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“Did I wake you?”
“No. I was lazing around.”
“You should be in bed by now. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
“I know. I just couldn’t sleep.”
“Maybe you’re excited.”
“Or nervous.”
“Either way you’ll be awake.”
“I guess. So what’s up?”
“You should be in bed by now.”
“You already said that.”
“But you should be sleeping now. Really.”
“If you think I should be then you’d be hanging up.”
“Do you want me to?”
“No.”
“Let’s grab a few beers...”
A full moon silently keeping vigil on the sea was always calming. It was exactly why Hisashi kept coming back to the coast whenever he felt lonely. Or disturbed. Or sad.
Sometimes, he hardly felt anything at all. He just wanted to be there.
“You’re making a habit of this, you know?”
Hisashi brushed a few wisps of hair away from his eyes before looking at the owner of the voice beside him. “So sue me,” he charged, accenting his words with a playful sticking out of his tongue.
Jiro chuckled at the guitarist’s signature sassiness. “Maybe I would.” He stretched out his legs before him and gave them a few shakes, certain that a few more minutes of sitting on them would render his lower limbs dead. Crossing his legs at the ankles, he leaned back, supporting himself with his arms propped behind, digits feeling the grains of sand by the edge of the picnic blanket.
“Thank you,” Hisashi suddenly said, breaking the few seconds of silence between them.
Jiro looked at the other man whose eyes were fixed out to whatever was beyond the horizon of the sea. “For what?”
“For keeping me company.”
“I’ve nothing better to do.”
The guitarist tore his gaze off the waters to regard Jiro in confusion. “But tomor—”
“Do you have any more beers left?”
“Yeah.” Hisashi prompted, ignoring for a moment the fact that he wasn’t able to finish his questioning because he was cut off. His hand fished for a fresh can from the cooler at his right. “Here.”
“Thanks.” As soon as he held the cold can, Jiro flipped open the tab and drained half of his Heineken in two big gulps.
The intrusion didn’t keep the guitarist from voicing his concerns. “I thought you’re leaving early tomorrow. Weren’t you taking her to a second honeymoon?”
“She wants me to take her to a second honeymoon.”
“Same difference.” Jiro’s mere reply was a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. Hisashi scoffed in amusement. “For someone who’ll be going to the Maldives to have nights of wild, uninhibited sex, you sure don’t sound excited.”
The bassist stalled for time by taking another sip of his drink. When he felt ready, he broke the silence with, “Maybe I’m not looking forward to it.”
“You’re not looking forward to sex?” Hisashi asked incredulously.
The blonde shot an accusatory sideways glance at the guitarist. “You’ve been hanging around with Teru too much, you know that?” It had always been a private joke between them, implying the singer as such a pervert. It wasn’t entirely true, of course. Teru was just too charming to resist, they supposed.
Hisashi let out an audible thought-filled sigh. Jiro knew at once that the smaller man had been dithering for time. At any other instance, he would’ve playfully snapped at Hisashi to get the words out but he was not in any mood to hurry up.
“Does she know?” Hisashi did ask after some time just as Jiro was bringing the can of beer to his lips.
“Know what?” he asked back before a sip.
“Where you are?”
“No. But she knows who I’m with.”
“You’re such a bad husband,” Hisashi scoffed. “I wonder why she even married you.”
“Because I’m Jiro,” he bragged.
Hisashi shifted position, this time hugging his knees close to his chest. “Haven’t you ever asked yourself sometimes why she agreed to marry you?” Suddenly, he sounded serious.
“No.” The pensive expression on his face went past Hisashi’s eyes.
“Really? Because, you know, sometimes I wonder why Izumi ever married me.”
“Why don’t you ask her then?”
A head of blonde-highlighted black hair bowed down. “I don’t want to know the answer.”
“Then stop wondering.”
Hisashi sighed anew. He looked up, gaze nailed to the luminous orb hanging above them. “It’s just that sometimes at night—sometimes, every night—I sit in bed…looking at her…asking myself if marrying her was the right choice.”
Jiro didn’t say anything but granted his attention to the man beside him. It wasn’t as though they hadn’t been in this situation before—talking about their personal lives, that is. Sharing stories about the lives they lead far away from the blinding klieg lights was no longer a novelty between them.
It hadn’t been the first time either that Hisashi placed his marital status at the top of their unplanned agenda. Jiro, in fact, had also come to notice that the more time they spent together just talking, the more Hisashi brought out into the open his personal life. And the more Hisashi disclosed a part of himself that he only used to tell either Teru or Takuro—whosoever’s ear was available to listen—the more Jiro wanted to know further: because in all their previous talks, every question had been left unanswered.
The two minutes of silence that transpired between them was accented by the occasional breaking of the waves on the shore. And then Hisashi decided to pose another query.
“You do know why I married Izumi, don’t you?”
Jiro sucked air between his clenched teeth then blew out just as audibly. “Yes.” His reply was firm, the strong line of his jaw rigid.
Hisashi nodded, as though satisfied. “Why did you marry Reiko?”
“Must you ask?”
“I want to know.”
“You do know, Hisashi.”
Hisashi swallowed what he felt was a lump of emotions building up in his throat. He thought maybe it was a sign: that he should dare to propose the question he had always wanted to ask but never got enough nerve to do. It was a query that had been bugging him even before he married his wife and Jiro married his.
“Jiro, would things have been different if I had run away with you then instead?”
The answer was easy, of that Jiro was certain. But memories from that December night drew back into his mind. That was when he had asked Hisashi to hop on a plane with him and flee to some country and just be with each other. That was when Jiro pleaded to the guitarist to choose him instead. That was when Hisashi, overcome by fear and confusion, chose to break his heart. That was when they shared their last kiss. Then morning had come…and Hisashi had married Izumi.
Would things have been different if I had run away with you then instead?
Jiro chose to question a question with another. “Would it have mattered?”
“I probably would’ve been happier.”
“That would’ve been true if you still feel the same way you did before.”
Hisashi reached out to cover Jiro’s hand with his. With a gentle squeeze, Hisashi smiled and met Jiro’s gaze. “Only the situation changed, Jiro. My feelings never did.”
For the first time that night, Jiro smiled—really smiled. “Mine, too.”
They probably would’ve kissed, their first in years, but they didn’t. The calm floating above them caused them to be silent and at peace. They weren’t talking, but they knew deep down, their hearts were.
Hisashi’s black sportscar came to a tentative stop in front of Jiro’s building. The clock on the dashboard told them both that two in the morning was a few minutes older but neither looked particularly ready to hit the sack.
“Jiro, do you know what the weather in Europe is like this time of the year?” Hisashi asked just as Jiro was preparing to get off the car.
“No.”
“Do you like to find out?”
“Yeah, I’d like that.”
Hisashi returned Jiro’s smile. It was a smile of joy and of excitement.
“I’ll see you at the airport later then.”
As soon as Jiro closed the car door shut in his wake, Hisashi wasted no time driving back to his own house. After all, there’s a lot to be accomplished before sun opened a brand new day.
Izumi shifted in bed to her left, an arm blindly groping for a warm body beside her. Her hand frisked the bedside a few seconds more. Then she opened her eyes.
Empty.
“Hisashi?” Only her own echo answered back.
With a sigh loaded with dejection, she sat up on the queen-sized bed, suddenly feeling so little on the partly-filled mattress. Her eyes strayed to the other half of the bed where Hisashi had always lain serene and tender.
Izumi felt her own heart still when she noted two things: that Hisashi’s side of the bed was made—like it hadn’t been slept in—and that in lieu of her husband was an envelope resting on the sheets.
Hisashi had always left envelopes for her to open when she woke up. Sometimes they contained plane and concert tickets so that she could fly to wherever it was they were performing. On some occasions, the packets held money so she could pay the bills and buy some groceries.
There had been one time when inside the sachet was a small slip of paper where the words ‘I love you’ were scribbled on.
But that was a very, very, very long time ago.
With a sigh, Izumi tipped the manila envelope upside down to let its contents drop on the beddings. The first that spilled out of the paper container was a single piece of jewelry, followed by a single sheet of paper.
She didn’t pick up the wedding ring: she discerned without reason that it was his. But she needed to know why it was there. Trembling fingers sought the paper and she recognized his handwriting. The message was short but written out with careful scrutiny.
Forgive me.
Tears welled in her eyes, rendering her vision blurry. They came from a nightmare that had long been haunting her whenever Hisashi wasn’t around. Her fears were coming true. She needed to do something, one that she always did whenever she felt the dread gnawing into her bone.
Immediately, she set her gaze on the nightstand right by Hisashi’s side of the bed. She had to seek solace and strength from the picture that had always been sitting there, reminding her that she was his and he was hers.
The gold-trimmed framed photograph of Hisashi and Izumi on their wedding day was still there.
Facedown.
Teru’s ear was still ringing from the after-effects of the phone being slammed down on him. In a way, he knew he called it upon himself. The way he remained oddly calm all throughout Takuro’s frantic tirade when he broke the news was enough to stoke the already scalding ire of Glay’s leader and before Teru got another word in, Takuro abruptly and violently ceased the call.
He had only meant well, of course, but he felt that this was the best thing either of his friends had ever done in life. Takuro, naturally, didn’t appreciate Teru’s support for the two. I’m sure they’ll call on us when they need for us to intrude, he thought, recalling them as the very words he told the tall lanky man.
Teru lit a cigarette then proceeded to the open the door leading to the balcony where he decided to greet Tokyo a good morning. He took a contented drag of the white stick then looked up the bright sky, just as an airplane flew above. His lips formed a smile, his mind wondering: Where could Jiro and Hisashi have run off to?
22 March 2008
4:13 PM