Chapter 25
Hua Dongmei
Ming dynasty. Dongmei was the first Hua to use a pig-bristle toothbrush. She created her own cleaning paste from cloves.
Heart note // Diminish yearning
Base note // Ginger
After work, the rain stops, leaving the air cool and fresh.
Mom is happy for me to go out for dinner with Rafe, although she tries to convince me to go for something other than sushi, muttering darkly about parasites and worse.
I lie and promise her I’ll stick to donburi.
She heads home and I go to meet Rafe, who is waiting outside the restaurant on Spadina.
When I catch sight of him lounging against a wall as he waits, I stumble. How did I not realize I compared every man I met with him over the years? They were all lacking and I never understood why until now. They simply weren’t him. He waves when he sees me and I speed up.
We’ve hit the tail end of the dinner rush and are seated at a small table for two that’s far more intimate than I anticipated.
After the initial conversation about our day and how Mom is settling in, we stop.
We’ve been texting, but there are huge gaps in what we know about the last thirteen years.
This makes it hard to be completely easy with each other, although the echo of that comfort remains and resurfaces often enough to give a false sense of familiarity.
Rafe holds his mug of green tea in both hands and looks at the table.
A frown has drawn long lines across his forehead, and we listen to the couple beside us gossiping cozily about their work colleagues.
Finally, he smiles at me and I take my courage in hand. “We haven’t had a chance to talk about what’s happened to us over the years,” I say. “I don’t even know if you have pets.”
He nods. “It’s weird to try to catch up on so much time. I don’t remember half of it. Maybe most of it.”
“What if we do a highlights reel?” I suggest. “We’ll trade the top five things we should know.”
Rafe puts aside his cup. I watch him greedily, hungry for his face after all the years of telling myself I didn’t care. Lies to yourself are almost impossible to get over. “My top five life highlights.” He sounds baffled.
Although it was my idea, I’m also struggling. It’s not so much a list as a judgment call about what I find valuable. What do I want him to know about me? By the time the server comes by for our order, I’ve only got three items and second-guessed a dozen others.
“Who goes first?” Rafe asks.
“You asked.”
He groans. Our tradition is, the one to ask is the one to go first.
“Fine. No comments until we’re both done.” Rafe clears his throat. “These are in no particular order,” he warns.
“Mine neither.”
Rafe thanks the server for the Asahi Super Dry and takes a sip. “Work. You know I work for the family real estate business. We branched out from residential and I want to move us into the luxury space, more high-end real estate.”
He glances at me and I nod.
“Pets. I have two cats named Trixie and Lola. While I’m here, they’re with my neighbor.” He pays the cat tax and shows me a photo of a sleek brown tabby and round black cat sitting side by side like judgmental sphinxes.
“Home. I live in a condo near the water in Kitsilano. Hobbies.” Here he flounders. “I don’t think I have any. Most of my time is working. Relationships. None. My last girlfriend was two years ago, and we dated for three years.” He looks up. “Your turn.”
I stop myself from asking what broke them up, because I don’t like thinking of Rafe with another woman. “I make perfume under Ile de Grasse. Also, I know Grasse isn’t an island. Mom points it out all the time. The name is conceptual.”
“I had no doubt.” His grin makes me laugh.
“I move around a lot. I’ve lived in seven cities since I left and I don’t go home very often. I don’t have any pets. I…” I peter out. “No relationships.”
“That’s four,” he says.
“It’s five,” I argue. “Perfume, moving, seven cities, not going home, no pets, no significant other. Six, now that I count them out. I overdelivered.”
“I consider moving, the cities, and not going home all variations on a theme.” He crosses his arms. “Give me one more.”
“I–I don’t have…” I falter, trying to think of something, anything.
“Not a negative,” he says. “Not anything missing. Something you have.”
That shuts me up completely because I’ve defined the last decade more by what I lack. “I have a friend,” I say finally. “Ana. She owns the store. At least, I think we’re friends.”
We sit across the table, looking at each other. “If this were my eulogy, everyone in the funeral home would cry from pity,” Rafe says finally, frowning at his cup.
“At least you didn’t turn into a kayak guy,” I say to lighten the mood.
“I was one for a while.” Rafe goes red. “I sold it last year and got back into hiking. Hey, I guess I do have a hobby.”
“We used to hike all the time,” I say. “Remember when we climbed the Grouse Grind?”
“It was in October,” he says.
“You slipped.”
He snorts. “Because you missed a step and fell on me.”
“Then those Japanese tourists took photos of us because we were covered in mud.”
“Right before that eighty-year-old couple in the head-to-toe Patagonia beat us to the top.”
“They made fun of us for being slow.”
Rafe frowns. “Yeah, if we’d known it was a race, we could have totally beat them.”
“We probably should have known. Doesn’t it automatically become a race the second someone passes you on the trail?”
We laugh, and for that brief moment, it feels like no time at all has passed.
“We could go hiking again here,” he adds. “I found a nice trail out by the zoo I want to try.”
Another date, pulling us from the past into a shared future. I nod enthusiastically.
Rafe eats neatly, which is something I forgot.
Missy Jin drilled manners into him, telling him a Realtor needed to exude a sense of class.
The conversation is easier than I expected, and with the basics of our lives out of the way, I feel better about simply talking.
We move from his trip to Ottawa to my time living there, and then to a jasmine-mint scent I’d been working on.
“I put it on before I left.” I hold out my wrist, where I’d sprayed it.
This is a mistake, because Rafe cradles my hand over the table. I keep my arm still but can feel the trembling start in my knees as he pushes my sleeve up to nose along my skin, his eyes closing to concentrate on the scent.
I do my best to cover my reaction to his touch.
Having Rafe back in my life again leaves me feeling strangely untethered.
It’s as if part of me never moved past the twenty-year-old who’d been stunted with hurt.
That Lucy was stuck in time, but I have options I can take if I grow through the past like a sapling reaching for sun.
The problem is that I’ve been in this space so long I don’t know if I can get out of it.
Loneliness is treacherous; it trains you to its needs and makes you think that you crave it.
Ana was the first one to start kicking at my walls, knocking out a block here and there, but with Rafe, they could all come tumbling, leaving me vulnerable.
Deep down, I’m still the girl who thrilled at that chaste garden kiss before the crushing disappointment came, but there’s a lot to learn about a man who’s going back to Vancouver in weeks.
He leans back and blinks. “It smells pretty,” he says slowly. “Like a spring day where you wake up energized after a long winter. Fresh.”
I manage to find my voice and pull my arm back. The imprint of his hand sits heavy on my skin. “Thanks.”
We keep going with the conversation, but the vibe has shifted to one that could be leading us to where we broke off so many years ago.
When we leave, the weather is warmer than it has been in the last few weeks and still carries its post-rain crispness.
“I’d like to walk for a bit,” I say, hoping to keep the spell over us.
He falls into step beside me, and we go up Spadina, me pointing out places I like. Then Rafe stops in front of a sign. “Oh my God,” he says. “They’re playing Big Trouble in Little China. We saw that in the rep theater, and we were the only people there.”
I laugh. “We tried sitting in every row to figure out which was the best, because we could.”
“One row up from dead center. Sitting in the front row nearly broke my neck.”
I read the rest of the poster. “Hey, it starts in twenty minutes.”
We immediately head over to the theater, a small screening room at the university, and get tickets from the apathetic seller.
“Popcorn?” asks Rafe.
I nod and we buy a huge and surprisingly fresh bag that I sniff with delight. Hot popcorn has a lovely toasted smell from the sugars heating, and the coconut oil lends it a delicious lushness. I dip my hand in at the same time as Rafe, and we both pull back.
“Sorry,” we say.
The next time it happens, he only smiles at me and doesn’t move his hand. Nor do I.
The room itself is a little strange since there are no chairs.
Everyone sits on big blocks placed like an experimental amphitheater around the screen.
A few have brought half chairs with built-in backrests.
The lights dim soon after we take our seats on the last block, one with enough space for two people to sit beside each other.
There are no trailers and the movie starts right away.
“What if it doesn’t hold up?” whispers Rafe as Egg Shen appears on the screen. “I haven’t seen it in fifteen years.”
I fold my legs to sit cross-legged. “Then we’ve blown a couple hours and twenty bucks, but on the plus side, we got popcorn.”
“True.” He settles back.
Rafe holds the popcorn between us, the way he always did after the time I got scared by the vampires during 30 Days of Night and tossed the bag so far in the air that it rained popcorn over the surrounding seats.
Sitting next to him in the dark transports me back, and I close my eyes for a second to let myself wonder what if.
What if I had stayed. What if I had called him. What if, what if.
What if we can pick up where we left off? What if I can have him back like nothing happened?
It’s almost one in the morning when we leave the theater, but we’re buzzed. “That was incredible,” he says.
“I’d forgotten how good it was.” I feel giddy. “You know there’s a bar named after the movie on Dundas?”
“No way.”
“Ana told me about it. Apparently, it’s got red lanterns and everything.”
We swap some favorite scenes, and it’s like being with Rafe again, my old friend. I gaze at his mouth, wondering if that’s all we’ll be but knowing for certain I want more.
The walk home is relaxed, as if Wang Chi has kicked the ass end of our estrangement along with the bad guys, and Rafe lingers at my door. “That was fun,” he says.
I nod, but I need to ask something before we get too deep. Eric’s words from the other day have been gnawing at me. I don’t know how you think any man could put up with it, not knowing if your own wife is using it to control you. I have to know. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Are you scared I’ll use my moli on you?”
He shook his head. “Never.”
“That’s certain.”
“I know you, Lucy. I trust you would never do that.”
I look at him, and I believe him.
“Okay,” I say.
He grins at me. “Doubt I could afford it anyway.”
“I’d give you the friends-and-family discount.”
“Thanks, but I’d prefer to use it on one from your mom. I need the occasional mood boost. Yours, though? Not necessary. I’ve got it covered.”
He waves at me and heads down the hall, as I stand in front of the door, puzzling over what he means. My moli isn’t necessary? Why not?
It’s not until I’m in bed that I realize what he might have meant, and I fall asleep with a big smile on my face.