Chapter 16
XAVIER
"You can ask me on a date," Isabelle said.
They were at the pho place. His wife was sitting across from him with her hands wrapped around a cup of tea because the pho was too hot and she was making him wait while she blew on it, which was a thing she did now, made him wait, and he was learning to love the waiting.
Xavier set his chopsticks down.
"A real one," she said. “I mean. If you want.”
She blushed, looking down at her pho. God, she was beautiful. He ached to reach out and take her hand. Instead, he simply smiled and asked: “Will you go on a date with me?"
"When?"
"Friday. Seven o'clock. I'll pick you up."
"Where are we going?"
"I'll figure that out. You'll have to trust me."
She looked at him, her expression warm, guarded and wanting all at once. And she said, "Okay."
So. Xavier was going to court his wife. His pregnant, separated, still justifiably angry, extraordinary, beautiful wife.
He was going to court her properly, the way he should have been courting her for the last decade, the way that meant paying attention to who she actually was and what she actually wanted…
not what he assumed she wanted because he'd never bothered to ask.
Xavier started with the restaurant.
Not one of his fancy restaurants. He spent two days researching. He called Douglas, which was a sentence he could not have imagined forming six months ago, and said, "I need your help. I'm taking Isabelle on a date and I don't want to take her anywhere I would normally go."
Douglas was quiet for a beat. "You're calling me for restaurant advice."
"I'm calling you because you know what she likes and I'm realizing I don't. Not this part of her. Not the part that eats burritos at seven in the morning and has a regular order at a taqueria on Clement."
"She eats burritos at seven in the morning?"
"Cold. Leftover. Standing at the kitchen counter."
"I love that woman." Douglas paused. "There's a place in Bernal Heights. Amal's. Moroccan. It's in a converted garage. Eight tables, no sign on the door, you have to know someone. The tagine is the best thing I've ever eaten and the owner plays oud on Fridays."
"Is it..."
"If you ask me if it's nice I'm hanging up. It's amazing. It's just not what you'd call nice."
Xavier found Amal's on a Tuesday evening and ate there alone.
The garage had been painted deep blue on the inside.
There were brass lanterns hanging from the ceiling and the tables were mismatched wood and the tagine was, as Douglas had promised, the best thing he'd ever eaten.
The owner, a man named Amal with silver hair and a quiet laugh, played oud in the corner and the music was like nothing Xavier had heard before: close, warm and full of longing.
He booked a table for Friday.
He picked her up at seven. She opened the front door and he looked at her, seventeen weeks now, in a dark red dress he'd never seen, her hair down, her belly visible and proud. The sight of her went through him with a force that bypassed every defense he had.
"You're staring," she said.
"I'm always going to stare. I've accepted this about myself."
She laughed and took his arm. They drove to Bernal Heights and she watched the neighborhoods change through the window.
"Where are we going?"
"Trust me," he said, smiling.
"I'm working on it," she replied. The sentence held everything between them, all the weight, the work and the hope. He heard it, held it and didn't try to make it lighter.
Amal's undid her. He watched it happen. She walked through the door and stopped, her eyes moving from the lanterns to the painted walls to the worn wood tables to the oud player in the corner.
Her mouth opened, she turned to Xavier and he could see it on her face…
the same expression she wore when she found a set of rosette blocks buried under bad paint.
She was looking at a room that someone had built with love, attention and no interest whatsoever in impressing anyone.
She recognized it immediately because she'd spent her entire life building rooms like this.
"How did you find this place?" she whispered.
"Douglas."
She looked at him. Her eyes went bright and wet, and she blinked it away, sat down and picked up the menu. "Tell me everything about the tagine."
That was the first date.
The second was the following Tuesday. He took her to a tile shop on Balboa Street that she'd mentioned at one of their baby lunches, the one that carried Portuguese azulejos.
He said nothing while she moved through the narrow aisles running her fingers over hand-painted tiles and explaining the history of each pattern.
Xavier listened. He watched her hands. He watched her talk to the tiles the way Douglas had told him she talked to houses. He asked questions and she answered them.
They went to the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park a few days later.
She told him about the restoration work that had been done on the pagoda.
He listened and asked how they'd matched the original joinery.
They went to a salvage yard in Oakland and she found a set of Craftsman-era light fixtures that made her gasp.
He bought them before she could protest and said, "For the Soto house.
Consider it an investment in your business.
" She'd held the fixtures against her chest, her face softening.
The weeks accumulated. He picked her up for dates; she picked the places and he showed up, paid attention, asked questions. They went to a bookstore in North Beach where she bought him a book on Arts and Crafts architecture and inscribed it: For the man who's learning to see.
They went to an exhibition at the de Young on American vernacular design and she stood in front of a photograph of a Greene and Greene bungalow for so long that a security guard asked if she was all right.
They went to a dim sum place in the Sunset that Margaret and Jonathan had recommended and ate soup dumplings and har gow and laughed about things that had nothing to do with their marriage, the baby or the mess they were still inside.
The baby grew. Twenty weeks. At that appointment, during the ultrasound, Doctor Levine turned the wand and paused. "Do you want to know the sex?"
Isabelle looked at Xavier. He looked at her. They hadn't discussed it, but somehow, in the glance, the answer was immediate and mutual.
"No," Isabelle said.
"We want to be surprised," Xavier said. "We've had enough of running the numbers."
The line was self-aware enough that Isabelle smiled. Doctor Levine nodded and moved on.
Twenty-two weeks. The kicks were visible now through her clothes; he’d watch her hand go to her belly mid-sentence. Her eyes would soften and she'd press her palm flat and say, "Active today.”
Xavier wanted to put his hand there too, wanted it so badly he could taste it, but he waited.
He waited until the day she took his hand at the dim sum place and put it on her belly without asking, without ceremony, just lifted his hand off the table and pressed it against the curve of her and said, "Right there. Feel that?"
He did. A kick, strong and insistent, pushing against his palm.
The sound that came out of him was a raw, wrecked noise that made the couple at the next table look over.
Isabelle smiled. She kept his hand there.
She held it with both of hers. He could see her pulse in her wrist and wanted to press his thumb against it, that old habit.
She must have seen it in his face because she moved his hand gently and placed his thumb on her pulse herself.
"There," she said. "Before you explode."
He almost kissed her. He wanted to kiss her so badly that the wanting was a physical thing, a heat that started in his chest. But he didn't. He didn't because this wasn't his to take.
If she wanted to kiss him she would kiss him.
He'd learned that on the sidewalk outside the house after the gala, when she'd put her hands on his face and closed the distance herself.
She would come to him. He would wait, even though it would be torture.
He waited. Through the twenty-fourth week, when the baby was the size of a cantaloupe and Isabelle was more beautiful than he'd ever seen her, her body full, curved and carrying their child.
The old him would have felt a possessive pride.
The new him just felt a loving pride. Through dinners and lunches and walks they grew closer, but the space between them was still there.
Still populated with his ugly words in their kitchen months ago.
But the space was diminishing. At least he hoped it was.
At twenty-five weeks, on a Friday night, he drove her home from Amal's, which had become their place now, theirs, the way the pho restaurant was theirs and El Castillito was theirs.
She'd had the tagine. he'd had the couscous and Amal had played something slow and aching on the oud.
Isabelle had closed her eyes and listened.
Xavier had watched her listen and wanted her with a desperation that was almost painful.
He walked her to the door. She stood on the step and smiled at him.
"Come inside," she said.
His heart stopped. Or it did something that resembled stopping: a pause, a suspension, a held breath of the blood.
"Are you sure?"
"Come inside, Xavier."
He followed her through the front door, and she turned to him in the living room and put her hands on his chest. He could feel his own heartbeat under her palms. Her eyes were dark blue in the low light, her lips were parted and she was looking at him with an expression that was desire, trust and something that was close to surrender but wasn't surrender at all. It was a choice. She was choosing him.
"I'm not ready for… everything," she said. "But I want you to touch me. I've missed you touching me."
He put his hands on her face. He held her jaw and tilted her mouth up to his and kissed her with a tenderness that was new, that belonged to this version of them, the version that had been broken and was being rebuilt.
She made a sound against his mouth, a soft, catching breath, and her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt.
Xavier walked her backward toward the sofa. She went willingly, her hands on his shoulders, and when the backs of her knees hit the cushion she sat and he knelt in front of her. She looked down at him with those beautiful eyes and his chest was so full he couldn't breathe.
"Tell me if you want me to stop," he said. "At any point. For any reason."
"I don't want you to stop."
He slid his hands up her legs, over her knees, along her thighs, pushing the hem of her dress as he went. Her skin was warm. Her breath quickened. He kissed the inside of her knee; she shivered and her hand found his hair.
"Xavier."
His name in her mouth. Low and breathless.
He kissed higher, the inside of her thigh, and she opened for him, her fingers tightening in his hair.
He looked up at her. Her head was tipped back against the sofa, her eyes half-closed, her lips parted.
The swell of her belly was right there, their baby, between his mouth and her heart, and the intimacy of it overwhelmed him.
She was letting him back in. Not all the way.
Not yet. Here. This. Her hand in his hair, his mouth on her skin and her voice saying his name.
Xavier took his time. He kissed the inside of her thigh, then higher, his mouth tracing a slow path until he found her, warm, wet and wanting.
She made a sound that wasn't a word, her hips lifting off the sofa.
He pressed her gently back down and held her there, his hands firm on her hips, and kissed her again, slowly, his tongue finding the rhythm that made her breath catch.
He found what she needed and stayed there, steady, patient, his mouth soft and sure. Isabelle opened for him completely, her thighs trembling against his shoulders, her hand fisting in his hair.
He could taste her. He could feel the heat of her skin against his mouth and the involuntary movements of her hips. The tension built in her thighs, and he wanted to stay here forever, on his knees in front of this woman, earning her with his mouth, his hands and every ounce of love and attention.
Isabelle gasped, her back arched.
“Xavier,” she gasped.
He stayed with her, steady, his hands on her hips, his mouth moving against her, with her, reading each shudder and sigh and adjusting, slowing when she needed slow, pressing deeper when her hips rose to meet him.
Her breathing fractured. Her thighs clamped against his ears and her whole body went taut, a bow drawn to its limit, and he held her there for one long, trembling moment before she broke.
When she came, she came with a cry that she muffled against the back of her own hand, her whole body shaking, pulsing against his mouth. He stayed with her through every wave of it, gentle now, easing her down.
After, he sat beside her on the sofa and she leaned against him, her head on his shoulder, her hand on her belly, her breathing still uneven.
"Stay," she said. "Just tonight. One of the guest rooms. I'm not ready for the bedroom."
"Okay."
"I mean it. Guest room.”
"I'll sleep on the roof if you want."
She smiled. “The guest room is fine.” She pressed closer. "Xavier?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you for waiting."
He put his arm around her. He held her against his side, pressed his mouth into her hair and breathed.
“I’ll wait a lifetime if I have to," he murmured.
Isabelle smiled and fell asleep against him. He stayed awake. He held her gently, loosely.
Her hand was on her belly. The baby kicked once against her palm, hard enough that he could see the movement through her dress. He watched it and pressed his hand over hers and held it there.
“I’m working on earning her back,” he whispered to their child. “How do you think I’m doing? Good?”
Another kick. Xavier smiled. “I’ll take that as a yes, kiddo.”