Chapter 16

T alia buried herself in her work over the next few weeks, trying to avoid what she knew would be a very difficult time coming up.

Even Dani asked her about it. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Yeah.… It was just brought home to me that he'll be leaving soon."

Dani nodded sympathetically. "Right? It's amazing how much we can get adjusted to the system that we have going on here, without looking at how it'll have to change moving forward."

"I wasn't even thinking that I would have to change," she admitted, with a sad smile. "I guess I was living in la-la land, thinking he would stay here forever."

Dani gave her an odd look.

Talia raised both hands in surrender. "Don't.… Don't even look at me like that. I get it. That was so foolish."

"It's not foolish," Dani argued, "but obviously you'll struggle when he leaves."

"Yep, I sure will. Yet it doesn't make a whole lot of sense because he's staying close in town."

Dani raised her eyebrows. "That's huge."

"I know, but it's not quite the same as his being here beside me all the time."

"No, of course not," Dani murmured. At that she smiled and added, "Yet sometimes that change is really good."

"It will be for him. And I'll still see him. It's just different ."

Dani nodded and went back to work, leaving Talia alone with her thoughts. She didn't even know how to or what to think about any of this, so she just basically put it out of her mind and kept on working. Even seeing him daily, she was surprised to see a marked change in his stride, to see him walking so strong. "Wow, look at that progress."

He nodded. "And it feels good too."

"And it should," she declared, staring at him. "That's huge."

"Well, I don't know about the huge part, but it's definitely progress that, for a long time, I wondered I would even make."

"Obviously you have, and you have dealt with that quite nicely."

He chuckled. "Enough is going on in my world right now that it's still in many ways one day forward and one day backward."

She raised an eyebrow. "Meaning?"

"Just like you noted, there's a change. I've got a meeting with Lance coming up," he shared. "He's popping by."

"Yep, he does that a lot."

Xavier nodded. "I'm looking forward to it, just checking out what I might do once I leave here. I'll get an apartment in town that's close enough to the gym that I can continue to work out, to slowly build up my muscles. I'll sign up for the weekend rehab sessions here too. Meanwhile I will figure out what I want to do for a job, if anything."

" If anything is an option," she noted, "then at least you can just focus on healing for now."

"That's what I was thinking," he said. "I don't want to take anything too far, too fast, and I don't want to stress myself out at this point."

She agreed with everything he said, but it was still hard to realize that that endpoint was speeding toward them.

*

At dinnertime the next day, Xavier asked Talia, "Are you okay?"

She nodded. "I am." Then she took a deep breath. "It's just hard."

"It is," he murmured, "but that's all right. These are good changes. The meeting with Lance went well. I'm just gathering ideas about a future job for me. Plus, the latest testing with Shane went well. It's amazing to see the progress I've made since day one here. I'm improving greatly, even from my viewpoint." He shook his head. "I have signed up for some of the weekend PT workshops here, so I'll be here on an irregular basis. And, of course, otherwise I'm a whole fifteen minutes away."

"I know," she muttered, "and yet fifteen minutes."

He laughed. "I know. I get it. It's different."

"It's a funny thing, but even fifteen minutes seems as if it's too much separation from you."

"Fifteen minutes can be too much," he agreed, "but I don't have a car yet, and I have to get a new driver's license and a few other problems taken care of before I can get here."

She stared at him. "Right, I didn't even think about that."

"That's because you're not the one who has to move out and to become an adult again," he noted, chuckling.

"Oh, even when you put it that way, it brings back horrible memories."

"Of course it does. Growing up and the growing pains that come with it," he said, a big smile on his face. "But essentially I have to be adept enough to leave home again."

"You're doing so well that it won't be a problem."

"I don't think it'll be a problem," he clarified, "but you can't ever really count on anything that's in progress," he cautioned. "You don't want it to be a problem, yet…" And he just left it at that.

She understood. Still it was amazingly difficult to even think about him leaving. However, she could hope that, as long as everybody was working and doing their jobs, Xavier would progress to that next stage of life quite naturally, and anything that he had to adapt to would be easy. "Are you looking forward to having a place of your own again?"

"I'm looking forward to a lot of things," he admitted. "And, yes, peace and quiet, privacy, all that is definitely part of it, but I will miss the food at Hathaway House."

She smiled. "Maybe you should take some cooking classes."

"That's not a bad idea. It would be good for me. I'm not a great cook."

She shrugged. "I'm not either."

He chuckled. "And here I thought you would save me from myself."

"Nope. You should take the cooking classes though. I'm all in favor of that."

He smiled. "That sounds like a doable thing. It even sounds like fun. I was talking to Ilse a little bit about it, and she had a couple suggestions."

"Really?"

"Sure, it's her field."

"It is, indeed." Talia smiled. "Funny how I never even thought of that."

Xavier shrugged. "It makes sense that the chef here would know where the good cooking classes are and what to start with."

"I guess when you were in the navy, you had a lot of cooking done for you too, right?"

"Absolutely. I can do just fine on a barbecue pit, but I think it's time I learned a little bit more than that."

She smiled. "I don't even barbecue much."

"Ah, so, in other words, I'll be doing the cooking when we're together, is that it?" he asked in a teasing voice.

"Hey, if you can cook, then it's all on you," she declared, chuckling.

"We'll see," he said. "I'm not sure how much I can cook. And that's one of the things that I'm looking forward to finding out. It's a weird stage of life for me. I'm looking forward to having a barbecue and to learning to cook on my own again."

Even later she was thinking about his words because it wasn't exactly anything she'd thought about. She didn't really cook, and she hadn't really needed to, not with the food here being so awesome and available. It was a perk of working here. So that wasn't much of an issue at all. Still, she might want to cook in her own kitchen, to create things from scratch, and maybe it would be nice to have more of those skills.

She thought about it a lot over the next few days and told Xavier, "I've been thinking about the cooking classes."

"Good." He smiled. "You want to take some with me?"

She stared at him. "What?"

He smiled. "Didn't even occur to you, did it?"

"You caught me with a couple things," she explained. "The whole taking a class together thing, which I think is a good idea, was one of the biggest things. Yet even taking a class solo wasn't something that I really had on my radar."

"Maybe it should be," he said.

"Oh, it definitely should be," she murmured. "I just hadn't really considered it."

"And that's part of what I'm doing right now," he shared. "I'm thinking about everything. I have lots to figure out regarding what I'm supposed to do with my life at this stage. I'm not very comfortable with change," he shared, "yet I know an awful lot of opportunity is here for growth."

"And I'm all for it. I think it's a heck of an idea."

He smiled. "I'm really glad to hear that, so sign up with me."

She nodded. "What kind of a cooking class is it?"

"I found a bunch of them. A basics class for people like me, who don't know very much," he shared, "also ones like Chinese and Indian specialities."

"Hey, I'm all for something like that too," she agreed. "I wonder if Ilse would give us any of her recipes here for some of our favorite foods?"

He stared at her. "It's worth asking."

She shrugged. "If I ever were to leave my onsite apartment, then I would more likely ask. In the meantime it seems like it would be the wrong thing to do."

"I'm not sure there is a wrong thing to do here," he noted, chuckling. "It seems as if you guys are all about acceptance."

"Ooh, we are," she agreed.

"And that's a really good point too. Besides, if you spend more time with me, we'll do a lot more cooking together, so it would be fun to learn together."

"I absolutely love that idea," she said warmly. "Kinda surprised I didn't even think of it myself."

"That's because it's comfortable here for you. I mean, think about it. You don't have to do any cooking."

She nodded. "It's a weird thing, isn't it? Not many jobs have these meals as perks."

"It's a good thing in many ways, but, for somebody like me, who wants to learn to cook, it can be a bit daunting."

"Of course. For me too," she admitted. "Still, I'm quite stoked over the idea."

"Good. I'll send you a bunch of options, so we can figure out which classes we want to take."

She nodded enthusiastically.