15 Xavier
15
XAVIER
D ON’T ROCK IT! ”
“I’m not,” I said. “It’s just swaying from turning.”
We were at the top of the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier. Samantha was clinging to me like a wet cat.
“Why did you want to go if you’re scared of heights?” I asked, looking down at her, amused.
“I’m not scared of heights. I’m scared of falling . I wanted you to get all the iconic Santa Monica experiences,” she said, clutching me.
“You being terrified is an iconic Santa Monica experience?”
“STOP.”
I laughed. I didn’t like that she was scared, but I very much liked that she was hugging me.
I didn’t really know what the rules were going to be when I got here. Would we pick up where we left off in the escape room, or would we feel awkward? But it was immediately like it had been before, like we’d known each other forever. Our twentieth date. Like the UFO had been a time machine that aged our relationship.
I had no idea what I was doing here. It made me feel better that she didn’t either.
This was not nothing between us.
I was just taking this visit one second at a time, hoping I’d get some clarity on what would come next, but the only thing getting clearer was that I really, really wanted to kiss her. I’d wanted to do it on the pier when we were watching the guy on the unicycle and again when we were looking at the ocean and I definitely would have kissed her on this Ferris wheel if she weren’t having a panic attack.
We swung higher and the gondola pitched wildly back and forth.
“I can’t believe this doesn’t scare you,” she said.
“For the record, I will never have a good time if you aren’t having a good time. We should plan activities accordingly.”
“Shhhhhhhhh, enjoy your terrifying view.”
We swung upward again and she made a little squeak.
I squeezed her. “Think about mustard, it’ll all be over soon.”
I felt her laugh in my arms and I smiled, peering out over the horizon. Her sacrifice wasn’t lost on me. The view really was breathtaking.
This place was a whole new world. I’d never been anywhere like it. I felt plopped down on a TV set, all these landmarks I’d only ever seen in movies. Enormous long-necked palm trees that lined the streets with mountains looming behind them. The smell of brine and french fries and the musty scent of the rotting wood of the boardwalk. The ocean stretching as far as the eye can see.
It made me feel stimulated. Like my sleepy brain, so used to seeing what it already knew, was kicked into high gear to process it all. These memories would be sharp and embedded.
And she would be too.
She already was.
I glanced down at my date, clinging to me for dear life.
I would be jealous if she was clinging to another man. Deeply, deeply bothered by it. And that was something else I needed to unpack because I didn’t live here, so she was going to do this with someone else eventually because it couldn’t be me.
I hated that it couldn’t be me. Which circled me back to what was I even doing here? If I knew this visit was pointless, why had I come? And yet, there was nowhere else I’d rather be, and nothing would have kept me from coming short of her forbidding me to do it. The urge was too strong.
Her fingers curled into my shirt.
“Tell me something,” I said. “It’ll get your mind off it.”
“What do you want to know?” she asked, her eyes squeezed shut.
“Tell me about your family.”
“Who do you want me to start with?”
“Jeneva,” I said.
“She’s thirty-two, divorced,” she said quickly, like the speed she relayed it would make the distraction work faster. “Her ex-husband has a sex addiction that she found out about ten years into the marriage. He spent their whole savings on cam girls. She got full custody and he left the state and got a job under the table instead of getting therapy and paying child support. This was last year. She’s hilarious, smart, a good mom, an even better cook, and she’s lactose intolerant but will never stop eating ice cream.”
“Tristan?”
She sucked in air as we swept upward again.
“Chronic wanderlust,” she said, her voice a touch too high. “Good at everything he touches, but never sticks to anything he starts. He’s a gifted artist and had a short but epic career as a somewhat famous cake decorator whose creations almost always went viral. You’ve probably seen them. They look like real things around the house and then you cut into them and surprise, it’s cake. He left that job after deciding to follow a boyfriend to Anchorage so they could homestead. He bailed after three months and called us from Punta Cana to tell us he was teaching surfing lessons and could he borrow some money that he never paid back. Left there to work at an outfitter in British Columbia. Now he’s home and he’ll likely vanish in the night for some other adventure and leave a bong water stain on the carpet and an unpaid bill of some sort that we have to pay.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” she said, her eyes still closed. “Grandma’s seventy-seven. First generation from Mexico.”
“Oh, do you speak Spanish?”
“A little. Mom was fluent but my dad wasn’t, so I didn’t hear it as much growing up. Mom’s an only child. My grandpa died six years ago. Grandma was a hippie—like, an actual hippie. She met my grandpa at Woodstock.”
“And what did he do?” I asked.
“He owned a palm tree farm.”
“A palm tree farm…”
“Yeah. It’s the family business. My mom, Lisa, ran things after my grandpa retired. They sold the business after Mom started getting bad.”
“Huh. You didn’t want to go into the family trade?”
“No,” she said, looking over the side and retreating back into my chest. “Trees are pretty boring—lucrative, but boring. A full-grown palm can sell for fifteen thousand to twenty thousand dollars depending on what kind it is. And that doesn’t even include”—she gasped as we went a rung higher—“transport or planting,” she continued out of breath. “Grandpa bought land in the Coachella Valley, back when it was cheap, and he planted a couple thousand of them. Spent his whole life just selling trees. When they bought the house, Grandma turned the backyard into an organic garden. She still doesn’t like food coloring. She keeps a Super Soaker full of Tabasco next to her bed because she doesn’t like guns.”
I chuckled. “And your dad?”
“He’s fifty-five,” she said. “Met my mom after a house party in the Hollywood Hills. Her boyfriend jumped off the roof into the pool and bruised his tailbone. She was pissed because she told him not to do it and I guess it was the last straw or something so she broke up with him and was walking home at four a.m. She snapped the heel off her shoe and my dad drove by and asked her if she needed a ride. He was delivering newspapers. She finished his route with him and they went to Norms for breakfast and the rest is history.”
We came to an extended stop and the swaying settled down a little. Probably letting people off and on. She hesitantly peered over the side again.
“You see that spot there?” She nodded to the beach. “Where it looks like a little tide pool or something?”
“Yes…”
“That’s a riptide.”
I leaned to look. “Really?”
“Yeah. My mom always pointed out how to find them. The waves don’t break at the opening so it looks like a good, calm place to get in, but it’s a trap. It sucks you out.”
“What do you do if you get sucked out?”
“You just let it take you. If you fight it, you die.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it’s stronger than you are. You’ll get tired and you give up.”
I studied the spot on the shore. We didn’t have riptides in Minnesota. Lakes don’t have them. I was glad she pointed it out.
I looked down at her. Her fingers were buried in my shirt. I couldn’t believe I was here.
I woke up in Minneapolis today, worked. And now I was on a Ferris wheel, looking at the ocean. With her.
I tucked her under my chin and breathed in the smell of salty sea air and listened to the muffled sound of people a hundred feet below.
They say that you won’t remember what someone said, but you’ll always remember how they made you feel. I don’t think this moment would be the same if it wasn’t for how it felt. Ocean or no.