Daisuki

by Hildred Billings

  She caught herself daydreaming about sex again and returned to work before somebody called her out for her lack of productivity. Those days one couldn’t be too careful in the economy when it came to keeping jobs, and Reina had the extra layer of stress as the sole bread winner in her relationship. What would they do if she lost her job? She did most of the bookkeeping since she was good at and liked math, so she knew their numbers – they had enough saved to live frugally for maybe about a year, and if Reina hadn’t found another good job by then…she laughed. Although the house was paid for, a return to natal homes and a loss of independence seemed imminent. Poor Aiko! She would have to get a job for the first time in her life.

  Reina then pictured Aiko in a series of minimum wage uniforms, from pouty office lady to sexy café waitress. That was the end of all her worries.

  Work ended at five but, as usual, Reina had to stay until five-thirty before the work was “done” for the day. Nobody knew what the arbitrary amount of magical work was, but it was never done until five-thirty. Likewise, nobody complained. They knew other people had it worse where they didn’t get to leave until six or seven.

  Leaving at five-thirty meant not getting home until well after six, however, with the way the trains ran at such peak commuting times. Reina saw various giggly girls on the train home, most of them snuggling up to some boy or another. She wondered what kind of romance was in the winter air before sending a text to Aiko. Reina’s stomach rumbled. Aiko responded and said dinner would be okonomiyaki, one of Reina’s favorite foods.

  It’s like my damn birthday today. If it were, Reina’s chances at getting laid that night were ten-fold.

  There were more girls and young women flitting around Reina’s neighborhood as she approached her and Aiko’s house. Is it a kind of zombie apocalypse? The sun was as good as set by the time she passed the neighbor Yuri’s house, but the woman stood near the street nonetheless.

  “Oh, welcome home, Reina-san!”

  Reina nodded, remembering a time a few years before when Yuri used to call her “Yamada-san.” But that was before they had seen each other naked.

  “Isn’t it a lovely evening?”

  Reina looked at the cloud-covered sky and sniffed – she smelled rain. “Lovely? Uh, sure. What are you doing out here?” Her rumbling stomach told her to hurry things up and get home to Aiko’s home cooking.

  “Hm? Oh, I am waiting for my husband. It’s the type of day for me to do that, ne?”

  Reina shrugged. Seemed like any other February day to her.

  “Oh, by the way! Please take some of this!” Yuri pulled out a tiny box of chocolate and placed it in Reina’s cold hand. “I know you’re not really a man, but…” She went red. Reina knew how to perform like a man, all right.

  “Thanks.” Chocolate? Well, she’d take it. And probably eat it before bed, if Aiko didn’t steal it. “Sorry I don’t have anything to give back to you.”

  “Oh that’s fine, silly!” Yuri turned her head toward her house. “I don’t think my husband will be back for another few minutes. I should check on my daughter and you should go home! Good night!” She waved and retreated into her warm house.

  Another shrug. Reina turned and shuffled down the street. She swore she smelled okonomiyaki cooking three houses down.

  And as if it were a neighborhood conspiracy, Aiko waited on the top of their genkan for Reina to walk through the door. Before she could say “I’m home,” Aiko took her briefcase and planted an unexpected kiss on her cheek. Well, she was frisky! Sex seemed a sure thing now.

  “Dinner’s ready!” Aiko said as she took the shoes and jacket Reina shed like a second skin. “It’s out on the table.”

  While Aiko cleaned up, Reina went into the living room and settled down at the table, where a steaming plate of delicious okonomiyaki waited for her alongside the obligatory bowls of rice and miso soup. Aiko had also cut up an apple, again in the shape of a heart, on a plate nearby. The only thing missing was…

  “Here you are!” Aiko entered from the kitchen and passed a bottle of beer to Reina before sitting down to her own food. “I bought a new set today. I got the right one, yeah?”

  Reina was already on her second sip. “Yeah, it’s great. Thanks.”

  The grin Aiko had on her face since Reina walked through the door still shone like a beacon of happiness. Reina became hyper-aware of Aiko watching her eat.

  They said little during dinner since Reina was famished and kept her mouth full of food and her throat washed out with beer. The alcohol soothed her and made the worry of work easier to bear. She thought about how much she wanted to see Aiko strip out of her clothes and take a long, long shower with her. Of course, that was for starters. They could finish in the bedroom.

  Aiko stared right back at her while she played with the food between her chopsticks. “Is it good?”

  Reina swallowed long enough to answer. “Un,” she grunted, favorably.

  “I’m glad.” Aiko then ate her own food, her eyes finally on the TV and not on Reina’s every move.

  With a full stomach, Reina started to nod off to sleep at the table with her chin propped up in a hand. She could hear the clings and clangs of Aiko washing the dishes in the kitchen and the cheers and jeers of the variety show on television. Anything beat the buzzing and apologies of her office.

  “Eh? Wake up!” Aiko slapped Reina on the back; she gave a start and stared up at Aiko’s enthusiasm. “I’ve got dessert!”

  “Dessert?” Reina sniffed the air. She couldn’t smell anything sugary. Or, better yet, maybe Aiko meant sex. That was definitely a good dessert. “Nee, Ai-chan,” she began, her hand reaching out to touch any part of Aiko’s body.

  A plate holding a small piece of chocolate cake clattered on the table before her. “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

  Oh, shit. Everything crashed inside Reina’s brain – maybe she drank her beer too fast. Was it Valentine’s Day? That accounted for the girls giggling everywhere, of all the hearts hanging on shop windows, of all the sales on chocolate. She remembered the chocolate Yuri handed out while waiting for her husband. Japan’s custom of women giving the men they fancied chocolate on Valentine’s Day always existed on some different plane from Reina’s perception: as a woman with no interest in any men anywhere, there was no point for her to care. She recalled getting chocolates throughout her life on Valentine’s Day, as a jab to her masculinity, but Aiko had never gone quite out of her way to make some show about…oh, the bento lunch in the shape of a heart.

  “Reina?” Aiko knelt beside her. “Is something wrong? Are you unwell?”

  Reina shook her head. “No, nothing. Thank you. It looks delicious.”

  “You forgot it was Valentine’s Day, didn’t you?”

  “Un.”

  Reina showed Aiko the chocolate she received from Yuri, and more teasing bloomed in the guise of Yuri stealing Reina away. The whole idea was ludicrous, of course, since Yuri was married to a man and Reina had no reason to run off with another woman when she had a perfectly good one at home – a wonderful one, who let her “be herself” and doted on her. All Reina had to do was make a salary, and in return she got great food and great sex from a great girlfriend.

  Aiko cleaned up the dessert plates. The variety show on TV switched over to a drama, signaling the coming of the post-dinner hours. At about this time Aiko would ask if Reina was ready for a bath.

  But she didn’t. After she finished her kitchen chores she returned and sat down at the table, an envelope in her hand. “Look at what we got today!” she said, opening the envelope to reveal a tiny white card inside. “I thought we weren’t going to be invited, but my niece called and said our original one must have gotten lost in the mail.” She handed the card to Reina. “Look!”

  She snatched the card out of Aiko’s hand and glanced at it, unable to read the English written in careful cursive. She recognized the names, however. “A wedding?”

  “Yes, my niece Eri is getting married in June.
We should go! It’s addressed to me but it has a ‘plus one,’ see?”

  Reina groaned, quietly, internally, a feat she had practiced over the past two decades. Going to a wedding, including a Western one, meant putting on fancy clothes and watching the happy couple’s families whisper to each other over “who invited her?” And Aiko would want to dance. Too public. Easy for Aiko to pretend nothing was amiss when she was the one wearing pastel dresses and squealing over everything cute. Vomit.

  Reina turned to the expectant grin on her girlfriend. “If you really want to…” The things she did for Aiko.

  Aiko bounced in her seat and grabbed the invitation to read it over again. Her body continued to sway in her unadulterated excitement. Reina wanted to go take a bath already – well, since Aiko was in such a good mood, maybe she was willing to squeeze in together.

  But when Reina suggested it a couple minutes later, Aiko rebuffed it. “I have something else to show you first,” she said with a touch to Reina’s arm. “I think you’ll like it.”

  She went upstairs. Reina flipped through the television channels and noted something recorded earlier. Bringing it up showed an afternoon’s worth of wedding shows. Reina turned off the TV. Boring.

  “Reina-chan!” Aiko called from upstairs a minute later. “Koko ni kinasai no!”

  A sharp chill jammed through Reina’s chest and into her groin. Only one reason for Aiko to bid her upstairs in such a girlish way, and it wasn’t to unclog the toilet.

  Smirking as if she had won the daily lottery, Reina got up and turned off the lights downstairs before going up to meet Aiko. Said girlfriend wasn’t waiting at the top of the stairs from where she had called, however, but a dim light was on in their bedroom at the end of the hall.

  When Reina slid open the bedroom door and leaned in, she didn’t see anything…or anyone. But she could smell Aiko’s perfume, and she noticed the jeans and blouse Aiko once wore left on the floor. “Oi, Ai-chan,” Reina said, wondering where her girlfriend had gone, “doko ni ikuze?”

  “I’m here!” Aiko leapt out from the blind spot in the parallel corner near their bed. Her smile was larger than Reina had seen it since they took that trip to Okinawa, but it wasn’t her smile making Reina’s sight linger.

  Aiko wore nothing but a skimpy, lacy, red…thing. Nightgown. Slip. Lingerie. Whatever. Point was Aiko wore it, and she wore it like she once danced at the lesbian strip club Reina worked at decades ago. When she hopped up and down for Reina’s approval, her petite breasts bounced through the single layer of red lace, distracting Reina from the fact Aiko wore no panties beneath her…thing. Her eyes didn’t know whether to stare at her girlfriend’s hardening nipples or the tuft of pubic hair beneath her lace.

  “Do you like it?” Aiko asked, posing like a supermodel from a magazine. “I got it just for today. And, well, any day after today I feel like.” She glowed, her skin lighting up like a lantern.

  Reina snuffed her approval. “I’m starting to think today actually is my birthday.”

  Aiko approached her and tugged on her blazer, luring her into the bedroom. “It’s Valentine’s Day. It practically is your birthday.”

  Everything from there on out should have been easier than breathing for Reina, whose second nature was everything sex. And with nineteen years’ worth of experience with Aiko, she knew all those places to push and patches to kiss to get the greatest rise. Most women were the same in Reina’s experience: just a clever kiss and stroke and they could be hers. Aiko was no different.

  And for the first few minutes, everything was easier than breathing. They kissed, they petted, they undressed – well, Reina undressed, since Aiko was already near naked – and they attempted vertical gyration until they could stumble to the bed. The sensation of the lace beneath her fingers fired Reina up more, and she noticed if she tugged on the lace Aiko’s eyes would roll back in her head for the splittest of seconds.

  “Reina-chan,” Aiko gasped as she clung to her girlfriend and struggled to get her top untucked from her pants. “Daisuki.”

  I love you.

  Reina registered it in her brain and then continued her onslaught, her hands traversing Aiko’s body and her mouth inhaling the scent between her girlfriend’s breasts. What else was there to care about at that moment?

  Aiko took Reina’s wrist and stared into her face, her brown eyes sparkling in determination. “Reina…let’s get married.”

  Reina took a step back and almost tripped over her blazer on the floor. She studied Aiko for a few seconds, all arousal sucked out, and laughed.

  Under the weight of this cocky guffaw, Aiko’s frame diminished until she looked like a naked girl abruptly finding she was nude. She bowed her head and said, “Mou, I’m serious.”

  Reina stopped laughing. “Get married? But that’s funny. We can’t get married.”

  “No…not here. Not legally, you’re right.” Aiko tipped her chin up again and frowned at Reina for the first time that night. “But there are other places we could go…and…” Her lip trembled. She didn’t glow anymore. “Who cares if it isn’t legal! I just want everyone to know that we…we’re…”

  “We’re what?” Reina splayed her arms out and laughed again. “We’ve lived together for over fifteen years now! Half of Ni-chome knows we’re girlfriends! Fuck, half of Ni-chome has been in this bedroom!”

  Tears. Aiko slumped to the floor, her sobs timid in sound but advertised on her face. Well, there went the evening.

  “Ai-chan…” Reina knelt before her and put a hand on one bare shoulder.

  “No!” Aiko shrugged her off with a force unlike her. “You’re so insensitive!”

  “Eh? What makes you say that?”

  “Because you are!”

  Aiko picked herself off the ground and shuffled to the bed. When Reina made to follow her, Aiko stopped and shoved her away. Her lingerie no longer made her look bare and appetizing, but bare and vulnerable.

  “So, I guess this means we’re not having sex tonight.”

  “No!” Aiko sat on the edge of the bed and wrapped her arms around her stomach. “Go away.”

  So she did. Reina left, abandoning Aiko to her sobbing and mumbles about “ruined everything.” Reina went down to have a cigarette where she couldn’t hear Aiko’s blabbering.

  Aiko stood in front of a window, watching an early March drizzle fall onto the neighborhood street. In the midst of the soothing fog was Reina’s outline, umbrella up and briefcase tucked beneath her arm.

  The windowpane chilled against Aiko’s forehead. A cup of hot tea steamed in her hands. The world blurred.

  Three weeks had passed since Valentine’s Day and the night Aiko felt she had “ruined everything.” That night they slept apart, with Aiko crying herself to sleep in her and Reina’s bed. The next night they didn’t say a word to each other and slept apart once more. The rest of that week was nothing but mumbling, abrupt words, and the usual motions they went through every day.

  By the end of the first week, Aiko had let Reina come back into their bedroom. Of course, that lecher took it as an invitation for sex, but Aiko told her it was the first day of her period. Whether it was…she could not remember.

  She healed from her hurt, a little – but just a little. Every time she looked at Reina she saw an uncaring child who did what she wanted when it was most convenient. Aiko didn’t know how she stood it for so long. Besides the bookkeeping, Reina did nothing around the house except eat, sleep, watch TV, and fuck women.

  The worst was watching Reina fall apart. They hadn’t been intimate at all since that stint on Valentine’s Day, and hadn’t gone out on the weekends, although Reina made calls to her friends in Ni-chome. Three weeks was the longest they went in nineteen years without even kissing each other.

  Aiko missed her. She thought about missing her while sipping cold tea and searching around the house for old contact books. Aiko wanted Reina there, holding and caressing her while they watched TV. But she waited for an apology she would
never get. For a…what? A proposal? A spur of the moment suggestion – she hadn’t expected Reina to laugh at her.

  Aiko found her contact book and hovered near the phone. She looked at the clock: evening in California. Aiko picked up the phone and hoped Reina wouldn’t yell at when the next bill came in.

  She sat at the dining table and listened to the operator switch to the international line. Just as she was about to hang up, something clicked a voice arrived.

  “Hello?” it said, in English.

  “Hello, Mi-chan,” Aiko squeaked, “is it late there?”

  Silence, and then the feminine voice returned, fumbling over sudden Japanese words. “No…no! Ai-chan, is that you? What’s wrong? Is it Reina? Did something happen to Reina?”

  “No.” Aiko shivered. “I was just calling to chat. Are you busy?”

  “What? No. I was about to take a shower, but…what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  Aiko smiled. She had met Reina and Michiko at the same time, when a cousin took her to meet them during their days in the entertainment industry. Since she started dating Reina, Michiko had been a regular at their house…and in their bedroom, since Reina never lost her fancy for her best friend.

  “I am okay. I just wanted to talk.”

  “About what?” Michiko always spoke Japanese like such an American.

  “It’s about nothing in particular.”

  “Of course it is, or you wouldn’t have called. I can hear something in your voice. This isn’t a pleasure call.”

  More tears burned behind Aiko’s eyes. “Reina and I…we are fighting.”

  Another exacerbated pause. “I can’t believe it,” Michiko finally muttered. “What the hell did that dumbass do this time?”