Love in the Time of Serial Killers(68)

“Other side,” Sam said. And of course, there was an open outlet in the same spot on the opposite wall. Some graduate-level critical thinking there.

“See, dropping RHCP song titles even now,” I said. “You can’t help yourself.”

“Can’t stop.”

I rolled my eyes at that one, sitting down and pointedly putting my earbuds in. I only half expected Sam to actually follow my direction about the guitar. I had no idea what he’d been doing before I showed up, after all, and I wasn’t the boss of him. But I was aware of him disappearing into the garage, the door shut behind him while he did . . . well, whatever building a guitar entailed. Something with wood and strings, I imagined.

When I’d finished and emailed the chapter to Dr. Nilsson—rough as hell but done, at least—I ventured out there, not sure if I should knock first. Even though I now knew that the garage wasn’t some secret serial killer lair, I still had this squirmy feeling in my stomach about bothering Sam there. But he glanced up from where he was working, giving me a smile as I came in.

“Done?”

“With that part, at least,” I said. “And I emailed this local professor my advisor wanted me to meet with, to set that up. Then I had to text Alison to see if she could help me look for a blazer.” I waved a hand, figuring it was all pretty boring. “Whatever. I hate shopping. What are you marking that up for?”

Sam had been measuring out distances on the raw wood body, penciling in a few dots along a straight center line. “I still haven’t decided on the scale length of the neck,” he said. “But if I go with twenty-five point five, I think this is where the bridge’ll go, and then the pickups will be here.”

He was pointing at various spots on the guitar, but I had no idea what half those words meant, so I focused more on how good his hand looked as he swiped some eraser dust off the wood, how much I liked hearing the energy in his voice when he talked about something that excited him.

“I have an old electric from high school,” I said. “The strings have a really bad buzz to them now, though.”

“Could need to have the frets leveled,” Sam said. “Bring it over and I’ll intonate it for you, put new strings on.”

“Cool, thanks,” I said. “Don’t be scared if the only song I can play is ‘Doll Parts.’ It’s just super easy so it might be the only one I remember. Personally, I don’t think Courtney had anything to do with what happened to Kurt.”

“Courtney Love doesn’t scare me,” Sam said. He put the pencil down, looked at me. “You’re used to intimidating people, aren’t you?”

I shrugged. “You have to admit. When you first met me, you were scared.”

“Because you threatened me with Mace,” Sam pointed out. “And called me my dude in a way that suggested imminent violence. I still thought you were cute. Meanwhile you thought I was a six on your serial killer scale.”

That seemed so long ago already, a time when I didn’t know Sam the way I did now. The way his eyes lit up when he found something truly hilarious. The way he sometimes pressed the tip of his tongue to the corner of his mouth when he was concentrating. The way his hands clenched my hips when he was about to come, as though he wanted us as close as possible.

On my serial killer scale, Sam was now comfortably at a one.

But on a scale of how much he scared me? It was starting to climb the charts. Because this was supposed to be a brief, fun summer thing . . . so why did it already feel like more?

“I’ll probably leave for North Carolina in about a month,” I said. I realized it was a non sequitur in our conversation, but in my head the through line was perfectly clear. “I should be able to find another apartment in the same complex where I was renting before, but I still need to get everything settled.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “Teachers go back the first week of August, so if it’s before that I can help you move.”

An altogether confusing response. On the one hand, my brain couldn’t help but interpret that as an eagerness to see me gone, although I was the one who’d brought it up and my leaving had never been in question. On the other hand, he wanted to help me move? Like, drive ten hours, go through my storage unit with me, unpack a bunch of boxes of books I probably didn’t need but was never going to get rid of?

That sounded like more commitment than a summer fling.

“We’ll see,” I said. Then, because I couldn’t stop myself, I blurted, “What about the next few weeks, then? What are we doing, if we know this is going to end?”

Sam cradled my jaw in his hands, his eyes searching my face, as if he were looking for some answer there. From his expression, I couldn’t tell if he’d found it. “We know it’s going to change,” he said, resting his forehead against mine. “That doesn’t necessarily mean end, unless you want it to. You have my full attention, Phoebe. I’m not going anywhere.”

The joke was on the tip of my tongue, something about how I was the one going somewhere in this scenario. But I swallowed it back, not wanting to shift out of this moment just yet. I pushed up on my tiptoes to press a kiss behind Sam’s ear. “My dude,” I said.



* * *





?SAM AND I ended up spending the rest of the night watching movies—somehow, I convinced him to let me put on Silence of the Lambs—and eating some pasta dish he’d whipped up that I was very impressed by.