Saying Goodbye, Part Two (Passports and Promises Book 1) (5 page)

Tears burned behind my eyes. “I never loved him, but I let him think I did. If I’d just been able to love him, for real, maybe none of this would ever have happened.”

He looked at me in surprise. “That’s a load of rubbish.”

I gasped, sitting back in my seat. “It’s not.”

“You’re daft if you blame yourself. That’s like saying my da would have survived colon cancer if we’d just loved him a little more. Dylan didn’t get sick because of you, and he won’t get better because of you. It’s an illness, Sam. You aren’t even part of the equation.”

“That’s what my mom and everyone else keeps telling me, but I know in isn’t true.”

“Your heart is lying to you. But what does this have to do with Kylie and your desire to visit a hostess bar? No matter how pretty a picture she paints, Sam, that sort of place is not for you.”

“I need to prove something to myself.”

“What?”

“I need to know I’m not a bad person.”

“You aren’t.” He seemed so certain.

“Thomas, I didn’t love Dylan, but I slept with him. I think there’s something wrong with me. I have to face my own darkness. Embrace it. Accept it. Or I’ll never be free.”

My cheeks burned and I couldn’t look at his face. I heard him take a deep breath and blow it out slowly. When I glanced up, I saw his cheeks had turned even redder than mine.

“If you do go, and I’m not sure you should, promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“That I can tag along with you.”

CHAPTER FIVE

T
homas asked me to come see one of his rugby scrimmages the next day. I didn’t know what to expect. I stood next to Kylie, who’d grown up watching the game. She tried to explain the rules to me, but it seemed more complicated than any sport I’d ever witnessed. Even cricket. Even quidditch.

“What are they doing now?” I asked, a cup of hot coffee in my hands. The players all hunched together on the field, looking like participants in some sort of violent group hug.

“That’s a scrum. They’re fighting for possession of the ball.”

Thomas emerged from the scrum, ball in hand, and sprinted down the field. He passed the ball deftly to a player behind him.

“And they can only pass backwards, right?”

“Yes,” she said, “but they can kick it forward. Watch. I think Thomas is about to score.”

Another player kicked the ball ahead. Thomas took off, amazingly fast for such a big guy. He dove over the line, ball in hand, then jumped to his feet and raised his arms in the air with a victorious shout.

“He seems pretty good at this,” I said.

Kylie snorted. “He’s one of the best. He’s being offered a position on the national team.”

“For Scotland? But he plans to go to grad school. In the States.”

Disbelief colored her pretty features. “Then he’s passing up the opportunity of a lifetime. He can always go back to school, but he can’t play rugby forever. It’s a brutal game. It’s not for old men. Or the faint of heart.”

When play resumed, Thomas got slammed to the ground, and a pile of other ruggers jumped on top of him. I dropped my paper coffee cup. It slid right out of my gloved hand and fell to the sidewalk, splashing my toes with hot coffee, but I barely even noticed. My eyes were on the rugby field.

He popped up a few seconds later, a huge grin on his face, and I let out a sigh of relief. Kylie gave me a knowing smile. “As I said. Not for the faint of heart.”

I picked up my coffee cup and tossed it into the trash. “I thought they were going to smush him.”

“He’s pretty tough. It would take a lot to ‘smush’ Thomas.”

I watched her closely. “I’m sorry about last night, Kylie. I know you wanted to spend time with him, and I sort of monopolized his attention, first by getting drunk, and then by getting sick.”

She laughed. “You monopolized his attention because you were the only girl in the room he cared about.”

I shook my head. “No, you don’t understand…”

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand, Sam. I have no interest in Thomas. I’m actually seeing someone else. Kind of. I only flirted with him to see if you’d get jealous, as a favor to him. Although he had no idea what I was up to and looked just as confused as everyone else.”

“He did look a little confused.” I frowned. “You wanted to make me jealous?”

She nodded, linking her arm with mine and giving me a squeeze. “And it worked, didn’t it? Things seem better between the two of you this morning.”

“They are,” I admitted. “I have to apologize for something else, too. I hope you don’t think I was being judgmental about your job. I agree with what you said. I really am seeing only half the truth. I…I need to see it all.”

When she looked at me, I saw a sad shadow in her brilliant green eyes. “As long as you know, there are some things, bad things, and once you see them they can’t be unseen. They stick with you. I saw those things as a nurse in Australia, and I’ve seen those things, in a different way, here. Do you understand what I mean, Sam?”

I thought about the way Dylan had looked the day I found him in his apartment, the way the spark went out of my good friend Gabriela’s eyes the day after she’d been raped. I understood what Kylie meant all too well.

“Pretending the darkness isn’t there doesn’t make it go away. It makes it stronger.”

She blinked in surprise. “Well, then. I guess you do know what I’m talking about.”

When the game finished, the men, covered in mud and blood, took off their shirts and grabbed a beer from a cooler on the sidelines. Kylie went to congratulate Malcolm. Thomas came up to me, bare-chested, and for a moment I couldn’t speak. He looked like a god, someone the ancient Greeks would have carved in marble and worshipped. His smile widened when he noticed my reaction. Then I saw a cut on his face and scowled.

“You’re bleeding,” I said, pulling a tissue out of my pocket. I moistened it with my tongue, and then tried to clean the blood off his cheek.

“It’s nothing,” he said, leaning close so I could reach his face better. “What did you think of the match?”

“Well, it’s a fairly simple game that’s really complicated.”

He tilted back his head and laughed. “That it is.”

“You’re quite good.”

“I am.” He winked at me. Even when Thomas bragged, he did it so charmingly that I felt my lips curving into a smile.

“Incorrigible,” I said, giving him a little shove.

The shove might not have been such a great idea. As soon as I touched his warm skin, a jolt went through my body. I pulled my hand away, and tried to focus on his face, but his abs and chest kept distracting me. I wanted to touch him again. Really badly. I sucked in a breath and tried to remember what I’d just been talking about.

“Kylie said you might have an offer to play for the Scottish National Team.”

“It looks that way,” he said, grabbing a towel and wiping the sweat off his body. I almost whimpered.

“So, what are you going to do?”

“I told you. I’m going to graduate school in the States.”

He put his arm loosely around my shoulders and led me back to the indoor sports complex at the university. We walked slowly. Still bare-chested, he seemed completely comfortable in the late January cold. I had on four layers of clothing and shivered.

“But isn’t this an amazing opportunity for you?”

He shrugged. “They’re going to make me an offer, but I haven’t seen anything in writing yet. I’ll hear back from all the graduate schools I applied to next month, hopefully. Once I have all my options in front of me, I’ll weigh them. For now, I’m just waiting.”

“Kylie said you can always go to graduate school later. Maybe she’s right.”

Thomas stopped walking and turned to me, tucking a curl behind my ear. “She probably is right, but it doesn’t matter. I learned an important lesson when my father got sick, Sam. None of us know how much time we have. Make the most of it. Be with who you want to be with and do what you really want to do.”

“So what do you want to do?” His proximity made it a little hard for me to formulate that question. He gave me a slow, sexy smile, one so full of promise it nearly made my toes curl.

“I’m still undecided. As I said, I don’t know what all my options are quite yet.”

I knew he didn’t just mean rugby versus school, but pretended like I didn’t understand. I promised I’d grab some lunch with him, and waited outside the locker room while he showered. Kylie found me there.

“I’m working tonight, Sam, if you want to come.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

Thomas and Malcolm came out of the locker room together, clean and fresh. Malcolm’s nose looked bruised and swollen and someone had put a bandage on the cut on Thomas’s cheek.

“What sounds like a plan?” he asked.

“Kylie is working tonight. She invited me to come and observe. What do you think? You want to tag along, right?”

He looked so unenthusiastic it almost made me laugh out loud. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

“You can’t come into the bar, Thomas. It’s a private club. You’ll scare away all my customers.” Kylie scowled at him.

He roped his arm across my shoulders again. “I don’t plan to come in. I’ll just wait for Sam to come out. I don’t think she’ll last very long.”

He was right. After about five minutes in the smoky, slightly seedy atmosphere, I felt ready to leave. I forced myself to stay longer. I didn’t want to offend Kylie and I also wanted to prove Thomas wrong.

Kylie had lent me a dress, a sparkling red number that clung to my curves, and she gave me very high red heels to match. Bethany, my friend back home, would have called them “fuck me shoes
.
”
They did sort of have that vibe.

Kylie had done my hair, fussing with my curls until I looked tousled and sexy. Like I’d just rolled out of bed, but in a good way. She did my makeup, too. Lining my eyes to make them look huge. Brushing my lashes with a heavy coat of mascara. Painting my lips bright red to match my dress. She dressed in a slinky halter dress and piled her red hair up high on her head. I watched in amazement as she transformed herself in minutes from a girl with a ponytail and freckles into a femme fatale. She’d had a lot of practice.

Thomas didn’t look at all pleased when he saw me. I pulled on my skirt self-consciously. Since I stood a few inches taller than Kylie, her dress hit me at mid-thigh level, a little shorter than I would have liked.

He didn’t say a word about my appearance. He just helped me into my coat and grabbed my hand.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said.

We found a coffee shop across the street from the club, and Thomas parked himself at a table by the window. I looked over my shoulder at him when I crossed the street, nervous for the first time. He gave me a wave and a nod.

I could do this. I needed to do this. I knew in my heart this was the way to banish some of my demons, but I felt curious as well. About the bar. About the women who did this job. About the uglier aspects of human nature.

Kylie introduced me to her boss, an older Japanese lady in a black kimono with sharp eyes and an even sharper tongue. Mrs. Miyata studied me from the top of my head to the toes of my feet.

“Over eighteen?” she asked, and I nodded. I thought I looked much older, especially with the piles of makeup and the clingy dress, but Mrs. Miyata could not be easily fooled. She narrowed her eyes, acting like she sensed I hadn’t done this sort of thing before.

“One chance,” she said. “No pay tonight. If the customers like you, maybe you can come back.”

“Thank you,” I said, giving her a little bow.

Kylie led me to a long, plush couch that spanned the length of the room. Small glass tables sat in front of us. Around a dozen foreign girls filled the room, all beautiful and wearing tight, brightly colored dresses. They looked like a flock of exotic birds trapped in the dimly lit bar. In spite of the elegant interior and expensive furnishings, something felt a bit off. The girls all had the same look in their eyes, an expression of bored resignation. This had become routine for them, like working in a fast food place back home. Except no one could legally touch your boobs at a burger joint.

“You did well,” said Kylie. “Mrs. Miyata didn’t suspect anything.”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble for this, Kylie.”

“No worries. Girls come here all the time to try it out, but she knows it’s not for everyone. She’s a sweet old bird. She’s actually quite…protective. All the employees are here.”

Kylie went to the bar to get us drinks, and spent some time chatting with the bartender. A good-looking Japanese guy not much older than us, very buff and tan, he had longish hair and an easy laugh. The sleeves of his black shirt were rolled up, exposing his muscular forearms. I saw Kylie reach out and touch one, stroking it, but pull her hand away as soon as Mrs. Miyata looked toward the bar. She picked up our drinks and made her way back to where I sat just as customers began streaming in.

Mrs. Miyata stood at the door, bowing deeply and saying
“Irasshaimase okyakusama,”
welcome honorable customer
,
to everyone who entered. The girls readied themselves. Some of them primping and playing with their hair, others downing their drinks, trying to fortify themselves for what lay ahead. 

My heart pounded in my chest. Music played in the background, a soulful jazz number. I crossed my legs and then uncrossed them, wishing my skirt covered more. I reached for my wine with a trembling hand, and Kylie gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

“You’re fine, Sam. Here comes Mr. Fujiki. He’s nice enough. Not a perv. Just chat with him, pour him some sake, and try to relax.”

Mr. Fujiki, a businessman in his mid-fifties, spoke to me in very precise and polite English, asking me where I came from and complaining about the weather. It seemed like a very ordinary sort of conversation, but I couldn’t relax. He sat too close, his leg pressing against mine, his arm brushing my breast at every possible opportunity. When his hand gripped my thigh under the table, my eyes widened in panic.

Kylie must have sensed my alarm. She very deftly got up and walked around the table to sit on his other side, diverting him. She flirted with him shamelessly, and Mr. Fujiki turned to her, ignoring me completely.

In the four minutes I’d spent with Mr. Fujiki, my questions had been answered. I’d been secretly afraid I could do a job like this; that I’d somehow lost my moral compass, but now I knew. I’d once been the girl who flitted from boy to boy like a bright butterfly among the flowers. I wasn’t that girl anymore, but I wasn’t a slut, either. I’d judged myself too harshly, torturing myself for months. Now I knew the truth, and it felt like a weight had lifted off my shoulders.