"Do you know what it's like to be me and surrounded by giant pots of chili and not allowed to eat it?"
--Sam Puckett
i'M Sick of Them Together
Amelia's youngest brother Marcus answered the door when I knocked.
"Hello, Fred—ward," he said with a giggle.
"Ah, your sister told you what my name is, did she?" I gave his head a distracted rub as I stepped into their living room. "Is your sister upstairs?"
"Uh huh," he said as he followed me in, "She's busy making herself look pretty for you … and said that I was supposed to keep you down here until she comes down …"
"Oh, yeah?" I asked, peeking up the stairway, but then obliging and plopping down on the sofa.
"And there was … something else I was supposed to remember …" Marcus said in a far off voice.
"Was it that you weren't supposed to tell me all that stuff?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah," he tried to cover his guilty smile, "Whoops."
"Don't worry, it'll be our secret," I said as I glanced at the clock. I don't know why I had been so worried about getting here early. It wasn't like Sam averaged anything earlier than five minutes late. Much less to any place where homework would be involved. "So, where are your brothers?"
Marcus climbed up on the sofa next to me as he arranged his face in a more serious way. "Scott isn't going to be here. He's spending the night at Joel's house ... and Dustin is downstairs. Amelia said that he has to clean up the basement because we made a mess … kinda."
"And you got out of it?" I put in an impressed tone.
"I …" he took a deep breath and looked at the floor, "Mom says that I can't go down there cause … cause I was just sick with the chicken pops and it's too cold … my feet get cold."
"Oh," I started.
"—But she says I'll be able to go down pretty soon," he added quickly, like he was worried that I might think less of him if he couldn't, "Yeah … pretty soon."
"So," I put my hands together and looked around. Did I mention I'm not very good around little kids? Inexperience, mostly. "What're we going to do tonight?"
"Well," he got that sneaky look again, "Maybe … maybe we could play Margo Polo …"
I stared at him with what probably resembled a helpless I-don't-know-what-to-do expression. "Margo … Polo? Uh, don't you mean … Marco Polo?"
He grinned and shrugged his shoulders.
Did I mention I'm not very good around little kids? What's the difference between Margo Polo and Marco Polo? And why do I keep going at this point?
"And don't you have to have … be in a pool?" I asked.
This is the part where he gets all quiet and unsure and I don't know, maybe even a little hurt.
"I don't know," Marcus said softly.
"But hey … hey," I said, feeling about as good as if I had just taken up kitten spitting, "We can … still play … do that. I'm sure we don't need a swimming pool. I think …"
"Okay," Marcus looked up at me and I realized that I had been over exaggerating just how much of his personal happiness he staked on the exact parameters of Margo Polo. "Wanna play video games?"
"Oh, yeah!" I jumped on that. "Sure, that would be great. What do you guys have?"
"Well," Marcus hopped down on his knees and moved over to the living room's television stand, as though he was showing off something rare and incredible, "We've got X-box and … and Nintendo …"
He opened the bottom doors to the entertainment stand and looked back at me, but kind of dropped his eyes at the last one. "We should probably … probably play X-box, cause my friends all say Nintendo is for … for nerds."
The kid had no idea how lucky he was that Sam didn't have any younger siblings.
"For nerds? What? No!" I made a face like that was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard. "Of course not. They're just saying that to sound cool. Come on, we'll play some Nintendo. What games do you have?"
He smiled at me like I was the coolest guy in the world. In reality I just had an absurd amount of experience in dealing with purported nerdish connotations.
Amelia came around the corner from the stairs. "Oh, you're here already. Great." She gave a distracted smile as Marcus returned to the couch with two controllers.
"What time is Sam supposed to be here?" I asked like I didn't know.
"Oh, any minute ..." She glanced out the front window.
"Is everything okay?" I stood up.
"Just a little nervous ... that's all." She had trouble looking at me. "I was looking through the syllabus again and I'm not sure exactly how to do this."
She didn't know how lucky she was. Especially if that was the worst thing she had to worry about.
"Well, here, let me look at it," I said as I pulled her towards the dining room table where she had all of her school stuff already neatly laid out.
"I'm done!" Dustin called as he pounded up the stairs. "Hey, Freddie's here! Freddie!" He barreled into me like it could be possible that two people thought I was the coolest guy in the world. And after having met me only once, no less.
I awkwardly said hi and kind of patted him.
"Are you sure you put everything away?" Amelia asked in a not so trusting tone.
"Yes, I did everything," Dustin shot back as he quickly disengaged himself from me without another thought and jumped on one of the kitchen chairs, tilting it back.
I looked down at the syllabus Amelia had handed me.
"Everything? Even the toy bins? And don't do that to the chairs."
I looked up and saw Amelia pushing at Dustin to get off the chair.
"No, I'm not doing those! Marcus is the one who messed them all up," Dustin protested.
"Go, it's your turn," Amelia said as she came back around to where I was trying to read.
"But it's not fair, Marcus did it! He always never cleans them!"
"Dustin, mom and dad said that it needed to be cleaned. So please, go do it now," Amelia said impatiently.
"So retarded," Dustin muttered as he turned and stormed back down the stairs.
"Don't use that word!" Amelia shouted after him, but she was already looking back down at the syllabus. "Sorry ... so what do you think?"
"Um, it is kind of vague ..." I said.
"Freddie ..." Marcus said quietly from the sofa.
"Yeah?" I looked up. Marcus was sitting in the corner of the couch with the two controllers. Looking pitiful didn't even begin to describe it.
"Are we going to play?" Marcus asked like he was afraid I had already forgotten his name.
"In a minute, Marcus," Amelia said, "Freddie just needs to help me with this for a second."
"You can start playing, I'll be there in just a sec," I reassured. I looked back down at the syllabus. "So have any other groups gone yet?"
Amelia's response was cut off by the door bell.
"Oh," Amelia quickly made for the door. She opened it. "Oh, hi Sam. I'm really glad you could make it. Please come in."
I abruptly found that I didn't quite know what the appropriate way to stand for this situation was. Folding my arms across my chest would probably convey a little bit more hostility than I wanted. Just standing there seemed kind of stupid, but leaning one arm against the table seemed to scream desperate attempt at casual, so I was left uncertainly fumbling between the two. Though in as cool of a way as possible, might I stress.
In all these things, these parameters where it was firmly established that either Sam or Amelia, and only Sam or Amelia were supposed to be, it was beyond weird whenever they overlapped. They just weren't supposed to do that. That was the whole point to the firmly established parameters being firmly established. Seeing Sam walking into Amelia's living room in her hooded sweat shirt, quietly eying up the place and looking like ... well, her, had to be on my top ten list for weird things to see. And that's saying something. I'm the technical producer on a web show that gets its kicks from weird things to see.
"And Freddie's here already," Amelia was saying.
"Yay," Sam said, "Can't start a party without him."
Amelia of course didn't quite know what to do with that. "Um, and I hope you don't mind the mess. We tried to clean up the best we could, but my parents are out of town for a couple of days and it's been a little crazy ..."
"We had smaghetti for supper," Marcus helpfully supplied.
"Yeah, you've got quite the dump here," Sam said as she looked around with what I could recognize as a fairly impressed air. Sam looked back at Amelia, who looked like she was teetering somewhere between offended and shocked. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding! It was just a joke! You should come over and try to clean up our place sometime." She tried to laugh, and I could tell she was feeling about as out of place as she ever would.
I cleared my throat. "We were just looking at the guidelines for what exactly you guys have to do for the presentation." I raised my eyebrows.
"Oh, don't worry about that," Sam said dismissively as she came around the table.
"You know what to do?" I asked, probably not sounding completely confident in that notion.
"It's always the same stuff for Mr. Crackers, I've had his classes before," Sam came to the pulled out chair I was leaning against and sat down in it.
Feeling slightly outmaneuvered, on multiple fronts, I stepped away from the chair as Sam unzipped her hood and sweatshirt and draped it around behind her.
"Isn't his name Mr. Crainers?" I asked, but it was more to say something as I pulled back than anything else. I looked over at Amelia and saw that she was doing her best to cover giggles. Ha ha, yes, Sam was just so hilarious.
Sam looked up quietly at this and then shrugged. "So, what's the plan?" she asked Amelia.
"I was thinking of maybe doing an illustrated chart," Amelia, mostly recovered, slid into the chair opposite Sam, "Something with graphs that we could use to show how, um, the supply and demand charts change—or maybe something ..."
Sam was nodding. "Lots of people do that, but Mr. Crackers is half deaf anyway, so ..."
I turned and went back over to the couch where Marcus was absorbed with a wide mouth. There was a quiet, not quite guilty giggle from Amelia as Sam went on, but I didn't look to see what she looked like.
--
"No!" I half shouted, relatively calmly. Relatively. "No, no, no, and no! The supply curve would shift left because the companies aren't getting lower taxes, the employers are. So that means—"
"Yes, we've heard what you think it means, and we're not interested in taking a doof's advice who's not even in the class," Sam answered.
I heard a giggle behind me in the living room. I'd wager half my HD camera's that it hadn't come from Marcus.
"Ain't that right," Sam nudged Amelia's shoulder.
"Uh, I don't know," Amelia started, immediately going utterly out of character and leaping to a side, "I guess I can see it both ways ... sorta ... but maybe Sam does have a point about the consumers buying more ..."
Wait. Wait. I didn't believe it. She was taking a side. And it wasn't mine. Unbelievable.
Well, coming from a logical and completely unbiased standpoint, my side was admittedly becoming the rough equivalent of buying mass Enron shares. I had realized this about three and a half minutes ago, about two minutes after I had gone and voiced my opinion. Sam had called me out on it, and I should've taken a breather there, but she had called me out. What was I supposed to do?
"All right, whatever," I threw my hands up.
Sam made a satisfied sound into the middle of her bite of pizza.
Yeah. Another story. Sam was having pizza after claiming to already have had supper. Not that I didn't believe her, but it was still irking me.
She had nonchalantly commented out loud that she was hungry. Amelia had answered, oh, there's pizza in the freezer, do you want one? I had said no, she doesn't, she said she already ate. Amelia, being the excessively great host that she is and probably would die as, had already been on her way to the kitchen. Sam, being the excessively thoughtful company that she always made for, hadn't stopped her. She'd actually called after Amelia what topping she'd prefer if they had it.
Irk didn't even begin to cover it.
I put my head over onto one of my fists and slowly took a bite of my piece.
Well I wasn't just going to let Sam have all of it, was I? She couldn't—well, yes, she could finish a whole pizza—but I definitely wasn't going to let her do that.
"Freddie, are you coming back soon?" Marcus called from the living room, not able to look away from the screen.
"Yeah, I'm kicking his butt," Dustin, equally distracted, said.
"Don't say that," Amelia called.
"That kid reminds me of my cousin," Sam said in a low voice.
I got up and stretched as Amelia said something I didn't catch.
It had been getting dark before I had arrived, but now it was pitch dark outside. Dustin had turned off the living room lights, even after Amelia had told him multiple times not to, which left just the television and the light over the kitchen table. Which was all more than enough to make me feel tired, even without considering how extraordinarily well I'd slept last night.
"So where you guys at?" I asked as I sat down between them and reached for my controller.
"We got way farther than you were," Dustin asserted as he leaned forward with his controller and then rolled around back into the sofa.
Marcus was trying to do about the same thing, and not altogether succeeding.
"Well I would hope so, that was twenty minutes ago." I looked down over at him and heard Marcus giggle. "I bet you can't make it past this stage before I do, and I'm still halfway back."
Dustin spared me a smile. "Oh, you're on! Go, go, go!" he shouted at the TV.
"Come on," Marcus said quietly beside me, and then futilely tried to shake his controller forward—which didn't help.
"Here, wait," I said as I put my controller down and reached over and around to guide his, and, to the best of my efforts, get his guy back onto the course, "Let me show you how to—yeah, that's it. And back up we go ..."
"Look at that," Amelia said in a low tone that wasn't meant for me, but instantly caught my attention, "Don't you think he would make a great dad?"
I did a remarkable job of going on as if I hadn't heard.
I didn't hear Sam say anything.
--
It was over before I really even thought that it could end. And it had went well, really well actually.
I helped the girls put the finishing touches on their model and looked it over for them ... well, for Amelia anyway. I thought it looked good, and Sam made no show to hide that she thought so, but it wasn't quite so easy to convince Amelia.
I'd come down from the boys' upstairs bedroom where we had migrated to play with micro machines and action figures. Those things didn't come to me nearly as easily as video games did, but I had managed.
So overall I thought it had went ... well. But what exactly had I been expecting?
Maybe ... maybe I had been expecting those brief looks on her face. When Sam thought I wasn't watching or couldn't see. When it was just me and Amelia or something just the two of us were doing. Maybe I had even thought about wanting those looks, but I hadn't really, not really. Seeing them had only contributed their fair share to the evening's awkward undertones, and even some guilt.
Amelia and I both politely thanked Sam for coming over, but Marcus had just went to bed and was asking for Amelia about something. So for a moment it was just me leaning against the entryway wall with my arms crossed and Sam bending down to put on her shoes as Dustin pestered her with questions.
"You're really pretty for a girl, you know that?" Dustin said.
My attention had been wandering as I watched her. It kind of stopped then.
"Oh, yeah?" Sam glanced up at me before wryly looking over at Dustin. "You're quite the stud muffin yourself."
"So ..." I could see Dustin trying to process stud muffin. "Do you want to go on a date with me?"
Sam raised her eyebrows and paused long enough that I knew she was putting forth an honest effort in trying to figure out how to be nice. "Sorry, kid. I'm kinda already dating someone."
I shifted a little and did my best not to wonder what exactly that meant.
"Oh."
"See ya," Sam said to no one particular as she zipped up her hood and sweatshirt and then looked at me.
"See ya," I said quietly as Dustin gave a deflated sounding bye.
That caused her expression she was sending me to change to something almost resembling unfriendly as she turned and stepped out the door.
For a long second after it had closed I tried to understand what that meant, but then I remembered that this was the girl that I had informed no one liked, could ever like ... among other things. It was getting harder and harder to remember just where things were.
Either it was naturally getting to be his bedtime, or a polite rejection from Sam Puckett was enough to crush his spirits, because it wasn't very long before Dustin pulled himself up the stairs.
There wasn't really much to clean up and Amelia said that I didn't need to stay to help her. As if she thought there was a chance that I actually might not.
"I'm so glad you came," Amelia said as she wiped off the table.
"Really?" I said. "It didn't feel like I had a lot to do."
"Are you kidding?" she asked as she went back into the kitchen and I leaned back against one of the chairs with my arms crossed. "We could've never gotten it all done without your help. And there's no way that we would've been able to get anything done with Marcus and Dustin here. Especially Dustin." She made an exaggerated face as she came back into the dining room and looked at me.
I gave a smile as I looked down at the floor. I really wish there was an on and off switch inside my head that pertained to Sam and all things Sam related.
"She really is a nice girl," Amelia said and I looked up, a little surprised. Mostly because she was able to say that phrase that everyone said about her and make it sound different somehow.
"Yeah," I said. When she didn't say anything I looked up again and saw her staring off to the side, looking worried enough that I was about to say something.
"I envy her," Amelia said. I straightened up in surprise and stepped away from the table. "She's not afraid of everything."
"Yes she is," I said forcefully and took a couple of steps towards her, as if that would automatically make her believe me, "She pretends that she isn't, but she is."
Sam had been afraid tonight. At least a little. I could tell.
If Amelia wasn't in front of me looking like that, I might have given more consideration to the amusing idea of Sam ever being afraid of Amelia.
Amelia was quiet for a moment. "And I'm afraid of everything."
She looked at me and I tilted my head a little, silently telling her no as I reached out for her hands. I leaned in close to her and smiled reassuringly, and she looked back at me and smiled a little too.
I reached up and put a hand in her hair. It was so practiced and familiar, and she offered no qualms when I leaned down and gently kissed her. But what she had just said didn't go away, and I knew that she was still afraid. I could feel it in the way she responded, with less hesitance, less care than she normally did. And I did my best to make that go away.
Though even as I tried, the thing that she was so afraid of kept racing through my mind, on a continual loop thatI wanted to wish I wanted to stop.But the harder I pressed, the worse it got, the easier it became to substitute all of this familiarity that was leaning so urgently into me, that was so desperate to please.
And with my eyes closed it was so easy.
Then I opened them and saw her eyes again, and felt everything snap back to this girl that was trying so hard. Our desires became the same.
It became hard to think, much less do much of anything else with this going on, but we somehow made it to the table. I lifted her up onto the edge, where I intended to thoroughly kiss her within the bare limits of sensibility, and then ...
I stopped. Because the implications and directions of the situation finally made it past my brain's front desk.
Amelia let out a slight sound at my pause and continued—while we were alone. Together. With Amelia eager to please and trying to prove something.
It wasn't as if I liked to think about it in those terms, but that was what it was.
I tried to continue like we had a moment before, but I found myself fumbling with the routine, albeit the elevated and more vigorous routine.
My pulse was everywhere and begging to be let out. It was making it so hard to think with the direction and possibilities and ... everything shouting.
I saw that we were on a brink. And I'm pretty sure Amelia saw it too when her endeavors paused a little, maybe at feeling how much my hands were shaking around her waist.
Alone, as alone as we'd ever be in a house with parents and three younger brothers.
But she didn't stop. She wasn't stopping.
And I knew she wasn't going to. When I slipped my hand underneath her shirt, along her lower back I felt that she wasn't going to stop if I didn't want to.
I had been pressing up against her fairly recklessly up until this point, but stuff hit their maximum and I awkwardly pulled back a little until there was at least a little safe distance. So I could think, only think.
But how was I supposed to do that when I was kissing her? Especially when I was kissing her in this place?
Everything ached so badly. Missing out would be the understatement of the year if I messed this up now. And nothing that claimed to be a part of me wanted to miss out.
I was kissing down her cheek, then her jaw, then her neck as I tried to untangle myself from those pair of thought-obliterating lips in this whole trying-to-think thing. And it was like gravity itself was leading me down, as Amelia made little noises and began leaning into me and offering a whole new variety of angles.
And it was the hot skin of her neck, and the heat everywhere else, and her hair and smell in my face. And it was—
Wavy or straight. It didn't matter. And lighter, so much lighter.
No! I thought furiously as I involuntarily jerked away from Amelia's hair.
She looked up just before she was following me with her hands, and then her lips found mine again.
I was not going to do this with Sam in any quadrant of my brain.
But when had I decided that I was going to do this?
My motions slowed.
The plan, the plan, how did this fit into the plan?
What plan? When was there a plan?
But this hitherto uncontemplated plan was clearly against proceeding any further.
What do I care? She's the one who said she's dating someone.
But ... but ...
There was also that whole moral thing that would be oh so easy to forget ... for a while. I practically already had. Along with all those other sincere good reasons not to ... which were hard to recall at this point and time, but that was understandable.
Though it was exceptionally easier to remember when I pulled back and looked down at Amelia, looking back up at me like that.
Thoughts, all sorts of thoughts of a girl. And Amelia.
"I'd better get going."
I blurted it before I had really made up my mind.
"Yeah ... okay," she said a little hastily as she tried to draw herself together and not look put out. There was a tiny bit of ... what, relief probably? That was only part of it, though.
I'd known for a long time, to various degrees, that girls have a different way to think about stuff like ... this. I hoped the one last brief kiss and smile I gave her assured her that this didn't suddenly mean she was unappealing or something.
I should've told her. Talked to her, about a lot of things, but especially about this. But I didn't.
I left, not feeling all that terrible. Though I knew that if my life had been simpler, maybe even if Amelia had been the only girl I'd seen tonight that I would've been feeling a lot more regret.
That wasn't to say that I was feeling all that great either. Maybe a little lost. Confused. And not a little hopeless. I was ashamed to admit it, but I was with Amelia. For the first time that consciously connected with something ... that wasn't perfect.
--
AN: On kind of a guilty note, Amelia's three brothers are named after Jennette McCurdy's brothers, cause I find it kind of ironic ... and okay, I'm kinda lazy. But I am proud of this chapter's quote, and not just because I was having some difficulties finding one.