My mind in a vice grip
Your legs still wrapped around my head
In that hotel suite
Cigarette ashes on my bed
They stain the sheets - I see you nude, dancing around my room
As if you ain’t a thousand miles back home
But it’s cool I’ll probably see you soon
I can’t go to that thrift store
Without smelling sex in the dressing room
Can’t hear my favorite film score
Without sweet nothings played on loop
It’s kind of rude, won’t let me loose
As if you weren’t a thousand miles back home
But it’s cool I’ll probably see you soon
I can still feel you kiss me
I thought I was ready
to see you off on that flight
I said goodbye - but as the clock, it ticks on by
I realize I’m still holding you close
As if you ain’t a thousand miles back home
But least we got telephones
Whoever said “out of sight, out of mind”
Fucking lied
‘Cause you’re not by, by my side
Still keep me up at night
I can still feel you kiss me
-Holywatr, “Without U”
—
It’s painful, honestly, the way she does it.
She steps into the cafe like she owns it, despite the oversized hoodie and ridiculously short denim shorts that looked worn out and threadbare but are probably designer and worth more than what you make in a month. The cap on her head, the large sunglasses, and the mask cover her - because without them someone might recognize her face as one that’s been on a million screens, a thousand advertisements, all over the world.
She looks, almost, like she doesn’t care. She looks like any other young woman grabbing an overpriced, oversweetened dose of caffeine that she’ll probably snap a picture of for her Instagram story before leaving half-finished on a sidewalk somewhere. She reaches the counter and mutters an order to a barista that doesn’t deign to even look up from the tablet he punches her order into.
Every movement she makes is painful to you. Her nonchalance - her indifference - stings. It’s a sharp spike poised above your ribs, giving you tiny little jabs of bright pain.
She steps aside from the register and saunters to the waiting area. A hand slips into her oversized tote - which, like the rest of her attire, hid a ludicrous price tag beneath its ragged exterior - to produce a phone that she idly scrolls as she waits.
It’s then that she sees you.
Dark glasses turn. The mask hides her expression. You imagine it’s hiding a regretful sigh, or one of disgust at something unpleasant that she’ll have to take care of - like a full trash can that needs to be emptied.
The barista calls her name - not her real one, not here, out in public - and she takes the plastic caffeine container, loaded with an obscene amount of ice and whipped cream and those stupid fucking chocolate sprinkles she loves so much. She walks over to the corner booth where you’re sitting, sits across from you.
The mask drops. The glasses come off.
Minatozaki Sana was many things. Idol, model.
Today she is just a young woman throwing away a toy she’d grown tired of.
—
“You look like you’re doing well,” she says, flatly. Her eyes, often so full of mirth and mischief and something she wanted people to interpret as joy - they look dull and uninterested today, as though she’d had to force herself to be here, to see you.
You don’t know what to say. What could you say? This was one of the most popular woman on earth, one of the most gorgeous, and you’d spent the last few years catering to her every whim. You’d seen her at her highest, supported you through her lowest, fucked her throughout. Those lips had wrapped themselves around your cock, whispered filth against shower tiles as you took her from behind, spilt her hopes and dreams and deepest insecurities on those quiet nights between shows when all you did was hold her in her hotel room while she cried about how she believed everyone around her wanted her just for her looks and not for the girl beneath them —
And now she was greeting you with the same interest she had given the barista moments earlier.
“I’m good,” you manage, although the words that leave your lips seem to come from a voice that isn’t yours.
“How’s your mom?” she continues, even as she takes her drink and stirs it absently, taking a short sip of the sugar water within.
“She’s good, she’s good,” you answer. The words cost you something to say, because speaking to her isn’t free anymore, not now. “The doctors say she’s responding well to the treatment. They say she’ll be out of the hospital in a few weeks.”
“Good,” she says. Her eyes don’t meet yours. She takes another sip of her drink. “Which hospital is she at?”
“She just got transferred to the Women’s Hospital, the one on 6th street.”
Sana nods, barely, but doesn’t make eye contact.
“How are you?” you ask, because that was how conversations worked, right? She asks how you are, you answer, you ask her how she is, she answers. You don’t have the courage or the brain cells to manage much more than that - not now, not when the woman sitting across from you is who she is.
Silence. It’s only for a few seconds as he stirs her drink with that green paper straw she hated so much. The world thought they knew everything about Minatozaki Sana, but her hatred of paper straws is something only you know about her. It’s an intimate thing, amidst the myriad of other intimate things you know of her.
But none of that knowledge is able to bridge the silence between you. It lasts only a few seconds, but they feel like forever.
“How are the girls?” you add, hoping a simpler question might prompt more conversation, might produce something, anything out of her to fill this painful, terrible silence.
“They’re good. Tour wrapped up. Just the encores in Seoul to go.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you… how was… uh, the cities?”
She looks up at you, finally, at the random words spilling from your mouth in some vain attempt to maintain some semblance of normalcy. She’s stunning - even without an ounce of makeup or the small platoon of makeup artists and hairstylists that make her look the way she does on those screens and advertisements - but today she looks tired, and uninterested, and done with it.
Done with you.
“They were good,” she answers, finally. Her attention returns to her drink to the sugar, water, and caffeine concoction on the table between you, as though it were a third participant in this awful, painful conversation. Silence returns, for too long.
“Sana, I-”
“Listen,” she says, at a volume and with a tone that rattles you. “We both know why we’re here.”
You don’t say anything. How could you?
“We can’t do this anymore,” she says. Her eyes falter for a moment - just a moment - before she wrestles them back in line. “It was fun. But it was a dream. Time to wake up. It’s over.”
Your words fail you. Two years - two years you’d spent with this woman - and they’re all gone, all over, just like that - a dream to be woken up from, a toy to be discarded.
You want to say something. Want to tell her the past few years have been the best of your life, that you’d seen cities and done things and had experiences that you’d long thought only existed in movies or k-dramas or fanfiction - and that she was at the center of all that, the source of it, the only reason why you were able to experience it all and that you will thank her, with every second of the rest of your life, that she picked you out of the thousands of men at that concert two years, eight months, three days and sixteen hours ago—
“Sana-” you begin, but no words follow.
“I don’t need a manager that will just get up and leave me randomly,” she states, the words somehow sharp and cold at the same time. “I need someone I can depend on. Whenever, wherever. You’re not that person. Not anymore.”
She lets the words lie there in the space between you for a moment that felt much longer than it actually was. Something painful flares in your chest.