Part Six: Day Two
Brooke rolled her head around her shoulders tiredly and rubbed at her eyes. She was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on what their tour guide was saying. She had gotten next to no sleep the night before and she was feeling the effects of it now. She and Sam hadn't spoken much when they had returned to their room after dinner, and when they did speak to each other it was fleeting, yet surprisingly polite. Mundane things, who got first dibs on the bathroom, who was going to put their clothes in which drawer, which one of them got control of the remote. Despite the civility of the conversation however, it was uncomfortable as hell and if it hadn't been for the fact that it was after midnight and that they were on lockdown, Brooke would have made her rounds and gone to visit Nicole and Mary Cherry in the adjoining suites they had reserved on the top floor. But it had been after midnight, they were on lockdown, and Brooke was left with no other option but than to lay down, and try not to think about Sam, which, vexingly, was something she had been finding increasing hard to do since the brunette had woken her up earlier on. Then to make matters worse, it seemed as if Sam was having trouble sleeping too, so they both had lay there in the dark painfully aware of the others presence until Sam had broken the silence. In fact Brooke could remember everything that had been said perfectly.
{"Brooke?" Sam had said softly, the word hovering in the air for a moment before the blonde responded.
"Yeah," Brooke had said, her eyes trained on the ceiling—not that she could make it out or anything.
"You awake?" Sam asked.
"What do you think Sam?" Brooke had responded turning so that she was facing Sam's bed even though she couldn't see her. It wasn't like Sam to ask stupid questions, so it immediately put Brooke on guard.
"I'll go with, yes," Sam responded, her tone a bit rueful. "Listen, I just wanted to say I shouldn't have shook you like that, and if your head really hurts then…"
"Don't worry, I won't make you say it," Brooke responded. "Wouldn't want a black hole opening in the room and sucking time and space into a huge gaping oblivion because we seemed to be getting along." She paused there for a moment. "And it only hurt for a little while."
"Yes…well…" Sam said in response. Brooke had expected more to follow that, but apparently Sam was done, because the silence came after that once more. Just as she was about to drift off to sleep however, she learned that she was wrong about the silence because Sam started up again a few minutes later. "I was thinking, that is to say that our previous conversation and you helping me with my suitcase made me think," Sam continued shaking her head at herself as the words came out of her mouth.
"And," Brooke questioned, sitting up slightly.
"And I think we should try, you know, make a valiant attempt to not piss each other off. Although the argument could be made that this situation shouldn't really be new for each of us since we live together back home, that argument is faulty. The fallacy lies mostly with the principles of time and space, which allow for us to be hardly ever occupying the same area at the same time back home. Here, however, things are different and…fighting could lead to bodily harm. So if you can pretend that you don't hate me for four more days, I think this trip could be much more enjoyable for both of us," Sam replied hurriedly, before letting out a breath and sinking back down onto her pillow.
Brooke was silent for a long time after Sam spoke, so long in fact that Sam had begun to wonder if the blonde had fallen asleep by the time she replied. "That sounds acceptable," Brooke said finally. "And," she added pausing again, "I never hated you," she went on quickly, then she shifted again, her sheets rustling together audibly and she closed her eyes.
"Brooke…" Sam started a second later, surprised by the other girl's words. Actually Brooke's words had caused some heart palpitations, but Sam chose not to focus on that at the moment.
"Brooke's sleeping now," the blonde responded, "she'll be available again in the morning, thank you and please call again," she continued effectively putting an end to the conversation.
"What no beep?" Sam asked afterwards, but she said nothing after that and Brooke could hear her settle down into the bedding like she had done only moments before.}
Brooke was broken out of her revere by the tour guide who was explaining the origins of Van Gogh's "Starry Night" to them. "When Vincent van Gogh was a patient in an asylum at Saint-Rémy in the south of France, he wrote to his brother Theo," she was saying as Brooke looked around to see if anyone had noticed her space out. "This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big," the tour guide went on. Looking around her at the restless faces of the Kennedy students loosely assembled around her, Brooke figured that it was a good thing this was the last painting on the tour. It was becoming very clear to her that the natives were getting restless, and truthfully she counted herself among them. "He said he stayed up for three nights painting the picture because according to him, the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." This was followed by clapping and then the scattering students who ran off to eat, or smoke, or ogle the nudie pictures during their free time.
Brooke's eyes immediately drifted over to Sam. She never wanted her eyes to immediately drift over to Sam, but despite her wishes her eyes just seemed to do it anyway, so not for the first time that day she found herself gazing at Sam, this time as the brunette walked away. Sam had branched off from her other friends, heading in the opposite direction; Brooke would have wondered where she was off to, but Nicole grabbed her arm and started dragging her down the hall.
"Where are we going?" Brooke asked giving up trying to follow Sam with her eyes and turning her attention to Nicole.
"Does it matter?" the shorter blonde responded. "The hell away from here," she continued shaking her head.
Sam paused, she had the strangest feeling that someone was watching her. She knew she was late for her meeting, but she turned around anyway, worse than being late would have been having someone notice where she was off to. Looking behind her she noticed Kennedy students scattering, but didn't see anyone watching her except for maybe Brooke who was in the process of turning around anyway. Despite herself Sam watched Nicole drag Brooke through the hall for a moment longer before turning around herself and heading towards the Pollack exhibit. She didn't have time to think about Brooke, she had a job to do. She didn't have time to think about the fact that she and Brooke had gotten along smashingly that morning, she didn't have time to think about the fact that she had seen the blonde smile more at her in the past two days than the past few years. She didn't have time to think about the fact that she had had a dream about Brooke again last night, and that when she woke up in the morning and realized that the object of her lust was lying peacefully mere meters away for her it had excited her so much that she had been forced to take an agonizingly cold shower. She didn't have time to think about the fact, that she and Brooke had actually talked on the bus as they drove from site to site, and that Sam had enjoyed talking with her, finding her conversation to be smart, and amusing. Sam didn't have time to think about these things, but that didn't stop her from thinking about them anyway.
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