Page 10 of The Backtrack
“You look really great.” He longingly admired her face.
Damon’s hand reached for younger Sam’s and squeezed her open palm. Then he tilted her chin up gently with an index finger. His eyes locked on to hers as he asked, “Can I kiss you?”
“Ah, God,” Sam muttered to herself.Thiswas the part of the memory that really hurt—when Damon had been so vulnerable, and she couldn’t reciprocate. His expression had hope, while hers had dimmed. And she remembered what came next. Poor Damon.
Teenage Sam hesitated, the same way she had all those years ago. She’d wanted to kiss Damon. He was adorable, like if Ezra Koenig and Pete Wentz had a baby. But with Damon, she’d known that if they kissed they would no longerjustbe friends. He would expect more. She had a plan to leave Tybee and, deep down, she also knew Damon wasn’t going to leave with her.
So she’d faked being sick and asked him to take her home. They never spoke about it again, and their relationship hadn’t bounced back to the normal level of best friend status they’d once held for each other.
Sam waited to hear the lie—Actually, I’m not feeling well...There was a long stretch of silence, save for the background music still playing from the headphones in her hand as Amy Lee yell-sang the climax of the song.
And then, instead of lying to Damon, Alt-Sam gave a slow but certain nod that made Damon lean down and cup her face with both hands. Their lips met. She pulled him in close as Damon backed her up against the hood of his car, in what was, honestly, a very smooth move. He quickly removed his snare drum case, and her clarinet, as their bodies pressed tightly together. Then he gently traced the line of her cheekbone with his thumb as she scratched through his hair with her painted black nails.
What in the teenage hormones is going on?Adult Sam uncrossed her arms, cocked her head and watched as history rewrote itself in front of her. “Huh,” she said.
Maybe she’d been playing the “What If?” game too much during flights, wonderingwhat ifthey’d ever tried being together. Though she didn’tlovethat the blue roll-on body glitter her younger self had put all over her arms was now covering Damon’s shirt. That would be a dry-cleaning nightmare.
Adult Sam got so close that she snapped her fingers next to them, but they didn’t respond. The rules of dreams were confusing. She circled, but it was like she wasn’t even there, or maybe they were just so focused on the make-out that they didn’t notice. The sound of their lips meeting—of Damon’s low growl in his throat—was honestly not her thing. She put the headphones back on to let the music drown out the saliva swapping. The last line of the song came through, where Lee carried the wordliiiiiiifeout until her voice went hoarse. Sam closed her eyes to let the last notes sink in but as she did, the air felt warm again and her eyes abruptly shot open.
The CD player had turned off. The song ended and silence filled her ears. There she was, back in her childhood bedroom—dream over.
Sam tore off the headphones and accidentally bumped her head on the wall she’d been leaning against. “Ouch.” She hissed as she rubbed at the tender spot. Maybethatexplained how she’d hit her head on a “car bumper” in her dream. She’d likely just bumped it at this same spot on the wall as she nodded off.
She hastily pushed herself up, grateful to be awake. The CD player and headphonesthunkedto the floor. “Okay, yeah, wow.” She cracked her neck. “That was strange.”
She held a palm to her chest and tried to concentrate on the present. She was still in her bedroom. And, yes, she’d had a fantasy about kissing Damon, but that didn’t have to mean anything. So what, the dream had been super intense? Jet lag could do wild things.
She smoothed a hand down her pilot’s shirt. Her hand shook, though, and she clenched and unclenched her fist to try to stop the movement. “Nothing to get worked up over.”
Flying nonstop from Paris to Atlanta, along with the stress of her trip and the nostalgia of being back in her house, had all conspired to make her so exhausted that she’d fallen asleep and dreamt about what could’ve been. And, to be honest, she’d often wondered what would’ve happened if she’d stayed in Tybee, or kissed Damon. Not because she regretted where she was; it was just a kind of curiosity that popped up whenever she thought of him. So she’d had a kind of fantastical dream about Damon that felt way too real.
Sam slipped on an old sleep shirt. Probably her subconscious was sending a message that she had unfinished business with Damon. So perhaps the easiest thing to dowasto just see him again. He might ask her questions—no, he definitely would—but she needed to ask him some, too.
And maybe it was all just a bit too much, because her eyes started to close on their own. Sleep. She desperately needed sleep. Lack of sleep was what had brought this weird hallucination on in the first place. She put her head on the pillow, closed her eyes and wondered if she’d have another dream of him.
4
Samhadfallen asleep, curled up on top of her bedspread, like some overly tired house cat. But she was woken up by a rather loud and boisterous set of bagpipes playing an army call. Further adding to her confusion was the come-hither expression from the Legolas poster tacked to her wall. She reared back and away from his icy-blond perfection, which caused her to accidentally roll off the twin bed and land on the floor. She winced from the instant pain in her shoulder, sat up and rubbed the sore spot. Which is when she saw that a mere foot from her was the CD player.
Her hand reached for it, almost out of old habit, but stopped when she noticed the smell of butter wafting up to her room. It was a sense memory so familiar that she already knew what her grandma was cooking, but her grandma wasn’t supposed to be doing things that required two hands. Sam pushed herself up and bolted down the hall to make sure her grandma wasn’t about to burn the house down.
In the kitchen, Pearl sat at the table in almost the same spot where Sam had left her the night before. Only this time, the bagpipes created the sort of illusion of a built-in dramatic soundtrack. Sam glanced out the window to see Byron, a neighbor she hadn’t thought about in over a decade but who, apparently, still liked to greet the morning wearing a green kilt and playing army songs loudly in the sand.
“Sam!” The voice of Jessie Tran, her grandma’s next-door neighbor, startled her. Jessie and Pearl shared a common love of dirt bike races and comparing rotisserie chickens from local grocery stores.
Jessie was at the stove and wiped her hands across the apron she wore before wrapping her in a hug so tight that Sam thought she might lose consciousness. Jessie had dyed black hair cut into a short bob and long nails painted neon orange that had remained the same color and length as they were when Sam was in high school. “Did Byron wake you up?” Jessie practically had to shout over the noise.
“What would make you think that?” Sam joked back.
“Huh?” Jessie replied.
“Yes!” Sam shouted. “Yes, he did!”
The bagpipes came to a miraculous halt. Outside, Byron saluted the rising sun and marched his way back up toward his beach house.
“You look like a raccoon who gorged at a dumpsite. What happened?” Grandma Pearl asked. All Sam could do was grunt in response.
To be fair, she hadn’t washed her face or showered before passing out—two important things she should do sooner rather than later. She tried to flatten her hair with the palm of her hand. “I need a shower, obviously.”
