36 Samantha
36
SAMANTHA
W E WERE AT the dinner after the funeral. It was January 2. Xavier had been here nine days.
After a lot of back and forth, we decided to wait until after the holidays for Grandma’s service. Her brother couldn’t get here on such short notice. The extra time gave us a chance to pull together a really nice event. We’d had a digital photo collage, and all the out-of-town cousins were able to make it. Tristan dressed her in her favorite pink pantsuit. It was about as perfect of a send-off as we could hope for.
I was a mess. For a hundred different reasons.
Grandma was gone. Xavier was leaving.
The only thing that had held me together this past week was iced coffee, Xavier, and dry shampoo. I didn’t know what state I’d be in if he weren’t here, but I was about to find out because his flight home was tonight.
He had been the backbone of my family the last nine days.
I think a lot of the same principles of taking care of animals transferred to taking care of grieving people because he was really good at it. His strategy mostly involved feeding everyone and being Xavier. His calm, steady presence defused more blowups than I could count. He had this way of redirecting people when they were anxious or testy, the human equivalent of throwing a tennis ball and giving out treats.
He left bowls of trail mix and cheese platters out in the kitchen at all times. Made sure there were three meals planned. He signed for flower deliveries, vacuumed, emptied the dishwasher, watered Grandma’s plants, fed the pets, took the boys out while the rest of us went back and forth to the funeral home to make arrangements. He took care of Mom a few times, who amazingly enough let him. He was even a pallbearer. It was Dad, Tristan, my great-uncle, and my boyfriend.
Xavier had folded into this family seamlessly over the last few days. Some fucked trauma bond experience that was way less fun than being locked in a UFO but equally as effective. My whole family was in love with him.
So was I.
And now he was going to go back to Minnesota, and I probably wouldn’t see him again until February. Maybe even March. I couldn’t go to him, not right now. For one, I was broke. I didn’t really have travel money to begin with, because of the remodel loan we’d all been paying on. But now there was the funeral too.
Tristan, Jeneva, Dad, and I split the burial cost, a couple thousand dollars each that I had to put on a card. Even worse, in the chaos I’d forgotten to cancel my roundtrip flight to Minnesota for the cabin trip I never got to go on, which meant I no-showed. I wouldn’t get a dime back for my ticket so I was out nine hundred dollars there too. That one hurt. Airline tickets were our everything right now and to lose one was heartbreaking.
Besides the financial reasons I couldn’t make it to Minnesota, there was the more pressing one: Mom.
I had no idea what we were going to do once Dad went back to work tomorrow. Grandma and I were Mom’s daytime caregivers, but I worked Monday through Friday so I’d always been more of a backup than anything. It was going to be an adjustment. A big adjustment.
Mom was doing okay, but I had a feeling it was because we were all home for the holidays, and Xavier was bridging a gap that Grandma left. When he was gone, he would leave a void in this family and I couldn’t even think about it because it scared me too much to do it.
I wanted to beg him not to go. And it was more than just needing my person during a hard time, or the things he did for my family.
I wanted him to live here. To stay. I wanted him to be with me all the time. I wanted the parallel life, here, like it had been the last nine days.
But I would never, ever ask him for it.
I knew how much he had to lose, literally and figuratively. His clinic, his credit—his entire life’s work. There was really nothing in the middle. It was an all-or-nothing situation and I couldn’t imagine how he could ever justify leaving that behind.
If you made a spreadsheet and you listed all the pros and cons, there would be a laundry list of reasons for him to stay in Minnesota and a tiny two-line list for California that said “weather” and “Samantha” on it.
Actually, I don’t even know if the weather would be a sell for him—he liked seasons.
So just me.
And even I was practical enough to know that didn’t make sense.
Knowing that we would never have more than this—and knowing that we should—was so hard to accept.
The funeral dinner reception was a buffet at Luigi’s. People were starting to say their goodbyes on their way out of the restaurant. I was sitting at the table in my black dress when Xavier came back over from the bathroom holding his duffel bag. He’d changed into the clothes he was going to wear on the flight home. He was leaving straight from here.
The boys darted around the room chasing each other. Xavier made eye contact with Braden and shook a single finger and both boys stopped and sat like normal human beings.
“It’s like a Jedi mind trick,” I said, taking off my heels under the table.
He scoffed.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” He dug in his pocket. “I found this under the washbasin in the laundry room this morning. It’s been in my suit all day, I almost left with it.” He handed me a bracelet.
I held it in front of me in complete disbelief.
It was Grandma’s. The one she gave Mom on her twenty-fifth birthday. The one Mom had lost.
“There was a white bucket full of dryer balls,” he said. “I was washing Pooter’s bed for you. It was in there.”
“I can’t believe you found this,” I breathed. “We tore the house apart. Literally.”
“The bucket looked like it had been there a long time. I bet no one checked it. It was probably one of those things you get blind to,” he said.
Tristan walked in from the bathroom.
“Look!” I said, showing it to him.
He pursed his lips. “Where was it?” he asked, his tone bored, like this precious family heirloom hadn’t been lost to us forever for over a year.
“The laundry room.”
“Cool. Why does Mom look like a French whore?”
I gasped. “Tristan!”
He crossed his arms. “Have you seen her?”
“Yes, I’ve seen her, I did her makeup as always, she looks fine.”
“You sure about that?”
I let out an exasperated sigh and like the universe intended to prove his point, Mom turned around from where she was sitting with her cousin Debbie at the end of the long table. I almost choked on my spit. Mom was contoured within an inch of her life. Dark, almost black-red lipstick and a smokey eye. Debbie had her makeup strewn out on the table and she was putting on yet more blush—and Dad was just sitting there, letting it happen.
I started digging in my purse for makeup wipes. I would be glad when all this was over. It made me remember how much my extended family annoyed me.
Xavier looked at his phone. “My Uber’s almost here.”
I froze with my hands in my bag. “I thought I was driving you.”
“You should stay with your family. You’d only get an extra half an hour with me.”
“But I wanted the half an hour.”
He sat down and scooted in to put his lips to my ear. “I don’t think your sister is doing well. I think your family needs you to stay and get them home.”
I looked over at Jeneva. She was staring at a wall with red eyes while my uncle Roman on Dad’s side was talking to the side of her face. She looked mentally checked out. As checked out as Dad was. And probably a little drunk too.
Xavier was right. I should stay with them. But I hated losing even thirty minutes.
“I already said goodbye to everyone.” Xavier nodded to the door. “Walk me out front?”
I took a steadying breath. Then I handed my purse to my brother. “Here. Find the wipes, save our mother.”
I slipped my heels back on and walked with Xavier through the restaurant. I felt like I was walking him to the plank. Neither of us wanted him to go.
It was dark outside. The freeway hummed somewhere off in the distance.
While we stood in front of the entrance he dug in his pocket. “Here.”
“What’s this?”
“New earbuds.”
I gave him a look. “Xavier…”
“You need them. I already programmed them to your phone. Please don’t eat them.”
I snorted. “Thank you.”
“Of course. I made you a playlist.”
I smiled. “You did?”
“Yeah. I’ll text you the link.”
“How many times is ‘Come On Eileen’ on there?” I asked.
“Not even once.”
I laughed tiredly and wrapped my arms around him and let him hold me.
“I’ll do everything I can to get here in February,” he whispered. “I’ll work overnights every weekend if I have to.”
I pulled away to look at him. “Xavier, no. Please take care of yourself.”
“Me getting back here is me taking care of myself.”
We peered at each other. Me, begging him with my eyes not to leave and him giving me his contemplative gaze.
“What are you thinking about when you look at me like that?” I asked.
“Lots of things,” he said quietly.
“Like?”
He regarded me with those crystal-blue eyes. “I’m thinking that I’m in love with you.”
The words were so unexpected, I lost my breath.
“Xavier…”
“You don’t have to say it back. I just didn’t want to lie.”
“But… but you’ve always looked at me like that,” I said.
“I know. I’ve always loved you,” he said simply. “I think I couldn’t forget you because I remember you from a different lifetime. And I loved you then too.”
I had to clutch a hand over my heart.
His Uber drove up behind him. He leaned down and gave me a kiss. When he pulled away I peered up at him. “I love you too.”
He held my gaze for a long moment, something pained on his face. Then he let me go and left me. Again.
Love or no, it was still just my name on that list.