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He rubbed his neck sheepishly. “She was jealous and clingy, and you only hung out with me so she got angry. But no, what I mea-“

“I was a freshman in my first week.” She stabbed her steak viciously. “I didn’t have any other friends." 

“You made friends eventually,” he said feebly, taking a sip of his wine. 

“After four months of every girl avoiding me, yes. I did finally make a friend.” 

“How is Lucinda these days?” He asked warily, watching her eviscerate her steak in what he could only imagine was what she wished to do to him. 

“She’s fine, just had her baby last month after she passed her bar exam.” His eyebrow lifted in surprise. 

“She went into law?” 

“Yup. After she blew her knee out she couldn’t continue lacrosse, so I guess law was the second best option.” 

“And you?” He asked tentatively. She stopped mutilating her steak to look at him. Her eyes had started to crease around the edges in the beginnings of crow’s feet, and her dark hair was now pinned into a professional, if a bit aged, French twist. He wetted his lips, knowing he had matured into himself as much as she did. His hair, now streaked with grey in a way that made him look distinguished, was slicked back professionally. And he didn’t have to look down to know his shoulders filled in the rectangular cut of his suit in a way teenage him would have killed to have. He refrained from wetting his suddenly dry lips again, now nervous. He asked, quietly. “How are you?” 

Her eyes drifted to the side. He hoped she wasn’t looking away to avoid glaring resentfully at him, but he didn’t know; it had been too long. 

“How do I look?” She bit out. His stomach tumbled like he was a teen again. 

“You look good.” He answered honestly. 

Silence. 

But damn if that wasn’t the truth. 

In his mind she had stayed a skittish, lanky teenager. Someone so utterly beneath him in terms of maturity and social life, who clung to him so desparately that first week of high school, that without him in her life he assumed she would stay that way: timid, angry, and small, and willing to contort herself to become smaller still. It never occurred to him that one day, he might feel dwarfed in her presence. 

She set her fork down. 

”Remember when you ‘asked’ to borrow my car in college?" She asked him mildly, like it was the weather. 

"Yes?" He couldn't help but feel like he was putting his head in the maw of a wolf. She smiled, saccharine and rotten. 

"Remember how it was the only form of transportation I had from dorm to campus? Given that it was upstate New York, and I lived off campus, and it snowed regularly? And remember how you took it, without asking me mind you, on a joyride with your frat buddies and totaled it?” She asked acerbically. “I fuckin' hated you for that.” 

He winced. She was stabbing her steak again, trying not to look at him. 

"And remember? When you brought me to that party just to strand me and fuck some other girl?" 

“Or when you got so high and drunk that I thought you actually died?” Her voice rose to a near screech. Her hand curled into a fist. She abandoned the steak to just clutch at the utensils, her hands tightening arrhythmically. He eyed the steak knife warily. 

“I had to drag you to my car to go to the ER at 3 AM," she finally whispered. "You were barely breathing. Not responsive, and all while driving I prayed I wasn’t carrying a warm corpse in my passenger seat. Do you know how long it's been since I've prayed?" 

“And when you- ugh,” tears stung her eyes now. He wanted to reach out. “And when you just disappeared off the face of the earth, no warning, no note, just poof- gone!”

Her voice lowered to a shaky whisper. “I hated you so much.” 

“I’m sorry.” He said. There was nothing else he could say. Anything else would be useless. 

“I know you are,” she sighed and leaned back. Taking the claw clip from her hair, she let the French twist loose so that her hair framed her face instead. “And for the record, I don’t hate you now.” 

He startled.

“No?” 

“No.” She confirmed. “It’s too exhausting to hate you and I don’t have the energy of my 20s to sustain that sort of grudge. I hated you because I thought you were the worst thing to happen to my life; but that was before shit happened. Before life got hard, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.” 

“Yeah,” she started quietly, pensively looking at him with her face cupped in one hand, her other laid tapping the tablecloth absently. “But now it’s like the world is pushing down on my shoulders and chest, crushing me until my lungs cave. People I thought were ride or die have come and gone and circled right back out of my life.” She sighed. He reached out and gently, hesitantly, laid a hand on hers. She let it stay.

“Really, what I wouldn’t give to go back to being young, where the only thing I have to hate is your dumbass.” 

“Well for the record,” he said quietly, slowly, “I hated myself too. And I’m sorry you got wrapped up in that self destruction. You didn’t deserve that.” 

“No,” she affirmed. “I didn’t. But you didn’t deserve the cards life gave you either.” 

“Can we start over?” 

She shrugged. 

“I mean we’re practically new people now, might as well reintroduce ourselves.”

4/3/24, 6/17/26 Edited

Then she heads home. 

The sun is setting west, but her home is nestled under an east-facing cliff. 

The house is dark when she enters. 

“Tadaima,” she calls softly, toeing off her shoes. 

And she cooks. 

Grilled fish. The skin charred just enough to crackle under teeth before giving way to soft, white flesh. The sea-given umami flavor salted to go perfectly with pillowy white rice. Cubes of  fatty pork belly simmered in stew, bubbling alongside flower-shaped carrots and golden potatoes. 

Sakura took the lid off the rice pot and breathed in the steamy sweetness of perfectly cooked rice. She spooned out a small mound into her bowl and portioned out the steamed asparagus from last night for herself. 

The floorboards creaked. 

The floorboards creaked with each step as she hauled the two pots and one frying pan up the stairs, and onto the second floor landing. She sat on the last step from the second floor, and pushed her cargo in a line on the paneled floor. One fiery red rice pot with two scoops taken out. One heavy clay stewpot. And an iron pan full of fish. Sakura blew a small spider away, sending a small cloud of dust up. 

Setting a pair of chopsticks across on the pan, she then grabbed the jug of tangerine juice. The golden orange nectar splashed as she filled a cup, and set the jug next to the rice pot. 

“Itadakimasu,” she whispered, and headed back down. 

Sakura set the glass of juice next to her cold bowl of rice and plate of asparagus. 

It was dark now. 

She lit a stick of incense, and placed it in the little cup at the center of the white-oak table. Placed behind the cup, two pictures of a man and woman smiling proudly were set at a gentle angle. Almost as if the two pictures were leaning in towards Sakura’s seat, and protecting the small burning light of the incense. 

Sakura slumped her head against the table, watching the small glow. 

The floorboards creak