Chapter Eighteen Satoshi #2
‘I was unimpressed when you told me you were getting married, Jonah,’ he said, steamrolling right over him.
‘I thought you were putting your emotions before your intellect; humbling yourself at the altar of your basest desires. But I have to say, I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
Because marriage has made a man out of you. ’
He gestured expansively. ‘Look at your life. You’re flourishing professionally – unlike your brother, it seems – despite all the obstacles that have stood in your way.
And then there’s the way you’ve supported your sister.
Lesser men would have let her lie in the bed she made for herself, but not you.
This isn’t something I say very often, because it’s something that has to be earned, not simply given—’
Fiona got to her feet. She leaned down, whispered something to her mother, then slipped out of the room.
‘—but I’m proud of you, son. And if you want to give us some more grandchildren, then…’
Both Jonah and Chess tried to wrestle the microphone away from him, but I wouldn’t have heard the rest of what he was saying anyway.
Without signalling to Isamu to cover the bar – without even making a conscious decision to do so, like I was a migratory bird, unable to fight the instinct to fly south – I went after Fiona.
I found her in the darkened library, standing at the window, looking out over the vineyard, shoulders rising and falling as she quietly wept. ‘Fiona?’
‘Go back to the wedding, Satoshi.’ She sniffed, once, twice, her voice catching in her throat. ‘I’ll be okay in a second. I just need to pull myself together.’
I hesitated for a moment, and then crossed the room to her, putting my arms around her. Maybe I could make this all okay – make this awful grey feeling stealing through me go away – if I could just be what she needed. ‘Your dad’s a fucking idiot.’
Her laughter was choked. ‘No, he’s not. He’s an arsehole, but he’s not an idiot.’
‘Yes, he is.’ I held her tighter. ‘You’re the one who pulled your life back together. You, not Jonah.’
She made a noise, somewhere between a sob and a hiccup.
‘I know how much it’s meant to you, to have him here.’ I pressed my lips to her hair. ‘I know he and Sadie have helped you a lot. But you’re the one who’s held it together. Who’s made sure your kids are safe and happy and loved. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, Fiona.’
‘I need you to stop, Satoshi.’ She sniffed again.
‘I need you to know this. I need you to know how remarkable you are.’
More tears slipped down her face. ‘Please,’ she choked. ‘Stop.’
I cupped her face in one of my hands, brushing her tears away on one side with my thumb while I kissed them away on the other. ‘I’ve never met someone I’m so in awe of.’
There was desperation in my voice, but I didn’t care.
I felt like we were standing on the top of a very tall building, so tall we were among the clouds, and if I could just make her see herself the way I did, then maybe she would see me the way I wanted her to, and I could pull us both back from the edge, collapsing backwards into a pile together, limbs and lives intertwined.
‘There’s no one in the whole world I admire more. You’re astonishing, Fiona.’
‘I need you to stop!’
She tore herself away from me. ‘Stop!’ she said, hands holding her own elbows, arms crossed over her torso. ‘Please, please stop.’
‘I’m sorry.’ My knees felt like jelly, and I wanted to fall to them in front of her, to rest my forehead on her feet and beg. ‘What do you need? Just tell me what you need and I’ll do it.’
‘I know you will! That’s the problem!’
She sank down into one of the leather armchairs, her head in her hands. ‘You are the loveliest man in the world, Satoshi.’
My legs would no longer hold me, so I surrendered, letting them fold beneath me, melting to my knees before her. ‘I don’t understand what’s wrong, Fiona,’ I whispered, curling my fingers around her wrists. ‘I don’t know how to fix it.’
She was weeping, breath coming in hitches and hiccups. ‘The loveliest, kindest man in the world. Which is saying a lot, considering what my brothers have done for me.’
‘What?’ The fog was rolling in thicker, the words not cohering into meaning.
‘Every time I need you, you’re there. Everything I ask, you do. No questions asked. No complaints, not once.’
‘Because I—’ The tannins were back in my mouth, my tongue thick and heavy. ‘I adore you, Fiona.’
‘I’ll never be able to repay you for what you’ve done for me.’ She caressed my cheek, and I leaned into her hand, the way Yquem always did for Isamu. ‘You put me back together. You made me feel like myself again.’
No one had ever had as much power over another person as Fiona Fisher did over me in that moment. I pressed my forehead against her knees, begging, worshipping, unable to find a single word that wasn’t please.
She was crying in earnest now. ‘I adore you too, Satoshi,’ she said. ‘Why is why I – I can’t be selfish anymore.’
‘No,’ was all I could say. ‘Fiona, no.’
‘You are the best person I’ve ever met.’ Her hands were in my hair, her forehead resting against the back of my head as she curled over me. ‘But the longer we let this go, the harder it’s going to be.’
‘No.’ There was only one word left now, in the fog, grey rot beneath my skin, sucking the life out of me. ‘No.’
‘It’s for the best, I promise.’ Her breath was coming in gulps and hiccups. ‘For us both. The longer it goes, the harder it will be for me when it ends. And the longer it goes, the harder it’s going to be for you to leave.’
‘No.’ It took a gargantuan effort to lift my head, to look at her.
‘You’re too kind, Satoshi. Too soft-hearted. You’re going to – you’re going to – the more this goes on, you’re going to feel obligated.’
She kissed me, the salt of her tears on her lips. ‘And I think – I think I’ve known it all along,’ she whispered. ‘That’s why it had to be a secret – because when people find out, you’ll be trapped. You’re not like Matt. You’re too kind to ever walk away from me.’
‘But I promised,’ I managed to force out. ‘Before – I promised.’
‘I know.’ She kissed me again. ‘But I know you, Satoshi. You won’t be able to bring yourself to do it to me. To do it to the kids. You’ll stay, even if you don’t want to, because we’ll – I’ll – have come to rely on you. And you – you’re too good to make me look like a joke again.’
‘No.’ I was three years old, incoherently wailing in a cloudy vineyard in Alsace. ‘No, Fiona.’
‘You deserve the world.’ She was choking on the words. ‘And I – I can’t give it to you. So I’d – I’d rather end it now, and have it hurt like hell, than for me to ruin your life and for you to end up hating me.’
‘No.’ I framed her face in my hands, made her look at me. ‘Fiona, I love you.’
I’d imagined a thousand different versions of her reaction to those words, from her fleeing in horror to flinging herself into my arms, but instead, she just shook her head, tears streaming down her face.
‘I love you,’ I said again.
I took her hands in mine, clasping her fingers tight. If she pulled away, I was going to fall from the top of this building, into the cold cloud of the fog.
‘I know I’m not who you envisioned spending your life with.’ Sheer desperation forced the words past the thick grey mould coating my throat. ‘I know I’m younger than you, and you don’t think I’m ready, and I know – I know you might not be ready either, to take me as seriously as I take you.’
‘Satoshi—’
‘But I can be what you need, Fiona, if you’ll just let me.’ The world was a blur around me now, and I was so tired, every bone in my body heavy, pulling me down into the earth, but I made myself look her in the eye. ‘Please, please, don’t push me away.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘I love you,’ I said.
Another moment’s silence, then, ‘I can’t let you,’ she said softly.
This time, in the quiet and the still, I could hear my heart, which had been breaking little by little, shatter all at once.
‘This time with you has been perfect. But it’s been a fantasy, Satoshi. A honeymoon. And it can’t last forever.’
Please let me try, I tried to say, but the words would not come out. There was a roaring in my ears, and no breath left in my lungs.
Fiona let go of my hands, cupping my face in hers so she could kiss me.
‘I never should have taken advantage of your generosity,’ she whispered.
‘I never should have asked the things of you that I’ve asked.
I’m so sorry I’ve made you feel like this – that I’ve made you hurt like this – but I promise, it’s for the – Satoshi? ’
I could barely hear her through the fog.
‘Satoshi?’ The ground had risen up to meet me, and something was warm beneath my cheek. Her hand? Her lap? ‘Oh my god, Satoshi, please—’
A rattle from the concertina doors. ‘Fiona, it’s time for your – Sato!’
Strong arms lifting me up, my head lolling against a hard shoulder. ‘What happened?’ Isamu demanded.
‘I don’t know!’ Fiona said. ‘We were talking, and he just fainted!’
‘Onīsan,’ I managed to groan.
‘It’s okay, Sato, I’ve got you.’ I could feel the vibrations through my brother’s chest as he spoke Japanese to me, his arm an iron band beneath my upper back, two fingers searching urgently for my pulse, relaxing when they found it.
‘You’re having a panic attack, I think. Try and breathe. What did you say to him?’
Fiona’s voice sounded like it was coming from underwater. ‘I – I—’
‘Spit it out. He hasn’t had a panic attack in years. What did you do to him?’
‘I – I – I—’
A growl, coming from somewhere deep in him. ‘You broke his heart, didn’t you?’
Her intake of breath was sharp and sudden. ‘How did you—’
‘Everyone in the fucking world knows he’s in love with you, Fiona! Now—’
The rest of the sentence faded away as the fog swallowed me up.