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Her fingers ran slowly over the smooth, wet surface.
Index and middle fingers. She alternated them with unconstructed ease, discovering soft lines that, perhaps, were nothing more than the very flow of her thoughts. A continuous, infinite path that always returned to the same point.
Like the images that overlapped in her mind, the same ones for hours now, that she couldn’t put in order or define. And perhaps it was precisely the flow of her memory that pushed her to trace those infinite capital italic “L”s on the glass, caressing the condensation that fogged it up and discovering glimpses of the night panorama that was hidden beyond it. She didn’t care, the landscape beyond the window was the last thing on her mind. She kept telling herself that the curved line that her fingers continued to write was an easy motif to retrace, a motif that her mind was unconsciously dictating to her fingers while she was lost in thought, but in reality she was well aware that the real explanation wasn't that. Not completely, if anything.
The “L” was also the beginning of her thoughts. Knowingly or not, there was something inside her that pushed her to write it down, to press that letter as if retracing it could somehow help her untangle the skein of colored wires that filled her head.
That was how she imagined her memories in that moment: a tangle of cables of different shades, so messy that she couldn’t find where to start to make sense of them. Each color had a different meaning: green was her friends, yellow was her family, blue was everything related to school, red was for him. And, at that moment, there were so many red wires that they almost completely obscured the other colors.
It was all messed up, but the more Nami mentally retraced those red lines, the thicker they became. The more she brooded over the problem, the further away the solution became. Bellmere always told her that worrying was useless, because problems either have a solution or they don't: if they do, worrying is completely useless; if they don't, worrying is equally useless. Nami had always found it to be a very sensible and rational argument, but she had never managed to make it her own enough to put it into practice. Whether her dilemmas were solvable or not, she still couldn’t stop thinking about it and dissecting the situation, analysing it from every perspective and angle.
It was a flaw of hers, she was well aware of it, but that didn’t stop her from spending entire nights awake, almost praying for her brain to turn off and let her sleep.
Like that night, the one she was spending stuck in the uncomfortable seat of the bus that was taking her and her schoolmates home, after the four days they had spent in a cottage in the mountains. The winter trip was perhaps the moment she looked forward to with the most anxiety and enthusiasm in the entire school year. A handful of days spent between ski slopes, excursions in the snow and overly comfortable armchairs. That year, then, it could be said that she was looking forward to it with even more excitement, because there was something that had recently become inextricably intertwined with the threads of her memories: Monkey D Luffy.
Nami couldn't understand how that boy had become the center of her thoughts in such a short time, the pivot around which her days and her good mood revolved. Her sister Nojiko said that it had been an epic love at first sight but Nami knew that in reality it hadn't really been love at first sight in the strict sense of the word. It had been like a fuse that lit little by little, traveled along the line of gasoline to the barrel and finally blew it up. And she had blown up indeed and continued to burn in a fire that she was sure nothing could put out. Especially because Luffy did nothing but fuel it every time he looked at her or casually touched her. And the times when that happened were more than her heart and her sanity could bear.
She had truly believed that they could have a chance; perhaps she had been foolish to delude herself but she knew that it wasn't entirely her fault. Not when Luffy was so close to her that Nami felt his heat on her skin.
She briefly retraced the months that had passed: the naturalness in sharing spaces, the innate care and the interest impossible to hide. And the glances, deep and infinite, that they exchanged in class, in the cafeteria and in the corridors; the increasingly less casual touches and that sort of instinct that led them to wander around each other more than was necessary. No, Luffy always found a way to be close to her; he always found an excuse to touch her and say her name, to talk to her and he didn't even try not to be caught staring at her insistently, so it couldn't really be her fault.
Anyway she had been too naive to believe that that trip in the snow could have changed something between them, too naive to dream of scenarios that were difficult to become real, too naive to really believe that Luffy would take that opportunity to do anything that would confirm that she wasn't crazy.
But then again, she had fallen in love with him so easily. That boy had dug into her heart and her brain with the same simplicity with which her fingers had removed the condensation from the window, imprinting on it those infinite "L"s that were slowly starting to drip. Even her heart must now be engraved with small intertwined "L", Nami was convinced of it.
She closed her eyes and ran her hand decisively over the glass, erasing the evidence of her weaknesses and suddenly finding herself face to face with her wasted reflection. It must have been the middle of the night and they had been traveling for almost two hours: she needed to sleep and she knew it, especially because the last night spent at the cottage she and the others had gathered in Usopp and Franky's room and waited for the dawn there.
There had been a moment, that evening, while the boys were telling each other stupid stories and drinking the alcohol they had secretly slipped into their suitcases, in which she had felt the need to take a few minutes for herself, so she had wrapped herself in a blanket and gone out onto the balcony – their room was the only one that had one. Luffy had reached her after a very short time and Nami had known it was him the same moment she had heard the sound of the sliding door opening. She had shared her blanket with him and they had remained leaning on the balcony railing for what seemed like an eternity, speaking little and looking at each other a lot. Another of those moments in which she had believed that Luffy was about to do something, another of those moments in which they were so close that it seemed almost absurd and painful not to erase that meaningless distance that still separated them. But Luffy had done nothing and, when they had then returned to their rooms to prepare to leave the next day, Nami had felt her heart heavy knowing that she had to dismantle the castle that she had built in her head.
Brick by brick. Each piece she pulled down was a pain in the exact center of her chest, in contrast to the ease with which it had been raised.
I threw my hands in the air, and said, "Show me something"
He said, "If you dare, come a little closer"
She wasn't even halfway up the first tower of bricks when Luffy appeared at her side. Nami would have been lying if she said she wasn't expecting him to approach, only that part of her hoped to be left alone at least for that moment. The other part had been dying to see him arrive for almost two hours.
"Hey," he murmured, his voice kept low to avoid waking the others who were sleeping. "You're awake."
Nami nodded as Luffy took a seat at her side. Without asking permission, just as he had taken a seat in her life. "You too," she replied and he barely shrugged.
“Usopp talks in his sleep: I couldn’t sleep a wink because he started babbling nonsensically,” he explained getting comfortable. “What happened to Robin?”
“With Franky, a few seats ahead. I think they’re asleep by now.”
Luffy smirked and looked at the front rows of the bus to confirm her words but he didn’t answer and Nami didn’t even expect him to. It was always like this between them: despite the first few months, when they did nothing but bicker, they had started spending most of their time alone in silence. There was no real reason but, for her part, Nami had so many things she couldn’t tell him that she realised that, perhaps, it was better if they didn’t talk at all. So she turned her gaze out the window, now almost fogged up again.
Luffy’s voice reached her when she almost managed to relax again. “You should sleep too,” he said, and Nami frowned slightly, turning to look at him, almost surprised by his concern.
He was looking at her with a serious and irreproachable gaze, his pupils slightly dilated and his posture a little stiff, as if he were trying hard to stay in his place. Nami studied him for a few moments before biting her lip and then answering, “I’m not tired.”
And it was a complete lie, especially since her worn out face and red eyes were already a rather obvious symptom of her tiredness; Luffy, however, didn’t buy it, as he gave her a skeptical look.
“Your face says the exact opposite. Either you’re tired or you got smoke in your eyes. Actually I clearly saw you cough after taking a drag on Sanji’s cigarette.”
Nami didn't know whether to laugh or be shocked, not because he worried for her but because it seemed like he observed as it was his precise duty to watch over her well-being; that seemed funny but also cute to her.
"These seats are narrow," she explained trying not to be enchanted by the cute determination reflected in Luffy's gaze. "I can't find a comfortable position."
He grimaced doubtfully but didn't investigate further and Nami was extremely grateful for that, because she wasn't ready to tell him that in reality she couldn't sleep because she didn't know how to stop thinking about him. She was afraid that Luffy already knew what the truth was but one thing was to suspect it and another to be certain of it.
“The others could disagree with you,” he observed, shifting his gaze to the seats to his left, where Zoro and Chopper were fast asleep.
“It’s been a tiring few days,” Nami supposed, logically. “And last night we didn’t sleep much, so I guess it’s normal that they’re falling asleep wherever they happen to be.”
Luffy looked like he expected that exact answer from her. “I guess that doesn’t apply to you.”
How could she lie in front of that intense, searching gaze? Nami didn’t know, she had no idea, but there was one thing she was sure of: they were living another one of those moments, the ones in which Luffy was so close it hurt. Besides, being stuck between him and the window, she was trapped in any case and wouldn’t have been able to escape.
With difficulty, she tore his gaze away from his, returning to focus on the condensation covering the glass. “I can sleep at home. Now… I want to enjoy the ride.”
“Even if the seat is uncomfortable?”
Nami curled her lips into a half smile, he was almost adorable when he insisted like a child. She shrugged her shoulders slightly. “I like bus rides, even… even in these conditions, yes.” She paused for a moment, then added, “I find them relaxing.”
Sometimes it scared her beyond belief that Luffy always and perfectly knew what was going on in her head. That was one of the other things that, no matter how much she tried to be rational, made her think: “There, I'm sure that it would be so beautiful and easy to be together.”
“So am I disturbing you?” Luffy’s voice surprised her after a few moments of silence and it seemed almost sad and tinged with something that, if Nami hadn’t known him so well, she would have defined as annoyed.
Nami automatically turned to look at him and, from his tense features, she understood that the boy really felt offended and hurt in some way by her behavior. But that didn't make any sense to her. What had she said wrong? She mentally rehearsed her own answer from earlier but found nothing that justified that suddenly resentful attitude.
So she simply answered sincerely, "I said that I find them relaxing, not that I'm relaxing." She paused briefly, deciding whether or not she should let it all out, then sighed, "And you don't bother me. On the contrary."
Luffy softened the rigid posture of his shoulders imperceptibly but the frown that had darkened his face was still there. "If I were to leave," he began, and for the first time ever he seemed far too and incredibly doubtful in pronouncing those words. "Could you relax?"
No, was the first thought that crossed Nami’s mind, intense and sudden like a long banished truth that's still difficult to ignore.
“No,” was what Nami said too. And then, without thinking too much about the consequences, she added: “You would never leave completely.”
Luffy’s lips curved into an almost imperceptible semblance of a smile. “Maybe I don’t want to leave completely.”
What was that? Was he voluntarily flirting? Did he perfectly get what she meant? She had matured that awareness that at this point the choice was up to him alone. One of the many moments she had shared with Luffy, she had had the frustrating feeling that the only way to make things change was for him to act. There was a discordant note in Luffy’s behavior that had led her to believe that he had now reached a point beyond which he had never gone and he seemed not to go beyond. She didn’t know if it was just a lack of willpower, but somewhere in Luffy’s eyes, Nami could also read the disappointment of not being able to do anything else.
Nami briefly retraced her train of thought and realised that she had been imprecise about one detail: she didn’t think he liked her, she knew he liked her. The point was if he wanted to take that leap into the unknown with her.
“If you don’t want to leave, what do you want to do?” she asked.
“Stay?” He asked, rhetorically.
Stay where? In that seat? In my life? So far away from me? – Nami’s lips curled inward, then she nodded briefly and turned back to the glass. “Stay then, I said you’re not bothering me.”
If Luffy wanted her to do everything, he was going to end up disappointed because she had no idea what to do either, and more importantly, how to do it. They were just two idiots, or maybe it just wasn’t the right time for them.
'Round and around and around and around we go
Oh, now tell me now, tell me now, tell me now you know
For a while no one spoke, so Nami continued to stare stubbornly at the white patina that was clouding the glass, letting herself be lulled by the curves of the road they were traveling. She felt an annoying and widespread sense of numbness that made her weak and nostalgic, nostalgic for sensations she had never felt and experiences she had never lived, but she didn't want to sleep because she needed that bus ride. She needed it to reach a turning point, any one: to leave behind what would perhaps forever remain the biggest regret of her adolescence or to decide to do something to take the slice of happiness she knew she deserved.
She didn't have time to do anything anyway, because Luffy interrupted the flow of her consciousness as if – once again – he had sensed that Nami was trying to find the strength to give up on him.
"Nami, what do you want me to do?" He sighed. She, caught off guard, automatically turned towards him, her lips parted.
Were they really talking about it? Nami felt that awareness reach her accompanied by a slight tachycardia. She continued to observe him for what seemed like hours, without finding anything sensible to say, her mind crossed by a deafening and indistinct buzz that prevented her from grasping a thought and transforming it into words.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” she then deflected.
Predictably, Luffy snorted in a smile. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Nami.”
Of course she knew, he sounded so aware, almost grown-up all of a sudden and she was extremely scared; but she would try to appear strong and detached, no matter how this story ended. “I know that… I know, but...” she took a deep breath and forced herself to clarify. “I meant… you’ve never done anything, you continue to do nothing, what do you expect me to tell you?”
If Luffy had foreseen such a turn of events, he didn’t show it. He frowned slightly – as he did every time he found himself faced with something he didn’t understand – and Nami could distinguish the hundreds of emotions and unspoken words that overlapped behind his dilated pupils. Doubt, fear, eagerness, awareness.
“I think these things don’t need dramatic gestures,” The determination that filled his words dug deep marks inside Nami: as usual, in his simplicity he was right, even if that wasn’t exactly how she thought things would go. And in fact, his answer annoyed her at the same time for the genuine way he always managed to throw her off balance - Do I make you lose your balance like you make me lose mine? – she thought, But she wouldn’t let him do it, because yes, maybe love didn’t depend on big speeches and graffiti, but she needed something, anything, to hold on to and that would give her the certainty that she hadn’t imagined everything.
“I don’t need those things,” she then replied. “Just… something. Even a- a little coherence? One moment you seem unable to stop gravitating towards me and the next you don’t seem to care about things like that at all. I can’t take the little bit you give me, that you’ve already take them back.”
She never thought she’d be capable of saying those words; how many times had she rehearsed that speech in her head? How much time had she spent hoping to find the courage to give it voice? She had lost count and, by now, she had also resigned herself a little to the idea of not having the courage, incapable of not loving herself enough to confess to a boy that she had fallen in love with him.
Luffy parted his lips and looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time, so Nami imagined she had pleasantly surprised him. But holding his gaze – especially after making a declaration like that – was becoming increasingly difficult. She was about to look away in cowardice, when Luffy spoke again.
“I’m taking it back because I can never tell if it’s what you really want,” he revealed, and Nami’s heart skipped a beat. “I don’t want to force you to… stay.”
I don’t want to hurt you. This is what Luffy meant, he wanted her to choose, not impose his will on her. Nami could feel those words hovering between them, clouding her mind. That was definitely the last thing she expected; those precise words, spoken in that almost hesitant and whispered tone of voice, in the middle of a dimly lit and sleeping bus. Luffy was putting himself out there and now it was really up to her to make sure he wasn’t doing it in vain. She wasn’t sure how she should do it, or what she should say to make him come closer but she took a deep breath, turned to look at him and said: “You don't need to do anything to make me stay.”
And Luffy smiled, smiled in that rare and beautiful way that Nami loved beyond belief.
Not really sure how to feel about it
Something in the way you move
Makes me feel like I can't live without you
It takes me all the way
She bit her lip, one cheek resting on the back of the seat and her eyes on his. "And you? Would you try to keep me with you even if I wanted to leave?" she said and instantly regretted asking that question. But she soon realized there was no trace of his usual smile on his face, instead he was looking at her as if he was hanging on her every word.
Without hesitation, Luffy nodded, “I would do anything to keep you with me, Nami.”
Nami’s heart skipped another beat.
And then he added: “If it depended on me… yes, I would really try everything."
Nami didn’t answer right away, she took a moment to process those words, to make them her own, giving them the meaning they really had. Luffy was concerned about not putting his will before hers, to leave her free to choose but he also knew that certain arguments were difficult for her to accept, he knew that where he saw a clear path, Nami saw potholes and obstacles, he knew that rarely had she found the courage to expose herself to someone and that for her it was always disorienting to have someone willing to fight for her in that way. But what Nami knew was that she wanted Luffy to be that someone.
Before she could answer, Luffy slid onto the seat and slowly approached her, until he was a breath away from her lips. Nami almost died at the thought that Luffy was really going to kiss her, but the boy didn't move and didn't close the distance that still separated them; once again he left the choice to her. Instead he remained breathing softly on her mouth, a hand under her cheek and he was so close that he was almost everywhere.
"You're good with promises, aren't you Luffy?" she asked and in the meantime she felt her heart and brain evaporate at the warmth feeling that Luffy transmitted to her.
Luffy, taken aback by the sudden question, looked up thoughtfully for a couple of seconds, "Um... I'm good enough," he whispered and Nami's breathing became a little faster. "Even a little more than enough, I think," he added smirking little with seductive confidence.
She nodded and murmured “Then promise,” but then, noticing perplexity on Luffy’s face, she immediately added, almost imperiously: “What you said before. Promise.”
And then, Nami just lost herself in his serious and intense look to be completely overwhelmed by the strength of Luffy's emotions and feelings. Directly from his lips to hers, so close that they were now touching.
“I promise,” he said. Nami swallowed hard, while her eyes burned from the heat, Luffy’s closeness, the happiness of knowing he was hers just as she felt she belonged to him. “I’ll keep you with me, I promise” he repeated.
And she realised she didn’t need any more words, not when her lips finally met the soft texture of Luffy’s. Nami had imagined this moment so many times that for a moment, just one, she was almost afraid she was in one of her fantasies, afraid she had fallen asleep and dreamed it all. But then Luffy slid closer to her and she could feel the warmth and pleasant touch of his body against hers, so Nami realised that no, this was better than any of her dreams or fantasies: this was wonderfully real.
“Keep me with you, Luffy.”