Page 6 of Chasing the Other Woman

Sam said.

There’s absolutely nothing to what Tony just said. But that doesn’t stop the spike of fear that travels up my chest.

Good ol’ Tony. Always taking care of our Sam.

“She catches everything, man. Nothing gets past her.”

“Right,” I say, because anything else would make me sound like a crazy person.

I look past him toward the yard. Sam’s standing near the command trailer with her arms folded tight over her middle. She’s talking to one of the crew, her hair coming out of the top knot she secured hastily this morning.

She doesn’t look like a woman hiding something. She looks like my wife, the woman I fell in love with when she heard me talking to Hershel about a storm system that was supposed to hit her town the next evening. She’d been 22 and obsessed with the movie Twister. She’d told me I looked nothing like Bill Paxton, but she’d try not to hold that against me.

“You should tell her to get some sleep,” Tony says, pulling me back.

“Sorry?”

“She’s not sleeping enough, I don’t think. Said something about it.”

Now she’s talking to him about how she’s sleeping?

I try to pull off that charming smile that some reporter asked me about once. Something tells me I look more like the Joker.

“What else you two talk about?”

Tony shrugs. “Just stuff.”

Before I can stick my foot further into my mouth, Luci appears behind Tony.

“Everything good back here? Thought maybe you got lost.”

Tony looks between us. “Yeah. Just putting this away.”

He drops it with the other cables and disappears, leaving Luci looking at me.

“What?” I ask.

“You’ve got that look,” she says, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her rain jacket.

“That look?”

“The one that says you’re burning calories from thinking.”

I glance toward Tony’s back retreating across the yard. “I’m good.”

“Sure you are.”

I hate that I want someone to tell me how stupid I’m being. More than anything, I hate that I’m not brave enough to talk to Sam about all the things that are keeping me awake at night.

Luci looks between Tony and me. “You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a grudge against poor Tony.”

“Why would you say that?” 36 years old is too old to be playing these stupid games, but here we are.

“Tony’s just friendly,” Luci says, and I can’t stop that tight feeling from crawling up my chest. Because if she has to tell me that Tony’s just friendly, it means she’s noticing the same thing I am. “Sam’s stuck at command now, and Tony’s a radar nerd. It makes sense they'd hit it off.”

Hit it off.

Out in the yard, Sam laughs. I look up and see Tony at her shoulder, looking at something on the tablet in her hand. It’s not the laugh I know. Not the one that comes loud and uncensored when it’s just her and me. I hate to admit that I haven’t heard that laugh in a long time.