31. Never Again
Never Again
Kiri
Ikeep the phone against my ear. I listen to the silence she left behind. My mind making bargains with reality, like if I don’t move, the call hasn’t really ended. She might still be there, breathing on the other side, waiting for me to stop being a fucking asshole.
She isn’t.
The hotel room comes back around me slowly.
Muted television. Curtains half-open over the Osaka skyline.
Two glasses and a bottle of whiskey on the coffee table from room service even though it's five in the morning. Rithy sprawls in a chair opposite me, watching without looking like he’s watching.
My thumb presses against the side of the phone.
Her name is still on the screen in Khmer with a crocodile emoji.
I did it on purpose so only Rithy or I would understand if her name popped up.
No need for that now. She won’t be calling me. I made sure of that. I lower the phone.
Rithy lifts his glass. “To doing the right thing.”
I look at him. He tips the whiskey toward me until I pick up mine. The rims knock together. I drink because I don’t know what else to do. It burns all the way down. Rithy leans back, satisfied in that quiet way he gets when he thinks a problem has been solved.
“She’ll be pissed for a while.”
I stare into the amber at the bottom of my glass. “She sounded more than pissed.”
“Yeah, well.” He shrugs. “She’s dramatic.”
My eyes cut to him. He raises a hand. “I like her. Mostly. More than her uptight, boring sister. Doesn’t make her less dramatic.”
“She was crying. She was trying to pretend she wasn't but I could tell.”
The words come out flatter than they feel. Rithy’s expression changes, just slightly. Then he looks away and takes another drink.
“She’s grieving. That’s the whole point.
” His voice gentles, but there’s that coldness beneath it.
The same tone he uses when we’re about to walk onto a stage and he needs me focused.
The same tone he used when we were kids and I told him he had to stop crying before Dad heard us and beat our asses.
He would nod and say okay like a little soldier.
“She's all messed up right now. She's lost her brother, she's young and horny and hot.
So, naturally, she's drinking and fucking the grief away. That sake bottle never saw her coming.” He gestures vaguely with his glass.
“And you were standing right there, looking like her favorite flavor of bad decision.”
I laugh but there’s no humor in it. “Great.”
“You know what I mean.”
Rithy sets his glass down and leans forward, forearms braced on his knees.
“She was chasing a distraction. I know if I lost you, I'd be chasing every vice known to man.”
My jaw tightens. I remember the words she used, how she said she didn’t feel this way around anyone except me.
How earnestly and openly she asked me to fuck her, on multiple occasions.
There was pain in her eyes, yeah, but the way she felt seemed real.
It's too hard to piece together. The more I try to separate what was real for her from what I feel and how heated everything became between us, the more it all runs together.
All of it can be true. Or none of it. I don't know anymore.
“It didn’t feel like that was all it was.”
“Of course not. That’s how distractions work. Even she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
The words hit me harder than I thought they would. I hear her voice again.
You acted like this had a future.
I press my tongue to the back of my teeth.
Rithy keeps going. “She’ll be sad, probably hate you for a few months—”
“Forever, probably.”
“Fine. Forever, whatever.”
He reaches for the bottle and pours more whiskey into his glass.
“Then she’ll meet some nice guy in Seattle. Some fucking banker or tech bro or whatever the hell men with normal jobs are now.”
I say nothing but the picture builds anyway. Natalia laughing across a restaurant table at someone else. Smiling as she leans into someone else’s shoulder. Some clean-cut asshole with no abusive alcoholic in his family, no bad reputation, no years of noise and touring embedded in his bones.
Rithy grins, trying to drag me into the joke. “He’ll fuck her once, think he’s seen God and won the lottery in the same night, and marry her before she has time to change her mind.”
The glass nearly cracks in my hand but Rithy doesn’t notice. Or pretends not to.
“He’ll spoil her,” he continues. “Big house. Stupid car. Vacations where nobody has to sneak around in disguises. Christmas with the family. Kids, maybe. Whatever she wants. Big family dinners with the Sawadzkas, all that shit. Rafe will be delighted. So will Kasia. Life moves on.”
My chest feels wrong. So tight that the air in the room feels thin.
“She’ll be okay,” he says, a sincere look in his eyes. "The young ones are resilient."
I nod because that’s what I’m supposed to do. That was the whole point, wasn’t it?
She’ll be okay. Better off without me.
Natalia, with all that light and fury and softness she pretends she doesn’t have, will go on and find someone better suited to her life.
Someone younger and easier. A guy Rafe won’t want to kill.
A man who won’t make her hide in hotel rooms or wait for the scraps of time between flights and soundchecks.
A decent man, who won’t tell her there’s a future while he’s touching her, then tear it away the minute she isn’t standing close enough to stop him.
Rithy moves from the chair to the couch beside me.
The cushion sinks under his weight. He pats my back once, hard enough to jolt me forward.
“You made the right decision.”
I stare at the phone in my hand. Natalia’s last words are still lodged somewhere in my throat.
Do you understand?
Rithy’s hand settles on the back of my neck. His fingers grip firmly, and he leans closer until his shoulder presses into mine.
“For both of you, brother.”
I swallow, then nod. “Yeah.”
“I love you. You know that, right?”
I manage half a smile. It feels dead on my face.
“I know.”
He studies me for another second, so I reach for the bottle.
“More?”
“Always.”
I pour his first. The bottle taps softly against the rim because my hand won’t stop shaking.
I tighten my grip but it's too late. Rithy sees it and his eyes drop to my fingers.
Then lift to my face. Neither of us says anything.
I set the bottle down carefully, then my hand disappears against my thigh beneath the edge of my hoodie.
Out of sight, pretending like that changes anything.
Rithy picks up his glass. His expression is quieter now, the certainty cracked around the edges.
He knows, at least some of it, but he doesn't know all of it.
He doesn’t know the way she looked at me in Nagoya, hiding behind that sheet.
The way I told her we’d figure it out, that it was our secret, like it was something beautiful because it belonged only to us.
He doesn’t know how she slept curled against me, one hand resting over my heart as if she trusted it.
Or how many times I almost called her back just now.
How close I came to telling her I didn’t mean any of it.
How badly I wanted to admit I was scared for her, for me, and for what this could do to both of us.
But he sees enough. My hand shaking and my eyes fixed on a phone that isn’t going to ring. The way I’m breathing like I just walked offstage after a three-hour set.
Rithy looks down at his drink, then back at me. Without a word, he holds out his pinky.
The same one we both got tattooed after our first decent check. The Khmer script is rough from the cheap shop we could afford back then, but we both know what it means.
Never again.
It started when Rithy was ten. Someone at school told him a pinky promise made whatever you said come true.
That night, Dad was losing his shit downstairs, and Rithy crawled under my bed to hide.
I found him there trying not to cry, so I told him we’d get out.
That one day we’d never have to live in that house again.
Never have to be afraid again. We’d take Ma with us and somehow figure out the rest. He made me pinky promise.
After that, he believed it like the promise had changed something.
Like the moment our fingers locked, the future was already decided.
So when we finally had enough money, we had the words inked onto our pinkies.
A reminder of what we survived and what we built after.
Whenever life gets hard, whenever the old fear starts creeping back in, we lock the promise again.
We do it before every show because this band was never only about music.
It was our way out. Our proof that we kept our word to each other. Rithy pushes his hand closer when I hesitate.
"Never again, right? Nothing comes between us, this band, or what we fought for. Remember that. It'll hurt her now but it's for the best, for everyone." Finally, I hook my pinky around his, and we give the promise an aggressive tug. He smiles and slaps my shoulder.
"That's it."
He raises his glass and I lift my own. I drink before he can see my face change. Before he can see the exact moment it settles inside me.
I told myself I was cutting her loose for her own good.
All I did was put the knife through both of us.