Page 45 of American Beauty

She doesn’t wait for a response. Just leaves the room with the same steadiness she entered, footsteps fading down the hall, leaving behind coconut-scented lotion and the echo of her strength.

I stare at the doorway long after she’s gone.

Show up for myself––easier said than done.

But I owe her that. And perhaps I owe it to Magnolia too. The man she fell in love with wouldn’t rot in bed. He wouldn’t disappear into silence and dust.

A few minutes pass, and I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, bare feet hitting cold floorboards. The effort is monumental, but I do it.

For my tina.

For the tiny flicker inside me that hasn’t gone out.

I shower, standing under the hot spray until my skin turns red and my lungs stop tightening with every breath. I trim my beard, towel off, put on some clean clothes.

Tina doesn’t say a word when I come into the kitchen. She gestures to the chair and sets a plate in front of me like it’s any other morning. But this is not my usual breakfast.

It’s panikeke, warm and golden, still fragrant with coconut oil. A heap of oka sits beside it along with fried eggs, sauteed taro leaves, and thick wedges of papaya. A traditional Samoan breakfast. The kind that feeds more than your body.

There’s no way any of this came from my fridge. I haven’t bought groceries in weeks. She had to have brought everything with her.

That’s who she is. A woman who shows up. Who feeds you when you’re too broken to ask. Who reminds you where you come from when you’ve forgotten how to stand.

As I pick at the food, she moves around the kitchen like it’s hers. Clearing empty cups from the counter. Wiping down surfaces that don’t need wiping. Refilling the fruit bowl, straightening the salt and pepper shakers like symmetry might fix what’s broken in me.

Tina says nothing. Doesn’t push. She moves with purpose––a quiet, steady love disguised as tidying up. It’s a love you don’t earn but shows up anyway.

I watch her for a second, then look back down at my plate. And somehow, keep eating.

“I’ve been trying to make sense of it,” I say, voice rough from disuse.

Tina pauses mid-wipe, her hand resting on the countertop. “Make sense of what?”

“There’s something I want you to read.”

It’s right where I left it—a small, leather-bound journal with soft, worn edges and Magnolia’s handwriting etched on the inside cover. My chest tightens the moment I touch it. I carry it back into the kitchen like it might shatter if I hold it too tight.

I place the journal in her hands, swallowing hard. “Magnolia gave it to me the morning she left Sydney. She said her heart was in it, the parts she couldn’t speak out loud.”

Tina takes it, reverent in the way only mothers can be when handling someone’s pain.

“She wrote about falling in love with me. About how much I meant to her.”

Tina opens the journal, flipping through the first few pages in silence. She pauses on a page, her eyes scanning a passage. Then she clears her throat and reads aloud.

“Sometimes I look at him and forget how to breathe. I didn’t expect this. I didn’t want to fall for anyone. But he makes me feel seen. And safe. And wanted. It’s startling how fast I’ve become his.”

She pauses again, glancing up at me, but I can’t meet her eyes.

Her voice softens as she reads the next line.

“He doesn’t even realize how much he’s healing me just by letting me in. I don’t know how to explain it—but when he looks at me, I feel like maybe I’m not so broken after all.”

“I don’t get it. How do you go from that to deleting someone from your life like they were nothing?”

Tina closes the journal, resting her hand on top of it. “You don’t write words like those unless you mean them. And people don’t lie in ink, Aleki. Her affections for you were real.”

“But if it was real––” I stop, tired of asking the same question over and over.

---