My Valentine

I lay beneath him, glowing, knowing it’s happened. I’m not a virgin. I’ve done it. I’ve made love with Nicholas. I’ve surrendered myself to him, he’s taken me and made me his, he’s finished inside me and I can feel him still inside me. It’s a wonderful feeling, to know that I’ve given myself to him, that he loves me just as I love him. That we’ve shared this act of love together, shared our bodies, our souls, our breath, our love. Shared everything.

My eyes look up at the ceiling, my hands slowly stroke his back. His skin’s so soft, his muscles are relaxed now, no longer taut and straining the way they were when he was taking me. His weight heavy on me, his skin against mine, his breathe hot and fast against my ear. He’s still inside me, still filling me and I don’t want him to move. I want him to stay there, I want to keep feeling him inside me. I want his weight on me, his hands on me.

“I love you, Nicholas.” My voice is soft, as soft and tender as my love for him.

“I love you, Kiyomi.” His head lifts, his eyes are looking down into mine. He’s glowing, smiling down at me, one of his hands brushing my sweat-soaked hair back from my forehead.

“I want to do it again soon,” I say, propped up on one elbow, smiling down at him as he lies on his back. We’re surrounded by rose petals,

“We will,” he smiles, and out lips brush yet again, the scent of roses and sex fills our room, and as he begins to engorge under my fingers, I know we will.

It’s daylight when I wake up. The curtains have been opened, sunlight shines in and I’m basking naked in its golden glow. Nicholas is lying beside me, looking at me. Smiling at me. My hands draw him towards me. Draw him onto me as I spread my legs wide for him, and no words are needed. Only our bodies, and we use our bodies to tell each other of that love we share, slowly, without any urgency, and at the end it’s as if our souls are merging as we strain against each other.

I’ve found paradise in Nicholas’s love, and I know our love will last forever.

“I’d better take you to Cindy’s soon,” Nicholas says, looking at the clock on the bedside stand. It’s eight in the morning.

“One more time,” I breathe, encouraging him to renewed hardness.

A minute later. “What do you want?” I moan, “tell me what you’d like me to do?”

“Kneel for me, Kiyomi,” he says, “kneel on the edge of the bed.” He takes me like that, kneeling behind me, and I watch him in the mirror, smiling until I can’t smile anymore.

“Kiyomi.” He groans my name as if it’s some sort of magic talisman, an incantation, a word of power. He’s cumming inside me, thrusting and cumming and spurting into me. “Kiyomi … Kiyomi….ohhhh Kiyomi.”

Afterwards, after we’ve showered a second time, he’s lying naked on the hotel room bed, watching me sitting naked at the dresser while I brush my hair out, the scent of roses filling the room. I see him watching me in the mirror, my eyes meet his, I smile. He stands, walks to me.

“Can I?” He reaches for my hairbrush.

I’ve almost finished but I say nothing. Instead I smile and pass my brush to him. He takes my hair in one hand, my brush in the other, brushes out my hair in long gentle strokes.

After he’s brushed my hair, I turn and kneel and take him in my mouth, and then, when he reaches his culmination and tries to ease back, I hold him close, I plunge my mouth down on him, and I swallow as he spurts his love into my mouth.

It’s delicious.

I’m licking my lips in the elevator, still tasting him faintly in my mouth, on my lips. The elevator doors open. Nicholas is holding my hand as we step out of the elevator. He’s carrying my overnight bag as well as his in one hand, holding my hand in his. I smile up at him as we walk towards the entrance, tucking myself into his side. Outside the sun is shining down from a clear blue sky, a day as beautiful as my love for Nicholas.

“Thank you for the most wonderful night of my life,” I say, quietly, almost rapturously, glowing inside. It’s as if I’ce captured the sun and it’s trying to escape through my skin, and when I glance up at him again, the morning sun is shining in a halo around his head.

“Kiyomi, I want you to move in with me when you start College,” Nicholas says.

My heart pounds all over again. “You do?” The thought of being with Nicholas, of living with him, of us being together fills me with joy. “Okay.”

“Okay?” He smiles down at me. “That’s it? No questions? No asking if I love you? Just, okay?”

I smile up at him as we walk out the doors, turn towards where Nicholas parked the Morgan last night. “Nope, no questions,” I say happily, “and I know you love me, so, just, okay, I’ll move in with you. Okay.”

“Okay.” He smiles. “What about your parents?”

“I’ll tell them I’m going to share an apartment with other girls,” I say. “What about yours?”

He grins. “I’ll just get my own place. I can move to wherever you end up going to College. Where were you thinking of anyhow?”

“I haven’t thought about it yet,” I say. We’re at his car, he’s putting our bags in the back. I’m about to climb into the passenger seat.

“Nicholas.” It’s his Dad’s voice, sharp, annoyed.

“Kiyomi, how could you?” My Mom’s voice is shrill, upset.

“Kiyomi. You’re coming home with us. Now” My Dad’s voice is harsh, unforgiving. My heart sinks.

Nicholas and I look over our shoulders at each other as our parents walk towards us. His face is pale, shocked. I feel faint, dizzy. This is a nightmare and it’s real.

“My dad says nothing when we arrive home. He parks the car. He walks off, stiffly, and I know he’s furious.

“Kiyomi, you were told not to see him again.” My Mom slaps me across the face. Twice. Hard. Almost, I fall. My head rings.

That afternoon, my Mom takes me to our family doctor. It’s so humiliating. I can’t believe my parents are doing this to me. It’s like the Dark Ages. Anyone would think this is the nineteen fifties or something.

It’s a full month before I manage to escape the vigilance of my parents and my brothers. One of them takes me to High School and picks me up every day. I’m not allowed out. They’ve taken my phone, disconnected me from the web. I have no way to try and contact him. Cindy tries to help me. She calls his phone for me. Texts him. Emails him. There’s no response. The number is answered by someone else. The emails bounce. His facebook profile is gone. He’s vanished from the web and I don’t know what to do.

I call an Uber, and go to his house. There’s a moving truck in the driveway. I knock on the front door. One of the movers walks over, answers my questions. The house has been leased out. New people are moving in..

The MacGregors? He has no idea who they are. They’ve gone? Left? My heart sinks.

When I walk back out, the Uber is gone and Lester is standing there, eyeing his iPhone. Heart sinking, I pause, open my phone. Check. There’s tracking software there. Someone’s installed it.

“Get in the car, Kiyomi,” Lester says. He’s holding the passenger door open for me. There’s a smugly satisfied look on his face. Like he’s happy.

“You’re an asshole, Lester,” I say. I’m crying silently, tears trickling down my cheeks. I look at him, driving, looking so satisfied with himself.

He’s gone. Nicholas has gone. He’s vanished and I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know how to look for him, and the world has turned gray. Gray and lifeless.

Johnny and Lester are talking about the dates they have lined up for Friday night. I ignore them both, toying with my seafood noodle soup. I’m not hungry. I haven’t been hungry for weeks now. I only eat when mom pushes me to eat, and when I do, everything is tasteless. I have to force myself to swallow each mouthful.

“How was your day, Kiyomi.” Johnny smirks at me across the table. He and Lester grin at each other. “Ken Watanbe said he’d like to take you out on a date.”

“Ken? He’s such a nice boy,” my mom says. “Very suitable.”

I don’t even shrug. I just look blankly at my soup and stir my noodles around. Ken Watanabe? How could they even mention him?

“Maybe this Friday?” Johnny says. “I can ask him to call you?”

“Answer your brother, Kiyomi,” Mom says to me, after a long silence.

I look up sharply. “Don’t waste your time, Johnny. The answer is no.”

“You’re being juvenile and rude, Kiyomi.” Mom’s furious with me, I know. She’s been furious with me for two months now. “Apologize now.”

“That’s not being juvenile and rude,” I say. “This is being juvenile and rude.”

I reach for the big dish of seafood soup on the table that Mom spent the last hour making and throw the contents at Lester and Johnny, splattering them both at the same time. Roger topples backwards, yelling and wiping his face frantically while Johnny scrubs his face with his arm. He’s swearing. I have a couple of seconds where I’m laughing before Mom starts hitting me.

“Apologize to your brothers,” she screams, “Apologize now.”

I may be the smallest in the family but I’m also the most stubborn. It doesn’t matter to me that Mom beats me. I cover my head with my arms as she flails at me, screaming. I’m crying. My nose is bleeding where she’s hit me in the face. Johnny doesn’t make any attempt to stop Mom. Lester’s in the kitchen. He’s still yelling, and I can hear water running. I’m laughing and crying at the same time.

“Go to your room,” Mom screams at last. Her arms are too sore to keep hitting me. “You can come down when you apologize.”

I don’t come down. I lock my door. Justine slips food in for me late at night after everyone is asleep. I have a month’s supply of chewy bars stashed in the back of my closet as well. I can live on chewy bars and water. I seriously contemplate climbing out the window and running away, but they’d just call the cops. Or worse. My Dad has connections. Besides, where would I go? Not to my friends. My friends' parents would call mine. I can’t live on the streets. I wouldn’t survive a day. I’m not stupid. After two days, Johnny breaks the lock on my door. I do my best to stab him with the scissors from my bathroom. I manage to cut his hands.

He calls me a mad bitch and backs off, one hand dripping blood. I tell him if he ever tries to come into my bedroom again, I’ll kill him. He believes me. When I try to call Cindy, my mobile account has been canceled, and my Internet access has been disconnected too. I’m a prisoner in my own home. Mom yells through the door at me, telling me not to bother coming down for meals until I apologize.

I live on chewy bars. Two weeks later, Mom finally gives up. By the time I go back to school, the bruises have faded to nothing. When Dad arrives home from his business trip to Japan and hears what’s happened, he goes ballistic on me. He doesn’t hit me. He grounds me. My dad or one of my brother’s takes me to school and picks me up. Otherwise, nothing.

It makes no difference to me. If I can’t see Nicholas, what do I care? I ignore Lester and Johnny completely. I refuse to speak to them. Refuse to listen to them. Refuse to have anything to do with them. As far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist.

They’re no longer my brothers.

I hear Mom and Dad talking about me late at night in the kitchen when I pad silently downstairs to get a snack from the fridge.

“She’ll get over it,” my Mom says. “All it’ll take is a few more weeks.”

“I don’t know,” my Dad says. “Kiyomi, she’s stubborn. It’s been weeks now. Maybe we should send her to Japan to live with your sister’s family. Get her away from here, she’ll get over him faster.”

“I’ll ask Matsuko,” my Mom says. “But if she’s going to go to University, she needs to finish her exams.”

“Send her for summer then, she can come back for the start of University. Or she can go to University in Japan.”

“Her Japanese isn’t good enough for that,” Mom says.

“Humphh!” my dad says. “She can go to Japanese school while she’s there, at least.

“I’ll call Matsuko in the morning,” Mom says.

I pad silently back upstairs. I hate them. I hate them all for what they’re doing to me. For their callousness, their heartlessness. For separating me from Nicholas. I don’t want to go. How can I go? Nicholas knows where I live, he’ll find me here, I know. It may take a while, but he’ll find me. But Japan?

He won’t even know that I’ve been sent there.

Of course I do well in my exams. I have lots of time to study. It’s after all my exams are done that Dad breaks it to me. I’ve known this was coming. I’m resigned to it.

“Your Mom and I have decided You’re going to Japan to stay with your Aunt Matsuko for summer,” my Dad says. “Your Mom’s going with you.” His tone says he’s inflexible, that there’s no choice. “If you behave yourself, you’ll go to University when you come back.”

What choice do I have? I don’t protest, there’s no point. Dad seems pleased that I don’t. Whether or not he’s pleased doesn’t matter to me. All that matters is Nicholas. A week later, I’m on the plane to Tokyo, seated beside my Mom, staring blankly at the back of the headrest in front of me. Mom chatters away happily. I have no idea what she thinks she’s doing? Does she think going to Japan will somehow magically erase my love for Nicholas?

Two months later, I’m flying home. By myself this time. Mom asks me all sorts of questions, and I reply, but there’s no meaning to my answers. Nothing consequential. Only empty words and platitudes. I’m not going to Oxford or Cambridge. Mom and Dad must know Nicholas is from England, they’re not sending me there. I’m going to University in Canada. Queens University, in Kingston. I look it up and it’s out in the middle of nowhere. I don’t want to go there, but my Dad insists and I don’t have the strength to argue or to refuse.

I’ve been at Queens University for a month now. My classes are going okay and Canada isn’t as strange as I thought it would be. I can focus on my classes and my studies. Outside of my classes and my studies, I try not to think of Nicholas. I try not to think of anything. I don’t call home either. Why bother? There’s nothing to talk about. There’s nobody back there who I want to talk to.

When my phone does ring, I answer it without checking who it is. It’s her. Mom.

My voice is flat. I answer her questions. Yes. No. No. Yes.

“Have you met any nice boys yet?” she asks.

I look at my phone, my eyes blurring. How can she ask that? Doesn’t she realize what she’s done to me? What’s she doing? How can she be so cruel? I hear her voice, tinny, from a distance. I can’t stop myself from sobbing. I hear her when I hold the phone to my ear again.

“What are you crying for, Kiyomi? Are you still being silly about that haole boy? That was months ago, I thought you were over him …”

I listen blankly to my Mom’s voice, the words flowing past me as the tears flow down my cheeks. All I can think of is Nicholas. Where is he? What’s he doing? How empty my life is without him. How meaningless my mom’s words are. I don’t understand her. It’s babble. Words without any meaning. Just noise.

“Kiyomi? …. Kiyomi?” My Mom’s voice, shriller, more penetrating.

Noise that I don’t want to hear as I sit there, crying hopelessly. Where’s Nicholas? I haven’t managed to find any trace of him online. Why hasn’t he found me? Is he even looking for me? Does he care or am I just a memory to him now?

I can’t bear to think that I’m nothing but a memory.

I hang up. I know I shouldn’t, she’s my mother, but I don’t want to hear her anymore. She calls back, my phone rings. I don’t answer. She leaves a voicemail. I delete it and turn my phone off. There’s half a dozen voicemails the next morning. I don’t even check them. I delete them all, my mind numb. I don’t really know what I’m doing.

She calls every day. I ignore every call. Delete every voicemail without listening to them. In the end I change my number. I don’t want her calling when I’m at school. I don’t want to hear her. When she emails me, I delete the emails without reading them. I’m punishing her, I know, but I don’t regret it. If I can make her suffer even a fraction of the pain that I’m feeling, I will. It won’t make me feel better, but I want to hurt her. Her and Dad.

A week later it’s my Dad that calls, early in the morning. How did he get my new number? I have no idea. I’m home when my phone rings. I answer. I listen to his voice, not really taking in his words, not understanding what he’s saying to me. I answer his questions, more or less at random, not thinking, not caring that much about what I say. When he starts to scold me, I put the phone down, not hanging up on him but not listening to him either. I sit there, crying. I can’t stop crying. When he finally hangs up, I turn the phone off. Shut it down. I can’t shut off my tears though. I don’t go to my classes that day.

I leave my phone powered off.

There’s emails. My mom. My dad. My brothers. I set those email addresses to spam, and I set spam to delete automatically. Mom tries messaging me on Facebook and Instagram. I delete every social media account I have. I don’t want to hear from anyone. I huddle in my room, missing my classes, staying in bed, crying until there’s no more tears, but I’m still crying inside.

I loved him so much, and now he’s gone, and I don’t know where. All I know is that I love him and he’s only a memory. Am I only a memory to him, or does he still love me? Is he looking for me the way I’m looking for him? How can I find him? But I don’t know how. I don’t know what to do, and I’m lost in another wave of gray and hopeless misery.

Three days later there’s a knock on the door. One of my housemates lets him in. It’s my oldest brother, Scott. The one that works down in Palo Alto. He’s looking at me strangely. I can tell he’s annoyed.

“What the hell have you done to upset everyone, Kiyomi?” He doesn’t sound happy with me. “Dad said you were acting like an idiot over some haole asshole you met. I got delegated to waste my time coming up here and sorting this nonsense out.”

He looks at me. “You look like shit, Kiyomi.”

I burst into tears.

“Jesus,” he says. “What the fuck’s going on…?”

Scott’s always been the brother I can talk to, and in the end, it all pours out. Talking to him is a catharsis that leaves me drained, hoping he understands.

“You have to pull yourself together, Kiyomi,” he says, that evening, after we’ve talked for hours. “Focus on your studying.”

I can tell he’s concealing his impatience with me. He’s humoring his little sister, helping her over a stupid schoolgirl crush that she’ll have forgotten in a few more months.

Will I forget Nicholas? I don’t think that I ever can. Will my love for him fade? I’m sure it never will. But I don’t share any of that with Scott.

He leaves the next day, confident that he’s talked sense into me. Confident that I’ll focus on my studies, and I do. At least when I study, I’m not thinking of Nicholas, but still, I cry myself to sleep every night.

Christmas break. I wasn’t going to bother going to my parents house. I don’t think of that house as home anymore. It’s the house my parents live in, that’s all. Scott calls me, tells me he’s sending me tickets, and when I look, they’re in my email. I don’t want to. I’d rather stay here alone than see my family. I don’t want to see any of them, but I know if I don’t go home, Scott will fly here again.

“Kiyomi,” my Mom says happily, as soon as I walk out the gate. She’s smiling. She’s waiting for me to smile back. To greet her. To hug her. “How was your flight?”