Six months later

Tokyo was kind of everything I had hoped it would be when I had applied for the exchange last year.

I rarely had the chance to leave London growing up – outside of a holiday in the Maldives before my parents divorced that I was too young to remember, and one-off trips to France and Spain, I had never left the country. So, Japan was a whole new world, and the experience was incredible.

I was pretty lucky to meet some great people in the dorm I was staying at, all international students on exchange like I was, and we all banded together in a group to go around and try and experience as much as possible over the year we had here. Shopping in Shibuya, sightseeing in Asakusa, bar-crawling in Shinjuku and Kichijoji – we did it all.

I had an amazing time immersing myself in a completely different culture. The first few weeks were a whirlwind of course, especially because I had to get back into the university mindset, but even as the months went by there was always something occupying me and my friends. So much so, it was almost enough to make me completely forget about the shit that had happened with Charley.

Almost.

It would happen at the most random times – walking down the street and catching a glimpse of a stranger wearing a cropped pink t-shirt; the taste of wasabi at a sushi place, a reminder of when we’d gone to dinner for her seventeenth birthday; everyone singing Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s, the sound of the night I began to realize I was in love with her. And then, it would all come flooding back.

And yet … as the first semester was coming to a close, it really did feel like the feelings were ebbing away. Not gone, never that far … but slowly fading into the background. Which was as good as I could have hoped for, I guess. It helped that she hadn’t made any attempt to talk to me, just like how it was before I had left. And how it was when she had been the one away, at Stanford. It was even more barren this time, in fact; both our birthdays came and went – mine in November, hers in January – and not so much as a birthday cake gif was exchanged.

So, when my dad had messaged me to ask whether I could come home during the Spring break, I was less apprehensive than I would have expected. Still, I was having a great time in Japan and had even been on a semi-successful date not long before the end of the semester (more on that later). I wanted to maximize my time here … so we settled on two weeks back in London of my month-long break.

Enough time to relax, see my friends, have the obligatory catchups with Mum and Dad. But not enough time, hopefully, to get caught up in my Charley problem once again.

Because that had always gone so well before.

I was nervous, heading up to the front door with all my luggage; less so about whether Charley would be here – knowing her, knowing my luck, she would be, and even if not, it would only be a matter of time before we ran into each other.

No, I was more nervous about myself – I honestly had no idea how I would react when I saw her again.

I rang the doorbell, and it turned out as usual that my cause for concern was entirely valid. Charley was the one who opened the door. My heart skipped a beat. And that was the exact moment it was really driven home for me, before one of us had even said a word.

Six months wasn’t nearly enough time. I think I realized then that a lifetime wouldn’t even be enough.

We were absolutely not going to be two ‘normal’ stepsiblings ever again – if we ever even were to begin with. The feelings had built up for twelve years, and I’d fallen too deep last Summer. For me, it seemed like we were going to be doomed to this purgatory for the rest of our lives; too much baggage to be family, too afraid of the consequences to be together.

She smiled at me. “Hey.”

She had let her natural jet-black hair grow out, I assume dying the remaining blonde to match it. I briefly wondered why – for work? Had she just grown tired of the look? For a second, another idea flashed across my mind: that she’d done it because of me – a symbolic reminder that she wanted us to go back to the way we were before. As if I hadn’t been attracted to her with black hair long before the blonde came into the picture.

Other than that, though, she looked exactly the same as she had before I’d left. Just as excruciatingly, infuriatingly beautiful as ever.

“What are you doing here?” The question came out blunter than I had intended maybe, but once I’d said it, I didn’t really regret it.

“I … took a day off work,” she replied, in an instant visibly deflated by my greeting. “Mum told me you were coming back today.”

“Oh, okay.” I walked past her with my suitcase, began to climb the stairs to my room. I could feel Charley hesitating for a moment behind me before following me up, and I sighed inwardly.

“Long flight, huh?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I replied. “With that and the time difference I’m pretty tired. Probably gonna have a nap now.”

“You’re never gonna readjust if you sleep now,” she smiled gently. “You need to push through.”

“I’m not here for long.” I sighed and let my suitcase down on the floor, before collapsing on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Don’t really feel like readjusting,” I added.

I could feel Charley’s silent gaze, and I wondered if she had gleaned the deeper meaning in my words. Luckily, at that moment my stepmum burst in, saving both of us from any more awkward conversation.

“Luke! How was the flight? How was Tokyo?!”

As Mum bombarded me with questions for what seemed like hours, I did my best not to look over at Charley, still standing in the doorway of my room.

“Did you get a chance to go to that jazz club? From the game you were always going on about?” By this point, my stepmum was barely even waiting to hear my answers before launching into the next question.

“Yeah, I…” I suddenly trailed off, distracted by Charley’s quiet footsteps as she left.

I stared at the place she’d just been, Mum’s onslaught fading into the background as I pondered what was to come. I felt a strange mix of relief and guilt about how I’d been successful in giving her the cold shoulder this time. And yet, I didn’t have high hopes that Charley’s retreat meant that she had given up on trying to maneuver our relationship into the ideal she’d planned for all those years ago.

Clearly sensing that I’d stopped listening, my stepmum followed my line of sight and realized what was up.

“Oh. She left,” she sighed. “Guess it was too optimistic of me to believe six months apart could solve whatever dumb argument you two had. You wanna finally tell me what the hell happened?”

I winced. I really did feel bad about giving her absolutely nothing, because it was obvious all she wanted was for her kids to get along. But on the other hand, I was pretty sure it was in her best interest not to clue her in to what me and Charley had going on.

“Nothing, Mum. Really.”

She stared at me for a few long moments, her expression eventually devolving into that look of pure disappointment and disdain that only a mother with grownup kids can produce. “Grown-ass adults,” she grumbled under her breath as she stomped out my room. “Where did I go wrong with them?”

I slumped back onto my bed and closed my eyes, breathing out hard. I actually hadn’t been lying about the jetlag, but at the same time I wasn’t so sure the flight was the reason I already felt so drained.

Ah, this is gonna be a long two weeks.