Chapter Three
"SO, LET ME GET THIS straight," Eve says. "You invited him to the opening of your local grocery, the wedding anniversary of the parents of the ex-girlfriend of your professor whose conversation you enjoyed back at freshmen year—"
"Sophomore," I correct her. "It was at sophomore year we had a conversation, and it made us friends for life."
But Eve goes on as if that little matter doesn't matter when it totally does.
"And then there's the book signing event of the author whose work you never even read—"
"I'm just the kind of person that celebrates everyone's small wins," I cut my friend off in protest. "That's not a bad thing, is it?"
Eve puts down her salad fork and leans back to stare at me with eyes that suddenly feel like they see more than Superman ever can even with his X-ray vision.
"So why don't you want to invite him to your graduation?"
Or maybe I'm just an idiot for not seeing that's what she's been getting at.
Between us, Kynu smacks both palms flat against the tray of his high chair and lets out a squeal of pure triumph.
He's got banana in his hair, banana on his chin, banana smeared across both cheeks, and he's grinning at the wreckage like a tiny emperor surveying conquered territory.
Two years old and already convinced that feeding himself is the greatest achievement in human history, and honestly, looking at the state of him, I kind of agree.
Konstantin's office is the last place you'd expect to find a banana-covered toddler in a high chair.
The desk alone could pass for a small aircraft carrier, dark and imposing, and the shelves behind it are lined with medical texts and framed degrees that make me feel undereducated just by breathing the same air.
Stefano's toys are tucked under the desk (the stuffed bear, the plastic stethoscope), and a framed photo of Eve and the boys sits angled toward Konstantin's chair where only he can see it.
But right now, with Kynu's banana massacre in full swing and Eve's half-eaten salad pushed to the side and my own untouched sandwich sitting on a paper plate balanced on my knee because I ran out of table space, the whole room looks like a daycare that accidentally got built inside a hospital.
"I'm just being considerate." I try to sound more earnest than defensive, but I'm not sure it's working, with how Eve's expression only turns dubious.
"This is a very special occasion in every student's life. I don't have parents to share it with, but others do. Not just parents, but siblings, too. By giving up my right to take those seats, I'm freeing them up for someone who needs more."
"Has anyone told you you're a bad liar?"
"Nope."
"That right there is proof of it," Eve points out while reaching for a napkin to wipe off a smudge of banana from her son's cherubic cheeks. Kynu protests by grabbing for the napkin with both fists, and Eve surrenders it without breaking eye contact with me, which is frankly terrifying.
"Oh, um, well—"
It's hard not to sputter when I can already feel my cheeks heating up for, well, lying.
"Y-You're not any better either, are you?" Because I distinctly remember how we talked about her and Konstantin in the past, and how she just had the hardest time hiding her real feelings because...guess what? She's no good at pretending either, so—
"You're absolutely right—"
I am?
"I'm a bad liar."
I feel like I should know where she's getting at, but...
"And since it takes one to know one—"
Kitty McKenna, do you even have a single working brain cell at this point?
How can I not have seen that coming?
"I'm on your side, Kitty," she says sincerely. "And you know Konstantin is, too—"
Well, that is true...
"So can you please just tell me the truth?"
Two weeks later, and the answer to Eve's question, the answer I stubbornly, shamefully didn't give her, is staring back at my face.
It's graduation day, and while I am happy that I'm finally done with college, and I can start working and paying off my student loan—
This is a happy occasion. Yes, I happen to be enrolled in a university that awards its best thesis recipients on stage during graduation, with the winner walking up alongside their family or someone special to them.
It's a unique privilege that the other students love, and I am happy for them, absolutely.
It's just that from where I'm sitting, in the middle of a sea of folding chairs arranged in rows across the gymnasium floor, I can see every other graduate flanked by parents, siblings, partners, best friends.
The girl two seats down has her entire family taking up half a row, her mother already crying, and the ceremony hasn't even started yet.
The guy behind me keeps turning around to wave at someone in the balcony. Everyone has their person.
And I have my cap and gown, which I ironed this morning with the kind of care that probably should've been a sign, and a clutch purse that's too small to hold anything except my phone and a single tissue, and my hands folded over both because I don't know what else to do with them.
That's her, Mom.
She, like, had to have a hole drilled in her head or something.
Poor girl.
They say she's lost her parents early, too, and she's spent most of her life in foster care.
The looks of pity and not-exactly-subtle whispers.
They've been going on nonstop, and this is the one thing in my life that I just don't want Dr. Collington to see.
Everyone knows, myself included, that he's way, way out of my league, and I'm not even talking about how beautiful he is, and how ordinary I am.
I mean, sure, that's a major factor, too, but there are other factors, equally important ones, like how he's born with a silver spoon worth billions, he's one of the world's best neurosurgeons, and oh, I can go on and on and on, but I won't because I already feel pathetic as it is, and I don't want to go up the stage later on with eyes balled out and ruined mascara.
So...refocus, Kitty.
This is a happy occasion, and I'll treat it as one.
It's sad that I'm on my own, but I'm still alive, and after last year's surgery, that's a fact I won't ever take for granted.
Life is good.
Not perfect.
But good.
Is there a tiny part of me that wishes he's here?
Well, yes, obviously.
But I also did hear he has an emergency operation scheduled today, so it's not like I can change my mind at the last minute and call him.
Life is good.
I repeat the words again and again. Mind over matter. Motion before emotion.
Up on stage, the best thesis winners from each department walk across to receive their awards from the dean, and one by one, their person meets them at the center.
A mother who can't stop hugging. A father who shakes his daughter's hand and then pulls her in anyway.
A best friend who screams so loud the microphone picks it up.
Each time, the audience cheers, and each time, I clap along and smile, and each time, the empty chair beside me stays empty.
But when I hear my name being called—best thesis, advertising department—and my knees are already wobbling as I rise from my seat—
Oh no.
It's my first inkling that I may not be as composed as I thought I'd be, and as I start walking toward the stage, my fingers gripping my clutch so hard the seam bites into my palm, and my eyes start stinging—
No, oh no.
I have a feeling when I walk up the stage, reality's going to hit me like a tornado the moment I reach the center and the dean looks past me for the person who's supposed to be there and finds no one, and oh no, oh no, it's finally going to happen, and—
Huh?
Who's that guy walking straight toward me like he has all the right to do so? And why does he look like this younger, less serious version of—
"Congratulations, Kitty."
He knows my name? He's also Japanese American?
And he's tall, not quite as tall as Dr. Collington but close, and he has the same dark hair except his is cropped short in a way that makes him look like he just stepped off a magazine cover for a sport I probably can't name, and he's wearing a suit that fits him the way suits fit men who've been wearing them since they could walk, and oh, okay, he's actually displaying the same lazy confidence as he reaches for my award from our dean to hand it to me himself, and oh, we're actually going to pose for photos together?
Am I being hypnotized? Am I being scammed? Am I—
"I am here on behalf of my older brother, Kazeyuki."
—living the dream because this is my future brother-in-law standing next to me?
The camera flashes, and I have no idea what my face is doing.
He's standing close enough that I can tell he smells expensive but different from Dr. Collington, sharper, less cedar, more open air, and the hand he places on my shoulder for the photo is brief and polite and somehow makes me feel like I've just been formally welcomed into a family I don't belong to yet.
We walk down from the stage together, and I'm in such a daze that I don't even register the rest of the ceremony.
It's only when the final name is called and the gymnasium erupts into cheers and the air fills with tossed caps that I actually recover my senses, and I start to panic, realizing that he might've left without me being able to say—
Oh, phew!
I see him waiting patiently by the gymnasium doors, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets and the easy posture of someone who's used to waiting for things to come to him rather than the other way around.
Everyone filing past keeps glancing at him.
A few girls do actual double takes. He doesn't seem to notice, or maybe he does and just doesn't care, and there's something about that, about the way attention slides off him like it's beneath his interest, that tells me this man has been looked at his whole life and decided a long time ago that being looked at wasn't worth thinking about.
All I can do is smile shyly, awkwardly as I come to stand before him.
"I was asked by Kazeyuki to drive you to your next destination."
Oh my goodness.
That courteous, grave way of him speaking is so like Dr. Collington's.
They're practically identical with everything.
..except for the glint of amusement in his dark eyes that I'm not quite sure how to describe.
Not evil, not malicious, not even wicked, but maybe jaded?
Can one be weary and amused at the same time?
If so, then I'm seeing clearly, and that's exactly how he is.
Eishun Collington.
He tells me his name later on, once we're inside his car, which, no surprise, is a limousine with leather seats the color of black coffee and the kind of quiet that only comes from very thick glass.
It's properly fitting of someone who I'll learn later on is even more famous than Dr. Collington, and someone I should've recognized if I were the type to follow professional golf. Or any kind of sports for that matter.
Eishun asks where he can drop me off, and the glint in his dark eyes marginally softens into something less jaded when I ask if he can drop me at Stanhope Vancouver.
"Did I say something funny?" I ask uncertainly.
"I'll let you know the next time we meet."
Oh. Okay. Why am I even surprised he loves dropping bits of verbal Sudoku, too? They really are related by blood.
Eishun politely says goodbye after dropping me at the hospital entrance, and the whole thing still feels rather surreal as I wave goodbye and watch the limousine cruise away. Did that really just happen?
Thoughts of Dr. Collington's younger brother momentarily fade as I push through the hospital's revolving doors, still in my cap and gown because I didn't even think to change, and I'm quickly swallowed up by an endless stream of well wishes from hospital staff.
Nurses I recognize from my follow-ups stop me in the corridor.
An orderly gives me a thumbs-up from behind his cart.
It's as if everyone knows I graduated today, and by the time I reach Dr. Collington's floor and push past the tinted glass doors of his consultation room—
Oh my gosh!
Party poppers shower confetti in the air as everyone gives me one of the happiest surprises of my life as they yell out "Congratulations!"
The room I know so well, the room with the pale wood desk and the calligraphy scroll and the stone basin that's been sitting on its shelf for a hundred years, is covered in streamers and balloons, and someone has pushed the desk against the wall to make space, and there's a cake on the coffee station where I learned to make rosetta art, and it's all so ridiculous and so beautiful and so wrong for this room that it can only mean one person is behind it.
Emily gives me a tight hug, and when she pulls back, all I can do is stammer incoherently.
"H-How—"
I want to say something else, but it's impossible, with my throat all choked up, and my lip already starting to tremble.
I don't want to cry.
I shouldn't.
This is a happy occasion.
But the moment I hear Emily cheekily say, "The boss knew you'd insist on coming here straight—"
I burst into tears, and even though everyone around me laughs, I...I...
Because I'm remembering.
The very first time I opened my eyes after the surgery.
Before the hospital room, before the heart monitor, before "grwd.
" There was a recovery room, and there were faces I didn't recognize, and my vision was blurring in and out, and I was so scared because I didn't know where I was or what had happened to me or if I was even still alive.
But then I saw him.
I didn't know his name yet. Didn't know he was the one who had just cut open my skull and saved my life.
All I knew was that a man with dark curls and the gentlest eyes I'd ever seen was looking down at me, and the way he looked at me.
..it made me feel safe. Like everything was going to be okay, even though nothing made sense, even though I couldn't move or speak or do anything at all except lie there and be terrified.
His eyes told me I was going to be fine.
And I believed him.
And then later, it was Emily who told me about the thesis.
How Dr. Collington had spoken to someone, or called someone, or done something, because the professor who had refused to let me defend my thesis had suddenly, inexplicably, changed his mind.
Emily wouldn't tell me exactly what he did.
She just smiled and said, "The boss has his ways. "
And now this.
Confetti in my hair and Emily's arms around me and a room full of people who showed up because he made it happen, and he's not even here, he's in surgery right now saving someone else's life the way he saved mine, and I'm crying so hard I can't breathe, and my heart feels like it's about to explode because this. ..
This has to be proof.
Right?
Even if he doesn't know it yet, Dr. Collington is totally in love with me!