Someplace Like Home |n.j

21.

"Why are you touching my stuff?"

I've never seen her so shaken and unnerved before.

Nami removed the paper from my hand with a harsh pull. I stand up from the bed and she distances herself from me with a step back, the same way I'd done with my ex.

"You're going back to Japan."

She looks away and gathered her papers, then put them on the tray on the floor.

Nami didn't deny it.

"Were you going to tell me? At all?"

I step around the bed to close our distance, and I quickly find myself back in front of her.

"You weren't going to tell me." I answered for myself in realization, with a pain in my chest that hurt more than I've ever felt before.

It all makes sense now, why she wanted to celebrate my birthday, why she's been so warm and close with me. But why doesn't it make me happier that she wanted our last days to be happy and joyful? It's like she was going to make me the most content man on earth, just to suddenly drop me to the ground when I reach my highest. I'd be left miserable.

No, this wasn't for me. It was all for herself. She's been keeping her guard up all this time, and Nami just decided to have a little fun before she leaves, regardless how I'd feel after it. That means she does have feelings for me, and she has all along. And for all this time, she's been avoiding commitment and confrontation intentionally. But why?

The more I look at her and our relationship, the more I realize how I never really knew Nami at all.

"Is that so easy to you? To just leave without saying anything?"

She kept her eyes to the floor as she reached to her back pocket and pulled out a cigarette and her lighter.

This did it. I snap.

"Goddamn it," I snatch the lighter from her hand and toss it to the floor. I pull the cigarette from her lips and crush them in my palm, "Fuck your cigarettes."

I lose control over my hands as they pointed at her viciously, and I know it's something I'll regret. But right at this moment, everything's finally spilling out of me, and I have no intentions of stopping.

"Why did you even bother knowing me? You know what-fuck you. Everything about you. Fuck your crooked fucking smile, get that shit fixed. And god, your fucking accent, 'don't even know what the fucking hell you are saying half the time," I felt my throat tighten and I know my face is burning red now with my veins popped out. She stood frozen as her hand held tightly onto her elbow. I'm scaring her, I'm aware, but I'm overflowing at this point, and there's no cap to keep me in.

"Fuck everything we've ever done or said, because now I know none of it means jack shit to you."

I know I'm just stating everything I love about her. Everything that stops me from leaving her, from doing the right thing for myself. Maybe that's why I hate it all so much. At one point, you get sick of it—the smile, the little moles, the most intoxicating eyes that just suck you in with every little glance—because you start seeing them for what they are: the things that are keeping you from being free.

What if I'd chosen to send her to a motel that night? Like the way she expected me to? What if I didn't ask her to spend the day with me? And I never got to feel my heart fall at the sound of her calling my name for the first time? I think I would've been happier by now. Or at least I would still have no feeling.

Nami brought colours to my life, she painted every place we stepped foot on together, and yet the colours are what's suffocating me. Maybe it was better before, when everything was black and white, when everything was nothing at all.