Page 31 of Up All Night
“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.”
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-anis 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?”
“Yes. I get license when I go.”
“What city?”
Before he could answer, the owner came back over and asked us how our food was so far. I guess Hadrian must have forgotten what I asked, because he changed subjects once the owner was gone again.
“I say you are pretty because you are… really pretty.”
If you could hear him in real life, you would understand why I was so taken aback with that relatively simple statement. Hadrian struggled to come up with the adequate words, but his brain failed him. Even when he showed me his dictionary purporting that I was beautiful, gorgeous, radiant, I still preferred the words that had come out of his mouth, because they had been with his voice. I’m sure I would have loved the words in Turkish as much, but since I couldn’t understand them, nor had he said them… wait…
“Say it again, but in your home language.”
His shy smile as he considered it killed me inside. When he spoke… God, the words! They were definitely Turkish. I had heard enough Turkish pop music to make those sounds out. Too bad I didn’t understand any of them.
Well, I didn’t understand them on the word-by-word level, but I understood the intent behind them. This man was saying that I was so beautiful that I knocked him off his feet and prevented him from speaking like a coherent, intelligent man. He had no senses around me. Instead, all he could think about was pleasing me, emotionally and physically. He wanted to lose himself in me. He wanted to stay up all night with me and discover what it meant to lock out the rest of the world and not give a single fuck about what other people thought.
