Wrote this before all the 50th anniversary stuff with Doctor Who and before the new season started( if it has, I don't watch the show but I think Sam does, so…). Also it was written before the new season of Supernatural started (which I do watch but I didn't want to include any spoilers for anyone who watched so what's in my story is just the speculations I had before the season started).

Disclaimer: If there's a restaurant out there in the world called Just Beef, I have not heard of one. I just chose that name because Burger Heaven was lame. I own nothing and to that possible restaurant, I'm sorry if I used your name without permission or knowledge of your restaurant name. Ditto for the Sandwich named Old American.

TMW CHAPTER 24

"Okay, so you agreed to this charade with Sam. You can do this. I Mercedes Jones, Miss Jones if you're nasty, can be with Sam alone without losing my stuffing. I got this. Of course, I do." I giggled to myself at how foolish I looked talking to myself in the mirror.

With my little pep talk down, I double-checked my ensemble and makeup. As I finished making sure I looked as unsexy as I possibly could (not like that was easy), I received a text from Sam saying that he was pulling up. I didn't reply; the text was synonymous with a honking horn. We may not have been going on a date-date but I refused to fall into any behavior reminiscent of how I conducted myself while we were…whatever we were. After some time, I guess he caught on that I wouldn't just come running out to him because the next thing I heard was the doorbell.

When I opened the door, a sudden sense of dread filled my gut. Clearly, I'm not one to follow my women's intuition; so, I shrugged it off.

"Hi." It was hard to look him in the eye. I was scared that old feelings would just come clawing through me. Instead, I chanced glances at him as he stared right at me.

Sam didn't respond. Not one word. I really didn't have time for his crap, but I had dressed as friendly as I possible for me, given myself a pep talk, and avoided calling Kurt and Puck to side step a lecture from either of them. Like I would call Puck anyway after hanging up on me, he and I both needed time to cool down, not to mention he hurt my feelings. After all that, there was no way I wasn't going to follow through and send Sam home before he opened his mouth, which literally took him three minutes.

When I was finally brave enough to look him head on, I cocked my left eyebrow in irritation and rolled my eyes as hard as I could. Surprisingly, the feelings kept quiet giving me the courage I needed.

"Oh, uh, hi, Bambs."

"Sam." The warning in my tone left nothing to the imagination.

"Sorry, Mercedes. You ready?"

"Yeah."

The ride to Lima Carts was unbearably quiet. I have no doubt that Sam didn't want to anger me so he kept his mouth shut. While I, on the other hand, had nothing to say (odd, I know). Well, I had plenty to say. We all know there was plenty I could say, but I didn't. I wasn't really sure if Sam would give me the answers I wanted or if I really wanted any answers from Sam at the time.

I could feel him stealing prolonged glances the whole 21-minute drive. My neck was twitching to look in his direction, but I kept my eyes focused on the road ahead.

We pulled into the parking lot, paid, and suited up for go-carts all without speaking one single word. I appreciated Sam's attempt at keeping the peace he'd already disrupted when he called me his old nickname for me, but there was only so much tense silence I could handle. So, I grabbed his shoulder before he entered the cart. "Sam, if we're going to do this, we can't do it like this. You can talk to me. I'm not going to bite your head off if you do. Earlier I just…you can't call me that or any of the other names you like to call me, but we can talk. We have to if we're going to have any fun." I tried to make my tone as upbeat as possible. I really didn't want to dampen the already heavy mood.

"Oh, okay." Sam turned his body toward me. His eyes were bright. "It's just…I don't want to upset you – I don't want this to end before it starts so…"

"I get it. It's okay Sam, but you don't have to be on eggshells. We used to talk, so, just talk."

"Right. So, you ready to get your but smoked?"

"As if you could."

Sam flicked my chin and jumped into the cart. "Let's see about that, Jones."

I followed after him getting into my cart feeling as everything was going to be just fine.

After I don't know how many rounds, I was ahead of Sam by one. Between you and me, I think he gave me the last one because he could tell I was miffed that I wasn't winning. "That was fun."

"Of course it was fun, you were winning."

"Yeah, I kind of was, wasn't I?" I joked flipping my hair.

"Sure. You hungry? Want something to eat?"

"Yeah, I can eat. All that butt kicking really took a lot out of me."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Sam mumbled nudging my shoulder as we made our way to change out of our cart gear. Before I made it into the woman's changing room Sam grabbed my shoulder causing me to angle towards him. "Um, do you want to get something to eat from the concessions here or do you want to ditch this place and get some real food?"

Real food did sound good I didn't want any processed nacho cheese or even more processed hamburger meat (mostly soybeans, ew). I didn't, but I also wasn't entirely sure I wanted to change locations. Not with Sam. "Uh, we can go. Real food sounds good." My stomach won out.

"Cool, how about, Breadsticks?"

"No, how about the burger joint down the street?"

"I can do that." I turned to open the door, "Thanks." I faced Sam confused. When he saw my eyes, he explained. "For this. For letting me back in your life. I missed you."

I didn't know what to say so I gave him a quick smile and hurried to the changing room.

The short ride to Just Beef wasn't as quiet or awkward as the ride to Lima Carts. We talked a bit, mostly about the carts. Sam had had a great time. I had too. It caused me to wonder about if things had been different. They weren't; so, I washed my mind of the should've, could've, would've beens. We parked and I began to unbuckle my seatbelt oblivious to my surroundings because when I looked up about to open the door Sam was standing there before me with the door open with his dazzling smile blinding me.

This was a red flag situation. A big red flag, he didn't open the door for me earlier. But it takes me to brush it off, which I did.

I exited the car walking beside him, not touching. As we neared the diner, he started talking again. "I wish we would have done this earlier." He wasn't directly addressing me; so, I didn't comment one way or another. I brushed that off too. I might have thought the same thing at one point during this thing we were doing. I couldn't begrudge him his opinion.

Once inside, a waitress seated us in a booth near a window. This wasn't a date so we sat on opposite sides of the table. Mind you, even if it was a date, I don't do that. It's stupid. We were given menus, and as soon as I got mine, I buried my head in the thing trying to find what I wanted. I was on the brink of starving at this point. I had skipped breakfast, too nervous to think about eating. I must have completely tuned him out because Sam tapped the table to get my attention.

"What do you want?"

"I don't know. Maybe something hot and spicy. What about you?"

"Just a regular burger, and please give me bonus points for not stating the obvious." He slid that crooked grin onto those lovely lips of his.

For a split second, my heart skipped. No warm-blooded heterosexual, who am I kidding, any woman would have reacted the same way. Outwardly, however, I just rolled my eyes as usual. "Duly noted." I replied dialing back the smile that wanted to overtake my face.

We both chuckled. I couldn't help myself. He was telling the truth. I could see the strain on his face. "Thanks, Sam, it really keeps things from being awkward between us, and for what it's worth, I missed talking to you too."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. So…besides what I already know, what have you been up to?"

"Nothing. Mostly working and helping at home more, and what you already know." He offered me a weak smile and turned to look outside the window. I have no idea what came over him. We were fine then all of a sudden this cloud kind of descended over his head. It was odd. I hadn't seen him like this often. Sam wasn't a worrier or easily depressed person. He was just naturally happy, naturally optimistic. The look on his face was completely uncharacteristic and unnerving.

He looked out the window for a time before he turned around to face me again. When his eyes met mine, Sam opened his mouth to say something but just as he was about to speak the waitress came over to take our orders. I ordered the habanero, pepper jack, bacon lover burger, while Sam got the Old American. We both chose our favorite drink, ginger ale.

When she left, I waited a while for Sam to say what he was going to say before the young woman showed up at our table, but he didn't. He wasn't even looking at me. His eyes were focused out the window. I'm too nosey to let something go, so… "You were about to say something before the waitress came." It was more a statement than anything else, but the inflection of my tone rose enough that it sounded like a question.

"Uh, yeah, but it was nothing."

"Sam." This time I wasn't reprimanding him. I was whining; I didn't want to go back to how things were in the beginning. That awkward crap was for the birds. I was not up for anymore of that with someone I knew I could at least shoot the breeze with.

"Fine. Can't really resist you, Mercedes."

"No, so spill."

"I was just gonna say that…well, you've been spending a lot of time with Kurt and that other loser – why?"

"Don't know why you don't know this but Kurt and I have been more than friends since long before you and I – whatever. You should have noticed that. After, I just – I was a crappy friend for a while," no need to elaborate on that, "and as far as Puck goes, all you need to know is he was my friend and he still is even though I haven't been that great a friend to him."

He wasn't happy with my answer. He wanted to know more about Puck and me, but I wasn't ready to give anything more than what I had already told him involving us. Honestly, I didn't want to tell as much as I had.

"Oh."

Yeah, oh. If he had paid more attention to me, he would have noticed that in the beginning of our thing, those two guys were there, and I'm lucky to have them now.

"I do kind of remember you saying stuff about Kurt, and I think I saw you sit with Puck a time or two at lunch."

"Yeah." This time I averted my gaze to stare out the window. The last thing I wanted was to fall into a dawdling, tense silence, but this crap begged for that. Thankfully, the waitress showed with our delicious burgers.

The silence only lasted for a little while. As we ate, conversation once again took a turn to lighter things. Our burgers, go carting some more, our favorite TV shows. Mostly his favorite show Doctor Who, which I had no interest in, but as he was wont to do, I let him prattle on about it. Talk continued like this for the duration of our meal through dessert and to the car.

"Now, I'm waiting for the next season, and the new doctor. I just found out the twelfth doctor is gonna be a Peter Capal-something. Don't know him, but hey, it's Doctor Who." He turned to me with the brightest smile and this gleam in his eye that I hadn't seen in ages. I'm pretty sure I had a fairly similar smile on my face.

"I can't wait for the new season of Supernatural. No heaven, all the angels on earth. Can't wait to see how that goes."

"Oh, MJ, me either," (I can't fight them all) "and it looked like Crowley may have become more human."

"I know. The part where he started crying and talking about needing love – I cracked up."

"Me too."

We were turning onto my street when he glanced in my direction. Just one look and we both burst into laughter. This time with Sam made me feel a sense of nostalgia. I was having a really great time.

When out of the blue…

"You're beautiful."

"Thank you, but Sam…" I did not want to let this get out of hand. Not now. Not when everything was going so well. But he wasn't listening to me.

"Mercedes, come on it's true. You know it; I know it. What's wrong with a friend pointing that out?"

He did have a point. "Alright, I'm sorry. I kind of am, huh?" I said trying to keep the mood from going weird. Just for fun, I flipped my hair off my shoulder and flashed him a little smile.

Sam poked me in my cheek with his index finger. "Yes, you are."

I heard the dreamy tone of his voice, but I let it go. We were nearing my house and the ride would be over soon. Looking out the window, I could see my house getting closer.

"Mercedes?"

"Huh?" I turned to look at him as he put the car in park in my driveway.

"Do you think we can do this again? "

"I don't know why not. I had a fun time. I kicked your butt in go-carts and had great burgers."

"That's great because I really missed this – us – like this."

"Me too. I'm glad we did this. I'm glad we can be friends." I smiled at Sam, but not suggestively or in any way that could be misconstrued as such. I'm completely sure it was only friendly, but the next thing I knew, Sam's lips were on mine and they were softer than I remembered but I DIDN'T respond. I couldn't, too many alarms were going off and it hurt. To be that close to him. It wasn't – I didn't feel the same things I felt all those many months ago when we broke up.

In complete disarray, I felt his hand come up to cup my cheek and at that moment, I was jerked from my mental freak-out. Coming to, I pushed him away and dashed from the car.

"Mercedes! Hey, wait up! Mercedes!"

As I reached the door to my house, Sam grabbed my arm, but I snatched it from his grip giving him as much of a glare as I could muster through the other emotions warring within me.

"Mercedes!"

I didn't say anything to him. I couldn't. I just continued to the door leaving him on the bottom step of the porch.

The last thing I heard before I slammed the door behind me was Sam yelling, "What did I do wrong?" Idiot.

I barreled up to my room past my father ignoring his concern locking my door behind me. I threw myself onto my bed, head pounding, and tears flowing from my eyes.

I really needed my person.

So next is Sam's pov. What do ya'll that are still reading this story of mine want to know from Sam? I need your input, do know that I can't reveal everything because he and Mercedes still haven't had their "come to Jesus" moment with each other. So keep it about the date and anything that's happened between them before then.

Thanks,

nakala