You've Reached Sam (7)

“Extra sugar and milk would be great,” Mika requests. “Please.”

“Sure,” the waitress says.

Mika holds up her hand. “Actually, is there soy milk?”

“Soy? No.”

“Oh.” Mika frowns. “Just milk then.” As soon as the waitress turns, Mika looks at me. “You didn’t reply to my messages. I wasn’t sure if we were still meeting.”

“Sorry. I haven’t been the most responsive lately.” I don’t really have another excuse. I have a habit of leaving my phone on silent. But this week, I’ve been especially disconnected.

“I get it,” she says, frowning a little. “For a second, I thought you might have canceled without telling me. You know I don’t like being stood up.”

“Which is why I came early.”

We both smile. I have a sip of coffee.

Mika touches my hand. “I missed you,” she whispers, giving me a squeeze.

“I missed you, too.” As much as I tell myself I like being alone, I feel a rush of relief to see a familiar face. To see Mika again.

The waitress arrives, sets down a small pitcher of milk, tosses some sugar packets from her apron, and disappears again. Mika rips open three sugars and pours them into her cup. She picks up the pitcher and holds it out. “Milk?” she offers.

I shake my head.

“Because it isn’t soy?”

“No … I’m trying to drink my coffee black.”

“Hmm. Impressive,” she says, nodding. “Very Seattle of you.”

At the word Seattle, Mika’s phone lights up as notifications pop up on her screen. The phone vibrates on the table. Mika glances at her screen, then back at me. “Let me put this away.” She hides the phone in her bag, and picks up a menu. “Did you want to order something?”

“I’m actually not hungry.”

“Oh, alright.”

Mika sets down the menu. She laces her fingers together on the table as I have another sip of coffee. The jukebox blinks orange and blue from across the room but no music plays. An air of silence nearly settles between us until Mika finally asks the question.

“So, did you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Are you sure? I thought that’s why you wanted to meet.”

“I wanted to get out of the house.”

She nods. “That’s good. But how are you handling all of this?”

“Fine, I guess.”

Mika says nothing. She looks at me, as if expecting more.

“Well, what about you,” I ask her instead. “How have you been?”

Mika’s gaze falls onto the table as she thinks about this. “I don’t know. The services have been hard. There isn’t really a temple around here, so we’re doing what we can. There’s a lot of traditions and customs I didn’t even know about, you know?”

“I can’t imagine…” I say. Mika and Sam have always been connected to their culture in a way that I haven’t. My parents are both from somewhere in northern Europe, but it’s not something I really think about.

Things quiet again. Mika stirs her coffee for a long time without saying anything. Then she goes still, as if remembering something. “We held a vigil for him,” she says without looking at me. “The day after. I stayed the night with him. I got to see him again…”

My stomach clenches at the thought of this. At seeing Sam one more time after he … I stop myself from imagining it. I have another sip of coffee, and try to blink the image away, but it doesn’t fade. I wish she wouldn’t tell me about this.

“I know. Not a lot of people wanted to see him like that,” Mika says, still not looking at me. “I almost couldn’t do it, either. But I knew it was the last time I would get the chance. So I went.”

I don’t say anything. I drink my coffee.

“There were a lot of people at the funeral, though,” she continues. “We didn’t have enough seats. There were people from school I didn’t even recognize. There were so many flowers.”

“That’s really nice.”

“Some people asked where you were,” Mika says. “I told them you weren’t feeling well. That you prefer visiting him on your own.”

“You didn’t have to explain anything,” I say.

“I know. But some of them kept asking.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter who,” Mika says, brushing it off.

I have the last sip of my coffee, which by now has lost all of its warmth, intensifying the bitterness.

Mika looks at me. “So have you visited him?”

I take my time to respond. “No … not yet.”

“Do you want to?” she asks, taking my hand again. “We can go now. Together.”

I pull my hand back. “I—I can’t right now…”

“Why not?”

“I have things to do,” I say vaguely.

“Like what?”

I don’t know what to say. Why do I need to explain myself?

Mika leans into the table, her voice low. “Julie, I know this whole thing’s been terrible for you. It’s been terrible for me, too. But you can’t avoid this forever. You should come, pay your respects. Especially now.” Then, in almost a whisper, says, “Please, it’s Sam—”