33. The Fates
The Fates
Kiri
Every time we play Hong Kong, Rithy drags us to the Meridian.
It's not optional. Neither is the booth overlooking Victoria Harbour, the bottle of whiskey none of us could afford the first time we came here, or the four glasses lined up in front of us before anyone is allowed to drink.
The first Hong Kong show we ever played was in a venue that reeked of bleach and a sewage problem that made us want to gag every time we took a breath.
And money? What money. We didn't earn a dime from our first Asia tour, but we were just excited to be here. We hit that venue like we were trying to make up for every empty room we’d ever played.
Ronan freaked when he cracked one of the house cymbals, Rafe went so hard he lost his voice halfway through the set, and Rithy spent the night convinced he’d seen the man he was going to marry in the pit.
Afterward, Stefan took us to the Meridian.
He had connections, even back then. A friend of a friend who knew a billionaire who owed Stefan a favor.
We stood downstairs for forty minutes while three different people explained that our names weren't on the list. Eventually, the connection pulled through and we ended up sharing one drink between four people because it cost more than our hotel rooms.
Stefan said it was something to strive for, proof that there were rooms we hadn’t earned our way into yet.
I've never really given a fuck about this shit, but it served its purpose.
We were sick of feeling like we weren't allowed in certain spaces, so the next gig, we went harder than ever before, like we were blowing those closed doors open.
We’ve come back every tour since. Now the staff know us and usher us directly to the private elevator.
Everyone inside is famous, wealthy, beautiful, or attached to somebody who is.
The kind of place where actors pretend not to notice other actors and billionaires dress like they’ve never considered the price of anything in their lives.
Our usual booth, the first booth Stefan ushered us to like the embarrassments we were, is waiting in the corner.
Reserved for The Riven Altar.
Rithy slides in first and points at the seat beside him.
I take my place against the curved leather.
Rafe sits opposite me, dressed entirely in funeral black with his hair in a ponytail.
He always gets mad at his hair when he's depressed; it's hilarious to fucking watch. A grown man fighting with his own hair. He’s been quiet since Kasia left Japan, which is saying something, because Rafe can make even silence feel theatrically loud when he wants to.
This is a different kind of quiet. The kind I understand, because I feel it too, for a totally different reason.
One I chose, but it doesn't make it any less heavy.
Tonight, he keeps turning his phone over on the table like he can summon her by checking it often enough.
Ronan drops into the booth beside him. “If you stare at that phone any harder, she’s gonna feel that shit through the screen.”
Rafe looks up. “I wasn’t staring.”
“You’ve checked whether she’s messaged six times since the elevator.”
“She’s probably asleep, or getting ready for work.”
“Then why do you keep checking the damn thing?”
Rafe’s gaze narrows. “Why do you keep talking?”
“I’m Irish—it’s a biological compulsion, Romeo.”
Rafe bursts out laughing, and fuck, we all needed that sound.
He slaps Ronan on the shoulder. The bottle arrives before Rithy can answer with whatever clever insult I can see written all over his face.
It's the same whiskey, same glasses, same ridiculous presentation involving a silver tray and one enormous block of ice carved with the club’s insignia that stunned us into awe that first night. Rithy pours the round.
He lifts his glass first. “Still fucking here.”
It’s the same toast every time. Our toast to the fact that the four of us can now enter through the private elevator instead of arguing with security on the pavement. We touch our glasses together.
“Still fucking here,” Ronan repeats.
Rafe says it quietly. I nod and drink. The whiskey burns all the way down.
Shame it can’t burn out the part I don’t want to talk about.
Around us, the club flows with music and expensive conversation.
Waiters move through the room carrying champagne beneath sparklers.
A woman laughs near the bar and my head turns before I can stop it.
All I see is pale hair beneath blue light.
But it's the wrong shade. The wrong woman. She turns, and her face is nothing like Natalia’s. I reach for my phone.
I saw her story earlier over lunch. Her in the middle of a crowded club, smiling like Japan had never happened.
That same prick from New Year's Eve was with her.
He had an arm around her shoulders. Her body turned toward the camera in that effortless way she has, like she knows exactly where every eye in the room will land.
I reacted before I could think better of it.
A heart. It was stupid and selfish. The digital equivalent of reaching for her after I’d already told her I wouldn’t.
She would have seen it by now. I open Instagram beneath the table and type the first letters of her name into the search bar.
Nothing comes up. For a second, I think the connection is bad.
The signal icon is full, but I search again anyway, slower this time. Natalia Sawadzka.
No profile or photos. No little circle around her face telling me she’s posted something new.
The understanding lands slowly, then all at once.
My shoulders sag. She blocked me. The music drops, bass thumping.
Rithy's saying something to Ronan. Rafe’s phone lights up and his entire expression changes before he tries to hide it.
The harbor glitters outside the windows like nothing's wrong.
I stare at the empty search results. What did I expect?
I asked her to believe me in Nagoya, then called from Osaka and made every promise sound like something she’d imagined.
She told me this was the last time she'd tolerate my bullshit.
I guess she meant it. Good for her, I think, even though it hurts.
I lock the phone and slide it facedown onto the table.
Rithy glances at me. His eyes stay on my face for another second, but Ronan starts complaining about the whiskey pour and the moment passes.
I take another drink. She shut the door.
I've got no right to knock after setting fire to the hallway.
Maybe this is better, or for the best or whatever bullshit people say when something terrible happens and they want to pretend it's fine.
Ronan is midway through telling us about a woman who tried to climb into his lap at the hotel bar in Nagoya when his entire face changes. He stops speaking; then his mouth actually falls open. I follow his stare toward the opposite side of the room. The glass in my hand goes still.
Radhika Malhotra stands near the private bar beneath a chandelier made from hundreds of suspended pieces of crystal. She’s surrounded by people, though surrounded isn’t the right word. People arrange themselves around Radhika. They always have.
She's wearing midnight-blue silk cut close through the waist, one shoulder bare, diamonds at her ears catching every beam of light. Her dark hair falls in a smooth wave down her back. There’s a man beside her speaking into her ear, some actor I recognize without knowing his name, but she isn’t listening.
She’s smiling at a woman across from her, one hand wrapped around the stem of a champagne glass.
Almost ten years, and I know the exact moment the smile is real. I know how the corner of her mouth lifts first. How her eyes narrow when she’s trying not to laugh. How she lowers her chin because her mother once told her actresses should never throw their heads back in public.
She's still as stunning as the day I broke her heart.
Ronan slowly sets down his glass. “I swear I’ve just seen a ghost.”
Rithy turns. His reaction is instant as his face opens with something close to joy.
“No fucking way.”
Rafe looks over last. For the first time since Kasia got on that plane, something brightens behind his eyes. He straightens, staring across the club as though the universe has finally offered him something more interesting than his own misery.
“Radhika,” he says.
She hasn’t seen us yet. Or she has and is pretending she hasn’t. Both are definitely possible.
Ronan leans forward. “How is that woman somehow more beautiful than she was ten years ago?”
“Money,” Rithy says.
“Nah. She's always been loaded. That's fucking magic.”
Rafe’s mouth curves. Then he leans toward me, lowering his voice as if he’s about to reveal something profound.
“There’s your Eurydice back from the dead.”
I look at him. “My what?”
“Isn’t it about time you stopped playing a song no one's listening to, Orpheus?”
I stare at him. I know enough to understand that Orpheus played music and his wife died. Or went to hell. Maybe both. Rafe reads Greek mythology for pleasure and assumes the rest of us absorb it through proximity.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means,” Ronan says, “he wants you to go talk to your ex, but he needed to make it pretentious.”
Rafe throws himself back against the booth in outrage. “Reducing myth to its least interesting interpretation is an actual form of violence, O'Shea.”
“Then call the police on me, Ashton.” Ronan locks his wrists together like handcuffs and Rafe laughs so hard I think whiskey might shoot from his nose.
Rithy doesn't pay attention to them. He's still watching Radhika.
“You need to go speak to her.”
“No way. It’s been almost ten years. I’m pretty sure if she wanted to speak to me, she'd have done it by now.”
Rithy considers that; then he puts down his drink and stands.
“Rith.”
He ignores me.
I catch his wrist before he clears the booth. “Don’t.”
“You said if she wanted to speak to you, she would. So, time to find out.”
“Sit down.”
He pulls free with a smile that, when we were kids, used to mean I was about to get blamed for something he did. Then he starts walking directly across the club.
“Fuck.”
I slide out after him.
Behind me, Ronan says, “Time to get a front row seat to the event of the decade.”
Rafe stands. “It's like we're the actual Fates.”
“You can be the mother, Rithy's the crone. I'm clearly the maiden.”
“That's a modern conflation of two different concepts. The Fates are—”
“Alright, Aristotle. We got the memo—keep up or we’ll miss the action.”
I catch up with Rithy halfway across the room, but grabbing him now would make more of a scene than letting him continue.
People already notice us moving through the club.
A woman says Rafe’s name behind me. Rithy doesn’t slow.
Radhika sees him when we’re still several feet away.
Her expression transforms. The guarded polish disappears, and for one moment she's the woman who used to sit cross-legged on studio floors at three in the morning, stealing Rithy’s cigarettes and arguing with Ronan about drum fills she didn’t understand.
It takes me right back to the first time she looked at me.