Page 22 of Let’s Be Real

Chapter Eight

Nate

Samantha’s dad was a dick.

Meeting him, seeing the way he treated his daughter versus how he treated me, a veritable stranger, clarified everything.

Why I was here. Why Adrian had been worried about her. Why she’d spent all her time at our house growing up.

He’d barely acknowledged her then easily dismissed her once he did. It had made me sick for her, and since I was practically the captain of the Dick-for-Dads Club, that was saying something.

And she had been more concerned over the bed situation than her own father not hugging her. That said something too.

“Oh my god. We have to do the alpine slide!” she cried.

“What?”

I frowned, first at her, then at the sign that had caught her attention on our walk around the resort. I could only guess what an alpine slide was. The way Samantha was bouncing on her toes, she was more than familiar.

She hooked her arm around mine, her long, lean body aligning with my side. “The slide, Nate. I haven’t done it since I was a little kid.” Her lashes fluttered as she blinked her big hazel eyes at me. “Will you come with me? Please?”

“I’m game. I can’t say I know what you’re getting me into, but if you say it’s fun, I’ll trust you.”

“It was fun when I was ten.” Thin lines formed on her narrow nose as she scrunched it. “It’ll either be a disaster or the time of our lives.”

“Let’s go find out.”

For all her family’s faults, they’d chosen a beautiful location for this wedding. The resort’s timber-and-stone main building was tucked at the base of a mountain, the slope covered in pine trees and wildflower-dotted meadows. Everything was lush and warm, golden and sun-kissed.

Samantha kept her arm around mine while we walked toward the gondolas, only letting go to step into the enclosed car. I followed, sitting on the bench across from her. We were like glass beads on a string, gently swaying as we pulled away from the loading platform and started up the mountain.

“I didn’t ask you if you’re afraid of heights.”

“I’m not,” I confirmed.

Sometimes I was afraid of myself when I was somewhere high up, but it wasn’t the height itself that caused the fear.

I’d heard it referred to as “the call of the void.” It wasn’t one I thought I’d ever answer, but I didn’t always trust myself.

Today was a good day, though. I had Samantha to focus on. My duty to get her through this weekend unscathed. The void wasn’t even whispering.

The ground slipped away faster than I expected. Below us, the resort shrank. Rooftops turned miniature. People were reduced to slow-moving dots. Ahead, the mountain opened, endless ridgelines layered in hazy blue, stretching farther than I could track.

Samantha pressed her hands against the glass, her excitement palpable. I could almost picture her smaller, melding herself to the glass in the exact same way. My memories had been smudged by time and trauma, but there were snippets where Samantha came through sharp and clear.

She’d always been tall for her age. Gangly like a colt. Her hair had been cornflower yellow, darkening as the years passed to a dirty blond. I could still hear Adrian making fun of her the first time she got highlights and picture how pink her cheeks had flushed. Rome had helped him come up with an apology for that one. Two days had passed before she’d come back.

When they’d been really young, Adrian would hide her in his room, like me or Rome would have told her to leave if we’d discovered her presence. We’d always known she was there. They weren’t great at hiding their giggles, and Adrian was a terrible liar, stumbling over excuses for bringing two sandwiches to his room.

After a while, they’d stopped hiding so much. Samantha was just there, like another sibling. I could picture her with her bare feet propped on our coffee table. Sitting on the counter in our kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal. Watching movies late at night by herself in the living room. Hunched over the dining room table studying.

Flashes of all the years I’d known this girl, who was now a woman, played out in my mind. For someone who was woven through most of my clearest memories, it was astounding how little I really knew her.

“Is this bringing you back?”

Samantha glanced back at me, her grin slipping into place. “One summer, my parents let Adrian come to Silver Springs with us. Probably so they didn’t have to deal with me. That doesn’t matter, though. It was the best time I’d ever had. He and I rode this thing a hundred times. We only went home when it shut down for the night.” She got up and shuffled across the gondola to sit on the bench beside me. “Let’s take a selfie to send to him. He’ll be so jealous.”

She held her phone out in front of us and pressed her head against mine. Seeing myself on her screen, smiling as wide as she was, was like looking at a stranger. Her glow was shining on me, making my smile brighter, my eyes glimmery. Like I was enjoying myself.