Page 51 of Just Try, Again and Again

I grace Lily with a grin. “What do you think I need a cuckoo clock for?”

45

Haruki - 31 years old

One week later

Kate is in the studio again. The second time this week and it’s only Tuesday. She claims to be here because she wants to bring me lunch while I do some admin tasks, but I know better. My best friend is bored being stuck at home. She’s also dying to hear about Berlin straight from the source.

“Yeah, so that’s basically it,” I conclude my story as I move the mouse around, my eyes glued to the screen, pretending that this conversation doesn’t bother me. “He told me he’ll send a courier over. Pretty anticlimactic.”

The look in Kate’s eyes tells me she feels an excessive amount of pity for me. Her face screamsoh, honey. With her hands cradling her baby bump, she answers, “I could’ve sworn he was going to make this grand gesture and try to win you back. Your story is one of a kind, after all. Sorry, Ki.”

Closing my MacBook, I look Kate in the eye and relieve her of her misery. “You got the right idea. Honestly, I think that was his actual plan.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, crinkling her nose.

“Well…” I pause, trying to make sense of the bizarre end to my time in Berlin. “We were getting coffee and whatnot.”

“Uh huh.”

“And then we started talking about everything, and I don’t know…I think I said something that must have made him change his mind. I’m not sure. Or maybe he just realized that too much time has passed. We were eighteen when we met, Kate, and we haven’t been in contact for five years.”

“But you were married, girl!” she quips. “You make it sound like you met this guy at eighteen and dated for a month before you split.” Now she’s giggling, and I can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of my relationship with Bryce, too. “You had a damn long-distance husband. You stop it!” she says, tapping my right forearm playfully. “I’m going to have to tell my daughter someday that her uncle Thomas was caught in an affair with a married woman once.”

My eyes roll back at her comment. “Oh my God!” My scream comes out with a giggle and it’s getting hard to keep the food in my mouth in place. I quickly chew before continuing to speak. “It was not like that. You know what happened. We agreed to kind of put a pause on everything so he could sort out his life.” I turn my head to the side over my shoulder so I can give Kate a playful look. “Think about it, if our relationship wasn’t on pause, I wouldn’t have met you. My best friend during my bachelor’s program was FaceTime. FaceTime and my camera.”

Now it’s Kate who is rolling her eyes. “Haruki, babe, you take on most of our consultation calls. Your best friends are still your camera and a video calling app.”

“Ouch,” I say, pretending to be offended. “You don’t count me as your friend?”

“Of course not. We’re sisters. And I’m still salty that you and Thomas never officially dated. We could have been sisters for real. Now he’s married already.”

“Your brother turned into a CrossFit fanatic. He runs marathons for fun. Even if we did start dating, I don’t think our relationship would have lasted that long.”

And with that, Kate and I burst out laughing again. Both of us probably concocting a mental image of Thomas breaking up with me because my ideal weekend is waking up on a Sunday at noon after pulling an all-nighter editing photos and going on a midnight food run. That’s the only jogging I am willing to do—when I have to pick up my takeaway. Lucky for me, that’s the only jogging Kate and her husband, Torben, are willing to do, as well.

So deep in our conversation, we must have missed the bell going off at the front door, which alerts us when customers enter our studio space.

The sound of someone clearing their throat, and my gaze goes upward, following the trail of dark jeans in front of my desk, and stopping once I see a familiar set of ocean blue eyes looking at me.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you ladies,” Bryce says with a lazy smile. Kate is already stepping on my sneakers under the table. As if I need the alert that he is standing in front of us. She must recognize him. I showed her pictures of when we were younger, but Bryce hasn’t changed much.I seriously need to ask him for his skincare routine, because he doesn’t look a day over twenty-five. Does he get Botox? Is it because his face is kept clean shaven?He breaks me out of my chain of thought. “You must be Kate. I’m Br?—”

“Oh I know who you are. You’re hanging on her—” I cut her off, giving her a taste of her own medicine and stepping on her boots.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Can we talk?” Bryce looks calm and self-assured. I wonder why he’s here.Maybe to talk about the divorce you asked for, Haruki.

“I’ll be at the back doing inventory on the products,” Kate excuses herself, taking her bowl of salad with her. I hold my laugh and fail miserably, causing Bryce to look at us in amusement.

“Kate!” I yell, still not able to control my laughter. “You have to come up with a better lie! We’re a photo studio. We don’t have products for inventory!”

“I’ll be in the back office buying baby things online and watching you both from the CCTV,” my best friend says with a sugar-sweet smile, giving us a goodbye wink in the process.I love her.

“Kate seems fun,”he remarks, claiming the chair that Kate was sitting on as his own.

“She’s the best,” I admit.

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