Page 16 of Love Hollow at Last
When Aya didn’t answer right away, Emi gave her a sly smile.“Actually, I could ask that same question about Noah.You liked him, so what changed?”
“You know what happened back then,” said Aya right away, but Emi only shook her head.
“You never talked about it, remember?”
Aya gritted her teeth.“Okay, well, let me give you the short version.First, I talked to Nobu.Sit over there, okay?I think that gets us the best angle of this stupid stage.”
Emi walked over to the spot Aya had indicated.She was moving slowly, probably because she was trying to process new information about an event that had happened a very long time ago.
“I can see why talking to Nobu might have put you off,” said Emi slowly.
Aya glared.“What?Because he’s gay?”
“No!Because he was a jerk in high school.”
“He still is, for all I know,” said Aya.“We haven’t talked in years.Luckily, it’s not that hard to avoid him.”
But Emi was shaking her head.“He really isn’t, Aya.He hasn’t been, not for a long time.”
Aya looked out over the deserted festival site.She wanted to say that people didn’t change, but she’d never believed that.She was certainly a different person from the shy young girl who couldn’t hide fast enough at every high school dance.Senior prom had been the only exception, thanks to Noah, and look howthathad turned out.
“Well,” said Aya, “it doesn’t matter.Back then, he was a jerk, but he still knew things.And he let me know that Noah wasn’t really interested in dating.”
“Oh, come on,” said Emi.“Noah was all over you.”
The long summer day was fading quickly behind banks of clouds, and Aya felt a raindrop on her hand.She tried to shield the camera.The pictures of Emi were going to look very dramatic, but Twy would be furious if she got the camera wet.
“He was interested in dancing with me,” Aya corrected her.“Flirting, maybe.But what I imagined, actually dating?That wasn’t going to happen.”
“Because you didn’t let it happen,” said Emi.
Aya didn’t speak.There was more to the story, and Emi was one of her few friends who had been there through the whole thing.But she wasn’t ready to share it.
“I think we should go in,” said Emi.“The storm is only going to get worse.”
The rain was steady, and Emi’s suggestion was very reasonable.But Aya looked at the landscape, which took her mind off those high school memories.Emi looked forlorn, a darkly devastated speck on the bare land, and Aya took as many pictures as she could.
“Stay there for a moment,” she said.“We’re finally getting something.”
By the time they left, Aya was satisfied.At least she had ammunition.She and Emi had both gotten soaked, but she’d managed to shield the camera, and at least some of the pictures were going to be great.
She just had to find it within herself to take Noah down.
15
Aya
“Physician, heal thyself,” said Aya as Emi stretched out on the couch.
It was the wrong joke.Aya was sitting at her mother’s kitchen table, using her laptop to try to make sure they had finalized the right type of accommodations for a guest who was in a wheelchair.Only two hotels in town had rooms that were not only accessible but also convenient, and the Love Hollow College vacant dorm rooms they had rented out for the rest of the crew were not going to work.Aya had to pray that nobody had made a mistake and booked out one of those rooms she’d reserved at the Valley Inn and Suites, but when she’d called earlier, the receptionist hadn’t seemed sure about the whole thing.If she had found a minute to go over there, she could probably have worked it out, but she had been too busy dealing with the festival—the same festival that was behind all those hotel reservations.If they had taken that room to give to some stupid “celebrity” singer, Aya would have to find a way around it.
Aya’s mom had always panicked when her children were sick.She had one hand on Emi’s back.As soon as she’d come home from the dance studio, she’d rushed over, shocked to find her houseguest ill.
Aya, on the other hand, hadn’t even bothered with a hot shower when they’d come in, soaked to the skin.She’d gone right back to work, but somehow, Emi was the one who had gotten sick.
“Aya, can you put on some water for tea?”asked her mother.There was a note of reprimand in her voice.Japanese American mothers did not let wet children come into their home without rushing them into a hot bath, and tea was almost as essential.
Emi spoke.“Is there an Urgent Care-type place in Love Hollow these days?No, right?”
