It's Okay

He listens to the door slam. You were only an amusement, fun for a while. He won’t miss you. He detangles his auburn hair with the comb you gave him. The handle’s bumpy where the plastic’s been moulded to resemble elephants because you thought he’d like to go on a safari holiday. Something completely different. He’s rocking-it-out to ‘Ain’t Life a Bitch,’ standing in the shower, using the last of your shower gel, punching the air with a wet fist, expecting you’ll be there soon to wash his back, and other places. He thinks that you can’t possibly mean what you said, hurtful, spiteful declarations of disappointment.

It’s been weeks. He’s slumped in his bed with the black, faux-silk sheets and the bananya cat cushions—silly half-cat, half-banana anime—that you love so much, and he hates. He’s hugging the stupid cat faces to his chest and breathing in your lingering perfume. He’s staring at the beer bottles piled up on the floor and wishing they were full. 

He’s watching TV, looking at some dancer spinning around in circles like you used to do. You used to make him dizzy and he’d grab you and tickle you to make you stop. He’s eating musty rice from a cardboard carton with the words Lucky Cat on the side and making a mess on the sheets. All of this because you left, taking the expensive diamond ring he bought you—jammed into the pocket of your weather-beaten leather jacket with the embroidered roses on the sleeves, like a solid reminder of how much he ‘totally blows’. 

There’s a knock at the door, but he doesn’t answer. He hears shouting, banging, someone trying to force the handle to turn. He staggers across the filthy floorboards and asks who’s there. His friend, Akio, tells him to let him in. Akio tells him to get a grip, ‘She’s no good for you. Forget her.’ He’s taking him out; will drag him if need be.

    They’re dancing. He’s drinking, telling terrible jokes. He’s leering at a girl in a latex catsuit, admiring how shiny she is, wishing he could run his tongue down her body to leave a snail-trail. Akio is laughing, saying, ‘You’ve no chance with her.’ But he’s swaying towards her anyway. Up close, she says his breath reeks, ‘Go home, loser.’ Akio puts him in a taxi, gives the driver the address, then heads back into the club.

It’s late afternoon in Shinbashi. His feet hurt from hours of walking in rain-soaked streets—where hidden doorways ooze scents of Dashi and pungent Natto—not thinking about you. He’s not savouring Okonomiyaki and remembering the time you spat it back onto your plate when he made you try it, or the times when you stayed out too late and came home drunk, slinging insults behind him because you couldn’t say them to his face. You blamed him for your drinking; you only drank so much because he did.

It’s all he can do to keep moving. Riding trains, travelling the city, in ever expanding circles from the centre of himself. A vast network of connecting rails, noise-music of bangs, clangs, hisses. When there’s clamour, he doesn’t have to think of all the ways he’s failed you.

He wakes in a new part of the city each day and the light changes to match his mood. It is bright now, Monday morning in Shiba park. His eyes have cleared of fog for a little while. He scans faces, looking for you amongst the tourists. He’s upright slowly moving his limbs—walking through rows of moulting cherry trees, which draw bees and lovers to their quickly fading blossoms. Old men present small gifts to their wives; young women pose for pictures with arms full of magnificent flowers from their boyfriends. 

His teeth feel mossy. He searches the ripped lining of his jacket pocket for painkillers. Takes them dry. He walks in the direction of your old house, stamps his feet down hard on the road to chase the morning-after shakes away and walks towards the end house on the left.

The broken panel in the wooden door is familiar. He runs his fingers over uneven planks, hoping for a splinter—a little piece of you in his skin. 

He remembers you always kissed his neck and ran your nimble fingertips along his collarbone when you were anxious. But that was before you started making snarky comments about his drinking. Before you began taking money from the joint account in spadefuls.  

He pulls a photo from his pocket, gazes at your smiling eyes and toothy grin with rows of ultra-white teeth. He thought the photo would be useful. He says, ‘have you seen this girl?’ as he tries to describe you. 

There is no one to call about finding you, but he takes his phone from his pocket. He needs to feel something else in his hand—something heavier than a photo—to break his concentration on the conbini market across the street. The booze in the window is the clear, thick sap-like stuff that angers his tongue and makes his nose run. He swipes his finger across the screen on his phone and reads the love you wrote, words stuffed with promise. He touches the symbols of your affection, trying to feel their texture. He types a message—maybe you’ll answer—keeping his hands busy.

He scrolls through dated images, looking for you. He finds a snapshot of Akio and him sitting side by side on the benches in a stadium listening to the baseball players’ serenades and the fizzing of the fireworks. They are waving flags—Tokyo Yakult Swallows—as the music swells. For a moment he remembers who he was. He may not be the man in the picture anymore, but Akio is the same. His best bud. All his other friends stopped calling; stopped caring. 

He imagines what Akio would say if he saw him grubby and struggling—what he’d do if he knew his friend couldn’t bring himself to go home, to where you used to be. He almost smiles when he thinks of how plainly he would chew him out, ‘You’re a mess. You stink,’ and he’d pinch his pudgy nose and wave his free hand in front of his face like he was swatting mosquitoes in the subway, ‘You’re coming home with me.’ 

He wants to ask Akio for help. He looks at the picture on his phone, lifts his face towards the conbini one more time before he finds himself selecting an emoji—a face with a downturned mouth and lowered eyes. He sends it. He feels dizzy, the buzzing in his ears no longer just the noise of the people, cars, and scooters. It’s done. 

He watches Akio walking towards him, his stocky frame and short, black purdey-cut hair bouncing as he moves with purpose. He’s unable to count the days since they last spoke. Akio never stopped asking to meet, but he’s been busy looking for you.

‘Bad day?’

Akio glosses the silence, talks about his little inu, how he had to take her to the vet, how much the bill was. They walk by a pond in a park, the swans arch their regal necks into the air and stretch their elegant wings. The birds show off for tourists who snap and click their expensive cameras. Akio smiles, talks about his fiancé, Emi, and the way she always burbled to the TV gameshow hosts that filled the main room of their tiny home with noise, every day; how she muttered insults when something interrupted her concentration on the answers to the simple questions they asked; the scent of meat and the hiss of steaming vegetables cooking on the stove in the background.  

Akio says he was honoured his friend came to the wake—the flowers he laid around Emi’s head were the brightest white. He says that she thought his friend was a Western rock star, handsome and rugged with an air of mischief. 

He lowers his eyes to the fresh weeds sprouting through the cracks in the path, finding a way through to the surface. He remembers how you used to call him your handsome gingerbread man, smoothing his red locks with your hands, circling your fingertips over the dimples in his cheeks; telling him how deep they were from smiling. 

His hands are shaking, as he remembers you, and his tongue goes dry—you left, you don’t want to be found—and that’s when it all goes to shit. 

‘Emi was a wonderful girl.’

Akio smiles, ‘perhaps an adult man didn’t need so much attention.’

‘Maybe, but she loved you. You’re lucky.’

‘But?’ 

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s obviously something.’

‘I’m just not sure you understand; what I’ve lost.’

            Akio hisses through gritted teeth, ‘We were to marry in the summer. You lost nothing, only a girl who didn’t care enough to stick around when you needed her the most.’

It’s been weeks of talking to strangers, having conversations about you with anyone who would listen through blurry mists of comprehension. Weeks of swinging from obsession to disgust; loving you and hating you; berating himself. Weeks of avoiding home. 

But now he’s climbing the stairs to his apartment. He is washing the scum from his skin while he thinks about Akio, their last conversation. Would he forgive him? 

He is scrubbing the wooden floors where he’d hurled his beer and picking up the bottles and bits of broken glass. He is clearing the bathroom cupboard of tampons and strawberry shampoo. He is texting Akio—sorry—while he boils the kettle for coffee, making better choices, cooking perfect meals with cabbage and cashew nuts. He is waiting on a text, but not from you. 

His phone is balanced on the arm of the sofa. A tinny twittering breaks his concentration on the laptop on his knees. He swipes a steady finger across the screen, sees his best friend’s name appear, followed by a thumbs-up emoji, ‘IT’S OK.’