Chapter 485: Properly, Not Like This

The premiere was the kind of event Sam usually treated as a formality, thirty minutes of photographers and a seat near the front she’d stopped feeling nervous about years ago. Tonight her hands wouldn’t settle no matter what she did with them.

"You’re fidgeting," Naomi said, adjusting the strap of Sam’s bag before handing it over. "You never fidget."

"I’m fine."

"You’ve checked the door three times since we got here."

Sam didn’t answer that, because there wasn’t a version of the truth that didn’t sound ridiculous out loud. She hadn’t seen Gio since the flowers started arriving, three months of roses and short cards signed with nothing but his handwriting, and some part of her had been checking every door for three months straight, not just tonight.

"Whatever’s got you like this," Naomi said, not unkindly, handing over the clutch she’d been holding, "you might want to settle it before the cameras notice you haven’t."

"There’s nothing to settle. I’m fine."

"You keep saying that. I keep not believing it." Naomi glanced toward the entrance out of habit more than suspicion. "I’m just saying, whatever it is, your face isn’t as unreadable as you think it is tonight."

Sam didn’t answer that either, mostly because she suspected it was true.

He walked in twenty minutes before the screening, and the room did the thing rooms did around him without meaning to, a small parting of attention even from people who had no idea who he was. Sam felt it before she saw him, the way she always had, some old instinct that had never once needed visual confirmation to know he’d entered a space.

"Who’s that?" Naomi asked, following Sam’s stare to the man now crossing the room toward them. "You’ve gone somewhere else entirely."

"Nobody. An old friend." Sam smoothed the front of her dress, buying herself a second she didn’t actually have.

He found her near the step-and-repeat, not making a scene of the approach, just closing the distance the way anyone would at an event they’d both been invited to. Up close he looked exactly like himself, and that was worse than if something had changed.

"You didn’t tell me you were coming," Sam said.

"Daryll didn’t think it would be a problem." Gio’s mouth curved, not quite an apology. "I can leave if it is one."

"That’s not what I said."

"No. It isn’t." He studied her, the pause stretching longer than these exchanges usually allowed, then glanced toward the step-and-repeat where a photographer was already angling for a shot of them together. "They’re going to ask who I am."

"They always ask." Sam kept her voice even, years of practice holding it steady. "I usually just say a friend."

"Is that still true?"

The question landed harder than its size should have allowed, and Sam took a second longer than she meant to before answering. "I don’t know what else to call it, if it isn’t that."

"Neither do I." Gio didn’t look away from her when he said it, which was new, or at least new since the last time either of them had counted. "I’ve had three months to think of a better word and I haven’t found one."

"Then why send flowers instead of just saying something?"

"Because saying something means admitting I don’t have a good reason for the last eight years, and I’ve never been good at admitting things I can’t fix afterward." He said it plainly, no performance in it, which made it land worse than if he’d tried to charm his way past the question. "The flowers felt safer. I could send them and still leave the door open to pretend I hadn’t meant anything by it."

"And now?"

"Now you’re asking, and I still don’t have a better answer than the one I just gave you." Something in his jaw tightened, like he was working through whether to say more and deciding against it. "I should let you get to your seat."

"Gio."

He turned back.

"You can’t keep doing this. Showing up, saying almost enough, and then leaving before it becomes something real." Sam’s voice didn’t rise, but it didn’t soften either. "I confessed to you when I was seventeen. You said I was too young. I was twenty at the hotel, and you still found a way to make it about my name instead of anything real. I’m not seventeen anymore, Gio. I’m not going to keep waiting for you to decide I’m finally old enough or important enough or whatever the actual reason is that you’ve never told me."

Gio didn’t answer right away, something working behind his eyes like he might finally say whatever he’d been holding back for eight years. Then the publicist waved from the theater doors, calling last seating, and whatever had almost surfaced folded itself closed again, the way it always did.

"We’ll talk," he said. "Properly. Not like this."

"You’ve said that before."

"I know." He held her gaze a second longer, something behind it she couldn’t name and didn’t have time to try. "This time I mean it."

He left before she could answer, and Sam stood there a moment longer than she should have, watching the space where he’d been standing.

"You okay?" Naomi appeared at her elbow, phone already buzzing with the two-minute call.

"I don’t know yet." Sam smoothed her dress, squared her shoulders, and let the practiced version of herself take over for the walk down the carpet. "Ask me after the film."

"For what it’s worth," Naomi said, falling into step beside her, "whoever that was, he didn’t look like a man planning on disappearing again."

"He’s disappeared before. More than once."

"Maybe. But you’ve never looked like that after one of the times he did." Naomi squeezed her arm once before peeling off toward the crew section. "That has to count for something."

Sam didn’t answer, but the corner of her mouth moved anyway, the first real thing her face had done all evening that wasn’t for a camera.