Rather than taking glasses from the overhead rack, he bent down again, emerging with two small pottery cups and a carafe. They were dark green, with a delicate white floral design on the side.‘This is Junmai Daiginjo sake from Yamaguchi.’ He decanted some of it from the bottle into the carafe. ‘Where my mother’s from.’ He handed me one of the cups. ‘Hold it for me. Like this.’
I did what he said, cradling it between my palms. ‘Two hands,’ I noted as he poured, right hand around the neck of the carafe while he supported the base with his left. ‘The girls would approve.’
‘The formal serving rituals for sake are different from wine. With sake, you use two hands. That’s how you show the person you’re pouring for care and respect.’
He filled his own cup, then put the carafe in the fridge. ‘That’s why the cups are so small. Sake is social. It’s meant for drinking with other people. The more you refill the cups of the people around you, the more you show that you care for them.’
The ache in my chest was back. ‘That’s lovely, Satoshi,’ I said softly. ‘Thank you for pouring this for me.’
He smiled at me – smiled the way he’d smiled a million times at me, only this time, it made me want to burst into tears. ‘You’re very welcome.’ He held his cup up. ‘Kanpai.’
I clinked my cup against his. ‘Cheers.’
We looked each other in the eye as we drank. ‘So, turns out this really pays dividends,’ I commented.
‘Mmmm?’
I pointed at my eyes with two fingers, then at his. ‘Seems like it’s pretty effective. If we hadn’t been so diligent about warding off seven years of bad sex, who knows how tonight would have gone?’
‘Who knows,’ he echoed.
Then, he didn’t say anything, and a sudden shard of uncertainty pierced my heart. ‘It was good for you too, right? You put in so much work to make sure it was good for me, but—’
‘Fiona,’ he said, ‘it was fucking incredible.’
‘Really?’
Satoshi reached over the bar, taking my hand and squeezing reassuringly. ‘Really.’
I squeezed back as I took another sip of the sake, crisp and slightly sweet as it slid down my throat.
‘I’m going to remember tonight for the rest of my life.’ His thumb traced circles over the base of mine. ‘Forever. Always.’
‘Me too.’
I drew his hand to my mouth so I could kiss his knuckles. ‘Although next time you have to let me go down on you.’ I bit gently at one of them. ‘You might be the boss, but I insist.’
‘Next time?’
I froze.
‘Do you not want to?’ I forced out eventually. ‘If you don’t, that’s fine, obviously that’s fine, but—’
‘Of course I want to! But do you?’
Satoshi sighed, disentangling his hand from mine so he could run it through his hair, black roots almost as long as the bleached ends in the dim light. ‘I know how complicated your life is, Fiona. I know how many things you have to worry about, and I know I’m not even close to the top of the list. And that’s completely fine. That’s the way it should be.’
‘Oh,’ I said, a little stung.
‘I don’t want to make things harder for you.’ His Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘So if tonight was all you needed, that’s fine. Nothing has to change. If you want to go back to what we were doing, that’s fine. If – if you’ve got it out of your system now, that’s fine too. I’ll be here for you anyway, same as always. Tsundoku will be here too, and—’
‘Will you pass me the sake?’
Satoshi looked at me.
‘Please?’
He took it out of the fridge and handed it to me.
