Page 38 of Yours for the Season
“Rob showed up to every game and sat front and center, just to watch me fall on my face on the ice. He sat there while my teammates, who had been playing hockey from the age of three, made fun of me,” he said. “I think he thought I’d magically get better, through the power of his money and childhood bullying.” There was a wry smile on his face, but Sameera wasn’t fooled. Tom had unearthed a painful childhood memory and presented it to her as if it were a talisman. It made it easier to share her thoughts, the ones she wished she didn’t have.
“Sometimes, I feel embarrassed by my parents,” she said in a low voice, hating herself. “I don’t want to feel this way. I hate that I do, and I know I should have grown out of this by now. But they will be walking down the street and say something outrageous, or wear something silly,like those Christmas sweaters, and I’m thirteen years old again and mortified, and I want to disappear.”
They looked at each other in silence, and for the first time, Sameera didn’t feel the usual self-disgust mixed with toe-curling anxiety when she thought about what she had shared.
“It will be okay,” Tom said solemnly. “Whatever they did, I promise it will be all right.”
“They invited a random stranger over for dinner at Cooke Place. Tonight,” Sameera blurted.
Tom paused. “That’s fine. My dad loves company.”
“Abu Isra plans to bring his wife and six kids,” she added.
Tom broke out in a smile. “Abu Isra is coming over? Then there’s no trouble at all. My parents eat at his restaurant all the time.”
This startled a laugh from Sameera. “Does everyone just know each other here?”
“Pretty much, yes,” Tom said. “It used to drive my mom crazy. She was an introvert.”
Sameera raised a brow. “That must have been difficult, in a place like Wolf Run.”
“I think she understood what was expected of her when she married my dad. There’s always give and pull in any relationship.”
“That hasn’t been my experience,” Sameera said wryly, thinking of Hunter. She returned to people-watching, but this time she could feel Tom’s gaze on her.
“Why are you single?” he asked, something more than curiosity in his voice.
“How do you know I’m single? Maybe I have a boyfriend in Atlanta. Or a fiancé,” she teased, and his eyes went wide. “Relax, I’m single. I have been, ever since my boyfriend and I broke up last year.”
“That’s a long time,” he said.
“When you work sixty- to eighty-hour weeks, what’s impossible is keeping anyone around,” she countered. That wasn’t the only reason, of course. Bee had installed a few apps on her phone several monthsafter Hunter left, had even offered to set her up with her cute next-door neighbor, Diego, a visual artist. She had rebuffed every encouragement. The scars Hunter had left by his betrayal ran too deep to be quickly forgotten.
Sometimes she wondered if she would ever be able to let someone into her heart again. No matter how amazing their samosas.
“I understand what it’s like, being too busy for a relationship. I’m just wondering how you walk anywhere without tripping.” Off her questioning look, he added, “Because of all the people dropping at your feet.” She threw her balled-up napkin at him, and he smiled at her before ducking his head, suddenly shy. “Andy wasn’t lying in his message. It’s been a while for me, too,” he admitted.
“Now that I can believe,” she said, and he made a face at her.
“We both work crazy hours. We’re both ambitious and driven.Someof us are more charming than others,” he added, waggling his brows.
“You meansome of ushave to try harder,” she teased, and he grinned, accepting her parry.
“Plus, there’s the online hellscape of dating apps.” He shrugged his shoulders in awho is even dating amid the trash fire that is modern lifesort of way. Except, in her case, it wasn’t the whole story, and for the first time in a long time, she found herself wanting to talk about Hunter.
“My last relationship didn’t end well. When Hunter left me—”
“Your ex was named Hunter?” Tom asked, unimpressed. “His name is a red flag.”
Sameera started laughing. “That’s what my sister Nadiya said!”
“Nadiya has good instincts. You should listen to her.”
“She’s currently not talking to me, because she thinks I’m datingyou.”
Tom leaned back. “Give me your phone. I’ll text her right now and tell her you’re smarter than that.”
Sameera laughed and shook her head.
