If her soul had a physical form, the cabaret would have been it. Everything about the space seemed to speak to her personality and general ‘her’-ness in one way or another.
There were heavy, layered curtains that hung on every inch of the walls that served no purpose other than to bring more richness and texture to the space. They weren’t covering windows to block out the sun—they were simply there to bring more darkness to the dark.
Vintage round tables spotted the large open space in front of the stage, while cozy and intimate booths lined the walls with button tufted backrests and faded velvet upholstery. Everything looked and felt worn, used and aged. From the carpet to the vaulted gold foil ceiling to the shaded wall lamps.
It was incredible. And she loved it. It was a blur of red with the shine of gold and the endless depths of black thrown in. Even though she and Sam had only been sitting for a handful of seconds, she knew she could easily spend hours in the place and still not be ready to leave. It felt so inviting, so comfortable, so muted and dulled and relaxed.
“I love this. It’s stunning. I can’t believe it took me twenty nine years of life before stepping foot into one.” She shook her head to further convey her disbelief. “Wow.”
He gave her a crooked grin as he settled into his seat, resting his arms on the round table they had chosen in the middle of the room, and took a look around himself.
“It’s kept me company during some fairly shitty times in my life. Cheap bottom-shelf booze, incredible music and never crowded—especially on a Thursday night like tonight where we’ve got the whole damn place to ourselves. It’s a peaceful paradise to wallow in any brand of problem.”
She nodded along in agreement, her eyes taking in how Sam looked in his long-sleeve white dress shirt and suspenders, sporting his usual laid-back demeanor. The waitress pulled her from her thoughts as she stopped at their table and asked for their drink order.
“I’ll take an old-fashioned, and the lady will have … ?”
She couldn’t remember the last time alcohol had touched her lips. And if she spent too long dwelling on it, she probably would remember and decline a drink. But what the hell—she was out at a cabaret with a lawyer. She’d order a drink.
“I’ll have the same, thanks.”
Sam gave a nod of approval and further settled himself into his chair before cocking his head and narrowing his eyes at her.
“So we have plans to go to a party next weekend, and you know a little about me, and I hardly know anything about you. That feels like something we should probably rectify.”
She made a good show of exhaling an over dramatized sigh as she shrugged off her coat and got herself comfortable in the slightly rickety, yet comfortable chair.
“I had a feeling we couldn’t just go on seeing each other once a week, me returning your handkerchief to you, us going out and having a good time, me inevitably having another breakdown before parting ways, and me still ending up with your damn handkerchief.”
He laughed easily and ran a hand through his hair as the waitress came by with their drinks with nothing more than a quick smile and a nod.
They both took sips of the amber liquid before continuing on with their conversation. A sip that both settled and unnerved her at the same time. The taste of the alcohol overwhelmed all of her senses at once. It brought her back to times and places she instantly pushed down and out of her mind. The warmth and familiarity of it was soothing, and seemed to tame the anxiety and nervousness that was constantly gnawing away at her insides.
Sam continued where they left off, giving her a moment to rub her lips together and move her tongue around her mouth to get reacquainted with the taste and bite of liquor.
“You know as much as I’ve come to enjoy and look forward to our little cycle and routine, I think it would do us both some good to try and fine tune it with some improvements.”
Nodding along in agreement was the only form of response she offered. She wasn’t sure where the hell she should start. Should she just launch in on her own personal struggles? Should she go back to the first day they met and try to explain the absolute disaster and fuckery that was her first attempt at going to therapy? Or should she try and explain why a booth full of cops was enough to make her literally flee a diner and have a breakdown in the middle of a sidewalk?
Any choice seemed god awful to her, and if she was going to have to do it, she’d rather he just chose for her.
So as she stared down at her glass and fiddled with the straw, using it to push around the orange rind and ice, Sam audibly took a breath and posed a question at a slightly lower volume than he’d spoken with before—as if he knew how delicate the conversation was, ready to shatter with the slightest change in pressure.
“What happened last week? With the coppers, at the diner?”
Ah. The more innocent of the two questions, at least in her mind, and probably in his. It didn’t directly relate to therapy, and was probably the most confusing out of the two scenarios.
Rubbing her lips together nervously, she took another much longer sip from her drink. She kept her eyes on the half-filled glass as she started to talk honestly to the person who had been such a surprisingly crucial part of rebalancing her life in the past few weeks.
“My ex-boyfriend was a cop. It wasn’t until I saw the group of them come into the diner that I remembered exactly where we were, and how close it was to his precinct. I guess I really didn’t want them to recognize me, and potentially pass word of it back to him. Not that he’s volatile or anything like that, it’s just, well, we didn’t exactly separate on good terms, and I just really don’t think I could handle even thinking about a hypothetical situation where I would have to talk to him, let alone see him.”
Out of her periphery, she could see Sam nodding along as she spoke, his gaze still fixed on her downcast face. He wasn’t deterred by her soft, quivering voice and uneasiness. He gently kept prodding her along, getting her to continue talking by asking simple enough questions.
“I feel like he might have something to do with how we first met outside of my therapist’s office?”
Another slow nod of her head and tight pursing of her lips. Jesus fuck why did it still hurt her so much to talk about Ben? Why?
It took another long sip of her old fashioned to lubricate her senses into a more relaxed, numbed state, so she could continue on with letting Sam into the debris field that was her life. The beautiful music from the piano served as an eerie yet appropriate backdrop to their conversation. It seemed to eb and flow perfectly with the pauses and words they shared back and forth.
Between the numbing warmth of the alcohol and melancholy lilt of the music, the words were slowly coaxed out from her brain, past her teeth and into the air. It was at the risk of making them real again, of allowing them to become real, spoken aloud, giving them form so they could hurt her again. A painful lump formed in her throat, but she trudged ahead.
“You would be correct to make that assumption.”
She swallowed hard as she considered the implications of what was about to come off of her tongue and into the space between them. They were words she had not spoken to anyone since that life-ruining night all those months ago.
But something about being in the near empty cabaret with Sam, a person who had so selflessly helped her time and time again these past weeks, a person with not the slightest clue of who she was or what had happened to her, made her want to say it.
To finally say the words that haunted her day after day. Words that never slept, never left her alone, never gave her a second of peace. But they were hers to share, and here and now felt like an okay time to just let them out of her skull, if only to see if it helped her feel any little bit better. The most she had to lose was him walking out, shutting her and her misery down. It wouldn’t be a shock—it would be expected. Losing was familiar. She would be able to bear it.
With a quiet voice and the stilling of her hands on the cool glass of her drink, she lowered her head further and slowly started to release some of the pressure from inside her over-stressed body.
“Six months ago, somebody assaulted me as I was leaving work late.”
She paused, letting the words sink into the air around them. The walls of the room seemed to lean in further on her, but not enough to send her off into panic. She focused hard on keeping her breathing even, on leashing the nerves and shame that surged up inside of her chest.
The alcohol was certainly helping the words slip past her usually tightly sealed lips. Good or bad, she didn’t know yet. She just focused on keeping her shit together for as long as she could. As long as she was able to talk, she would.
Sam only sat and looked at her with an intent and open gaze. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not—it felt like the whole room had held its breath, even though it was empty.
“The guy forced me back into my dance studio as I was trying to lock up and leave, assaulted me, and left me. I think he had been stalking my ex and I for months, because of someone who had been harassing me outside my building and leaving notes under the main door.”
More silence met her ears as she took a breath to try and calm her hammering heart and still the shaking that had crept into her fingers, causing the ice in her glass to create erratic clinks. Without needing another sip, she finished the last piece of the greatly abbreviated tale so she could have it out of her after all those months. A watered down, bullet-point version, but a version nonetheless.
“I survived, or some of me did, and they weren’t able to find the piece of fucking trash who did it. He won’t be held accountable, won’t be punished. It didn’t help that my ex was in denial about the whole thing and thought we could just go back to being how it was before it happened. Wanted me to go back to how I was before. Needless to say, it’s what caused our relationship to end very abruptly.”
As the last sentence left her lips in what she felt like was a near whisper, she picked up her glass, bypassing the straw, and chugged the last half of her drink. It was easy to raise her empty glass, get the attention of the waitress, and get another one on its way to her.
Sam sat, unmoving and still looking at her. His eyes were now a little wider, his mouth just slightly agape. The ending of the song from the piano player and resulting silence of the bar seemed to spur his brain back into motion.
He blinked rapidly and leaned forward on his arms to get closer to her as he whispered, “Anna, I am so unbelievably sorry. That doesn’t even cover it, I know, but, I am so, so sorry.”
She nodded with pursed lips and finally looked up at him as she said, “It’s fucked. Plain and simple. The whole fucking thing. It’s two thousand percent fucked in a way I still can’t understand. And its been six fucking months since that piece of shit unraveled my whole life.”
The waitress was an angel clad in an old, rather ill-fitting uniform as she dropped off another old fashioned in front of her. Anna quickly brought it to her lips and took a long, hard swallow of the strong amber liquid that burned her esophagus the whole way down, its sweet numbing effects sliding in to join the churning tide of her stomach.
Talking about how that night came to be all those months ago was like having someone stand on her chest and pull apart her ribs in one bone-cracking motion. And to top it all off, she couldn’t even bring herself to mention fucking Ben’s name. Pathetic.
In an effort to keep her mind from spiraling down and down and down into all those feelings and memories, she folded her arms across her chest and leaned forward onto the table to try to keep the rawness concealed, keeping her eyes glued to Sam’s drink on the table as she spoke again in the tone that was her new normal—indifferent, disconnected and monotone.
“So that’s why the cops at the diner set me off, and why I was such a wreck the day we met after my failed first therapy session.”
They sat in heavy silence for what felt like eternity. The slow, jazzy piano music was gnawing away at her eyes and her insides. Each note seemed to pull forth another memory from the raw crater in her chest.
She and Ben getting drunk and handsy at a restaurant after she found out she had won the solo spot in her dance troupe’s spring show. She and Ben planning their first getaway vacation for the summer. She and Ben having, slow, lazy weekend days to just move between eating, sleeping and having sex. She and Ben slow dancing on her birthday in the middle of Central Park.
Each memory played out around her as they sat in silence. Vignettes of ghosts that blurred and morphed together one after the other. Before she could fall into the sprung trap full of warm feelings and perfect days that sucker punched her heart so hard it physically hurt, she lifted her head and cocked it at Sam, her hair spilling over her shoulder in the process.
“So what led you from an island an ocean away to become a lawyer in the great U.S. of A.?” And just like that, she was swimming up and up and away from the depths of her sadness, of her brokenness.
Her eyes finally moved back to Sam’s face, watching as he matched her posture by leaning back onto the table and letting that easy smile slip onto his face. It didn’t quite meet his bright blue-gray eyes as he sighed, moving his gaze down to his own near-empty drink.
“You know, I was just about to prattle off some bullshit lie about how I always knew I wanted to be one of the good guys, working to make sure the scales of lady justice were kept even and true. But after all the truth-telling you just did, that wouldn’t be fair to you at all.”
She looked on at him, her brow creasing as she considered the implications of his near lie. The fact that he even told her he was going to be dishonest was refreshing. It pointed to a moral compass he attempted to abide by, which was more than she could say for most people she had known. She waited patiently as he fiddled with his drink, what little dim light there was shining off of the watch on his wrist.
“I was a troublemaker back home when I was young. Getting involved with the wrong crowd, getting into stuff that would get me in trouble. My first run in with the law, seeing how it broke my mother’s drug-addicted heart, I knew I was staring down a choice. I wish I could say I got on the straight and narrow right then and there, but unfortunately it took my mother’s heart giving out after getting clean to get me to see the light. After a year or two saving up and seeing firsthand how much darkness and cruelty exists in people on the streets of London, I wanted to be the one putting them away. Make my mother proud. After I traveled overseas and got my JD, criminal law nearly sucked the life right out of me. I got out before it took me under, and I’ve been working family cases and taking on pro bono work for just over a year now. I’m still adjusting, still trying to figure it out. It isn’t easy, and I still don’t know if I’m doing right by my mother, by me, by where I grew up and what I saw there.”
Each word hit her harder than the last. His story was unbelievable. To think that he had put himself, had put his whole heart out there to try to do right by his mother and himself, and he still wasn’t sure if it was enough. And for him to pursue a career so fiercely, to try and defend the world from evil as he no doubt watched his mother lose a battle to time and her health after coming out on top of her addiction. She couldn’t fathom it, couldn’t even begin to understand his hurt and pain.
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She had slowly nodded along as he spoke, sipping her drink now and then to make sure all the cursed memories of her own were kept down in their murky depths and away from her mind by continuing to drown them in old fashioneds. She tried to find the right words to say, to let him know she understood the gravity of his struggle and how difficult it must be to try and deal with it and attempt to move on.
“I can’t imagine how hard it must be, knowing you fought so hard to do right by her and it somehow just wasn’t enough. I know how hard it is to constantly be trying to figure out what is you’re supposed to be doing, and it fucking sucks.”
Bobbing his head and sipping his own drink, he kept his eyes glued to his hands as he set the glass down and fiddled with his straw, poking round at the single ice cube before responding.
“Well, if there’s anything I’ve learned from defending and prosecuting people in this enormous concrete jungle, it’s that life is too damn short and too damn fragile to be alone in anything. Death, dying, and suffering are always waiting for you around some corner at any given moment. I’ve been doing therapy for about a year now after getting sick of pretending everything was hunky fucking dory. Pain is a bitch no matter what form it takes, and watching my mum go through hard times and not be able to help was gutting. But being here, trying to make the best out of people’s fucked up messes and get them the best possible outcome, even with the fact that I’m out here, struggling as I chase some kind of life for myself … Trying to be better, trying to get better and keep going on makes it feel like it’ll all be worth something.”
With the last word, his bright blue eyes flicked back up to her before picking up his drink and finishing it off in one sip.
All she could was nod at him slowly as the truth of each of his words hit a soft spot in her heart that she was convinced had disappeared entirely. She was still watching him as he hailed the waitress for another drink, the same way she had just minutes ago.
“That’s hard, Sam. It really is. I don’t know how you’ve been here dealing with it on a daily basis, fighting for people while you try and fight for yourself, but what I do know is that the world needs people like you. Selfless people who care and just try to do what’s right. You’re a rare breed, and if no one has thanked you today, let me be the one to do it. Thank you.”
It was hard to tell in the poorly lit room, but she could’ve sworn a blush crept across his cheeks as he dipped his nodding head and smiled in appreciation of her honest words. And as he looked back to her after thanking the waitress for a fresh old fashioned, her heart skipped a beat in a way she hadn’t felt since the great divide occurred in the middle of her happy, simple life.
The silver watch on his wrist. The suspenders that hung loose at his waist, the rolled up sleeves of his dress shirt revealing the toned muscles of his forearms. How strong his hand looked as it gripped his drink. How when he cocked his head and gave her that big, easy grin, his hair fell out of place slightly, tickling a knee-jerk reaction somewhere locked deep, deep away within her to run her fingers through it and put the strands back where they belonged.
Suddenly a hot blush was spreading across her own cheeks, giving away the fact that the beating in her chest was harder and faster then it had been minutes ago. It would be easy enough to blame it on drinking. And thankfully, she had the dimness of the room working in her favor.
She found herself straightening up in her chair, leaning forward onto the table with her elbows as she let out a nervous laugh and quickly fidgeting, putting her hair behind one of her ears.
Her eyes met his, and as he raised his fresh drink up to his lips to take a sip, he paused and said over the rim of the glass, “You know, we can’t spend all night being so damn serious and heartbroken. Let’s have some fun, shall we?”
With a nod and quick exhale through her lips, she matched his sip and reveled in the warmth that it brought to her extremities.
“To say my life has been incredibly fun deficient would be the understatement of the century. I’m on board for fun.”
A contemplative look crossed his face as he tapped his fingers on his glass and moved his gaze up to the ceiling.
“Let’s just ask each other questions. If you don’t want to answer, that’s fine, but the first person to refuse has to either get up and try playing a song on the piano, or dance along with the pianist very, very enthusiastically.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at the horribleness of both options. Sure she hadn’t danced since before everything in her life had turned rotten, but she could bust out a few silly dance moves if she needed to get out of answering a question that badly.
“Alright, you’re on. You go first, mister Bailey.”
“Hmm, let’s see. What was the time you made the biggest ass out of yourself?”
A chortle escaped her lips as she shook her head from side to side.
“Oh my god, you want me to pick one time? Jesus, let me see. Umm how about the time I got way too high and drunk at a rave, proceeded to walk up to an attractive man and slap his ass way too hard, ask him if he was the sun because he was burning me up, and then promptly threw up all over his shoes.”
Sam tipped his head back and let out a loud burst of laughter. She just shook her head back and forth and smiled as she took another sip of her drink. It felt good to just talk about shit that didn’t hold some kind of heavy weight or seriousness from the past year of her life.
It successfully lightened the mood between them—even the tunes the pianist played seemed to reflect the new fun and easygoing flow of their conversion.
Back and forth they went for what felt like hours. Each of them asking lighthearted questions, each of them answering. Drinks kept coming, and she knew their conversation and laughter got louder and louder. They were unwinding and letting loose in a still relatively empty cabaret, and this was the first time she had been out and had fun in … God, she couldn’t remember how long it had been.
But it felt good. Almost like an out of body experience. Hearing about Sam’s life, tales from the courtroom and England, embarrassing relationship mistakes, shit he did as a kid, it was refreshing. It had nothing to do with anything that had been a part of life recently, and she reveled in it. It was all new and interesting and different and enjoyable.
So she leaned into it, just a little bit. She kept drinking, kept laughing, kept giving him shit about the stories he told. Until there was one question he had refused to answer.
“What’s your ideal girl like?”
“What’s my ideal girl like? Well. I think we’ve finally come to a dead end.”
“Really? That’s the question that’s making you fold? Come on, it’s not that bad.”
“Well, I’m not answering it. So I guess that means I’m either due to dance or play, and I pick play.”
With a wink and a shit grin, he tipped his head back and finished off his drink before standing up and walking towards the stage. She was still perplexed as to why he’d refused to answer the question—it seemed innocuous enough in her mind. Thankfully the alcohol coursing through her system didn’t let her dwell on the thought very long.
Instead, she found herself standing and following behind Sam as he headed towards the stage, seating herself at the table that was closest to the piano. It put her parallel with the bench, ensuring she had a clear view of the pianist's face.
Sam walked up the steps at the end of the stage by the bar, raising his hand for another drink from the bar as he passed it, approached the pianist and gently placed a hand on his shoulder and bent down to talk into his ear.
The way the pianist responded to Sam with a smile and nod made her feel as if this had happened before. She slowly shook her head at him as he took a seat on the bench, patting the pianist on the back as he turned to leave the stage.
He’d pulled a fast one, that’s for sure.
She placed a hand under her chin and settled into her seat as she gazed up at Sam, whose long, arching fingers were perched over the keys as he took a deep breath and gazed down at all the different notes.
A few chords rang out before his voice filled the air of the dark and moody cabaret—a handful of people had streamed in and out over the course of the night, but they paid no mind, keeping on as if the piano player hadn’t changed at al.
“Georgia, Georgia, the whole day through. Just an old sweet song, keeps that Georgia on my mind, on my mind.”
She was enraptured as she watched him find all the right chords and notes effortlessly. His voice was smooth and easy to listen to, and there was no doubt in her mind that he had been playing and singing for quite some time. Oh he had definitely pulled a fast one on her.
A smile had crept its way onto her face as she gazed up at Sam, whose eyes remained on the keys as he moved through the song. And he really did move—his body swayed to the rhythm, his head tipped forward and back with the swells of the notes.
But it was the way the light framed him on the stage that brought her attention to things that had been poking at her mind throughout the night. The way his fingers moved across the keys, the crisp line of his jaw, the curves of his lips as they formed each word, the strong arch of his shoulders.
What was she thinking? Sure, the room throbbed and buzzed a little from all the old-fashioneds currently filling her stomach, with only a few bites of a shared appetizer they had ordered hours ago to try and offset the many, many drinks she’d consumed. Sure, she felt a little drunk. But she’d been drunk plenty of times right after everything had gone to shit. And not once had she found herself even remotely close to lusting after someone else, after someone who wasn’t Ben.
Now here she was, six months out from all the awful shit that had happened to her and subsequently leaving Ben, and she was watching a lawyer play a piano at a cabaret with drool practically coming off her bottom lip.
Sporadic applause echoed throughout the room. The song had come to an end, the last line “There’ll always be Georgia” having left Sam’s lips and the resolving cords leaving a sweet, happy hum in the air that directly contradicted the unpleasant anxiety surging up in her gut.
The feelings, the setting, the fact that she was out with another guy. It was suddenly a lot pressing down on her at the same time. Not that she was unhappy or not having a good time—it couldn’t have been more of the opposite.
As Sam took the stairs down and off the stage, set in a straight line towards her, she smiled at him. A big, genuine smile that hadn’t graced her face in forever. She couldn’t help it. Even though she knew she needed to leave, needed to get home before something in her snapped or clicked and sent her spiraling, she was truly happy to see Sam as he walked off the stage and smiled right back at her.
He stopped before her, hands tucked into the pockets of his dress pants in front of his suspender straps, shrugged his shoulders as he said, “I may have pulled one over on you, just a little.”
With the shake of her head and folding of her arms across her chest, she replied, “And to think I fully thought I might see you bungle your way through a song or dance incredibly awkwardly.”
“Next time, it will be the incredibly awkward dancing, promise. And for the record, I was oh-so hoping I’d get to see you embarrass yourself first.”
They shared a laugh over their common desire to see the other just a little bit humiliated before she looked back towards the table where both of their coats hung on the backs of their chairs still.
“I’ll have to raincheck you on any embarrassment. It’s pretty late, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to live with myself tomorrow if I consume any more old fashioneds or stay up much later.”
He nodded in agreement as he glanced down at his watch. His brows arched as he read the time and surprise spread across his face.
“No shit—it’s almost bar close. Now that went by way too damn fast. I guess time does fly when you’re not busy working yourself to death. Come on, let’s grab our coats and I’ll close the tab.”
She started following him back through the maze of mostly empty tables back to theirs, which was littered with empty drink glasses and a few plates from food. As she followed behind in his tall shadow, she caught the scent of warm cologne, the perfect balance of rich, earthy goodness with a touch of sweetness underneath. She may have taken a deep breath of it, just to get another lungful to make sure she’d caught all the notes.
“We can split it this time, or I can cover the whole thing since I didn’t pay at the diner.”
They were both shrugging into their coats as they walked towards the exit.
“I’ve got it, no worries. I’m here so often I get a little bit of a regular’s discount anyway. If you want to wait by the door I’ll go pay at the bar quick. It’ll take me just a second.”
The protest on her tongue died at his quick reasoning, and with a nod of agreement, she walked towards the door and watched as he chatted with the bartender and paid their bill. Such a normal, regular, everyday thing to observe. He gave him cash, and it looked like he told him to keep the change. Then Sam asked him a question, and he gave Sam what looked like a napkin and pen. After having written something down, Sam gave the bartender that easy smile of his and a wave over his shoulder as he walked back towards Anna.
“Are you taking the train or grabbing a cab?”
“I’ll probably cab it since it’s so late. How you coerced me into staying out past my very early bedtime is beyond me. I should’ve been asleep hours ago.”
“Well, I hope some laughs and a little music made it worth it. I can try and defend you from the grumpies if you think tomorrow’s going to be a tough case.”
Another easy laugh rolled through her as they pushed through the doors and out onto the frigid air of New York City at one in the morning.
“I think I’ll be able to avoid the grumpies, and you really need to work on your lawyer jokes before the party next weekend. I’ve got plenty of time to get to sleep anyway, and a whole lot of nothing to do tomorrow.”
All she had to do was step out to the curb, raise her hand, and a cab was already pulling up to the curb beside them. That was the beauty of New York in the wee hours of the morning: an overabundance of cabs for the few people managing to make it home instead of crashing with a friend or sleeping with someone.
As she turned to look at Sam and say goodbye before tucking into the welcome warmth—and unavoidable stink—of the cab, a thought pinged through her brain.
She wouldn’t need his handkerchief before leaving this time. There were no tears or snot to mop up after one of her emotional rollercoaster rides of hell. She wouldn’t have an excuse to go see him again at his therapist’s office.
Just as she was about to try and find some way to verbalize the weird combination of disappointment and sadness that came along with not seeing him again, Sam spoke first.
“You know, I think phone numbers are a much more reliable, not to mention easier, way to get a hold of people these days. Not that I don’t enjoy our handkerchief routine as much as the next person would, but there’s something about the convenience of a phone number … ”
Looking up at him, she found his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat and his head slightly cocked to one side with a smile tugging on one corner of his lips.
It was just a phone number, right? No obligation, no expectations, just a phone number. And god damn was it cold outside, and all she really wanted at this point was to be tucked into the cab and heading home to her apartment where she could sleep off her hangover until the afternoon hours.
So she quickly stuck her hand into her pocket, pulled out her phone and offered it to Sam.
“You make some very compelling arguments, lawyer Sam. Now make it quick before this cabbie decides to ditch me because I’m too damn slow.”
He took it from her with a grin, his fingertips grazing hers, and quickly punched in his number before handing it back to her in a matter of seconds.
“Thanks for tonight, Sam. It was really a lot of fun to just get out and do something new for once in a long, long time. Thank you for that. And hey, I’m not crying like our past goodbyes, so that’s definitely saying something.”
He chuckled as he reached to open the door of the cab for her. She looked over her shoulder for just a moment to get one last look at him before the night was officially over.
“Anytime you want to go out and do something fun, or new, or both, you just let me know. And schedule permitting, I’ll make it happen. I’ll see you in a week, miss Anna. Have a good night.”
“Have a good night, Sam.”
He shut the squeaky cab door shut behind her, and she sat back into the old leather seat, her hands resting in her lap with her phone. The cabbie asked her where to, but she took a few more seconds to take in Sam as he stood in the glow of New York at night. Hands in his pockets, that easy smile still spread on his face, billows of steam rising around him from the grates in the street. He looked straight out of a scene of a film noir.
She wondered if that smile ever left his lips, even when it had a reason to—especially now that she knew full well now what those reasons might be. She wondered what he said in therapy.
He pulled his hand from his pocket to offer her a wave, and she waved back slowly as the cabbie asked her again where she’d like to go.
What an interesting, loaded question. Instead of mulling over it, delving in too deep, getting lost in the traps and mazes of her mind, she gave the driver her address and finally turned away from Sam who had placed his hand back in his pocket and turned to walk down the street at a relaxed, easygoing pace.
The driver pulled off into the always busy streets, and her vision was overtaken by the glow of red taillights and the dozens of different kinds of night lights—neon signs, street lights, windows, billboards.
As she was starting to lose herself to her buzz and the mesmerizing blurs of light, she absentmindedly reached to tuck her phone back into her jacket pocket before she accidentally lost it in the cab. Her hand was met with something as she reached into the pocket that was supposed to be empty. She pulled out whatever was inside, thinking she might’ve accidentally tucked in a napkin from the table in her effort to get ready to go when she was a little liquored up.
A smile crept over her lips as she took in what she now held in her lap. Sam’s handkerchief with a napkin that had ‘Keep it. It’s yours whenever you need it.’ scrawled on it in neat, elegant cursive handwriting. Somehow even his penmanship matched perfectly with his easygoing demeanor, his calming presence.
All it took was reading his note and holding the handkerchief in her hands to ease the swirling of thoughts that had been gathering speed since she watched him wave goodbye.
Everything fell away. The city, her restless roommates named anxiety and depression. She leaned into her buzz that still felt good. She let herself be soothed by the note and fabric in her hands. It was easy. Her eyes went back to the blurs of light, and for the first time in a long while, the city didn’t seem so scary.