This Story Might Save Your Life(14)

In those three months, I felt anxious and ineffectual. Lonely.

In those three months, I met Xander.

Ours was the quintessential coffee shop meet-cute. He grabbed my cappuccino, I grabbed his; we realized our mistake at the same time.

“Triple shot with oat milk and a dash of cinnamon?” he asked, reading off my cup with a sweet, melodic accent.

I read his; it was the same. “I guess there’s no point in switching…” I did a double take at the name scrawled in marker. “Zander?”

“With an X, not a Z.” He glanced down at the drink that was supposed to be mine. “I’m guessing no one ever misspells your name.”

“Roy?” I shook my head, deadpan. “Never.”

He laughed, and my lips spread into a grin.

“Your dimple is perfect,” he said.

“Your hair is very blond.”

“Would you like to join me at my table?”

He had the kind of smile you might expect in a Jane Austen movie: perfectly imperfect. Only, with that hair, those blue eyes, and those razor-sharp cheekbones, the effect was more Thor than Darcy. I like Thor. And so I said yes.

There was no lull in the conversation. He seemed to find me interesting; in turn, I felt interesting. My tract-home childhood in the Inland Empire wasn’t boring at all! Graphic design is riveting!

Xander had recently quit a high-stress regional management position at Hugo Boss in order to try his hand in the entertainment industry. “My father produces C-movies, which pay the bills, but I’m aiming for B’s and hopefully, eventually, A’s.” He was twelve when his parents divorced; that same year, his father moved him and his five-year-old sister from Denmark to Los Angeles.

“You weren’t even a teenager yet,” I said. “I’d have guessed you were a recent transplant with that accent.”

“I don’t want to lose it,” he said self-consciously. “I’ve been told it’s charming.”

Whoever told him this was not wrong. I lowered my head to hide my flush and backtracked slightly, expressing surprise that his father moved him so far from his mother.

He shrugged. “My mother wasn’t cut out for parenting.”

“Do you ever see her?”

“She’s not around anymore. Neither is my dad, for that matter.”

This made me think of Benny. When I said I was sorry for his loss, he waved my condolence away. “No no, not like that. They’re just doing their own thing.”

“Then I’m sorry for that loss.”

He tilted his head in a thoughtful way. “Me too.”

We sat there for two hours, long enough for me to grow tired. When I mentioned my sleep disorder, he propped his chin on his palm. “Narcolepsy,” he said, as if savoring the word. “How wonderfully unique.”

There were no tasteless jokes about Sleeping Beauty or indelicate comments about how nice it must be to get so much sleep. He didn’t suggest I was milking it in order to take advantage of disability benefits on account of the fact that I “don’t look disabled.” (Oh yes, friends, I’ve heard it all.) Xander said all the right things. I was wonderfully unique.

We went on two dates in two nights, both ending on my doorstep with a gentle kiss. I wasn’t sure what to make of this surprising development, but Xander was kind and handsome, and I was lonely.

On the third night, I came down with a high fever.

“I’ll bring you soup,” he said over the phone.

I was fairly certain this fever was the newest in a revolving door of drug-related side effects, so I let him. He arrived not with soup, but with the ingredients for soup, which he proceeded to make from scratch in my kitchen. I don’t remember nodding off, but when I awoke a few hours later he was beside me on the comforter, hair adorably rumpled.

“Did I sloup through…” Hearing myself, I tried again, doing my best to enunciate. “Sleep. Through the soup?”

He smiled, like this was the cutest thing he’d ever heard. “You did.” His lips turned down. “Unfortunately, I may have also caught the bug.”

I felt his forehead; he was burning up.

We stayed in bed for the next several days, shivering and snuggling under blankets, watching movies, holding hands, napping, slurping broth. Through our fever hazes, we got to know each other at fever pitch, and it was, hand on heart, one of the most romantic weeks of my life.

By the time Benny had packed his last box and turned over the keys to his childhood home, I’d fallen hard. Only problem was, Benny knew nothing about it. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. It didn’t feel right to mention my own happiness while he was still deeply grieving.

I brought him pizza the night he returned. “I missed you,” I said, pulling him into a hug.

“I missed you too.” He held on for longer than usual. “You have no idea.”

“You changed shampoos.” I sniffed. “Eucalyptus?”

“Good nose.” He ran a hand through his curls and sank down onto the couch. “It was my dad’s.”

I dished out the slices. He took a bite and sighed. “It’s good to be home.”

“I’m sure. Is the house for sale now?”

“As of yesterday.”

“Does it feel weird?”