29 Xavier
29
XAVIER
M Y FLIGHT LANDED at 5:30 the next morning. I was a zombie getting off the plane.
I’d picked a middle seat because it was cheapest, so I hadn’t slept well on the flight—not that I would have slept well after that phone call.
I was starting to second-guess taking the red-eye. My body ached for sleep, and I was getting a headache. But when I came out and saw Samantha leaning on her car, I forgot any tiredness or discomfort.
She broke into a smile and threw her arms around me.
It’s ironic how important things make the world smaller. How a kiss with someone you love can make you feel like you’re alone with them, like you’re in a snow globe with just the two of you when really you’re outside baggage claim at a busy international airport.
I buried my nose in her neck and hugged her like I had spent the last four weeks paddling here on a disintegrating raft and I had collapsed on shore. And the worst part was the raft was going to have to take me home again.
I hadn’t told Samantha yet what happened with my mom. It was too much for over the phone, especially knowing I was going to see her soon anyway. I wanted to tell her in person, when I could hug her and touch her and look in her eyes, and for the first time, I really felt how hard it was to not see her every day.
The need was more than just missing her. It was the absence of my person. The inability to hold her and be held. There was no substitute for this. For the feeling of her arms around me.
The thought of getting two days of this and then six weeks of nothing drained me. It gave me a preemptive emotional exhaustion on top of the real one I was feeling.
She pulled away. “How did you sleep?”
“I didn’t.”
She put out her bottom lip. “Awwww. Well, let’s go home and take a nap.”
“I don’t want to sleep when I’m here,” I said tiredly. “I want to be with you.”
“Well, that’s very disappointing because I’ve been dreaming of napping with you under the blankets for weeks .” She grinned. “Naked.”
“Okay. Maybe a short nap.”
She laughed and bounced up to kiss me again.
We got into the Dart. “I was searching the car for the missing jewelry and I found a new tape in the carmuda triangle,” she said, holding up a cassette. “Want to hear what’s on it?”
“The what?”
“The carmuda triangle? The little space between the center console and the seat? I’ve been listening to all my mom’s old tapes. There’s some good stuff on there. Songs I haven’t heard in years. I thought I’d listened to them all and then I found this. I saved it for you.”
She popped it in the tape player.
“I was thinking we could drive with the top down since the sun’s not up yet,” she said.
“Sure.”
It was in the twenties in Minnesota. We’d already had snow. But here it was seventy-two. The air was perfect and the freeway was empty so early on a Saturday. It felt apocalyptic, like we were the last people alive.
Sometimes with her, I did feel like we were the last people alive.
She hit play and Jon Secada came on. I hadn’t heard this song in a decade. “Just Another Day Without You.” It came out of the lone speaker and she held my hand between us while the wind blew through my hair and we cruised down the freeway.
I think this was the only time driving the Dart wasn’t a bad idea. This was the small witching hour that it had been built for. The moment was perfection. A closing scene in a movie where they drive off into the sunrise.
My mind felt shriveled up. I was mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted. But at least I was here.
For now.