Say You'll Remember Me(76)

I couldn’t see how I could say no. So I didn’t. “Welcome to the team.”

We shook on it.

When we went out to tell Maggie and Tina, they started screaming and ran to hug him. Then they started hugging me.

My phone rang and saved me. It was Samantha. I wriggled out of the PDA and swiped to answer.

“Hey—”

“Xavier…”

I froze. She was crying. “What’s wrong?”

Everyone stopped talking and looked at me.

“It’s my grandma. She didn’t wake up this morning. She died.”





34





SAMANTHA


I WOULD NEVER remember Christmas Eve the same way again. It would be the day my heart had been broken, probably for as long as I lived. A lifetime of good memories and moments wiped out by one tragic event and rebranded into the day the bad thing happened.

Everything was a blur.

I called Xavier. That was the first thing I did. It felt like sending out a pointless SOS. He couldn’t get here. I was shouting into the void like the Titanic beeping Morse code into the ether as it sank, even though nobody was going to make it in time to pull survivors from the icy waters.

Dad brought Mom to my apartment to get her out of the chaos. Tristan took the boys to get donuts so they wouldn’t see when the coroner showed up. I wish I’d thought of it before he did so I wouldn’t have to see it either. They brought her out feet first, wrapped in a blue body bag.

My sister and I answered questions clutching tissues. Neither of us really cried. It was more of a dazed sniffling in between because we had to keep it together enough for the tasks we had to perform.

After her body was gone, we had to clean her room. Jeneva balled up the sheets and the mattress protector and we stuffed it into the washing machine. Then my sister and I called funeral homes. Dad contacted the rest of the family, Tristan brought back donuts and ordered food later, which was probably the only reason any of us actually ate.

Mom kept asking for Grandma.

I had the foresight to preemptively medicate her. Everyone was crying and if Dad going to the gym had set her off, Grandma dying was going to be a thousand times worse. Not that she’d understand what had happened, but she would know that one of her constants was suddenly not there and that would be enough.

I know I was doing things, but I felt like I wasn’t doing anything. It felt like more needed to be done, important time-sensitive tasks, and I couldn’t remember it all and everything was taking too long and I was moving too slow.

I fed Pooter. I fed the pug. He pooped on the carpet in my room, probably because nobody let him out. I cleaned that up. I had a headache from crying—or not crying enough and trying to hold it in.

Then somehow it was nighttime. I took two melatonin and then two Advil PMs.

I didn’t expect Xavier to come. He said he would. The last thing he told me was “I’m coming.” But I hadn’t heard from him since I’d called him this morning. My fault, not his—I’d let my phone die, the truest indication of my mental headspace.

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.

I utterly lost my shit.

Guttural sobbing into his shirt. The breakdown I should have been having all day, but I’d been too busy adulting to properly lose it.

“Shhhhhhh, it’s okay.” Xavier smoothed my hair.

I couldn’t see him. It was dark in the room and I was buried in his chest, but even with my eyes closed I knew him. I’d know him anywhere. I felt rescued, like help had finally arrived. I didn’t have to be strong anymore, I could be a worm and he’d be a worm expert and I could just wiggle down in the dirt and rest my brain. I wanted him to hold me so tight I couldn’t breathe.

“Shhhhhh, I’m here,” he whispered.

I couldn’t even imagine the hoops he had to go through to make this happen. The astronomical cost of the last-minute Christmas airline ticket, covering the ER shift he was already covering for someone else, finding someone to watch Jake, canceling on the guys for the cabin.

My whole body racked with sobs.

She was gone. One minute she was alive, and then she wasn’t.

I thought Mom’s dementia was cruel. It was cruel. It was a long goodbye. But no goodbye was just as bad.





When I woke up at 10:15 the next morning, Xavier wasn’t there.

I thought for a second that I had imagined him here, that I’d been delirious with grief and it never happened. But then I saw his duffel bag by the bed and it made me burst back into tears.

I took a shower and put on clean clothes, brushed my hair because I didn’t want to be the girl with the rat’s nest in front of him. He was pretty much the only reason I was functioning at all.

When I pulled on his hoodie to leave for the house, I saw he’d fed Pooter, changed her water, and cleaned her litter box. The pug was also gone.

I found my dog and my boyfriend in the kitchen serving breakfast to the boys, who were sitting at the counter, feet dangling off barstools.

Xavier had made a whole pan of ham and cheese scrambled eggs. There was a massive stack of buttered toast on the island cut into triangles and a full pot of fresh coffee.