46
SAMANTHA
Three Months Later
D ID YOU SEE the post?” I grinned.
“I did,” Xavier said. “He’s got two hundred applications.”
I did a little jumpy thing in the living room.
In addition to the freelancing I did in my spare time, I’d been writing all the animal bios for the rescue Xavier volunteered at for the last three months. About every third or fourth one went viral.
This week was a bio for a tabby named Apple Bottom Jeans—my name choice. I called him the guy your mom always warned you about: toxic, controlling, unemployed, and watching you at 3:00 a.m. with night vision. Comes with boots with the fur.
“The traffic crashed the website,” he said.
I gasped. “Really?”
“Really.”
“I don’t know if I should be proud or feel bad for the IT guy.”
He chuckled. “You’re doing for animal rescue what you did for mustard. You should be proud. Even if you are a menace to the server.”
I smiled. I was having so much fun. I loved bending the internet to my will, it was my favorite pastime.
Things were good. I felt fulfilled. More than I thought I would. And for the first time in a long time, I was me again. The me I remembered.
I started doing Mom’s makeup again. Tristan went back to dyeing her hair. I painted her nails and dressed her in pretty tops. I took a tip from Xavier and got her headphones so she could listen to music. She loved music. I made her playlists of all the songs on the tapes in the Dart and she listened for hours. It calmed her down.
I found ways to put color in her gray world again. I found ways to put it in mine too. Even if the color wasn’t Xavier.
I hadn’t seen him in three months, since the trip we spent in the hospital. And we had no plans to be alone in a room together any time soon.
I missed him terribly. I always did.
It was our one-year anniversary today. Well, one year since we met. We counted it though because we both agreed it was over for both of us the second I called him an asshole.
“I wish I could see you today,” I said, my smile fading a little at the edges.
“Soon.”
“There’s a four-day weekend coming up in a few weeks and Jeneva said she can watch Mom for me. I think I’ll try and get tickets then,” I said.
“Okay. You’re getting flowers later.”
I perked up again. “Am I? You’re getting special pictures later.”
“ Am I?” he said, a smile in his voice. “I like those.”
I smiled down at the carpet.
“Do you remember the first time you saw me?” I asked.
“Of course. I remember every single thing about it.”
“Me too,” I said. “I remember when you came into the room—it felt like a shift in the air pressure. You had on dark blue scrubs and your hair was sort of messy. No beard. You looked so serious. You saw the kitten in my shirt and you had absolutely zero reaction to it, just a complete mask.”
“Oh, I reacted to it,” he said. “My heart was pounding, I was nervous. I thought you were so beautiful, and it made me self-conscious.”
“What if I hadn’t come back into the clinic?” I asked. “What if I’d just moved to California and you never saw me again?”
“I would have thought about you for the rest of my life. Even after only a few minutes. You would have haunted me forever. You’re not someone you forget.”
I smiled softly.
“I have something else for you,” he said. “I made you an anniversary playlist.”
“Awwww, you did?”
“Can you go out in the yard?” he asked. “Put your headphones in? Listen to it?”
I glanced at Mom on the sofa. “Sure. I’ll take Mom outside. We’re due for a little sunshine before dinner anyway,” I said.
“Okay. I have to get going. I love you,” he said.
“I love you.”
He sent me the link and then hung up.
He did the playlist thing a lot. We’d learned to be creative. There were ways we could connect, even if they weren’t in person like I preferred. We watched shows together at the same time, we video called. He actually had time for that now that he wasn’t working a thousand hours a week.
I did the math. I got to see him about twenty days a year.
I’d been to summer camps longer than that.
It was fine. It wasn’t what I really wanted. It never would be. But it was enough because at least it was something.
I was getting Mom’s shoes on when my sister came home.
“Oh hey, I was just about to text you,” she said, hanging her purse on the hook by the door. “Dad’s bringing Italian for dinner. Tristan wants to know what wine you want him to bring up.”
“Hmmm. Maybe a red blend?”
“Okay. Maybe I’ll tell him to pick two. Oh, and Dad’s going out tomorrow, just so you know,” she said, pulling off her boots. “Tristan said he’d take Mom.”
I smiled to myself.
My brother had really stepped up. They all had, but especially him. The come-to-Jesus moment did what I’d hoped it would. He didn’t give Dad any more shit. We’d moved Mom into Grandma’s old room so Dad could go to sleep before she did. Tristan was third shift now. He covered Mom from after dinner to bedtime seven days a week. Jeneva and Dad did weekends and I got the two days off.
I couldn’t tell you if it would work forever, but it was working for now. We were a team again.
We were a family again.
Jeneva looked at her watch. “Want me to take Mom?”
“No, I was taking her out to the yard. Xavier sent me an anniversary playlist he wants me to hear.”
She looked at me softly. “Oh, I forgot that’s today. I’m sorry you can’t see him.”
“Yeah.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it being separated all the time. I could never.”
I scoffed to myself. My life was full of nevers.
A mom who would never say my name again. Jewelry still lost that I’d never find. A boyfriend who I’d never get the chance to get sick of.
I led Mom to the yard and put her in the gazebo and put my earphones in.
I didn’t look at the songs first. I liked to just hear the playlist the way he meant for me to experience it, one after the other without knowing what was coming. Sort of like life.
I did what I always did. I walked around the yard, picked kumquats and peeled the skins and ate them. I stood on the edge of the pond and looked at the koi while “Harvest Moon” played in my ears. And I thought about him. About us and all our nevers.
About the life we’d never have together. The marriage that we agreed we wanted but would make no sense with our circumstances. The family we couldn’t start, the menagerie of animals we’d never adopt because I didn’t want them without him here. The nights alone, the sound of his voice through a Bluetooth speaker while dogs bark in the kennels behind him, the fading scent of his body on a hoodie I’d taken. His beard growing in and getting shaved with the ebb and flow of the seasons we’d spend apart. Finding something unimportant that he’s accidentally left behind. A ChapStick on my nightstand, a receipt for gas bought two thousand miles away. Kisses at the airport, those precious whispers in the dark when he’s finally here and I can feel the press of his lips or the tickle of his breath on my mouth. The luxury of seeing him brushing his teeth in my bathroom or the hard outline at the front of his pants while he’s watching me change into my pajamas. Sand under a towel, waves crashing in the moonlight, a nibble to my lip, contemplative gazes across a cheap fast-food table.
All of it worth it.
All of it memories I would never trade for anything, even though our future together is impossible. Because even though it isn’t possible, it doesn’t mean it isn’t perfect.
Sometimes never is enough.
Someone tapped my shoulder. I jumped and pulled out my earbud and turned to face a hovering bouquet of roses.
At first I thought maybe my flowers got delivered and Jeneva had run them out to the yard for me. But then they lowered. Xavier was standing there on the other side.
I almost broke in half right then and there.
I threw myself into his arms.
“You’re here…” I gasped.
He held me so tight I could barely breathe.
“Surprise,” he said into my hair.
I did a little laugh-cry.
“I thought we agreed not to do any more surprise visits after the last time,” I said.
“Did we?” he whispered.
All I could do was laugh and hold him harder.
This was the best anniversary gift I could ever ask for. Him. His smell, the feel of his body pressed into mine, the rumble of his chest when he speaks. A gift.
I pulled away and kissed him. He put the flowers down to kiss me back properly.
When he was done he pulled away and studied me. “I missed you so much,” he whispered, rubbing a thumb on my cheek.
I know we saw each other on video calls and we sent pictures, but he looked so much better in person. Rested, like a normal human being who didn’t work eighty hours a week. He’d shaved his beard for the spring. He looked the way he did when I met him.
Another slide, jumping ahead.
I would always experience him like this. Long waits and big changes. A reminder that every time I saw him, I was remembering the time before and how he’d become different in the distance between visits.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, wiping under my eyes. “It would have given me something to look forward to.”
“Because the look on your face gave me something to look forward to,” he said.
“Yeah, but—”
I stopped and stared at something happening in the gazebo. Mom was on her knees, laughing. Petting a dog? But it wasn’t Pugsly…
I squinted. “Is that… Jake ?” I said, blinking over his shoulder. I looked up at him. “You flew your dog in?” I asked. “Maggie couldn’t watch him?”
“She could, but it wouldn’t make any sense for a one-way trip.”
It took me a moment. The words had to swirl around my brain for a second before I heard them in the right order.
“What do you mean one-way trip?” I said carefully.
He smiled. Then he stepped aside.
His SUV was parked in the driveway behind him.
I stared at it, my heart pounding. “No… Xavier, please don’t play with me.”
“I’m not,” he said.
“You didn’t…”
“Yes. I did.”
I looked up at him. “But… your practice!”
“I don’t care,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t care about any of it. I’m tired of waiting forever.”
I smacked a hand over my mouth. “Xavier, it’s too much,” I breathed. “You had to give up too much. This had to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done—”
“No. Being without you is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I’m sorry I put you through it. I should have ended up here sooner, but I had to come to it on my own.”
Tears started to sting my eyes. “What made you?”
“Hank,” he said. “He made me think about it. About what was keeping me there. At the end of the day it wasn’t the business. It was them. I didn’t want my parents to see me fail, and really that’s exactly what I was doing anyway. I was failing myself trying to prove that I measure up to people I don’t give a shit about. And for what? Pride? The last word? I don’t care what they think or what they say or the narrative they run with when there’s a for lease sign on the door. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to forget them. It’s what they deserve.”
“But your friends—”
“They helped me pack. They’re happy for me. Couldn’t get me out of there fast enough.”
I laughed, wiping under my eyes.
“I did what I could to mitigate the damage,” he said. “I waited until my lease was up on my apartment. I sold all my furniture. Hank is going to keep working three days a week until Maggie and Tina can find new jobs and my patients can find new vets. And then I’ll liquidate what I can and…” He stopped to give me the contemplative gaze I’d missed so much. “I want to stop living one flight to California at a time. I want to wake up every day and be alone in a room with you. I want to witness your life and have you witness mine. I want a parallel line and the fantasy world we talked about to be real. I want us to make memories.”
I studied him and he tucked my hair behind my ear.
“I have nothing, Samantha. I don’t even have a job. I’m about to be several hundred thousand dollars in debt, I’m broke. All I have is my veterinary license, and I’m not even licensed in California yet—”
“Xavier…”
He looked at me like maybe I was going to send him home.
“This is a very weird way to ask me to marry you.”
I watched the smile spread across his face.
“Will you?” he asked, his voice a little thick.
I nodded. “A thousand times yes.”
He let out a relieved laugh and I jumped into his arms.
He was here. He was always going to be here. I would get to wake up with him and fall asleep in the same bed and get wings on a random Wednesday and collect animals together. Whatever we wanted. We could make it up as we go.
Mom was standing in the door of the gazebo watching us. She was beaming from ear to ear. She knew. Something ingrained that told her she was seeing true love. Her heart remembering even though her brain had forgotten. She didn’t know who I was or who he was. But she still knew what love was.
Maybe that’s the last thing we forget. Or we never forget it at all. Not really. We lose the words to say it. We lose the ability to show it. But we never lose the ability to feel it or recognize it when we see it.
Love is the brightest color in a gray world.