He smiles sadly and runs his hand through his hair.
“The thing is, Percy, I do.” I can feel my face scrunch in confusion. He brings one leg on the dock, twisting so he can face me. I take my feet out of the water and tuck them under me so I can do the same.
“You always thought I was perfect.”
“Sam, you were perfect,” I reply, stating the obvious.
“I wasn’t!” he says, adamant. “I was obsessed with getting out of here, and then when I went away to school, I was so terrified I was going to mess it up, that I had only seemed smart because I’d grown up in such a small town. It felt like any day they’d figure out I was a fraud. I was paralyzed with fear. I was homesick, too. I missed you like crazy. I didn’t want you to know how bad it was, to think less of me, so I didn’t call.”
“You were eighteen, and it was totally normal to feel that way. I was too immature to realize that.”
He shakes his head. “I was always jealous of Charlie. I think you knew that. He barely studied in high school and would just kill every test. Girls loved him. Everything seemed to happen so easily for him. And then you did, too.” My stomach feels like it just dropped forty stories.
“I felt like my future exploded when you said you couldn’t marry me,” he goes on. “But I thought one day you would change your mind. I thought we both needed a bit of time. But then . . . I didn’t take it well, hearing about you and Charlie.” He rubs his face. “I was angry. With you. With Charlie. And with myself. The way I felt about you was always so clear to me—even when we were young I knew you and I were meant for each other. Two halves of a whole. I loved you so much that the word ‘love’ didn’t seem big enough for how I felt. But I realize now that you didn’t know that. You wouldn’t have turned to Charlie if you knew that. And for that I’m sorry.” He reaches toward me, pulling my bottom lip out from under my teeth with his thumb. I hadn’t realized I’d been biting it.
I start to reply, to tell him he doesn’t need to apologize, that I’m the one who should be explaining herself, but he stops me.
“When I went back to school after Christmas, I just wanted to forget you and us and everything that happened,” he says. “I wanted to get you out of my system, but I think I also wanted to hurt you the way you hurt me. I studied like crazy, but I also drank a lot. I’d go to these big house parties—there was always a keg, and there were always girls.” He pauses. The muscles in my stomach seize at the mention of the other girls. He squints, as if he’s asking my permission to continue, and I take a deep breath and wait.
“I can’t remember most of them, but I know there were a lot. Jordie tried to keep an eye on me. He was worried I was going to catch something or screw around with some psychopath’s girlfriend, but I was relentless. It didn’t make a difference, though. All I could think about every day was you,” he says, his voice scratchy. “Even when I was with other girls, trying to erase you from my mind, you were still there. I’d wake up, sometimes I didn’t even know where I was, so full of shame and missing you so much. But I’d just do it all over again, trying to forget. And then one night at some party in a frat house basement, I saw Delilah.” My breath hitches at her name, and I rub my chest as though I can soothe the ache beneath my breastbone.
Sam waits until I meet his eyes again.
“You don’t need to tell me this part,” I say. “This part I’m pretty sure I know.”
“Delilah told you?”
I nod.
“I thought she would. She was a good friend to you.” I wince, remembering how terribly I’d treated her. I’d been mad and then when I got over my anger, I was too ashamed to apologize.
“I was out-of-my-mind drunk, Percy. And I made a pass at her. She told me off and stormed out of there. I think I puked all over myself, like, two minutes later.”
Exactly what Delilah had told me.
He lets out a bitter laugh. “I stopped sleeping around after that. I just ate, went to class, and studied. I was kind of a robot, but after a while I stopped being so angry with you and Charlie—and myself.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I hate that I did that to you.” I watch the ripples radiating from where a fish has jumped. We’re both quiet. “I deserved it,” I say after a little while, turning back to him. “The other girls. You hitting on Delilah. You yelling at me yesterday. For what I did to you, I deserved it all.”