Sam was maybe four years deep in her feed when he realized what he was doing. She’d given him the full-blown no-thank-you. He needed to let this, let her go. He closed out of her account and braved a look at his DMs. Walls did a good job monitoring them, but Sam liked to look every now and then. He scrolled back to Oscar Sunday and whoa, Walls hadn’t been lying. His DMs were filled with messages from all kinds of women. He could have had Walls lock his DMs but the way the messaging system worked he’d also miss sincere messages and tagged posts from fans. He decided it was worth it to take the bad and bizarre with the good.

He scrolled by a message from Dru Anastasia, then scrolled back again. He’d watched her show Andromeda with Lilah a few times. He liked the whole space, paranormal aspect of it, but the cast hadn’t been enough to keep him interested. Dru was beautiful, though. The message she sent was . . . it was definitely an approach.

Congrats on your win. You should take me out sometime so we can celebrate.

I think we’d both enjoy it.

She’d added a wink emoji.

The image of trying to “enjoy” a meal with Dru Anastasia flashed through his mind. There was no spark there, only cautious confusion. He closed out of the conversation and moved on to the next message from Brandon Williams21. He’d tagged Sam in a photo of what looked like a school presentation that had a big red A at the top with a scrawled note that said “Good work.” Sam smiled as he read the caption.

I’d never heard of Josiah Williams before my dad took me to see The Sky Beneath Our Feet. I decided to do my term project on Josiah and learned that he’s on my family tree. Thank you to @TheSamPleasant for bringing a member of my family to life.

Sam shared the post on his account and added his own caption, congratulating Brandon on his A and thanking him for tagging him in such a personal post. He may have been nursing a hopeless crush that had already been buried, but at least he’d helped to inspire a high school sophomore. It wasn’t what he’d expected from the night, but it was something he could feel good about. With some of the optimism restored, Sam went to sleep.

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

It took some doing, but Amanda finally got PJ to stop yelling. The manager of Delightly had rightfully lost his shit, but Amanda was determined to make things right.