The Light and Fallen (16 page)

"Apparently he's had a change of heart. He's
not dating any more."

"A change of heart? Like he found Jesus or
something?" Samara snorted. "That just seems
so
unlikely."

"I don't know," Carin said, "but he broke up
with Danica three weeks ago, and he hasn't gone out with anyone
else since then."

"Hmm…." Samara filed the last letter and
slammed the cabinet drawer shut. "Come to think of it, he has been
acting a little less intense lately."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Samara blushed. "I tripped on the
stairs the other day, and he sort of appeared out of nowhere and
helped me up."

"Ooh, did he ask you out again?"

"No, he just acted friendly. Like a
normal
sort of friendly."

"That's weird," Carin said, "because every
time I've seen him talk to you, he looked like he was trying to
consume you with his eyes."

She giggled as Samara made a face. "It's
true!" she said. "I've never seen anybody look at someone the way
he looks at you."

"I know," Samara admitted. She could feel a
blush color her cheeks. "But he didn't do that the other day."

"Do you think he likes you?" Carin asked.

"I doubt it," Samara said. She snorted as she
thought about all the different girls Jack had gone out with. "I
don't seem like his type. I'm much too average."

"Lucian didn't think so." Carin raised her
hands in surrender when Samara shot her a look and spun her chair
around. "I'm just saying," she said, "it's something to think
about."

The start of the Christmas holidays brought
the first spell of truly cold weather blustering in. The roads
stayed slushy with half-frozen rain, and the skies remained
overcast with dark clouds.

Samara was just relieved to have made it
through midterms. Keeping her mind on her classes had been a
struggle, and she was concerned about some of her grades,
especially in Physics. When the scores were posted, she was shocked
to see that she had made an A, bringing her overall course grade up
to a B-. She'd even finished top of the class in the mid-year
physical fitness assessment, surprising both herself and Coach
Cottlebum.

She sat at her dining room table reading the
chapters Mr. Higgs had assigned over the holidays. Her eyes skimmed
over equations that described time dependent and non-linear
relativity. It was very strange, but it almost made sense. When she
closed her eyes, the patterns seemed to roll themselves out in her
imagination. She shook her head and snapped the book closed. Lucian
must have been the best tutor ever.

She crossed her legs underneath her and
hugged her arms around herself. The house smelled delicious. A mix
of spices intermingled in the air, and she could see their
Christmas tree twinkling beside the fire place. Dina had been
cooking at an almost manic pace since the holidays began,
alternating between baked goods and elaborate dinners, and at the
moment she was attempting to make a four foot tree out of
pastry.

As Samara watched a cream puff fell off the
middle of the tree, rolled across the floor, and bumped into her
shoe. "What is that?" she asked.

"It's a croque en bouche!" Dina said
animatedly. "It's French."

"It's kind of big."

Dina rolled her eyes playfully at Samara. "I
know," she said. "It's going to be the centerpiece at the community
Christmas luncheon." She flapped her hands in exasperation as a
second pastry rolled down the tree and over the edge of the
counter. "Unless all the cream puffs fall onto the floor!"

Samara made a noncommittal noise as she
picked the pastries up and dropped them into the garbage. Dina's
face was flushed and loose tendrils of hair escaped her bun and
hung around her face. Her mother's behavior was bizarre, but it was
better than the alternative. She'd been afraid that the holidays
would throw her mother back into a depression. She would rather be
picking pastries up off the floor than trying to coax her out of
bed. "Do you need any help?"

"No." Dina stepped back and eyed the tree
form. "I need more eggs." She grabbed her purse off the floor and
rummaged through it, producing two twenties that she handed to
Samara.

Samara eyed the bills in her hand. "How many
eggs do you want?" she asked.

"Twenty dozen maybe?" Dina mused. "Or
twenty-two?" She tapped a finger on her chin thoughtfully. "Just
get twenty-five dozen, to be on the safe side, and a gallon of
heavy cream."

"So
three hundred
eggs and a gallon of
cream."

"Yes!" Dina nodded her head decisively and
pressed another twenty into Samara's hand. "While you're out
getting that, I'm going to start the caramel sauce."

Samara grabbed her keys off the counter and
stuck them in her pocket. "Is it okay if I do a little Christmas
shopping while I'm out? I'm not finished yet."

"Fine," Dina mumbled as she attempted to pull
apart the sticky pages of a cookbook on the counter. "I've got
enough to keep me busy for a while."

Samara slipped out the kitchen door and went
into her room to get some shopping money. She pulled a few bills
out of the top drawer of her dresser and counted out twenty six
dollars. She stuffed the cash into the pocket of her jeans. It
wasn't a lot, but it was probably enough for some sort of kitchen
gadget. She had already exchanged gifts with Carin and Bethanny
before Christmas break started, so her mom's present was the last
one she had to purchase.

"I'm leaving," she called as she walked
through the living room to the front door. She didn't hear any kind
of response from the kitchen and knew Dina was back in her own
world. She probably didn't even realize she was alone in the
kitchen.

Samara took a deep breath as she locked the
front door behind her and picked her way carefully down the icy
driveway to her car. The temperamental weather had kept her
indoors, and she was glad to have an excuse to leave the house. She
had to go to two grocery stores to find twenty-five dozen eggs. The
stores were bustling with last minute shoppers, and Samara was
grateful that Dina hadn't had a longer list. Many of the shelves
were empty, and she considered herself lucky to not have to drive
across town to a third store.

She carefully loaded the eggs and cream into
the floorboard of the car, then drove toward Bed, Bath, &
Beyond. She was trying to decide if she could afford a kitchen
scale, when she felt the car begin to shudder. The steering wheel
jerked in her hand, and she heard a loud pop and then a grinding
sound from beneath the car. She eased onto the shoulder of the road
and waited for a break in the traffic zipping past before she
opened her door and got out of the car.

Jack watched Samara walk around the car. She
disappeared from view as she squatted down to examine the flat,
then opened the passenger door and began digging through the seat
console searching for her cell phone. She ducked her head below the
dashboard and he wondered what she would do next. Normally he would
expect to see tears, but she was refreshingly unpredictable.

Instead she slammed the passenger door shut
and walked around to the back of the car. He watched in amusement
as she popped the trunk and hoisted out a large metal jack. She
held it awkwardly, and he wondered if she even knew how to use it.
She seemed determined to wrestle it into submission and shoved it
underneath the edge of the car near the flat before she returned to
the trunk and tugged out a spare tire and a tire iron.

He was sure she lacked the necessary brute
force to actually change the tire, but her determination was
admirable.
Time to come to the rescue
, he thought. He pulled
into the street and cruised to a slow stop behind her car. He
flashed a warm smile in her direction and rolled down his passenger
window. "Can I give you a hand?"

Samara sat in Jack's car and watched him
change her tire with effortless ease. She had been surprised but
relieved when he pulled up behind her on the road. He still made
her nervous, but without her cell phone she was stranded. Accepting
his help was far less frightening than hiking down the road alone
or taking help from a stranger.

At first she had refused to stay in the car,
and he'd played along. He had shown her how to remove a lug nut,
and then stepped back to let her try. He allowed her several
attempts, giving her the dignity of working up a sweat before he
gallantly took the tire iron from her hand and declared that she
was freezing, ushered her to his car, and insisted that she stay
there while he finished changing the tire.

She pressed her hands flat against the tan
leather seats and was impressed in spite of herself. She could feel
heat warming her, not only from the vents in the dashboard, but
also from inside the seats. The car was immaculately clean, and the
interior was somehow dim even though it was the middle of the
day.

Jack had taken his jacket off and laid it
over the hood of the car while he worked. He was wearing a short
sleeved shirt, and with each turn of the crank his muscular arms
flexed. She tried not to stare, averting her eyes to watch cars
passing by, but she couldn't help peeking over at him as he pulled
the flat tire off and carried it to her trunk with one hand.

Maybe I misjudged him
, she thought. He
had dated a lot of girls, there was no denying that, but they threw
themselves at him. And it wasn't his fault that he made her so
tongue-tied. She couldn't pinpoint exactly what he had ever done to
make her uncomfortable. He had always been courteous to her. In
fact, stopping to help her after she had turned him down twice was
more than she could ever have expected.

She had a quick flash of memory and heard
Lucian's voice, "You know he's not a nice person." Had he told the
truth? There was obviously animosity between them. She had trusted
Lucian because she thought he cared about her. That didn't seem to
be true, so maybe what he said about Jack wasn't true either, at
least not completely.
Maybe
, she thought,
he finds Jack
threatening
.

She considered the idea as Jack finished
tightening the lug nuts and lowered her car back to the ground. He
sensed her gaze and looked up, giving her a little wave. She could
see a light sheen of sweat on his face despite the cold, and he had
a smudge of dirt on his cheek. He was indisputably good looking. It
would be easy to see how a rivalry could exist.

Jack loaded the tools back into her trunk on
top of the flat, and then opened Samara's door. "Give me your
keys," he said, "and I'll start your car so it can warm up for a
bit before you go."

Samara pulled her keys out of her pocket, and
he trotted back to her car and cranked the engine. When he got back
into his car he handed her a cell phone. "Is this yours?"

"Yes!" Samara cried. "I thought I looked for
it everywhere. Where did you find it?"

"It was in the floorboard." He shrugged. "It
must've been stuck under the seat and slid out when I shifted the
car."
Samara pressed it to her chest. "I lose it everywhere," she
confided. "I was afraid that I left it at the grocery store."

"I saw that you'd been to the store," Jack
said. "Did you know you have a truly excessive amount of eggs in
your car?"

"I know," Samara laughed. "They're for my
mom. She's making some sort of huge pastry tree for the community
Christmas luncheon."

"Sounds delicious."

I should ask him to go with me
, Samara
thought.
I don't have any reason not to.
She felt a pang as
she thought about Lucian. Her heart still longed for him, but he'd
made his choice and she was going to have to move on.

"Are you still interested in that tour?" She
let the words rush out of her mouth before she could change her
mind. "We could go to the luncheon together, and then I could show
you around." She dropped her eyes when he hesitated and kicked
herself for being so forward. "If you're still interested," she
stammered.

He gave a low chuckle and she burned with
indignation. "You can just say no," she snapped. "You don't have to
laugh at me."

"I was trying to remember what day the
luncheon is," Jack said in a soothing voice. "And I'm just laughing
because you're so cute."

Samara could tell he was amused at her
discomfort and wished that she could hide her feelings more easily.
"It's next week," she said. "The Tuesday before Christmas."

"Sadly," he said, "I'll be out of town, and
to be honest I don't really need a tour guide anymore. But," he
added, "there's a party on Saturday night, if you'd like to go with
me."

She stared at him in surprise, unsure whether
she should accept his offer. "Third time's the charm," he coaxed,
sensing her hesitation.

There's no reason not to, Samara reminded
herself. She didn't usually go to parties, but maybe it was time
for a change. As Carin would say, 'Carpe diem and all that.'
"Okay," she said, "that sounds fun."

"Your car should be warmed up by now," Jack
said, "and I'm actually late for an appointment, so I guess we
should say goodbye. I'll come pick you up at 8:30 on Saturday."

Samara nodded. She was already having doubts
about going out with Jack, but there was no way she could
gracefully backtrack. "I'll see you then."

She was distracted on the drive home. She
couldn't decide if going out with Jack was a huge mistake,
considering that it was Lucian that she really wanted. She refused
to listen to the niggling part of her that whispered that just
maybe she was trying to get back at Lucian. It's for the best, she
told herself firmly. It will help me move on.