Page 82 of The Devil She Knows
Hannah pursed her lips and Sam frowned.
She’d expected a bigger reaction than that. For Hannah to at least want to know why now.
“Look, Sam,” she said. “I have something I need to tell you, and I should’ve said it sooner, I definitely should’ve told you last night, but Coco and I—”
Sam held up a hand, feeling the strangest sense of déjà vu. Like she knew what Hannah was going to say before she said it. She didn’t need to hear it. “I don’t want to know.”
Hannah’s brow furrowed. “You don’t seem surprised.”
Surprisedshould’ve been the least of what Sam felt, and yet everything shedidfeel was … muted? Like pressing on a bruise instead of feeling a fresh hurt.
“What are you really doing here, Han?” Because she doubted it was to talk about her illicit affair with Sam’s boss.Ex-boss.
“I was with Coco when you called.” Hannah had the decency to look abashed. “I tried to get her to agree to give you the time off. I figured it was, I don’t know, the least either of us owed you, considering … well. But she was being petty, Sam, and trust me, I told her exactly what I thought about it.”
What did Hannah want her to say to that? Cool? Thanks for trying? “Pettyis pretty much par for the course with Coco.”
Hannah winced. “Coco is … she’s complicated, Sam.”
“Coco’s not my problem anymore.”
“Right. That’s … good for you, honestly.” Hannah nibbled on her bottom lip. “What do you think you’re going to do? I mean”—she waved at the boxes and packing paper—“what’s next?”
Sam blew out a breath and shrugged. “Melissa’s going to let me crash at her place until I figure things out.” No one was going to approve her for a new apartment while she was unemployed without money coming in. “I think I saw that bakery on Seventy-Fourth—you know, the one that always has those cute window displays? I saw that they were hiring.”
Hannah frowned. “That place is a cupcakery. A cupcakerycafé. You can’t go from working in a Michelin-starred restaurant to a café. For God’s sake, you’re a formally trained pastry chef. You’re too good to be slinging coffee.” She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes for a count of five, then dropped them, shaking her head. “This is exactly what I was talking about. This could be your moment. You could be looking for a job as an executive pastry chef somewhere or—or trying to build a following online or applying forTop Chef, but no. You could be the next Candace Nelson, Sam, and own a whole chain of cupcakeries. You could be great, but instead you’re still going to be punching a time card in five years because you’re back to thinking small.”
Normally, when Hannah got on a tear like this and told Sam she was thinking small, Sam wouldfeelsmall. Small andashamed and guilty, like she was letting Hannah down by not dreaming big enough.
She waited for the shame to hit, but for whatever reason, it didn’t.
“You don’t really know me at all, do you?”
Hannah gave her an incredulous stare.
“I don’twantto be the next Candace Nelson.” Sam didn’t want to be the next anybody. She wanted to be the first Samantha Cooper and, quite frankly, it didn’t matter if no one knew her name. She was okay with that. “That’s not my dream. It never was.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “I’m not saying you actually have tobethe next Candace Nelson, Sam. It was an example. I’m saying you could be if you tried.”
If shetried? “Hannah, all I did was try with you.” To want what she wanted. To be the person Hannah wanted her to be. She’d triedsohard for so long that somewhere along the way, so gradually she hadn’t realized it was happening while she was in the thick of it, Sam had lost sight of who she was, what she wanted, why she’d moved to New York. All she had been able to see instead was everything Hannah wanted her to be that she wasn’t. All the places she didn’t measure up. “I think what it really comes down to is that no matter how hard I tried, it was never going to be enough, was it?Iwas never going to be enough.”
Hannah took a step toward her, her face falling when Sam took one back. “Sam—”
“You always told me I could do anything, be anything, and I thought,Wow, she must really believe in me.” Sam blinked back the sudden sting of tears. “But that’s not whatyou were saying, was it? When you were telling me I could be anything, really, you wanted me to be a completely different person.” A little poke here, a prod there; Hannah had been trying to mold Sam into something she wasn’t, something she would never be. “That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
Hannah’s silence spoke volumes.
It hurt less than Sam had thought it would, having her suspicions confirmed. At least now she wouldn’t wonder for the rest of her life if it would have mattered had she done something differently. “Thank you.”
Hannah looked up at her, eyes wide. “For what?”
“For seeing the writing on the wall before I did. I mean, you could’ve had the decency to call it quits before you started sleeping with my boss, because full offense, Han? I don’t really care how unhappy you were with me, that was a shitty thing to do.”
Hannah cringed. “For whatever it’s worth, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I swear I didn’t. I came by the restaurant one night and you had already left. Almost everyone had, but Coco was still there, and I was going to leave but she offered me a drink. We got to talking and I had too much wine and the next thing I knew, she was leaning in and kissing me and—I’m not proud of what I did. I’m not. But Coco and I, we both know what it’s like to be ashamed of who we used to be. She understood me in a way that no one else ever has. We understood each other. Neither of us grew up like this, Sam, and we’d both do anything to make sure we don’t have to be those people again.”
“And you think, what? That I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth? InGrosse Tête?” Don’t make her laugh.
“The difference is, I’m not ashamed of the person I used to be.” Sam didn’t want to forget about the girl from Grosse Tête who dreamed of moving somewhere she could be her whole self. Sam still carried that girl inside herself and she owed it to them both to stop trying to live up to someone else’s ideals and start living up to her own. “For whatever it’s worth to you, I liked the girl you used to be. The one I met.”
