My last two customers chose that moment to come up and pay. I had never had to dig deeper to find my customer service smile. ‘How was everything?’ I asked, keying in the wrong price on the EFTPOS machine twice before I got it right.
Fiona got up.
Panic shot through my heart, a sudden lightning bolt through the fog. If she left – if I let her go – she might never come back.
She reached over the bar, picked up a cloth, walked over to the table my customers had abandoned, and started wiping it down.
And there it was, that potent, golden, addictive elixir, pumping through my veins: relief.
‘Have a good one, mate,’ one of my customers said.
‘I will,’ I replied faintly, as they left. ‘You too.’
Fiona couldn’t give me what I wanted. I knew that. I’d known it for a long time, even if I couldn’t admit it. The most I would ever be to her was a secret indulgence, kept carefully apart from the rest of her life. I would never be her home.
But that didn’t change how much I loved her. She was the best person I had ever met, and I’d told her there was nothing she could ask of me that I didn’t want to give.
I drained the last of a glass of disappointing Sauternes I’d been sipping, walked over to the front door, and snicked the lock.
Fiona straightened at the sound. Cloth dangling from her hand, she looked at me, and I looked back at her, heartbeat thundering in my ears.
‘Put it down,’ I said.
‘This?’ She held up the cloth.
‘Yes. I’ll clean before I open tomorrow.’
I had never once left the bar floor before cleaning down – the thought of it made my skin prickle uncomfortably – but I might never have this chance again.
Slowly, Fiona put the cloth down. ‘Good,’ I told her.
‘It’s your bar.’ One corner of her mouth quirked upwards. ‘You’re the boss.’
I might never have this chance again, because she might be the death of me.
‘I am,’ I said, ‘but you’re in charge.’
I crossed the floor to her in five strides. I didn’t touch her, but I held out my hand to her. Her breath was coming quickly as she placed hers in mine, and it caught as I kissed her knuckles.
‘Tell me what you want,’ I said. ‘Are we back to first base? Second? Third?’
She always blushed when I asked her to clarify her boundaries, but this time, Fiona met my gaze. There was something glittering in her eyes – not mischief, but something close to it. A challenge, maybe, or a test.
‘All of it, Satoshi,’ she said. ‘I want it all.’
Chapter ThirteenFiona
Tasting today: Junmai Daiginjo sake, Yamaguchi, Japan.
Few things taste as good as a drink shared with a lover.
The first time I had ever been up to Satoshi’s apartment was the night Matt had left. I had cried myself hoarse in his office, barely enough voice left to rasp my agreement when he said,Let me take you up to my place, okay?He’d led me up the stairs, and even though my brain had been reduced to a primordial soup of terror and grief and humiliation, I’d noticed how his feet made almost no sound: how gently – how carefully – he stepped.
That was how he’d been with me almost every day since: gentle, careful, so tenderly restrained as he touched me. Satoshi Tsukamoto knew how to tread lightly, and it had been exactly what I needed.
But there was another Satoshi underneath. The Satoshi I’d once seen in an alley, shoving his lover up against a wall, and had, without being able to admit it to myself, been searching for glimpses of ever since. The Satoshi beneath the waistcoat and the glasses and the smile: the ravenous Satoshi, the voracious Satoshi, the Satoshi whowanted, burning with desire and zeal and passion.
He paused in front of the apartment door, key in one hand, the other in mine. He had not let go of it, this whole time. ‘Are you sure? If you’re not, I won’t hold it against you.’
