Waiting for Sunday

chapter 18 - the other side of this

Somehow, this keeps happening to her. Mira's life has always been a series of plans and strategies and well thought-out scenarios, and yet she keeps ending up somewhere extraneous, somewhere she would never have placed herself. It also always seems to involve Nao Kamiya.

She sits across from him in a booth in a narrow, greasy diner that smells of bacon and pepper and strong coffee, the seat underneath her cushioned and yet hard as stone. It is the sort of place where the overhead lights are the gaudy, artificial yellow of a butter substitute, and all the waitresses have tall hair and little aprons and call you things like doll and darlin'. It is not the sort of place for people like Mira.

Nao, at least, seems at home—the sleeves of his artfully stained sweatshirt bunched up to his elbows as he works on the absolute mountain of hash browns on his plate. Mira slowly sips coffee from a fat white mug, just watching him. The spontaneity of this situation has given her a stomach ache that has ruined any stronger appetite.

Mira sighs and lets her eyes trail out the window. The sun has started to sink, the sky a dim ugly gray over the countryside. She rarely comes out here, and she rarely stays this long.

"Are you busy?" Nao asks, in response to her sigh. She's struck once again by his accent, the longer vowels of it, the softened edges: busy pronounced like it has a z in it rather than an s.

"I'm always busy," Mira says, stirring her coffee until a miniature whirlpool forms and swirls her reflection away. "That's my life."

"Then why are you here?"

"You offered."

He gives her a knowing smirk, and a dimple forms in his cheek Mira didn't notice before. "Exactly. It was an offer. You didn't have to say yes."

Mira's been caught. She doesn't squirm; instead, she forces herself to meet his eyes, her gaze even. "My aunt's never talked about you," she says. "If you're so friendly with her, how come that's the case?"

Nao's smirk softens, just enough for her to notice what seems like a natural ruefulness to his mouth—like the past is a part of him, an extra organ beneath his skin. "It's complicated. Harriet knew my mom better than she knows me, and even then...God. It's just complicated."

"I can handle complicated."

He scoffs like she's made a bad joke of some kind, and leans back against the booth, arms folding over his chest. "You know, it's funny. I ain't never heard Harriet mention a niece, neither."

Mira rolls her eyes. She's regretting agreeing to this more and more with every passing second. Harriet is her mother's ill-mannered and reclusive older sister who ran away from home when she was seventeen and never came back. Of course she wouldn't have mentioned her. Mira was seventeen herself when she even found out Harriet existed."Family is—"

"Complicated?"

"My family's all Catholic, Nao," Mira snaps. "We don't believe in this witchcraft stuff. It's outrageous."

Now he laughs like she's told a hilarious joke of some kind. He douses his hash browns in more ketchup and pokes at them with his fork. "Right."

"I'm just saying," Mira insists, unnerved by his nonchalance, the ease with which he brushes her off. "It wouldn't surprise me if that's why she doesn't want to get all that close to you."

"If none of it's real anyway, what's the harm?" Nao says. He hesitates before lowering his fork soundlessly, his focus shifting to Mira, and Mira alone. "If I'm just some hick halfway to a psychotic break who's convinced himself magic is real instead of facing the actual ugly shit in the world—God, anything but that, am I right?—then what would be the point of even worrying about it? Why guard yourself against something that ain't a threat in the first place?"