Unbreak My Heart(23)

The doors open, not with a screech but with a whoosh, and the crowds of people do not push or shove. They politely shuffle off. It’s five-thirty in the evening on a Sunday night in June, and the station is bustling.

We push through the final turnstile at the Hachikō exit. We’re at one of the busiest, craziest intersections in the world, because Shibuya Station sits at the convergence of a half dozen streets, where Holland took that selfie for me—a picture I love. I want to capture a new moment here, right now, three years later. Then I want to text it to her and tell her she doesn’t have to miss me anymore, ever. She can have me. I’m here.

But it’s just for now.

So there’s no point in a for now selfie.

My hands remain at my sides, and instead, I watch her as she drinks in the view with wide eyes. “Home,” she whispers, and it hits me like a fist in the solar plexus.

This is her place.

Her land.

I’m in a foreign city—no kidding—but this is her stomping ground.

I knew that, logically, but I didn’t truly get it on a deeper level until this second.

I’m not her home. And her home doesn’t include me.

“Look,” she whispers reverently, pointing. “That was one of Ian’s favorite things.”

I turn and nod. “Yeah, it was.”

Carved into the street-side wall of the subway station is a bright, chunky mosaic of stars, rainbows, and a white Akita with a perfectly coiled tail. The story goes like this—the dog Hachikō followed his owner, a university professor, to work every morning and waited for his return in the evenings. One day in 1925, his master failed to show. He had died while teaching. But Hachikō was loyal to the end. The dog walked to the subway stop every day, waiting for the same train for the next several years until his own death.

I tap the dog’s head once for good luck. Holland taps his chin. She gestures to the intersection. “I can walk you to your place.”

“It’s okay. I know how to get there. Go get some sleep.”

As if on cue, she yawns again. “It’s possible I might conk out. See you tomorrow?”

“I’ll text you later to make plans.”

Then I go one way, and she heads another.

Two directions.

Two lives.

Two apartments.

We’re together, but we’re not at all. Perhaps it’ll always be this way.

I cross the intersection and join the sea of people fanning out in all directions.

I’m with all these people, but I’m still alone.





15





Andrew



I open the familiar glass-paneled door to the lobby of the apartment building that still feels more like Ian’s than mine, even though it was ours, and press the elevator button.

The last time I was here was an impulsive trip the summer after my first year of law school.

The day classes ended, Ian surprised me by picking me up on campus, looking all cool and Risky Business with shades on. “We’re getting out of town,” he’d declared, smacking his palm on the shining red door of his car.

“Vegas, baby?”

He scowled. “Hell, no. We’re flying far, far away. I have a craving for fish, and I have credit card miles burning a hole in my pocket.”

Enough said. We took off on a ten-hour flight across the sea and went to the fish market for breakfast the next morning.

“I’m going to OD on sushi,” I’d said, patting my belly while pushing away the bowl of rice and fish at the food stall we loved.

“If you do, I’ll revive you, so you can have some more.”

“That sounds like a most excellent plan.”

My stomach growls as the elevator rises, and I’m hungry from thinking about breakfast. I’ll need fuel before I go to the teahouse tomorrow.

But as I imagine my first full day, something is missing, and it’s the woman I just left. My instinct lately has been to go it alone, but if I’m here to figure out how the hell to be happy again, I ought to push past that gut impulse to fly solo. Kate wanted me to talk more; Jeremy encouraged me to hang out with friends.

I draw a steadying breath and send Holland a text.



Andrew: I’m already hungry for sushi. Fish market tomorrow?





I set my phone in my pocket as I reach the sixth floor and turn the key in the door of our—my, I need to get used to saying my, especially since I’m the one who has to decide what to do with it—apartment.

I pause as I wrap my hand around the knob, bracing to be clobbered by memories.

But when I open the door and step inside, it’s like a deep inhale of fresh mountain air. This place is small—it is Tokyo real estate after all—but it feels big compared to my house in Los Angeles somehow.

More than that, it feels alive.

I drop my backpack by the door and turn into the kitchen, running my hand across the outside of the fridge, over the bright white sliver of the countertop, then along the panes of the window that look out to the busy street below.

I return to the living room, breathing in the familiar surroundings—the blond hardwood floors, the light-green couch, the bookshelves with the framed photos our parents left behind—all of us as kids, then the two of us, then a shot of Laini at her wedding. Should I have told her I’d left the country?