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“My brother will never be the bigger person. He will only be the bigger bitch.”
The kiss was slow and easy, but my heart pounded anyway. Something about her just felt right. She’d felt right from the very beginning I realized.
I hung up and stood there for a moment with my hands on my hips. I was smiling. I wiped it off my face and came back out.
My cell phone pinged and I pulled it out. It was Samantha. A picture of her and her mom taking a shot of orange juice. I smiled. My girlfriend. The word. It made me so happy. Everything about her made me happy. Except where she lived.
“Well, I’m getting her the cute ones,” Tristan said. “She’s not gonna be in some hideous old lady nappy.”
He’d told me about his financial situation. He really did not have disposable income. Now that I knew that, it made the donation he gave Pooter all that more generous.
I had been given a blessing from the benevolent mustard gods.
“He’s so far away, Tristan.” He scoffed. “And? This isn’t 1851. You’re not waiting five months for a handwritten letter coming on a steam train. Get your shit together.”
My heart swelled just looking at him.
And then I realized. None of the fear and worry I had was because I didn’t think it would work. The fear and worry was because I knew it would.
There would be weeks upon weeks of boring gray without him and then two or three days of color.
Make memories when I could. With everything in life, it’s what you can live with. It always is. And this was still better than nothing.
Then Xavier glanced at me, standing outside his door. There was a split second of blank. The blank I got from Mom. The nothingness. Then a wave of beautiful recognition moved across his face. I’d taken recognition for granted my whole life. The way it lights someone up, how it can speak to you without a word across a crowded room. That split second of raw reaction when you’re seen and known. Relief, joy, happiness at locking eyes with someone you were looking for or seeing someone you didn’t expect.
So this was going to be my life now. Long droughts without him, with short bursts of this. This was worth it.
“I wish you would have told me you were coming. I would have gotten iced coffee for the fridge.” He was still smiling.
I’d stood for an extra-long time in front of his framed veterinary license on the wall, studying it. I was so proud of him.
He swiveled my luggage into a corner, then turned around and pulled me into another embrace. He was so happy to see me. I could feel it in his arms, in his energy. It pulsed through him like electricity and it lit me up too.
“I’ll carry you anywhere you need to go,” he said, lowering himself over me. I giggled and he smiled, breathing into the kiss he pressed to my mouth.
“I missed you so much,” he whispered. “I missed you too. My boyfriend.” I smiled. His face lit up at the word. I had wondered if it had the same kind of magic that girlfriend had for me. I guess it did.
“I have to get up and iron my clothes for tomorrow.” I started getting out of bed. “I’ll do it,” he said, getting up. “No, you don’t have to iron my stuff.” “I want to.”
He had a bottle of Murkle’s in the door. He’d tossed the French’s mustard. My heart melted. He hadn’t known I was coming. He just had this in a secret show of loyalty. Honoring all my tiny allegiances and petty vendettas. This was my love language.
A core memory. The best moments don’t have to be big to be forever.
“Well, my dream woman is a glass-half-full kind of person. She fights for what she wants and believes in the humanity of others—and she’s usually right. She makes the most of bad situations, deeply dislikes heights. She’s funny. Smells great. A fan of seashells and mustard, hates chorizo. And she never brings the right jacket.” I raised my eyes to hers.
I would never forget that moment when I saw her through the glass yesterday. Looking out the door and seeing her standing there, holding the handle on her luggage, wearing a sweater with a scarf wrapped around her neck. She didn’t have the right jacket. The memory of that moment was already tucked away. My brain had wrapped around it, storing it in the place I kept my most special things.
It’s weird knowing what’s going to be in your end-of-life montage, as it’s happening. But I already knew when my life flashed before my eyes, the best parts of it were going to be about her.
It was worth it because nothing made me feel as good as this. Nothing. I loved waking up with her in the morning and that I would get to come home to her tonight. I loved going out to eat and talking about our days and making plans for tomorrow. I loved that she was going to use my shower and my pillow would smell like her hair. Being alone in a room with her.
I already felt the loss of her leaving and she only just got here.
“If you could be an egg for a year in exchange for a million dollars, but you’d have to find someone to keep you safe during that time and not break you, and if they do break you they get the million, who would you pick?” “You,” I said without thinking about it.
There’s no cure for dementia. Even if you have a million dollars.” “If there was, that’s what I would use the money for,” I said, meaning it.
“Okay. Your favorite restaurant, then. And can I wear one of your hoodies?” “You can have anything of mine on your body, anytime.”
“I’m still low-key terrified of Shannon Horwedel from the third grade. She made fun of some white shorts my mom had washed with a red shirt and it turned them pink. She called me Pinky the whole rest of the school year and got all the rest of the kids to call me that too. I hate her to this day. I saw her once at the Grove and I did this tuck-and-roll thing behind a bush.”
I was always waiting. Waiting for him to be off so he could call. Waiting for him to get a second to text me, waiting for him to watch the reel I sent him two hours ago when he was in surgery. Waiting for him to come back.
It was like he was always thinking about me. A crow, bringing me shiny things. But really, all I wanted him to bring me was him.
“Would it make you happy?” I asked. “Yesssss.” “Then I will do it.”
I wanted to talk to Samantha because this whole thing made me feel too vulnerable and I didn’t want to be emotionally naked in front of anyone but her. And that was the moment I knew two things. The first was that I could never let my parents see me fail. Ever. I could never shutter this business. It would validate everything they thought about me and I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. And the second was that I was head over heels in love with my girlfriend. And that was worse than I thought it was too.
“Really? When your daddy met you, he wanted to kill you.” Xavier took her from me and laid her on his chest. “Well, to be fair, you didn’t have a butthole, sweetie.”
“You talked in your sleep,” I said. His brow furrowed. “I did?” “Yeah.” I smiled wryly. “What did I say?” “You whispered ‘come on Eileen.’”
“Because if you were my wife you would be my world. Everything starts with you and ends with you. Anything else is just the stuff that happens in the middle.”
No, my parents would never know her. They didn’t deserve to.
“Xavier, the penis that flew in from Minnesota. Nice to meet you.”
Believe me, they do. Nobody works faster than horny women. They probably found you hours ago.”
“You would want to do worm things. You would have worm needs.” “So no?” “So I would take care of you,” he said. “I’d learn everything there is to know about worms. I’d become a worm expert. I’d put you in a flowerpot. I’d make sure your soil was warm and you were safe. I’d set you on a windowsill—but not too high, so you wouldn’t be scared.”
“I wouldn’t know if you still understood me, but I’d talk to you anyway.” Kiss. “I’d play music I know you like and I’d plant flowers for you.” Kiss. “I’d decorate your pot with seashells. I’d never leave you alone. I’d take you with me everywhere. I’d have your lava lamp and a bottle of Murkle’s Mustard where you could see it from your pot—”
Being this far away from Samantha was brutal. It was like starving, all the time. Getting a taste of something every few weeks and never getting full and then going back to starving again.
“Mom said his profile popped up on Facebook and she clicked it just to see, and he was bitching and moaning about junk mail and campaign texts.”
Then at 1:08 a.m. Christmas morning I felt a dip on the side of my bed. Suddenly I was wrapped in firm familiar warm arms and for the first time in sixteen hours I was held together enough by someone to completely fall apart.
The boys nodded at him like their messiah had spoken and went back to eating their eggs.
On the nightstand next to the lava lamp was a single Advil PM and a single, lone earbud. “Nooooooo!” “What happened?” Xavier said from behind me. I turned slowly. “I swallowed my earbud.”
“God, this day is a fucking nightmare,” I muttered. “And now you can’t even watch cat videos in surround sound.”
CAN 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.
