“That blows my mind.” He made an explosion sound as he pulled his fingers from the side of his head and heaped another bite of his nasty cottage cheese into his mouth, chewing with obvious relish.
I stared down at my phone, waiting for a response from Hana. None came.
Not then, and not in the hours I sat up, waiting, hoping… Not until I was pulled from a fitful sleep at seven the next morning to the ding of a message.
Hana: Okay.
That’s all she wrote back.
Talk about keeping her thoughts and reasons close.
But I rose, showered, shaved, and dressed before I called for a rideshare to take me to the restaurant where she’d said she’d meet me at eight.
When I arrived, I realized the café she’d chosen was just a couple of blocks from her office, and it seemed popular with young professionals. I was ten minutes early, so I sat on the bench out front and texted my mom. It was nearly eleven in New Hampshire, so I knew she was well into her day.
Me: Why didn’t you ever tell me Mrs. Sato died? What else happened to Hana’s family?
Mom: Oh! You found out.
Me: Yeah, I did. What else have you kept from me?
My mother called me, and I declined it. After a long moment, the bubbles reappeared in our text thread.
Mom: Your dad thought it best we left the Satos alone.
Me: And you just went along with that? Knowing Hana had lost her mother? After the years of her hanging out with us multiple times a week? Do you see how cruel you were to her? How selfish?
I felt myself getting angry all over again. I leaned my head back and shut my eyes, trying to find some level of calm.
Mom: Your father has his reasons, Paxton.
“Well, they’re rotten ones,” I grumbled.
I checked the time, only to re-check it again seemingly an hour later to find that less than a minute had passed.Damn, I was really anxious. Way more than I’d been for any hockey game, even my first professional one.
She’d show. That was one thing about Hana; she followed through. And she’d picked the place and time, so I knew she knew where it was. I shouldn’t have arrived so early, because now that I’d given my name to the hostess and let her know I was waiting for the other half of my party, I had nothing to do but pace out front and check my phone.
“Pax?”
I whirled at the sound of Hana’s voice. I shaded my eyes and stared into her dark ones.
“Hey,” I said with a smile that grew and grew until my cheeks ached. I’d missed her so damn much. Only now that I saw her again did the heaviness I hadn’t realized I was carrying ease.
She returned my smile tentatively and touched her fingertips to my small cut. “I’m sorry about this.”
“Not a thing,” I said.
She bit her lip and shook her head. “It was, too. Don’t let me off the hook like that. I behaved badly. Terribly, in fact. I’m sorry, Pax.”
“Not as sorry as I am. I deserve way more than a thrown stapler. You have to believe me, Hana. I had no idea about your mother.”
She studied me for a long time. Long enough that I felt people shifting closer, whispering, possibly recognizing me. They didn’t matter, though. Hana did. I kept my attention locked on her as I waited for her to finish her examination of me. “She died in a car accident. Aiki and I were also in the car.”
I sucked in a breath, my muscles tense. If her mother died, the accident must have been bad. “You’re okay?” I rasped.
The faintest smile graced her lips. “I didn’t die, and I can still get around, so yeah. The doctors said I was lucky.”
I clasped her hand between mine. “I really can’t imagine what that was like. But I’d like you to tell me. I want to understand.”
