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When she turned the corner, I lost it. I bawled into Xavier’s chest, letting out all the emotions I’d been holding in. He squeezed me tight, not saying a word as he let me get it out.
Eventually, my sobs subsided, and I realized I’d made his shirt wet with my tears.
“She’ll be okay,” he promised.
“You don’t know that. What will I do if I lose her?” I asked. I looked up at his face, which was blurry from the film of water in my eyes. “I don’t think I could handle it.”
“You’d be amazed at what you could get through,” Xavier said, and I remembered what Jackson had told me about his sister.
“I’m so sorry!” I said. “I didn’t mean…”
“It’s alright,” Xavier said, and pulled me into another tight hug. “It’s normal to be scared. But Helen seems like a tough woman, and I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“What should we do now?” I asked. “I’d really like to take my mind off everything until the nurse calls me.”
Xavier cocked his head to one side.
“I have an idea,” he said, “but I’m not sure you’re going to like it.”
I wondered what he was getting at. If it was something sexual, I was too worried about Helen to be in the mood. But it seemed he wasn’t thinking in that direction, because he led me back out to the car and drove me to an old building with a faded sign above its door.
“Anantiqueshop?” I asked.
“This is one of my favorite places,” he said. “I know it might sound dumb, but antique shops make me feel better when I’m having a bad day. There’s something about seeing things that have been around for longer than me, my parents, and even my grandparents, that makes me feel like not everything is temporary.”
He gave me a smile and my sleep-deprived mind wondered if he might have been implying thathe and Iweren’t temporary, but the thought faded when he climbed out of the car, the sound of the slamming door stunting my attention span.
The shop looked tiny from the front, but as soon as we’d walked through the double doors, I realized that it opened up into a warehouse far bigger than I’d expected. We turned down a walkway where I expected to find a dead end, and instead found a long winding path that took me through typewriters, old iron sewing machines and street signs from the 1930s.
“What is this place?” I asked, marveling at the collection of old watering tins that had been hung from the ceiling.
“Like I told you,” Xavier said. “It’s the place I go when I need to forget about my own mortality.”
He walked around an old cabinet, his green eyes focusing on an old washing board.
“You know that yellow velvet couch we have at the studio?” he asked. “I bought it right here, along with a few other bits and pieces that you might not have noticed.”
My mind went back to the vase I’d tried to draw with Jackson. I hadn’t thought about it much at the time, but ithadlooked out of place in an apartment full of men. And the bookshelves it lived in were, now that I thought about it, not as modern as I might have expected, and the paintings on the walls looked like they were probably from this shop, too.
“Incredible,” I said. “So you really love this stuff.”
“Yep,” Xavier said. “I know a lot of people who are into collecting antiques for the money, but that’s not me. I’d rather make my money through my work, and focus on finding pieces that I truly love.”
We walked through a section that was full of old lamps. Each one had an ornate shade over its bulb, and most of them were switched on, bathing us in yellow light.
“Is there anything here that catches your fancy?” he asked. “I’ll buy you anything you want.”
I gazed around. The warehouse was crowded with items on the floor, walls and ceiling, and I didn’t know where to start. The more we walked, the more pieces I found that were surprising and delightful, but ultimately weren’t for me. Like the half-built car from the 1940s that looked incredible, but clearly had no place in my life as someone who didn’t have somewhere permanent to live.
“I’ll let you know,” I said, as I turned another corner and found racks full of clothes. “How do you make decisions here?”
“Things just… leap out,” he said, and he gave me a knowing look. “You’ll know when it happens.”
He vanished down another aisle while I looked at old cassette tapes, and when I turned around, I was struck again by how huge and cramped the space was, considering it was full of so many things. I checked my phone to see if anyone had called me and so far, nobody had. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.
It was two hours since we’d left Helen, and the websites I’d checked told me the average time for the operation was ninety minutes. What if something was wrong? What if the surgeon found something he wasn’t expecting to see?
What if she hadn’t made it?
