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I considered. “That makes sense, I guess. Like how Italians like to eat their prosciutto with melon.”
Xavier nodded, pleased. “Exactly.”
I took another bite of the tofu, then looked up to find him watching me intently, his bottom lip pulled between his teeth like he was trying to hide a smile. Oh, Xavi, just let it out, I wanted to tell him. Suddenly, I wanted to see that smile more than anything else in the world.
“Well, whatever they do, it’s amazing,” I said. “You’ve got your work cut out for you.”
He leaned across the table, conspiracy and mischief blazing merrily across his honed features. “I could do better.”
I swallowed, frozen in his intensity, my next bite poised, but unmoving.
Then he winked. Xavier Parker actually winked.
Joy—and maybe a little hope—sprang in my belly along with the delicious tastes on my tongue.
And then we both settled down to enjoy the rest of the dish.
* * *
We talkedour way through four more courses, and several glasses of wine and sake, while Xavier listened to stories about Sofia growing up. It was strange being with someone who actually wanted to know everything about the little creature who was the center of my life. I spent so much of my time trying not to be that parent who couldn’t stop talking about their kid, but also envious of the people who had a partner to share the interest. My sisters and brother dealt with it, but they were her aunts and uncle, not her parents. They cared, but not enough to want the lowdown on her last playdate or to reminisce about playground politics.
Xavier, on the other hand, was absolutely rapt.
“That Melinda sounds like a piece of work,” he said after I’d described an instance the week before where Sofia had come home angry at one of her classmates for taking her grapes at lunch.
“Well, to be fair, she told Melinda her fruit was poisonous,” I said. “And I can’t really blame the other kid for taking some of hers. They are only four.”
“It’s just bad manners,” Xavier said, already on his daughter’s side. “I don’t care how old you are. You don’t touch someone else’s food.”
I laughed. “You would say that.”
“I certainly fucking would,” he agreed before finishing his glass of wine.
The server appeared with another, as well as a tray bearing our final course.
“Dessert,” he said. “Tempura-fried taro mochi with a green tea gelato. Enjoy.”
Xavier and I both leaned eagerly over our dishes. I was stuffed to the gills, despite already having had a few to-go boxes set aside. But I had to admit it—this had probably been one of the best meals of my life. The idea that Xavier could somehow top this was unbelievable. And yet, he remained confident that he could.
“What about when she was born?” he asked after a few bites of the chewy cake. “You said it was hard, the actual birth. Why was she so early?”
I sighed and pushed my dessert away. It was delicious, but this story always made me feel a bit queasy with anxiety. Besides, I’d already eaten too much. “Well, there was a placenta rupture—do you really want to hear about this? It’s kind of graphic.”
Again, it was one of those stories I could only share with a very select few. Lea and I sometimes swapped war stories about the birthing room the way former soldiers talked about war. But even she wasn’t as invested in the gory details as I was. After all, I had been the only one there.
Xavier just nodded, unperturbed. “Tell me.”
I sighed. “Well, I woke up in the middle of the night with this horrible pain in my belly, and my sheets were soaked with blood. Like a lot of it.” I covered my mouth, wincing with the memory. “Honestly, I thought I’d lost her. Seven months in, after everything I’d already been through, and I was losing her.”
I exhaled slowly. It was still a fear that returned, often in the middle of the night, just like when I’d been woken. Sometimes I had to get up and check on her, just to make sure she was still alive.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever get over it.
“Anyway, I went to the hospital, and they had to induce labor. That means they give you this drug, and it gets things going. I was—it was a lot of pain. But it worked, thank God. My body knew she needed to come out.”
Xavier didn’t say anything, just took a sip of his wine and then started running his finger around the rim of the glass while he listened as intently as ever.
“When she arrived, she was blue,” I continued quietly, fingering the edge of my sake cup in an action that mirrored his. The ceramic cup was patterned with white and blue flowers. The exact shade of Sofia’s eyelids when they had placed her in the oxygen chamber. “She couldn’t breathe on her own, and she’d been at critically low oxygen levels for a while because of the rupture. She was so helpless. She couldn’t do anything. She had to stay at the NICU while they helped her breathe and fed her through a tube. She couldn’t even breastfeed until she was almost two months old.”
