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Sam had always loved sunsets.
He woke up too late to appreciate a sunrise (a fact that vexed his mother to no end) and, whilst he often stayed up late into the night gaming, he found the impossible silence and infinite darkness somewhat oppressive. The sunset, however, was a perfect thing. It was the precipice of the old and the new, the day and whatever it brought slipping away for a new one to settle in. A new day that meant new opportunities, new moments, new memories to store away like a bear does its honey in the winter.
A new day for life to potentially be different.
It never was, of course. Zuzu City had been a constant flurry of experience that satisfied the frenetic nature of Sam’s mind. He had bounced from club to park to friend’s house the way his thoughts bounced from dinner to alien sightings to chord progressions. It was the best place for a wild child. Then his parents announced that they were moving to Bumfuck Nowhere and suddenly he was in a small town with no friends, no places to go, no movement.
He met Seb, of course, and Abby. He got on well with Penny and he even had the odd conversation with Haley over the garden fence. But the stagnancy was there, like scum on a forest pond. The water never moved, the air clung to your skin like wet clothes, and before he knew it his father was six years into a brutal war that never seemed to end and he was the man of the house. Each new day rolled by, and yet Sam was still mopping the sticky floors of Joja Mart, still losing at pool every Friday, still getting screamed at by the mayor for practising kick-flips despite being twenty-five years old.
Nothing changed and nothing was new and Sam was restless.
But then you came into town.
You, wandering through town with an oversized straw hat and pallid skin from being cooped up in a cubicle for so long. You, with bright eyes and a bounce to your step because to you, the city had been your cage and sleepy little Pelican Town was a new opportunity. You, who didn’t hold back in ingratiating yourself with the village. Sam watched, mesmerised, as you ran about completing errands, bought out Pierre’s store for seeds, blagged the Egg Hunt so that Vince could win for once. You were the energy that the town had been missing and, as the seasons melted from Spring to Fall, he found the kinetic energy of you pulsing through his veins and stimulating his heartbeat.
He was thinking about you as he made his way down to the abandoned shack by the cliff’s edge in Cindersap Forest. He noticed a poorly-written sign had been hammered to the roof, proclaiming ‘hatz’ were inside. Absently, he took his pen from his jacket pocket and yanked his sleeve up. His arms were always covered in scribbles, with shopping lists for his mother and lyric ideas and random thoughts that sprung to mind that he was desperate not to lose. He found a small gap on his forearm and wrote ‘tell Vince not to play in old house’, as he had no doubts that this was the work of his little brother. Where he got a hammer and nails from was unclear, but Sam had a sneaking suspicion it would have been his father’s shed, which he knew for a fact had old mining bombs inside that he’d stored for George before he went to war.
Sam slumped down on the edge of the cliff, pulling a Joja Cola from his pocket and running a hand through his shaggy mullet. His mother hated his hair. She hated a lot of the way Sam presented himself; his stubble, his nose ring, his eyebrow piercing, his tongue piercing, the stick-and-poke smiley face on the palm of his right hand that Seb had done when they were drunk two years ago. She hated the way he slouched, the way his nails were ragged from the strings of his guitar, the way he slept late and scrunched his nose up at her home-cooked meals before grabbing a pizza. Sometimes Sam wondered if she hated him , though she would never admit it.
He sighed when he noticed footsteps coming his way. He looked over his shoulder and froze. You were standing there watching him, a basket of blackberries hanging over the crook of your elbow. The sunset was in its early stages, the light pink of the sky bathing you in a warm glow that made his breath stutter in his throat.
“Oh, hi,” he said, internally cursing himself for not coming up with something better than that. “How ur, how are you?”
“I’m alright. I was just heading home to make some jam when I saw you.” You looked out at the horizon, squinting a bit against the light. Your nose crinkled in a way that made Sam’s stomach knot. “Mind if I join you?”
“Sure.” He patted the grass next to him and you sat, placing the blackberry basket between you. Sam stared down at it and found himself irrationally frustrated at the inanimate object for putting a barrier between the two of you.
He held his can out to you. “Want some? Promise I don’t have cooties.”
You grinned and took it from him, taking a swig. Sam tried not to stare at the way your throat bobbed, the long line of your neck and the way your hair curled beneath your ear. He wanted to reach out and tuck it back for you, but instead he coughed and looked back out at the offing.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked quietly.
You nodded your assent. “Do you come out here often?”
“Most nights, yeah. The beach is fine, but I feel like the whole town’s down there sometimes. Out here, it’s quiet.”
“Wouldn’t have you pegged as someone who wants quiet,” you said playfully.
Sam smirked. “Oh don’t get me wrong, I know I’m loud. Kind of impossible not to be in a ghost town like ours.”
You cocked your head and he was hit with the feeling that he’d said the wrong thing. “You don’t like it here?”
Sam bit his lip, his teeth worrying the silver ball protruding from his lower lip. He didn’t notice the way you watched him do this. “It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s pretty and my best friends live here. I have a job. I get to play my music…”
“But?”
He smiled softly; of course you picked up on his hesitance. In the time he’d come to know you, Sam was painfully aware of your discernment. Sometimes it was like you were in his head. (He knew that was a step too far, of course. He was a big believer in aliens, but the line had to be drawn somewhere.) “I just feel like I’m not meeting my… I dunno, my potential here?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Lots of things, I guess. I’m five years from thirty and I still live at home, for one thing,” he snorted.
“You’re helping your mom with Vince.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“Plus everyone in this town lives with their family. I don’t think there’s a single person who doesn’t live with their parents or their sibling or their grandparents.”
“Except for you,” Sam noted. “You’re probably the only independent person in this whole town.”
You looked down at the can that was still in your hands, picking at the ring pull idly. It made a gentle pinging noise that Sam couldn’t help but think would make a great sample in a dance track. His fingers itched for his pen, but the way your expression clouded in contrast to the impossible radiance of the sun on your face commanded he do nothing but watch you and commit you to memory. This was something he would not be able to write down.
“My parents are back in the city,” you said carefully. “They write to me quite a bit.”
“I bet they’re proud of you.”
“They are.” You smiled gently, but the corners of your lips didn’t reach your eyes. “But my grandpa… his legacy is unmatched. Everyone talks about him and what he did for the town. What Hidden Oak farm was before he died. He was a wonderful man and of course he’s not here to actually say any of this, but I can’t help but feel like I can’t meet what he and everyone else expects from me, you know?”
“I know.” Emboldened, Sam moved the basket behind you both and scooched over a couple of inches. Your fingers were brushing the tips of his now, both of you calloused and dry. It created a beautiful friction, one that Sam was almost convinced could create literal sparks. He did not push it, however, and kept his touch there.
“Have you spoken much to my mom? Jodi?”
You shook your head. “I brought her a cauliflower once.”
Sam remembered. He had been sitting watching a kid’s show with Vince on his lap when you appeared at the door, a cauliflower the size of his head in both your hands. Sam’s mother had squealed and clapped her hands like a kid at the Feast of the Winter Star. You looked so proud of yourself for having made her that happy; seeing Jodi so happy had made his heart swell in his chest and he hadn’t realised he was staring until Vince loudly complained that he was squeezing him too tight.
“Well… my mom’s a wonderful woman. I love her a lot. But she’s very… I dunno, I guess you’d call her ‘traditional’?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “My grandparents are devout Yobans. Temple every Sunday, prayers before bed, that sort of thing. Mom is very much the same. When she got pregnant with me, she was only seventeen and it was like the world was ending, you know? My dad - Kent - was eighteen. He dropped out of college, married her, got a job as a bin man. We lived with my grandparents right up until we went to Pelican Town and dad joined the military to be able to afford to buy the house. Vince was only a year or so old when he deployed. I was nineteen so I was old enough to be the ‘man of the house’, I guess. So I took that seriously. I got a job, I helped with Vince.”
The sunset was melting into a deep orange, like the flesh of the fruit. Sam didn’t realise he was monologuing, but you didn’t interrupt. You sat with patience and let him continue.
“I kept telling myself that when dad came back, I’d leave. But it’s been six years since he left and I’m still here. And mom… I feel like she doesn’t appreciate everything I do for her, you know? People always think I’m younger than I am because she speaks to me like I’m a kid, still. She sees me sleeping in late, sees the way I dress and the things I enjoy, and they aren’t good enough for her. She thinks I’m a bad example for Vince. And she hates that I don’t got to temple.”
“Are you Yoban?”
“I was baptised, but that’s the extent of it.” Sam fiddled with the cuff of his blue jacket; his father’s jacket. “I love my mom. I really do. She does her best for us. But sometimes I feel like she had me so young, I wonder if she can’t help but resent me a little bit, you know? And if I was different, if I was more like… I dunno, more like my dad, maybe, then she’d be alright about what I want from life.”
“What do you want?”
“ More .” It came out desperate, ripped out from some deep hidden part of his soul. Sam looked at you, wide-eyed, shocked at himself for revealing so much of him. His skin flushed deep red, almost indiscernible in the soft light, and he let himself take your hand now, giving it a squeeze. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have dumped all that on you.”
“Why not?”
“Because… because it’s private. And it’s not fair on you. We don’t know each other that well, really.”
“I'd like to get to know you more.” You say it so matter-of-factly that it takes a minute for Sam to process what you’ve said at all.
“You - you do?”
“I think we have a lot in common.” You tighten your grip on his hand and he runs his thumb along your knuckles, gentle, like he’s plucking the strings of a tightly-wound guitar and is scared to break them. “I can’t speak for your mom, but it sounds to me like you’re doing everything you can for your family. It’s a big responsibility.”
“Like running a farm is,” he said gently and you gave a small smile.
“Yeah, like running a farm.” You looked at him then, really looked at him. Sam took in a deep breath that may have been a gasp; in the dying sunlight, with his heart on his sleeve and your hands cupping his, Sam felt something that he had only heard about in the songs on the radio, had only read about in the Yoban verses. It was something so complicated and yet so simple, like breathing, that it could only be fact. You were beautiful and he was yours.
“Thanks for talking to me,” he whispered.
“Always. Feel free to talk to me whenever.”
“Careful, I might take you up on that.”
“Please do.”
The sun had fully set, night had fallen, and the new day looked wonderful.