Prologue Satoshi #2
‘It’s not that painful.’ I shrugged. ‘I came out to my family when I was fourteen. Not as pan – I didn’t have the language for that yet – but I told them that I was attracted to everyone, not just girls.
Nobody was surprised – I was in a bit of a femme fashion era, I was really into jewellery and dramatic eyeliner, and I was completely heartbroken over one of the boys at school, it must have been very obvious – but it wasn’t a big deal.
Isamu patted me on the shoulder and said, “All right, Sato.” My mother hugged me.
So did Noriko. My father grunted and went back to what he was doing. ’
‘So the opposite of performatively supportive, then.’
‘I didn’t expect anything else. I was braced for worse, honestly – I’d heard some horror stories – so I appreciated them being pretty low-key about it.
’ I shrugged. ‘Anyway, we’re not a very demonstrative family, so having them make some big declaration of support would have been weird.
Our love language has always been acts of service – doing, not saying. ’
‘That’s my love language too.’ Fiona wrinkled her nose fondly at me.
‘I worked that out the first time you handed me one of those book lists for Lex.’ I wrinkled my nose back at her.
‘But while they did all the right things, it still would have been nice to have some words of affirmation too – or something like this.’ I tapped the pin on the bar again.
‘Not just okay, makes no difference to me, but I see you.’
She nodded contemplatively. ‘Thank you. That’s very helpful.’
‘You’re very welcome.’
‘And for what it’s worth,’ she said, ‘I see you.’
I blinked.
‘I sure as hell saw you yesterday morning making out with hot day spa Kieran like your lives depended on it.’ Mischief sparkled in her eyes. ‘There I was, minding my own business, innocently heading down to the bakery, thinking, Oh, I’ll just cut through that alleyway next to Tsundoku, and—’
‘Stop,’ I groaned.
‘I’m assuming you’re either the black sheep of the Tsukamoto family or you don’t know what demonstrative means.’ Fiona poked me playfully in the arm. ‘Because you, my friend, are clearly very demonstrative.’
I didn’t fall in love with her that day either. But later that night, lying beside my beautiful boyfriend, aware that no matter how much I tried to demonstrate my love to him, it was fading away, those three words echoed in my mind: I see you.
The eighty-second time I didn’t fall in love with Fiona
‘Isamu, will you just listen to me?’ I said. ‘I understand what you’re saying. But—’
‘But you want to do it anyway.’ Isamu folded his arms over his chest. I was several inches taller than him, but he was twice as wide across the shoulders, and he always managed to look down at me somehow, in a way that made me feel every second of our twelve-year age difference.
‘Even though it makes no financial sense. Even though you categorically do not need to be an MS to run this place. Even though it’ll mean working yourself to the bone – you want to do it anyway? ’
‘Yes.’
Isamu pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Sato, this is ridiculous. Why would you—’
The door opened. ‘Sorry, Satoshi, I know it’s not quite two yet, but—’ Fiona paused, looking between us. ‘Am I interrupting?’
‘No.’ I beckoned her inside. ‘I’m about to open, and Isamu was just leaving.’
My brother glared at me. ‘We’re not finished talking about this.’
‘You can talk as much as you want. I’m not going to change my mind. Take a seat, Fiona – I have some new things I want your opinion on.’
I poured her a splash of a Slovenian orange field blend as Isamu, with one last grunt of displeasure, left.
‘Do you want to talk about whatever that was?’ Fiona asked.
‘I was only popping in to see if any of those books I ordered for Lex had arrived, but they’re on camp, Matt’s in Melbourne for work, and the girls are going straight from school to a sleepover. I’ve got time.’
‘There’s not that much to tell.’ I took another glass down and poured a splash of the orange wine for myself. ‘I told Isamu I’m going to sit the MS.’
‘The MS?’
‘The Master Sommelier exam. The highest qualification you can get in wine. It’ll be a lot of work – it’s the hardest exam in the world, it’s got a pass rate of about five per cent – but I’ve wanted to do it for as long as I can remember.
It’s the whole reason I went back overseas to work.
I didn’t want to leave home, not when I finally had one, but I knew I had to if I wanted to get enough serious experience.
I’ve basically been preparing for this my whole life.
’ I swirled the wine in my glass. ‘But Isamu doesn’t think I should do it. Doesn’t think I can.’
‘Did he say that?’
‘Not in so many words, but…’ I paused. ‘I was more… fragile, when I was younger. Anxious. All the moving around did a number on me, and even after my father died and we settled here for good, I used to have panic attacks. I don’t anymore – I did a lot of therapy, and I’ve got strategies to manage it now – but in Isamu’s mind, I’m still a delicate little flower. ’
‘Is that why you want to do the exam? To show him you’re not?’
‘No. Wine isn’t just the family business to me. It’s genuinely my passion.’
‘I know,’ she murmured, an unreadable expression crossing her face for a moment. ‘I know how passionate you are.’
‘But if I’m being honest – proving myself is starting to become a bigger part of the reason.’ I exhaled. ‘Isamu’s not wrong. I don’t need to be an MS to run Tsundoku. But I want to be one. I want to prove – to him, and to everyone – that I can do it.’
Fiona tapped her fingers against the foot of her glass for a few moments before she spoke again. ‘Is it weird to say that I completely get it and also don’t get it at all?’
‘A bit, yes,’ I said. ‘Explain.’
‘Have I told you much about my family? Not Matt and the kids, I mean – my parents? My brothers?’
‘A little. They’re in Sydney, right? Where you grew up?’
‘Mostly. My dad is a big-time professor at Eastern Sydney University. My mum dropped out of her PhD to marry him. Both my brothers have PhDs – Elias is a historian, Jonah did English like my dad – and I was expected to do one too.’
‘Bookish,’ I said, remembering that first time we’d met.
‘Very.’ Fiona leaned her chin against her hand. ‘But one of the first things I ever remember knowing – like, knowing in my bones – was that academia wasn’t for me. They were furious when I told them I was dropping out of my undergrad, but I knew I didn’t have the passion for it. Not like they did.’
‘That seems pretty unfair. Did they want you to be miserable?’
‘In their defence, they thought I was dropping out to get married. The one person whose footsteps I wasn’t supposed to follow in was my mother.
’ She offered me a grin. ‘For all their giant brains, none of my family could get their heads around the fact that correlation wasn’t the same as causation, that I was dropping out and getting married.
And it put this fire in my belly to prove that I could live just as good a life as any of them – better, even – even though they thought I was making a completely idiotic choice. ’
She inhaled the bouquet of her wine. ‘So I don’t know what it’s like to have that all-consuming hunger to do something – especially when that something is an extremely difficult qualification in the family business.
But I really do understand wanting to prove a point, even if the people around you think it’s a terrible idea. ’
‘It sounds to me,’ I said, ‘like you’re the wisest one in your entire family, Fiona Fisher-Sinclair.’
She laughed, that champagne laugh of hers that had endeared her to me from the start. ‘I’ll drink to that.’
I clinked my glass against hers. ‘Cheers.’
‘Wait, wait, wait.’
I paused, glass to my lips.
‘I can’t believe you’re planning to sit for the ultimate wine exam and you don’t know that you have to look me in the eye when we toast!’ she said. ‘Otherwise it’s seven years of bad sex.’
I chuckled, pulling the turquoise frames of my glasses down my nose so I could exaggeratedly look her in the eye.
‘The whole Kieran breakup is still so fresh that I’m not in a place to worry about that for myself—’ I clinked my glass against hers again ‘—but I wouldn’t want to doom you to a fate like that. ’
‘Thank you.’ Fiona winked at me as she drank. ‘Mama’s got needs.’
It was another day on which I did not fall in love with her – but as I closed up that night, mopping the floor and cleaning down, I did idly wonder what needs Fiona had, and whether her husband could possibly be satisfying them.
The time I did
The night it happened, falling in love was the furthest thing from my mind.
Mostly, I was busy worrying about my junior sommelier Birdie.
Isamu had insisted on me hiring another qualified somm so I didn’t have to run every single shift myself, freeing up time for me to study.
Realistically, though, Birdie was taking up more of my time than she was saving.
I didn’t want to fire her – she was a lovely person, and she was supporting a sick mother – but she’d worked for me for three months now and I still couldn’t trust her to run the floor alone, because her service skills had a nasty tendency to fall off a cliff when things got busy.
Tuesdays were usually quiet, though, and we didn’t have many bookings – Fiona and Matt were one of the few – so when the other staff member rostered on had called in sick, I’d been confident that Birdie and I would be fine on our own.
However, a string of walk-ins had taken us to capacity, and we were run off our feet.
Birdie had been looking increasingly stressed as the bar filled up, so I’d told her to focus on waiting tables while I looked after beverage service. I was trying to keep an eye on her at the same time, but for all my years of hospitality experience, I was, alas, still only human.
‘Mate, come here a second.’ Matt beckoned me over to their table with one finger.