14. Alex Sebring
Chapter 14
Alex Sebring
Magnolia’s absence screams at me in the things she left behind—the pair of unwashed knickers I found in the laundry basket… the half-used strawberry lip balm she’d apply at bedtime… the box of tampons under the sink.
I can’t bring myself to throw them out. It’s pathetic, I’m well aware. But every time I carry them to the bin, I freeze. Like chucking her cotton rockets means admitting she’s never coming back.
So yeah. The tampons stay.
It’s been four weeks since Magnolia ended things. Two weeks since I created that playlist for her and got no response. A month since I’ve functioned like a real person.
I am nothing but a lovesick fool.
My phone buzzes. It’s Tinā again, but I don’t answer. My family, Jack, Laurelyn––they all mean well. They’ve all been calling and texting to check on me. And I’ve ignored every damn one of them.
I don’t have the energy to pretend that I’m okay and everything is going to be all right.
Last night, I tried reading Magnolia’s journal—the one filled with all her private thoughts from her time in Sydney. Pages of messy loops and coffee stains and pieces of her I thought I knew.
I only read two entries before I had to stop. Not because it was too much work. But because it wrecked me.
He makes me feel so safe. So wanted. I’ve met no one like Alex. I didn’t think I could fall this deeply in love with anyone. But with him, it was inevitable.
She loved me.
With her whole heart.
And then the wind shifted, and she didn’t anymore.
A faint beep cuts through the silence—sharp, familiar. The kind that comes from the back door when someone punches in the code.
I don’t move. Because I already know who it is. No one else uses the keypad. No one else walks into my home like they own the place.
Only one person doesn’t need an invitation.
Tinā.
Her footsteps move through the house with a calm authority, the kind that comes from raising six kids and running a home like a quiet empire. She doesn’t call out for me. Doesn’t ask permission. She knows where I’ll be.
It’s late morning, I think, but the blinds are still closed. And I haven’t bothered to check the time.
There’s a quiet knock, and the door creaks open. She pauses in the doorway, taking me in without a word. I can imagine what she sees. The blankets tangled around my waist. The stubble that’s moved past rugged into something closer to despair. My body too still. My spirit gone quiet.
“Oh, Aleki.”
I shift my gaze toward her, and the second our eyes meet, I see it in the soft furrow of her brow, in the way her mouth tightens like she’s trying not to cry. Heartbreak. Not the loud kind. The quiet, aching kind that mothers carry when they’re watching their child slip into something they can’t fix with a kiss to the forehead and a warm plate of food.
“You missed Sunday with the family. Again. And church. Four weeks in a row, Aleki.”
I shift, pulling the pillow higher beneath my head. “I’m going through a lot right now.”
She comes into the room and sits on the side of the bed. “I called you three times yesterday.”
Talking is the last thing I want to do. “I texted to let you know I was okay.”
Her fingers fold in her lap, tight. “And the day before that? When Jack texted? Or when Sefina found out she landed her dream job and we all gathered at the house to celebrate?”
I glance away. “I’m happy for her.”
She hums low in her throat. “You didn’t even reply, Aleki.”
“I need space right now.”
“You’ve always pulled away when you’re in pain. You lock the doors and pretend you’re fine when, in truth, you’re crumbling.”
I blink up at the ceiling, not sure what to say. Because she isn’t wrong.
“You’ve always carried things deeper than your siblings. You hold on longer. Feel it harder. It’s your greatest strength—and your greatest burden.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, turning my face into the pillow. Her hand comes to rest on my shoulder, fingers warm, grounding.
“I know what heartbreak looks like. I know what grief sounds like. But this is more than that.”
I don’t respond.
“Aleki.”
My throat tightens.
“Are you thinking about hurting yourself?”
Her words land like a stone in my chest. I hate that she’s filled with a fear like that.
“No, but I’m tired of hurting like this. It’s too much.”
Relief flashes in her eyes, and she reaches over, brushing a hand over my hair like she did when I was a boy. “Okay. That’s what I needed to hear.”
Her hand falls away. “Now, get up. Take a shower. I’m going to make you something to eat. You may not be ready yet, but you still have to show up for yourself.”
She doesn’t wait for a response. Just leaves the room with the same steadiness she entered, footsteps fading down the hall, leaving behind coconut-scented lotion and the echo of her strength.
I stare at the doorway long after she’s gone.
Show up for myself– –easier said than done.
But I owe her that. And perhaps I owe it to Magnolia too. The man she fell in love with wouldn’t rot in bed. He wouldn’t disappear into silence and dust.
A few minutes pass, and I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, bare feet hitting cold floorboards. The effort is monumental, but I do it.
For my tinā.
For the tiny flicker inside me that hasn’t gone out.
I shower, standing under the hot spray until my skin turns red and my lungs stop tightening with every breath. I trim my beard, towel off, put on some clean clothes.
Tinā doesn’t say a word when I come into the kitchen. She gestures to the chair and sets a plate in front of me like it’s any other morning. But this is not my usual breakfast.
It’s panikeke, warm and golden, still fragrant with coconut oil. A heap of oka sits beside it along with fried eggs, sauteed taro leaves, and thick wedges of papaya. A traditional Samoan breakfast. The kind that feeds more than your body.
There’s no way any of this came from my fridge. I haven’t bought groceries in weeks. She had to have brought everything with her.
That’s who she is. A woman who shows up. Who feeds you when you’re too broken to ask. Who reminds you where you come from when you’ve forgotten how to stand.
As I pick at the food, she moves around the kitchen like it’s hers. Clearing empty cups from the counter. Wiping down surfaces that don’t need wiping. Refilling the fruit bowl, straightening the salt and pepper shakers like symmetry might fix what’s broken in me.
Tinā says nothing. Doesn’t push. She moves with purpose––a quiet, steady love disguised as tidying up. It’s a love you don’t earn but shows up anyway.
I watch her for a second, then look back down at my plate. And somehow, keep eating.
“I’ve been trying to make sense of it,” I say, voice rough from disuse.
Tinā pauses mid-wipe, her hand resting on the countertop. “Make sense of what?”
“There’s something I want you to read.”
It’s right where I left it—a small, leather-bound journal with soft, worn edges and Magnolia’s handwriting etched on the inside cover. My chest tightens the moment I touch it. I carry it back into the kitchen like it might shatter if I hold it too tight.
I place the journal in her hands, swallowing hard. “Magnolia gave it to me the morning she left Sydney. She said her heart was in it, the parts she couldn’t speak out loud.”
Tinā takes it, reverent in the way only mothers can be when handling someone’s pain.
“She wrote about falling in love with me. About how much I meant to her.”
Tinā opens the journal, flipping through the first few pages in silence. She pauses on a page, her eyes scanning a passage. Then she clears her throat and reads aloud.
“Sometimes I look at him and forget how to breathe. I didn’t expect this. I didn’t want to fall for anyone. But he makes me feel seen. And safe. And wanted. It’s startling how fast I’ve become his.”
She pauses again, glancing up at me, but I can’t meet her eyes.
Her voice softens as she reads the next line.
“He doesn’t even realize how much he’s healing me just by letting me in. I don’t know how to explain it—but when he looks at me, I feel like maybe I’m not so broken after all.”
“I don’t get it. How do you go from that to deleting someone from your life like they were nothing?”
Tinā closes the journal, resting her hand on top of it. “You don’t write words like those unless you mean them. And people don’t lie in ink, Aleki. Her affections for you were real.”
“But if it was real––” I stop, tired of asking the same question over and over.
“How do I still love her this much after everything?”
She looks at me like she’s seeing right through to the boy I used to be. Then she reaches across the table, her hand covering mine.
“Because when you love someone the way you loved her, it doesn’t vanish. Not just because they’re gone. That kind of love doesn’t disappear, Aleki. It stays. And it changes you.”
Her words gut me. But somehow, they also hold me together.
“You need fresh air. Not this grief-soaked Sydney silence you’ve been sitting in. You need grounding and family and to breathe where the world isn’t so heavy.”
I glance up, already knowing where this is going.
“Go home to Samoa, Aleki. Let the sea cleanse your hurt and your roots remind you of who you’ve always been.”
I blink hard. “And then what?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Remember who the hell you are.”