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The first time around, Alisa comes home from the gym, sports bra and high ponytail, and when Miwa looks at her, all her words disappear.
(The whole situation is actually an indicator of the problem at hand; it’s proof that they’re out of sync, they’re off schedule. As far as Miwa knew, Alisa still went to the gym first thing in the morning, and not in the late afternoon. Miwa doesn’t think of that, though. She thinks of the neon stripe along the side of Alisa’s yoga pants, and the soft sound the duffel bag makes when it falls to the floor.)
“Thought I told you to stop smoking inside,” Alisa says, pouts, and walks straight through the living room on her way to the kitchen. Miwa crushes the last of her cigarette against the ashtray and follows her. Miwa decides, in fact, that now is not the time, this is not the moment. She’s got time.
“Well, I was stressed, I thought I earned it.”
“Stressed?” Alisa turns around, frowning, and rests her hip against the countertop. She’s holding a two-pound whey protein container in one hand – every time Miwa tells her how terrible the taste of whey on her lips is, Alisa bounces right back with something about the smoking. They’ve learned to settle. “Why?”
Miwa walks closer, feeling Alisa’s eyes on her. Alisa’s eyes are so pretty, grass-green, always greener. Miwa is not short, let me tell you, but she feels short when she’s next to Alisa; all ash blonde hair, springtime eyes, model physique. Sure, she’s pop art pretty, pin-up pretty, but she can be so scary, she can be so daunting. Who wouldn’t feel intimidated by the prettiest woman in the world, honestly.
Miwa doesn’t tell the truth. “Ah, y’know. Customers can suck.”
“Bad day?” Alisa says, softer, and pushes a bit of Miwa’s hair behind her shoulder. “It’s getting long,” she had said, the night before. She had pushed it away from Miwa’s face, held it in place, and kissed her slow, self-assured, deliberate. Her nails are currently baby blue; they scrape against Miwa’s skin, and she shivers.
“Mhm.” Miwa doesn’t close her eyes, doesn’t tremble, doesn’t sway or lean closer – she just might. She represses the feelings, hides the truth, lets them swell up inside her and press the air out of her lungs.
Alisa leans in and kisses her, lip gloss making it sticky and peach-flavoured. Miwa takes a half-second to kiss her back; Miwa raises her hands, hesitant, and cups Alisa’s jaw.
Miwa decides, they’ve got time.
Alisa tells her she used to smoke, once upon a time. Alisa sighs over dinner, sets down her chopsticks and raises her glass of sake to her lips, leaning back in her chair and smiling fondly. (She has so many smiles, Miwa’s learned. Conceited, cocky. Happy, graceful. Happy, ecstatic. Relieved, pleased. Now is fond, nostalgic. Now is two steps before sad, blue.)
“God, it was so long ago… I’m getting old.” She chuckles, pauses.
Miwa scoffs, arms crossed over her chest, a flesh-and-bone shield, a cage. “So am I. We are all.”
“Miwa.” Alisa frowns, like she’s angry. Miwa holds her gaze for a moment, and looks away.
“Sorry. Keep going.”
“It was back when I was fresh out of high school, and, you know, I was still in the teenager headspace… Wanted to fit in, wanted to be pretty. Wouldn’t eat – at one point, I burned through a pack in a couple of days, because of all that anxiety and stress. At that time…” The way she pauses, the way she breathes, shift her voice into something gloomier, somber. “Pretty girls had bony knees, nicotine stained fingers. I just wanted to be pretty, I guess. Wanted people to think I was pretty.”
Miwa thinks of sitting on curbs, lighting other people’s cigarettes with matches, cupping her hands in front of lighters so the flame won’t wane with winter nights’ wind. Who uses matches , girls would say, smiling. Miwa could just smile back. Miwa thinks of the pretty girl on the other side of the gym, cheering for her brother’s adversary. Miwa thinks of meeting her eyes across the room. (Alisa could never get lost in a crowd. Miwa doesn’t know how Alisa saw her, between everyone.)
“You did it,” she says, under her breath. She’s still looking away.
“Hm?” Alisa asks, raising her eyebrows over her glass, the surface steaming, the steam swirling in mid-air.
“People think you’re pretty.” Miwa says, matter-of-fact; Miwa looks back up at her, and swallows. She’s so pretty, so fucking pretty. She’s a crystal ball, a porcelain teacup. She’s a thunderstorm and a half; she’s dark magic, curses and hexes.
“Do you?”
“That’s a stupid question.”
“I’m still asking it.”
Miwa pauses. Thinks of the sound of the wind in the trees in horror movies, thinks of dust glittering in the sunlight of her childhood home’s attic. At night, like this, Alisa’s eyes are the colour of moss, the colour of the ocean. Painted endless.
“You are pretty. There’s no thinking about it.”
When the salon’s empty, when she has no client in the next slot and nothing to worry about, Miwa likes to go outside, lean against the shop window and watch the city. Sometimes smoke, too, but she’s had periods of trying to stop, for Alisa’s sake, not her own. She pulls her lighter from her jacket pocket and twists it in her palm a little before she lights the menthol. ( “I always thought you’d be the type to smoke these. Normals too, but these – you’re too stylish.” What did that even mean?)
Her lighter’s a Zippo, Mt. Fuji engraved into the side, the colours faded. It is, more than anything, a gift from Alisa, like so many other things. Miwa’s learned that Alisa’ll see things and think of people or think of people and see things, and buy them gifts, just like that. They didn’t even know each other when she bought Miwa the lighter – and still, nothing else would have been as right.
They met in a nightclub, the jukebox music chittering and a karaoke machine echoing from the bar next door, and Miwa was nursing both a half-empty shot glass and a headache that throbbed to the rhythm of the song. Miwa was heartbreak and purpling bruises, was a colourful LED’s shadow, ever since she was fifteen. Miwa was a silenced gun.
“Kageyama, right?”
Alisa reminded Miwa of the women she saw in World History textbooks back in the day, reminded her of impressionist paintings and eighteenth century monarchs, guillotines and puffy dresses. Alisa was five foot ten and wore heeled boots. Alisa smiled, like joy, like a flashlight in the mirror, and Miwa could just look at her.
They had met two days before, they had met when their faces were inches apart. Her boss had been hired to do the makeup for a photoshoot, so she was there with helping hands and careful fingers. As for Alisa, she simply belonged in front of a camera. Miwa drew a golden wing of eyeliner along her lashline and could feel Alisa’s breathing on her palm. Miwa couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. Her ribs were made of rope.
They had met so many months ago, dozens of weeks ago, they had met eyes across the gymnasium and Miwa had clenched her fist and thought can you cry after seeing the prettiest person in the world?
Miwa hadn’t forgotten – how could she forget? No one looked like Alisa. No one had given her instant heartache like Alisa. Christ, she hadn’t even been Alisa, then; she hadn’t had a name at all. All Miwa knew was that she was probably related to Nekoma’s #11, and nothing else. Miwa knew she was more than she could manage.
Alisa had forgotten.
Miwa downed the rest of the drink and turned around. Haiba Alisa’s at a gay bar.
“Yeah. Haiba Alisa.”
Alisa smiled, cheery, bashful, and nodded slightly. She took a seat next to Miwa, and Miwa couldn’t look away. Alisa was out of this world, Alisa was something more than human. Alisa was a riverbed nymph, a naiad, and Aphrodite’s vengeful. Aphrodite looked down at them and sighed at young love, sighed at shaking hearts and late evenings.
Kissing Alisa that night tasted of strawberry syrup, her drink something pink in a sugar-rimmed cocktail glass. Alisa kissed her, fearless, and identified the brand of her cigarettes. Alisa gave her the lighter at another shoot, a week later; smiled, winked, and slid it into Miwa’s hand. “Thought of you, Kageyama-san.”
It’s not the second time around – might be the third, the fifth. The thing about planning to break up with someone is that you’re reminded of what you have to do every time you’re with them, but the courage doesn’t tend to come along with the thoughts. Instead, you get nostalgia, guilt, distraction. Miwa gets frowns and sighs, gets exasperated, tired smiles, gets kisses to her temple when she doesn’t come to bed immediately, to the curve of her jaw when she’s spent a night insomniac, to the dip of her navel when she seems so out of it, Alisa might cry. (Which is said for the sake of the expression; Alisa wouldn’t cry, not at this, not immediately. She might look crystal clear and transparent, but Alisa’s got so much inside of her, the dark side of the moon. She shines bright, but you can’t be sure of that when you’re not seeing her.)
Miwa picks Alisa up from work and her makeup’s something in cobalt or cerulean, something prettier than anything Miwa’s ever done, her hair’s curled with sparse, small braids, and she looks like the moon and the stars, like the sky at dawn. She looks sad; Miwa gets why people say sadness is blue.
They stop at a traffic light; Miwa taps away at the steering wheel, it’s been a long day. She looks to the side and Alisa’s looking at her, her eeriest, most unreadable gaze, so Miwa starts “Alisa-”
“I don’t know if you think I’m thick,” Alisa says, sharp, quiet. Her voice is a bit deeper than what people think it is, generally; in moments like this, she makes herself seen. “But I noticed, Micchan. The way you fell out of love with me.”
The stoplight turns green, but Miwa doesn’t react. The cars around her speed down the street, the car behind her honks, and she finally presses her foot into the accelerator. Her eyes feel dry and her chest feels full, about to pop, like she’s been breathing in smoke. Like she’s got carbon monoxide spoiling her blood, vein by vein, capillary by capillary.
“I didn’t…”
“It’s fine, Miwa. I’ve come to terms with the whole thing.”
Miwa pulls over and stops the car, kills the engine, because she can’t drive like this. She turns and Alisa’s looking out the window; her reflection is vague in the glass, her eyes glossy, her lips tight.
“I don’t- blame you.”
“Alisa,” Miwa says, before Alisa can say anything else, and because she can’t stand to hear anything else. The words pile up her throat, an unstoppable influx, forming and running faster than she can make sense of them. “Don’t blame yourself. I love you – I do. I love us. No one knows me better than you do, no one could understand me like you do, I just… I think our time has gone by. I don’t think we’ll go anywhere.”
“I know all of that.” Alisa sighs, and it’s a hoarse sound, a harsh sound, like screaming underwater. Like drowning. “You’ve pulled away. You’ve never been easy to reach, Micchan, but now you’re- Our love is hollow. Neither of us are there, anymore.”
Alisa pauses. Miwa’s love for her has always been a hard time breathing, sponges sucking up her blood, her trachea corked shut.
“Our love turned empty a long time ago.”
The air between them’s dark matter, and nothing can fill it up. Miwa doesn’t know what else to say; the conversation feels like it’s over. Everything feels like it’s over, filled to the brim and poured back into the ocean. Not a single drop left to tell the story, to bring back memories, to call about love.
Miwa wonders if she’s supposed to move out, now. Miwa wonders if the air between them will remain unspoken words, palpable. The air inside their apartment feels like static, like white noise yells.
Alisa locks the door and leaves the keys dangling, echoing in the too-full emptiness. She turns around and kisses Miwa; it’s so familiar, it’s so drenched in repetition and longing, that Miwa’s closed her eyes before their lips touch. Miwa’s reached for Alisa before they’re even close enough, holding her head and her hair tangling between her fingers, Alisa holding her close by the small of her back.
“Alisa, I-” Their kisses are sloppy, full of breath, despaired. They kiss with knives and shattered glass.
“I’ll miss you,” Alisa says. Conclusive.
They’re not trying to salvage anything – they know there’s no love left to rescue. They’re saying goodbye. They’re acknowledging love, and loss, and misery. They’re acknowledging that nothing’ll ever be like this again . They’re leather and lace, copper and gold. Their love is made of stone, but it’ll burn, and it’ll crumble.
Their apartment is the same as it’s been for months, for years. No less furniture, no less walls. But now sounds echo, be it the stumbling footsteps as they kiss into their room, be it sad, mourning hums whispered against each other’s mouths because they’re famished, they’re rotting, they’re wilting, be it sighs and moans and yells because their bodies belong to each other, and even this will fade.
Their love is ruins. Their chests rise and fall, bare, rugged, two shades of pale skin marked with scars and ribs and tattoos.
Even Rome once fell.
Moving in had been passionate, like everything else. Moving in had been white walls, tan carpets and cardboard boxes, had been sleeping in the living room, half-naked, and waking up at inhumane hours because there were no curtains to hide the sun. Moving in had been all of Alisa’s happy smiles, Miwa’s push and pull and her kisses to the back of Alisa’s neck, had been calling the landlord one week into living together because there was something wrong with the heating, had been bare mattresses on the floor and half-built shelves.
There are no smiles in moving out, but there are no tears. There’s cooperation, there’s silence. Miwa wants a cigarette; Alisa’s got her hair up in a ponytail and she is, has always been, so pretty. Miwa thinks of the feeling of Alisa’s hand on the back of her neck, on the back of her head, nails pushing up into her hair, pulling. Miwa thinks pointlessly, because there’s no point in stagnation. Miwa thinks, loveless.
She bought new boxes the day after the talk in the car; it had been so long since they started living together, so long since she had to get up and moving. She’d grown comfortable, grown used to the coffee stain hidden by the sofa, used to the infiltration bubble in the kitchen ceiling that their landlord never came around to fix, used to their king-sized mattress and the arrangement of her clothes in their shared closet.
Miwa leaves her ashtray behind. It’s a pretty thing, blue glass molded into curves and tips, something she had bought at a flea market when she was growing out of her teen age. She does it by accident, truly, leaving it to the side to cover in bubble wrap later but forgetting to do it at all. Except, when she gets to unpacking, when she feels like smoking because of the weight of all the air in the tiny new apartment- she looks through all the boxes, and remembers she left it behind.
The thing is, Alisa never calls to give it back. Miwa waits a week, and then another, awfully aware of the weight of her phone in jacket pockets and jeans, thinking of Alisa every time she lights a cigarette. If the lighter wasn’t enough, now she taps the cigarettes and thinks of the ashes falling into blue glass on their coffee table – Alisa’s coffee table, now. She thinks of Alisa sticking out her tongue and saying her mouth tastes like smoke, thinks of the campfire in her chest. Thinks of resting her arm against the windowsill at six in the morning, the sun dawning up the skyline the same colour as daisies, thinks of the smell of the city, of the dew, and of Alisa’s arm around her waist. Thinks of going to nightclubs together and kissing, people pressing against their skin, but feeling like they’re the only ones in the world, the only people alive right now. (Clichés are cliché for a reason, after all. Miwa couldn’t think of anyone but Alisa, back in the day.)
Eventually, she buys a new ashtray. Eventually, she forgets about the blue one, forgets about the coffee stain, forgets about the dream travel spots glued to the insides of the closet doors, forgets about the designer bags from Alisa’s shoots, forgets about experimenting with free samples of expensive makeup brands. Forgetting’s a strong word; she lets them slip her mind, lets it all fade away. Love’s a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
When she remembers, she wonders if Alisa looks at the ashtray and thinks of them, still.