Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 101427 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101427 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Kenji hadn’t come to bed.
I had fallen asleep alone.
And I’d woken up many hours later. . . still alone.
Not even a crease in the pillow.
No scent.
No warmth.
Just the silence of someone who never showed up. And it was that silence that made the room feel too large, too beautiful, too curated. Like a showroom I’d been placed in, not a space built for intimacy.
Like the dream had followed me here after all.
Fuck. . .
That version of my mother, all dressed up and still alone, waiting for a man who didn’t come home. It hit me harder now since Kenji was not in the bed.
You’re not your mother. Things are different. Don’t go there.
I breathed in and out.
But. . .why did I have that dream again? Was it a warning or a message? Why can’t I stop thinking of that stupid moment during my childhood?
It always came to me in odd times in my life.
That dream.
That hallway.
That damned sad view of my mother with the heartbreaking song.
That little girl who thought her sadness wasn’t urgent because her mother’s was always louder.
I swallowed.
There were lessons a woman learned in childhood that she didn’t realize she even learned until years later. Lessons that crept in the heart and stayed long after she had forgotten who first said them or what had happened to make her think that way.
Some things a person doesn’t have to be told to believe—they just graft into the spine.
That memory. . .that night became a scripture writing within me. A gospel of lessons I didn’t know I was reciting all my life:
Women wait in beauty.
Men forget to come home.
Love is abandonment.
And music becomes confession when no one is listening.
That was what I saw as a little girl. That was what I learned. Not because my mother taught it, but because I watched her live it.
You’re not that little girl anymore so stop it.
I ran my fingers along the edge of the bed, pausing at the perfect pillow, cool to the touch. Kenji hadn’t slept beside me. Not even for a second.
And I hated that it still made me feel. . .alone like her.
Even though I knew he was at war. Even though I told myself I wasn’t that kind of woman. Even though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t love like that.
Ever.
Stop thinking about it. That was just a dream.
Yet, my chest ached.
My stomach felt hollow.
My jaw tightened even though I had no reason to be angry.
I almost wanted to call my mother.
Almost.
But I wasn’t ready.
The calls were always so awkward—measured and tight, like we were both holding our breath, waiting for someone to blink first.
She answered because she felt she had to.
I called because I felt I should.
Nothing about it ever felt like love.
It felt like habit—two people keeping a calendar appointment neither of them wanted to cancel.
Our conversations were clipped.
Courteous.
Too quick.
When the conversation slowed down at all, it was only because she started talking about him.
My father.
Still in jail.
Still a legend in her heart.
Still the love of her life, even after all this time.
She wrote him letters every week and got on her knees to pray for him every night. She had his pictures in gold frames all over her apartment. When she spoke of him, his name was a holy symbol instead of a criminal that shattered us. To her, he was not a man who stole her joy and future.
He was still her addiction.
And she shot him into her system daily—on purpose. Smiling. Crying. Humming Billie Holiday as the needle slipped in.
And as awful as it was to watch, I deeply resented her for it too.
For loving a man who broke everything.
For choosing that heartbreak again and again, instead of choosing herself.
Instead of choosing. . .me.
Yet now. . .sitting in Kenji’s bed, staring at the untouched pillow where his head should have rested, I felt the cold press of something terrifying in my chest.
Shit.
I was beginning to understand my mother more than I’d ever wanted to. Not just intellectually, but viscerally. Down to my marrow.
I was beginning to comprehend the way she had given him her heart.
I was understanding that deep, aching worship. That kind of obsession that turned absence into scripture.
The way she dressed up and waited.
She had been in love with a man who didn’t come home.
And now I was lying in a man’s bed, wondering if I would spend my life waiting too. The thought made me sick. . .but I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. . .I was too far gone to leave Kenji. . .he was deep in my bones now and I didn’t want his presence to ever leave me.
Fuck. How did that happen? Am I my mother now? No. I can’t be. Right?
I clenched the sheets in my fists.
I didn’t want this legacy. Didn’t want to be the daughter of a woman who waited. Didn’t want to become the woman who waited too.