Hey guys, here is yet another oneshot. I seem to be churning these out quite rapidly haha. For those of you that have read 'Forget Me Not' by abracadabra94, you may notice some similarities between this story and that one. It was purely coincidental, I promise, and I have already had a chat with abracadabra94 about it, so s'all good :). Please review. Reviews honestly make my day, and I'm not even kidding. It's truly sad how often I check my email looking to see if I got any more.
Finally I thought, sitting on the couch and putting up my feet. I had been waiting all day for my mother to leave for her shift at the hospital, and she was finally gone. I had just picked up my book when I heard a knock at my door.
"Coming!" I called, reluctantly getting up. Obviously there's someone at the door as soon as I get comfortable I thought. I opened the door to find Sam standing in the hallway, her hands shoved in her pockets.
"Uh, hey" I said in confusion. Sam had only ever voluntarily come to my house twice – when we kissed and when she needed my help with Missy. Whenever Sam turned up at my door, she did something very un-Sam, and I wondered what it would be today.
"Hey Freddifer" she said.
"Uh, what are you doing here?" I asked.
"My mom was driving me insane" she answered. Carly and Spencer had gone to Yakima for a week, so either Sam came to visit Carly out of habit and then remembered that she wasn't here, or she was really desperate. Very rarely did she choose to spend time with me. I didn't understand why, though, because we got along just fine whenever we were together. It was weird, but somewhere along the line, Sam had become my best friend. She still tortured me, but she had eased up on the physical violence and her insults had taken on a more playful nature. I had learned to just brush it off, knowing that she didn't actually mean it, and I teased her back now. It was almost like we had rubbed off on each other – Sam made me lighten up a bit, and I made Sam grow up a little. Ever since we kissed, we had slowly become closer and closer. Before that night we denied our friendship, neither of us wanting to accept that our relationship had progressed past just acquaintances. But that night broke down all the walls we had built, and we now weren't afraid to admit to ourselves that we were friends. It had become even more obvious when Carly began dating a guy named Brandon, leaving us with only each other for company. Carly always started to spend time with us but then left to be with Brandon, so although Sam and I spent a lot of time together, we never actually chose for it to be that way.
"Okay" I said, stepping back. "Well, my mom isn't home, so if you wanna-"
"Let's go get smoothies" Sam interrupted me.
"Okay" I said. I went inside and grabbed my phone and my keys before walking back to the door where Sam was waiting in the hallway. We took the elevator down to the lobby and made our way outside. It was an uncharacteristically beautiful day in Seattle – the sky was cloudless, the sun was shining and a gentle breeze blew. I couldn't help but smile as we exited Bushwell and began walking down the street towards the Groovy Smoothie. Sam looked at me, raising an eyebrow.
"What are you smiling at, dork?"
"Just…it's a nice day, that's all" I said, gesturing broadly to the general surroundings.
"You're so lame" she said with a laugh and a shake of her head. We were walking down the street when Sam suddenly stopped, grabbing me forearm to stop me.
"Freddie, look" she said, pointing across the street. I looked and saw a house with a garden in front. At the very front of the garden was a blue poppy bush.
"What?" I asked, looking for something of consequence. Unfortunately Sam didn't hear me, because she had already started to cross the street. I ran to catch up with her, and she stood in front of the house.
"Look" she said again, pointing at the poppies.
"They're flowers" I said, wondering what was so special about them.
"No, they're blue poppies" she said, leaning forward to inspect the blossoms. "They're my favourites"
"Really?" I asked, slightly surprised. Sam didn't strike me as the type to have a favourite flower. "I didn't know that"
She didn't answer, just kept looking at the flowers. They were quite pretty, actually – yellow centres with bright blue petals. As I looked at them, I realized that they matched Sam perfectly. They were different, and unconventional, and unexpected. They were bright, and fun, and bold. And the colour of the petals perfectly matched Sam's eyes. I leaned forward and picked one of the flowers, handing it to Sam.
"What are you doing?" she asked, eyeing the flower suspiciously.
"You said you like them, right?" I asked, shrugging. Sam narrowed her eyes at me before snatching the flower out of my hand.
"Let's just go get smoothies" she said, continuing to walk down the street. We walked in silence, and I snuck a glance at Sam. She was smelling the flower and smiling shyly, the breeze gently blowing her hair back and the sun illuminating her smooth skin. My breath caught in my throat. She looked so astoundingly beautiful that I had trouble convincing myself that it was the same Sam whose favourite hobby was injuring other people. I had always known she was pretty, but this was different. Before, it was a mere observation that I stated as a fact. She was pretty, there was no denying it. But now, I couldn't stop looking at her. I wanted nothing more than to run my fingers through her hair and over her skin, seeing if it felt as soft as it looked. I wanted to grab her in the middle of this crowded street and kiss her. My crush on Sam had slowly been developing since the night we kissed, but I had managed to push it away and ignore it until now. But this obliterated every dam that was holding back my feelings, and they all came rushing forward. I quickly looked away before Sam caught me staring at her, but I knew that the image would be burned into my memory forever.
We chatted as we walked to the Groovy Smoothie and went inside. We bought our smoothies (or rather, I bought our smoothies) and went to sit down at our usual table. Sam laid the flower carefully on the table in front of her, playing absentmindedly with it as we drank our smoothies and talked. She ran the petals gently between her fingertips and traced the edges of the leaves on the stem. We stayed in the Groovy Smoothie until T-Bo kicked us out, at which point we walked back down the sun-drenched sidewalk. We decided that it was too nice a day to waste, so instead of heading back to Bushwell, we headed for a nearby park.
We walked around the park talking, and I was once again surprised how easy it had become to talk to Sam. If you had told me five years ago that I would be able to have a legitimate conversation with Sam Puckett, I would have asked what you were smoking. Now we chatted easily, talking about everything and anything. Around Carly I still censored myself, afraid of saying something too dorky or lame or weird, but around Sam I said whatever came into my head without having to think about it. I was entirely myself around Sam, and I loved that freedom. I had absolutely no idea why I still did this, because my crush on Carly evaporated when we began dating. It was a dream come true at first, but I quickly realized that I didn't actually like Carly. She was beautiful, kind, fun, smart – everything I could possibly want in a girlfriend, but that was exactly the problem. I liked the idea of Carly more than I actually liked her. When I kissed her, I felt nothing. No fireworks, no sparks, nothing. The first time Carly kissed me, I was shocked to realize that the whole time, I was comparing it to my kiss with Sam. My kiss with Sam was awkward and weird, but the moment our lips touched, I understood the expression 'sparks fly'. It literally felt like there were a million sparks of electricity in the air, making my synapses do a dance. Sam knew that I no longer had a crush on Carly, but she didn't know why. She would never like me, and there was no way I was going to risk ruining our weird, twisted friendship by telling her that I liked her.
We walked around the park for a little before sitting on a bench in front of the duck pond. The bench was under a big oak tree, and dappled sunlight shone through the leaves onto the grass and bench. Sam turned and plopped her feet in my lap, placing the poppy carefully on her lap. We watched the ducks as they wandered around the pond, coming up to the fence in the hopes of being fed. Among the ducks were about a dozen fluffy yellow ducklings, tottering around and making the squeaky little noise that ducklings make. We sat on that bench for about two hours, usually talking, but sometimes there would be a break in the conversation and we would lapse into comfortable silence. We had become close enough that we didn't have any awkward silences anymore – if there was nothing to say, we didn't feel the need to fill the silence. I would sit there and watch Sam gaze across the pond, the dappled sunlight on her face and the breeze in her hair, and marvel at how beautiful she looked. I had never seen her look so peaceful or content before, and I couldn't take my eyes off of her.
We spent the majority of that week together – either Sam would come to my house or we would go out. Usually we went to the Groovy Smoothie and then to the park, sitting on the bench by the pond. It very quickly became our bench, complete with our names carved into it. One day we arrived to find another couple sitting on our bench. Sam demanded for them to get off our bench, to which they responded that it wasn't our bench because it didn't have our names on it. The very next day Sam brought her pocket knife and carved her name in the bench, staking her claim on it. After I protested, she reluctantly added my name next to hers. Every time I saw our names in the bench, carved in Sam's messy scrawl, I couldn't help but think how nice they looked together. Sam and Freddie. If only it was that easy.
Every time we passed a blue poppy bush, I would pick a blossom and give it to Sam. Sometimes she would end up with three or four flowers in one day, depending where we went. Every time I offered her a flower she snatched it with a roll of her eyes and a proclamation of how lame I was, but I could see the smile playing at the corners of her lips. When Carly returned from Yakima the flower-giving died down a little, because I knew better than to give Sam a flower in Carly's presence, but whenever we were alone together and we passed a blue poppy bush I would give her another flower.
One day I went over to Sam's house. Carly had gone to a cabin with Brandon and his family for the long weekend, and my mom was venturing beyond her normal crazy and into the realm of the clinically insane, so I decided to visit Sam. I knocked on the door, and eventually Sam's mom opened it. She looked angry at first, but her expression smoothed out when she saw that it was me at the door.
"Hey there kid" she said, smoothing her hair and adjusting her shirt to expose more of her ample cleavage.
"Uh…hi, Mrs. Puckett" I said, freaked out by this very un-subtle display. "Is Sam home?"
"Not yet, but she's on her way" she said, looking at me. Her expression alone made me want to call the police. "You can wait inside if you want, she should be home soon"
"Um…okay" I said hesitantly. She stood back to let me in and I hurried past her, not sure if it was wise to stay in a house alone with this woman.
"Can I get you anything?" she asked, closing the door behind me and batting her eyelashes flirtatiously.
"I'm okay thanks" I said, instinctively taking a step back and crossing my arms in front of me. "I'll just wait in Sam's room"
I turned on my heel and all but ran away from Sam's mom. I had seen in one of Sam's blogs for iCarly that her mom thought that I had 'filled out nicely' but this was scaring the crap out of me. I shut Sam's door behind me and turned around, looking around Sam's room. I walked over to her desk, which was covered in clothes and food in various stages of decay, and sat down. I sat there bored for a few minutes before I began looking around for something to do. I poked around Sam's desk, worried what I might find, and accidentally knocked over a tennis ball. It rolled across the floor and over to Sam's bed. I held my breath, willing it not to go under the bed – I was terrified what I might encounter under there. Fortunately, the ball hit something under the bed and rolled back out. I got up and knelt down to pick it up, wondering what it had bounced off of. I looked under the bed and saw a copy of the dictionary. Who knew that Sam owns a dictionary? I mused, pulling it out. I looked at it, turning it over in my hands, when I noticed that there was a page that wasn't lying flat. Assuming that the page had folded over, I opened the dictionary to that page to fix it, and what I saw made my heart skip a beat. Between the pages of the dictionary was a blue poppy. I knelt on the floor, staring at the page in shock. Somewhere in the middle of all that surprise, my mind registered the page number. 239. I told myself that it was just a coincidence, but I knew in my heart that it wasn't. I looked at the page, seeing a whole bunch of words beginning with 'f'.
fond adj. 1. affectionate, loving. 2. over-affectionate, doting. 3. (of hopes) cherished but unlikely to be fulfilled.
foolish adj. 1. lacking good sense or judgement. 2. (of actions) unwise. 3. ridiculous.
I closed the book gently, shaking my head at the irony, and placed it back under the bed where I found it, next to a shoebox. At this point I was in a very curious mood, so I pulled out the shoebox and opened it. Inside, I found about thirty pressed blue poppies, their fragile petals turned dark turquoise. She kept them all I thought in shock. I can't believe that she actually kept them all. I looked at them, a million different feelings coursing through my mind. Shock, wonder, confusion, nervousness and above all, an overwhelming sense of happiness. Just then, my phone buzzed. I gave a little yelp and quickly shut the shoebox, shoving it under the bed where I had found it. I pulled out my phone to find a text from Sam. Oh God, she knows that I went snooping under her bed I thought frantically. She's gonna kill me mercilessly. I opened the text.
my mom tells me that you're at my house. hang tight, i'll be home in about two minutes.
My breathing slowed as I realized that Sam didn't know that I had been rummaging through her stuff. I sat in the desk chair and played games on my phone until Sam walked in.
"Hey" she said. "What are you doing here?"
"My mom was being a lunatic" I said. "Where were you?"
"You don't need to know"
"Okay then" I said. "Uh, Sam? Can we please leave? Your mom is creeping me out"
"You can buy me a smoothie" she said, opening the door and walking out. I followed her and we quickly left, walking to the Groovy Smoothie. The whole time, I was thinking about what I had found. It had to mean that she liked me back, right? I mean, why would she keep all of them unless she liked me? I was so distracted that when we passed a blue poppy bush, I almost forgot to pick one for Sam. I wasn't paying attention to where we were going, and when I didn't immediately pick a flower for Sam, she slowed down. I barely noticed that she had slowed down, but I matched my pace to hers, still thinking. I looked across at her and I was surprised to see that she looked more upset than I had ever seen her. Her expression surprised me enough to bring me back to reality, and it was only then that I realized that we were passing a blue poppy bush. I quickly picked a flower and handed it to Sam. She snatched it as usual, but I saw her eyes light up as soon as I proffered it. My heart expanded as I saw her smile exultantly, inspecting the flower. She had to like me, she just had to. We walked to the Groovy Smoothie, talking and laughing as usual. We drank our smoothies and headed for the park as always, sitting down on our bench. Sam kicked off her shoes and mismatched socks, wiggling her toes and crossing her legs. I sat next to her, stretching my legs in front of me. Sam rested her arms on her legs, her hands carelessly resting on her knees. I took a deep breath, steeling myself and wondering what the hell I was about to do. I tapped her on the shoulder.
"Hey Sam?"
"Yeah?" she asked, turning to face me. Before I could wimp out, I leaned forward and kissed her. I felt her stiffen in surprise, and for a moment I panicked that I had interpreted it all wrong, and I was about to receive the beating of the century. Then I felt her give in and kiss me back, turning her body to face me and taking my face in her small hands. Eventually she pulled back.
"What was that?" she asked me, furrowing her brow in confusion.
"That was me kissing you"
"Well obviously, dork" she said, rolling her eyes. "Why?"
"Cause" I said, leaning forward. "You're funny" I whispered, kissing her softly on the side of her neck. "And smart" I continued, kissing her jaw just below her ear. "And beautiful" I said, kissing her on the cheek. "And amazing" I said, kissing the very corner of her lips. "And I'm crazy about you" I finished softly, kissing her gently on the lips.
"You're such a dork" she whispered, running her fingertips lightly down the side of my face, tracing my jawbone. "But you're my dork"
She leaned forward and kissed me again, running her fingernails over the back of my neck and driving me crazy. Too soon she pulled back, smiling at me. She then scooted across and leaned into my side, resting her head on my shoulder. I wrapped my arm around her waist, pulling her closer and resting my hand on her leg. She threaded our fingers together, snuggling closer and giving a happy little sigh. We sat there for nearly three hours, talking and laughing, both of us riding on a high of pure happiness. Eventually, I realized that I had to get home before my mom began to panic. I told Sam this, planting a kiss on her nose before sitting up. We got up and were turning to walk away when Sam stopped.
"Wait" she said. She turned and went back to the bench, kneeling on the ground. She pulled her knife out of her pocket and carved something in the bench. I walked over and looked at what she had done. She had carved a small plus sign on the bench between our names. Sam + Freddie. I could get used to that.