When You Were Here (24 page)

My lips find hers. They are as soft as I remembered, and she tastes spectacular.

We pull apart for a second and look at each other, sharing crazy grins. Then she comes in for another one, putting her hands on my cheeks like I’m hers, like she’s claiming me, and she kisses me, hard and deep and with an intensity that is out of this world, or maybe it is clearly
of
this world.

To kiss again like this—I think it’s safe to say that I am totally, 100 percent a happy guy.

But even though I want to do so many things to her right now, I force myself to focus on something else.

A ceremony, a ritual.

“I have an idea,” I say, and when I tell Holland, her eyes glisten, but she says yes.

Holland waits in a shoe store down the street from my apartment. I don’t let her come upstairs, because I know us. If we are alone behind a closed door, we won’t leave. I walk over to the windowsill and take a smooth, flat rock the size of my palm from the base of one of the more Zen-like plants. I find a Sharpie, and I drop that and the rock into a plastic bag. Finally I grab the envelope with the lilac seeds that Holland sent my mom.

I close the door, find Holland, and hold her hand as we walk across Shibuya to the narrow alleys and side streets that lead to the Tatsuma Teahouse. The teahouse is closed today, and we can’t go in anyway. Still, I tell Holland the story Kana told me. Well, the parts I remember.

“I love that. It’s beautiful.”

I nod. “It’s a love story.”

“I like love stories.”

Then we’re off to the subway. We fly down five flights of stairs to the lowest platform. The subway doors close quietly behind us. My hand is on her back, and I watch her looking at the posters of Japanese women writing novels on cell phones and pictures of Japanese men drinking energy drinks. I’m nervous again; it’s only a subway. But it’s
more
than a subway. It’s a subway in Tokyo, and I want her to like it here. I want her to fall for this city.
My
city. Funny how I came to Tokyo to reconnect with my family, but I found something so much simpler, something I didn’t even know I was looking for. But it’s here, all around me: in the streets, in the shops, on the subways. My home.

We exit at the fish market and climb the stairs up to the food stalls. Some are closed since it’s afternoon now, but
that food stall
is open, and Mike is working.

“Long day, dude?” I ask.

He nods wearily. “The usual?”

“I’ll let the lady go first,” I say, then turn to Holland. She orders tuna and rice, and I ask for the same. I tell her about my mom, how she came here every day when she was in Tokyo, and how we ate here together when I was with her.

Next we head across town to the temple. My mom’s temple now—that’s how I think of it at least. We go inside and nod in unison to the Buddha. “She used to come here too. I think this place gave her peace.”

“I can see her here. I can definitely see her here.”

We leave the temple and make our last stop. No subway this time. Just a short walk to the cemetery behind the temple.

I take the rock and the pen from the bag. On the rock I write a name:
Sarah St. James
.

I hand it to Holland. She writes two dates. Then she reaches inside her black bag and takes out a tiny piece of Sarah’s baby blanket. It had been inside the manila envelope with the photos. I place the rock on the ground—a marker, a makeshift gravestone next to these other gravestones. Holland tucks the piece of the blanket underneath the rock.

Together we sprinkle lilac seeds around the rock. They won’t grow; I know that. They won’t rise up and turn into a lilac bush in a few years. For a lilac bush to grow, you have to plant it, water it, and all that stuff. But that’s not what this is about.

I hold Holland’s hand. She squeezes mine back. “I smell lilacs everywhere. And I don’t mean from the seeds.”

“I know,” I say. “I smell them too.”

“This is going to sound weird, but lilacs don’t have a different season here in Japan?”

I shake my head. “Nope. But sometimes they’re just everywhere. And that’s just the way it goes.”

As we walk away the scent of lilacs lingers in the air.

We’re back at my apartment, and as I hold the door for her, I feel like I’ve had too much caffeine, or like it’s my birthday
and all I want to do is open my presents. The door clinks shut, and seconds later we’ve made it to my bedroom, and I am laying her down on my white futon. I tell myself to slow down, to not rip off her clothes, to take my time because we have time. Besides, she looks so gorgeous here on my bed, and I want to drink her in.

“Can I take off your clothes?”

“Please take off my clothes,” she says.

So I do, taking off her bracelets, her T-shirt, her shorts, and everything else. Her clothes are scattered across my futon, marking my bed. I always want her clothes on my bed.
Always.

I stop to look at her. She is naked, and it’s the most beautiful sight. I run a hand along the back of her leg, thrilled to touch her again, to be able to. Her body moves against my palm, and she gasps, a soft, lingering sigh. It’s all so achingly familiar and so incredibly new at the same time.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Please kiss me, Danny.”

I start at her ankle, and she shivers under my touch. I look up at her, and she looks down at me, and we lock eyes for a moment. Then she whispers,
Don’t stop
, and I reacquaint myself with her knees and her thighs, her belly and her hips, and everything in between. She says my name over and over, and it’s almost too much. But I am up to the task.

Then her cheeks are flushed, and she has this happy, woozy look on her face.

“Hi,” she whispers.

“Hi.”

“I missed that too.”

“Happy to make up for all the lost time.”

Before we go any further, I ask: “So should we double up or something this time? You know, just to be safe.”

“I’m on the Pill again,” she says, and I raise an eyebrow. “Not for
that
. The doctors put me on it afterward. To get everything back to normal. Ugh.” She covers her eyes with her hands.

“Hey,” I say, and gently take her hands off her eyes. “It’s okay.”

“I know. I just don’t want you to think I’m on it for other reasons. I haven’t been with anyone since you.”

I grin in response, then kiss her eyelids. “Good.”

“But yes, we should use a condom too.”

I give her a goofy thumbs-up. “Double the protection, double the fun.”

It’s still amazing, or maybe it’s even better because here we are again, and we can’t seem to stop returning to each other. I don’t want to stop, not with her, not ever. When it’s over and we’re lying next to each other, I’m not relaxed, though, because I half-expect her to leave, to dart out and never come back.

“Holland, please don’t leave me again,” I say.

“I won’t run away again.” Then softly, shyly, “I’m yours, Danny.”

She reaches for my hand, clasps it in hers.

“Then promise me,” I say. “Promise me if something
happens, like Sarah, that you’ll tell me. That you’ll give me the chance to figure things out with you. You don’t have to be alone.”

“I know that now. I do. And I won’t leave you alone when things are hard for you, like I did before. I promise.”

I want to bookmark this moment, capture it for the rest of my life. I know there are no guarantees, not in life, not in love. But I’ll take what I can get; I’ll take what I can
give
. Another chance.

On Sundays during the spring and summer, Holland would go with my mom to the farmers’ market. They brought their canvas bags and bought up cranberry-walnut breads, honey-kissed peaches, sun-ripened cherries, and flowers, gobs of flowers. They bought huge bouquets and little bouquets of whatever was in season. Holland would put her flowers in vases around her house; my mom would do the same at our house.

“It’s like living in Amsterdam,” my mom declared as she returned with orange tulips. It was just a few days after Holland and I had our first kiss. We weren’t
out
yet; we weren’t officially a couple.

“Tulips! Tulips everywhere. We’re living in Holland,” the girl named after the country added.

“We are turning this place into our own Netherlands,” my mom quipped.

“We’re like the Dutch!”

It was Kate’s turn to chime in. “Clearly you two have been practicing your nicknames.”

“And look, we picked up some zinnias to plant. They’ll bloom in time for Labor Day,” my mom said. “They’ll be gorgeous.”

My mom and Holland went to the backyard and began working in my mom’s garden, digging and planting and getting their hands dirty. At one point I stood by the sliding-glass door and watched them. Holland was kneeling in the dirt, her hands in the soil. She looked up, noticed me, gave me a nod, and then a wink. I tipped my forehead back to her, a slight grin in return, then went back inside.

Later that day when Holland had returned to her home, my mom flopped down on the couch and said to me, “You are so busted, Danny. How long did you think it would take for me to figure out you’re involved with Holland?”

She was the cat that had caught the mouse, and she was satisfied with the hunt.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Denial will get you nowhere,” she teased. “Now fess up.”

“Mom, don’t be gross. I’m not going to tell you anything.”

“Ah-ha! So there
is
something to tell! I knew it, I knew it.”

I just shrugged and smiled—an admission. “What do
you want for dinner? Want me to make some sandwiches or something?”

“Sure,” she said, and I brought her a plate with a turkey sandwich on wheat. “You couldn’t have made a better choice.”

“You like turkey that much, Mom?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“I do. I do know what you’re talking about.”

I’m glad my mom approved of Holland. And right now I kind of want Kana to approve of Holland too. We’re at an old-fashioned noodle shop in Shibuya having lunch. We sit at slatted wood tables and are surrounded by solo businessmen and businesswomen loudly slurping their noodles in approval.

Holland covers her mouth with her hand and tries to stifle a yawn.

“Did Danny tell you I have secret Asian cure for jet lag?” Kana says as the waiter brings our bowls of noodles. She says it in a thick Japanese accent, clearly making fun of herself.

“It’s not jet lag,” I say proudly.

Holland laughs, then points to me. “American boys. What can you do?”

“It’s a good thing I knew he”—Kana points her thumb at me—“was head over heels in love with you from the start. Made it so much easier to keep my hands off him.”

Holland smiles. “I’m sure he was terribly hard to resist.”

“
The worst!
Every day it was like pulling arrows out of my heart,” Kana says dramatically, then mimics the process of removing these arrows.

“Oh, ha-ha,” I say, but I’m glad they like each other, because you never know with girls. You never know if one thinks the other is stepping on her territory. The thought of me being territory for either of them is laughable, but I like that each of these girls can stake a claim on me, a different one but still a claim.

When we finish the noodles, Kana asks if Holland has had the sponge cake yet. Holland says no.

“That is a sin. And it must be rectified. But there are other sins that must be righted first, beginning with those flip-flops you are wearing, Miss Holland.” Kana turns to me and says, “Danny, we will meet you at the sponge-cake place in thirty minutes.” Kana hooks her arm through Holland’s and escorts her out of the restaurant.

I’m alone again, and there’s something I need to do. Something I should have done long ago. I hoof it back to my apartment—
my
apartment, my
home
, it’s easy to say now because
this
is where I live—and open my mom’s medicine cabinet for the first time since the night I arrived. The pill bottles are still there. I take them all to the kitchen and dump the contents of each one into the trash can. It turns out that disposing of medicine isn’t that complicated. I looked up the guidelines online. You’re just supposed to mix up the pills with “undesirables” like coffee grinds or cat litter and then toss them out in the trash. I don’t have
litter or coffee grinds, but I think trash is kind of undesirable too. I’m about to tie up the bag when I think of another bottle I’ve forgotten. Only this one is mine. I go to the living room where I keep my painkillers. I look at the bottle longingly for a second, remembering the feelings, the way these pills took the pain away, the way they took me away. I’ll miss the escape. Still, I dump the remaining ones in the trash and toss the bag in the incinerator in the building.

I resume my path to the sponge-cake café, and soon Holland and Kana join me. Holland is wearing rainbow socks up to her knees and a new pair of pink Converse sneakers. She looks totally adorable.

Kana holds out her arm as if she’s presenting Holland, in her new duds, to me.