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Sometimes, it feels like Sam spends most of his life waiting.
He waits for the perfect moment to get up as the golden morning peeks through his bedroom window. He watches the brick wall to his left, the carpet to his right, the plain white ceiling where a spider trawls the cornices for something it will never find. Sam thinks about that spider, and pointedly avoids thinking about anything else. He waits for whichever comes first: the sliver of sun that's inching towards him to finally reach his face, or the first spark of energy to crawl out of sleep-suppressed hiding and do its job of lighting up his bones.
He waits for his phone to glow from where it sits, face-up, on the control panel of the dusty synthesiser. He flicked off the text hours ago — wanna hang out? Silence curls up and cries in a black screen. Sam keeps his fingers busy plucking strings and scribbling lyrics. His hands are content that way. He's content that way. He's buried too deep in nylon vibrations and graphite etchings to be anything else. Still, occasionally, the temptation runs away with him. He paces the short distance to the synth, peels one hand off the top of his guitar, and taps that silent screen. Just in case he was absorbed for long enough to miss something. He was not.
He waits for his family to glue itself back together again. It's been three years since its binding fragment broke off and scattered eastward, and each year without him is heavier than the last. Each year, the letters get less and less frequent, and the dread when a new one arrives gets more and more daunting. Each year, the pencil line on Vincent's door climbs another few centimetres, and he overhears a few more dangerous truths from people who forget that whispers have legs, and Sam makes a few more promises he lacks the divine authority to fulfil. Each year, Sam's memories looks less like the real thing and more like Vincent's crayon sketch on the wall of a half-empty bedroom. Each year, Sam thinks less, and prays more, and doesn't ever cry.
He waits for his future to branch skyward from his small-town roots. He walks the same path to work at the same times every week, along the cobblestone path and through the plaza and over the bridge. The blue box stands on the grave of the trees it killed. Sam works for an amount that a wishing fountain would laugh at and spit right back out at him. He fantasises about screaming crowds and stadium lights. He fancies his mop a guitar and the floor his stage. He dreams up a new melody, which he strums later for an audience of stars and moonlight, and maybe that spider he lost days ago if he didn't swallow it overnight. The song dies in the same air it was born from. The stars don't cheer. The moon doesn't speak of it. Sam can count on one hand all the households that know his name.
He waits for all of life's answers to magically bestow themselves upon him. He clings to his unwavering belief that all things will work themselves out in due course. The universe will do what it does best. It will carry him where he needs to go. He won't try to run or hide or stress about things that are out of his control, because all that would give him is a lot more stress to bear, while the outcome remains the same. Pondering his dad's fate won't make him any more likely to come home. Obsessively checking his phone won't make Sebastian any more likely to text. Patience is a virtue, his mother says, and virtues are always rewarded.
So Sam waits, and trusts, and hopes. He waits even when the waiting starts to feel fruitless. Even when his guitar starts to feel like dead weight in his arms, and his fingers hurt from plucking coarse strings all the time. Even when he keeps failing that skateboard trick he's been trying to land for months, and all he has to show for it is bandaids and bruises. Even when the void he's waiting to fill isn't guitar-or-skateboard-shaped.
He waits, and good things do happen. Fridays bookend the row of dreary weekdays, and the Saloon wraps him up in invigorating warmth. He warms his hands by the crackling fireplace. He sinks his teeth into a warm slice of pizza, with a gooey layer of fresh cheese, just as thick and stubborn as he likes it — the kind he has to really tug on for the thread to snap. He flunks at pool, because he always does, but Sebastian's lip quirks when the far left pocket catches the eight-ball, and he laughs at a joke Abigail makes at Sam's expense, and Sam feels warm because he made Sebastian happy.
Saturdays are especially worth waiting for. Video games, band practice, talking for hours under a sinking sun, smoke wisps that spread like feathered wings and fly over the river. He resonates with the way everything around him glows — the cherry of the cigarette, the circular sun like a splodge on a palette, cradled by a sky it dyed orange. They glow the way his heart does in his chest, brighter with every little glance exchanged. After Sebastian leaves, Sam stays for a while to watch the horizon. He waits for some dramatic change; a sign that the universe is watching right back. A bird, a helicopter, a UFO. Nothing comes or goes, but he does catch the first star that blinks in the stretch of dusk, and that feels meaningful, somehow. He wishes on that star. It isn't falling, but he has nothing to lose by wishing anyway. He always wishes for the same thing.
The week's lilting crescendo dips on Sunday, then Sam awakens at the crest of a new week to a golden morning peeking through the window. He turns onto his back, chest to the air, sheets crumpled in a heap on the floor. A small black spider patrols the ceiling cornices. Sam lies there, following its path with his eyes as the sunlight inches towards him.
He waits.