by Corri Lee
“Moshi moshi, Valentine-senpai.”
“You do realise that when you speak Japanese, your voice goes higher like an anime school girl. It’s kinda hot.”
“Ah, so desu ne.” For good measure, I giggled. His growl in response made me a little hotter around the collar, if that was even physically possible. I craned my neck and looked at the time. Eleven o’clock. My first meeting was at three. So much for that cat nap. “I can’t decide if you’re calling really late or really early.”
“Both. I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long to call you, cupcake. I was leaving Natasha’s when I got a phone call from my agent telling me he might have a job for me but I had to get to Liverpool pronto.”
I sat up straight, letting go of a concern I wasn’t even aware I’d had. Through the whole flat redecoration fiasco, Blaze had insisted on paying for half of everything. In fact, he always made me split the cost of everything and spoiled me with meals he wouldn’t let me contribute towards.
That was all very nice and gentlemanly, but his income was subjective. He never knew how much would arrive in his royalty cheques until he opened them, and with most of his time taken up caring, chances to extend his reach and expand his portfolio were limited. So close to thirty, modelling work was becoming out of the ordinary, voice acting jobs always less frequent, and eventually the numbers on those cheques were going to get smaller and smaller. Trying to match me pound for pound had to be doing some serious damage to his savings.
So I was happy to know that he’d been working. “Anything good?”
“It has potential. It was an audition for a film.”
“Indy or mainstream?”
“Mainstream. And my chances look good for the lead.”
My spine straightened further. A male lead in a mainstream film was huge, not just good. If it was a hit, his face would be everywhere and casting agents would likely fall over themselves to get to him. It could take him all over the world and I had the means to go with him.
But I couldn’t help feeling like his optimism was a little premature. He couldn’t travel far if he was caring for Natasha, and wouldn’t be able to leave London for more than a day at most. He’d undoubtedly have to pick between her and his career, and I would inevitably urge him down the more morally gracious path.
“Well, fingers and toes crossed! Are you still in Liverpool?”
“No, I’m home. My phone died halfway there and I didn’t want you to worry. I miss you, too, Emmeline.”
That made me feel marginally better, though I became suddenly aware of how big the king-size bed felt without him in it with me. In fact, my life felt very empty, even with the sound of his voice.
“What’s on your agenda today?”
“I have a meeting in a few hours and trying not to die from heat stroke. Plus I’m kind of worried that you might have been right about this wedding.”
“Why? Has Hunter said something?”
“No.” I narrowed my eyes. “But he’s going to.”
He didn’t. Hunter spent the week he’d booked off work escorting me around Tokyo, driving me to my meetings and taking me to the restaurants and bars he knew I’d like. He got to see how I worked with the executives and hotshots, sitting in the corner of the conference room in Henry’s building, The Howard, making no effort to hide how impressed he was.
Later, he told me he been worried that Blaze would distract me from work, but that really was the only insightful thing he had to offer. Occasionally he’d make cryptic comments, remarking on ‘too much time spent scared to face rejection’ but I could never make sense of them. He had always been the most self-assured person I knew and now to see him so deflated... It worried me.
And why now? Why so close to his wedding? When he’d already left his family behind and moved to another country for her, why was this the commitment that was too much for him?
I had to conclude that it was normal for my own sanity. He was just twenty-two like me and probably freaking out about marrying so young. One had to assume that Siobhan was the woman he’d stick with, which meant maybe another sixty or so years with her. Every day. Every night. He’d have slept with one woman in his entire life when he died.
I had to stop looking at it like that. If I kept on, I’d be offering to be the one who helped him make a run for it. It was different for me because I’d lived so much more than he had. Okay, it hadn’t all been good, but I’d known life. I’d tested the waters. I’d loved, lost, travelled and triumphed. Really, when you looked at what he’d achieved, it wasn’t much.
Though maybe it was the idea that his life nearly lacked purpose. Nature would have you believe that our mission is solely to procreate. Sentimental family members like my mother would say we were on the planet to find and marry our soul mate. Achievement driven narcissists would say the ultimate goal was to become successful, scholars would say it was to become knowledgeable and tree-hugging fantasists would say that all we needed to do was love.
So far, Hunter had done three and a half of those things. He earned a good wage and was well respected in his job. He was exceptionally bright and he’d found love. He needed only to say ‘I do’ to make it four items checked off the list, then he’d just need to become a father. In less than a year he might have his full house, literally, and that posed the inevitable question of, ‘Now what?’
Yeah, that sounded like something he’d obsess over. I told myself that he was just having a mini existential crisis that would clear right up as soon as he was standing at the altar. I just hoped neither me nor Blaze would find ourselves in the same position.
It was the third day of waking up without Blaze when things got crazy. I’d had a meeting with the managing director of Hunter’s father’s company—nothing out of the ordinary there. Hunter took me sight seeing through Harajuku—still normal. Then we stopped for lunch. Normal lunch? No.
Hunter paused mid-bite halfway through our meal and set his chopsticks down. “Emmeline? Can I ask you something deep?” I made him wait while I ate another sushi roll before I answered, squinting at him.
Hunter Rosen did not do deep. Hunter Rosen was about as deep as a teaspoon. Hunter Rosen certainly didn’t pose questions as straight cut as that.
Hunter Rosen had my interest caught—hooked, lined, sinkered, reeled in, gutted and served with soy sauce.
“Thames deep or South Pacific deep?”
“South Pacific.” Add some wasabi.
“Go on.”
He looked down at his hands, picked up his chopsticks again and started to jab at a chunk of tempura. “When I met Blaze while you were still in New York, he told me that your heart was taken by someone else. That doesn’t seem to be the case any more.”
I changed my mind. He wasn’t allowed to ask me ‘something deep’ anymore. There was nothing quite as awkward as talking about a failed love as talking about it to the failed lovee. “Where are you going with this?”
Obviously not sensing my tone, he shrugged and continued to play with his food. “How did you stop loving someone else? What changed?”
All right. That wasn’t what I was expecting. I was dreading an inevitable, “Who is it?” and, “Why did you never say?” conversation proceeded by facetious laughter right in my face.
As it was, he’d asked something I could never have anticipated, so I really had to think about it. I couldn’t identify one single event that made me stop loving Hunter, I just... did.
“Nothing changed. It... adapted. He completely took over my life and mind, and I didn’t have the capacity to dwell any more. He had me under full assault, and when someone is so present in your life even when you’re not looking at them, you start to reform around them and realise that they fill you up in a way the old love couldn’t.” There, that was... it’d do. God, I hoped it would do.
It did, fortunately, seem to satisfy Hunter. He sat quietly for a moment, mulling over the explanation. That gave me time to eat a little more, before he asked me something that killed my appetite. I jus
t had a feeling something like that was coming.
“So it wasn’t immediate?”
I chewed while I thought about it. “I don’t think so. There was chemistry from the start, but I don’t think I really realised that he’d taken over until I left him. I dunno; maybe it was instantaneous. Maybe it just took something drastic for me to figure it out.” Like a very real threat of not even losing him, but having to share him.
“So that space in your soul can be taken over by someone else with time?” Hang on a minute. What an odd thing for someone who’d never loved anyone other than the woman he was with to ask. I was starting to jump to some really dangerous assumptions.
“Guess so. Or else it wasn’t really the real thing the first time.”
If he was hinting at what I thought, was Siobhan the first love or the extra curricular? It seemed too much like his strange mood whittled down to more than pre-nuptial jitters. Was he hoping Siobhan could fill a void or was he hiding something more sinister, like a new lover he hoped would stop him caring about her?
Either way, I could tell that I was going to be in an awful situation come the wedding day. In either scenario, Hunter clearly didn’t love Siobhan Asakuro.
He clammed up again after that and I really didn’t mind. My brain was working overtime trying to make sense of the conversation we’d just had, trying to rationalise it in a way that didn’t end up in him somehow being a liar. I didn’t want to think that of my friend; that he was a cheat. But he was giving me very little choice.
He must have known that he’d said too much because we spent the rest of the afternoon trading nothing but basic questions and monosyllabic answers. I would have happily gone exploring on my own or just spent the rest of the day in the hotel, but he clung to me despite our less than prolix communication.
I wondered if, when the time came, I’d have to be the one who put an end to the farce. I wondered if I’d have to be the person who stood up in the middle of the ceremony and give my reason to stop it in it’s tracks. I wondered if I’d go to Hell if I didn’t and let him get on with it—leave him to find someone to break it down like I had done to Blaze. And, of course, I wondered if I was looking for drama where it didn’t exist.
I finally cracked during dinner in the hotel restaurant, abandoning my barely touched meal. Hunter shot me a quizzical look and reached over to refill my glass of sparkling water.
“Tell me you’re not cheating on Siobhan.”
He blinked a few times and shook his head. “I’m not cheating on Siobhan. Never have, never will.”
“Okay.” I believed him. I needed to hear the words to be sure of it, but with them out in the open, I believed him. “But something is eating at you, Hunter. It’s driving me fucking crazy. You have to give me something.”
He sighed. I expected that to be the end of the conversation. I forced myself to eat a little more, not really tasting anything. He watched me take every uninterested bite.
“Do you remember what you told me at the winter ball?” My mouth was full so I shook my head. “ ‘There are no great love affairs, just great lovers’. Well, sometimes there aren’t even great lovers.”
I swallowed quickly, nearly choking on a laugh. “Are you telling me Siobhan is bad in bed?”
“No!” Hunter scowled but I could see him fighting back his own chuckle. “Admittedly, there’s no element of pleasant surprise after five years, but that’s not what I was saying. Sometimes there are only mirages and untouchable fantasies. You don’t know it yet, but if you spend enough time with someone, you start to realise that they’re not perfect. Then strange little prolapses in reality happen and you start to wonder—”
“What if.” I finished his sentence because I knew the scene well. “I’ve been there. But what does this have to do with you looking like you’re about to run out on your fiancée?”
“I’ve been wondering if it’s better to be happy or comfortable. And from that, trying to define what happiness and comfort are. I don’t know, Emmeline, which do you think is more important?”
My mind stretched back to the day I met Blaze. Sitting in that bathroom in Double Booked, complaining that I was too comfortable. Wanting and waiting for my life to get messed up by some spontaneous whirlwind wonder, and it came.
Was I happy now? I suppose so. Life had it’s ups and downs, but it was also mostly comfortable, too.
“Happy, Hunter. Of course happiness is more important. But the two aren’t mutually exclusive and both are flawed. If things were too perfect or too comfortable, you’d complain that there were no challenges. Sometimes you need hard times to overcome to bring you closer.” I scoffed down at my plate. “Trust me, I’m kind of a good authority on this.”
Hunter opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted by his phone. While I watched him roll his eyes at the caller, I considered all the challenges I’d overcome with Blaze.
He’d had learnt about my mental inadequacies. That was one.
Then he’d found out about Hunter. That was two.
When he’d found out about my family, it made three.
I found out about his wife, which was four.
And I’d left. Five.
Then I came back and found out he’d been cutting. Six, and our current separation made a final count of seven. Seven challenges that had brought us closer each time. Surely we were close enough?
Every time life set up one of these hurdles up for us, it inched a little higher each time, and our relationship was so short-sighted that we never saw them coming. We never got the run up we needed to clear them. I didn’t imagine how there could be any worse surprises hiding in the dark for us, and how we’d get through them when they came.
Hunter tapped my phone and alerted me to the message I’d missed coming through.
Video call right now. Need to see your face. Have news.
Blaze. I wasn’t sure whether I should interpret the clipped sentences and demand to see my face as excitement or warning of one of those damned hurdles, but still I excused myself and headed straight for my laptop because I needed to see his face, too.
He picked up my request for the video call mere seconds after I sent it and greeted me with a smile. My smile. The one he kept for me, and I knew it because his eyes were burning hot.
“Hey, cupca—... Are you okay?”
No, I miss you and the future terrifies me.
“I’m fine.”
“Missing me, beautiful?”
I looked at the pixelated image of his devastatingly gorgeous face. His eyes were still glowing, molten for me. How could I not miss him? “Only a whole fucking lot.”
“You wouldn’t say no to me flying over a little early, then?” His lips curved at my expression of absolute disbelief. “Henry and Daniel have decided they want to make Hunter’s bachelor party so we’ve all made arrangements to come sooner.”
A thought bugged me. It was eight in the evening in Japan, making it eleven in the morning for him. So surely he should be with—”Natasha? Oh God, she’s not coming with you, is she?”
“Are you crazy?” He laughed. “I don’t think the world is ready for ‘One Wedding, Three Brides, No Survivors.”
“Oh... Good.” I brushed off the mental images of Natasha, Siobhan and I in a silent showdown, competing to be the biggest and blushiest bride. Hands down, I would win, but it would be an ugly victory. “So when are you coming?”
Blaze looked at his phone then sucked his teeth. “I dunno, about... fifteen hours?”
“You’re shitting me. Don’t shit me, Valentine. I am in no mood to be... shat with. Shitted? Shat? Shat.”
“I’m serious, cupcake. Henry and Ivy are outside waiting for me. I’ll text you the arrival details.”
All the tension of the day left me in a second. Just knowing that he was coming—that I’d be able to touch him, smell him and just see him in person—made everything better. We’d be able to see the rest of Tokyo together. I’d cancel my meetings to make sure of it. T
he other half of me was coming to complete me again.
No. I was wrong. My life was perfect.
“I can’t wait to see you.”
“I can’t wait, either. The flat has been lonely without you.”
My poor love…
“I have to go and get on that plane, cupcake. I’m going to see you really soon.”
“I’m already counting the minutes.” I really was. I was already trying to figure out what I could do to fill the time.
“Just one thing before I go.” Blaze took a breath and let it out slowly, looking right into the camera on his laptop. “I love you, Emmeline.”
I slammed the laptop shut.
Crap.
A little tangle of nerves and nausea followed me around for the rest of the night and well into the next day. I tried to sleep but lay wide awake, replaying my volatile reaction to being told that I was loved.
Did I regret how I’d handled it? Of course. But could I have said it back to him? No. It just didn’t feel right to me to say it.
As promised, Blaze texted me the ETA for his flight in his usual jovial tone. He obviously wasn’t too put out by the way I’d cut him off, and I was almost certain that he’d been expecting it. He knew that feelings scared me—that I feared something might change with those three words. He knew me well enough to throw them out there at a time when I had chance to process it and the distance to mull them over.
There would be no pressure repeat the sentiment back to him. He probably wouldn’t even bring it up again. Like the love notes I didn’t receive at the right time, I knew it was another one of those occasions where it only mattered that he’d said it, not that I’d reciprocated.
I found myself drinking alone in the heart of Tokyo, telling myself that he’d said it because he was selfish. He’d only cared about getting it off his chest, even if it put me in a distressing situation. After about five drinks, I finally told myself to stop being stupid; he’d said it because he meant it. Drink six didn’t believe that he could possibly have been serious. Drink seven said I was impossible to love. Drink eight raised a valid point that I hadn’t known what love looked like in the eyes of a besotted man, so how could I know what it felt like to be loved? The bottom of drink nine asked me if I even knew what love was.