“I usually get the Chicago Classic.”
He nods in approval. “Sounds good to me.”
“I’ll get us some fries, too.”
Our waiter arrives to take our order. Then he heads off again, taking the menus with him. Haru leans back in his seat and looks around the restaurant. Baseball shirts are framed along the brick walls. “This place is very… what’s the word?” He rubs his chin. “American.”
“Very different from the tea place,” I say.
His face softens. “You remember the tea place?”
“How could I forget?” It was hidden from tourists in the back of a used bookstore. “After you made us walk all the way there for a piece of paper.”
He smirks. “The piece of paper was for you.”
“And youdroppedit.”
“No, you didn’t hold it tight enough,” he says.
“You should have been more careful—”
“You should have stayed with me.”
We stare at each other. I’m not sure what to say to this. “I told you. My friend was waiting for me.”
“So you don’t regret it?”
“That’s not what I said.”
Haru folds his arms. “That’s what I’m hearing.”
I can’t tell if he’s serious. I lean into the table. “I tried to find you online. Do you know how many times I searched your name when I got back?” I didn’t even know if it was short for anything. “I looked through tagged photos of the festival, hoping I’d find you somewhere in the background.” I stare at my hands, unsure if I should be telling him this. “I even looked up the temple where we made the wishes together. I even thought about coming back to find yours. In case you wrote your last name or something.”
“There were thousands of them,” Haru reminds me. “How would you have found it?”
“It was the third tree by the entrance, on one of the middle branches,” I say. “You wrote on a blue slip of paper.”
“I’m surprised you remember that.”
“Some memories are hard to forget.”
He smirks at this. “I’m glad to be one of them.”
I smile back at him. It’s a bittersweet moment, the two ofus sitting together again, reliving the past. I’ve imagined this conversation a dozen times in my head. I’m a little embarrassed to ask this next question. But I can’t help myself. “Did you ever try to find me?”
Haru takes a second to answer. “I never stopped looking,” he says. “You know, I stayed there for hours, hoping you might come back to see me. But you never did.”
“I didn’t know,” I say.
“It’s alright.” Haru reaches across the table, taking my hand for the first time. “I found you anyway.”
I squeeze his hand, feeling a warmth move between us. There are still a hundred questions racing through my head. But the answers to them don’t matter right now. Who cares how this is possible? Maybe it’s really him after all. The waiter appears with our order. So I push those thoughts away as we cut into the pizza, enjoying our dinner together.
Haru takes the train back homewith me. I told him he could stay over tonight. Dad is asleep on the sofa when we step inside. He left the television on again, but it’s not the usual news channel. Then I hear the familiar voice. A home movie of me and Jasmine is playing. We’re probably six or seven years old here, running around in the backyard. Since Jasmine moved away, I find him watching them every now and then. Although my dad comes off as stern at times, deep down he’s the most sentimental. Jasmine told me that’s where I get it from.
I lead Haru to my room and close the door quietly. Ourclothes are still damp from the rain. As I go through the dresser, Haru wanders over to my desk, noticing the paper star he made me.
“You kept this,” he says, picking it up.
