The Winter Project

30. Stephanie

As she woke, she felt warmth. She felt a warm body pressed against her and all of a sudden she was aware that she was in a hotel room that smelt as familiar as if it were her own bedroom. Not her childhood bedroom that she loathed so deeply, but her bedroom that she had shared with Minoru. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she could see one of his shoes lying on the ground next to the bed. She was ecstatic, but could barely remember a thing.

She had a habit of getting blackout drunk a lot of the time. For Stephanie, there was really no such thing as having a few drinks and calling it a night. She didn't exactly know where her limit was, but she always seemed to surpass it no matter how hard she tried to stay sober. Before Minoru had turned up at the bar, she was so nervous that she had no choice but to consume as much beer as her body could handle. Now she could only remember brief flashes of their conversation from the night before. She assumed that everything had gone according to her plan. She felt his arm wrap around her torso and allowed herself to fall back to sleep in complete bliss.

When she woke again, the experience was not as pleasant. The bed was no longer warm and the scent of Minoru was weaker. She sat upright and looked around to find that she was alone. As she got out of bed she noted that she was still wearing her top and jeans from the night before. She rushed to the bathroom and was unable to even lift the toilet seat before vomiting right on top of the once pristine porcelain. Begrudgingly she cleaned it up, desperate to save face for when Minoru returned. Just as she had finished and was cleaning her teeth, she heard the door open and close.

"Hey," Minoru said as he placed one coffee on the table and took the other with him as he moved to the bed to sit down.

"Hi," she replied, smiling at how perfect it was to be there with him, just as she had imagined it when she had been playing this moment in her head on the plane to Tokyo.

"I spoke to Hitoshi this morning," Minoru continued. "Turns out you're right. He's having a baby."

"See!" she practically shouted without intending to as she walked over to the bed and sat down. She climbed across it to sit next to him and observed his body stiffen. "I wasn't lying, Min. Somebody had to tell you in person and so I came here." She rubbed his back as if she was trying to comfort him, but he stood up almost immediately and walked back over to the table and leaned against it, coffee in hand.

"I still don't understand why you're here." He looked impatient. Stephanie knew all of Minoru's facial expressions and how to best approach each one, and so she was prepared on how to handle him but she was still full of fear of rejection, and it was throwing her off her game. "Last night you told me about Hitoshi, then you asked me if you could come to my room and fuck me, and then you came in here and cried relentlessly for a solid hour about how you wanted us to buy a house in a village."

It dawned on Stephanie suddenly that she and Minoru had not had sex the night before. It also dawned on her that she may have slept in his bed and he may have cuddled up to her in the morning, but that Minoru was notorious for doing that to everyone he slept beside. Several of his friends made jokes about how Minoru liked to be the big spoon any time one of them shared a bed with him after a night out.

"Steph," he sighed, his visible impatience turning to a look of frustration. "You and I broke up. We broke up for a good reason. I don't understand why you are here." His expression was now one that she did not recognise and she feared it was one he had never had to use on her before: Anger.

"Because I love you," she said firmly. She stood up and walked over to him and faced him directly, fed up with all of the crying she had done over a man who was too blind to see how perfect they were together. "Because yes, I don't like it here, and yes I don't like travelling. I don't want to live in a city and hang out with your friends, but I love you. I love every single thing about you and if I had to choose between never seeing you again, or spending time with you here then I choose here. Let's fucking live here! Let's live anywhere. I'll do whatever you want me to do. I can't live my life without you, Minoru."

She was shaking with fear, but deep in her heart she knew the rejection was inevitable. She could not see a single trace of love for her shining through his eyes.

"You don't make any sense," Minoru replied. "You love every single thing about me, and yet you don't love the idea of travelling with me, and you hate all of the things that I love. That alone wouldn't be enough to stop a couple from being in love and having a relationship, but I hate all of the things that you want from our relationship. I don't want to live in a big semi-detached house with a huge garden for our kids to play in. I don't want to move out of London. I don't want to be with you because I don't love you, and maybe you deserve to be with somebody who truly can reciprocate your feelings. But do you have any idea how fucking weird it is that you have followed me here?"

She had every fucking idea, and she felt ashamed. She sat back down on the bed and talked him through every single event that had happened to her since they had broken up. She confided in him about her self-harming and her fear of being alone. She told him about how she was afraid she would go back to having mindless sex with an endless stream of strangers to validate her self-worth. She cried a lot, and yet they both managed to laugh a lot in between as he offered comedic responses to her serious questions and stories, just like he always had done in the past to cheer her up when she was feeling low. They reminisced and they talked about their futures as separate people living separate lives. He promised to always be her friend, and as much as she tried, she couldn't promise not to love him anymore.

Her flight home was the following morning, and so Minoru agreed to let her stay with him in the hotel for one more night. He spent the day exploring the city alone while Stephanie stayed in the hotel and sobbed. Their conversation was therapeutic, but it didn't heal the gaping hole in her heart that Minoru was going to leave. That night, Minoru snuck into the hotel room late at night and climbed under the covers, and Stephanie cried silently into her pillow knowing that it was the last night she would ever lay by his side. When he was half asleep, he pulled her close to him and she lay on his bare chest. He wiped away her tears until he was truly asleep and she was unable to cry any more. She knew that in the morning she would have to wake up, tear herself away from him and say goodbye to a fantasy she had been living in for years, and the night was going by so quickly even though she forced herself to stay awake and savour every minute of it.