“Was it something I said?” he teased even though a sad smile crept across his face.
“No. This is a textbook ‘it’s me, not you’ situation. You’re—well, so far so good.”
“What does that mean?” Sam laughed.
“I’m trying not to gush over you. We’re not there yet.”
“And we won’t get there, is what you’re saying.”
“I keep running into you by accident and I know you’re not trying to boo me up or anything, but if you come to my room tonight? I just know me. I’ll want to run into you again on purpose and I just can’t.”
“I see.”
“My life’s kinda full right now and not in a fun way. When I do start running into someone on purpose, I don’t want my life to get in the way.”
“So we part as friends,” Sam replied. “Friends who desperately wished they had slept together at least a dozen more times.”
Amanda let out a hideous snort. “You have a lot of friends like that?”
“Nah, Cha-Cha. Just the one.”
“Mr. Pleasant. I’ve had a wonderful time.”
“If you change your mind—”
“I’ll book a room with Naomi.” Amanda watched Sam’s face closely, noting the hurt he was trying to hide. Finally he gave her a little nod, letting her know he understood, that he wouldn’t push her any further. She dropped her gaze to the knot of his tie, and they spent the rest of the song swaying together in their own corner of the dance floor. When the song ended she wanted to leave him with a final bit of advice, maybe hint at the idea that he should ignore any DMs he received from Dru, but she decided to stay out of it. If he took her up on her offer, it would just serve as further proof that Amanda had no business messing with Sam. She stepped back, taking his hand as it slipped from her waist.
She reached up and slowly, but playfully drew the backs of her fingers down his cheeks.
“You’ll find another girl like me, Tex. I promise,” she said in a deep Southern drawl.
“Don’t make this worse than it already is. You best go, missy. Leave a cowboy to his broken heart,” he responded in kind. Amanda chuckled a bit as she gave his fingers a light squeeze, then walked away. This was how they needed to leave it, with laughs and no hard feelings. Nothing had really happened between them anyway, just some pelvis-quaking sex and part of a really decadent dessert. Speaking of which . . .
Amanda grabbed a piece of cake and headed back to her table, where Helene’s actual cousin was sitting, rocking her sleeping toddler. She could still see Sam on the other side of the room. The smile had returned to his face as Loud Mouth stepped up and started to dance with him.
“Oh, I haven’t had any cake yet,” Helene’s cousin said as Amanda made herself comfortable.
“You want me to grab you a slice? Your hands are full with the baby,” Amanda replied.
“No. I’ll get one before we head back to our room. Are you having fun?”
“I am,” Amanda said, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. For once, she couldn’t wait to get back to LA, where her regular life was underwhelming and exceedingly less complicated.
* * *
Around midnight when the after-party started to dwindle, Sam decided to call it a night. Overall the wedding had been a complete success. For one, an actual wedding where both the bride and groom had shown up on time and enthusiastically said I do had taken place. And as the afternoon had rolled into night, a lot of the guests had gone out of their way to tell Sam how much they were enjoying their time at Big Rock Ranch. Sam couldn’t have been happier for his friends, so he’d felt like a total ass sporting a fake smile for the rest of the reception. He’d danced and mingled, declined more than one indecent proposal, but overall he’d had a pretty good time himself, until Amanda had let him know that whatever he’d seen happening between them that night and beyond was no longer in the cards.
Amanda had split an hour before, not that he’d been paying attention. He’d caught sight of her a few more times as the night had gone on. As she’d enjoyed her slice of cake, when Ignacio’s brother had pulled her back out on the floor to dance to some Latin remix of the new Normani track. When she’d hugged Helene and Ignacio good night. She’d headed back toward the lodge with another female guest by her side. Sam knew no one had caught on to the way the heat between them had thawed. Still he didn’t think it would be a good idea to take off right after she’d left. He’d waited until the mood of champagne and wedding hookups amongst the stranglers became too much to handle, then headed back to the barn, where he’d parked Zach’s truck.
The place was quiet when he got back to Pleasant Lane. He let himself into Miss Leona’s house, then made his way down to the guest room. He should have passed right out. It had been a long few days, and he still hadn’t recovered from the adrenaline rush from being under the spotlights on that Oscar stage. He was exhausted, but he lay awake in bed, just staring at the ceiling, wondering what the fuck was wrong with him.
Sam didn’t know what he expected. Actually, that was a full-blown lie. He’d expected he’d enjoy Helene and Ignacio’s wedding. He’d expected to enjoy a few laughs with his grandmother, and when she’d had enough he knew Jesse would come pick her up and take her home, leaving Sam to openly ogle Amanda late into the night until she gave him the signal that she was ready for the two of them to head back to her room together. He had condoms at the ready. He had more champagne chilling, a short menu of late-night snacks on deck just in case they needed to refuel between what he’d hoped would be round three and four. He’d expected to wake up early tomorrow morning and kiss Amanda, finally get her phone number, and sometime next week, he’d expected he was going to call her up and ask her out on a proper date so they could really get to know each other.
He wasn’t sure what exactly had gone wrong. Not that it mattered. Amanda had told him where she stood and all he could do, what he planned to do, was respect that. She just wasn’t into him.
Sam had to face it. He was an optimist and a hopeless romantic, and both of those things sometimes got in the way of reality. Amanda had made it clear the first time she’d skipped out of his hotel room that she wanted nothing to do with him beyond their one-night stand. Running into each other again had been pure coincidence. He’d been so amped to see her again some of the sparkly dust that clouded his brain from time to time had him mistaking that coincidence for destiny.
On planet Earth, however, that wasn’t the case. If Amanda wanted him, she would have said so. But no, she’d done her best to let him down nice and easy. She liked him, but not enough to see if what he was feeling between them could become something more. Something that at least involved exchanging phone numbers.