Heart of Change

by Roxy Harte

  Love is unconditional and undemanding.

  Sure, there’s always room for compromise, but I can’t be someone I’m not.

  It’s raining cats and dogs as I drive from the doctor’s office to the real estate office across town and I let out a big breath when I finally pull in to their parking lot. I look at myself in my rearview mirror. I look stressed. Deep grooves pressed between my eyebrows. I’m not running away, I’m taking charge of my life.

  “I certainly hope that’s the truth of it,” I tell my reflection and then I race through the heavy downpour to the office, splashing through puddles, and really looking forward to living somewhere other than Seattle for awhile.

  I fold my umbrella and place it in a caddy before holding out my hand to the agent, a petite Asian woman who appears stunned to meet me when I say, “Simone Sinclair.”

  “Cho Nishimura.” She smiles and finally takes my hand. There is no trace of a Japanese accent and I wonder how many generations back her lineage goes in the U.S. “I’m a huge fan. Really. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

  I smile. It feels wonderful to be Simone Sinclair again. As I follow the woman to her office, I realize I never was very good at being plain, old Sarah.

  “I only hope I do not disappoint you today.”

  “Uh-oh,” I say.

  “Mr. Kramer was very clear that you wanted a house, but in the city limits, you will find yourself more comfortable in one of the new high-rises, and they can be very accommodating.”

  I nod, but am far from enthusiastic. “I’m not sure I want to be in a high-rise. The possibility of earthquakes make me nervous.”

  “I understand,” she says. “But really, with the new advances in construction, I think you will find that the high-rises are very safe. I have a report of the damaged areas from the last earthquake and I think you will see that most of the severe damage was in the older sections of town. Before the new building codes were in place.”

  I grit my teeth as she pulls up her computer screen. I hate to admit it, but as she proceeds with her presentation, I’m impressed with her thoroughness in easing my fears and pointing out the level of luxury and amenities offered by going new. It isn’t hard to see why Simon sent me to her, she knows Tokyo. It turns out that her favorite apartment is also mine. By Tokyo standards, it is huge and is going to cost me a sizeable portion of my retirement money, but I stand to make it back within the first few years if Simon’s predictions are on target. And since I can’t have a house with a yard, I can at least have the one of the most luxurious apartments in Tokyo. It offers a beautiful view of Tokyo Bay, a split floor plan with accommodations for a live-in housekeeper/nanny on one side of the living space and three additional bedrooms on the other side.

  Cho also provided all of the information I would require to find a suitable nanny, get my driver’s license, and rent furnishings. I hadn’t considered what I would do with my house in Seattle, but Cho had an answer to that as well—temporary leasing as a vacation rental. All that I would be required to do would be to store my most valuable belongings, or have them shipped to Tokyo, and hire a management company.

  “By keeping it temporary, you can make sure that it is available when you need it.”

  I nod.

  An hour later, I am the lessor of a luxury high-rise apartment in Tokyo and lessee of a vacation home in Seattle.

  “You will be very pleased with the view, location, and amenities,” Cho assures me and I believe her. There is also a park, an international market, and an elementary school within a block’s walk. Honestly, the floor plan sold it, everything else is just icing.

  My next stop is a moving and storage company. They send me home with two crates for my international shipping needs and the promise of two men in two weeks to box and haul the rest of the important items into long-term storage. Of course, the main furnishings will stay and I hope I don’t regret that choice, even though Cho repeatedly assured me before I left her office that the executive clientele who would be renting from me would take as good a care of my things as I would.

  My final stop is the drug store. I’m not wasting any time. I buy seven pregnancy tests, one for every day of the week, my intention to use the first one in the morning.

  But I can’t wait that long and use it as soon as I get home.

  Negative.

  That’s doesn’t mean I’m not pregnant, I tell myself and then I crawl into bed, hugging the teddy bear, hoping like crazy that tomorrow’s test result shows positive. I know, I know. I should wait until Friday. I can’t…I’m just not that patient.

  I sleep, waiting, hoping…and dream about my future in Tokyo with a new job and a baby to share my life with. I don’t wake up until midday Tuesday.

  I stumble down to the kitchen for something to eat, having not eaten since Saturday. I eat like I haven’t eaten in a week and then I start to think about when my last meal really was, not Saturday, maybe the night before the procedure, because I only remember juice and water since. I open the fridge for more orange juice and think for a second that I hear a car in my drive, but know it must only be a car going around the curve beyond my gate. When I hear the doorbell, I jump, spilling juice on the counter.

  I walk slowly to the front door and when I catch my reflection in the hall mirror, I almost don’t open the door after all. But I do because I suspect Tina or perhaps Meg…

  And then Geri is in front of me, pushing me inside, closing the door. My back is suddenly pressed against the wall and she is kissing me, hard, deep, greedy, hungry, needy, and I respond to her like I have every time she kisses me. I cry, but I manage to keep kissing her back. My mouth can’t get enough of hers as our tongues collide.

  “We can’t keep denying this,” she manages to say.

  “I don’t want to deny this,” I promise her.

  I roll over, waking with a start. I feel the bed beside me, it’s cold…it was just a dream.

  Just a dream.

  I swallow hard, realizing how badly I wanted her. And how desperately I’ve been pushing her from my thoughts. If I don’t think about her, I can pretend that none of it happened. I won’t feel like my heart is breaking.

  My feet and legs are lead as I walk down the stairs to the kitchen. I open the fridge and pull out the orange juice. I wait for the crunch of tires on my driveway, but there isn’t a crunch. The only sound coming through the open window is birds. And rain. It’s drizzling softly. Big surprise.

  I fill a glass with orange juice and walk to the front door, open it and hope to see her Jeep. It isn’t there. Defeated, I sit on the step and watch the rain, the birds, the swirl of tree leaves as the wind blows softly through them. The day smells like damp earth and I realize just how long it’s been since I paid enough attention to my surroundings to notice.

  I set my glass on the porch at my feet and stand, walking barefoot out into the soft rain, lifting my face to it. I start walking…through my gate…down the road. The hill is steep leading from my house to the park and although my house sits on the back edge of the park’s boundary, the road winds a mile, maybe two miles to its entrance. It doesn’t matter. I don’t think about it. I keep walking, my bare feet hitting cool, wet asphalt…then the damp gravel of the parking lot…then the coarse mulch of bark and pine needles of the trail.

  I’m drawn to the tree I leaned against when Geri made love to me. It looks exactly the same as a dozen other trees, but somehow I know which one it was.

  Closing my eyes, I run my fingers over the bark and then I am hugging the tree, sobbing. Sobbing hard. Saying goodbye. I force myself to remember each touch, each caress, each sigh…and then her voice, “I don’t want it to be just sex with you! And that’s what it feels like.”

  Simon is in my driveway with a police officer when I finally come home. It is late in the day, almost dusk, and only the deepening dark under the tree canopy made me realize that I should go home. I knew it was raining, drips of water managed to make it through the thick canopy. I didn
’t know that it was pouring until I left the forest for the main road. I’m soaked through to my skin by the time I see Simon’s car. And a police car. Simon is standing in my open doorway talking to a police officer when he sees me approaching. He races to my side. Worry lines his face when he takes in my bare, dirty feet. “You scared me to death! What happened? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I assure him. It is obvious that I am not fine. And to think, it was only yesterday, or the day before, that I’d felt so powerful. I remember belatedly that I was supposed to have met Simon at four.

  The officer is relieved that it was a false alarm. I’m glad my assurances that I am fine send him on his way, though he cautions me to be more careful.

  Back in the house, sitting across from Simon, wrapped in a blanket with a towel around my wet hair, I tell him I am ready to leave for Tokyo, sooner rather than later. I need to work. I need to get my mind off Geri and off my baby worries before I have a nervous breakdown for real. I don’t tell him my concerns, but I know he knows that I’m at my breaking point.

  “What can I do to help?”

  I shrug, trying desperately hard not to ask him to make love to me. He still draws me like a magnet. Physically. But mentally, emotionally, he can’t be that man. And I need to try to stop forcing him into a role he can’t fill. I swallow hard, my throat and chest tightening. I’m trying to do the same thing to Geri.

  Blinking back tears, I point at the empty crates in the dining room. “Cho Nishimura said to fill those crates with the things I absolutely must have in Tokyo…and what must go with me will not fit in two small crates.”

  “What do you want to take?”

  I stand, holding out my hand, glad for the warmth of his grip when he takes it and allows me to lead him from room to room, pointing out hundreds of mementos, awards, pictures, artwork, small pieces of antique furniture that I don’t want left to the mercy of strangers. “I know it’s just stuff,” I wave my hands around helplessly, “but it’s stuff I don’t want to leave behind.”

  He slides his hand under my chin, tipping my face up, catching and holding my gaze. “You aren’t coming back are you?”

  “Not for a long time, Simon. I need to make a new life and I can’t do that here.”

  He nods. “Can you find what you are looking for in Tokyo?”

  I smile and it is the first time I’ve smiled in days. “I’m counting on it.”

  I watch Simon as he takes charge, calling Cho, calling an international moving company, calling so many people I lose track of what he is saying or doing and am left merely watching in amazement. After a half hour, he sits beside me, taking my hand. “All done. You’ll be stuck in a hotel for a week, but it is a very nice hotel, not in Tokyo, in the country. It’s a spa actually. And they will treat you like a queen there. You are going to feel like a new woman. By the time you arrive in the city, your apartment will be ready, furnished, staffed, and hopefully with all of your crates waiting for you to unpack. Unless you want me arrange that as well. I just merely thought you might want to choose where your art and personal photos and things go.”

  “Yes, thank you, I would.” I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve never seen you so overwhelmed. I’m worried, Simone.” He squeezes my hand. “Is it because you want a baby so badly?”

  I hold back tears. “That’s part of it. And part of it is making a fool out of myself.” I shrug. “I fell in love, but it doesn’t seem to be reciprocated.”

  “The woman?”

  “Yes, Geri.”

  “Well, she’s a fool.”

  I laugh. It seems suddenly so ridiculous that he is telling me that Geri is a fool for not wanting me after I chased him for two decades.

  “We’re both fools,” he amends.

  “I’m glad you admit it. There is something else you can do for me.”

  “Name it.”

  “Stop calling me every hour on the hour to tell me how much you need me in your life. It’s confusing, and right now I just want to focus on my new career and my new life. It’s time we face facts.” I say we, meaning I. “We haven’t worked out particularly well as relationship material for each other in two decades, so suffice it to say that we are friends. Period.”

  “I do love you, Simone.”

  “I love you too, Simon, as a friend.”

  There is a moment’s silence before he agrees, “I’d rather be your friend than not part of your life at all.”

  “Good.” I hug him. “I’d like that too.”

  He snickers. “Can we sometimes be friends with benefits?”

  “Simon!” I shriek, pushing him away, laughing because I think he only half meant it.

  “You can’t blame a guy for trying, baby.”

  “And you can’t call me baby anymore. I’m the head of our Asian production company. It isn’t professional,” I admonish, shaking my finger at him.

  “Yeah, yeah.” He laughs.

  “When can I leave for this fabulous spa?”

  “Is tomorrow soon enough?”

  I smile and nod, then start pushing him out the door. “I have to pack, you have to go.”

  He kisses my cheek at the door and pulls me into a hug. “Welcome back, Simone. I was getting worried about you.”

  “Me too,” I say. “Me too.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  A loud noise startles me awake and then, hearing the whistle of wind whipping around the house, I fully wake up and realize I have no electricity. I walk through the semi-dark house. It is late morning, but the sky is dark and ominous, making it seem like twilight. We have storms in Seattle, but rarely bad ones. So I am surprised when I look out and see a tree down across the road. “Does it never end?”

  My bags are packed and ready in the corner of my bedroom.

  But it doesn’t look like I’ll be leaving anytime soon. I call Simon, who tells me he’s been trying to call, but the connection doesn’t go through. His voice goes static for a second and then he comes back, and I get, “…worst storm…years…no flight today…”

  “Simon? Simon!”

  The line goes dead. Well, crap. I crawl back under the covers and listen to the wind and rain, hoping none of the big old trees around my house fall over.

  It is some time later when I awaken to pounding on my front door. The wind is still whistling around my house. I think that Simon was insane to drive over here to tell me we couldn’t fly out. He’s insane! Grabbing a flashlight from a nightstand drawer, I hurry through the dark house. I open the door, smiling, then realize it isn’t Simon under the big yellow raincoat, but Geri. “What are you doing here?”

  “I had to see you. I drove all night.” She pulls off her dripping raincoat and leaves it on the porch before stepping into the foyer.

  “That will blow away,” I say. “Hand it here.”

  She does, I carry it dripping to the hall bathroom where I lay it in the sink. “You drove?”

  “If you haven’t noticed, there’s a storm out there off the coast and not only is the ferry down, but flights are grounded too.”

  “Yeah, must be some storm.” I say, trying to see through the big picture window as I walk back into the living room. It is darker than before, seeming like night. I busy myself by lighting some candles.

  “Must be some woman who drew me back.”

  I don’t comment. I don’t know what to say. I don’t want this to be another false start at a relationship that doesn’t have a chance. I remember how real my dream was. Am I dreaming this now? I don’t think I will be able to bear it if I wake up again. I light a few more candles, on the fireplace mantle and on the coffee table. I turn off the flashlight and set it on a small side table by the sofa.

  “I’ve had a lot of time to think,” she says.

  “You’ve been away a week.”

  “That’s a long time to think about someone when you’re thinking you might never see them again. I didn’t want the last time I saw you to be the la
st time I’d ever get to see you.”

  “Ah, that’s what this is about.” Enlightenment dawns a bit slowly. “Which one called you, Meg? Tina? Because it isn’t going to change anything that you are here,” I say, not believing I’m saying it. “I’m going back to Tokyo, and this time I’m sinking my heart and soul into the project. I’m not going to get sidetracked by what I think I want or need, because I already have everything I need to be happy. I know who I am. And I’m okay with that.” I don’t mean for the last part to come out as an angry jab, but that’s exactly what it comes out sounding like.

  “You’re right.” She nods. “You’ve always known who you are and you’ve never apologized for being yourself. I’m sorry if I made you think you have to be something you aren’t to be with me.”

  I shrug.

  “When do you leave?”

  “As soon as the airport clears it.”

  “Wow. That’s soon.”

  “Yeah.” I sigh, sitting down on the couch. She sits beside me. Wasn’t I just sitting here with Simon? God, how ridiculous is this?

  “I can’t believe you are here.” I pull my knees up to my chin, hiding behind arms and legs. She tips her head back against the couch, closing her eyes, her eyelashes flaring out over her cheekbones. She looks so soft, so relaxed. And I’m a wreck, trembling beside her.

  You are so beautiful.

  Her eyes open and she turns her gaze to me. It is like she heard my thought, because she blushes, like she always does when I tell her she’s beautiful.

  “You are beautiful.” She reaches her hand out to touch me, settling for running her hand over my arm. “It’s what makes this so hard.”

  “Please don’t tell me anything else that is going to make me hurt any more than I already hurt,” I beg. “I can’t take it. I fell in love with you! And you wouldn’t—”

  “I know. I know. I’ve been a complete and utter moron.” She scoots closer, pulling me into her arms even though I stay wrapped up, a tight ball of uncooperative arms and legs. “I can’t stand being away from you.”