Part II—'Bridge of Light'
She didn't know how she'd done it; her response to Sam wasn't how she wanted to broach the talk with her manager. Again, he was giving her his heart, and again she had him leaving, hurt. This time was different. There wasn't another guy, and there wasn't any infidelity. Somehow this felt just as bad as her senior year, however.
It had been a struggle for her to figure out what to do. She needed advice, or to at least talk out the incident with another person. Without needing to give much thought as to who to call, Mercedes snatched her phone from the empty half of her bed and scrolled through her contacts. After two rings she got a hoarse, "Hello?" from Kurt.
"Did I wake you up?"
"You know every person who says 'no' to that is lying…" He half expected a chuckle or some quick agreement; instead, he got a wet sniff through the receiving end that made him soften his voice further, "Mercedes, are you alright?"
"No. Kurt, I messed up."
After catching a quick glance at a slumbering Blaine, Kurt quietly eased out of the bed and padded out to the living room—his voice still low and gentle. "What are you talking about?"
"With Sam. Everything came out wrong. I feel awful…"
"Waait, wait, slow down." He sighed and muttered, "I knew something was up with him earlier. Anyway, take a deep breath, and tell me what happened, from the beginning."
Starting with another sniff, Mercedes relayed everything, beginning with the phone call she'd gotten with her manager and ending with her having gotten back to her apartment to shed her tears.
"Ouch…" he empathized. "So…you said before that it all came out wrong. What did you mean to tell him?"
"I feel like I don't even know anymore. It was stupid to have brought it up or for me to have even let it be on my mind after I hung up with her. I guess I just wanted to be honest with him—tell him what had happened when I talked to her earlier."
Kurt stifled a yawn, "Well before she called you, what were you feeling about Sam? I mean you'd been spending a lot of time with him since you got here."
"I know and I'm not gonna act like a lot of old feelings didn't come back and hit me fast and hard…and then he told me he'd basically felt the same way and I chose then to tell him about that stupid call." Midway through a sigh, Mercedes' head swished back and forth, "Kurt, I need to make this right. You remember me telling you all that stuff he did for me senior year?"
"Uhh-huh, your name in lights, the St. Valentine's thing, and don't forget I knew about the YouTube video before you did…but what about it?"
"I wanna do something memorable for him. He's constantly making me feel special—big or small gestures. I want to do that for him too, with my apology."
While sitting cross-legged on the couch, Kurt drummed his fingers on the bend of his leg and hummed a short, "Hmm… well there's the carnival. That seems like a significant place for you guys, and maybe a good place to hold Operation: Grand Apology."
"Yeah but after what's happened last night, I don't think I could get him to meet me there anytime soon." As Mercedes considered a few places she knew of that might be good for the 'Grand Apology' as Kurt put it, a light bulb went off in her head. "Kurt, you've seen the first Sex and the City movie, right?"
Although she couldn't see, Kurt rolled his eyes, "Only about a dozen times thanks to Sugar. When she was in glee club with us, we hung out a few times at her place and she'd put that on .time. I eventually put and end to that and introdu—"
"Okay okay. 'Yes' would've worked," she said with a light chuckle. "I think I've got an idea…"
Her eyes were glancing down at her phone screen every few seconds as she stood near one entrance of the windy Brooklyn Bridge, anxiously waiting. A ways on the path, she could see three musicians huddled with two of them resting acoustic guitars in their lap, and the third wielded a saxophone. They were buzzing and strumming notes here and there under the guise of being street performers, but Mercedes knew better and was thankful for Kurt getting the NYADA students to help out so suddenly the following afternoon.
She tugged the black mink coat a little closer to herself, but it didn't stop the quick shiver that made her shoulders shimmy. There were few passersby, talking to one another or on their cell phones, and even a couple of cyclists sped past, but the silence of her phone had her nervousness growing inside her chest. While clutching tight to her phone, Mercedes shut her eyes and took a deep, cold breath. The look on Sam's face before she last saw him, and the way she remembered feeling in that moment came rushing to the front of her mind, making the feelings inside her worse. She did her best to push them out of her mind; the worst he could do after this was not accept her apology and explanation.
While reminding herself of this, through a few more focused breaths in and out, her phone jingled. Mercedes' eyes snapped open and her chin dropped as she read, "Come on," from Kurt. She knew what that meant, and with one more noisy breath out, Mercedes stuck her phone inside her jean pocket and advanced onto the bridge. She let her doe-shaped eyes sift through the mild crowd until she spotted Sam walking beside a chatting Kurt. Sam's grimacing face had her hoping more than before that she might be able to set things right—to return a little of the many attention-grabbing but romantic gestures he'd done for her in the past.
Her eyes locked with one of the guitarists who'd been staring at her for some time. Once she'd given him a small nod, however, he turned his attention to the other two musicians and soon the first had begun playing. His fingers were pinched tight over the strings near the guitar's body while his other set of fingers plucked two shimmering notes back and forth. The second guitarist soon joined in after, loudly strumming four separate, escalating notes. Their melody was all too familiar to Mercedes as she took a deep breath, locked her eyes on Sam and sang.
Sam hadn't thought much about the music that started on the bridge. He was doing his best to keep up with Kurt's prattling over potential wedding venues and tuxedos, but the turn of events from the night before were still clouding his mind. Occasionally Kurt would give him a friendly elbow to try and shake the morose look on his face but somehow his features ended up drawn down again. He reached up to adjust his black earmuffs as a faint but familiar voice filled the air around him. Brows knitted, Sam looked up from the toes of his brown boots to the clusters of people in front of them until he saw her—black fedora, equally black coat, dark, plump pink lips, round cheeks and her doe-shaped eyes staring right back at him as she sang out.
"Some people live for the fortune.
Some people live just for the fame.
Some people live for the power;
some people live just to play the game…"
For a moment, Sam pulled out of his bittersweet stupor to ask Kurt a question but the elder teen had long since halted his steps. It was just Sam gazing down at Mercedes as she approached him with gradual strides.
"Some people think that the physical things define what's within
and I've been there before, but that's life's a bore—
so full of the superficial…"
Sam started to turn back, looking to place an accusatory glance at Kurt, but Mercedes shot her hands out and gripped his forearms tight, demanding his attention while she belted out the chorus. Her expression was fierce; focused and sincere with hope—just like the words that left her mouth.
"Some people want it all, but I don't want nothing at all, if it ain't you, baby—if I ain't got you baby…"
As she sang the second half of the chorus, "Some people want diamond rings, some just want everything, but everything means nothing if I ain't got you…" Mercedes rolled her shoulders back, letting the coat fall off of them. Her hands reached behind her back and she yanked one sleeve and then the other. She couldn't help smiling through her singing from the confused expression that was crossing Sam's face, but she it didn't stop her pulling the coat entirely off her body and hoisting it over the side of the bridge. Her arms were spread, welcoming the cold breeze over her body while repeating the chorus.
"'Cause nothin' in this whole world don't mean a thing, if I ain't got you with me, baby…"
The guitarists and saxophonist played a little more to conclude the song, and a few passersby clapped for the four of them. Sam was fighting his signature crooked smile but he'd lost and ducked his head as he started taking his own jacket off. Mercedes' caught her breath and though she hadn't worn enough layers to keep warm, she spoke, loudly enough for Sam to hear her. "Sam, I needed you to know… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel like you were gonna be this...stain on my image if we started dating again. Yes, my music's important to me, but I let my manager get in my head and that was wrong. She's known me for a handful of months, through calls and meetings. But it doesn't mean she knows me. No doubt a lot of her advice for me will be out of her self-interest, and that's fine when it comes to my music sometimes, but…I don't need an image, and I don't need people who hardly know me telling me who I need to be with. I just need you. I need Sam Evans."
Her teeth started to chatter toward the end; she was shivering but she steeled herself against the chilly weather, jaw clenched, waiting for a response and unsure if she would get one. Her fingers closed into tight fists at her sides and she tried to gauge the look on Sam's face as he stood before her, half out of his jacket and gazing hard at the grey-blue water. She saw the muscles along his jaw roll while he pursed his full lips together.
When it seemed he wasn't going to respond, Mercedes lowered her gaze. "I just…needed you to know that." With a few conclusive nods, she turned to thank the NYADA musicians but before her teeth and tongue could get past the "Th—"
"I think you need a coat, first."
Mercedes tucked her lips in. Her cheeks were the only things that had begun to feel warm; she turned back around to see Sam casting his signature soft smile at her. Now with his olive green jacket fully removed, he closed the space between them again, lifting his arms to cloak the jacket around her. Mercedes held it close without letting her eyes leave Sam's face. He let his fingers linger on the collar—his thumbs brushing her face as he covered her hands with his gloved pair.
"Thank you," Mercedes murmured.
Still softly smiling, Sam gave her a 'you're welcome' nod.
"We'll take things at our own pace."
"Like the last time we were here?" he spoke in a low voice.
The corners of Mercedes' lips rose, "Like the first time we were here."
Sam's smile filled out enough for the creases at the corners of his eyes to appear. He spoke through the happy expression, "So then… there's still my copy of Pacific Rim sitting at your place. And you still haven't seen it…"
Mercedes chuckled, bearing a full smile of her own, "So we needa get out of this cold and go watch it."
Without another word there, Sam wound an arm across her shoulders and pulled her close to his side. Mercedes gladly obliged, already feeling warmer than before. As soon as she looked up, Sam was tipping her fedora back to press a kiss to her forehead—gentle yet firm at the same time. He tugged it back in place again and began the walk back across the bridge beside Mercedes. In that lasting moment, there was nothing else either of them wanted or needed to say.
-the end-