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Laurent could not recall the last time he had smoked a Marlboro Red — or the last time he had smoked a cigarette at all, for that matter.
Yet here he sat, against all odds, in a jacuzzi filled to the brim with scalding-hot water and sickeningly sweet suds that were way too expensive not to have been made out of liquid diamonds and flecks of various precious metals, clearing the butt of his second cancer stick in the past thirty minutes.
His throat burned in flames; his chest ached and he could barely breathe after he finished the last of it, and still it wasn’t enough. Unwilling to perish at the hands of emphysema just yet, Laurent swatted clumsily at the stone tile bordering the bathtub for the bottle of champagne that he had drained however long ago that night and, once he held said bottle in his clutch, sucked and tongued at the neck of it for that one last sweet drop that never came.
He sagged in defeat, sitting with his head propped up on the porcelain bathtub while he waited on all the water to drain out, leaving his barenaked and quaking body for the cool, conditioned air to dry.
“The reason I came here without notice is because I needed to tell you something,” Oz had sounded, and looked, one hundred percent emotionless. That was the norm for him, though. There was absolutely nothing there to prepare Laurent for anything. “However, you might want to have a seat before I begin.”
What is it? Laurent had almost snapped. It was a rare occasion indeed that anyone could benefit from beating around all the bushes — or however that saying went. Especially a man as busy as—
“Damn it, Laurent.” Oz, surprisingly, had turned out to be the one who snapped. “Can’t you just listen to someone else for once in your life?”
“You don’t usually get so emotional,” mused Laurent, folding his arms and leaning against the corner of a wall. He refused to let on to the fact of the matter, but Oz’s sudden dip into a lower octave really had given him a jolt. He sighed. “What exactly is this about, Oz?”
Ozaki just sighed right back, his own being a frustrated sound that seemed way too simple in its straightforwardness. It reminded Laurent of someone.
“It’s about Makoto.”
Laurent’s eyebrows shot up first and then furrowed, lips pursed. He was listening.
“Seriously, Laurent,” Oz spoke with a dark, grim look on his face that Laurent would never forget for the rest of his life. “Sit down.”
The funeral had proven to be a simple, quiet affair.
The only thing remarkable about the day itself was how hard it continued to rain. The precipitation was almost never so fierce at the location where the service was being held as it was on that day, apparently.
No more than fifteen individuals had turned up to the service — likely the only ones with whom Oz had been able to keep in contact over the years — and about half of that number were people that Laurent had never in all his days seen hide nor hair of. Judging solely by the ethnic features and overall stuffy demeanor of those people, they were the distant relatives of Edamame, come to pay their respects.
Laurent had not known that Makoto had more than one parent, let alone a whole extended family. Where on Earth had they all been when Laurent had found Makoto those many years ago, struggling all on his own?
“What?” Laurent felt his throat choking up. “No, Oz, that’s absurd. I, I talked to him last week. He can’t just be– he can’t just be dead.”
Laurent wanted more than anything just to brush the news off, to laugh and poke fun and send him on his way; but the look etched onto the elder man’s face was serving only to fill Laurent with a bubbling mix of rage and desperation. In fact, the way Oz stared at him with those eyes alluded to what he had just told Laurent being anything but a prank or a joke.
No. It was a lie. Oz had to be lying.
“It’s true, Laurie,” said Oz, his voice quivering for the first time since he had strode into Laurent’s office that morning. “I’m the one that found him, that found my boy…”
Laurent sucked in a breath to prepare himself for the grisly scene; but, thankfully, Oz did not go into the details. Honestly, he seemed to be far more preoccupied with damming the metaphorical floodgates than unnecessarily traumatizing anyone. Good man.
“He just,” Oz sniffed, then cleared his throat as if the show of his emotional state had been shameful. “He looked peaceful. He was holding onto all these– envelopes when I walked into his room. I honestly had thought that he had fallen asleep holding onto his mail, at first.”
The way that Oz smiled was heartbreaking. “That was the main reason why I decided to come all the way here, actually. He left one for you.”
Laurent patted the place over where the yellow envelope was tucked, still unopened, on the inside of his suit jacket as the eulogy was being delivered.
It continued to rain buckets, and Laurent couldn’t explain why, but he wished he didn’t have to stand underneath the small gazebo along with everyone else. He wanted to just stand there in the rain, letting it pelt him and ruin all of his clothes. Perhaps he merely wanted a good excuse to cry when he felt like it, without the impression that he was being judged.
“Does anyone else have any words they would like to say before we proceed?” The elderly Japanese woman (Makoto’s paternal grandmother or great-aunt, Laurent decided) asked in very thickly accented English.
The relative’s words rung louder than even the rain, and all of the words that had preceded them. Laurent flicked his gaze back and forth around his person, suddenly feeling very conspicuous in the small crowd.
He felt eyes on his back and they were in fact Abbie’s. Their eyes made contact, and Laurent cleared his throat quietly, forcing himself to look away before it became a thing.
Too late.
“C’mon,” she’d murmured with as much sympathy as she could, nudging him in the side with her elbow. Luckily, Laurent was wearing enough layers that he barely even felt said nudge. “Let’s get outta here, man. I’m starving.”
Abbie had not been joking.
The millisecond Laurent bid a whispered adieu to Cynthia, Abigail had all but dragged him down the street to some dinky self-serve buffet, throwing him into a secluded booth and storming off. She returned in less than a minute with two plates, each piled high with its own unique mountain of assorted potential heart attacks.
She slammed one of the plates down in front of him. He blinked up at her, his jaw slack and lips parted. He was not even remotely following her logic right now.
“You know I’m old, right?” Laurent shot her a wry little smirk.
“I didn’t know or care what you would like,” she droned. “But you need to eat something.”
Abigail had no problems holding up her unspoken end of the deal — her cheeks puffed up like a bonafide hamster’s while she talked and ate. Perhaps Laurent had not been the only one to return to some of his old ways under the sheer weight of grief. He really was not one to judge.
“Oh? And since when do you care about my well-being?” Laurent was going for lighthearted, yet he just came across as sad and forever alone.
“Honestly, man?” Abigail stopped to chew (and swallow) thoughtfully. “I don’t.”
Laurent snorted softly. “Then why… all of this?” He waved one of his hands suggestively. “If you wanted to go on a date with me, you could have asked and I probably would have said yes, funeral procession notwithstanding.”
“You fucking piece of shit,” she sighed, not looking even a little bit amused by Laurent’s unskilled attempt at a black comedy routine. “I am only doing this because he would never have let me live it down if I had just stood there and let you wander off into the woods and blow all your brains out. Or something.”
Laurent was stunned by how blunt and borderline-cruel she was being — even for her. He took a little nibble off of his steak.
“You know, I still don’t carry,” he said in response to the blow-your-brains-out comment. “Furthermore, if I wanted to, erm, do something like that, I can assure you that it would not be in such a messy and traceable way.”
That got a halfhearted snort out of Abbie. “Guess not. After everything you two idiots went through, I sometimes forget that you’re nothing alike.”
There was an intense stretch of silence — or, rather, of quiet chewing.
“Thank you,” Laurent said to her after some time. “For caring. Whether it’s for me, or for him — thank you.”
“I already told you who I cared about,” she mumbled. “Don’t make it weird or I’ll fucking dine and dash.”
Laurent felt a genuine smile crinkle at the corners of his eyes for the first time in days.
He and Abbie sat at that table at the restaurant for a good, long while, finishing up the last of their meals and making awkward attempts at small-talk in short bursts before falling back into a mostly-comfortable silence.
Abbie was done first and Laurent offered to pay for her food compulsorily. She didn’t argue, but did thank him begrudgingly, and they parted ways.
Before she left, she, to Laurent’s surprise, ordered him to “text me or something,” before turning on her heel to stomp her way out through the restaurant’s double doors.
After finishing up his plate a short time later, Laurent stood up from the table.
He was still out of his wits to some extent, and he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with himself. Nevertheless, he wandered outside, fumbling in the pockets of his overcoat for the opening to the box of cigarettes as he traveled aimlessly on foot, dimly aware of the way back to the cemetery where he had parked his rental car earlier that day.
Laurent sparked the lighter against the end of his cigarette, blowing out a long plume of smoke toward the cloudy sky. The rain had stopped at long last, and the twilight air was cool and moist. Laurent took it in sharply, allowing a shallow wave of comfort to wash over him.
His stomach was hurting badly, and it wasn’t just because he had eaten too much. Thoughts, memories of Edamame flooded Laurent’s head and drowned him, making him guard against that choking feeling in the back of his throat.
He felt starkly aware, once again, of the unopened envelope that was nestled safe in his suit-jacket pocket. Maybe it was the self-loathing talking, but perhaps Laurent really was nothing more than a dumb blond, just like everyone had always loved to tell him.
First of all, he still couldn’t find the courage even after Makoto’s passing to face the truth of his role in the boy’s — no, in the man’s — lifelong torment. Then, and perhaps worst of all, he’d had the audacity to attend that same man’s funeral as if he had actually been welcome. As if he’d actually had any earthly right.
Laurent didn’t text Abbie.
He didn’t return Oz’s or Si-won’s overprotective, overly worried voicemail, and he didn’t pick up when Cynthia repeatedly called him, either.
Instead, he wandered alone for hours — or, more likely, several minutes — before happening upon some hole in the wall Irish pub in the heart of the downtown area and deciding that perhaps some liquid courage was exactly what he needed in order to ease his current predicament.
So it was decided: he would get plastered, and then he would open up the envelope and take a look at what was inside. Yep, super healthy. So courageous. Much wow.
Laurent woke up seated upon a warm red barstool inside that same pub, hours later, head resting atop a pillow of his own drool and with one supremely irritated bartender towering over him. He was tapping his foot impatiently, with his burly arms folded across his broad chest.
The scene itself would have been kind of hot under literally any other circumstances.
Laurent couldn’t remember exactly what he muttered at the big man as an apology, stretching his arms up high above his head and then dropping all of the bills inside of his wallet onto the countertop — clear of the pool of his saliva, of course.
“That should be more than enough to cover the rainy day, my good man,” he simpered, getting up to leave.
“Ho-ly shite,” cried the bartender. “That’s all for little old me, is it? Well in that case, I’m sorry to hear that someone stabbed y’er dog and then shagged y’er wife. Safe travels, ya rat bastard!”
“Ooh, a gentleman and a scholar,” cooed Laurent drily.
For a moment, Laurent forgot everything — where he was, why the hell it was so cold outside, and even where he had left his car.
Then, on a wave of sickness, he remembered everything.
His car was at the cemetery, still.
Where Makoto was now buried, next to his mother.
By the time Laurent got back to the parking lot, darkness had fallen in full. He dug around inside his coat pockets for the keys to the rental– and found them, to his great relief. He climbed into the driver’s seat and powered on the vehicle’s engine, grateful for the beautiful heating that quickly blew at full-blast against his face.
He turned on the interior overhead lights and warily removed the small packing envelope from his jacket pocket. It simply read ‘for Laurent’ on the front of it, in what he could only assume had been Makoto’s finest cursive script.
Laurent’s heart squeezed. Come on, now, you can do this. Be strong.
He slid a tremulous finger between the glued flap to open it, pulling out the only content: a small plastic… gadget. That was the best way he could have described it. After a couple of seconds, he recognized it as a flash drive.
Without even stopping to think, he twisted into the backseat and grabbed the case that held his laptop, opening the computer up on the passenger seat and powering it on.
When the drive finally loaded, Laurent was not expecting to see the single, small sized audio file: listen.mp3.
Against everything Laurent had ever learned about opening mysterious audio files, he double-clicked on it and waited.
“Hey, Laurent. It’s me. If I know you at all, you’re listening to this recording drunk. But since you are listening to it in the first place, I don’t particularly blame you for getting shit-faced ahead of time. Still, I don’t particularly like talking to drunk people, so I will be keeping this brief.”
Laurent slammed his index finger on the pause button in a panic. Coughing up a tearful sob into the palm of his hand, his whole body trembled. His shoulders quaked, and he full-on snot cried until he ran out of the required tears to do so.
He hated that he had been that unprepared to hear Makoto’s voice. It was so cute, just like Laurent remembered it.
With a shuddering breath, he once more pressed the Play button.
“You’re listening to this, most likely, because I died. It is not your fault that I died — not as much as you will be inclined to tell yourself it is, at first. The fact that this is even a possibility for you filled me with such deep sadness and regret that I had to record you this…”
The recording was still playing, but all Laurent could hear was soft rustling, almost as if Makoto had been wearing socks and was shuffling them against his carpets while he pondered what else he wanted, needed, to say.
“I promise you, Laurent, you are not as bad a person as you think you are. Or as bad as I made you feel when I was feeling hurt.” There was another long pause before Makoto spoke again.
“If I’m being honest, I forgave you for all of that stuff with Dorothy a long time ago. You and I both know that it’s never been your job to bear the weight of every last one of my dumb choices. So don’t start now, okay?
“Anyways, before I go, I just wanted to tell you one last thing: I think that you deserve to be happy. I always have. I just never knew how to properly tell you.”
Makoto’s voice sounded rough towards the end, like as if he had been trying not to get overwhelmed or cry until after he finished recording; and it broke Laurent. Then, Makoto said something in Japanese — although Laurent could tell that the phrase was, in fact, meant for his ears — and the recording ended.
(He would figure out later that the phrase Makoto had said in Japanese, roughly translated, meant “Thank you, for everything.” )
Laurent drove back to the hotel to the crisp sounds of Gary Numan’s Cars playing on the stereo, and of the much needed breeze coming in through the cracked-open driver’s side window.
Tears streamed down his face almost the entire ride back, urging him to wipe the telltale signs of his heartache away so no-one saw.
He pulled up to the valet and tripped out of the car, feeling dumber for giving that grumpy bear of a bartender the rest of his cash than he did for drunk-driving. Now he would have to remember to go through the tedious process of writing in an even bigger tip for the valet employee.
Oh, well, thought Laurent, c’est la vie.
He left his black winter coat, scarf, and suit jacket in the passenger seat, so that he could get some fresh air on the way to the revolving-door entrance of the building, and enjoy the air conditioning all the way up to his suite. Alcohol always did have that uncanny way of making the biting cold of a dark winter night feel like the gentle breeze of a perfect midday in autumn.
When he got to his suite, finally, he felt like puking.
So he did.
He thoroughly rinsed out his mouth and brushed his teeth for several minutes afterward, and then immediately fishtailed back toward the mini-bar. He had forgotten his box of Marlboro Reds in the car, unfortunately (fortunately?).
After a couple of shots of brandy to top himself off, Laurent flopped down, completely spent, on the edge of the double-bed. He felt himself weeping quite wretchedly, and had not nearly enough pride left over to try and stop it.
He opened his eyes after crying, trying to blink away the tears and the aggressive headache that had only worsened since he’d come from the pub. All the sudden, the lights in the suite felt way too bright and glaring to be tolerable; and it was making him want to go back to the toilet and vomit up the rest of his dinner. He reached out, blurry-eyed, to fiddle with the switch for the lamp on the bedside table.
A warm, nimble hand cupped his, caressing it, and Laurent honest to god jumped about ten feet into the air.
Once he finished flicking away his tears, there was no mistaking it. The mop of fluffy brown hair, the face that always seemed to squish, no matter which emotion it displayed. It was Makoto’s face, all right — as plain as day and beaming down at him as if he had just told Laurent the funniest joke about two guys and a mini-bar.
“M, Makoto…? ” Laurent squinted through the pain throbbing behind his ears, his eyebrows scrunching together as a result. “But why, how are you–”
‘Makoto’ smirked. Devious little thing. Just like he remembered him. “Gotcha.”