35 Xavier
35
XAVIER
C AN YOU HEAR it?” Samantha asked. She still sounded stuffy from crying.
We were back in her room. It was the end of the night. She was lying in her bed and I had my ear pressed to her stomach. “Come On Eileen” was playing three inches from her belly button.
“I can hear it,” I said.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. The fiddle just started.”
“Oh my God,” she groaned. “My life is a sitcom.”
I pulled her shirt back down and propped myself on my elbow to look at her.
“You’re sure I don’t need to go to the doctor?” she asked.
“I’m very sure. You’ll see your earbud again soon.”
She scoffed.
She seemed a little better. Calmer.
I had over a week until I had to go home. More time than I’d ever spent with her. But I already dreaded leaving. It was hard enough going home knowing I would miss her, but it was even harder to leave knowing she needed me.
It had been a very long day.
Her family had decided Christmas would go on as planned. The funeral home was closed, there wasn’t anything else to do for Grandma at the moment, and the boys wanted to open presents.
I didn’t want them to feel like I was intruding on their holiday, but at the same time, wild horses couldn’t have dragged me away from Samantha in her state. So I’d made it my job to collect the torn paper and put batteries in things while they opened gifts, so they could just focus on the fun parts. I set a timer on my phone for bathroom reminders for Lisa and let someone know when they went off. I put out snacks and boxes of tissues and I hovered at the edges and stepped in when I was needed and disappeared to wash dishes and clean up when I wasn’t. And I was happy to do it, to be any kind of useful to her in any way.
I leaned down and kissed her softly. “Do you want to hear some good news?” I asked.
“Please, yes.”
I told her about Hank. When I was done, she shook her head.
“Wow,” she said, sitting up on her elbows. “So he’s just going to work there for free?”
“That’s what he said. I feel guilty letting him do it.”
“It sounds like he wants to,” she said. “I kind of get it. I think having us around helped Grandma too. People need people. Just pay it forward one day. Go be someone else’s fairy godfather when you’re a million years old.”
“Ha.”
“Should I send him a mustard gift basket?” she asked. “Do you think he’d like that?”
“I thought they were sold out.”
“Yeah, but the guy from distributions has a crush on me. He’d make one for me if I asked him.”
I arched an eyebrow. “The guy from distributions? Should I be worried?”
“When you’re a VILF? No.”
I snorted.
She put her arms around my neck and hugged me while I rubbed her back. “Should we do Christmas gifts?” she asked, her chin over my shoulder.
“Sure.”
She let me go and I reached over for my bag and pulled out the tiny wrapped box. We’d agreed nothing too expensive, that our money should go to travel, but I’d put a lot of thought into this.
I sat up against her headboard while she grabbed my gift out of a drawer.
“Here,” she said, climbing back into the bed. “You first.”
I tore the snowman paper. It was a framed photo. The photo of us at Mother Putters.
“I sent it to myself from your phone,” she said. “Look.” She showed me the little plaque at the bottom: Our first date, July first.
I smiled. I loved it.
“I thought you’d want to start collecting memories,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said, beaming at it.
And she was right. I did want to collect our memories.
Everything I got to do with her was precious to me. I’d never been much for mementos or keepsakes but now all I wanted was to look around me and see evidence of her . I wanted to breathe in and smell her, reach out and touch her, open my eyes and see her. Short of living with her nothing would be enough, but the frame was a start.
“Now you,” I said.
I gave her the box.
She tucked her legs under her and wiggled off the lid. She gasped. “A seashell necklace?” she said, holding it up by the chain.
“It’s one of the ones we found in Santa Monica. It was in my pocket when I got home.”
“I love it so much,” she said quietly, staring at the shell in her palm. “A memory I can wear. Thank you.”
She put it on and looked down at it around her neck for a moment. “Where do you usually spend Christmas?” she asked, gazing at the necklace but talking to me.
“Nowhere. I work.”
She looked up and blinked at me. “Every year?”
“Mostly, yeah.”
Her brows were furrowed.
“The guys sometimes invite me, but it’s a family holiday,” I said. “I don’t like to feel like I’m intruding.”
“So you’re just… alone?” she asked.
“I’m always alone.”
The look on her face was so bleak I thought she was going to start crying again.
“It’s fine, I’m used to it,” I said.
“It is not fine. That’s not something anyone should get used to.” She shook her head. “You have me now, okay? I’m your family. You spend Christmas with me. Every year, no matter what. Promise me.”
Something about it made my chest ache. Maybe because I really could see it. Decades into the future, Christmases with her, our parallel line. I could see it like it was a memory, not a vision.
I never felt like I belonged anywhere or to anyone.
But I belonged to her.
It was so natural being with her, I wondered if loving her was a contract that I’d signed in a former life. Because it had never been like this for me with anyone else.
I think there are two types of people you fall in love with. The ones who are a good fit. Their lifestyle matches yours, you share the same values and beliefs, you find them attractive and you like spending time with them. It’s good. Great even. You can live your whole life with this person and be madly in love and never want anything different… unless you’ve already met the other type of person you fall in love with.
The One.
The person who was made just for you. And you only ever get the one.
Samantha was my one.
I knew it by how painful it was to see her cry. I knew it by how I was willing to work harder for her than I’d ever worked for anything or anyone including myself. Loving her gave me purpose. It made me feel like I knew what my life was supposed to be about. I felt focused and calm and like a frantic search I hadn’t known I was on was over. This was what I was here to do, this was who I was here to be with, and now my job was to get here and take care of her. And taking care of her family was an extension of that.
From what I understood, Samantha’s grandma did most of her daughter’s daily care. If my experience with aging animals was any indication, Lisa was going to have a hard time with this transition. She’d be off her routine, she wouldn’t deal with the change well, and her condition would probably deteriorate. Accidents would be a lot more frequent. They’d forget to take her to the bathroom, they’d forget to feed her, and both those things would make her more difficult to manage. Nobody was in the right headspace to deal with anything right now. Everything was the last straw. It was clear the family was in no place to take care of the fundamentals at the moment. I got the sense Grandma had done a lot of it and the wheels of the household were not turning without her. So after I cleaned up breakfast this morning, I started figuring out lunch plans for everyone. Then dinner.
I was going to facilitate whatever was needed. Food, errands, chores. Anything to make her life better, easier, gentler.
I kissed her softly and she closed her eyes.
“How much did it cost for you to get here?” she asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
She looked at me. “Tell me.”
“The only seats left were first class.”
She grimaced.
“There was another cheaper seat on Christmas, but we’re getting snow and I was worried the flight would be canceled and I wouldn’t be able to get here until next week,” I said.
“Xavier…”
“I know,” I said quietly.
It was all gone. Every penny I’d made over the last month working at the ER, plus another hundred and fourteen dollars on top of it. Gone.
I was grateful that the money was there when I’d needed it. Better than putting an emergency visit on a card. But I felt deflated and exhausted knowing that I was back to zero.
She must have seen the weariness on my face. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You look really tired.”
“I am really tired,” I admitted.
She studied me. “I feel like this relationship is killing you.”
“Don’t say that—”
“No, I’m serious. You shouldn’t be working seven days a week.”
“I don’t know what else to do,” I said. “It’s difficult and I hate it. But it is what it is.”
We slipped into silence.
“If you had the power to erase every memory you have of me so you didn’t know what you were missing, would you do it?” she asked.
“No, I wouldn’t do it,” I said without even thinking about it.
“Why?”
“Because life wouldn’t be worth living if I didn’t remember you.”
She looked like she didn’t believe me. “But it’s so hard though,” she said.
“Would you erase the memories of your grandma so you wouldn’t feel the way you feel right now?”
“No.”
“Some things are worth remembering, Samantha. No matter how much they hurt.”
I watched her swallow. “I’m glad she got to meet you before she died,” she said. “I’m glad you got to meet her, so when I talk about her, you remember her.”
I was glad too.
She peered up at me and put a hand on my cheek. “Look at this beard. My winter boy.” The corners of her mouth fell. “I feel like I’m seeing your life in slides,” she said, her voice a little sad. “I see you and it’s a five-o’clock shadow. Then it’s a goatee. Then it’s a full beard. And I’m not there for any of it. It just jumps ahead weeks and months and you’re different every time I see you.”
“Do you want me to shave it?”
“No. I want you to be with me all the time. I want to see you so much, I don’t notice the little changes.” She peered at me. “You are my favorite person. Did you know that?”
The words hit me unexpectedly, but I kept my face flat the way I always did.
“You’re my favorite person too,” I said quietly.
“Even when I’m trying to compliment you, you turn it back on me. You are a wonderful human, Xavier. I hope you know that. I hope you hear me when I say it. You are so selfless. Hard working. Generous. Gentle. You’re smart and patient. And I saw everything you did for us today. We all did.”
The words filled me up. For once I let them.
“You make me want to be that way. You make me want to be everything,” I said. “Funny enough to make you laugh, successful enough to take care of you. Sexy enough that you can’t keep your hands off me.”
“Well, you are definitely that.”
I took a deep breath.
“Normally I wouldn’t believe anything nice someone said to me,” I said quietly. “But it must be true or I wouldn’t have you.”
She was looking at me the way she looked at mustard. And I vowed that I would be the kind of man who deserved that for the rest of my life.