When You Were Here by Daisy Whitney

Author:Daisy Whitney
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316209748
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2013-04-18T16:00:00+00:00

I catch the first train to Kyoto in the morning. It’s Saturday now, and the train is filled with families, with fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, and all I can think is this might have been the very train my father took on his last trip.

The same train, the same car, maybe even the same seat.

I switch to an empty seat across the aisle, just in case. I push my earbuds into my ears and zone out to music, letting the songs drown me for a while. I swipe my finger across my phone to switch to a new band, and like someone just jumped out of the closet to shout “Surprise!” there’s a text from Holland staring up at me. The first time I’ve heard from her since I kicked her out of my house nearly a week ago.

How is Tokyo? We miss you here.

Even as I think about my family, about the way we all splintered, Holland is still the real shard in my hand, and I can’t bring myself to take it out. I want to shut her out. I want to find the strength to ignore her forever and just let go of the piece of my wasted, ragged, worn-out heart that she irretrievably owns. But my instinct to reach out to her, to talk to her, to hold her tight, is too strong. It overpowers any ability I have to save myself.

As we wind south through Japan to the city where my sister waits for me, I give in. I’m on a train now to Kyoto.

Seconds later she writes: I love trains. They are so…

I know what she wants to say. They are so romantic. Trains make you think of movies and novels and rain. Trains are the last few hours before you’re ripped from the one you love. Trains are all the ways you miss each other—wrong train, wrong tracks, wrong time.

I know what you mean. I send before I think about it, before I contemplate the sheer stupidity of letting her back in with a bit of banter, because her words on my screen are a purr, sexy and inviting.

The towns speeding past the windows…

Why am I doing this? Because it feels so good to talk like we used to, even though I know this is just a shadow of what we had. But I chase it anyway. The rattling of the cars on the tracks…

I close my eyes and imagine everyone on this train has disappeared and it’s just Holland and me. We ride the train as far as it goes, into the night, an endless night with her.

Another text comes in from her. Can I call you later? I want to talk to you.

My phone is a pill, it’s a sweet, seductive pill that’ll trick me into thinking she’s what I need, when she can’t possibly be what I need. I stuff the phone into the bottom of my backpack.

A red sign flashes above the train doors. First, Japanese writing I can’t read.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.