“Well, okay,” he said. “But you must be hungry, what with all the kicking ass and taking names.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m a little hungry. I guess.”
He grinned, and in the incandescent light of the store behind him, his green eyes seemed to flash. “This is a hunger only ramen can cure.”
Jamie, as it turned out, was pretentious about ramen.
“That place is way too big,” he said when we passed a restaurant with floor-to-ceiling windows and two long counters with rows of plastic seating. “It’s industrial. A ramen shop shouldn’t seat more than five people at a time. The steam from the kitchen should get into your sinuses.”
We found a small one tucked around the corner from the station, beneath an overpass. It was windowless with only one booth and three counter seats.
“This,” Jamie said as I pulled the paper-screen door shut behind us, “is what I’m talking about.”
We put money into a machine at the front of the shop and pressed buttons for everything we wanted to order. It spat out tickets for each item. A miso ramen for me and a miso ramen with extra seaweed and two plates of gyoza—vegetable and chicken—for Jamie.
The booth was free, so we slid in.
“This is officially what I missed the most,” Jamie said. He started pouring glasses of water from a plastic jug on the table. “Well, almost the most. You can have some of the gyoza if you want. Or if you want to order anything else…”
I sat back against the plastic of the booth and rubbed my eyes. The air was warm and salty, and I could feel it in my pores. Jamie was right; ramen shops were better this way. But they weren’t what I would miss most. Ever since the Imperial Palace, I’d been cataloging the thousand small things I wished I didn’t have to leave behind. The Christmas lights at Takashimaya Times Square, the small row of persimmon trees growing in one of the alleys behind my house, hot yakitori from the stand by Yoyogi-Uehara Station.
An older woman wearing a heavy blue apron came out of the kitchen to take our tickets.
“I have a question,” I said as soon as she walked away. “And just tell me the truth, okay? Is it a southern thing?”
“Is what a southern thing?” He pushed a glass across the table. I caught it and took a sip. The water was cold, and it made my teeth buzz. I drank it all in two gulps, so Jamie poured me another glass.
“You know,” I said. “The chivalry thing. The being-the-good-guy thing. Is it because you’re southern?”
He snorted. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew the rest of my family.”
“You don’t have to do anything for me,” I said. “I’m not going to have a meltdown, you know.”
“I know that.” The worry crease appeared between his eyebrows again. That crease was starting to become familiar. “And you’re wrong. You and David are both wrong. I’m not the good guy.”
“Of course you are.”
His voice dropped. “If I were the good guy, I wouldn’t have sent that stupid text. I wouldn’t have left without talking to you again.”
I shook my head. “That wasn’t all your fault, Jamie. I’m the one who said all that stuff about you. About how you were a—”
“A twitchy little loser.” Jamie cleared his throat. “Yeah. I remember.”
“Exactly! And I threw your good-bye present, like, right in your face.”
He smirked, and his eyes skirted the Totoro pin on my sweater. This weird, tingly warmth rushed through me.
The waitress came back and set two small blue-and-white cups in front of us. They were filled with hot tea that smelled like rice and autumn leaves. I leaned over and let the curling steam evaporate on my face. When I glanced up, Jamie was still watching me, his eyes thoughtful and searching. I could have pretended not to notice, but I met his gaze full on. My pulse started pounding in my ears.
“Can I ask you something?” he said, leaning across the table.
“Yeah,” I said, leaning forward a little to meet him. “I think you’ve earned the right.”
“That watch you’ve been wearing—is it the same one you had when we were kids?”
“Oh.” I sat back and grabbed my wrist.
“Crap,” Jamie said. “Sorry.”
“No,” I said. “It’s no big deal.”
He nodded, clearly relieved.
“It was a gift from my dad.” I placed my hands back on the table and stretched out my fingers. “You remember how he lives in Paris?”
Jamie nodded again.
“When I was a kid, I hated going back and forth. I used to be really—depressed about it, I guess. That might not be the right word. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
Depressed. Or maybe just sunk so far inside myself that no one could get to me. Not my mom, not my teachers.
Nobody.
Like how I’d felt when I found out Mika and David had been lying to me. Like the floor was dissolving beneath my feet and there was nothing I could do to stop the fall that would follow.
“So your dad got you a watch,” Jamie said carefully.
“Yeah.” I shook off the dark and sticky feelings and clicked the button that switched the display. “Dad would set it so that it told me how long I had until I saw him again. That way, when I got sad, I’d know time was bringing us closer together, not further apart. I think he was trying to make me feel less powerless or something. But honestly, the only thing I wanted was to go live there.”
“Really?” Jamie said. “In Paris over Tokyo?”
“I don’t know.” I folded and unfolded the corner of a chopstick wrapper. “I’d definitely pick Tokyo now. But when I was little, I would’ve gone to Paris in a heartbeat. I used to tell all my teachers I was from there, even though I couldn’t speak French.”
Jamie laughed.
“And I’ve visited every year since I was five. Since—my dad left.”