Butterflies and Stupidity

Even as she cursed herself for meeting him again despite knowing he couldn't possibly like her all that much, she couldn't stop herself. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get him out of her head.

She was muttering to herself as she left the dorm. Cursing her own stupidity. What on earth was she thinking, meeting him again? Hadn’t the three weeks of radio silence made it clear that he wasn’t particularly interested in her? Never mind what had happened before that. She sighed. It was no use. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get him out of her head. She’d even tried daydreaming about some of the staff working at the international center at the university. Nothing worked, he never left her thoughts for long.

She must be a total and complete idiot, after all. Her friend had texted her just as she was leaving, reminding her to be strong. She scoffed. It’s not like their meeting tonight was going to be anything else other than a break-up talk. How could it be? Then again… She thought back to the messages from the last few days. He’d used a few emoticons, just enough to seem strangely cheerful if he did want to break up. Break up. Could she really call it that? After all, they’d only gone on a few dates--in the past six months. And texted almost every day before it happened. And kissed--very nice kisses. And did it. Another sigh.

What if he didn’t want to ‘break up’? Well, she’d just have to ‘break up’ with him herself then, she reminded herself firmly. She wasn’t about to let him use her, contact her only when he was bored. Straightening her shoulders, she walked down the path to where she noticed a car waiting.

A white car.

Wait. That couldn’t be right. Had he transferred to her city after all? She doubted it since he hadn’t mentioned it at all in the past few months since their first date. As she walked out the front gate, she glanced at the number plate, her number one strategy when it came to identifying cars. Huh, LA? Even weirder. Last time she’d seen him--granted, that was almost two months ago now--he’d still had the number from Las Vegas, right? Had he had it changed only to have to change it again… Something in the corner of her eye caught her attention and she turned around to look at the car behind her. The car was black, and nicely camouflaged in the dark. A glance at the number plate taught her all she needed to know. Of course.

She glanced back one last time at the white car. What a coincidence. Turning around again to face his car, she waited for him to pull up next to her, pasting what she hoped was a serene smile on her face. She sincerely doubted she was very successful. The moment she’d caught sight of him her heart had accelerated alarmingly. She took one last deep breath as she opened the door and got in the car.

“Hi, sorry to have kept you waiting.” Did she sound nervous? ‘Cause she sure as hell was.

“Hey, Maya.”

She was doomed. How pathetic was she? Two words from him was all that was needed to shatter her admittedly fragile composure. He fiddled with something on the dashboard--probably his GPS--before slowly pulling out into the street. She glanced at him, taking in his hair and his clothes. She still remembered the feel of his hair. Strangely wiry because of the wax he used to style it, but very nice to the touch. His clothes were fairly casual, dark pants and a dark hoodie. She couldn’t make it out very well in the dark. Out of the six times she’d met him now, she’d seen him in casual clothes three times and in a suit the other times. Great, now that she’d seen him in formal and casual clothes an even number of times she could stop meeting him. That settled it. She barely kept from rolling her eyes at herself. At least she found herself amusing. It was something.

Neither of them had said anything after the first exchange of greetings. What was she supposed to say? Tell me why you didn’t text me. Where you really that busy? How do you feel about me? No way she could say something like that. She almost wished that he’d just get it over with. Tell her that he wasn’t interested and that he had no desire to see her again after tonight. That would make things easier, because with every second that passed she was less and less sure that she would be able to break things off herself. She didn’t want to. She could picture Emma’s face in her mind, reminding her to be strong. Then she silently chanted ‘you’re a strong, independent woman’ to herself, something she and her friends usually said as a joke, hoping it might help. Not particularly. Crap.

He yawned. That drew her attention back to him and she realized they’d only been driving for a few seconds.

“Did you come here from LA?” Probably not. It was more likely that he was here in San Francisco on a business trip. He wouldn’t come all the way from LA just to see her for a few hours.

“Yes. I had a day off today, so I came.” Only years of training--not really--kept her mouth from falling open.

“Were you planning on coming here from LA on Friday as well?” They’d originally agreed to meet Friday evening, but he had had to cancel because of work.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I suddenly had to do overtime.” He looked over at her before focusing back on the road.

“That’s okay. You can’t help it if it’s work.”

A few moments of silence. She played with the ring on her finger, glad she’d decided to wear it after all, since it gave her something to play with. She’d received it from her mom four years ago when she graduated from high school, but hadn’t worn it in the past few months, afraid she might lose it. Tonight, however, she’d decided she needed all the emotional support she could get.

She wondered idly if he felt as awkward as she did. She felt grateful for the music he’d put on, silence would have been unbearable. It’s not like she was uncomfortable with silence in different circumstances, it was just that she really didn’t know what to do or say. On one hand, she knew it was probably better to get it all over with, on the other hand, sitting here together with him--even including the uncomfortable silence--had made her realize how much she had missed spending time with him. Guess absence really did make the heart grow fonder.

She glanced at the road, and suddenly she grew a bit worried. Where was he taking her? Her worries didn’t center around the fact that he might kidnap her, or something else equally laughable, but that he might decide it was a good idea to take her to the same hotel as last time. And what worried her the most in that situation, was that she didn’t know how she would react.

She whipped her head around. “Where are we going?” Looking at his dumbfounded reaction, she almost flinched. That had come out a bit stronger than she’d intended.

“Nowhere in particular, I hadn’t decided yet,” he answered slowly.

“Oh.” Well, now she felt stupid. She mumbled, “Sorry about that, I just didn’t know where we were going, and I…”

Neither of them said anything for a few seconds, both of them looking at the road before them.

“How was your trip?”

“It was great,” she said, not really planning on elaborating. “I had a great time.” What did one say to the man who’d taken one’s virginity and then almost stopped all contact anyways?

“What did you like most?” he asked, then chuckled. “I guess it would be pretty hard to choose just one, though.”

Maya couldn’t help but grin. “Exactly. But I suppose what I liked the most about it, was that I could see all kinds of places that I’d only read about in books or seen in movies with my own eyes. I could never have imagined that a few years ago.” She proceeded to tell him about some of the places she’d seen. He occasionally nodded or responded with a brief comment. As she kept on talking, her enthusiasm grew and she almost felt like they’d fallen back into some kind of routine. Despite all of the worry she’d felt leading up to tonight, and all the awkwardness from only moments ago, it suddenly felt very comfortable between them.

After she finished talking, a comfortable silence fell between them for a few moments. Then he broke the silence.

“I guess we should decide on a place to go though, right? We can’t really talk properly in the car.”

“Yes, of course.” She swallowed. Talk. Before meeting him tonight, she’d thought she knew what he was going to say. Now, however… “Do you have a place in mind?”

“Not exactly. I’m not really familiar with this area unfortunately.”

“Oh, right. Neither am I, actually,” she said with an apologetic smile.

“How about going to a park?”

“That sounds nice.” She thought for a few seconds, trying to come up with any kind of park nearby. Suddenly an image popped into her head. “You know… Actually, we’re pretty close to the beach here.”

“Really?” He looked over at her.

“Yeah, it’s really close to my university. About 15 minutes on foot.”

“That is close. Do you want to go there?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind. We would have to drive all the way back, though.”

“That’s no problem. If it’s that close to your university it should only take us about ten minutes to reach by car.”

“Okay, that’s settled then.” She grinned, secretly pleased. She’d tried to run a couple of simulations in her head as preparation for tonight, and an embarrassingly large amount of those took place at that beach.

As she’d been wallowing in self-congratulations, he’d already found the best way back to the beach. On the way back, they actually passed a little park, and they discussed if they should stop there instead, but to Maya’s satisfaction they continued on to the beach.

When they were almost there, they passed a ferris wheel. It was part of the amusement park next to the university. As they drove past it, Akihito commented on it. Maya smiled at his enthusiasm.

Another few minutes passed and they finally reached the beach. After some consideration, they decided to park at a convenience store near it, since there didn’t seem to be anywhere else to park the car.

Maya got out of the car, suddenly nervous again. Up until now, they’d only talked about random things, neither of them touching upon the elephant in the car. But they couldn’t avoid talking about it forever.

They walked next to each other in silence, turning onto a little path between the trees that led them straight to the beach. They stopped for a few seconds to admire the view. She hadn’t been there at night in quite a while, so she’d almost forgotten how beautiful it was. He seemed to think the same way, making a few comments about it. Although they were at a beach, it wasn’t open sea. They were at an inlet.

They walked along the path, chatting some more. Maya had just opened her mouth to say something, then something loud flew into her ear. She stopped in her tracks, letting out small shriek, waving her hands frantically next to her ear to make sure that the bug that had gotten in her hair was gone. Akihito was looking at her in surprise, not really sure what had happened.

“Something flew into my ear,” she said in answer to his stunned look. She sounded a tiny bit indignant, as if she couldn’t believe that a bug had dared to fly into her ear and caused her to make such an undignified sound.

He laughed. “Are you afraid of bugs then?”

“Not really. I mean, I don’t like them, but I’m not usually afraid of them. But this one flew into my ear.” He looked at her, grinning. It was only then that she realized how close to each other they were standing. After the attack, she’d grabbed hold of his arm without realizing it, unconsciously wanting to be closer to him as she looked around for another potential attacker. Now, several moments after the attack, and being quite safe, she was still holding on to that arm.

They looked into each other’s eyes, and Maya couldn’t be sure of what she saw in his. Abruptly, she let go of his arm.

“I am deathly afraid of spiders, though,” she said lightly, trying to break the tension between them. Did she imagine it, or did her voice sound slightly higher than usual?

“Oh, really? Why’s that?” She looked at him as if he were out of his mind, her eyes conveying a clear message. Have you ever seen a spider? However, he seemed to expect a spoken answer.

“It’s their legs, I guess. They’re so long, and creepy, and I don’t know.” She shuddered just from thinking about it. “They move so fast.”

“So what do you do when you have a spider in your room or something?”

“Nothing. I either try to get someone to kill it or put it outside. If that’s not possible, I just stare at it, keeping it in my sights and making sure it doesn’t move, while I try to find a way out of there that doesn’t involve passing by that spider too closely.” She wasn’t kidding. One time she had a ten-minute-long staring competition with a spider. A competition that ended with her running out of the room the second that spider moved.

He chuckled at that. "I'll save you next time."

Next time. They continued walking, and as they kept talking and laughing together, Maya desperately tried to push down the butterflies that were flitting around in her stomach.

Author's Note

Sorry for the rather abrupt ending. I originally intended to add a whole part about them having the chat, but in the end I felt it might be better to have a slightly open ending.