by Cynthia Dane
So I wasn’t quite over him yet. Can you blame me? You read about my date and the great way he loved on me, even if he didn’t love me. And since this is technically a romance novel, you know how it’s probably going to end.
Yes, folks, this is the part of the story where I hate everything and am convinced I’m never gonna have love again.
But I’ll spare you the angst and drama by telling you it lasted about a day. Because if we’re going to have our happy Romance ending with only a week to spare, I gotta get over this shit quickly!
It also helps that I got a message from Hadrian around eleven that night. Do you know what it said?
“I’m sorry because last night. The room air is hard on my throat. I cough a lot.”
On one hand, the air was dry in that hotel room, yes. On the other? Ha! Bullshit, dude!
Of course, I wasn’t going to tell him that. “It’s okay. I understand. How are you today?”
Because I wanted to see him again, duh. Might as well segue him into it.
“I am okay. You?”
“I am also okay.” You know, I read back these messages I have saved on my phone and think… God, we’re so lame! “I had fun last night.”
“Me too.”
I waited a few minutes. Odds were he was at work. But did he know how badly I wanted to see him again? How much I wanted to nestle my head against his chest and inhale that intoxicating cologne? Aftershave? Whatever it was? How much I wanted one of his terrible kisses? How I yearned to feel him on top of me, behind me again? I was so pathetic, I even fantasized about sucking his cock again. Hey, if you saw and felt that thing, you would be fantasizing about it too! Hell, I wanna do it right now!
“Should we meet again?”
“Yes, again. Me too.”
“When is good for you? I leave next weekend.”
Trapped in my room that night with nothing but my mind to keep me company (my neighbor had thankfully toned it down on the sex for a couple of days. Probably had his dick in a splint,) I agonized that he was never going to answer me, even if he was busy at work right now. As a child of the ‘90s, I grew up with these images of women waiting by their phones, their answering machines, anything that would create correspondence between her and that mystery date from the night before. Was he going to call? Would it be uncouth if she called first? Well, as an older Millennial and a child of the ‘90s, I can safely say I grew up to a different world. With instant messaging, we don’t have to turn each other down face to face. Hell, we don’t even have to say anything at all. True, people could have not called back then, but now it hurts even to think about how easy it is to contact people… and never do it.
Basically, the son of a bitch ghosted me.
For days!
I was a nervous wreck those first two days. Why wasn’t he answering me? Did he change his mind? It had been two, three, four fucking days. At first I told myself he was working late and needed to sleep through the next day. Fine. Whatever. He’d get back to me, right? Anytime now. I’d be at dinner, at a café writing, on the subway playing Neko Atsume between stations, doing anything in my day to day life when he would finally contact me again. Probably with another apology.
Except he didn’t.
After the second day, I stopped checking my phone every fifteen minutes. I had to stop living like that. I had shit I needed to get done. People to see.
Illnesses to fucking have.
That’s right, folks. Yours truly got sick two days after seeing Hadrian. See, there was a plague in Japan. A coughing, hacking, wheezing plague that completely knocked you off your ass with a fever for a day and then, if you were oh-so-lucky, made you hack up your lungs for days afterward. Now, I had actually been a little sick with the same thing a couple weeks ago. I felt so terrible back then, because of those thin share-house walls, but now I didn’t give a fuck as I suffered with my even worse relapse. I would cough as loudly and proudly as I possibly could when my neighbor went back to his fuck-a-thons.
I was particularly proud when one night he woke up at 4 am and cried, “Nemurenai! Minna urusai!” Loose translation? “I can’t sleep! Everyone’s too fucking loud!” Good. Eat your god damn heart out, you French asshole.
I was miserable in more ways than one, and this piece of shit was going down with me.
So there was pitiful little me, hacking up both of her lungs all day, every day, staring at her phone wondering when Hadrian was ever going to get back to her. If ever. Meanwhile, the only reason I got any sleep at all was because I was that knocked out. Although my neighbor continued to fuck his way through the night and occasionally wake me up. Whenever that happened, I made sure to cough harder to spite him.
By the end of the third day, as I sat in my favorite restaurant reading my next installment in billionaire fuckathons and wishing I got some of that of my own again, I made the decision. An important decision that I’m sure you’ve been screaming at me to have by now.
If I didn’t hear from Hadrian by the next morning, I knew I was never going to hear from him again. I had sent him one last message, restating that it would be nice to see him but I was leaving in a few days. After that, I stopped checking. I still got hopeful whenever I picked up my phone for other reasons, but nope. Nothing. And I knew there would be nothing, because the asshole had ghosted me.
Why? Why do guys do that? Was Hadrian merely leading me on so I wouldn’t think he was an asshole until the time was right? Or had I scared him off by acting too needy on accident? A million scenarios ran through my head. He hadn’t actually liked me. He liked me too much but didn’t want to get too deep with a woman who was leaving – or because he was leaving. There was someone else. He had been lying about everything and didn’t want to face his lies. He was so busy he completely forgot about me. Honestly, that was the least hurtful one.
No. No, I had to stop those thoughts. So I told myself that if he didn’t get back to me by the next morning, he never was going to, and I had to move the fuck on!
Maybe find another date? Ugh. No. Not worth it. Besides, any man I went on a date with? I would compare him to Hadrian, for better or for worse, and I didn’t need that shit on my soul.
But even though I had accepted he wasn’t going to return my message, let alone in time for us to meet again before I had to leave, that didn’t mean my attitude was awesome.
Would’ve been one thing if I was only dealing with being ghosted. Being sick on top of that? Blech. But you know what was worse? You know what the one thing that made me really hate my life was?
If you guessed my shitass neighbor, then you are correct! That fucker could still go to hell!
We were back to our regularly scheduled sex marathons next door. Every two hours those two were back to fucking. The bed smacked against the wall, knocking shit off my desk. I hated everything because nothing I did blocked them out and let me sleep. My lack of sleep kept me sick longer than I should have been. I spent so much time wanting to put a bullet of mercy in my brain that it should be no surprise that I swore vengeance upon them and every little sperm that man had ejaculated over the past two weeks.
It should come as no surprise, my friends, that I received a message from you-know-who when I was in the middle of a sleepless night thanks to the worst neighbors a girl could ask for.
“I’m very sorry. My phone break. I get new one. You in Japan?”
I couldn’t believe it.
I couldn’t fucking believe it! The bastard was back online! And daring to talk to me!
My gut instinct told me to believe him. After all, he had gotten back to me, hadn’t he? Maybe the thing about his phone was true. Maybe he really had broken his phone, and one of the first things he did was message me.
I wanted to believe it, okay?
Ladies, you know what I did. Come on. I don’t have to tell you that I didn’t immediately message him back. That would’ve been weird, right? So I waited as long as I could without fear of him going to bed. A whole twenty minutes. Tha
t’s right. I kept that fucker hanging on for a whole twenty minutes! HA! Can’t be tamed!
“Yes, I’m still in Japan. Sorry about your phone.”
Come on, Hadrian. Last time you made me ask you out. Could you ask me out this time? You know I’m game to fuck you. I wouldn’t still be talking to you if I had such a miserable time, and I think you and I both know that I had fun that first night we met.
“What you do tomorrow? Work?”
I did have plans to work on a novel the next day. However, I was willing to change any plans if it meant seeing Hadrian.
“No plans.” Yessssss, that would make him ask me out! Don’t complicate it, girl!
“We meet tomorrow?”
Spike it in the end-zone! Go out for celebratory drinks! Slam dunk that mother fucker! Pound my hands against the wall I shared with my shitty neighbor and scream, “It’s my turn, asshole!”
What I meant to write was, “Sure! What is good for you?”
He told me he had to do something in the afternoon and that dinner would be best. I agreed. I needed time to get whatever beauty rest I could and get ready for my big date with Hadrian, the comfortable-with-you edition.
What we didn’t agree on was where to go. He said he was fine with anything, or that we could go back to Oji. Me? I sat there, listening to my shitass neighbor nut-off in his girlfriend for the third time that night and typed, “Why don’t you come to my neighborhood? There is a nice restaurant here.”
“Okay. I come to you. Last time you came to me. It’s good.”
I think he meant to say that it was fair, but whatever. Point was? I was concocting the plan of the century, and I needed Hadrian and his awesome cock to do their parts, if you know what I mean.
“Yes!” my neighbor cried while his girlfriend remained as silent as a mouse yet again. “Nice!”
You keep thinking that, buddy. Because I was about to get even.
Chapter 10
Problem: I had no idea where to take Hadrian for dinner. I agonized over that more than I agonized over what to wear.
If I were a decent cook, I would have made him something at the share house. But I can’t cook worth shit, so a restaurant it had to be.
My neighborhood had a ton of restaurants. A lot of them were nothing special, though. A lot of chain restaurants you find in every neighborhood in Japan. A ton of Italian restaurants that a connoisseur like Hadrian wouldn’t find special for a date. There were a lot of Chinese and Indian restaurants that I’m sure were perfectly fine, but I’m so finicky about those cuisines that I wasn’t sure if I could handle them.
The only thing notable about my neighborhood was the plethora of French restaurants, but again, a cuisine I didn’t really jive with. Besides, most of them closed early in the evening, so that didn’t do us any good.
I got lucky when I canvassed the neighborhood that afternoon and found an “American” restaurant ran by a couple of foreigners. (They even spoke English. Whoa.) Although I wasn’t that worried about getting Hadrian to a restaurant. I was more worried about what I had planned for later that night. I hadn’t told Hadrian what I wanted from our last night together. I mean, I wasn’t going to trick him into anything. Goodness, no. But it was going to take some awkward conversations for him to understand what was up.
First, dinner.
I met him outside a nearby train station. He still wore the tight jeans and leather jacket, but his shirt was a long-sleeved turtleneck that made him look so stupidly good (that’s a real description, yes,) that I convinced myself every woman walking by us was jealous of me. They had to be. Look at this handsome devil approaching me with a smile and a pat to the arm. Look how comfortable he is with me. Look at how he kisses my cheek!!! before staying a respectful distance away from me as we walk down the street. He could hold my hand or loop his arm around my shoulders any time he wanted, but I wouldn’t ask it of him. That would’ve been something he worked his way up to over multiple dates.
Too bad we wouldn’t have them.
“You like American food?” I asked.
“American?” What was that face for? Was he going to question what “American” food meant? (You know what it means in a foreign country. Hamburgers. Good ol’ fashioned types of hamburgers. If you’re really lucky, you get a place that also serves up American breakfasts and dishes like country fried steak. If you’re lucky. You are rarely so lucky in Japan.) “Yes. I like American food.”
“Good. Because if you’re moving there, you better like it.” I could’ve said the same thing about Japan and me, oops. There’s a reason I always lose weight in Japan, and it has everything to do with the fact I can’t eat much of the local cuisine.
“American food is good. Although Italian is better.”
“You know, I can’t argue with that.”
The owners of the restaurant waved at me when I brought my date in. The Canadian woman in charge gave me a knowing wink as she handed us English menus. Hadrian instantly gave his menu the most puzzling of looks, so I quietly asked the woman to bring us one of their Japanese menus. She was surprised, but said nothing.
“But I need to practice my English,” Hadrian said.
“You can look at both. It’s best way to practice Japanese, yes?”
He smiled. “Maybe so.”
Good thing I got him a menu he could better understand, because the burgers there were, uh, intense. They allowed you to put almost anything and everything on a burger. Some of it was very American, like bacon and “house sauce,” but other things were hilariously Japanese, like extra octopus ink and pickled ginger. No thanks to both. I would, however, try a bacon burger for the first time in Japan. Do you know how hard it is to get bacon in Japan? It is not something they consume on a regular basis, even though pork is the second most popular meat after fish.
Once we placed our orders of separate burgers and a giant basket of fries to share, the owner left us to our little corner. I admit, I was a bit nervous to have this date within earshot of others who spoke both English and Japanese. But whatever, right?
“Again, I’m sorry about this.” Hadrian showed me his new phone. “It break. I get new one. I message you but too long.”
His panicked face told me that he feared I would be angry with him. Honey, if I were that mad at you over something so silly, I wouldn’t have gone out on this second date with you. “No worries. I understand.”
He sighed in relief. “I’m glad. I think I want to see you again. You ask me to see you. I am happy, but something like this… it happened.”
I nodded. “Maybe I worried a little. Like maybe you didn’t like me.”
“Really?” He laughed, opening the translation app on his phone. He punched something in before showing me the screen. “You are impossible not to like.”
I blushed. I mean, really! This guy was going to lay the flirtations on heavy tonight. Good. He could make up for last time.
“You go back to America?”
That was what he was going to start with? “Unfortunately. I don’t have much choice. I have to go home.”
“Ah, it’s nice. Home in America.”
“Soon it will be your home too.”
“Yes. I leave in…” he counted on his fingers, “three weeks. So soon. Also too far away.”
“It’ll be here soon enough.”
His demeanor implied he had no idea what I said, but he would smile anyway.
You ever get the impression that some people really, really want to be around you? Not in a creepy way, but for some reason they’re taken in with you (before they really get to know you, unfortunately) and spend the next two weeks finding excuses to be near you? Obviously the exact opposite seems to be more common, but it’s the ones who like being around you who surprise you the most. In the case of my dear Hadrian, he couldn’t stop smiling to the point I wondered if he knew where his usual brain had ran off to.
“You are very pretty today… uh…” He looked down at his phone. “Cyndi.”
&
nbsp; Oh, ouch. Not the pretty part, but the part where he was still calling me by the wrong name. Perhaps I should have fixed that before going on a second date with him. But my real name is so hard for Japanese speakers to say. Granted, Japanese isn’t Hadrian’s native language, so who knows what sounds are hard for him to say.
“Actually…” I cleared my throat. “My name isn’t Cyndi. Sorry.”
“Yes, you say before.” He flicked the napkin beneath his fingertip. “Can you tell me?”
“What? My real name?”
“Yes. Please.”
I don’t know why he wanted to know. This was the last time we were ever going to see each other, so what was the point? “Mildred.”
He stared at me. “Mi… Mil…”
God help me, I have one of the most Germanic grandma names possible. If Hadrian couldn’t wrap his tongue around it, imagine how Japanese people, who don’t have Ls or Rs in their language, fare! Can you blame me for picking a name like Cyndi for my romance writing career? Sheesh. “Mildred.” Did I dare to say it how it’s spelled in Japanese? “Mi-ru-do-reddo.”
“Oh… it’s difficult. You have nickname?”
“Nope.” I hate variants on my real name. Milly. Like, really? Someone once thought they were cute trying to call me Milda. Milda! “Sorry. You can call me Cyndi if it’s easier.” I’m not used to hearing that name in real life, but here we are.
“I like your real name. But, it’s difficult to say.”
“I understand. Not like yours. It’s easier.”
“Yes, but Japanese people have difficulties.”
I could only imagine. Ha-do-ri-an is how you would say it. One of the only good party “tricks” I know is writing people’s names in Japanese.
“So where will you work in America?”
We received our food, which gave Hadrian enough time to come up with an answer. “Restaurant. Italian. With friend.”
I figured it was like how he got his job here in Japan. A friend knew someone who could hook him up with a job. How close were people in the Italian restaurant business, anyway? “You also tend bar in America?”
