Page 21 of Off the Edge

“You wanna take your coat off?” I asked.

“No.”

“It’s hot in here.”

“No.”

“You can sulk, but you’re gonna need to take that coat off or you’ll get too hot and dehydrate.” I went into the bathroom, filled a glass with water, and when I came back out, he was fighting with his half-off coat. He had one shoulder and arm out, but the other was stuck.

“Are you laughing at me?” he asked, hair flopped over his doe eyes.

“Yeah.” I put the glass on the side and came back to the bed to help tug the coat off. “Tomorrow, you are so going to hate everything about this. So imma enjoy it while I can.”

“I already hate everything,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, figured as much.” I pulled his arm from the sleeve, then pulled the coat out from under him. His gaze stayed locked on my face the entire time.

“I do not hate you,” he said, back to sounding small and lost, and very un-Hasegawa-like.

I draped his coat over the back of the chair and frowned. I was going to have to spend the night in the chair, I realized. The room only had the one double bed, and there was no way I was sleeping next to a wasted Hasegawa. Neither of us needed that memory.

“Wish things were different,” he added, his voice softer. “I want them to be different. With you. I want to be with you.”

“No you don’t, that’s just the Japanese booze talking.” I moved the coats, grabbed a pillow off the bed, punched it a few times to fluff it but also because it felt good, and dumped it into the chair.

“You don’t want to sleep with me?” he asked, those eyes of his going sad.

I laughed. “There is no right way to answer that. Drink your water. Lie down. Sleep it off.”

He didn’t move. His soft, sultry eyes stayed on me. “I miss you.”

Of course he had to be off-his-head drunk to say the things I’d been desperate to hear from him. What I wouldn’t have given eighteen months ago to hear him say those three words, to fly back across the Atlantic and stay with me. But those dreams were over.

“It’s probably a good idea if you don’t talk,” I said. “Because you’re gonna say something you’ll regret, and I don’t want to be someone you can’t look in the eyes anymore.” I turned off the lights, except for the one by the door, and wheeled the chair closer to the side of the bed and sat. “Especially when those eyes are yours,” I added softly.

“You like my eyes.”

I smiled, I couldn’t help it. He wasn’t an angry drunk or a sad drunk, he was a cute, vulnerable drunk, and it was killing me not to play along. “I like your eyes, and not because of the whole Japanese thing.”

His lips tightened. “That would be racist.”

“Yeah, thanks, I figured that out for myself.”

“You are very smart, Camden.”

“Not really. Or I’d have told you the truth about us over a year ago.”

“The truth?” He flopped back, head on the pillow, and turned toward me.

I rearranged my own pillow behind me and slumped deeper into the chair. “Doesn’t matter.”

“I want to know.”

“No you don’t.”

“I’ll forget tomorrow.”

I laughed. “No you won’t. You’ll remember all of this, every word, and it’ll fuck things up. So, new rule. You like rules. No talking. Go to sleep.”