#midwestwitch

“We were, we were… and you know I care about you a lot, Sharon. And this has nothing to do with you. I mean, you’re great, perfect even… I don’t know what it is, I just can’t seem to figure out what it is that’s wrong with us.”

I gulp. I am finally here, the place I didn’t want to be. Ending a relationship is something I always dread because no matter what the feelings are, mutually or individually, someone still walks away with hurt feelings. Sharon and I never really discussed where the relationship was going. When we first met, we both understood that this could go long term or it could be casual and we didn’t care either way. She knew my opinion on marriage and she didn’t seem to mind. The topic came up on occasion but we never really pursued the conversation to a resolved end. Basically, we have been cruising along, not moving forward. We have been doing this for a long time.

I know exactly what the problem is, but there’s no way I am going to tell Sharon what’s really going on. Instead, I am going to tell her that she is far too good for me and she doesn’t deserve this hemming and hawing on my part about a further commitment. I will tell her that it’s unfair to her to make her wait until I get my head together and can give her what she wants. Regardless of my reasons, all of these are completely factual and perfectly good reasons all on their own for me to end this relationship.

Unfortunately for Sharon and for me, the real reason I am ending this is because I am too head over heels in love with my best friend to allow any other woman into my heart. I don’t know how anyone can be in love with two women at the same time, but I am not one of those men.

This is most unfair to me, because with my luck, I will be in love with Sam Chance for the rest of my life.

“I’m s-sorry, Sharon,” I say, trying to clear my head and not allow Sam to dominate my thoughts, as she so often does. I need to get this out and give Sharon my undivided attention. She deserves that much. “I care about you and I am very fond of you, but we’re not moving forward. I don’t think there’s anything more that either of us can take from this relationship.”

Sharon is staring at me skeptically, her big, glistening cerulean eyes shimmering with tears. I hate making people feel this way, especially someone I know so intimately. I want to hide her from all of this pain. If I could have told her two years ago that there was no way she would ever be able to compete with the unrequited love in my heart, both of us could be spared this painful break up. Unfortunately, I was lonely and Sam was the one insisting on setting us up, so I couldn’t disappoint her. How was I to know that Sharon was delightful and intelligent, with a bubbly personality and a sharp, witty sense of humor, not to mention beautiful to boot? How could I have been so lucky to find this wonderful woman, a woman willing to share her life with me?

How could I be such an ass as to take that love and know that there was no way I could ever reciprocate it?

My nose starts to tingle, indicating that my eyes are about to flood with tears of my own. My heart aches desperately in my chest, having to do this to Sharon. I don’t want to lose her, I really don’t, but I know it’s the only fair way.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Sharon. You’ve come to mean a great deal to me,” I tell her, trying to cushion the blow. “You just… you’re wonderful and you deserve a man who will commit to you, a man that will share his life with you. I’m an idiot and I’m not going to sit here and insult your intelligence by feeding you break up clichés. I want you to be happy, and that’s the truth.”

“That’s not the whole truth, Joe,” Sharon finally states. I peer up at her after taking a moment to rub my eyes. I am, to say the least, surprised.

“What do you mean?”

“Come on,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You and I both know that’s not the real reason you’re breaking up with me.” I stare at her without speaking, my mind blank. “You’re breaking up with me because I’m not Sammy and I’ll never be Sammy.”

The first thing that happens is my entire body flushes cold. Then, my heart stops in my chest, my stomach twists itself into knots, and I clench my jaw so tight that I feel a tension headache starting at my temples. How could she know? And if Sharon figured it out, had Sam figured it out, or god forbid, Tom?

“How –”

“Please, Joe,” she says with a sniffle. “I’m not an idiot. It’s in the way you talk about her. The way you look at her. The way you are with her. I had an idea you had feelings for her when we first met, but I knew you loved her when we were at the beach… about six months ago.”

I am shocked, to say the least. I had really hoped I was being a little more discreet about my feelings. Maybe I am in the clear, because Sharon would naturally pay more attention to me than Sam or Tom. They usually gravitate toward one another. “You knew?” I finally whisper to her.

She nods, wiping her eyes. “I doubt Sammy notices, but you stare at her. A lot.”

“I do?”

“All the time,” she says and when I hear the pain in her voice my heart breaks again. “When everyone is talking or involved in something, you stand back and get this look in your eye… Like the sun sets on her and only her.” Sharon pauses to take a shaky breath before she continues. “How can any woman compete with her?”

“I’m so sorry, Sharon,” I say to her quietly, truly meaning it. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

She shrugs. “It’s my own damn fault, honestly. I already had my suspicions and then I saw you staring at her, but instead of saying something or breaking up with you first, I stuck with it. I hoped maybe one day you would start looking at me like you look at her… but now I realize it’s never going to happen. You can’t be happy with anyone, Joe, until you deal with your feelings for Sammy.”

“But I can’t, that’s the thing!” I burst unwittingly. Holding onto all of these feelings and not having anyone to express it all to is a heavy burden. “What am I going to do? There’s no way I could ever betray Tom’s friendship by saying something to Sam about how I feel. Besides, telling her means I would lose her.”

Sharon sighs, crossing her arms and sitting back. “You’ve either got to tell her, Joe, or you have to let her go. Either way, you can’t be in her life anymore.”

The fear I feel instantly with this statement is so strong it almost knocks me backwards. Lose Sam? Is Sharon insane? How could I ever lose Sam? How could I lose Tom? These people are too important to me to just shrug and walk away. I try to express this to Sharon, but she is unwavering. I realize too late that I am being awfully insensitive but Sharon doesn’t seem to mind too much. This is why she is such a wonderful person.

“Listen, Joe… You’re sitting here, trying to tell me that it’s so unfair to me that you don’t want to commit any further and that I should be finding the happiness I so deserve, but you should really be saying this to yourself.” She stands up, readjusting herself and I follow suit. She walks toward me and places her hands on my chest, absently wiping my shirt, a gesture of hers I find comforting. It hurts to think of her never doing it again. “You either have to tell Sam the truth, for your sanity, and see how she takes it, or you have to decide that you deserve happiness, too. If Sam and Tom are really meant to be together, then nothing is going to split them up. Sam is married, with kids, and she’s not going to just walk away from that life easily, and you know that. You are being more unfair to yourself than you are to me.”

“Sharon, you don’t understand…”

“I understand perfectly,” she interrupts, crossing her arms again and stepping back. “You’re telling me that I deserve someone who wants what I want. The biggest question here is why don’t you think you deserve the same thing?”

Before I have a chance to answer her, she stands on tiptoe to kiss me on the cheek, gives me a sympathetic smile, and turns to leave. Just as she gets to the door I call out her name and she pauses, looking back at me just as I whisper, “Thanks.”

Joe: Now

   “Yeah. Tom and I are beyond talking this out anymore. The longer he’s gone the more I realize it. I think my marriage is over.”

Joe’s jaw dropped. Never, in all the years he had known Sam and Tom, would he have expected this. Sam and Tom were like two halves of the same whole. They had a rhythm unlike anyone he had ever seen before. They had the kind of love that songs and poems are written about, and there was never a doubt in Joe’s mind that Sam and Tom were meant to be together

And then, just like that, their rhythm was off and they were no longer together on anything. It scared Joe to know that a love story as beautiful and poetic as Tom and Sam’s could ever reach a point where it was beyond repair.

This was not the way Joe wanted Sam’s love, if he had his choice. He didn’t want his friends to be in heartbroken over their broken marriage. He didn’t want Emma and Izzie to have to go through the pain of a messy divorce. He didn’t want to think that there was a possibility that he could win Sam’s affections because she had been devastated enough to lose the true love of her life.

Then again he hadn’t expected Sam and Tom to ever come to this much of an impasse in their relationship, so anything could happen at this point.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

 Sam’s shaky voice finally penetrated the thin veil of Joe’s thoughts. He tried to clear his head and be there for his friend. He gave her an encouraging smile and sat straighter. “I think the best thing to do right now is sleep on it,” he said, going to the safest possible option he could think of. “You’re over emotional right now and you know it’s not a good idea to make decisions when you’re emotional.”

“You’re right,” she said, dejected. She was still pacing, white as a sheet and biting her lip. Joe could even see the slightest tremor in her fingers. He didn’t want to comment on it. He just wanted her to calm down. “You’re right, you’re right… I don’t know what I should do about all of this. I haven’t heard from him in three days, you’d think I would be freaking out, but I’ve just been… I don’t know… I’ve been enjoying myself with you and now I can’t get a hold of him and I have all of this guilt because I want to be mad at him but I’m madder at myself,” she blurted out in one long breath. “I should just wait until he’s home and I can talk to him myself.” Joe watched her as she paced a few more steps before finally stopping and heaving a huge sigh that brought her to her knees. She bent over and started sobbing.

Joe was familiar with Sam’s emotional outbursts and for the most part, knew how to handle them. This time, he was at a loss. He wanted to jump up and be by her side to coddle her and make sure she was okay, but at the same time this was an area he had never expected to venture. Sam was mourning the loss of a good marriage and there was nothing he could do to salve that kind of wound. She was going to have to cry this one out on her own.

“What am I doing, Joe? What happened to my marriage?” she cried between sobs, and Joe knew that sitting back and watching her was not an option. He stood up and walked over to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and standing her up to walk them back over to the fountain. He didn’t want anyone noticing her crying on the ground. It certainly wouldn’t give them any semblance of privacy, which was what they needed right now. As soon as they sat down on the fountain, Sam crumpled into him, her head resting against his shoulder as she cried. Joe kept his arm around her in an attempt to provide something steady for her to rely on. “What am I going to do? I’m so lost… I can’t let another marriage fail, Joe, I just can’t… At least that time, Zach and I didn’t have any kids to worry about… And Zach wasn’t… Tom is… I just…”

“Sh,” Joe said, setting his head against Sam’s. “You don’t need to figure this out tonight. Like I said, you need to sleep on it. It’s not doing you any good to worry and fret when Tom isn’t even here to talk to,” he assured her. “For now, it’s probably best if you put it out of your mind.”

“Joe, that’s the problem!” she said, sitting bolt upright. “I keep putting off everything I need to say to that man and now look where we are!” Sam’s coffee colored eyes were blazing in her fervor to figure everything out. “He ran off to escape our problems! Putting it out of my mind is the absolute worst thing I can do right now.”

Joe sighed heavily. “Sam, be realistic. How the hell are you going to fix your marriage when your spouse is not here? Not to mention the fact that you can’t get a hold of him. Besides, why would you want to fix your marriage over the phone?”

Sam’s shoulders sunk. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Like I said, sleep on it.”

Sam nodded in response, sniffling and wiping her face. She seemed to be calming down but Joe sat in silence nonetheless and allowed his friend to gather her wits. He knew that she didn’t favor breaking down, especially in public, and he was going to allow her to maintain her dignity. It was the least he could do for her.

“So now what?” she asked after nearly five minutes of stretched silence.

Joe was so relieved to hear her speak that he felt a renewed sense of purpose. Tonight, he was going to do everything in his power to distract her from what was going on in her marriage. He wanted to put the light back in her eyes.

“I assume you don’t want to go back to the movie?” he asked first.

She crinkled her nose in the adorable way that she always did. Joe smiled at the sight. “We’ve already lost our cherry spot. Besides, I’ve seen that movie over a hundred times.”

“Same here,” he said with a chuckle. “Do you want to go home?”

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “I need a little more time to clear my head before I end my night… and if we go home, it’ll be the end of the night.”

“Oh… okay,” Joe said, frowning at her.

Sam saw his confused expression and she chuckled, a sound that was so unexpected and delightful that Joe knew the rest of the night was going to be infinitely better than it had been. “Trust me, I understood what I just said. Basically, I don’t want to go home right now. I want to be out. I don’t have any kids at the house, I don’t have to be a wife and a mother tonight. I’m just your Sam. What do you want with me?”

Joe had to bite his lip to keep every possible response from slipping out of his mouth right then. It was getting harder and harder for him to keep quiet about everything. Sam seemed to be getting closer to him in a very dangerous way. Instead of trying to actively discourage it, Joe was going out of his way to accommodate himself to Sam. As a direct result of this, Joe’s heart was overflowing and ready to just burst with all of the words he had waited so, so long to say.

It was unacceptable and he had to put a stop to it.

“Well, we can stay in the park. If you like,” Joe added quickly. The sun had made its daily journey beneath the horizon and there was still the slightest streak of orange and pink left in the sky. The gas lamps in the park had sparked to life over the last fifteen minutes and there was a soft, romantic feeling to the place. Joe knew it was a much smarter idea to just take Sam home and allow her to face her fears but he knew he couldn’t do that. The worst, most aching part of his heart was speaking a lot louder than his logic.

He only hoped that over the course of the next few days or however long it took Tom to get back that he didn’t succumb to this weakness. It could prove a very bad decision.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Sam whispered. He peered over at her and saw a sweet, trusting smile spreading across her face. An icy fist of guilt gripped his heart. She had so much faith in him, Joe, her best friend, the sturdiest part of her support system right now, a man who would not let her down. He just hoped he could be that for her. It was going to be a struggle to ignore the thick feeling of magic in the air, the spell that was starting to descend over both of them.

“Good, let’s go,” he said abruptly, not allowing his guard to drop for a second. Joe took Sam’s hand and stood up as quickly as possible so that their bodies were no longer touching and kept her at a chaste but comfortable distance as they started to wander past the fountain. Sam remained quiet as they walked, holding hands. Joe’s heart was hammering inside his chest. The silence was amiable, but he felt as though it still needed to be filled, if only to quiet the shouting thoughts in his head, the thoughts that were so dangerously close to being spoken.

But right as he decided to start them on a neutral, safe topic, Sam sighed heavily and wrapped her other hand around his arm, leaning into him and gripping him tightly. That ice he had mounted to protect his heart started to slowly melt and he found that he was slowly starting to forget what it was he was feeling so guilty about. Nothing mattered but this moment, a moment he would cherish forever. He didn’t know if it meant anything more to Sam than it did to him, but he didn’t care either. Right now, there was no huge family crisis looming around the corner, no daughters or marriage to worry about. It was just Sam and Joe, and they were joined together.

Maybe it was forever and maybe it was just now, but all Joe knew was that he was appreciating every second he got to be the person Sam clung to.

“Where do you want to go?” he finally asked her. They had walked for so long in silence that he was sure they were going to get turned around before they felt like talking.

She shrugged nonchalantly, gazing around the layout of the park. “You can take me anywhere. I’m just enjoying the company.”

Joe’s heart lurched. There was something to the lilt in Sam’s voice, the way she said this that made him think there was something… something to it… But he couldn’t have heard right. Sam was too good of a person and too devoted to her family to ever even consider the possibility of them, like he had so many times.

“Well,” he said, coughing to make sure and clear the surprise out of his tone. “I bet the carousel is running now.”

Sam gasped the moment he said the word ‘carousel.’ “Oh my god I bet it’s gorgeous all lit up at night! Can we go? Please?”

Joe rolled his eyes, pretending that her pleading was inconvenient when really seeing her big beautiful doe eyes wide and imploring had already obliterated any resolve he may have had to begin with. “Fine, I guess,” he said with a chuckle, letting her drag him down another path.

“This is so exciting,” she said as they walked on, an added bounce in her step. “It’s stupid, I’ve seen this damn carousel a million times on any other normal day, but I don’t know what it is, it’s like there’s something in the air tonight that is just making everything seem so… oh I don’t know…”

“Magical?” Joe offered, completely swept away.

Sam stopped then, her hand still clasped around his. She turned to stare into his eyes and every thought Joe had immediately fled his brain under this penetrating gaze. He watched a tornado of tumultuous emotions sweep through her glistening brown eyes, feeling immensely anxious as he waited for the stillness to break. Joe wasn’t even one hundred percent sure he wanted it to end at all, but Sam tore her gaze away and breathed a nearly inaudible, “Yeah, magical,” before turning around and continuing on.

“I-I’m sure it’ll be beautiful tonight,” Joe said lamely, trying to mend the awkwardness that now hung in the air between them.

“I’d love to bring the girls here to see it,” Sam offered, her voice sounding somewhat far away and wistful. “There just never seems to be time to do anything like that with them.” She sighed heavily, a sigh so sad it made Joe’s heart ache. “I know Emma would love it.”

“I’m sure she would.”

“I think it’s the teenaged sentiment not to care as much about your parents because they’re wrong about everything,” Sam posed, “but I just really never thought Emma would be a typical teenager.”

“You know, I don’t really think she is,” Joe offered.

“Really?” Sam asked, incredulous. “How so?”

“Well, she’s not egregiously disrespectful.”

Sam snorted. “What Emma are you talking about?”

Joe rolled his eyes and shook their joined hands in an effort to emphasize his point. “Every teenager is disrespectful. My word was ‘egregious.’ I’ve seen some real monsters that swear at their parents, yell at them, and then still have this gross idea of entitlement. To her credit, Emma is not one of these kids. Sure she has her tantrums, but what hormonal pubescent kid doesn’t? It sucks being a teenager; physically, emotionally, mentally, socially.” He shuddered, remembering how he had gone through puberty in front of the camera, essentially sharing the most awkward years of his life with an audience. He loved his work but sometimes he wished he had been able to keep that part to himself.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” she agreed. “We’ve been tremendously lucky with both of our girls. I don’t have to worry about Izzie for a little while but she’s not nearly as emotional and high strung as Emma can be. I don’t know what it is lately, I can’t seem to connect with Emma.”

Joe took a deep breath. He had hoped to keep Emma’s confidence but he didn’t want Sam thinking that she was a bad mother because Emma wasn’t willing to talk to her. “Honestly, Sam, you have nothing to worry about.”

Sam’s head whipped around to stare at him, hard. “What are you talking about?”

“I talked to Emma the other morning,” he confessed. He could just see the lights of the carousel as they crested the final hill to the other side of the park. “Her problem is with Tom.”

“Tom? What’s going on?” Sam’s voice was hard and she was tugging on his arm. Joe wasn’t sure she even realized she was doing it.

“Well, she seems to think that he doesn’t want to be around her,” he said. “Like he’s deliberately trying to avoid her.”

“Why the hell would she think that?”

“I’m not sure,” Joe said, not wanting to tell her the truth. Emma had confessed that she felt as though her father were avoiding her because she reminded him too much of Sam, but he certainly didn’t want to tell her that. “She seems to be real broken up over it.”

Sam sighed sadly again, her grip on Joe’s arm loosening. He felt the blood rush back in, unaware that she had been holding it so tightly. “Tom’s been avoiding all of us lately.”

Joe held back anything that wanted to escape past his lips. Instead, he nudged her with his shoulder a bit as the carousel came more and more into view. They couldn’t get a good look but it was certainly bright against the backdrop of the darkening sky. “Hey, we’re almost there.”

“Wow, that was fast,” she commented, and her pace quickened. The previous statement about Tom was forgotten and they hurried over toward the benches that sat opposite the carousel. Sam stopped before they got all the way there and turned to take in all the lights. “Wow,” she sighed. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, it really is,” Joe said, unable to tear his eyes from Sam’s face. Her expression was one he had not seen on her face in a long, long time. It was one full of hope and wonder, something that for many years had always been at Sam’s very core. His heart felt lighter than it had in months, knowing that even after all of the things she had gone through, Sam was still Sam. The essence of who she was had not been extinguished, but merely dimmed. Without warning, his eyes filled with tears and everything that had overwhelmed and plagued him for months was there at the surface, clamoring to be heard and expressed and he didn’t know if he could hold it back another second.

Thankfully, Sam broke him from this train of thought by tearing her gaze from the carousel and up to Joe’s, her eyes twinkling with the pure whimsy of the situation. “Do you want to ride?”

“W-What?” Joe stammered, caught off guard by the question. It certainly wasn’t what he was expecting.

“Ride with me? Please?” she said, grinning as she clasped her hands together and stuck out her bottom lip.

He laughed at her, turning his head away so he didn’t just roll over. “I don’t know about that, Sam.”

“Oh come on!” she said forcefully. “Why would you bring me all the way over here if you didn’t want to ride?”

“To make you happy,” Joe said, the statement flying out of his mouth so fast he didn’t even have time to consider the consequences of saying it. Sam, however, only smiled wider at him, her eyes softening.

“It would make me super happy if you rode with me!” she insisted.

He moaned and groaned for a few more seconds before finally agreeing. “But we’re not riding on those dumb horses!”

“Ugh! Poor sport,” she said, and she took his hand once again, leading him over to the ride. Honestly, Joe didn’t care where they sat. He just wanted to make her smile.

They paid for the ride and climbed on, finally compromising on one of the small two-seaters. They settled in, squished together almost uncomfortably, laughing and joking about the situation. Sam continually teased him for not being ‘man enough’ to ride a pony and Joe kept telling her she was crazy if she thought a grown man would sit on a sparkly pink porcelain horse. Once the ride began, though, Sam was quiet as she took everything in. Joe peered over at her and saw that her eyes were closed, the breeze gently wafting through the soft tendrils of her golden hair.

Joe had the chance while she had her eyes closed to really examine her. It was something he liked to do when she wasn’t paying attention because the woman was really something else. Sam was nothing like the ubiquitous overly made up Hollywood glamour types, the kind of woman that couldn’t leave the house with covering nearly every inch of herself in shiny beads to distract from the fact that she wasn’t really all that beautiful or interesting.

Sam Chance was beautiful without even trying, on the inside and the outside. Her smile was warm and special, like she only really gave you a brilliant, gleaming grin when you were special. It was one of those small gifts she gave that let you know what you meant to her. Her eyes were always glittering and mischievous, something that was absolutely irresistible, but beyond all of her aesthetic attributes was the core of who she was. Sam was kind, compassionate, giving, and understanding. She was a wonderfully supportive friend, a great listener, and someone he knew he could turn to for comfort. On top of all that, she was exquisitely passionate. She loved her friends and family with fervor, gave one hundred and ten percent to her writing, and always had issues she wanted to discuss. Her passion was probably the thing Joe loved most about her.

Just before the ride ended Sam opened her eyes back up and sighed again, this time happily. She rested her head against his shoulder again and he rested his head on hers. The carousel came to a slow stop and they departed, walking over to the bench they had approached before and sitting down.

“That was wonderful, Joe, thank you,” she said.

“You’re very welcome, Sam.”

“You’re too good to me.”

“Nah,” Joe disagreed, nudging her again. “I just do it to shut you up.”

“Oh, whatever.”

“Men don’t ride merry-go-rounds, Sam. They only begrudgingly agree to accompany a woman onto one.”

“It’s not a merry-go-round, smart ass. It’s a carousel,” she corrected. “And you seemed to be having a good time.”

“How would you know? Your eyes were closed the whole time!” he accused.

Her cheeks flushed red and she turned away. “Not the whole time.”

Joe was flattered to hear this but chose not to speak on it. He didn’t want to ruin the crazy thoughts in his head, the ones that just made him feel like things were changing. They couldn’t change. That was bad.

Sam was silent as well, but Joe knew immediately that her attitude was shifting yet again. He didn’t want her to start worrying again but he felt it was pointless to try and shake her from it. After all, it wasn’t just going to go away on its own and he knew that Sam had a tendency to overthink things. It was part of that passionate side of her, a part that was frequently an obstacle.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked her after she made no move to begin talking. If nothing else, he was going to get her to express herself. That always seemed to help.

She shrugged in response, sitting back against the bench. “I don’t know, just life.”

“‘Just life?’ What does that mean ‘just life?’” he spouted. “You have to tell me, I’m your best friend, and I’ve been so nice to you all night...”

“Don’t try that Jewish guilt on me,” she said pointing an accusing finger at him. “It doesn’t work.”

“Oh come on, I have to use it on someone, I’ve got so much of it.” Joe smirked. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s… Well, it’s life, Joe, just life!” she said, throwing her hands in the air, exasperated. “I wish it was clearer. Like, I don’t know… you start out on this road in high school, thinking things are going to go one way and that you’ve made the right decision in a life partner, and then out of nowhere, life says ‘Nope!’ and takes it away from you. And then, for all of your hard work and suffering, life gives you this one amazing chance at love and happiness only to take it away and make you wait and wait for it to come back. When it finally does, life makes you think that it’s going to be okay from here on out, that you’re going to be happy and that you’re not going to struggle and then it starts to laugh at you and decides it’s going to ruin your happiness by just taking it away again. Why, Joe? Why does life want us to be miserable? It makes no sense to me…” Sam spit everything out at once and then took a deep, cleansing breath. “Sorry. You asked for it.”

“I did, I did,” he agreed, nodding. “I’m sorry you’re so frustrated, Sam, but life… Life isn’t easy. Love isn’t easy. Believe me.” Joe clamped his mouth shut for a second, still unwilling to let anything slip.

Sam, however, wasn’t going to let this go so easily. She narrowed her eyes at him, turning on the bench so she could stare at him. He turned to her, unable to hold her piercing gaze for long. If he stared into her eyes for too long he knew the last of his will would crumble and he would confess everything.

She opened her mouth a couple of times, deciding against whatever she was going to say before finally speaking. Her voice was quiet and guarded, like she knew she was about to say something that could start some kind of emotional thunderstorm. “What happened with you and Sharon?”

So much happened inside Joe all at once that he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to completely explain what happened. First, there was the shock that she had brought this subject up yet again, coupled with the confusion of why she was so determined to know the answer. The fear, on top of the shock and confusion was nearly crippling. He didn’t want her to know the truth but he didn’t want to lie to her, either. She had asked him this numerous times throughout the years, so he knew that she just had a natural curiosity about it, but now he suspected that she must have had a suspicion there was something he wasn’t telling her, something important. Among the other emotions he was already dealing with was the frustrating joy he was feeling, an agonizing exuberance he couldn’t really deny. There was a part of him (deep, deep down though it was) that wanted to just confess everything to her, thereby taking full advantage of her current state of vulnerability and perhaps swaying her into his favor, since he could provide her the love and affection she was sorely missing elsewhere.

This was the particular emotion that Joe had the hardest time handling and the hardest time trying desperately to deny. He was a good person and he didn’t like to hurt anyone, especially those closest to him. Tom was a good friend, and on top of that, a good man. There was no denying that about Tom Hiddleston. He was genuine, one of the most sincere people Joe knew, the kind that would give you the shirt off his back and cared deeply for the family he had created for himself. Tom had his faults, but everyone did, and overall, he was a good husband and father.

Unfortunately, Joe couldn’t help but notice that there was trouble in paradise. He had watched as Tom’s attentiveness to his wife waned and then faded completely and knew that at some point, Sam would need him more than she had before. To be honest, there was no actual intent on Joe’s part to pounce, securing his place next to Sam in place of Tom. No, that had not been the purpose; he had just wanted to get close to Sam. He wanted to be near her, wanted to hold her in his arms for a second, feel what it was like to be there, with her.

Joe’s intentions were purely selfish. It was always about being close to Sam, no matter how he did it. Normally, these selfish, insanely cruel thoughts about his relationship with Sam were easy to dispel. Over the past few months it had become harder and harder to quiet them. The last couple of days they had been deafening.

“I know, I know, you hate it when I ask you,” Sam’s voice sounded far off but Joe came back to her quickly. He realized that he had sat silent for nearly a full minute, not responding to Sam’s question. She sounded slightly panicked as she reasoned with him. Joe would have stopped her sooner but he couldn’t make his voice work quite yet. “I don’t know what it is, over the past few months I’ve just been thinking more and more about it and I can’t figure out why you’ve always been so cryptic about it. I mean… I’ve even talked to Sharon about it and she wouldn’t tell me what happened, either. I really don’t get it.”

This was enough to snap Joe back to the present. He found his voice quickly, asking, “You talked to Sharon about it? When did you talk to her? What did she say?”

“Easy,” Sam said, taken aback. She was staring at him with an incredibly puzzled expression, continuing. “I asked her a couple of weeks after you guys broke up, since you weren’t talking to me about it. I really wanted to know what the reason was.”

“Why?” Joe spat. He didn’t mean to sound so angry. He was scared, not angry, and desperately wanted to get Sam off the subject. “Why the hell was it any of your business, Sam?”

Sam’s confusion quickly slipped into one of affront. “Excuse me?”

“My reasons for breaking up with Sharon are just that. Mine,” he said, leaning forward and burying his head in his hands. He had no idea what he was doing, yelling at Sam in public like this. It was insane and he didn’t know how to stop himself. He felt like he was careening out of control in his efforts to avoid telling Sam how he really felt.

“When the hell did you get so private?” she cried, trying to keep her voice down and not cause a scene. Luckily the crowd tonight wasn’t too thick. “You’ve always confided in me on a regular basis, up to your relationship with Sharon and everything after. It’s the one damn thing you can’t tell me about, and all of a sudden your business is private?”

“There are some things I just don’t want to tell you about, okay?” Joe answered, not bothering to lift his head up. He knew if he did that everything would spill out. He felt on the edge of a precipice, where one more nudge and he’d be ready to confess. He had to teeter himself back the other way and facing Sam in this enraged state would break him. “Maybe I need some things to be private. Maybe I like it that way.”

“I don’t believe you,” Sam said coldly above him. “There’s something else going on here, and I want to know what it is. What’s so horrible that you can’t tell me about?”

“It’s not…” Joe took a steadying breath, closed his eyes, and stretched up from his sitting position. When he opened his eyes he stared intently down at his hand, resting on his leg. He could not look at her. “It’s not horrible, Sam. It’s not like that.”

“Well, then what’s it like?” Sam demanded. “There’s not a single thing you could tell me that will make me think any differently of you. You’re still my Joe. What is so big that you could think that would ever change? You’ll always be my Joe.”

The next couple of seconds happened quickly but for Joe, the moment was so agonizing that it happened in slow motion. All at once, Joe’s eyes swept up from his hand, landing smack dab in the middle of Sam’s penetrating gaze. His breath caught in his throat, his heart skipped a beat, and all the sound around him drowned out, leaving a rushing sound in his ears before time seemed to speed up into overdrive until he was in the present, opening his mouth and speaking the words that would haunt him forever.

“You’re wrong.”

“What? No I’m not.”

“Yes. Yes you are. There’s just one thing that I could tell you right now that would change absolutely everything.”

“W-What do you mean?” Sam’s voice was shaky. He knew she was onto him, and all of the warning bells went off in his brain, those horrible thoughts that he had tried so hard to fight for so long had finally won. Now that he had started, he couldn’t stop. It was now or never.

“You want me to give you some bullshit story about how Sharon and I just weren’t compatible and that it was so banal I didn’t even bother telling you what happened. You want me to say that either one of us was unfaithful, and too embarrassed or ashamed to admit it. You’d even accept some sordid tale about a sexual quirk that I couldn’t handle. All of those things, Sam, I know you would forgive me for, but there’s just one explanation for all of this that will affect our relationship in a negative way.”

“How do you know it would be negative?” Sam asked, sounding panicked.

“There’s no other way for it to go, Sam, I’ve considered it.”

The air was thick with tension but Joe let Sam ponder it for a second before she whispered, “Tell me.”

Joe breathed deeply and turned to Sam. If he was doing this, he was going to be looking at her. He wasn’t going to tell a woman he loved her with his back turned, especially this woman. He gingerly reached out and took her hands in his, taking the second to appreciate the moment before everything changed. She was so lovely, so wonderful and patient. He never wanted to forget how she felt in this exact moment, because from here on out, she would feel differently.

Once he had the courage, he took a deep breath and began. “Sharon was a wonderful person. She was caring and considerate and any man in his right mind would be ecstatic to have her meet his mom. I would never be able to give Sharon that. Ever.”

“Why?” Sam breathed, although he suspected she might know the answer.

“Because for all of Sharon’s lovely qualities, there is one thing she will never ever be. You.”

Sam sat back immediately, yanking her hands out of Joe’s grasp. His heart felt wounded but he knew he couldn’t expect happiness from her. Her face now bore a mixture of confusion, anger, and undeniable shock as she mouthed wordlessly for a second before finding her voice. “What… What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He didn’t want to scare her away. He had to tell her everything. He had to tell her that he didn’t want to end her marriage or force a choice on her. He hadn’t meant to fall in love with her all those years ago and he had tried to talk himself out of it every day since, but it was there, strong and undeniable. He had to tell her all of this but for some reason he couldn’t find the words.

After a brief struggle for the right words, Joe knew he needed to speak. He had to explain this somehow. “It means that I couldn’t reconcile my feelings for you to give Sharon what she deserved. So I had to let her go.”

Sam frowned deeply at him, her eyes crazy with emotion. “Your feelings for me…”

“I-I never meant for it to happen, Sam,” he began. “I never wanted to come between you and Tom and I never wanted you to be unhappy. I just wanted to be close to you… I tried so hard to talk myself out of how I felt for you, Sam, but it was pointless. I…” Joe’s gaze swept over Sam’s and for a brief second he saw the look in her eye shift from anger to something softer, an expectant look that shifted right back to her guarded veil of anger.

Joe wanted a few more minutes to prepare and calm himself down but he had to get through this. This was it. The moment he had feared for years was upon him. Whatever happened beyond this point was probably what was meant to happen anyway. At least it would finally be out there and he could get some closure.