Seven Days of You

by Cecilia Vinesse

  I shoved my hand in front of Jamie. “Give me some.”

  Worry filled his eyes. “Are you okay?”

  “Fan-fucking-tastic.” I shook my upturned palm at him. “Gimme.” I started wiping up David’s side of the table, keeping my head bent so the American couple couldn’t see how red my face was.

  I couldn’t believe I’d flirted with David like that. In front of Jamie, of all freaking people! The humiliation of being duped by David (yet again) was bad enough without adding Jamie-as-witness to the mix. I mean, what the hell is he even doing here?

  David came back from the bathroom just as the waitress was leaving. “I have to go somewhere and change,” he said. “This pink shit is staining.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I’m going home.”

  “Why?” David asked. “What’s wrong? Don’t tell me you’re pissed off at me as well.”

  “You probably shouldn’t yell,” Jamie murmured.

  “I’m not yelling!”

  Jamie crossed his arms and shrugged. He was standing a little bit in front of me. “You’re not not-yelling.”

  “Oh.” David glanced between us and sneered. “Oh, now I get it.”

  “Get what?” I asked.

  He pointed at Jamie. “All this fake chivalry. All this bumbling good-guy crap. I should have noticed. Baby James still has the hots for Sofa.”

  I stared hard at the table, at the wet, glossy swirls where the smoothie and stranded strawberries had been. A Beatles song was playing over the restaurant speakers, and I wished someone would turn it up.

  “That’s not—” Jamie said.

  “Any of your business,” I said.

  “Don’t take his side, Sofa,” David snapped. He rubbed his temples like he was exhausted. “God. Girls and their drama. It’s all so stupid.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. “Girls and their drama?”

  David threw up his hands. “You, Mika, Caroline—you all do it. You’re incapable of hanging out and having fun without making it about some boy who likes you, or doesn’t like you, or whatever. All this pointless, dramatic bullshit.”

  My jaw clenched. I saw the last twenty-four hours in snapshots: Caroline crying as she walked through the cemetery, David telling us Jamie’s biggest secret, satisfaction in his voice. I saw Mika telling me not to trust him. And I saw all the girls he’d broken up with over the years, how some of them had sought me out to ask me what they’d done wrong, why they’d lost him.

  “David,” I said quietly. “Please know that when I say this, I do not say it lightly. You. Are. Deluded.”

  He raised one eyebrow.

  I jabbed Jamie’s shoulder. “And you’re an idiot!”

  “Me?” he asked.

  “Yes! You knocked that milk shake over on purpose.”

  “It was a smoothie,” he said timidly.

  “Whatever!” I turned back to David. “But you. You listen. Because this is important. You can’t hurt people and expect them to take the hit. You can’t call them dramatic when they get upset because you used them and lied to them. That is not a girl thing. That is a you thing!”

  “Hey,” David said, lowering his blue eyes and then looking up at me again. All contrite and placating. “Sofa…”

  “No.” I took a breath, deeper than the one before. “I’m the one who had a crush on you, and you’re the one who led me on. But whatever. Joke’s on me, right? You’re covered in smoothie, but I’m the idiot in this scenario. The biggest freaking idiot for—for ever thinking you could like me back. And, whatever, it’s exhausting. This is all exhausting.”

  I tossed the used napkins onto the chair and walked away, swerving around tables, ignoring stares, heading to the door that led down to the street. The music over the loudspeakers changed to something new: Elvis.

  As I got to the door, I spun around. “For God’s sake, Jamie!” I shouted. “Are you coming or not?”

  CHAPTER 16

  WEDNESDAY

  “WOW,” JAMIE KEPT SAYING. “WOW. That was incredible. Really incredible. You were like an Avenger or something! You avenged yourself.”

  We were on Inokashira-dori, the main road that ran toward Shibuya Station. I could see the crossing in the distance. It wasn’t raining anymore, but the streets were dark and slick. Water sprayed out from under the tires of passing cars, and the air felt cool and metallic.

  “Hey.” I stopped walking. “I have a question for you.”

  “Okay.”

  I shoved him. “Why the hell were you hanging out with David?”

  Jamie seemed embarrassed but didn’t answer right away. We were standing outside H&M, a steady rush of people going in and out of the fluorescent entrance even though it was after seven. Someone walked past us in a black raincoat, which made me realize that Jamie had forgotten his. And that I’d forgotten my umbrella.

  “He called,” Jamie said finally. “Mika wasn’t picking up her phone, and he wanted me to check on her. I told him she wasn’t home, and then he invited me out.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you went.”

  He rubbed the palms of his hands together. There was an anxious crease between his eyebrows. “I figured you’d be there.”

  I pulled my bag around me and hugged it tight. We were blocking people’s way on the sidewalk, but I didn’t care.

  “Was she really not home?” I asked.

  “No,” Jamie said. “She just didn’t want to talk to him.”

  I relaxed my grip on the bag. “She doesn’t want to talk to me, either. She hasn’t tried to call me all day.”

  “I think she’s worried you’re mad at her.”

  “Duh. But she could at least try. I don’t want to leave things like this.”

  “You won’t.” Jamie nudged the tip of my shoe with his own.

  A bus flew past us, hurtling toward the crossing. Speakers attached to it blasted a new J-pop hit that warbled and distorted as it moved away. I pressed my lips together and tasted lipstick, which creeped me out.

  Jamie nudged my shoe again. “How are your knees?”

  “My knees?”

  “Yeah, they still look sore. Do you need more Band-Aids?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, okay,” he said. “But you must be hungry, what with all the kicking ass and taking names.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m a little hungry. I guess.”

  He grinned, and in the incandescent light of the store behind him, his green eyes seemed to flash. “This is a hunger only ramen can cure.”

  Jamie, as it turned out, was pretentious about ramen.

  “That place is way too big,” he said when we passed a restaurant with floor-to-ceiling windows and two long counters with rows of plastic seating. “It’s industrial. A ramen shop shouldn’t seat more than five people at a time. The steam from the kitchen should get into your sinuses.”

  We found a small one tucked around the corner from the station, beneath an overpass. It was windowless with only one booth and three counter seats.

  “This,” Jamie said as I pulled the paper-screen door shut behind us, “is what I’m talking about.”

  We put money into a machine at the front of the shop and pressed buttons for everything we wanted to order. It spat out tickets for each item. A miso ramen for me and a miso ramen with extra seaweed and two plates of gyoza—vegetable and chicken—for Jamie.

  The booth was free, so we slid in.

  “This is officially what I missed the most,” Jamie said. He started pouring glasses of water from a plastic jug on the table. “Well, almost the most. You can have some of the gyoza if you want. Or if you want to order anything else…”

  I sat back against the plastic of the booth and rubbed my eyes. The air was warm and salty, and I could feel it in my pores. Jamie was right; ramen shops were better this way. But they weren’t what I would miss most. Ever since the Imperial Palace, I’d been cataloging the thousand small things I wished I didn’t have to leave behind. The
Christmas lights at Takashimaya Times Square, the small row of persimmon trees growing in one of the alleys behind my house, hot yakitori from the stand by Yoyogi-Uehara Station.

  An older woman wearing a heavy blue apron came out of the kitchen to take our tickets.

  “I have a question,” I said as soon as she walked away. “And just tell me the truth, okay? Is it a southern thing?”

  “Is what a southern thing?” He pushed a glass across the table. I caught it and took a sip. The water was cold, and it made my teeth buzz. I drank it all in two gulps, so Jamie poured me another glass.

  “You know,” I said. “The chivalry thing. The being-the-good-guy thing. Is it because you’re southern?”

  He snorted. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew the rest of my family.”

  “You don’t have to do anything for me,” I said. “I’m not going to have a meltdown, you know.”

  “I know that.” The worry crease appeared between his eyebrows again. That crease was starting to become familiar. “And you’re wrong. You and David are both wrong. I’m not the good guy.”

  “Of course you are.”

  His voice dropped. “If I were the good guy, I wouldn’t have sent that stupid text. I wouldn’t have left without talking to you again.”

  I shook my head. “That wasn’t all your fault, Jamie. I’m the one who said all that stuff about you. About how you were a—”

  “A twitchy little loser.” Jamie cleared his throat. “Yeah. I remember.”

  “Exactly! And I threw your good-bye present, like, right in your face.”

  He smirked, and his eyes skirted the Totoro pin on my sweater. This weird, tingly warmth rushed through me.

  The waitress came back and set two small blue-and-white cups in front of us. They were filled with hot tea that smelled like rice and autumn leaves. I leaned over and let the curling steam evaporate on my face. When I glanced up, Jamie was still watching me, his eyes thoughtful and searching. I could have pretended not to notice, but I met his gaze full on. My pulse started pounding in my ears.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said, leaning across the table.

  “Yeah,” I said, leaning forward a little to meet him. “I think you’ve earned the right.”

  “That watch you’ve been wearing—is it the same one you had when we were kids?”

  “Oh.” I sat back and grabbed my wrist.

  “Crap,” Jamie said. “Sorry.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s no big deal.”

  He nodded, clearly relieved.

  “It was a gift from my dad.” I placed my hands back on the table and stretched out my fingers. “You remember how he lives in Paris?”

  Jamie nodded again.

  “When I was a kid, I hated going back and forth. I used to be really—depressed about it, I guess. That might not be the right word. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

  Depressed. Or maybe just sunk so far inside myself that no one could get to me. Not my mom, not my teachers.

  Nobody.

  Like how I’d felt when I found out Mika and David had been lying to me. Like the floor was dissolving beneath my feet and there was nothing I could do to stop the fall that would follow.

  “So your dad got you a watch,” Jamie said carefully.

  “Yeah.” I shook off the dark and sticky feelings and clicked the button that switched the display. “Dad would set it so that it told me how long I had until I saw him again. That way, when I got sad, I’d know time was bringing us closer together, not further apart. I think he was trying to make me feel less powerless or something. But honestly, the only thing I wanted was to go live there.”

  “Really?” Jamie said. “In Paris over Tokyo?”

  “I don’t know.” I folded and unfolded the corner of a chopstick wrapper. “I’d definitely pick Tokyo now. But when I was little, I would’ve gone to Paris in a heartbeat. I used to tell all my teachers I was from there, even though I couldn’t speak French.”

  Jamie laughed.

  “And I’ve visited every year since I was five. Since—my dad left.”

  Discomfort crept across his face. “Parental abandonment, I definitely get. Why’d he leave?”

  I twisted my watch, hard. I hated talking about this. It always made Dad sound like the bad guy. “We were moving to the States—my parents met here, in Tokyo. Mom had a job at a foreign university, and Dad was teaching English. He’d just graduated from college—he’s, like, seven years younger than she is. They got married here, and Alison and I were born here, but then Mom got a job at Rutgers and Dad didn’t want to go.” I couldn’t stop twisting my watch. A small blister was starting to bloom on the sensitive skin just below my palm. “But it wasn’t just that. Dad didn’t want to live outside France forever, and Mom didn’t understand that. You know what, though? I think I do. If you had one place you totally fit, wouldn’t you go? Wouldn’t you have to?”

  Jamie took hold of my wrist and gently pulled it away from my other hand.

  He wasn’t touching my skin or anything. Just the watch. He had smooth, trim nails and a wide thumb.

  I swallowed so loud, I was sure he must have heard it. I’d definitely told him more than I’d meant to. I never really talked about my dad, and no one other than my mom and sister knew the whole watch story. Maybe I’d only told him because I was leaving—because it didn’t matter as much.

  Jamie held up the watch so he could read it; I moved to the edge of my seat. “Is this how long till you see your dad again?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “That’s how long till my flight leaves Tokyo.”

  The waitress came back, this time holding two deep bowls filled nearly to the lip with brown broth, noodles, and meat. She put one in front of me and the other in front of Jamie. I grabbed a set of wooden chopsticks and broke them apart. Jamie and I didn’t say anything for a minute as we mixed the ingredients together: slender bamboo shoots, bright green onions, dark seaweed, and long, crimped noodles.

  “I know it’s weird,” I said eventually. “Alison’s always telling me to stop wearing it. And I really should. It’s a little kid’s watch.”

  The waitress set the plates of gyoza in the middle of the table. Jamie drizzled them with soy sauce and pushed the plate of vegetable ones closer to me.

  They were delicious—warm and crispy dumplings with a filling that was almost too hot and too sweet. We polished off both plates without talking. Jamie looked like he was trying to hold the gyoza in his mouth for as long as possible. He looked like he’d been waiting to eat them for the past three years. Which, I guess, he had.

  “It’s not a little kid’s watch,” he said, swallowing his last bite. “You’re not a little kid.”

  After dinner, we walked to Shibuya Station. Mom called to say she was still cleaning out her office. I said I was walking around Shibuya with Mika. I couldn’t help the lie—the truth felt way too weird to say out loud. Alternate universe, I reminded myself. None of this counts.

  Everyone around the station was dressed to go out. A girl with a bow on her head the size of a small street sign, a guy in bright yellow combat boots and pinstriped pants. They clustered around the Hachiko statue, then broke off into the night like satellites tracing new orbits. Jamie and I stopped at the crossing and waited for the light to change. Cars shooting by, one after the other after the other.

  I studied him. Lit up by the surrounding buildings, he was blue, white, pink, and yellow. A neon constellation. He caught me staring and his face brightened. I was grateful he didn’t ask if I wanted to go home then. I wouldn’t have known what to say.

  CHAPTER 17

  THURSDAY

  JAMIE AND I WENT TO TOWER RECORDS and rode the glass elevator all the way to the top floor. We went to a fast-food restaurant and ordered french fries, spilling them over a tray and counting them out so we each got the same number of crispy and non-crispy ones. We stood on a street corner where the air smelled like the memory of rain, and Jamie touched my elbow
and said, “So. What next?”

  Midnight came and went, but we didn’t catch the last train.

  We didn’t even try.

  The arcade was three stories high and packed with hundreds upon hundreds of games. Best of all, it was open all night.

  Jamie and I hung out by the UFO catchers. UFO catchers are those claw-machine games, the ones that are a total con in the States and slightly less of a con in Japan. With a little strategizing, I’d seen people actually win some of the vast array of prizes: Rilakkuma stuffed animals and Hello Kitty toasters and enormous boxes of candy. Jamie decided we should try to win a box of chocolate Pockys bigger than my TV.

  “Don’t you think we’ve eaten enough?” I asked.

  “Still not everything in Japan, though,” he said. “We must forge ahead.”

  “Right, of course,” I said. “Win us those Pockys or the mission will be compromised.”

  He spared a glance from the machine to give me his biggest grin. When he turned back again, he furrowed his brow in concentration. I let my eyes trace the small bump on his nose and then move to his eyelashes, which were as pale as his hair. The game must have been frustrating, because he’d started chewing on his lower lip.

  “Isn’t that your phone?” he asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Your phone.” He pointed to my bag, which was buzzing.

  “Oh.” Crap! Why do I keep ogling him?! “Yeah. It is.” It was my mom, saying good night. I’d texted her a little while ago to tell her I was staying at Mika’s and that I’d be back in the morning. The constant lying to my mom didn’t feel like the best decision I’d made all day. But it didn’t feel like the worst one, either.

  I tried to hand Jamie my phone. “You should call your parents.”

  “Nah,” he said.