I jump up when he begins to walk away. “Samson, wait!”
He turns around just in time to catch me when I throw my arms around him. I bury my face against his neck. When he folds me into his arms, I start to cry.
So many things are running through me at once. I miss him so much already, but I’m also angrier than I’ve ever been. I knew this was coming—the goodbye. But I didn’t know it would be under these circumstances. I feel powerless. I wanted our goodbye to be a choice I had a part in, but I’m not getting a choice at all.
He kisses the side of my head. “Take the scholarship, Beyah. And have fun. Please.” His voice cracks on please. He releases me and walks to a guard standing next to a door. I feel heavy without him, like I’ve lost an entire support system and can no longer hold myself up on my own.
Samson is led out of the room, and he never even looks back at me to see the destruction he left behind.
I’m sobbing by the time I make it outside to my father’s car. I slam the door, angry and heartbroken. I can’t even begin to absorb what just happened in there. I wasn’t expecting it. I was expecting the exact opposite of that. I thought we were going to work this out as a team, but instead, he left me completely fucking alone, just like every other person in my life.
“What happened?”
I shake my head. I can’t even say it out loud. “Just drive.”
My father grips his steering wheel until his knuckles are white. He starts the car and puts it in reverse. “I should have beat the shit out of him the night I pulled him off you in the shower.”
I don’t even try to explain that he wasn’t protecting me from Samson that night. Samson was helping me, but at this point, another explanation would be futile. I just go with a blanket statement. “He’s not a bad person, Dad.”
My father puts the car back in park. He faces me, his expression unyielding. “I don’t know where I went wrong as a father, but I did not raise a daughter who would defend a guy who lied to her the entire summer. You think he cares about you? He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”
Is he serious?
Did he actually have the audacity to say he raised me?
I glare at him, my hand on the door handle. “You didn’t raise a daughter at all. If anyone is lying in this scenario, it’s you.” I open my door and get out of his car. There’s no way I want to be stuck with him all the way back to Bolivar Peninsula.
“Get back in the car, Beyah.”
“No. I’m calling Sara to come pick me up.” I sit down on the curb next to the car. My father gets out of the car while I pull out my phone. He kicks at the gravel and motions toward the car.
“Get in. I’ll take you home.”
I wipe tears from my eyes after I dial Sara’s number. “I’m not getting in your car. You can leave now.”
My father doesn’t leave. Sara agrees to come pick me up, but my father sits patiently in his car until she arrives.
TWENTY-EIGHT
It’s been an agonizing week with no news from Samson. Nothing at all. I’ve tried to visit him twice, but he refuses to see me now.
I have absolutely no way of communicating with him. All I have to cling to are the memories of the time we spent together, and I’m worried those will start to fade if I don’t at least get to hear his voice.
Am I really just expected to move on? Forget about him? Go to college like he didn’t force me to become a completely different, better version of myself this summer?
I stopped talking about Samson to anyone in this house. I don’t even want his name brought up because it just leads to arguments. I’ve barely left my room all week. I occupy my days with mindless TV shows and visits to Marjorie’s house. She’s the only one I’ll speak to about him. She’s the only one on my side.
I’ve been alternating between the two shirts that were in Samson’s backpack all week, but they no longer smell like him. They smell like me now, which is why I’m snuggled up to his backpack, watching a marathon of a British baking show.
I don’t know what to do with his things. I doubt he cares to keep toiletries, and there wasn’t anything of value in his backpack other than the poems his father wrote to him. But I don’t want to give them to Marjorie to get to him because I feel like they’re my last connection to him.
They might one day be the only excuse I have to get him to speak to me.
I’m going to have to move on at some point. I know this, but as long as I’m still here and he’s still in jail, I can’t focus on anything else.