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Tears wet my hands as the back of my hand caresses her cheeks.
"There’s nothing to forgive. I just need you to understand what I'm telling you. I know you worry about my safety, but I feel that for every one of these girls who are trying to get out. I chose to do this. You have to let me do it my way. This is not going to work between us otherwise."
Her words slice me open, and I’m bleeding. I hate knowing that there is something in the world that will keep us from being together. It scares me. And I don’t want to be scared with her. I reach down and run my thumb over the cut on her cheek.
Instead of pushing me away, she lets me kiss her, softly, gently, as an apology.
There's a flash of the headlights on a car driving past that remind us where we are and I open the car door for her. "Where to?"
"There's a laundromat around the corner, that's where I told Peta to go if something happened. Let's go get her."
“Anything for you.”
thirty-two
Kiara
When I moved back to Hong Kong, I was both hiding and seeking. Hiding from the last four years of my life, and seeking a new reality. But the death of my mother tempered my new resolve to take the time to really understand myself, and soon I was throwing myself at my work, letting it lead me, rather than the other way around.
It was unlike me. I tease Nathan about being wound so tightly, but truly, I'm no different. It just manifests in different ways. My lifestyle and occupation choice are my way of retaining control.
And now, I feel like my future has been thrown into the air, the broken particles of my resolve floating around without any centering mass to draw the pieces together, no gravity to make sense of the debris of my life, to give myself direction.
After we left the club, we found Peta huddling in the corner of a nearby empty laundromat, but she was so scared she didn't even recognize me at first. I guess the prospect of being dragged away in a car driven by a blond Englishman didn't settle her fears as much as it should've. We spent almost an hour trying to get her to come with us, and finally, Ananya managed to get in contact with her friend who met us at the laundromat and then followed us in her car with Peta in it to the apartment.
It showed me how I was flying by the seat of my pants and could've put her in even worse danger than she already was. Something I could not forgive myself for.
By the time I crawled into bed with all my clothes still on and lulled to sleep by the sound of Kylian taking a shower in the en suite, I didn't know up from down. Left from right. Right from wrong.
So, when I wake up, I do the only thing to do in those moments: I go see my dad.
"More rice?" he says, holding his hand out to dish out some more rice to me.
I wave a no, as I finish chewing the last mouthful.
It's a simple meal, steamed rice, top tier soy sauce and some pickled mustard greens. It's the meal I eat when I want nothing else in the world, when I want to remember my childhood, when my soul needs healing.
"This is good, ha?" my Dad asks, pointing to the jar of his pickles.
"Much better than your home-made wine, Dad," I tease. "Nathan, Kylian, and I almost didn't even wake up the next morning. You shouldn’t be able to cut the wine with a spoon!" His laugher fixes everything and after a few more minutes of teasing him, I feel whole again.
"It was such a nice surprise to see you here, my dear."
"Well, I didn't think we got a lot of chance to talk the other day with those two chatterboxes around."
"They are quite the talkers, aren't they? That's how Nathan takes after your mother. And you take after me."
I force a smile.
It's the first time he's ever said anything like that, mentioning ways that I might resemble him. And before I stop myself, I say, "I thought only Nathan was the one who takes after you."
"Well, you are your mother's child. Through and through. Beautiful, intelligent, kind of... grumpy,” he adds, with a sly smile.
"Dad!"
"But you are also tenacious, very good at reading people.” He laughs seeing me make a face. "When your head isn't preoccupied thinking of other things, that is. And you see opportunity in places no one else does. In that way you're more my child than Nathan. He's hot tempered, vain and doesn't think all people are worth his time."
The resemblance is uncanny. "Mom."
