When You Were Here

the boys crazy,” Holland says playfully.
    “And I’d have hated each and every one of those boys, and I wouldn’t have let any of them near her.”
    “Of course. But you wouldn’t have needed to worry. Because she’d only have eyes for the boy she’d loved since she was in grade school.”
    “Would she?” I take the photo album away from Holland and set it gently down on the bench. It’s just us now.
    “Yes. Just like her mom did.”
    “Is that what her mom did?” I trace a finger across her palm.
    “Yes. She was a goner for this one boy. No one else ever stood a chance, because she fell for the boy next door a long, long time ago. Well, a few blocks away. But, still, it felt like next door.”
    “And what about the boy?”
    “I hope,” she begins, nerves creeping into her voice, andwhat she says next becomes a question, “he would have been in love with her his whole life too?”
    “Totally. Like a disease. One that gnawed away at his heart and turned him into ice.”
    “Oddly enough she still loves him, even though he keeps calling her a disease.”
    I touch her bracelets next, then run my fingers up her arm, savoring the feel of her warm skin. I reach a hand into her hair. She leans into my palm and closes her eyes. I trace her cheek with my thumb, her face, her beautiful, gorgeous, perfect face that I could touch and kiss my whole life.
    My lips find hers. They are as soft as I remembered, and she tastes spectacular.
    We pull apart for a second and look at each other, sharing crazy grins. Then she comes in for another one, putting her hands on my cheeks like I’m hers, like she’s claiming me, and she kisses me, hard and deep and with an intensity that is out of this world, or maybe it is clearly of this world.
    To kiss again like this—I think it’s safe to say that I am totally, 100 percent a happy guy.
    But even though I want to do so many things to her right now, I force myself to focus on something else.
    A ceremony, a ritual.
    “I have an idea,” I say, and when I tell Holland, her eyes glisten, but she says yes.

Chapter Twenty-Seven
    Holland waits in a shoe store down the street from my apartment. I don’t let her come upstairs, because I know us. If we are alone behind a closed door, we won’t leave. I walk over to the windowsill and take a smooth, flat rock the size of my palm from the base of one of the more Zen-like plants. I find a Sharpie, and I drop that and the rock into a plastic bag. Finally I grab the envelope with the lilac seeds that Holland sent my mom.
    I close the door, find Holland, and hold her hand as we walk across Shibuya to the narrow alleys and side streets that lead to the Tatsuma Teahouse. The teahouse is closed today, and we can’t go in anyway. Still, I tell Holland the story Kana told me. Well, the parts I remember.
    “I love that. It’s beautiful.”
    I nod. “It’s a love story.”
    “I like love stories.”
    Then we’re off to the subway. We fly down five flights of stairs to the lowest platform. The subway doors close quietly behind us. My hand is on her back, and I watch her looking at the posters of Japanese women writing novels on cell phones and pictures of Japanese men drinking energy drinks. I’m nervous again; it’s only a subway. But it’s more than a subway. It’s a subway in Tokyo, and I want her to like it here. I want her to fall for this city. My city. Funny how I came to Tokyo to reconnect with my family, but I found something so much simpler, something I didn’t even know I was looking for. But it’s here, all around me: in the streets, in the shops, on the subways. My home.
    We exit at the fish market and climb the stairs up to the food stalls. Some are closed since it’s afternoon now, but that food stall is open, and Mike is working.
    “Long day, dude?” I ask.
    He nods wearily. “The usual?”
    “I’ll let the lady go first,” I say, then turn to Holland. She orders tuna and rice, and I ask for the same. I tell her about my mom, how she came here every day when she was in Tokyo, and how we ate here together when I was with her.
    Next we head across town to the temple. My mom’s temple now—that’s how I think of it at least. We go inside and nod in unison to the Buddha. “She used to come here too. I think this place gave her peace.”
    “I can see her here. I can definitely see her here.”
    We leave the temple and make our last stop. No subway this time. Just a short walk to the cemetery behind the