“Sit down. Sit down.”
He brought her a glass of orange juice and then sat a plate down in front of her that, even with all the food piled high on the table, had two fried eggs and bacon designed into a smiley face. Then he sat down next to her and watched her eat.
She didn’t really care for ketchup, but it would be rude to tell him so now, especially after he had used the stuff to write a message in Japanese on the eggs. She smiled. He really was like a housewife, and you didn’t treat your wife like a waitress. You happily ate what she served, and, as the Senator had taught her, you ate it with a smile on your face.
She took a few bites of the eggs. They weren’t too bad, if she pretended the ketchup was tomato.
She swallowed the egg down with some orange juice, juice that Gakino told her was “fresh, supa fresh,” pointing to a new juicer plugged-in next to her microwave that she hadn’t noticed before. She should ask him now in the glow of the morning about talking to her friends on Skype in a few hours. She’d waited probably as long as she could to broach the subject. How to ask your new famous boyfriend if he’d prove his existence to your oldest friends through a computer video chat? How about...she had no idea and would rather do anything else? She cleared her throat a little.
“It’s good. Thank you.”
“So, what do you think of my I-love-you eggs.”
“Your what?”
“My ‘I love you’ eggs.” He pointed at the eggs, “See, it says, ‘I love you.’ Well, actually, you already ate some of it.” .
“You’re saying that you love me?”
“Yes.”
Her fork clattered against her plate. “And you’re saying it like that. In Ketchup. On eggs. In a language I don’t speak?” Her voice raised beyond her control. She sounded panicked, angry, on the verge. Like a woman, say, seriously considering stabbing her boyfriend with her fork.
“Yes,” he said, sitting up straighter. Pulling away, his smile faded. “You don’t like it.”
She hated watching his face grow strained and angry, but she couldn’t do this. Her heart was racing, and she felt dizzy. She stood up and put her plate near the sink, not quite throwing the food away, but clearly finished with it. “No, I don’t like it. I really don’t.” This was more than she had hoped for. Too much. Eventually ending a fantasy fling with an idol would be heartbreaking, but losing a man you loved–one who promised to love you back–that would be annihilating. She couldn’t do this.
“You don’t like it so much you aren’t going to eat it, even though I went to all this trouble to make it for you?”
She nodded her head, unable to speak and walked away from him.
Gakino was still standing in shock, staring at the doorway Eloise had walked through. He stared a moment longer before turning and grabbing his jacket off the rack and sliding his sneakers on. He walked out of her apartment, closing the door quietly behind him despite the anger rising up out of his shock.
“She is going to finish my love eggs. A girl who gets I-love-you eggs should eat them, right? Right?”
Gakino walked the half a block down the street to the 7-11 to get a beer, talking to himself the whole way. He’d left, too full of anger, to give himself a minute to find a better way to deal with Eloise.
He’d come all this way to be with her. It wasn’t just about distance. He’d come to this point in his life. He’d come to this point in his career. He’d risked everything–his career, his friends, his heart. He’d pissed off his manager last week when he’d made the decision to come to Taiwan and be with Eloise. This week he’d asked Shun to lie as cover for him. Shun was sitting in a hotel in Taiwan for the sole purpose of helping him pretend he wasn’t seeing Eloise. She was going to eat the damn eggs. He knew she wanted to eat them.
He was halfway to the pay counter when he realized he was standing in the middle of 7-11 in nothing but his sneakers, boxers, t-shirt, and a jacket. He laughed in self-deprecation and paid for two beers.
Gakino turned right out of the 7-11, the apartment building door easily in sight. So was the guy with a camera across the street from the apartment building, sitting at a little cafe table.
He quickly stepped in the opposite direction, shoving his hands in his pocket and hunching his shoulders. He didn’t stand out that much in Taiwan on a Sunday. There were lots of guys wandering around in similar outfits. But if that reporter had traced him here, he’d know who Gakino was with one look. He’d also know that Gakino should not be dressed like this, Sunday or otherwise. What would happen to Eloise if he was caught there?
Gakino reached into his pocket for his phone, but as his hand closed around the phone he was filled with anger again. Damn. What good would it do? There was nothing to do. His hand shot out to call a taxi. One pulled over within seconds. He slid into the back seat, looking to see if the reporter had seen him.
The taxi hadn’t moved and Gakino realized the driver was asking him something in Chinese. Probably the man was asking Gakino where he wanted to go. Where did he want to go? He wanted to go back to Eloise’s and have this fight, but that was impossible now, wasn’t it?
“English?” the driver asked.
“Oh yes. Yes. English.”
“Go to…”
Gakino sat back in the taxi with a laugh. He had no idea. This whole day had just exploded on him. “Anywhere I can get drunk…”
“Anywhere?”
“Yes…just…drive.”
The taxi driver pulled away from the curb without a question and into traffic.
Gakino sighed and ran a hand through his hair, one leg bouncing against the taxi cab floor. He really just wanted to get drunk. Really, really drunk. He popped the tab on one of his beers and took a long drink.
“You have a girlfriend?” Gakino gestured with his beer at the driver. The driver looked at him in the mirror then down to his beer.
“Yes. Girl problem? More drinking?” The man’s eyebrow raised in question at Gakino.
“More drinking.”
The driver suddenly reached down, turned off the meter, and turned the taxi onto a side street.
“Drinking,” he said as he drove off. “I take you. My friend…his place. We drink as friends. All women make you drink.”
*
———-
From: Eloise Bromleigh
< [email protected] >
To: Bethany Danae, Maia Green, Cassandra Medeiros
< [email protected] > , < [email protected] > ,
< [email protected] > ,
Subject: Change in Plans
Hello all.
So sorry, but there’s been a change in plans this morning. Something unexpected came up that was totally unavoidable. I promise to email you later and reschedule.
Eloise
———-
Eloise sighed deeply and squeezed the table edge in frustration. She was relieved not to have to have this conversation, but it was being overridden by the supreme anxiety clawing its way up her spine. First, the epic failure of the “I-Love-You-Eggs” and then Gakino’s disappearing act.. He wasn’t answering his phone. He didn’t answer texts either. It had been hours.
She was starting to freak out.
She didn’t even know who to call to find out if he was safely on his way back to Japan. He could have been hit by any of the hundreds of Taiwanese buses for all she knew. Her worry was vacillating back and forth between self-recrimination for her egg meltdown and anger at Gakino’s inconsiderate silence. She’d overreacted. She knew that. But he was being an inconsiderate ass by ignoring her. Where was he?
Just as she was ramping up to another mental lambasting of her absentee boyfriend, her phone rang.
*
Walking toward the long haired idol, Eloise stared at Gakino sprawled in his underwear in the hallway outside of Yamamoto’s hotel room. He lay there like a drunken beached whale. He was half asleep and half laughing at himself. There was no way he could walk on his own.
He probably had no idea where he was. Or what his own name was. Yamamoto was wearing a dark blue robe, the belt tied neatly and his hands pushed elegantly into the pockets. It opened in a slight V at his throat, flashing skin. His hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail, a small black hairband keeping it off of his face inconspicuously. Coming face to face with Yamamoto Shun for the first time would normally be enough to make a girl stutter, but right now she was too angry. How could he leave Gakino in the hall like this?
“What do you want me to do with this?” Eloise thrust her arm out, pointing to the general heap of Gakino.
“Get him out of the hall. I gather from your texts and his that, basically, you put him here. I spent all day and all night getting his depressed, sad, and increasingly pathetic messages about your little fight.” Shun raised one eyebrow at her, unconcerned.
“Do you have the key?” she hissed.
“What?”
“Do. You. Have. The. Key?”
He handed it to her with a flourish and without a word.
“Ja, mata.”
“You’re leaving? You’re not going to help?”
“This,” he said, gesturing to his face, “takes work.” Then, without another word, he walked into his room and closed the door behind him.
“Great,” she mumbled, grabbing Gakino’s ankles. She pulled him, dragging his long body down a few doors.
“Doko? Dokodokodokooooooo...you look like El-chan. Are you El-chan?” Gakino lifted his head off of the floor to squint in her direction.
Eloise ignored his drunken question in favor of getting him into the privacy of his room as fast as she could.
“You look like her, but you can’t be her. She hates eggs. Who hates eggs? Eggs are love. No! She doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know...how long until she knows? Hah! She doesn’t know like Mr. Driver.” He swung his arm abruptly into the air, making a giant circle until it fell and landed heavily against his own eye. “I can’t see! I can’t see anything but Eloise. She blinded me with my own eggs!” He held his hand against the side of his face that he’d hit and she heard him sob, his chest jerking upward. She started to drop his legs, horrified at the pain he was in. Then, in almost the same breath, he pointed at her with the offending finger. “You’ll tell her I love her right? Maybe words are better than signs. You know she hates those damn candles. Damn the candles and the ketchup. They break hearts.” Then he was chattering away in Japanese.
He remembered. Even drunk he remembered the secret and shameful story she’d told him about her silly love confession in candles…well… not her love confession.
When she finally got him into the room and into his bed, Gakino was drunk and silly, alternating between laughing and complaining.
At times he thought it was funny that he’d been caught outside in his underwear and found himself drinking with a stranger. Other times he complained at how mean she had been not eating his eggs and not accepting his confession. When he finally settled in to sleep, she got his sneakers off and she sat there watching him.
She pulled herself up onto his headboard, wanting to wait until morning to make sure he was fed and ready for tomorrow. As night slowly changed to morning, she watched his face, calm, beautiful, more serious, more stern than she normally saw it.
She needed to remind herself more often that Gakino’s manner wasn’t thoughtless and unconcerned. His attitude, his joy in life was a thoughtful one, a careful consideration of the smartest and most successful way to live. She knew he didn’t smile because he was happy, but because he believed that smiles made you happier and brought positive things. His smiles, his laugh left the door open for luck. He believed that, and made a conscious decision every day to be pleased about life. She sighed and set her head back. What a night. A fuss over eggs.
Gakino mumbled and rolled toward her, trying to snuggle up against her. She pulled the covers he’d refused earlier over him. His hair had fallen over his eyes and she pushed it away and continued to watch his face.
I Love You Eggs. She shook her head. She’d handled it wrong, but when he had said it, her head started a rousing chorus of “This guy doesn’t really know you. He doesn’t even know what you like,” and it had sent her into a panic, and honestly, he was always so calm, so happy, so optimistic, that she wanted to see—if only for a moment—that smile slip. It hadn’t been conscious or premeditated, but when she noticed him getting angry, she hadn’t backed down or apologized because she had wanted to see what was real and what was a mask.
Was he really so eager, so earnest? Was her willfulness going to make him suddenly hate her? Looking at the clock, she was startled to see that so much time had passed. Grabbing the phone on the bedside table, she ordered breakfast. Then she eased herself off the bed, pulling up Gakino’s arm, and laying it beside him. Next, she went to Gakino’s closet. She grabbed clothes she knew he liked: a long t-shirt with the neck stretched out and a pair of loose cargo pants that fell to mid-calf.
She set the clothes on the chair near the bed and then found shoes and socks. She walked into the bathroom and started to unwrap all the complementary toiletries. Gakino had his own, but they were either in his bag or at her house, so she would set out the stuff the hotel offered. She put the toothbrush and toothpaste on a hand towel near the sink. Pulling her hair out of its pony tail, she let her long hair fall and pulled out the two pins she put in her hair almost 24 hours ago. She set them above the toothbrush, next to a small bottle of face wash, since she knew he liked to wash his face first thing and hated when his hair got in the way. Then she moved the conditioner and shampoo to the shower stall and spread a towel along the floor. She left the door open and turned on the small mirror light on the sink, so he wouldn’t search for the things she set out. As she finished, she heard a soft knock at the door.
Opening the door, she covered her lips with one finger, signaling for silence, and she watched as the food was pushed in. The bellhop lifted lids off the food she ordered, and mouthed “ok, ma?” each time. She nodded repeatedly. Then, following him to the entryway, she handed him enough cash to cover the bill and a sizable tip. Whispering “xie xie,” she closed the door behind him and returned to the food.
Taking the ketchup bottle in her hand, and shaking her head, she used the bottle as a crude pen, putting a message on the omelet she’d ordered.
What I do for love, she thought. When she finished the message, she picked up Gakino’s phone. Finding his charger in the wall, she set the timer ahead 15 minutes, which would give him about one hour to eat, shower, and dress, she placed the phone next to the bed near the clock. She set it to a Tenshi song she liked to wake up to, hoping his own music would wake him with less disorientation. She considered staying, but decided that he was going to be tired and a little ill, and he certainly wouldn’t have time to talk to her. Leaning down she pressed a kiss to his forehead. He made a small sound in his sleep, but she couldn’t tell if it was happy or sad. He had a plane to catch in a few hours. They would talk later. She walked out of the room, wondering what he would think when he saw her I Love You eggs.
CHAPTER 13
Pushing past the curtain at the doorway, Gakino walked into Donzoko, a bar he and the guys had been coming to since their debut. It was darker inside, the glare of the afternoon sun forgotten in the light yellow glow bouncing from the few lights over head to the soft wood on the floor and tables. Toeing off his shoes, he slid his feet into a pair of slippers. He could hear Sano laughing, and knew they’d started without him. Turning his head, he saw them in their usual back corner, far from the door. They each had hats on, but they wouldn’t be noticed here. The customers were mostly male college students and salarymen. Besides, they’d known the owner for years. If there was trouble, he’d make short work of it.
Shuffling the short distance to the others, he slid into the booth and grabbed a handful of dried anchovies. He started popping them in his mouth, already smiling although he didn’t know the joke. Being with his friends was alw
ays the solution to whatever worried him.
“About time you got here. We’ve already had a few rounds,” Hiro said calling over the waitress.
“Sorry, I got tied up at work.”
“Is that what we’re calling it now? Eloise is pretty experimental then?”
“Very funny, Ryo,” Gakino said, shaking his head. “I left Eloise and Taiwan early this morning. I actually didn’t even have a chance to tell her goodbye, but Sugiyama sent me a text right as I landed, telling me that I needed to meet him immediately. I don’t know how, but it’s like he knows my plans before I do. Anyway, I’ve been there all afternoon.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about getting rid of that little pest once and for all,” Ryo said.
“Work talk? Really? We don’t want to turn into those poor bastards,” Shun said, wrinkling his nose at a table of men, ranging in ages from twenty to fifty, who were dressed in dark slacks, white button-ups, and loosened ties. Some of them had taken off their neckties and wound them around their heads.
“Ryo, you know talking about KM is in direct violation of our long standing work-talk prohibition,” Sano added gently.
“Let’s not bring this up here,” Hiro complained. “We already work seventy hours a week.”
“Well, most us of do.” Ryo said, with a pointed glance at Gakino. “I don’t normally take weekends off.”
“Jealous?” Gakino teased, knowing that Ryo wasn’t serious.
“I know I am,” Sano said, lifting his beer to his lips.
“You should be,” Shun added. “I got to see her up close a few weeks ago. She looks great in a temper.”
How to Date Japanese Idols (The Tenshi Series) Page 16