Unbreak My Heart(30)

Jeremy: This is Callie. I met her at the beach last night. Guess what? She loves dogs! Who woulda thunk it?





Jeremy: Also, for the record, I am not, technically, sending you a photo of your dog. I am sending you a photo of a babe.





I bang out a reply.



Andrew: For the record, I’m not thanking you for the photo that happens to include a head of a dog. I’m thanking you for where that woman’s hand was when you took that picture.





I bump my shoulder to Holland’s and show her the picture. She pretends to pet the dog’s head through the screen. “What are you up to, Sandy?” she asks the screen.

God, I fucking love her.

The dog, and the woman.



*

When we reach Shibuya again, the nerves kick in. “I feel like I’ve been called into the principal’s office.”

“Do you think you’ll wind up in detention?”

“I don’t know what to expect when I talk to Kana,” I admit as we pass an electronics store where a salesman hawks a TV set.

“What do you most want to ask her?” Holland asks. The midday rush is full of men and women in business suits, mingled with über-trendy girls who click-clack down the sidewalks in chunky boots and playing-card earrings and dudes who wear plaid pants and sport dyed-blond hair. I try to picture Ian and Kana here on a weekday afternoon, weaving their way through these crowds.

I squint, but I can’t quite see it. That’s why I want to talk to her. I want to know him better.

But I hardly know her. We’ve talked briefly on the phone a few times, but that’s all. When she came to visit Ian one weekend in the spring, I was in Miami for pro bono work, so I never met the woman who captivated him.

“I want to fill in the puzzle. I want to know what he was like when he was here. Why he was so joyful.” I tilt my head, considering the possibilities. “Hell, maybe it’s patently obvious. He was probably happy because he was getting laid.”

Holland laughs, her hand on her belly as we pass a boba tea shop. “Sex is a natural pain reliever.”

An image of the unopened bottle of Percocet flashes before me. Correction—opened. By me. A slash of guilt cuts through me, but I tell myself I can stop. I will stop.

Hell, maybe that’s why Ian stopped taking his meds.

“Endorphins, right?” I ask, as much to take my mind off the topic as to keep the conversation moving.

“Sex increases the production of oxytocin, the love hormone. It’s released from the brain before climax, along with endorphins, which are a natural painkiller. Make sense?”

I scratch my jaw. “I’m not sure.” I wiggle my eyebrows. “I feel like I’d do better with a hands-on tutorial.”

She swats my elbow. “Oh, stop.”

“No, I mean it.”

“I know you mean it.”

“I’m just saying, there’s no substitute for experience.”

She arches a brow as we near an intersection. “I think we both know what would happen if we embarked on that field trip.”

We stop at the light, and I look her in the eyes. “What would happen?”

She answers matter-of-factly. “We’d never leave the bedroom.”

I groan at the images flickering before my eyes. Holland stripping off the yellow T-shirt she’s wearing, sliding out of those jeans, peeling off her panties. “I’d be fine with that. Also, thanks a lot for putting those ideas in my head right before I meet my brother’s girl.”

“I suspect you had them in your head already,” she says, then gives me a flirty look.

She’s flirtier over here, and I half wonder if it’s something in the water, or if it’s the escape from Los Angeles, a city that had become the epicenter of so much loss in my life.

I wink at her, since I like the flirty zone—it’s a happy place, and that’s where I’d like to be. “That is true. Those ideas are pretty much always present, especially after you launched yourself at me this morning in front of the vending machine.”

Her eyes widen. “It was a mutual launch.”

“All systems were go.”

She points to the small park across the street. “Also, there she is.”

I follow her gesture to find a woman tossing scraps of bread to squirrels.

“She’s a squirrel feeder,” I say in wonder as I see Kana in the flesh for the first time.

“Just like us,” Holland adds quietly. “Only a different launch pad.”

Instantly, I catalog the woman, as if her appearance will unlock clues. Red buckle shoes prop her up a few inches taller, and her purple blouse ripples in the breeze. She wears a short black skirt, pleated and a little playful. She fits in so well with this city—colorful, but not outrageous.

Holland shouts to her in Japanese, saying “Hey girl,” I think.

As the dark-haired woman turns, the moment slows to a surreal crawl, and that’s my fault because I’ve invested it with so much, like Kana is a vessel for all the secrets of the universe. Or mine, at least.

But now I see she’s just a woman a few years older than we are, who’s feeding wildlife in a city park.

Time speeds up when she waves back, then ticks faster as she sees me. We close the distance, but she’s speedier, walking to me, her brown eyes wide and earnest, her lips curved into a smile.