* * *
Sam sat in his leather chair, his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. His mind kept replaying those fateful moments this morning when Lara had lulled him into old memories and had made him believe, just for a moment, that the awful moments in the past five years had never been. Even now, he could not understand how it was possible that he could have forgotten about Josie.
'Josie�' he sighed inwardly, closing his eyes momentarily in pain. No matter the reason, what he had done today was inexcusable, unforgivable�and yet he knew he had to tell her. He couldn't live with himself if he didn't. But the thought of the pain his admission would cause made his stomach sour dangerously again.
'How could I have been so stupid!?' Sam berated himself. 'How can I even explain this to her? How can I ask her to understand?' He allowed his head to flop to the side, staring at the telephone on the side table next to him.
Sam knew he was avoiding the inevitable. He was supposed to meet Josie for a late lunch, and it was already past one�when he said he would meet her. Wearily pushing himself out of the chair, he ran a hand through his hair. His hand was shaking.
'After what you've done, Sam, you at least owe her an explanation and an apology, even if she never wants to see you again,' he thought. 'That, and tell her it was your fault entirely; that she had nothing to do with this. If I had only kept my resolve, I wouldn't have fallen into Lara's trap�'
With timid steps, he slowly crossed his living room and picked his keys up off of the table by the door. His fingers fiddled with the new door keys; they felt unfamiliar, the sharp edges of them pressed uncomfortably in his hand. Finally, placing his hand on the doorknob, he opened the door and stepped over the threshold. No matter what price he had to pay, Sam knew it was time to face the music.
* * *
Josie stood, stunned and anguished, watching Lara as she stalked out of her life, taking all of Josie's hopes and dreams with her. All her fledgling dreams of happily-ever-after with Sam were gone forever. Sam didn't love her. He didn't want her. And he'd gone from her bed to Lara's in the space of two hours.
Tears welled up and scorched her eyes, but Josie refused to let them fall. She knew that once she started crying, she might never stop again.
As Lara wound her way through the bullpen back toward the elevators, reporters, copy editors, in fact everyone in the office stopped what they were doing to stare at her as she passed. Everyone knew that her passing meant bad tidings for Josie. That much was evident by Lara's smug expression.
Over by Josie's office, workers had gotten up from their desks to peer curiously through the door, trying to gauge Josie's demeanor.
Anita snorted and shook her head, thinking, 'Damn vultures�it's like they're watching a train wreck!' Turning toward the masses, she gave them all a hard glare, saying firmly, "Don't you all have work to do? Leave the poor girl alone, already!"
Abashed, people stared at their feet, at the carpet, fidgeting for a moment at having been caught in their gawking. Then they started to dissipate. Soon, all that was left was a very serious Anita and a very impressed Merkin.
"Wow�that was power, baby," he said to Anita with a smile, as if they were sharing some kind of private joke.
Anita advanced on Merkin, forcing him to back up until he was trapped against the front of his desk. Anita's voice was quiet, but there was no mistaking the menace in her tone, "Merkin, if you don't get your skinny little white butt out of here in the next ten seconds, I'm gonna smack you into next week."
Merkin protested, "But�but, I'm her assistant�she needs me!"
"The only thing that Josie needs right now is to be left alone," Anita answered. "And if I hear that you've breathed a word of what you just heard to anyone, they will be the last words you ever say�at least as something other than a soprano� Get my point?"
"Uh�yeah, yeah�I get it. Don't say a word. Zip the lip. Can do." Keeping his eyes locked with Anita's, Merkin edged around his desk and, once he was free, he took off in a dead sprint.
Now that everyone who could possibly overhear was gone, Anita entered Josie's office and closed the door firmly behind her. When she turned around, she gasped at the look on Josie's face. It was the look of utter despair, as if the world had just dropped out from under her. And, Anita had to admit, it pretty much had.
"Josie?" Anita began softly. Josie didn't even look up. "Josie? Are you okay, hon?"
The sound that came from Josie's throat was half a sob and half an unbelieving snort. Grabbing a tissue from the box on her desk, she wiped her nose and then looked up. In despair, Josie answered, "Okay? Okay!? I don't even know what okay is anymore."
Anita pulled a chair away from the back wall a little and sat down in it facing Josie. "Do you want to talk about it? Tell me what happened?" Anita prompted.
Josie half-laughed again and looked at Anita with her red-rimmed watery eyes. "If I know you, Anita Brandt, the second you heard that she was here, you were perched outside that door listening to every word�just in case I needed the 'calvary' to come in� Am I right?"
Anita blushed a little at Josie's accurate description.
A hint of a smile touched Josie's lips. Anita was a good friend; she cared about Josie and tried to protect her from life's seamier side whenever she could. But this was one blow that even Anita could not have protected her from.
"Lord, how I wish you had, you know, pulled an 'Anita'�stormed in here without knocking and just interrupted everything�" Josie paused for a long moment, and then finished with a choked voice, "because then maybe I wouldn't know that Sam doesn't love me�"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hon. Just because that snake in the grass Lara says so does not make it true, Jos."
"Anita� You didn't see her� You didn't see the look of triumph on her face when she told me that Sam loved her."
"Oh, come on, Jos� She was just trying to hurt you because Sam chose you over her, that's all. Trying to scare you off."
"No, Anita. Not this time. When she told me that Sam had kissed her and told her he loved her just this morning�she was telling the truth." Josie paused to grab another tissue and dabbed at her eyes. "She actually�" Josie swallowed painfully, "�picked up the receiver to my telephone, held it out to me, and dared me to call him�"
Anita sucked in a painful breath at that revelation. Even a scheming manipulator like Lara would not make such a bold move without having some backup� Either Lara knew that Sam could not be reached, or else what she told Josie was true. And from the way the woman had been gloating when she left Josie's office, she was betting on the latter.
Anita studied her friend in silence for a moment. Josie was trying to be brave, but Anita could tell that her life had just been shattered. For a second or two, Anita enjoyed the idea of Sam getting run over by the El or being flattened by a bus, but then decided that such a death would not be painful enough to make up for her friend's misery. Maybe one of those flesh-eating parasites�
Josie continued, "I knew it� I just knew it�" Tears rolled down her puffy cheeks in earnest, her breath coming in sobs again.
Anita half-heard what Josie had said, still imagining terrible, torturous deaths for one Sam Coulson. But when she heard Josie begin to sob again, she instantly came back to the present. "Knew what?" she asked.
"That I was unlovable� That a guy like Sam could never really be interested in someone like me�" Josie cried.
"Awww, Josie� That's not true! You're smart, funny, and beautiful! Every guy in this office would love to get their hands on you�"
Josie met Anita's gaze. Tears rolled down her cheeks in rivulets. With eyes full of pain and sorrow, she whispered, "But� I don't want any of them. I want Sam�" Josie buried her head into her hands and wept.
'Coulson, you're a dead man!' Anita thought to herself angrily. Then she dragged her chair over and around the desk so that it was next to Josie's. Then she pulled Josie into her arms and held her as she cried until she had no tears left.
When Josie's tears subsided, Anita patted her Josie's back and then sat up in her chair, breaking their embrace.
"Oh, Anita� How could I have been so stupid�again? How could I possibly have been so wrong about someone?"
Anita thought about what Lara said to Josie, about the story she told about Sam being attracted to teenagers and using Josie for a diversion. Something just didn't click there. She had watched the tapes. She saw, just as everyone else had, Sam slowly fall in love with Josie. It seemed that even he was not aware of it until the very end. And that kiss (or kisses) on the ball field could not have been staged. Sam Coulson was just not that good of an actor. If he couldn't even keep his growing feelings for Josie a secret, then pretending a kiss like that would have been far beyond his acting abilities�
Plus, they'd all witnessed Sam tell Josie at the prom that he had broken things off with his girlfriend, yet Lara denied they had ever split.
And then there was the fact that Sam and Josie had been practically inseparable since Sunday night. And the way Sam stared at Josie with such naked longing when Josie wasn't watching. This morning, when she'd been in the room, even then he hadn't been able to keep his eyes off Josie. All his body language, his mannerisms, the sound of his voice�everything seemed to scream that he was so in love with Josie, he didn't even know which end was up.
"Maybe�" Anita ventured, "maybe you're not so wrong about him, Jos."
"But, Anita, you heard what Lara said�"
Anita cut Josie off mid-sentence. "Yeah, I heard it. But, Josie, we don't know the circumstances behind what happened. We don't know the context. Okay�just follow along for a moment� "
Josie nodded.
"Okay. Let's just assume at this point that Lara was not just outright lying; that there was some truth in what she said to you. Fine. She said he kissed her and said he loved her� That's pretty vague. He could have kissed her on the cheek and told her he loved her as a friend or something�" Even Anita didn't believe that, but she was willing to let Josie believe it if it would help.
Bitterly, Josie repeated the fateful words, "She said that Sam told her he loved her 'more than life itself�' That doesn't sound like friends to me�"
Anita held her hands up in front of her in defense. "All right, all right�but that's not my point. My point is, we don't know what the circumstances are. The actual scenario could have been quite different from the one Lara portrayed to you. She could have twisted around a few facts to conveniently fit her story, do you see?"
"I don't know that there are too many other ways that what he said can be interpreted, Anita�" Josie pointed out.
"Okay, I know� I agree that it sounds pretty bad, but we still don't know why he said it."
"That's pretty obvious, don't you think?" Josie queried. "I mean�that woman looks like a�supermodel! And then there's dumpy old me�"
"Josie, does Sam seem like the kind of guy that only cares about looks? Really?"
Josie contemplated that for a moment. She thought about how unhappy he'd sounded when he spoke of Lara on the Ferris wheel ride� and that was weeks ago. She remembered how embarrassed and annoyed he seemed by Lara's behavior the night at the club. She remembered what he had said Sunday night about how Lara put down and belittled everything he thought was important�and how lucky he had been that Josie had come along and saved him from that fate. And even last night, when they had been at Luigi's� he'd told her of his one trip there with Lara, and how embarrassed he'd been. That didn't sound like love to her.
But yet, if he was still with Lara, and she had all those other things against her, then what else did that leave?
"I don't know, Anita. I'm starting to wonder if I ever really knew him at all�"
* * *
Lara climbed into the taxi she had finally hailed in front of the Sun-Times building. Everything was going according to plan. Either Sam would come back to her once he realized that things between he and Josie were irreparable, or he wouldn't. But one thing was for sure�either way; he wasn't going to have Josie. She had made sure of that.
Opening the door of the cab and climbing inside, she turned toward the cabbie and said simply, "O'Hare."
The cabbie nodded, and once she was settled into the back of the car, he pulled the vehicle away from the curb in the direction of the airport.
Lara leaned back against the seat and sighed, pleased with her victory. She was surprised how incredibly easy it had been to root out Josie's insecurities and prey upon them. But then, it seemed that Josie and Sam were very much alike. Despite living in a large city like Chicago, Josie also seemed quite small-townish and na�ve like Sam. She had no doubt that they were probably very well suited for each other. That was what made the victory especially sweet: because she knew that otherwise, they probably would have been very happy together. But Sam more than deserved it after all she had gone through with him. She had earned a place in his life, unlike this�woman-child of his.
Granted that Lara had always believed in the power of revenge, but she had never felt such a burning desire for it before. Although, she'd been rude and cruel in the past, she had never gone out of her way to sabotage a relationship like this. But then again, no other man had ever dumped her. There were all kinds of successful businessman types that she'd been with, but she'd been the one to end things. But this�this useless schoolteacher dumps her? Her? It was not to be tolerated.
Bringing her thoughts back to the present, she looked around the dingy back seat of the cab. If the midtown traffic was any indication, the ride to the airport promised to be a long one and she was bored. Then she noticed that a prior customer had left at least part of a newspaper on the seat, so she picked it up. It was the front section of that day's Sun-Times. 'How very fitting,' she smiled to herself, and then settled in to read the headlines.
Lara did a double take as she read the headline on the bottom of the front page. She read it a second time and then her eyes widened. Her eyes glued to the page, she read the details behind Sam getting suspended from his position at the school pending the investigation into his relationship with Josie. As she finished, an evil smile crossed her features. She rolled the newspaper up and tapped the cabbie on the shoulder with it. "Excuse me?" she asked.
Looking up and making eye contact with her in the rearview mirror, the cab driver said, "Yeah?"
"I need you to turn around and go back toward the city. I just realized I have one more stop to make�"
* * *
"Josie�" Anita reminded her, "I think that maybe you are jumping to conclusions a little. We don't know why Sam said and did that with Lara today, and considering this would make or break your relationship with him, don't you think he at least deserves the right to defend himself? Maybe there is an explanation for his behavior. How will you know unless you ask him?"
Josie shook her head sadly. "I don't know if I can ever face him again� What if it's true? What if it was all a game? What if he did send Lara down here to break things off so he wouldn't have to see me again? I couldn't take it if he stood there and laughed in my face, Anita. I've done that once, and it almost killed me. I can't handle it again."
Sadly, Anita replied, "I know, Josie. But still, it wouldn't be fair to falsely accuse Sam of something he didn't do, would it?"
Josie was in turmoil. She desperately wanted to believe there was some other explanation for what Lara had told her�but she was afraid to get her hopes up again. "Oh, God, Anita�I just don't know� I feel like my heart has been smashed into little pieces and right now the shards are cutting up my insides. I'm hanging on by a thread, here�"
* * *
All the way up in the elevator, Sam tried to rehearse what he was going to say to Josie. The words swirled around and around in his head, but it didn't seem to matter what he said or how he said it�it all sounded awful. He didn't know how he was going to bear watching her face as he broke Josie's heart.
The elevator cruised to a stop and the bell went 'ding', signaling his floor. Pasting a friendly smile on his face, he exited the elevator, surreptitiously wiping his sweaty palms on his pants. If he was going to have to tell Josie this terrible thing, there was no reason to give anyone else any indication that anything was wrong. It should be between him and Josie alone. They would go out to lunch, find a quiet corner table, and he would confess his transgression to her.
As his eyes met the receptionist's, he nodded a little by way of a greeting, but all he received was a cold stare in return. He heard a few gasps, and at least half the room was staring at him as if they'd seen a ghost. 'Hmmm�' he thought to himself, 'you'd think that they'd be used to the idea of me being here after already seeing me this morning�' But he thought nothing more of his strange reception.
He turned a corner and saw Josie's assistant Merkin huddled on the corner of a petite, pretty brunette's desk. Merkin's back was to Sam, but the younger man's hair gave him away. He and the woman seemed to be whispering back and forth, deep in conversation. As Sam approached Merkin from behind, he placed a hand on Merkin's shoulder to get his attention.
Merkin saw Rhoda's face turn completely white as she obviously recognized the person behind him and thought, 'Oh no�not again!'
Then Sam spoke. "Hey, Merkin� is Josie in?"
'Whoa,' Merkin thought to himself, 'I am definitely having a bad karma day�' To Sam, he said with a stutter, "Uh�uh�yeah�she's in, why?"
"We're supposed to go out to lunch," Sam replied. "I just wanted to make sure she hadn't forgotten about me�"
Merkin snorted a little and responded, mostly under his breath, "Yeah, I'd say there's no chance of that�"
"Huh?" Sam asked. What did that mean?
"Oh�nothing," Merkin replied hastily. "But, uh� I was given strict orders by Anita that no one was to bother Josie right now�"
Sam patted Merkin's back once or twice before starting on again toward Josie's door. Looking over his shoulder as he walked, he said, "Yeah, but I'm sure that was not supposed to include me�"
Once Sam was out of earshot, Merkin turned toward a baffled Rhoda and answered, "Wanna make a bet?"
* * *
"So, then why don't you wait a little and see if you hear from Sam? I mean�if he supposedly sent the 'Ice Queen' down here to break things off, then you shouldn't hear from him again, right? So if you do hear from him�then you can ask him what happened� What do you think?"
Josie sighed, not really ready to contemplate the possibility of a life without Sam. "I think�" Josie trailed off as there was a soft rapping on her door and then it opened. Both Josie and Anita looked up to find the object of their discussion standing in the doorway.
* * *
As Sam opened the doorway to Josie's office, he was stunned at the sight he found. Josie and Anita were huddled behind Josie's desk. Josie looked awful�like she had been crying. Once she'd seen him in the doorway, she'd lowered her eyes to her lap and wouldn't even look at him. And Anita� Well if looks could kill, he would have been singed to a pile of ashes on the spot.
Looking from one woman to the other in worried confusion, he wasn't sure what to say. Something was very, very wrong�and he had no idea what it was.
Studying Josie's expression again, he aimed his gaze at her, cleared his throat a little, and asked softly, "So�ahem, are you ready to go out for lunch?"
Anita looked at Sam as if he had three heads, while Josie simply didn't answer.
Sam was becoming more and more worried by the second. Walking closer, he asked questioningly, "Josie?"
Just when Josie thought she didn't have one more tear inside her to shed, fat droplets formed and sat on her bottom lashes, threatening to fall. What in God's name was he doing? How could he just blithely walk in here as if nothing at all had changed? Hadn't he hurt her enough?
Swallowing her anguish, Josie momentarily composed herself and met Sam's green eyes. The apparent confusion and worry she saw there almost undid her again, but she steeled herself against his charm. Never again would she allow him to affect her�at least not in his presence. Firmly and quietly, she said simply. "No. Thank you, but I'm no longer hungry."
Sam swallowed his own rising panic. The tension was so thick in the room at that moment, he felt mired in it, like he couldn't escape. The walls felt like they were closing in on him. Feeling slightly claustrophobic, he tugged at the collar of his shirt and avoided meeting Anita's wrathful glare. Trying to think of something, anything to break the ice, he ended up blurting out the one thing that had been on his mind the whole time, "Uh, you'll never guess what happened to me this morning after I left here, Josie�"
Josie felt the last flicker of hope in her heart gutted out and died at his words. There it was� The proof of her worst fears. It was all true�the kiss, the declaration of love for Lara�the falsity of all she'd held dear.
He must have heard from Lara how poorly she took the news and came down to smooth things over using his power over her heart and soul. Josie squeezed her eyes closed in absolute torment, praying that she could weather this storm without losing her mind.
Anita felt the muscles in her arms twitch. In another second, she was going to jump the damn desk and strangle the two-faced bastard. What, he and his hussy girlfriend hadn't had enough fun with Josie, so he had to come down here and prolong the torture!?
Giving Josie's slack hand a comforting squeeze under the desk, she stared Sam up and down and gave him a look that clearly read she found him utterly vile and disgusting. Then in her most scathing tone, she said confrontationally, "Oh really? Well, I think maybe she could�" If he thought he was going to some more damage to her best friend, well, then he'd have to go through Anita Brandt to do it.
Sam looked from Anita's glare of utter hatred to Josie's utter despair. His heartbeat thudded thickly in his brain, but he just couldn't think�couldn't make sense of it. Then the meaning of Anita's words finally hit home.
Sam's eyes widened in shock, and he felt dizzy and out of control, as if the floor had suddenly given way beneath him. He realized there was only one possible explanation for this moment.
Lara.
* * *