He stayed still, eyes closed, hands lightly touching my waist. I stepped closer to him, and he brushed the back of his fingers against the bottom of my T-shirt.
He pulled back, just enough so that our mouths lost contact. But I wasn’t ready to let go. Not yet. I grazed my lips against his and held the back of his hair. My breathing had gone all weird and shaky. My heart was beating so loudly, and all I wanted was to kiss him more. To kiss him completely. To press into him, and open my mouth, and feel his whole body move against mine. I leaned forward an inch, and my shirt hiked up at the back—his hands skimmed the surface of my skin. I gasped and jumped out of his grasp.
“Sorry,” I said. My lips were tingling like crazy.
“Sorry,” he repeated, his neck turning red. “I shouldn’t have—”
“No, I didn’t mean—” I wanted to kiss him again, but I was conscious of the fact that we weren’t alone. People were still tossing coins into the shrine. A sudden breeze rustled through the branches of the tree, making the ema clack against one another.
I grabbed him by the fingertips. We stayed like that for a moment, our hands linked between us like a jump rope. “I just meant, that wasn’t planned,” I said.
He blushed. “No. I guess not.”
I studied him. The corners of his mouth, his eyebrows—they were light brown. I took him in, piece by piece. The broken line of his nose, the white spots on the tips of his teeth.
“Is this okay?” he asked, glancing nervously at our hands. “Do you want me to let go?”
Instinctively, I stepped forward. Our hands moved together.
“No,” I whispered. “No thanks.”
We stayed like that as we walked to see the inner square of the shrine. It was quiet and I felt sleepy. Not tired, but sleepy. Like I was in that moment when you lie down in bed in the dark and everything feels warm and safe.
We walked back through the sacred forest, back into the gray city. I was waiting for the spell to break, for Jamie to pull away or touch his hair or something. To give me an apologetic shrug. Well, I think we can both agree that that was weird. Am I right?
But he didn’t.
We kept walking, past Harajuku and all the way up to Omotesando. The sky was starting to darken. The trees running up and down the dori sparkled in the light from glass shopping centers. It made me think of a thousand twinkle lights. It was the Champs-élysées in Paris and Fifth Avenue in New York all rolled into one. My stomach lurched as I remembered that soon I would be flying toward one of those cities. In fact, the movers were coming tomorrow—
I dropped Jamie’s hand. “Oh shit!”
“What?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine.” I dug through the mess of receipts and flyers and purikura in my tote until I found the plastic cardholder with my Suica card inside. “Except it’s not. I have to go. I have to pack. Like, I’m beyond the point of having a choice in the matter.”
“Sure,” he said. “That’s fine.”
“Right.” I hoped I didn’t sound as heartbroken as I felt. I hoped he couldn’t hear the catch in my voice. “I guess I’ll see you around. Tomorrow maybe?”
“No.” He opened his hands and flexed his fingers. I wanted to grab them again. Or kiss him. Maybe I could kiss him good-bye. Maybe I could kiss him good-bye and start running down the avenue and then we wouldn’t have to deal with a real good-bye later. That was probably the best idea I’d ever had. Bravo, Sophia—
“I mean, that’s fine. I’ll come with you. I’ll help you pack.”
I stepped closer to him. “You do not want to help me pack.”
“Of course I do.” He was smiling. “I’m a great packer, and anyway, what else am I going to do tonight?”
“Uh. Something that doesn’t suck.”
“You’re ridiculous.” He wrapped his hand around mine and whispered in my ear, “I’m coming with you.”
At my front door, I let go of Jamie’s hand again. It was bizarre and sudden—all that space between us.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just, my mom’s probably in there. And my sister. She’d be merciless.”
The curtains were closed in most of the apartments around us. It was dark but not silent. Someone was listening to a news broadcast. Someone else was practicing a Yann Tiersen song on the piano. Our house had a small front yard closed in by stone walls, and a part of me wanted to stay there, in the dark, with Jamie and the halting city music.
“No worries,” he said. “My sister would be exactly the same. She hated the last girl I dated. They met over the summer. I think Hannah might have stolen twenty dollars from her wallet.” He paused. “Honestly, I think she’s probably the more delinquent of the two of us.”
“Oh.” I took my key out of my bag and rubbed my fingers over my plastic panda bear key chain. So I was right. There had been a girlfriend.
An older woman.
I wondered if I was in over my head. Five days ago, Jamie had showed up in Tokyo and I’d been convinced he was there just to make my last week miserable. Five days ago, I’d wanted him to get on another plane and leave me alone forever. Five days later, and I didn’t even like it when he wasn’t touching my hand. In some ways, it was wonderful. But another part of me kept freaking out over these really terrifying things.
Like, for example, what were the chances that Jamie was a virgin?