32 Samantha
32
SAMANTHA
W E WENT TO the vet after the smash-and-pug-grab, and then home.
I was in the kitchen telling Jeneva the story while Xavier monitored the dog in my apartment. Mom’s birthday dinner was in less than an hour.
Since I was doing the apps, I had less time than everyone to get my food ready. Jeneva, who managed to land salad, had taken pity on me and was helping. I was making baked jalapenos. They had a cream cheese peanut butter filling and then you topped them with golden raisins and feta. It didn’t feel ambitious at the time, but I was still flustered from earlier.
“So he just saved this dog? Right there in the parking lot?” she asked.
“Yup. When he stood up and looked at that guy after he said he wouldn’t take him to the vet? Chills,” I said, slicing a pepper in half. “The look he gave him? Total Dark Lord.”
“He was so good with Mom that one time. And the boys love him,” my sister said, deseeding the jalapenos I was cutting. “I wish he lived here.”
I scoffed. “Same.”
I finished filling the poppers and I put them in the oven.
“Where is everyone?” I asked, wiping the counter down.
“Mom’s in the sunroom with Grandma. She’s got pozole in the slow cooker. I think Dad just got home. He had sides and made them before work. Not sure where Tristan is. He had dessert.”
“What did he make?”
“I don’t know, he won’t tell anyone.” She set her knife down. “Hey, Dad left again last night,” she said quietly.
I froze with a rag in my hand. “Whaaaat?”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “At midnight. I saw him get in the car.”
“You think it’s his tooth again?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. What is going on?”
“Dad’s fucking around, that’s what’s going on,” Tristan said from the doorway.
I turned and pinned him with a look. “ What? ”
Jeneva put a hand on her hip. “Dad would never.”
My brother crossed his arms. “Oh no? Sorry, but I know what booty call hours are. And he’s acting shady as fuck.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t even start rumors like that, Tristan. I get that you enjoy the intrigue, but Dad is not a cheater.”
“He leaves at least twice a week,” he said, pursing his lips.
I pulled my face back. “He does?”
“Yeah. I’m in the fucking basement, I see the driveway from the window. You owe me a tattoo by the way.”
I groaned. “I know. Just make the appointment and Venmo request me.”
“I will. Thanks.” He took a handful of the shredded cheese for Jeneva’s salad and left.
My sister paused to shake her head at him as he disappeared back down to his basement lair.
“As if…” she mumbled.
Mom was the love of Dad’s life. They’d been together for over thirty years. Even the idea of him cheating was ridiculous.
“Why is he like that?” I whispered.
“Who knows. I literally don’t have the energy for it.”
I heard the back door open. Xavier walked in.
“How’s the dog?” I asked.
“He’s fine. Resting.” He nodded at my sister. “Hi. Nice seeing you again.”
Then he leaned over and gave me a quick kiss. “Do you want help with this?” he asked, nodding at the dishes.
“I would love help, thank you.”
Xavier took over for me while I went down to ask Tristan for access to the wine cellar for a bottle of white to go with the starters. He opened the door, said: “You shall not pass.” And then shut it again.
When the appetizers were done, I sent out the dinner is ready text. I could feel the inhabitants of the house activate.
The boys came first, bursting through the kitchen, chasing each other and yelling. While my sister scolded them for running, Grandma made her way in and smiled when she saw my boyfriend. “Xavier, the penis that flew in from Minnesota. Nice to meet you.” She shuffled to the fridge to get a beer.
Xavier blanched and I leaned into him. “That comment was taken very out of context,” I whispered.
“I can’t wait to hear the explanation,” he whispered back, amused.
Dad came in next leading Mom. She stopped in the doorway, noticing the fancy setup. “Is it New Year’s Eve?” she asked.
She looked blankly around the kitchen, no recognition for me or the man who’d patched her up that night—or any of us really. But I’d done her makeup this morning while Xavier was sleeping and Tristan did her hair and Dad dressed her in a pretty red dress. She looked amazing. She looked the closest to her old self that she ever would.
If you didn’t talk to her, if you didn’t already know that the dementia had taken hold, you wouldn’t know just looking at her. Not tonight.
I was glad I had so many memories of her from before so I could superimpose them onto who she was now. It let me pretend, even just for a second, that none of who she was today was real.
I pictured her bursting into animation. Putting her hands over her mouth to smile at the setup. She would comment on the flowers we’d gotten her and make a joke with Dad about the jalapenos not being the hottest thing in the room.
She’d grab her own plate and serve herself and ask Xavier about what he does for a living while she ate without anyone helping her. She’d nod in understanding and ask follow-up questions because she’d remember his answers, telling her own little stories. Then she’d reapply her own lipstick and take pictures with her kids and insist that Xavier scoot into one because she’d know that he wasn’t just some guy.
But the facade could only last a second. The image in my mind blurred as Dad snapped a bib on her. The color faded and she went back to gray.
Dad sat her down and then put a hand out to Xavier. “Hi, I’m Dan. I think you’ve already met my wife, Lisa.”
“Yes, we met a few months ago.” He shook Dad’s hand and looked at Mom. “Good seeing you again,” Xavier said, smiling at her.
She said hello. That’s all. And only because it was an ingrained response, not because she was being social or even that she realized she was being introduced to someone. It was just the echo.
I felt the ache in my chest.
“I want to thank you for your help that night,” Dad said. “I had to run to the pharmacy and I left the back door unlocked, and well—You know what happened.”
“It’s no problem.”
Tristan appeared right as Jeneva set her salad down.
He completely ignored all of us. He grabbed a mixing bowl and shoveled half the salad into it. Then he took six of the jalapeno poppers and dropped them on top, Salt Baed the bowl with raisins, stabbed the middle of this slop pile with a fork, and plopped onto a stool. “By the way, your boyfriend is in a viral video,” he said. Then he started eating.
Xavier and I blinked at each other.
“What?” I said.
Jeneva looked back and forth between us. “What is he talking about?”
“What viral video?” I asked.
Tristan rolled his eyes. “Google is free?”
I picked up my phone.
I had a text from Becca. She’d sent it to me and Xavier in a group chat with a bunch of numbers I didn’t have in my phone:
Omg the comments
There was a link.
“Xavier, check your phone,” I said.
I clicked on the attachment and a video with almost one hundred thousand views on it popped up.
It was the parking lot earlier. The caption read, “ hot veterinarian saves dog #glendale #animalrescue #thirsttrap. ”
I let the video play.
It was a total hero montage. Xavier breaking the window and lifting the pug from the car. His arms look great. He’s all serious and devastatingly handsome, his jawline like a paid actor.
Then he’s got the water and he’s doing his cool-down thing—the cameraman was really good, getting all the angles. The dog’s coming out of it, I’m in the background on the phone with 911, the cops are pulling up.
It pans to when the asshole guy comes out to yell at us about his window, then back to Xavier, still on his knees. The dog is sitting up now. Xavier is glistening like he’s been misted with olive oil, an homage to the volleyball scene from Top Gun . He lifts the bottom of his shirt to wipe sweat off his face. You can see his whole stomach in HD. His six-pack abs crunch like an accordion, it’s glorious. Then that part of the clip repeats in slow motion.
Oh my God, the person who took this video was good . They understood the assignment. The whole thing was a cinematic masterpiece, start to finish.
I went straight to the comments.
Why am I jealous of an unconscious pug??
brB Locking myself in a hot car
How many times did I watch the end? Yes.
I put a hand over my mouth to cover my laugh. Oh, he was gonna haaaate this.
I looked up. He was watching the video. His face had gone flat.
Becca’s group chat was pinging with texts. I assumed it was the guys.
WTF Bro I see u been doing the crunches I showed u, thank god for me
Holy shit I’m laughing so hard what r u doing in CA ?
Is that Samantha’s number? Is the dog ok?
I looked back at my silent date.
“You all right over there?” I asked.
He stared at the phone another moment, then slowly looked up at me. “‘I need him in a way that’s a threat to feminism’? What does that even mean?”
I snorted.
Dad looked back and forth between us. “What does that mean?”
Jeneva was laughing, watching the clip on her own phone. Actually from the commentary I could hear she wasn’t watching the original video, she was watching a duet of the original, which meant it was officially everywhere.
“Let me see that,” Grandma said, motioning for my cell. I gave her my phone. She took her reading glasses off her head and put them on and squinted at the screen. “‘Lowering the volume so my bf doesn’t ask why the same video is playing on repeat.’”
I bit the inside of my cheek.
She went for another one. “‘I’d army crawl naked through a thousand miles of broken glass just to lick the seat of that man’s workout bench.’” She read on. “‘A teardrop just ran down my thigh—’”
That’s it. I lost it. Un controllable laughter.
“Grandma, give me that!” I took my phone back, dying.
Jeneva and Dad were cracking up. Mom was laughing too now, but only because we were.
Xavier was looking at his phone. “They are never going to let me live this down…” he said, totally talking about Jesse, Mike, and Chris.
They weren’t. They seriously weren’t. They were playing this at his funeral. He had no choice but to outlive them all.
I couldn’t stop laughing.
“I’m sorry,” I wheezed. “Hearing my grandma read thirst comments about my boyfriend was not on my bingo card today.”
That got him. He gave me a good-natured if slightly embarrassed chuckle. I mean, it was hilarious, there was no denying it.
My dad slapped his shoulder and gave it a paternal squeeze. “You’re a good sport.”
It took me a solid five minutes to get my shit together.
We finished eating and sang happy birthday to Mom. Dessert was a cake that looked like the coffee maker. It had been sitting on the kitchen counter the whole time. It was a huge hit, if very confusing for the birthday girl who was already confused as a rule.
We all cleaned up dinner and an hour later, Xavier and I were back in my room. Our little rescue pug was fast asleep and snoring gently.
“Who knew you were going to get so much done on this trip,” I said, flopping onto my bed. “Saved a dog from certain death, your abs got famous, you got a boost for your business.”
“They don’t know where I work,” he said, coming out of the bathroom from checking on the dog.
I propped myself on my elbows. “The strangers of the internet? They do. Believe me, they do. Nobody works faster than horny women. They probably found you hours ago.”
He laughed like he didn’t believe me.
I twisted to grab my phone from the nightstand. I googled his clinic and turned the phone to him and showed him his new Google rating. 5 stars where a 4.7 used to be. About a hundred new reviews, all of them hilarious. I didn’t even need to check to know I was going to find this. I also knew the asshole guy with the pug was probably getting canceled as we speak.
“You’re a sexy hero,” I said. “From a PR standpoint, this whole thing is absolute gold. I pray for this kind of organic mustard engagement every day of my life. You have been blessed by the TikTok gods.”
He blinked at me.
“A VILF is a thing now,” I said, putting my phone away. “That’s because of you. You should be proud of that.”
He shot me a playful look.
“What?” I said.
“Stop.”
“There’s a VILF hashtag.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Yes, there is,” I said. “I’m following it.”
He tickled me. I shrieked and twisted to get away from him. He grabbed me by the hips and rolled me over onto my back while I squealed.
“I liked VILFs before it was cool!” I said, giggling.
He tickled me harder. I started tickling him back.
We were both laughing. I had tears in my eyes. He had to hold my hands against the mattress to get me to stop. He leaned over me, his heart pressed to mine, his chest still rumbling.
His hair was shaggy again. It hung down over his forehead and his full smile beamed.
“Are you going to stop?” he asked.
I bit my lip. “Making fun of you or tickling you?”
“Both.”
“I don’t know, I kinda like being pinned here. It’s making me want you in a way that’s a threat to feminism…”
He laughed and let my hands go, caging me between his forearms.
I rubbed my nose to his. “You want my advice? As a social media expert?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“Until we as a society are mature enough to see your naked stomach in a slow-motion montage and act with dignity, I think you need to keep those abs put away.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth. “You want me to keep them put away?” he asked, his voice lowering.
“I mean, not in here. Obviously.” I bit my lip. “Unless you need to sleep. You’re carrying the weight of the thirstiest comment section on TikTok. You’re probably tired, I get it.”
He burst into husky laughter. “ Stop. ”
Then he dipped his head to kiss me.
“VILF. So lucky,” I breathed.
He smiled while he hiked my leg up around him and tipped my head back to kiss under my jaw.
“Xavier?”
“Hmmm…”
“Would you still want me if I was a worm?”
He pulled his face back and looked at me, amused. “Am I also a worm?”
“No. Just me.”
He blew a long breath through his nose like he was thinking about this seriously. “Well, if you were a worm, things would change.”
“How?”
“You would want to do worm things. You would have worm needs.”
“So no?”
“So I would take care of you,” he said. “I’d learn everything there is to know about worms. I’d become a worm expert. I’d put you in a flowerpot. I’d make sure your soil was warm and you were safe. I’d set you on a windowsill—but not too high, so you wouldn’t be scared.” He started kissing me again. Gentle little pecks around my face. “I wouldn’t know if you still understood me, but I’d talk to you anyway.” Kiss. “I’d play music I know you like and I’d plant flowers for you.” Kiss. “I’d decorate your pot with seashells. I’d never leave you alone. I’d take you with me everywhere. I’d have your lava lamp and a bottle of Murkle’s Mustard where you could see it from your pot—”
“You’d keep buying Murkle’s for me?”
“No, I’d buy it because it’s the best.”
I smiled up at him. His hair, hanging over his eyes.
“I think this is the only right answer,” I whispered.
He curled his fingers around my ear and pressed his lips to mine.
This time I didn’t stop him with silly questions.