Chapter 23
SAM
I drive.
I drive for hours.
I drive until I physically can’t anymore.
Until the lines in the road start warping and wobbling and my eyelids get heavy.
I know that if I keep going I’m either going to kill myself or someone else or both, and that’s no use to Ash at all.
I curse myself for not being able to do it all in one shot but fine, okay, whatever.
It’s still progress. A few hours pause for sleep won’t matter much in the scheme of things.
So it’s midnight when I wind up in Virginia, a little ways south of DC.
I pull into the first cheap motel I find and take their cheapest room.
Drag my sorry ass to my accommodation and all I want to do is fall into bed and sleep but I know I smell like ass, and look like it too.
So I practically crawl into the shower and I stand there letting the hot water sluice over me, rubbing the little bar soap over me in the most absent way, pushing shampoo through my chlorinated curls.
Clean, I think as I rinse off. Clean enough, anyway.
I hate it. Feels like I’m washing the last vestiges of Ash off my skin. Hard to believe just last night we were making love and I was close, so close, to telling him I was falling for him. Staring into his blue eyes in the mirror, still buried inside him, nosing his ear, breathing him in.
I do have one thing though, and that’s the shirt he slept in.
The heather gray one that says Do It In The Sand!
across the chest. Even though I don’t usually sleep with a shirt, I dig it out of my duffel and pull it on anyway.
Tug the collar up to my nose and breathe deeply and yes, it does still smell like him. It puts me marginally more at ease.
Only a few more hours in the scheme of things. Sleep a little, get up at eight, grab some food and gas and then fuck off. From here, Rhode Island’s about seven or eight more hours. Which is still so damn far.
I snap off the light and crawl into the double bed, feeling like I ran a marathon when all I did was sit behind the wheel.
All these days of driving are starting to take their toll on me.
I’d been looking forward to getting back home.
Being able to swim in the ocean, my ocean, and going to my gym. But doing it without Ash…
I wonder where he is right now. If he stopped somewhere for the night, some shitty motel or another, or if he found a ride to take him straight through.
Hopping from car to car until he gets to his destination, or a trucker working the night shift.
Perks of being a passenger princess, I guess. You don’t have to really ever stop.
Wonder if we’re looking at the same moon right now. Not quite full but still heavy in the sky, its bright light visible through the gap in the curtains. I don’t get up to close it in case we are. Looking, I mean.
I miss him so damn much. His absence is like someone’s taken a scoop out of my heart.
It’s such a tangible loss. I didn’t know you could miss someone that much.
I was bummed out when Adriana moved to Connecticut, but it was nothing like this.
To the point where I feel physically ill. Just on the verge of perpetual tears.
I lie there for thirty minutes unable to sleep, mind full and broken heart beating altogether too fast. And then thirty minutes drags into an hour, an hour and a half.
It’s 1:30 a.m. and I’m so tired I feel like I could collapse, if I wasn’t already lying down.
Brain doesn’t care what the body needs right now, I guess.
A really fantastic time for the insomnia to kick in.
I roll over, away from the window and towards the nightstand.
I stare at the phone and wish there was someone I could call.
Camila, maybe, except she’s pregnant and even though she might even be up, I don’t want to saddle her with this.
Coming out to Dad was already a terrifying enough experience for one day, anyway, even if he was receptive.
There is someone, though. Who I know for sure knows.
I sit up and pick up the receiver. The phone’s one of those rotary style ones, and I painstakingly dial a number that I haven’t in a very, very long time. I put it to my ear and listen to it ring, and on the fifth ring I hear a faint, sleepy, “Hello?”
“Hi, Gabe,” I say. “It’s me.”
“Sam?” He sounds amazed. “Do you know what time it is? What on earth are you doing calling at this hour?”
“Apologizing,” I say. “Like I should’ve a million years ago. Sorry the timing is fuckin’ weird, but it’s a weird time in my life.”
“Asere, you don’t…”
My throat seals itself shut at that. Asere. A stark reminder of what we were, what we could’ve been, if I’d actually given it half a chance. Maybe that would’ve been enough to save him from this fate. Another day, month, year. Who knows.
“I was a shit to you,” I say roughly. “Dropped you like a hot potato because I was scared little shit. It was unfair. So, I’m sorry.”
“Sam…” He goes quiet for a moment, then clears his throat. “You know, right? About me.”
I grip the receiver, that grief I’ve been holding at arm’s length seeping its way in. “Yeah. I know.”
He sighs softly. I can picture him perfectly, at least as I knew him back then. Golden skin, brown hair that always flopped in his dark eyes. “Russian roulette,” he says at last. “I caught the bullet.”
“I’m so fucking sorry, Gabe. You deserve so much better.”
“Not your fault. It is what it is.”
“Do you know—” I stop. “No, forget it. Never mind. Stupid question.”
“I don’t, anyway. It could’ve been anyone. People I don’t talk to or know anymore.” Gabriel sounds tired. “I reached out to as many people as I could afterwards. Told Vivi to tell you because you weren’t taking my calls. Did the best I could.”
“Gabe, I—”
“You’re sorry, I know, I heard you the first time. I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago.”
“Well, if you hadn’t, I’d get it. If you were still mad.”
“It’s been two years, Sam.”
“Yeah, and I didn’t even reach out to you after I found out.” I swallow hard. “I was being a bitch. Scared shitless testing myself, and then even after that I was just…I don’t know. There’s just no good excuse. I suck.”
He laughs a little. “Yeah. Sometimes you do really suck, Sam. But it’s okay.
It’s not an easy life. And you and me—we weren’t in love.
I was just frustrated back then, being dropped like that.
Or…maybe even jealous. You could go on and live your normal perfect life, and I couldn’t. I guess it really hit that home.”
“You can call me a shithead if it makes you feel better.”
“Maybe back then it would’ve,” he says wryly. “Not so much now. Water under the bridge, asere.”
“How are you? With everything. Is treatment going okay?”
“Started this new thing called combination therapy. That means taking about a thousand pills a day,” he sighs. “It’s not pleasant, but it’s supposed to, you know, stave it off a while longer. AIDS. So I guess it’ll be worth it. Expensive, but…”
“Wish there was something I could do.”
“So did you call at almost two in the morning just to assuage your guilt or something? Out of the blue? What’s the deal?”
“Not quite,” I say. “I…well, you probably don’t want to hear about my drama. I’m just happy to hear your voice, man.”
“Tell me.” He sounds brighter. He always was a gossip. “I’m so damn bored with my own sob story. Tell me yours. It’s only fair.”
So I do.
I tell him everything.
I tell him about how just a week ago I drove up the coast to visit the girlfriend I dated for two years just to prove to myself that I was straight, only to get dumped the minute I arrived.
About the gorgeous hitchhiker who begged me for a ride to Miami, who I somehow managed to fall in love with in a matter of days. How we blew apart.
“Cono, Sam,” he says. “Your life has more drama than mine, and I’m dying.”
“Hey, don’t fuckin’ say that. Heart’s still beating, ain’t it?”
“Actually,” he muses, “dying has been very boring so far.”
“Gabe.”
“Hey, it’s okay. It might take me a long time to die, but I will. I’m not gonna mince words.” I hear sheets rustle. In bed; of course he is. I woke him up. “So you’re going to get him, huh? This great love of your life.”
“I don’t know if he’s some great love,” I mumble, suddenly feeling awkward. It’s sorta weird to talk to an old fling about a new relationship. Especially now. Like…this. Our current circumstances.
Gabriel doesn’t seem bitter or anything, though. If anything, he’s hinging on it like it’s a romance novel. “Driving over a thousand miles to go get him when you don’t even know if you’ll wind up together sounds like a pretty grand gesture of love to me.”
“Did the same for Adriana,” I argue. “And look how that turned out.”
“But you didn’t want to bring her back, did you?”
I pause. “I made him a promise,” I say at last. “Told him I’d get him there. That’s all.”
“So coy, even now.” I think he’s smiling. “I’m happy for you.”
“Don’t. It might end in tragedy. Like most of my relationships, actually.”
He laughs softly. “You don’t have the best track record.”
“No, I don’t.” I shift the receiver to my other ear. “Gabe, we should hang. When I’m back in town. If you’re up to it, I mean. Whenever you want, whatever you wanna do. I’m down for it.”
“I’d like that, Sam,” he says. “I’d like it a lot.”
We talk a while longer, Gabriel and I. About everything, about nothing. About what he’s done and what he’s doing and what his life is like, beyond the HIV. He’s got a whole community rallying around him, including my tía Vivi. He’s not alone, at least.
It lifts my heart to hear it, but there’s still that anticipatory grief. Knowing, no matter what, his number is up. But I guess I let myself feel that. What is grief but the final translation of love?