way Eric was with the poor woman...it nearly brought a lump to Michi’s throat. This was a man who was born to be a doctor. A man who shouldn’t have given it up. And he was Riku’s father, she thought as a swell of pride overtook her. “Paramedics are on their way in,” she said, glancing out the window, not so much to watch for the paramedics as to pull herself together.
Immediately, the onlookers in the café began to move tables and chairs back and push the display shelf of coffees and mugs for sale to the wall to make room for the two paramedics, their equipment and their stretcher. “Her vitals are stabilizing,” Eric said. “So now it’s more about her being frightened than anything else.”
The woman looked up at him again and nodded, and Michi was still amazed by the way not only the woman but everyone in the room responded to him. Even in the middle of a medical crisis his voice was so calm, so reassuring she was impressed by how much she remembered the detail of it. It was the same deep, convincing undertone that had seduced her. The same richness that had enticed her into his bed. Yet now she could hear the edge, the command. And she could see the way people were responding.
“I was actually thinking about you earlier,” Eric said.
There hadn’t been a day gone by since he’d left her that she hadn’t thought about him. She’d sculpted the perfect words to say when she did finally catch up to him. Practiced them. Edited. Practiced. Edited. And now that the moment had arrived, all she could think to say was, “How have you been?” Stupid. Stupid. And she didn’t hear his answer between the noise of people still moving tables back and the mad flurry of the pounding feet of people trying to get out of the way.
“She’s doing better,” Michi said, as Eric bent down again, but this time not as keen to watch the patient as he was to look at her. “Respirations still shallow and fast, but nothing dangerous.”
Ruth, the choking victim, smiled at Eric like he was the only one in the room as the paramedics took quick vital signs, then lifted her onto the stretcher. At that point, Eric took her hand and went with them to the ambulance, and it was only when they had arranged her in the back and were getting ready to shut the door that he let go. Once he did, he slapped the door to indicate everything was good, and the ambulance siren came on, then the vehicle nosed its way into bumper-to-bumper New York traffic.
“She really trusted you,” Michi said, standing behind him.
“I think if you’re in a life or death situation and there’s somebody there to help you, you naturally trust them. Haven’t been in one myself, but it makes sense.”
“How have you been, Eric?” she asked again as they walked back over to the sidewalk.
“Busy. New responsibilities, a new job, a new life.”
“Medicine’s loss,” she said, clearly uneasy. This wasn’t the right place to tell him about Riku, neither was it the right time. But it was circling around her now, the reality of what she was about to face. “My, um...aunt mentioned you’d left surgery to take over your family business.”
“Duty called,” he said. “But that’s life, right? Things happening when you least expect it. Like you. I thought I saw you outside my building a while ago,” he said, following her back through the congestion of people and displaced tables and chairs in the café. “Standing on the sidewalk.”
“I was taking a walk earlier, so you might have.” Since he wasn’t mentioning the baby she’d been carrying, she assumed he hadn’t seen Riku. “I was on my way to order coffee and a scone,” she answered, then laughed. “Which is pretty obvious since we met in a shop where they sell coffee and scones.”
“Good coffee, great scones. So, can I get you something? The blueberry scones are the best, in my opinion.”
Blueberry. That caused her to laugh. Today she must have simply reminded everybody of a blueberry, and that one little scone held so many ramifications, her stomach turned over and all she wanted was to turn around and get out of there, blueberry scone or not. “After what just happened, I’m out of the mood,” she said.
“Well, I’ve got a secretary back in the office who’s expecting delivery service, even though she’ll deny it, so...” He stepped on ahead to the counter, placed his order, then turned back to Michi, who’d taken several steps toward the door. “Not that it’s any of my business but are you in New York for any reason in particular?”
To find him? No. To find herself, perhaps. Mostly, though, for Riku. “Family,” she said. “My uncle and his partner are here, and...” She shrugged as she took another couple of steps backward toward the door. Opened it, then hesitated for a moment. “Look, I need to get going. They’re expecting me.”
“I wish I’d known you were coming. Maybe we could have set aside an evening...”
“Maybe,” she said on a wistful sigh as she stepped out onto the sidewalk.
“Is it too late for that? Since I’m the boss I can juggle my schedule. Maybe something tonight? Dinner?”
That could be the perfect time and place to tell him everything. Which was why she was hesitating. Her fear of what she had to do was finally turning into her reality. “It’s not like we started anything real that night. Then the way you left me... I mean, I didn’t have expectations. But when you do what we did, I should think there’d be a civil goodbye at the end of it.” Except failed contraception had turned that into an impossibility because she had Riku now. And no regrets, except her actions.
But if she did decide to tell Eric, would he have regrets? Well, now wasn’t the time to tell him, and now wasn’t the time to discover the answer to her question. Maybe that angel had dropped down when she wasn’t looking and left her with enough of a solution to get her by for a little while. But only for a little while as she still felt unsettled. “Seven,” she finally said. “At my uncle’s restaurant.” A comfort zone she desperately needed now.
“Which is?”
“Tanoshī Shō, if you don’t mind eating Japanese food. It’s small, quiet, and the chef...they don’t come any better than Takumi. But if you’d prefer a steak, or something Italian...”
“What I’d prefer is an hour or two of your time, Michi. That morning when I left...it never felt resolved. You know, lacking the whole closure thing people talk about today.”
“Waking up alone in bed is closure enough,” she said, even though she felt the same way he did.
“Then bear with me. There are some things I need to tell you, for my sake.”
“You left me,” she said, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “We weren’t...aren’t...anything, and we knew what we were about, so what happened happened.”
“I had a good reason.”
“And the author Jean Renoir once said, ‘The truly terrible thing is that everybody has their reasons.’” She didn’t want to be obstinate, didn’t want to sound so harsh or rejecting since she too had her reasons. But this was fear bubbling up in her. Pure, raw fear. Everything that had scared her these past nearly three years was finally confronting her, and she had to get it right or too many people would be hurt.
“Look, I don’t want to get into this here. I’ve got a meeting in a few minutes so tonight...”
Michi swallowed hard, then nodded. “Tonight,” she repeated, then managed a smile. “But only if you try my uncle’s peanut amanattō.”
“I don’t believe I know that one,” Eric replied.
“He doesn’t make it for the general public. Mostly for his family.” And in a way Eric was family. “Here, in America, his desserts are a little more Western, but back home this was always a real treat. In fact, there’s a version without the peanuts that Riku loves...” She caught herself before she said anything else. This wasn’t the way to tell him. Not here. Not now. Not a casual mention in a going-nowhere