Page 32 of Up All Night
I got all that from one sentence in his native language. Because when a man can speak confidently? God. Right in the heart. And the loins. If he thought I was killing him? He truly had no idea what he did to me.
After our all-American dinners, he asked me if we should go for a walk. By then it was almost seven, and if we followed the same pattern from last time, we would get coffee, walk, andthenahem.
Except I wanted to make sure we stayed in my neighborhood. I could already see his eyes scanning the area for a love hotel. Hold on, man, there were other things we had to do first. Put your wallet away! Not everything needed to be paid for.
We walked up and down the neighborhood, since unfortunately there were no parks in the area. There was, however, a Shinto shrine that still had open grounds even though no clergy were present. We sat on a bench as the air grew colder. I worked up the nerve to ask him back to my place.
Instead, he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. The man who didn’t like impromptu touching, even from people he liked – he kissed me in public!
“What was that for?” I giggled, because that was how damn giddy I was. “I could kiss you too, you know.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Why was he apologizing? “I am very excited today.”
“Really? About what?”
His look was more than puzzling.
“Doushite?”Sometimes it was easier to speak in Japanese.
“Because soon I go to America. And because I am with you tonight.”
Ahhh! Flames of embarrassment on my face! The sides of them!
“Maybe I see you in America one day.”
Wouldn’t that be something else? I had no idea where he was going. He never asked me where I was from. We knew how futile those hopes were. With our luck, he’d be moving to Miami and I would be in Portland. Or, even worse, he would move somewhere like San Francisco or Los Angeles. So close, yet still so damn far away.
Why would we do that to ourselves? This needed to stay a fling. My vacation fling, his pre-move fling. We were in one of those indie films that make you feel like you’re on the precipice of a happy ending, only to have it yanked away in the final scene. Oh, come on. Not a tragedy! More like bittersweet: the couple get on their separate planes with smiles on their faces, but never see each other again.
Hadrian smiled. Stared at his feet in the night and smiled. Whatever he was thinking about… was it about me? Was he excited to be with me again? Was he pretending, like I was, that this was the beginning of a fun relationship that could one day be something more?
I nudged him. “It’s cold, huh?”
“Yes, so cold.”
“Maybe we should go.”
“We go?”
He could say that phrase all night as far as I was concerned. “Sure. You want to go back to my place?”
Even if he understood me, he probably didn’t believe me. I was going to have to bring out the big language guns.
“Atashi no heya ni kaerimashou ka?”
Hadrian’s eyes widened. Oh, yeah, he definitely understood me now. I took him by the hand and gently pulled him off the bench.
“Daijyoubu,” I reassured him. “It’s not far.”
We were actually at the shrine a two minute walk away from my share house. I wasn’t sure Hadrian was going to make it, though. He kept looking at me as if I asked for the impossible. Suppose I made the grand mistake of telling him that I live in a share house. Hadn’t he once told me that he hates living with other people and having to listen to them exist?
Yeah, I knew what I was doing. My only hope was that he would play along.
My neighbors were having one of their weekly parties where they eat homecooked food and drink a fuckton of wine. I’ve hung out with them before, but usually my schedule conflicts with such things. And honestly, one of the reasons I went on vacation to a country that covets personal isolation is because I was tired of having to do groups multiple times a week like I do here in America.
That said, I was happy to see them. Unlike Hadrian, who didnotlike having to follow me all the way toward the kitchen to get to my room.
“Hey!” My Turkish neighbor waved at us. She approached… and stopped the moment she saw the mysteriously handsome stranger following me. “Oh, you have a guest? Nice. You can come hang out with us if you want.” The others raised their wineglasses behind her.
