Chapter 4: The Taste of What Could Have Been
The rain whispered against the window, a constant, shushing sound. Emily’s fingers, resting lightly on his knuckles, were the only points of warmth in the room. Her touch was a question. Her words hung in the air between them, delicate and devastating.
‘Let me stay tonight.’
Jay stared at her hand on his, at the pale skin, the simple silver band on her finger catching the low light. That band was a lock, a seal, a fact. He felt the weight of every unsaid thing press down on his lungs. The confession she’d delivered by the river had dismantled his world, but this request was about building something new, however fragile, from the wreckage. It was an act of defiance.
He didn’t trust himself to speak. He turned his hand over, palm up, and her fingers slipped between his. He laced them together, the fit so familiar it was a physical ache. He looked from their joined hands to her face. Her eyes were wide, glistening, stripped bare of any pretense. She was waiting.
“All these years,” he began, his voice a rough scrape in the quiet room. “I thought it was my fault.”
Her brow furrowed slightly. “What was?”
“Everything.” The word was too big. He tried again. “That night. The party. You were drunk. I told you I’d take you home.” The memory was a scar, thin and white and painful to the touch. “I saw you. You were leaning against the doorframe, your eyes were already closed. I started towards you.”
He could see it, the blur of colored lights, the thumping bass, the smell of spilled beer and sweat. Her, smiling and slumping. Him, pushing through the crowd.
“Then Mark Grabowski grabbed my shoulder. He wanted to talk about the econ final. It was loud. I shouted I’d be right back. I turned…” He paused, the image sharpening. “And you were gone. David had his arm around you. He was guiding you towards the door. I saw the back of your head. Your hair. And then you were just… out the door.”
He looked at her, needing her to see the memory with him. “I stood there for a full minute, maybe more. I was going to follow. I told myself I would. But I was angry. At Mark. At the noise. At myself for getting distracted. Mostly, I was angry at David. He’d been looking at you all night. I’d seen it. That possessive look he got. And he just… took you. He saw his chance and he took you from me.”
The last words came out harsh, dripping with a bitterness he’d nursed for nearly a decade. Emily’s hand tightened around his.
“I went outside,” Jay continued, the story forcing its way out now. “The lot was empty. Your car was gone. His was gone. I stood there in the cold and I just knew. I felt it in my guts. Something was done. Something had been decided.” He let out a shaky breath. “A month later, David called. He said you two were getting married. He said you were pregnant. He sounded fucking triumphant.”
Emily flinched. Jay didn’t stop.
“I congratulated him. I think I said ‘that’s great’ or some shit. I hung up. And that was it. I cut you both off. Not because I hated you, Em. Because I couldn’t fucking breathe.” His eyes burned, dry and hot. “Every time I thought of you, it was like a knife in my chest. David, with his hands on you. David, giving you a child. David, living the life I was supposed to have. It was a movie playing on a loop in my head, and I was just a ghost watching it. So I ghosted you for real.”
He pulled his hand from hers to run it through his hair, a gesture of pure agitation. “I carved out that night, that single moment I looked away, and I made it the reason for everything. My punishment. My misery. My fucking emptiness. I filled my life with nothing because it was easier than filling it with the memory of you.” He finally looked at her, his gaze fierce and broken. “And now you just… reappear. You walk into a burnt room and tell me the marriage isn’t real.”
He stood up abruptly, unable to sit still. He paced the short length of the room, his silhouette passing through the slivers of neon light from the window. “You have no idea what that does to me. Nine years. Nine fucking years of carrying that guilt, that anger. And it was for nothing. It was built on a lie I told myself because the truth was too painful.”
“What truth?” Her voice was small from the floor.
He stopped, facing her. “That you chose him.” The words hung there, cruel and blunt. “Even if it was a mistake, even if you were scared, even if you were forced… you chose. You said yes. You walked down that aisle. You went home with him that night.” His voice cracked. “And I have to live with the fact that I let you.”
Silence flooded the room, thick and suffocating. The only sound was the relentless rain.
Then Emily moved. She unfolded herself from the floor and stood. She crossed the space between them, her steps soundless. She didn’t touch him. She just stood before him, her face tilted up, washed in the faint, bleary light.
“I didn’t choose,” she whispered. “I surrendered. There’s a difference.”
She reached up and placed her hands on either side of his face. Her palms were cool, her touch impossibly gentle. “You carrying that guilt… it’s the same as me carrying this ring. It’s a weight we put on ourselves because the world was too heavy to hold.” Her thumbs stroked his cheekbones. “I can’t give you those years back, Jay. But I’m here now. In your hollow apartment. In the middle of the night. Asking to stay.”
Her eyes searched his. “Don’t make me go back to that quiet house. Don’t make me lie next to him tonight. Please.”
Something shattered inside him. A dam of practiced control, of bitter solitude, of years and years of saying no to every good and dangerous thing. It gave way all at once.
He covered her hands with his, holding them to his face. Then he leaned down and kissed her.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was a collision. It was nine years of longing and regret and white-hot anger funneled into the meeting of their mouths. He kissed her like he was claiming something that had been stolen, like he was devouring the space between past and present. She gasped into his mouth, a sharp, surprised sound, and then she kissed him back with equal ferocity.
Her hands slid from his face into his hair, fisting in the dark strands, pulling him closer. He wrapped his arms around her waist, lifting her slightly off the ground, crushing her body against his. The taste of her—tea and salt and her—was an intoxicant. He walked her backward until her shoulders met the wall beside the window. The rain-streaked glass was cool against his knuckles as he braced his hand beside her head.
He broke the kiss, both of them breathing in ragged, shuddering gasps. Their foreheads pressed together.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispered, his voice guttural.
“No,” she breathed, her eyes black in the dim light. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
That was all the permission he needed. He claimed her mouth again, his tongue sliding against hers, the kiss turning deep and filthy. His hands moved over her, learning the new geography of her body. He cupped her breast through her blouse, his thumb finding her nipple, hard and eager. She arched into his touch, a low moan vibrating in her throat.
He fumbled with the buttons of her blouse, his fingers clumsy with urgency. She helped him, her own hands pushing his jacket from his shoulders. Fabric rustled and fell to the floor. Her blouse opened, revealing a simple lace bra. He dipped his head, his mouth finding the swell of her breast above the cup, his teeth grazing her skin. She cried out, her fingers tangling in his hair.
“Bed,” she gasped. “Now.”
He led her the few steps to his narrow bed, a futon on a low frame. They fell onto it together, a tangle of limbs and desperate hands. He peeled her blouse and bra away, finally seeing her, all of her, in the watery light from the window. She was more beautiful than his memory, curves softer, skin like pearl. He worshiped her with his mouth and hands, tracing the lines of her body as if memorizing a map he’d been lost without.
She pushed at his shirt, her nails scraping his chest. He tore it over his head. Then her hands were on his belt buckle, yanking it open. Her own pants and underwear were shoved down her legs, kicked away into the darkness. There was no art to it, no slow seduction. This was a raw and hungry reclaiming.
He hovered over her, his body caged between her thighs. He was painfully hard. He looked down at her, her hair fanned out on his pillow, her lips swollen from his kisses, her eyes wide and wanting.
“Are you sure?” he asked again, the last fragment of his conscience.
In answer, she reached between them, her hand wrapping around his cock. Her touch was electric, shocking a sharp hiss from his lips. She guided him to her entrance, slick and hot and ready for him.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” she said, and pulled him down into her.
He sank into her in one deep, relentless stroke. She was so tight, so wet, so perfectly her. She cried out, a sound of pure relief, her back arching off the bed. He stilled, buried to the hilt, overwhelmed by the feeling of being inside her after a lifetime of imagining it. The reality was a thousand times more potent.
Then she moved her hips, a sharp, demanding roll. “Jay,” she pleaded, her voice thick with need. “Please. Move.”
He began to thrust. Slowly at first, a grinding, deep rhythm that made her gasp with each penetration. He watched her face, her eyes clenched shut, her mouth open. He kissed her again, swallowing her moans. The feel of her around him, beneath him, was obliterating every other thought. There was only this: the slap of skin, the creak of the bedframe, her ragged pleas in his ear.
He shifted, hooking her leg over his arm, changing the angle. The next thrust made her scream, her eyes flying open. “Right there,” she sobbed. “Oh god, right there.”
He hammered into that spot, his own control fraying. The room filled with the sounds of their sex: the wet, rhythmic slap of their joining, her high, desperate whimpers, his own guttural groans. It was obscene. It was beautiful. It was everything.
Her nails dug into his back, scoring him. “I’m gonna come,” she choked out. “Don’t stop. Fuck, don’t stop.”
He drove into her harder, faster, his vision blurring at the edges. He felt her inner muscles begin to clench around him, a fluttering, irresistible pulse. Her climax hit her like a quake, her body seizing under his, a broken, continuous cry tearing from her throat. The violent squeezing of her around his cock shattered his own restraint.
With a final, deep plunge, he came, his release pumping into her in hot, urgent waves. He collapsed onto her, his full weight pressing her into the mattress, his face buried in the sweat-damp curve of her neck. His entire body trembled with the force of it.
They lay like that for a long time, panting, slick with sweat, limbs intertwined. The storm of passion ebbed, leaving behind a profound, aching quiet. The rain still fell outside.
Eventually, he shifted his weight to the side, pulling her with him so they lay facing each other. He could still feel her heart pounding against his chest. Her eyes were closed, long dark lashes fanned on her cheeks.
He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. Her eyes opened. They held a soft, dazed warmth he hadn’t seen since college.
“So,” she whispered, a ghost of a smile on her lips. “I’m staying.”
He pulled the thin blanket over their cooling bodies. “Yeah,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You’re staying.”
She nestled into him, her head on his chest. His arm tightened around her. In the dark, with her scent on his skin and her warmth pressed against him, the ghost of his guilt and anger finally began to loosen its grip. It wasn’t gone. But for now, it was quiet. For now, there was only the sound of the rain, and the steady, living rhythm of her breath.
For now, there was only the sound of the rain, and the steady, living rhythm of her breath. Jay stared at the ceiling, its cracks mapped in the grey light leaking through the curtain. Her leg was hooked over his, a warm, heavy weight. The scent of sex and her perfume and old sheets was a new reality he didn’t want to leave.
“I named my sourdough starter Bubbles,” he said into the quiet.
She made a small, muffled sound against his shoulder. “You already told me that, you dork.” She shifted, propping her head on her hand to look at him. Her smile was a sleepy, sated curve. “Master baker.”
“She was very temperamental.” He traced a line from her shoulder to her wrist, following a faint, almost invisible scar. “Died when I went to Osaka for a week. Forgot to put her in the fridge.”
“Murderer.”
“Accidental fungalcide,” he corrected. His thumb brushed her inner wrist, feeling her pulse. “I never tried again. Seemed like a bad omen.”
Her smile faded, but her eyes stayed soft. She watched his fingers on her skin. “We would have had a dog,” she said, her voice quiet. “If.”
He stilled his hand. “If?”
“If you’d kissed me that night in your dorm after the cinema. If I hadn’t gotten so scared of wrecking our friendship. If you’d just said something.” She looked up at him. “We’d have a shiba inu. Named something stupid like Waffles.”
The simplicity of the fantasy was a punch to his sternum. A dog named Waffles. “I was going to,” he admitted. “That night. I had a whole speech planned in my head. About how your laugh made my chest feel weird. How I’d mapped out the quickest route to your bio lecture just to accidentally bump into you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You started talking about David’s new car.” He let out a breath. “You got so animated. Your eyes lit up. I figured you were already gone.”
She closed her eyes, a pained reflex. “I was nervous. I talked about stupid things when I was nervous.” She opened them again. “So. Shiba inu. Waffles. Probably a lot of plants I’d forget to water. You’d remind me.”
“We’d live somewhere with big windows,” he said, the vision forming like a slow-developing photograph. “Lots of light. Not this… box.”
“You’d hate my throw pillows.”
“I’d tolerate them.” He pulled her closer, her skin warm against his. “You’d complain about my organized spice rack.”
“Alphabetized?”
“By region of origin.”
She chuckled, the vibration traveling through his ribs. It was a delicate, precious sound. They were building a phantom life in the dark, board by board. The silence that followed was comfortable, filled with the phantom barking of a small, fake-named dog.
“Would we be married?” he asked, the question slipping out before he could vet it.
She considered it, her finger drawing circles on his chest. “Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe we’d just be… this. For years. Together because we wanted to be, not because a piece of paper said so.” She looked up at him. “Would you have wanted kids?”
The air in the room changed. It grew still and thin, as if all the oxygen had been suddenly siphoned out. He felt her body tense against his, the subtle retreat.
He chose his words with infinite care. “I never really thought about it. Not in concrete terms. It was always a ‘someday, maybe’ thing floating out in the future.” He paused. “With you? I think I would have thought about it a lot.”
Emily was silent. Her finger stopped its circling. She stared at a point on the wall, her expression flattening into something hollow and distant. The playful fantasy had evaporated, leaving behind the cold, hard substructure of her reality.
“I lost a baby boy,” she said, her voice devoid of all texture. “At twenty-eight weeks.”
He held his breath. He knew this fact, intellectually, from her confession by the river. But here, in the intimate dark of his bed, it was a different kind of knowing.
“I know I’d never met him,” she continued, the words measured and precise, as if walking across a frozen pond. “But losing him was… I wanted to die. It wasn’t just a pregnancy. It was my son.” She swallowed, the sound audible in the quiet. “Sure, it was David’s. Biologically. But there’s something maternal and protective that develops when a woman is carrying her child. A knowledge. He was mine.”
A single tear tracked from the corner of her eye, disappearing into her hairline on the pillow. She didn’t wipe it away.
“And I failed to protect my child.”
The sentence hung in the air, final and devastating. Jay’s arms tightened around her instinctively, as if he could shield her from the memory. He had no words. There were no words. ‘I’m sorry’ was a pebble thrown into a canyon.
He pressed his lips to her temple, a soft, lingering touch. He just held her, letting the weight of her confession settle between them. Her body was rigid against his, armored against a grief so profound it had reshaped her bones.
After a long time, her breathing evened out. The tension in her shoulders softened a fraction. She’d given the pain a shape and a name in the dark, and now it sat with them, a third presence in the narrow bed.
“I think,” she whispered, her voice rough with spent emotion, “if we’d had a child… I would have been terrified every single day. That I would fail again.”
“You wouldn’t have been alone,” he said, the promise fierce and immediate in his throat.
She turned her face into his neck, her breath hot against his skin. She didn’t reply. She didn’t have to. The ghosts of their what-ifs, the phantom child, the unnamed dog, all receded, leaving only the tangible truth of their intertwined bodies in the quiet apartment. The rain had lessened to a fine, whispering mist against the glass.
Slowly, her breathing deepened into the rhythms of sleep. He stayed awake, staring into the darkness, one hand slowly stroking her bare arm. The maternal protectiveness she described—he felt a stark, inverse version of it now. A fierce, chaotic urge to guard her brittle sleep, to stand between her and the world that had asked so much and given so little.
He watched the faint neon sign from the pachinko parlor across the alley flash its pointless, cheerful light onto his ceiling. Red, then blue, then green. It painted her sleeping face in fleeting, unnatural colors. His chest ached with a fullness that was almost pain.
Downstairs, a garbage truck beeped, its hydraulics hissing in the predawn gloom. The city was waking up. Their night, their fragile cocoon of confession and skin, was ending.
Emily stirred, mumbling something incoherent into his shoulder. Her hand, which had been resting on his chest, curled into a loose fist. She was here, solid and real and heartbreakingly complicated in his arms. The fantasy of Waffles the shiba inu and alphabetized spices dissolved like smoke.
All that remained was her, and the pressing, impossible question of what happened when the sun rose.