Chapter 2 – Past Forgotten and Ignored
She had drifted off with the television on. She noticed the time on the TV, and she noted that she'd only slept for half an hour. It was on a weather channel, and she woke up to the weatherman telling her that it'd be a sunny day in Chicago.
Chicago. She had liked Chicago. Hell, she still liked Chicago. There was someone she had loved in Chicago. Hell, she still loved him. She had loved him. Luka.
His name was like a dagger through her heart, slicing through her thousands of times. Although, she felt for him the way that she did, she couldn't give into his phone calls again. She couldn't talk to him – there'd be nothing to say. He wouldn't understand if she'd try to say it.
She sighed as she prepared herself to stand up from the couch. As her hands met the cushion to push her body upward, the phone vibrated across the end table again. She looked at the name with glazed eyes, and silenced her phone. The phone quit vibrating and she set it back down on the end table.
She went into the bathroom and washed her face. Returning into the living room, her phone beeped, indicating that there was a new voice message. She collapsed onto the couch and rubbed her face with her fingertips. She picked up her phone and called her voice mail.
"Sam, please talk to me. Are you somewhere that maybe I could drop by and we could talk?" he sounded desperate for her. She hated his desperation, but she couldn't stand to fall in love again only to not be loved back. "I miss you," his final words were spoken breathlessly, and they sent shivers down her spine.
She closed the phone, and the snap echoed throughout the hotel room. The noise was slightly louder than the light sounds coming from the weather channel. She set the phone back on the end table beside the remote, and she leaned back into the couch. Her head rested against the armrest, and she rubbed her eyes.
Squinting her eyes at the time that the television had captured in the corner of the screen, she sighed at the numbers that it contained. It seemed so late to her, but in reality it was really early in the morning. The time changed to 7:53. She sat up from the couch and grabbed her cell phone back off of the table.
Trying to remember the last time that she had talked to her parents, her temples barred up with sharp pains. She rubbed her temples, driving the pain from her head. The last time that she had spoken to her parents was a month before they fled to Chicago, and she realized that it'd been nearly a year since her and her parents had exchanged words.
She dialed her parents phone number, her phone number that she had as a child, and traced her thumb over the send button on her cell phone. Her cell phone belonged to a Chicago area code, and her parents would never recognize that number. She sighed, firmly pressing down on the send button. The phone rang on the other side of the line, and she rubbed her nose nervously waiting for someone to answer.
"Hello?" a soothing voice said down the phone. Her mother was oblivious to who was resting on the other end of the phone line. Her mother's voice implied that she possessed an open mind that day, willing to give anything a try. She'd seen that side of her mother – her mother had actually had those days a lot throughout her pregnancy at 15.
"Hi, mom. It's me, Sam," she said, her voice shaking slightly.
"Hi, Samantha. How's Detroit?" her mother asked, sounding very happy to be speaking to her.
"Actually, right now we're in New Jersey. We actually got here about 2 hours ago," she said, exhaling nervously. She leaned against her upper thighs. What was there left to say? She'd just told her mother that they were in New Jersey. "Alex really wants to see you guys, do you think that maybe we could have lunch sometime?"
"Lunch? Sugar, you guys are welcome to come join us for breakfast. Your father should be getting up pretty soon, and I'm sure that he'll be very happy to see you," her mother said. It really was one of those days that her mother was willing to try anything. She'd really like to see her little brother Mark.
"Breakfast sounds great. Where we're staying isn't exactly home cooking," she laughed quietly in the back of her throat. "I guess that we'll be around soon," she said, smiling while slightly nodding her head.
"We'll see you then, Sammy," her mother said. Before her mother could hang up, she felt the need to thank her – she'd never felt that need before.
"Hey, mom? Thank you," she breathed out. She and her mother said their good byes, and once she hung her phone up, she went into the bathroom. She started the shower, and once the steam had risen from the top, she stepped in.
The water was warm against her skin, and it was refreshing. The water colliding with her skin was maybe just what she needed. It could keep her collected for a few hours, or at least until she had left from her parents. The last thing that she needed was to breakdown in front of her parents.
She got out of the shower, pulled on some clean clothes, and got Alex out of bed. She made him go into the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face, and he questioned her the entire time. Once they were both changed and he was mostly clean, they headed out of the door of the hotel with the hotel key in her pocket and the car keys in her hand.
Pulling into the driveway of her childhood home, she noticed the red Ford Mustang that her dad used to drive, a black Ford Ranger, and a red Lincoln Navigator. She hadn't ever realized how big the driveway was, until her car was parked behind the mustang. The car stopped at a house that Alex didn't recognize, and she glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
"It's okay. You're going to like them – well, you'll at least like your Uncle Mark," she said, faking another smile. She remembered talking to Mark. Mark called once a week for 4 years after she had left, it gradually turned into once every two weeks, and now it was once a month. Mark never talked to Alex, so Alex only knew him from what his mother had said about him.
"How come we've never been here to visit them before?" he asked, unbuckling his seatbelt. He climbed out of the backseat, and their doors shut in unison. She placed a hand on his shoulder, and squeezed it.
"You know what, kiddo? I bet that your Uncle Mark has a lot of stories to tell you," she said, attempting to change the subject. They approached the door, and she looked down at him as they stepped onto the porch step. He looked up his eyes wide.
"Are they better than Luka's?" came Alex's immediate reply.
"I bet that he could teach some stuff about basketball. You like basketball, right?" she asked, making a loose fist and knocking it against the hollow, wooden door.
"It's all right," he said, and seconds later the front door was opened.
She clutched a cup of steaming coffee in her tight grasp, and her fingers cramped, prompting her to set the cup down onto the kitchen table in front of her. The sound of the ceramic hitting the wood seemed to make her mother shift in the seat beside her. She knew that she had some explaining to do, but she didn't know where to start.
"You left Detroit. Did you leave and come here?" her mother asked, crossing one leg over the other and leaning against the table expectantly.
"No, actually. We were in Detroit for like, a week after I last talked to you. We went to Chicago," she said, looking down at the table. Her eyes traced the pattern and sweat rings from glasses when she was a kid. She couldn't find the courage to look up and see her mother eye-to-eye.
"Chicago? Where did you go after that?" she asked. She was right to believe that she had fled to more places than just Chicago. Her parents had never heard of Alex going to one school for an entire school year, but miracles do happen. She was there now, wasn't she?"
"No where. We were in Chicago for a little over a year," she said. She glanced up, her eyes barely meeting her mother's. She leaned forward, sighing in defeat. If her cell phone rang at that moment, she wouldn't have the strength to not speak to him. "You know, it was nice. I thought that this time I'd finally been given the opportunity to fall in love with one city," she shook her head.
"If you loved Chicago so much, why'd you leave?" her mother asked. She was sincere, really seemed to care about Sam. Immediately following the question her mother asked, she searched through her brain for an answer that her mother would understand.
"Steve showed up, and he started to interfere with our lives. We'd finally made something that was starting to work. It took us a year to adjust to everything that'd happened, and when we were finally adjusted, Steve shows up and changes everything," she said.
"I always told you that Steve was bad news," her mother said, her tone lacked the condescending tone that she'd usually had with Steve's name tact to it.
"I know that you did, but, you know, right now," she trailed off, shaking her head. "I just – I just don't really want to talk about it," she said, furrowing her eyebrows and shaking her head more frantically.
"You haven't been home to see us in what? 8 years?" her mother asked, changing the subject to something else that Sam didn't want to talk about. Sam sighed, running her hand through her long, golden, curly hair. The tips of her hair were dry, but her hair was still slightly wet on top.
"Yeah, almost 9," she sighed, nodding her head in agreement.
"Something happened in Chicago, didn't it? Something happened that made you want to come back to a place that was home, didn't it?" her mother asked. Her mother was searching for her eyes. Her mother hadn't searched for her eyes since she was 14. All throughout the time that she was pregnant with Alex, her mother was distant in her eyes and in her speech.
"What would make you say that?" she asked, her voice on the edge of being defensive.
"You can't fool me, Sam. You never would have come back home to see us unless you needed to be in a place that you have called home before, and I'm coming to conclusion that the only places that you've ever called home are Trenton and Chicago," her mother reached her arm out and gently placed it on her shoulder.
"You always used to think that you knew me – everything about me," she said, pushing her lips together. She humbly bit her bottom lip, and her mother rubbed her upper arm. She looked up at her mother, tears glazing over her eyes, and she swallowed down a tearful lump in her throat.
"Sam, I used to know you, and I still do," her mother said gently. Sam stood up at the same time as her mother did, and frail arms enveloped her. She forgot what those arms around her felt like. She forgot that she had missed her mother comforting her. Even though her mother was soothing her just the way that she needed, it reminded her of how much she had needed comfort the past couple of weeks.
"I think that Alex and I should go, mom. We've imposed long enough," she whispered, drying her tears as they pulled away.
"You couldn't impose on us, dear. Mark's going to be home any second," her mother said, smiling.
"I would love to see Mark," she agreed shaking her head, "maybe we'll stay for a little while longer."
"Nonsense. You have to stay. Tracy and Aaron will be over later. We're going out for Cajun tonight," her mother was insisting that they stay.
"I've had the best Cajun food," she said, shaking her head with wide eyes. She sniffed and wiped the tears from beneath her eyes. She smiled while releasing a small laugh. "I hated Cajun until he made me eat it. I just fell in love with it," she said, rolling her eyes happily.
"Who made you eat it?" her mother asked.
"Never mind. It's not important," she sighed, smiling. She wiped the tears from her cheeks and sniffed again. She picked up her cup of coffee and sipped the liquid from it, its steam no longer flowing out of the top like a chimney.