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Each morning in the locker room, Yuzuru greets Javier in Spanish and Javier greets Yuzuru in Japanese. It started as a mix-up and then it became a joke and then it became just another part of life. Yuzu likes the taste of hola! in his mouth, and he likes hearing Javi’s stumbling osu! in return.
Increasingly, Yuzu has found that languages mingle in his brain. Sometimes when he skates, he finds himself thinking in English. He hears fragments of Coach Orser’s voice in place of his own as he skates into his Axel. The word calm settles him more than odayakana.
At other times, he finds himself thinking in Spanish. Just momentarily. He gets a meal and thinks delicioso instead of oishii. He catches his blade on the ice and thinks mierda. He sees Javi approach and the word bueno fills his mind like smile.
He and Javi try to talk in each other’s languages sometimes. Like all skaters, they are unfailingly addicted to learning new languages. But, for the most part, English is the bridge where they meet. It’s still a shaky bridge for Yuzu, but he’s getting better every day. Things are cool. Brian is awesome. Life is all good.
Sometimes he wishes that he knew a better way to communicate, though.
*
All wrong.
The feeling lasts for three days and he’s sure it’s going to last forever, until Javi says, in English, “Let’s go.”
The two of them are still on the ice after a day’s training. Yuzu is squeezing in yet more practice, even though it’s an hour since Brain told him to go home. Yuzu mumbles under his breath a tired amalgamation of not right now in three languages. Then he feels Javi’s hands on his back, thumbs momentarily pressing between his shoulder blades.
“Vamos,” Javi says in his ear, followed by a rapid sentence in Spanish that Yuzu doesn’t catch. Javi drops his hands and skates away, toward the locker room. Yuzu’s eyes follow him, thoughts of practice forgotten.
When, thirty minutes later, they arrive at Javi’s apartment, Javi is quick to say, “This is not the destination. Just, uhh. Detour.”
“Where is the destination?” Yuzu asks, feeling plaintive.
“A surprise!” Javi says with an impish grin. “But first. Supplies.”
Javi gestures toward the couch, where Yuzu takes a seat. He’s not sure how he feels about surprises. Javi disappears into the kitchen and comes back with a cup of coffee (unasked for, but made exactly the way Yuzu likes), which he pushes into Yuzu’s hand. Then Javi is gone again, darting from room to room. Looking for something.
Yuzu is not surprised that, whatever supplies Javi is looking for, he can’t find them. The thing about Javi’s apartment is: it makes no sense. Nothing is where it should be. The first time Yuzu visited the apartment, he opened the silverware drawer in the kitchen to find a pair of shoes inside. They were good shoes. Special occasion shoes. Polished to a high shine. But why were they in the silverware drawer?
Yuzu figured that Javi must be missing actual silverware, so he bought him a package of knives and forks and spoons, plus chopsticks. Javi thanked him excitedly and gave him a big hug. Then he put the silverware away in the freezer.
Yuzu doesn’t know if Javi unpacked in a hurry and accidentally put the TV remote in the toothbrush mug and the cereal in the magazine rack. Or if it’s a cultural thing and all Spanish people file their pens and papers underneath the sofa. Or if his new best friend is, in fact, a maniac who will one day murder Yuzu. With a knife from his freezer.
Javi bustles past Yuzu and disappears into his bedroom. All Yuzu can hear of him is the sound of an American pop song being sung quietly off-key. Five minutes pass and the only change is a shift from Bruno Mars to Ke$ha. Gingerly, Yuzu levers himself up off the couch and approaches the half-open bedroom door.
“Javi...?”
When Yuzu nudges the door open with his foot, Javi stops singing and says, smiling, “Un momento! One minute!”
Yuzu nods and leans against the doorjamb, watching Javi.
Javi is Narnia-deep in his closet, rummaging past hangers full of clothes. (At least Javi’s clothes are where they’re supposed to be, Yuzu thinks with a wry smile.) Yuzu glances around the room and then averts his eyes quickly from the unmade bed. However, he’s not quick enough to avoid the mental image of a sleep-sated Javi rolling over in bed to reveal the corded muscles of his back. And it’s easy, so easy, to imagine himself lying beside Javi, pushing his fingers into the rumpled curls of Javi’s hair and—
“Found it!” Javi announces, pulling a garment bag from the closet.
Yuzu stares at him with glazed eyes, trying to refocus on what Javi is saying and doing. Javi unzips the garment bag and pulls out...
A fishing rod.
*
Yuzu and Javi sit on a bench, exhaling white puffs of breath into cold air. The Square’s three enormous arches cast long shadows across the slow stream of people that weave through the plaza. Gulls fuss and squall nearby, refusing to settle for more than a moment. Yuzu knows the feeling. Busy parts of Toronto still make him nervous. All around him, traffic noise mixes with rapid-fire English, and Yuzu feels the knot of anxiety in his chest tighten.
Beside him, Javi is relaxed. Yuzu remembers suddenly the last time they were here. December. When the whole place was lit up in blue and green and pink, and the water feature was iced over into a rink. A group of them, Javi and Yuzu included, went skating at Nathan Phillips Square. But no one was really interested in skating. The others talked and laughed and, when the soft lighting made them braver, held hands and kissed. Yuzu left the party early, blaming exhaustion, but it was only another excuse.
He doesn’t know why Javi has brought him here today. The day is cold and – without the pretty lights and ice rink – the Square is kind of ugly.
“Javi...” Yuzu says, trying to remember how to say, I want to go home.
Javi smiles and hands him the fishing rod. “Let’s fish,” he says, nodding.
Yuzu looks around him, just to make completely sure that they are still sitting in the middle of a concrete plaza, beside a decorative pool of water that’s no deeper than an egg cup and contains absolutely no fish whatsoever.
His confusion makes it out of his mouth as: “No... fish?”
“Sure there are!” Javi says with a grin. “Hundreds of fish! Just have to catch them.”
Javi takes the fishing rod back, flicks it a few times and casts a line into the shallow water. He closes his eyes for a moment, allowing the line to lift gently in the breeze. Then he opens his eyes and looks at Yuzu.
“This is what I do when I’m sad,” he says. “Que siente morriña. Homesick. When I’m homesick, I fish.” Javi hands the rod back to Yuzu. “Try it.”
Yuzu accepts the rod warily. Fishing. In Toronto. On concrete river banks in an inch of water. The idea is so ridiculous that he can’t help but smile. Maybe imaginary fishing as a cure for homesickness makes perfect sense for a man who keeps his shoes in his silverware drawer. Maybe, in Javi’s mind, it isn’t a drawer. It’s a gilt-lined shoe compartment of kings.
Javi’s imagination and enthusiasm are boundless. Yuzu still thinks Javi might be a little bit nuts, but he is finding it increasingly difficult to imagine his life without him.
“Close your eyes,” Javi says. “Pretend you’re in Japan. Fishing.”
Yuzu closes his eyes, but the second part of Javi’s instruction is a stretch. He’s surrounded by loud Canadians. He can hear a Carly Rae Jepson song playing nearby. The gulls squawk.
Beside him, Javi says, “My father took me fishing when I was small. The water was always dirty. Never any good fish to catch. But it was… perfecto. It felt… like home.”
Yuzu squeezes his eyes closed and concentrates. He imagines his father’s voice. He imagines the sharp scent of conifers. He imagines a warm breeze. He imagines he’s home. It works for perhaps 1/60th of a second, then it’s gone and he’s sitting in the middle of Toronto again. And the world is still wrong.
The problem is: he’s not even sure he’s homesick for Japan. Sendai used to be his home, unequivocally, and now it’s not. He feels like he leaves a part of himself in Toronto every time he flies to Japan. And then he leaves another part of himself in Sendai every time he flies back to Canada.
Every time he shuffles his life from one continent to another, he feels like he’s shedding a skin. He knows he’s becoming new. Different. He’s just not sure he has caught up to his new self yet.
He opens his eyes with a sigh and sets down the fishing rod.
“Sorry,” Yuzu says. “Not working.”
“No problem,” Javi says immediately. “I have many other ideas. There are many things that will make you feel better. Food! We will find food. We can eat fish instead of catch them. Then we will find a club. And we can dance. And you will not feel sad anymore—”
Yuzu leans over and kisses Javi.
The kiss is not at all how he imagined his first kiss with Javi would be. They are in public. It is cold. They are surrounded by Canadians. But Yuzu experiences a sensation like scales tilting inside of him. For just a moment, the feeling of wanting overpowers the fear.
Quickly, he pulls away again. It was a brief kiss, a split-second of cold lips meeting cold lips, but Yuzu heart beats like he’s drowning.
He half expects Javi to resume talking. A barrage of words (in three languages, punctuated by laughter) is what he has come to expect from Javi at all times. Now, however, Javi is silent. Yuzu feels his insides jolt: the fear comes roaring back.
“Sorry,” Yuzu mutters at last. It is one of the first words of English he ever learned, but he has never uttered it more miserably. “Sorry, sorry.”
“No digas lo siento,” Javi says in a rush.
Yuzu doesn’t have a chance to figure out a translation before Javi is kissing him.
Javi is kissing him.
His brain is scarcely able to react, but his body has no such problem. Javi’s mouth is warm as it opens against his own. He squeezes his eyes shut and returns the kiss. And he forgets. He forgets the cold. He forgets their surroundings. He could be Japan right now. He could be in Spain. He could be ten miles above the surface of the Earth. Just floating. And kissing Javi.
Maybe Yuzu is still catching up to his new self. Maybe he’s still figuring out where his home is. Maybe the world will still feel a little bit wrong from time to time. But he’s sure of one thing:
There has never been anything that has felt more right than kissing Javi.
*