“Um . . .” I begin—but then my eyes slide to Rory. Still a tiny innocent, happily eating her ice cream and being very careful not to drip it on her makeshift cape.
“Oh, stop, she’s old enough to hear this,” Belle says, rolling her eyes.
“Yeah, I’m twelve,” Rory says with her mouth full of ice cream. “I know all about romance.”
“Rika!” Eliza waves a hand in the air, like we’re in class and I need to call on her. “What happened after I left you at the dojo? Did you and Henry, like”—she lowers her voice, her eyes shifting from side to side—“do it on the mat?”
“What!” Belle shrieks—not bothering to lower her voice at all. “If that’s the case, it should’ve been the first headline you relayed to me, Rika-chan.” She gives me a disapproving look. “Momentous both in terms of you losing your virginity and desecrating a historic Little Tokyo landmark.”
“God, no,” I blurt out, covering my flaming face with my hands. “We didn’t . . . do that. We just . . .”
I take a deep breath and look at all of them again. They’re all waiting. Eager. My nure-onna instinct is to stuff all these feelings down again, but they’re just too big. I need for them to come out.
“We might’ve gotten . . . close,” I admit. “Closer than I’ve ever gotten before.”
“Oh my god,” Belle whispers, her face lighting up.
I have been kissed exactly three times—well, three times before Henry—and it’s never gone beyond that. The first time was Jack Fukuhara, who smashed his face against mine when we were thirteen and working on a bio project together. I guess he found all that talk of cells and blood and intestines super romantic. The second was Simon Jones, one of the only white guys in judo, who thought I was about to fulfill all his fetishy geisha-girl fantasies. The third was Chris Reyes, who asked me out on exactly one date and then was scared to come near me ever again. Probably because I shoved him away so hard, he nearly fell into the fountain at the god-awful outdoor mall he’d decided to take me to.
I shoved all of them away, actually. All three times, the kisses were like clumsy lunges with no warning and way too much saliva. I’ve never been kissed by someone as careful as Henry. Someone who will spend an endless amount of time fascinated by a very specific section of my bare skin . . .
“But wait, back up,” Belle says, holding up a hand. “Why were you at the dojo? I need this entire sequence of events laid out for me, Rika-chan. Start from the very beginning.”
So I lay it out. I tell them everything—rewinding as far back as the day of the parade, when we tumbled to the ground. I also catch Eliza up on my Mom Quest, how all of this ties together. I finish with our moment at the dojo—where we did kind of desecrate a historic Little Tokyo landmark.
“Unf,” Belle groans, sitting back in her chair. “That all sounds beyond swoony. Why are you freaking out so much, Rika-chan? Is it because you’ve never done this much with someone?”
“I . . .” I stop and think about it. And I swear that one spot he couldn’t stop kissing pulses. “Actually, no,” I say slowly. “Doing things with him, him touching me, us being together . . .” That spot pulses again, and I don’t even want to know how red my face is at this point. I toy with the silky hem of my dress. “It doesn’t feel weird at all. It feels right. It feels like . . .” I play with the silky hem some more, my voice lowering to the softest of whispers. “. . . we fit together.”
The table falls silent. My cheeks burn, and I wonder if I’ve revealed too much, if they’re all looking at me like I’ve completely lost my mind. I very slowly raise my gaze from my lap, expecting to be met by a trio of appalled expressions.
But . . . no. None of them look like that. Belle beams at me in a way that borders on smug. Eliza gives me a mushy gaze, like she’s about to melt into a puddle on the floor. And Rory . . . well, Rory doesn’t look appalled, but she is frowning at me in an accusing fashion.
“He was supposed to be my boyfriend!” she complains. “You don’t even like Dance! Off!”
“He’s too old for you!” Belle admonishes, whacking her arm. “We can find out if he has a younger relative of some kind. And anyway, Rika never likes anyone, so let her have this one!”
“Fine,” Rory grumbles, slouching over her ice cream. “I guess that would be okay.”
“Oh, Rika,” Eliza says, reaching over to squeeze my hand. “This is so precious.”
“Really?” I press. “It’s not weird to feel that way about someone so fast? Like, I don’t know, you belong with them and it’s not hard to feel that way? It just works?”
“Well, I’ve certainly never felt that way in my many romantic escapades,” Belle says, waving a hand. “But I don’t think it’s weird, no. Remember, that’s how Ma Och says she felt the first time she saw Ma Suzy. Every person who was in that year’s Nikkei Week court or involved with that year’s Nikkei Week court or . . . I don’t know, in the vicinity of that year’s Nikkei Week court had some kind of crush on Ma Och. She’d just moved to the States from Japan, she was this exciting new face—and she was just so cool. But she says the minute she saw Ma Suzy, that was it. It was like a light went on. She felt that connection instantly, and she knew they belonged together.”
I surreptitiously brush tears from my eyes. Ugh. Why am I crying? I’ve heard this story a million times. Maybe it’s because this time I’m actually picturing it. Auntie Suzy, so beautiful in her princess gown, her smile the sweetest, brightest thing in the room. Full
