Page 101 of Let's Talk About Love

“I like you,” she said, voice cold but strong. “A lot. More than I ever thought possible. You snuck into my heart and now you’re punching holes in it.”

“Alice—”

“It’s fine. It’s fine.” She inhaled, nodding and staring out the windshield at nothing. “It was my mistake. I should’ve asked and not assumed that you’d be okay with me as is.” She turned to him. “Let’s just forget the whole thing, okay? Everything.”

“I’m sorry.”

Alice opened the car door—half in, half out, he touched her elbow. “You know I care about you, right?”

She tried to smile. “Good night, Takumi.”

CHAPTER

33

Standing under the shower’s healing stream, Alice rolled her neck, tried to massage away the knots forming in her shoulders. She placed her palms flat against the wall and pushed, trying to stretch the muscles in her arms.

Then she did something she never did—she squeezed her eyes shut, held her breath, and plunged her head under the water. She’d regret that tomorrow when the hair shrinkage set in.

But that’s what later was for: worry. At that moment, all she wanted to concentrate on was the way her scalp prickled from the sudden heat.

She was not in the business of sadness. Most days, she ignored it like a pebble in her shoe. She resisted giving in to the chip on her shoulder. But when it knocked her backward and sat on her chest like a boulder, she had no choice other than to let it.

(She’d gotten pretty good at not letting people see.)

(Eating her body weight in pizza definitely helped.)

(And running water worked wonders in the soundproofing department.)

By the end of her shower, she had cried so much that she degenerated into a mouth-breathing monster. Her nose was a useless smudge on her face and her lungs ached something fierce. She had to take intermittent deep breaths when her chest quivered from exhaustion.

The TV droned on, Glory slept in her lap, but Alice didn’t pay attention to either. Her mind, for the most part, remained blank, looping footage of static. Takumi had crawled into her soul, too, and she had to continue pretending that he hadn’t. She was a bubble of raw emotion, a sleeping beast waiting for some dumb knight to come poke her. She didn’t want to be rescued from her sorrow. This pain meant it had been genuine.

Her feelings for him were real.

But she wasn’t a total masochist. She allowed herself to check her phone once per hour. She held it in her hand, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. There was always at least one new message (that went unanswered) or a call (that went unreturned) from him.

Because he missed her.

(But one day soon, he would stop trying.)

When she opened her eyes, Takumi was temporarily shocked from her mind. She pressed the Callback button as soon as she saw the name.

“Dad?”

“Hey, baby girl.” A tremendous amount of background noise filtered through. Somehow, she heard those three words with stunning clarity. “Let me go outside.”

“What are you doing?”

“One of your mom’s get-togethers. Your aunts and uncles, the neighbors, the usual,” he said. A door closed. The line became quiet. “I left you a voice mail.”

“Oh. I didn’t listen to it. I just saw that I’d missed your call. You usually text me, so I thought it was urgent.”

“Ah,” her dad said. “No. I was talking to your aunt Carol and, uh,I… I guess I just wanted to hear your voice. You know you’re my heart, right?”

“Yeah,” Alice said, voice cracking. Her entire face began to hurt from the effort it took not to cry.

(She cried anyway.)