Chapter Thirty-One
Halfway to Eugene, Mika pulled over at a rest stop. Guess who’s coming to see you? she wrote to Hana. The lightness of the message belied the darkness creeping in.
Hana texted two hours later, just as Mika reached the outskirts of the city. WTF. You’re coming to Eugene?
Mika parked under an overpass, pressed the heel of her palms to her eyes. Her car shook from the semis passing overhead. Correction, I am in Eugene. Hotel name, please.
She cupped her knees and squeezed, waiting. At last, Hana sent a map link along with a message. I’ll be in the lobby.
* * *
Mika swung through the glass turnstile of the swankiest hotel in Eugene. True to her word, Hana was waiting, arms crossed, tapping her fingers against her bicep.
“Hi!” Mika smiled, but she imagined her expression appeared off. She felt off. As if she were falling from a great height and could do nothing to stop it.
“Hi,” Hana said carefully. “This is a surprise.”
It was morning, seven o’clock, and mostly families milled around the posh lobby. Mika inhaled. It smelled like citrus, much better than the antiseptic at the hospital. “I know. I just thought, what the hell?! I miss Hana.”
“Uh-huh.” Hana eyed her skeptically. “So, you dropped everything on a Sunday at five a.m. to drive here?”
“Exactly. Isn’t this fun? I want a drink. Let’s get a drink.” Mika scanned the lobby for the bar.
“It’s seven a.m., bars are closed.”
“Minibar?” Mika felt very smart. She had a solution for everything.
Hana looked at the ceiling. “Alright,” she said. “But mostly because I don’t think you should be in public right now.”
Hana’s hotel room was sleek and modern, with a king-size bed, a little table, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a muddy river. Mika appreciated the view for all of two seconds before finding the mini-fridge, cleverly hidden in a dresser. She grabbed the first little bottle she saw, uncapped, and drank it down. Whiskey. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her throat burned, and she liked it, the way it distracted her from the pain in her soul.
“I gotta say.” Hana leaned against a wall. “You’re not exactly giving me warm, stable vibes here.”
“You’re telling me.” Mika didn’t feel stable. She felt very unstable, as a matter of fact. As if she were balancing on broken branches. She went back to the fridge. Another little bottle of whiskey down the hatch. Should she eat something? No. Crazy talk. That might ruin her buzz.
Hana moved across the room and withdrew a bottle of water from the fridge. “At least sip it between shots.”
“Thanks.” Mika took a healthy drink of the water. Out of whiskey, she moved on to vodka. It was a good brand, even better when mixed with cranberry, but Mika shot it straight.
Hana sat on the edge of the bed. “Are you going to tell me what happened? I haven’t seen you like this since freshman year in college.”
Mika hit her nose. “Ding, ding, ding. You got it! What happened? I fucked up again. That’s what happened. Isn’t there a saying about the past repeating itself?” The booze started to take effect. Her stomach warmed. Her limbs numbed. That’s what she wanted: to feel nothing, like she had the last sixteen years—it was much safer this way. Back to the mini-fridge. Another vodka? Tequila? Why not.
“Mika,” Hana said calmly. “Mika!” She clapped her hands.
Mika tilted her head. “What?”
“Sit,” Hana commanded as if Mika were a dog.
Mika crumpled to the floor near the minibar. Better to stay close. That tequila wasn’t going to drink itself. She reached for it.
“No!” Hana’s hand wrapped around Mika’s wrist. How’d she moved so fast? Or was Mika just moving very slowly? “No more until you tell me what’s going on.”
Hana shut the mini-fridge, and Mika leaned against the dresser, pulling her legs into her chest to hug them. “I slept with Thomas, and Penny caught us.” She paused for emphasis. “In our underwear.”
“Yikes.” Hana sank down to the floor, sitting across from Mika.
“It gets worse.”
“How much worse?”
“I’d like another drink.”
“No more until you tell me the whole story.”
For a moment, Mika pouted but then explained how she and Thomas had kissed a while back at his hotel. How they’d agreed to keep their budding relationship a secret. How they didn’t want to make Penny worry over nothing, better to wait until there was something—until they were something. How the next time they were alone, they’d fallen on each other like lovers reunited after war. Then Penny had walked in, face twisting in anger. “We stayed up and fell asleep on the couch.” She thought of resting in Thomas’s arms. Through their mutual worry, everything still felt like it would be okay then. “Penny went out drinking, I guess.” It occurred to Mika she was doing the same thing Penny had. Drowning her sorrows. But she shoved the comparison away. She was thirty-five, not sixteen. She could do whatever the fuck she wanted. “She ended up in the ER for alcohol poisoning. We went to see her and . . . she was so angry. She said some awful things.” I had a mother. She died. Mika’s blood ran cold, remembering the venom in Penny’s words.
Mika flopped her head back to stare at the ceiling. “I had Penny.” Mika’s hands opened and closed. “After sixteen years, I had her, and I did the one thing certain to drive her away. I knew it was a risk, and I did it anyway.” Mika should have known. If you touched the sun, you got burned. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Why did I think I could have a relationship with Penny and Thomas? I’m so stupid.”
“Wait a minute,” Hana said with a frown. “What are you talking about?”
“Look at my life, Hana. Look at what a fucking mess it is. Look what a fucking mess Penny’s and Thomas’s lives are now. You know what the common denominator is? Me.” She jammed a thumb to her chest. She’d made her mother miserable too. If Hiromi didn’t have Mika, a daughter to support, would she have stayed in Japan? Lived the life she wanted? All signs pointed to yes.
“Okay, I’ll give you the situation is not ideal.” Hana stretched out her legs, crossing them at the ankles. “It’s complex, that’s for sure, and you and Thomas didn’t think things through entirely. But, honey, do you really believe you somehow engineered this? That you have the strength to ruin everything?”
Mika nodded mutely.
“Please,” Hana snorted. “You are far less powerful than you think.”
Mika jutted out her chin. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter,” Hana stressed. “What is it you want here? You want Thomas? You want Penny?”
What is it you want? Thomas had asked her the same thing. Then she’d kissed him. Because she’d wanted to, but also to avoid the question. To avoid being honest with herself. “I want Penny. I want Thomas too. And more than that . . .” She balled her hands into fists, slammed them against her knees. “I want to be happy, and I don’t want to be afraid anymore.” She thought of the set of oil paints discarded on the living room floor. What will you do with an art degree? her mother had said. And soon after, Mika had met Marcus. At the time, Mika saw this serendipity as a reward for standing up to her mother. But when Marcus brought Peter into her life, it became a punishment instead. For disregarding her mother, for going against her wishes. How could she not have seen those two things as being linked before? Everything that had happened to her had reaffirmed what her mother had always told her. That she wasn’t worthy. That if she tried to fly, she would fall. Better to stay on the ground.
“Tell me about the afraid part,” Hana said gently.
A deep ache pulsated through Mika. “Don’t you ever feel like life has passed you by? Don’t you ever think about when we were in high school? How everything seemed so certain and then . . . I don’t know. I just had the rug pulled from underneath me, Hana. And I’m so afraid it will happen again.” To love was to hurt. To live was to hurt. And it had happened again. Mika curled her fingers into the carpet.
“I don’t feel that way. But I see how you can.”
“Sometimes I wish I could go back in time, but that means wishing away Penny, and I’d never . . . But it all just hurts so much. When I reconnected with her, it felt like a second chance. At first, I just wanted to know that I didn’t fuck her up too much, but then she wanted to know me. To be with me. It all felt so good being a part of her life.” As if Mika had been reincarnated. Suddenly, it felt like her life didn’t have to be a train rushing by.
“You can’t rely on others for your self-worth,” Hana said. “That has to come from within.” She moved to her knees and sat directly in front of Mika. She cupped Mika’s cheeks. “Do you believe that?”
Mika looked anywhere but in Hana’s eyes. Hana squeezed her cheeks a little too hard. “Ow,” said Mika.
“Eyes on me, drunkie. I want you to remember this. You deserve to exist. You deserve to take up space. You deserve to have the things you want.” She let go but then pressed a hand to Mika’s chest. “I see you. All that hunger, to travel, to paint, it’s still inside you. It’s gnawing away at you, and I’m afraid of what it’s going to do to you if you keep it all to yourself. You can’t go back. You can never go back. But you can decide how you want to move forward.”
Mika didn’t allow Hana’s words to sink in. The wound was still too raw, festering and open. “What happened to me?” she asked meekly.
“Life kicked the shit out of you.”
Mika nodded. “Maybe I’ll come on tour with you after all.”
Hana sat back. “No. I’m not letting you. You’ve started building something in Portland.” She tugged on her ear. “Plus, Josephine is coming tonight. And I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you’re kind of a twat block.”
Mika giggled, then hiccupped. “Twat block?”
“Beaver dam?” Hana scrunched her nose. “Any better?”
“Much better,” said Mika. “Can I drink more now?”
“No.” Hana crawled to her feet. She removed Mika’s shoes, helped her peel the sweatshirt from her shoulders. “Now, you can sleep. I have to go to rehearsal.”
Mika stood, swaying a little. Her head pounded, tears and alcohol a nasty combination. Sleep did sound good, though. “Maybe a tiny nap.” Mika pinched her fingers together and stumbled to the bed. She slipped under the covers, and it was like being on a cloud.
Hana tucked her in. “You can shower and borrow some clothes when you wake up. But don’t use my toothbrush. Call the front desk and ask for one.”
“Poo,” Mika said. “You use someone’s toothbrush once . . .”
“Boundaries. Every good friendship has to have boundaries.” Hana squeezed Mika’s feet over the covers.
“Love your face,” Mika said, snuggling in.
Hana closed the curtains, clicked off the lights. The room was cool and dark. “Love your face,” she said back. The door shut, and Mika drifted off to sleep.