Chapter Thirteen Fiona #3
He’d kissed a gentle line across my shoulder. Do you want to talk about it? What happened today?
I’d sighed. Not really.
But I’d spilled the whole story anyway: Matt turning up on my doorstep, Lex’s outburst, the way I’d sent the kids off with my brothers so I could finally have it out with him.
I’ve never been so angry in my whole life.
The fact that he thought he could just show up like that – like I’d roll over for him…
No wonder you wanted to cheat on him, he’d murmured.
I’d taken his hand and pressed it to my lips. I don’t want to think about him anymore, Satoshi.
We’d had sex again, long and slow and languid this time, and then I must have fallen asleep. My last memory was of Satoshi at my back, our fingers tangled together, one of his thighs between mine, his breath warm in my hair.
But now he was gone.
I sat up and used the torch on my phone to look around his apartment. Yquem was draped along one of the arms of the sofa, but Satoshi wasn’t anywhere.
I paused for a moment, then set my phone down and flicked on his bedside lamp.
My ruined underwear was nowhere to be found, but he’d folded my dress, my bra sitting neatly on top of it on the coffee table.
My shoes were no longer in the messy pile with his that they’d been in when we kicked them off – rather, they were sitting on the top row of his shoe rack, aligned precisely perpendicular to the wall.
I retied the sash on my dress, the thought of him taking the time to get up and tidy making my heart ache. I rubbed at it with the heel of my hand, the skin still tender from how tight he’d held me to him, a memory that made it ache even more.
I found Satoshi downstairs in the bar. He was only in his underwear – his boxer briefs were royal blue, I noted, unable to stop myself smiling at the fact that they matched his glasses, a different pair than the green ones he’d been wearing before – as he wiped down tables, mop and bucket propped against the wall.
He turned, a couple of glasses in one hand, and saw me. ‘Oh. Hi.’
‘Hi,’ I replied.
‘I – um…’ I’d never seen him at quite so much a loss for words before. ‘I couldn’t sleep. Sorry. Nothing to do with you, I just…’
‘It makes you antsy when the bar’s not clean?’
He tugged at his hair, his expression sheepish. ‘That obvious?’
My heart, which had been aching, melted. This man. This beautiful, beautiful man.
‘Do you want to finish wiping down tables,’ I asked him, ‘or do you want to mop?’
‘What?’
‘I’ll mop,’ I decided. ‘You finish the tables.’
‘Fiona – I – no, you don’t—’
‘Don’t worry, boss.’ I wrinkled my nose fondly at him. ‘You can check my work after.’
We worked in silence for a while – not an uncomfortable silence, but a companionable one, the swish of the mop against the floor and the clatter of glasses as he stacked them in racks and carried them out to the kitchen the only sounds.
He relinquished his cloth to me so I could wipe down the bar as he carried the mop bucket out to empty it.
It was impossible not to admire the long lines of him as he walked away, the tendons in his left arm standing out from the bucket’s weight.
I’d just had sex with this man. I’d just had sex with Satoshi Tsukamoto, and it had been the best sex of my entire life.
I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth, trying to swallow the laugh rising up inside me, but I couldn’t. It bubbled out of me, rushing, fizzing, like a bottle of champagne that had been shaken up.
‘What’s wrong?’ There was a worried look on Satoshi’s face as he re-emerged from the back.
‘Nothing!’ I managed to gasp. ‘I’m just – will you come here?’
He did. I wrapped my arms around him as tight as I could, hiding my face in the curve where his neck met his shoulder, and laughed.
One of his hands came to rest between my shoulder blades, the other stroking the back of my head. ‘I thought you were crying.’
‘No.’ I kissed the hollow at the base of his throat. ‘Not this time.’
He drew back. ‘You’re all right?’
‘Satoshi,’ I went up on tiptoes so I could kiss his lips, ‘I’m great.’
He smoothed his hand down my shoulder. ‘Do you need to go? Or can I pour you a drink?’
I would need to go at some point. The sun would come up, and the world would be waiting for me, and I would have to meet it.
But right now, there was just this. Right now, there was just him. Outside, there might be storms aplenty, but here, in this place – this one special, safe place – everything was quiet and calm.
‘I would love a drink.’
I slid onto my regular barstool, ogling Satoshi shamelessly as he bent down to get something from the lowest tier of one of his wine fridges. ‘I like your new uniform. Very fashion-forward.’
He chuckled. ‘Do you think it’ll draw in more customers?’
‘Without a doubt.’
He turned the bottle in his hand slowly upside down before righting it and removing the cap. ‘What’s this?’ I asked.
‘Sake.’
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.
‘Pick up your cup,’ I told him.
He did. With his long, strong fingers wrapped around it, it looked almost comically small, but he held it in two hands anyway.
Trying not to let my hands shake, doing my best to mimic the way he’d held the carafe, I refilled it.
‘You’re not wrong,’ I said. ‘My life is complicated. There are a lot of things I have to worry about. But when I’m here – with you – I don’t have to worry at all.’
Satoshi didn’t say anything. His chest rose and fell as he took in a long breath.
‘Not just because you make me come so hard I forget everything,’ I added. ‘Although that helps, obviously.’
That drew a surprised, stunned laugh.
‘I’m kind of obsessed with you,’ I said.
‘I always have been, I think. You’re so…
I’ve spent my life surrounded by passionate, dedicated people, but them – their world – has always felt so closed to me.
Like it wasn’t for me. But from the very first time I met you, it was like – like you were standing in front of an open door.
Like you were saying, Welcome to my world, come on in, make yourself at home, there’s room for you here. ’
‘That’s hospitality, Fiona,’ he said softly. ‘That’s my job.’