Say You'll Remember Me(19)

“My mom has dementia,” she said. “She’s fading away and I haven’t been home in seven months. Everyone is taking care of her but me and she doesn’t know my name anymore and I feel like that’s my fault because I could have come sooner but I didn’t because I wanted to forget it was happening. And then it happened without me and now I can’t get it back.” There was pain in her voice.

I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry…”

Then I told her something I didn’t tell anyone. “I don’t talk to my parents because they were abusive,” I said.

She sat up and looked at me. “Abusive how?” she asked.

I let a breath out through my nose. “Physically. Verbally. Mentally. Emotionally. I left when I was seventeen. I moved in with Jesse’s family and I never spoke to mine again.”

She looked stricken.

“I think…” I had to stop and start again. “I think that’s why my emotions don’t get away from me.”

“Why?”

“Because when I showed how I felt, that’s how they knew how to hurt me.”

I watched this move across her face. Understanding, empathy, sorrow. But for some reason it didn’t make me feel overexposed like I think it would with anyone else.

I didn’t talk about my childhood. To anyone. Ever. Only the guys knew what it was like, and they only knew because they’d been there.

There was something cathartic about admitting that it had shaped me in ways that weren’t always for the better.

For the most part I liked to think my upbringing had made me a stronger person. It taught me independence and self-reliance. I was someone who would never raise a hand to my own children, someone who knew the power of encouragement and compliments—even if it was too late for me to be the kind of man who could accept them myself.

My dad’s insults and barbs drove me. I heard them in the back of my mind, every day of my life, telling me I was lazy and pathetic and I would never amount to anything. Proving him wrong was the fuel behind every single thing I did.

I put myself through college and veterinary school working two jobs. I built my own practice from the ground up. I tried every day to be the kind of man who could look in the mirror and know that I was good and smart and accomplished no matter what he’d said.

And I was also the kind of man who didn’t open up easily. I didn’t trust people. Even Maggie and Tina, who obviously cared about me and would never hurt me, had to gather information about me from the glimpses they got by accident. I was too afraid to let anyone in and say the kinds of things that I’d just told Samantha after less than twelve hours in her presence.

And I don’t know why she did this to me. I just knew that she did.

She peered at me gently and I gazed back at her. Her mouth was red from the Ring Pop. Mine was probably blue. The disco ball shimmered and threw prisms over us and not a single part of any of this felt believable. I didn’t know how or in what way, I just knew something important was happening and that knowing it in real time was a gift.

The moment was shattered by the sound of a lock being turned.

The door to the room flung open.





8





SAMANTHA


I AM SO, so, so sorry.”

The manager had been apologizing to us for a solid five minutes. “Please, let me give you some gift certificates or…”

I grabbed my phone from the locker while Xavier told her in his scary calm but definitely disappointed in you voice that this could have had serious repercussions had one of us had medical issues.

My phone had thirty missed calls. I texted Jeneva I’m alive, I’m fine, I got locked in an escape room.

Then I looked at the time. It was almost 5:00 a.m. My flight was in two hours.

“We have to go,” I said, looking up. “Now. I can still make it.”

The manager followed us out, pleading with us to let her make it right.

“Train your staff,” Xavier said flatly. “And fix the door, you shouldn’t be able to lock it.”

“Yes. Absolutely,” she said, nodding while she ran after us. “Is there anything else I can do?”

He stopped and looked at her. “Actually there is.”

I held the lava lamp he made her give me in my lap the whole way back to my apartment.

When we got there I ran in, Xavier on my heels.

“I have to take a quick shower,” I said, already pulling his hoodie over my head while he stood in my living room looking around in bewilderment.

“Where is your furniture?” he asked.

“I don’t have any.”

Pooter came running out of my room and he picked her up.

“Her gabapentin is in the kitchen,” I said, darting to the bathroom. I closed the door, finished stripping, and started brushing my teeth while the water heated up. Then I jumped in and took the fastest shower I’d ever had in my life while I swished mouthwash. I didn’t really have time for any of this, but I’d rather miss my flight than wear the dirt from the floor of the escape room to California.

I came out a few minutes later with my only towel wrapped around me. Xavier was in my room.

“Your bed is an air mattress,” he said.

“I know. Can you deflate it for me while I get dressed?”