It’s time traveling. It’s like living in a book in Justin’s house. Slipping in between the pages, where everything is old and secret. Sam and Justin step over all the stairs that creak. They drag Justin’s mattress onto the floor.
Downstairs there are cut-glass ice cream bowls and they are ruby red. There are drawers all filled with doll clothes. There is a wicker doll carriage with a baby doll inside named Cynthia. Her head is painted wood. Her nose is chipped. For pressing dolls’ clothes, there is a miniature iron made of actual iron.
There is a telephone you have to dial, and a gramophone you have to crank. Dishes are mismatched and chipped. Paint blisters the kitchen ceiling, but the house has carved wood banisters, and in the living room there is a window seat with a red velvet cushion. You can sit there and look out at flower beds, and oaks, and maples.
Justin takes care of the whole garden. He mows the grass and pulls the weeds and hacks blackberry canes.
When Sam comes over in the evenings, she and Justin walk out to watch the sunset.
The sky glows, blackening the trees.
You feel like you’re floating.
Then when you come in again, the wood floor in the living room tilts gently.
The dining room is pale pink, like the inside of a shell.
On the windowsill above the kitchen sink, Ann keeps a whole family of African violets. She will cut a leaf and cultivate the stem in water. At night she checks on all the flowers, the pink, the white, the purple ones with golden centers.
Justin cooks spaghetti with Sam’s help, and then after dinner dessert is gingersnaps and shots of scotch, and ice cream in the ruby bowls. Sam and Justin have chocolate, but Ann has rum raisin. Her favorite candy is maple sugar. Her favorite drink is cognac if it’s very fine. Her favorite thing to do is read. Her favorite author is Edna St. Vincent Millay, because she was a good poet and she didn’t give a damn.
Ann is all there, and that’s amazing. That’s the hard part too. Ann is always in the house and she sees everything. Sam is glad she has stopped climbing stairs.
At night they are so quiet. Sam buries her face in Justin’s pillow. They fall asleep in each other’s arms but shift and wake apart. Sam reminds him, “In four days, I’m starting class.”
He says, “I know. You told me.”
When they show up together at Red Rocks, they get teased.
Kyle tells Sam, “Have you noticed Bolt doesn’t like you so much? When he sees you, he smells Justin.”
When Sam comes home, her mom questions her. How old is he? Where does he work? Then she uses the answers against Sam later. Courtney says, “Think.”
Sam says, “I do.”
“He’s twenty-four.”
“So what? I’m almost nineteen.”
“That’s the whole point.”
“He’s a good person.”
“You know that already?”
“It’s not already. It’s been all summer and last spring.”
“Then introduce me.”
“Mom! No!”
“Why not? What are you afraid of?”
“Nothing. I just don’t want to.”
“Well, if you’re living with him.”
“I’m not.”
“Half your clothes are at his place.” To Courtney the relationship is like osmosis. “You are never here.”
She is right. Sam is not home. She is not anywhere. When she is with Justin they hardly even eat.
They are like air plants. They live on nothing. They sit in bed and talk for hours. Justin tells Sam about his mom, who is now on a church mission. He tells her how they used to be close and then they fought, and that was when he moved in with Ann.
“What did you fight about?” Sam asks.
“Just sin.”
“What kind of sin?”
“The regular kind. Drinking and partying and dealing.” He says dealing fast and moves on quickly. “Sleeping with my girlfriend.”
He tells Sam about this ex-girlfriend who is now living down in Boston. Sam tells him about Corey, but not Declan. Then she does. “He took advantage,” Justin says.
Sam thinks about it. “Not exactly.”
He says, “I disagree.”
They are sitting opposite each other on his mattress. She says, “I was a bad kid.”
“No, you weren’t!”
“I was.”
He says, “You were a kid, not good or bad.”
It is strange to hear him say that. It is a relief, but at the same time she doesn’t quite believe him. She says, “You weren’t there.”
“What about your mom?”
“I never told her.”
He doesn’t say You should have. He says, “I wouldn’t have told my mom either.”
Sam says, “I wish I’d never told mine about you.”
“Why? Is she worried?”
“She’s irrational!” Sam says. “She’s defensive.”
“Because she’s never met me.”
“And if she does, you think you’ll win her over?”
Justin is stroking the arches of her feet. “Yeah, obviously.”
Then Sam shakes her head because it isn’t obvious at all. The thing upsetting her mom is real. It’s not that Sam is sleeping with Justin. It’s not that he is a terrible person. It’s not even that Sam won’t come home in time to help. Courtney knows Sam will be there mostly. What scares Courtney is that Sam will change her mind and decide against college, now that she’s with Justin. Courtney is afraid that Sam will give up because she is too happy—and she is right to worry.