Chapter Two: "I Found Someone"
--One month later--
Tommy woke up with a start, as the plane suddenly began to move up and down violently. "What's that?!"
"Just some turbulence, sir, don't worry," the flight attendant assured him. "We'll be out of it in five to ten minutes, I shouldn't wonder. Would you like anything to drink, to calm you down a bit?"
"Um, no, thank you." She nodded and left him. Oh, right. I've felt turbulence before. He began to mentally laugh at himself. Then he looked around. Oh shoot, it's still nighttime. Hmm, maybe I should've asked that flight attendant for some hot chocolate, but I doubt they make it here. Oh, well. He settled back down in his seat and rearranged his covering, also bringing up his pillow from where it had somehow slipped down to his lower back. He was sufficiently comfortable, but somehow couldn't get back to sleep. He checked his watch. Geez, it's three hours 'til the plane lands. Figures. I'm usually lulled to sleep by the engine and wake up after everyone else has already left, but this time the dmn turbulence has got me up way too early. Maybe I should try counting sheep, or just thinking of something really, really boring. Like my trip to Thailand. He chuckled. Thailand had been uneventful, to say the least. He had planned the entire trip five years ago, when vacationing in the middle of nowhere had sounded extremely attractive, but now he was actually craving a bit of attention; or a lot, he'd heard that the boy-band era was still alive in East Asia. Maybe he'd get a few deals on hotel stays for being who he was, get to sign a few autographs, heck, he might even meet a groupie or two. There was always something hot about Asian chicks, they were always said to do exactly what you wanted them to do… Tommy held in his laughter, and pushed those dirty thoughts to the back of his mind. He tried to get to sleep once more, and this time, he succeeded.
The flight attendant from before was now passing through the entire plane, checking on all the sleeping passengers, and was stopped near the end by a young woman pulling surreptitiously on her sleeve. "Marie, what is it?" She bent over to whisper in her little sister's ear.
"I just woke up from the turbulence."
"That's funny, so did Mr. Quincy."
"Seriously?" The flight attendant nodded. "How's he doing?"
"Fine, aside from the fact that he's traveling alone. He just fell asleep."
"Good for him," smiled Marie. "Say, Jill, you think you might manage to make a little—"
"Sure."
"Thanks." Marie grinned and watched Jill leave to go to the plane's kitchen, coming back a few minutes later with two cups of hot chocolate with marshmallows. She placed one into Marie's hand, and took a sip from her own. "Now. You wanna talk about what you're gonna be doing in Tokyo? How're you gonna get around, where're you gonna stay? If you want, I can recommend a few places."
"I told you, I'm gonna stay with Rei and her family. Didn't I?" Jill shook her head.
"Well, you remember Rei, right?"
"The girl that you did the higher education student exchange-type thing with?"
"That's the one."
"But it's over now, you're both done with college, so why are you going back to Tokyo? Don't tell me you're going to become a teacher there."
"No, I'm just going over there for summer vacation. I'm coming back home to Toronto afterwards. But, Jill, there's going to be a DBSK concert, and I just have to go with her to see them."
"Why on earth did Rei have to introduce you to DBSK? Couldn't you have told her about some Canadian bands?"
"I did, I told her about Jude Harrison. But that's beside the point. I love Japan, I just wanna go over there again; surely I'm allowed?"
"All right." Jill smiled. "But you have to spend time with me for once, while you're there. I'm not gonna have my little sister fall in love with a cute Japanese boy in Tokyo and not know about it."
"Jill!"
"Sorry," Jill smilingly apologized. "So, have you called Rei? Is she going to come pick you up? Does she know the plane lands tomorrow morning?"
"No, Jill, I'm just going to get a cab and go fifty miles to her house."
"All right then, good luck with that, and good night."
"G'night, Jill." Marie sighed calmly and settled back in her seat, watching her sister go away with the mugs of hot chocolate, and she suddenly thought too late to ask of her what Tom—Mr. Quincy—had said to her. Well, she reasoned, apparently he couldn't have said anything that was really important, otherwise Jill would have mentioned it. Before, she said that he really cracked her up when she was asking for his boarding pass, so apparently he's got a great sense of humor. Maybe I should try to meet up with him in the airport. I don't think Rei will really mind; Tom Quincy's another of those famous artists I told her about. Her and Hero, me and Tom. We all love our poster boys.
In a few hours, Tommy arose with the sun, as did the other passengers, and after a typical indescribable airplane breakfast, prepared to land quite soon. He had some trouble getting his guitar down from the upper compartment, and therefore was one of the last to leave. As he neared the exit, he saw a young woman passenger embracing the flight attendants. The last to be hugged was the one that had attended on him personally, and when the girl finally let her go, she looked at him, smiled, and said, "I hope you had a pleasant flight, Mr. Quincy."
"I did, thanks."
"So," spoke up one of the flight attendants, "are you really gonna be all alone during your stay?" All of the females giggled.
"Yeah, I guess so, unless I find someone to occupy my time."
"You mean until," quipped the passenger, making everyone laugh, then she looked at her watch. "Oh shoot, Rei's probably right outside! All right, bye, everybody. See you soon, Jill."
"Bye," said the flight attendants, and the passenger took up her bags and walked off the plane. Tommy noted that the one he had talked with personally before put one of her hand into the "Call me" sign to the girl as she left; that was probably Jill. It suddenly came to him that the two actually looked quite similar; they were probably sisters. He watched the women look after him next, then got the idea to stop right before he got off the plane and shoot them one of his winning smiles. The effect was as he had planned. They all began screaming, and he chortled to himself as he went onto the walkway, intent on catching up with that last girl; which actually wasn't that hard: he saw her stop upon seeing him, as if to wait up for him. As he caught up with her, she smiled.
"I knew you were gonna do that," she said.
"What?"
"That stunt with the flight attendants. You just couldn't help yourself."
"Oh, you mean when I made them scream? Yeah, that was fun."
"Just so you know, those are all bona fide Little Tommy Q fangirls, so you should have heard them when they found they were gonna attend you. My eardrums were ringing for ten minutes afterwards."
"Yeah, well, I got used to it a while ago."
"So did I, I thought. But they haven't screamed like that for eight years, back when I was in high school and we all heard that Boyz Attack had broken up. But one thing that I never understood: Why did you never record a solo album? I mean, after all, you were the one that left and split up the band because you thought you were good enough by yourself, so why didn't you?"
He had been asked this a good number of times in interviews, and there, he had always given some vague, evasive excuse that led to another topic and didn't really answer the question; but here, with this girl standing right in front of him and looking at him so earnestly, he wanted to give her the real reason. So he did.
"My manager didn't like the sound I wanted to create," he confessed, "so I gave up on trying to make it on my own. Over time, though, I learned to be satisfied with helping other artists with their own music, putting my own touches on it, and letting them take most of the credit."
"Well, not all of it," she assured him amiably. "Your artists' albums are always so much better than anybody else's in the country, and you really gave G Major Records a good name." Here they stopped, almost as if by agreement. "I was really sorry to hear that it closed up. What's gonna happen now?"
"What, for me or for the artists?"
"Whichever. I mean, both."
"Well, I'm not worried for my artists. Practically all of them are talented enough to be able to get picked up pretty quickly by other studios and get new contracts."
"And you?" He looked at her when she said this, and saw that her eyes and voice were full of genuine concern. He sighed.
"…Well, I'm kind of taking a break right now."
"Yeah, you have been working kind of nonstop lately. But you are gonna go back to producing, aren't you? I mean that there are artists out there who probably won't be able to do well without you. Look at Jude Harrison, for instance. You've been producing her since she started out nearly two years ago as a contest winner, and now her second album's just gone double platinum."
He remembered when he had found that out, on his last day in Thailand. He had seen her picture on the front of every newspaper and magazine, and had felt such pride that something he had created had been so successful, and yet, there was still a pang in his heart every time he saw her face, or heard her voice. He had tried his hardest to forget her, but she only seemed to surface in his thoughts more than ever. But when he looked up, he saw the girl still there, watching him curiously. Tommy suddenly felt insecure, as if she had somehow read his thoughts, and knew the whole truth about him and Jude: their history, the fact that he was still in love with her, and his worry that she had already fallen for Jamie, all without him even telling her. This girl's gaze could have him crying in her arms, baring his heart and soul to her.
"Tom?"
His train of thought was broken. "What?"
"What happened to Jude?"
For all that he felt utterly exposed in front of her, he guarded his words. "Um, last I heard, she was with a friend of hers who was working on setting up a new recording company."
"Oh. Hey, you wanna meet my friend Rei?"
"Ray, like a guy?"
She laughed, an exquisite, twinkling laugh. "No, R-E-I, a Japanese girl's name."
"Oh. Ok, I guess."
"Come on. We've stayed here too long anyway." She carelessly waved a hand towards the exit, and Tommy got the sudden impulse to grab her hand and kiss it. Then, out of the blue, the girl began running, in one uninterrupted burst of energy, down the length of the entire walkway. He was put in mind of Atalanta and watched her for a moment, then broke out of his reverie and ran to catch up with her, but whenever he got close to doing so, she caught sight of him and deliberately ran faster. As they neared the exit, she began singing "And I Ran", which made him laugh. She finally stopped short a few inches from the exit, allowing him to catch him up with her and his breath. She chuckled, as she herself was breathing normally, and said, "Now you know never to try to race a track student."
"Well, how was I supposed to know that?"
"The running shoes might have given you a clue." She pointed her toe.
"Still not fair."
"Hey, man, I kind of expected that you'd still be in top shape, judging by that extremely hot bod. I mean…" She pretended to cough, but the smile was still on her face, and he knew that she had meant what she had said.
"I am, it's just that I do mainly weight training, not that much cardio."
"Yeah, your heart wouldn't be able to take it, 'cause you're an old man." She was teasing him now, but he liked it. He decided to retaliate.
"Well, how old were you when Boyz Attack was at its peak?"
"Fourteen."
"Ha! I was seventeen. Wait a second, that means you're—"
"Twenty-two."
"What the? I thought you were around eighteen."
"Well, thank you. A lady always likes others to think she's younger than she really is." She smiled bewitchingly.
He had no ready retort, and so let the matter rest, but he still couldn't stop staring at her. Her eyes caught with his and held them hostage, and as he unconsciously leaned in, she seemed to respond, but quickly pulled away before they got too close and exited, looking back at him teasingly as she did so. He had nothing to do except follow her like the lovesick puppy he had turned into.
He caught her scanning the crowds of the airport terminal, her eyebrows wrinkled and her manner uncertain. He approached her from behind, but she sensed him, and said to him without even turning her head, "She's supposed to be here by now, especially since we both wasted so much time fooling around on that walkway, but she's not."
"Maybe she's just late."
"She's a stickler for punctuality, believe me. Ten minutes early is on time for her."
"Maybe you just can't tell her apart from all the other Japanese girls."
She gave a short laugh. "If it were anyone else, that might be true; but we've known each other for five years. I'd recognize her from fifty miles away." Then she smacked her forehead. "I almost forgot! My luggage."
"Oh right, mine too."
"But yours is probably only five empty suitcases."
"No. It's four empty suitcases and one full."
"Full with hair products, I bet."
"Now you're gonna pay for that!"
"Nuh-uh!" She had expected that his reaction would be to try to grab her, and consequently eluded him and ran once more, this time to the conveyor belts. He knew her tricks this time, and followed her as closely as he could, and therefore nearly crashed into her when she abruptly stopped for no apparent reason. All Tommy could see was a native girl a couple meters away, calling out something that sounded to his ear like, "Mariku!"
"REI-KUN!" Tommy's companion screamed, and weaved in a high-speed fashion through the crowd to get to Rei. When she accomplished this, which was a matter of about twenty seconds, Tommy witnessed a major glomp. (a/n: a glomp is like a severe tackle) Rei nearly toppled over from the absolute force of her friend's big-catlike hello, but was laughing uncontrollably, and so appeared to have been expecting it. They began conversing excitedly in fluent Japanese, and for a few minutes, Tommy feared that he had been forgotten; but then his heart lifted when he saw the girl waving him over.
He picked up his things as well as hers, and brought them with him, noting the girl whisper a few words into Rei's ear. Rei looked a little unsure and nervous at the message, but looked back at her and nodded. As Tommy came closer to them, his eyes met with the girl's, and she smiled more brightly, as did he. When he finally reached them, he set the bags down and moved his hands to try to express the fact that he didn't quite know how to greet them properly.
The girl pushed Rei forward. "Well, give him a hug!"
Rei immediately did so, and hung on for so long that Tommy wondered whether this was yet another of his fangirls. He gingerly began trying to unwrap her arms from around him, and she felt the pressure and let go. "I'm so sorry," she said with almost no accent and smiling, "it's just that I've heard so much about you, and you're Mariku's bishie—"
"Rei!" The girl cut her off with a dangerous look.
"What? It's not like he knows what 'bishie' means."
"What's bishie mean?" Tommy asked cautiously, though judging by the context in which it was being used, he could guess that it meant something like "Mr. Unattainable".
The girl chuckled. "Well, literally, it means 'hot guy' in Japanese."
"Oh, so that's not bad."
"But," added Rei mischievously, "it's also used to mean something like 'Mr. Unattainable'," which caused her friend to playfully reach out and grab her throat.
"REI-KUN!!" She began to throttle her, but only succeeded in making Rei laugh even harder. "You've just ruined my only chance of having a normal friendship with him!"
"Well, not really," Tommy assured them. The girl stopped choking Rei, and they both stared at him. "I'll still stay around if you want, even though now I know I'm hanging with a fangirl." He smiled.
"Yay!" She hugged Tommy, not nearly as enthusiastically as she had Rei, of course, but still quite enough to make him breathless. When she finally let go of him, they smiled at each other, and he suddenly found himself wishing they were alone together. But unfortunately for him, they weren't, and he suddenly heard Rei speaking behind them, ruining the moment.
"So, are we gonna eat first or come over to my house to unpack?"
The girl promptly turned her head to look at her, then back to Tommy. "Well," she confessed to him, "I kinda wanted to unload my luggage first, so I wouldn't have to go dragging it around when we went out to eat, but if you're hungry—"
"No, no, no, go ahead," Tommy interrupted. "I'll just go and look for a hotel."
The girl nodded and released him from her grip, but kept looking up at him uncertainly, as if she wanted to say something, and glanced despairingly over at Rei. The two stared at each other for a moment, and then Rei nodded her answer to the unspoken question, which only she saw and understood, in the other girl's eyes. She stepped meekly towards Tommy, clearing her throat.
"Um…I know it's kind of sudden, but would you maybe like to stay with us for the time you'll be here in Tokyo?"
Tommy looked down at the other girl, and she smiled invitingly at him. "Please??" she implored him, clasping her hands together. "We could show you around, take you to the best restaurants, have tons of fun…"
"I'd really love to, but…" He looked back at Rei. "You girls live alone, right?"
"Well, the apartment's kinda right next to my parents' house," confessed Rei. "It's the only way they'd allow me to live by myself until I got married."
"Oh." He looked down and inwardly for a moment, and then flicked his eyes back up, only to see the disappointed faces of the two girls. He could tell that they already knew his answer, but he still felt like he owed them some sort of an explanation. "Look, it's not just your parents. It's that there's paparazzi everywhere, and if they were to catch me living with two girls…"
"They'd have a field day." The girl nodded understandingly. "Right. I forgot about that."
"But," Rei broke in, "Tom, surely if they were to see you hanging with us all the time you're here in Tokyo, they'd try to put two and two together and make five."
The girl explained, "But, Rei, if they were to follow us home and see us go different places to sleep, then they'd have more cause to doubt that that was true."
"Oh. Right…But does that mean you're not going to stay with me?"
It took Tommy a few moments to think about that and fully realize what she was talking about, but when he did, he stared, utterly surprised, first at Rei and then at the girl. The two girls began chuckling between themselves, and it quickly grew into uncontrollable hilarity when they saw Tommy's still-stunned expression.
"Well," said the girl, still chuckling and ready to burst into fresh laughter if Tommy was to look at her the 'wrong' way again, "I don't think they'll really be thinking like that; and if they do, then they're real perverts."
"So you guys aren't actually…" Tommy couldn't finish the sentence, but he didn't quite need to. The girls started laughing once more.
"NO, man!" said the girl, wiping tears from her eyes, but still continuing to laugh. "Yes, we're actually closet lovers. We just lure guys into our apartment to make their twisted fantasies come true." Now Tommy was getting into the joke, and began laughing with them.
"So then, maybe you should stay with me, so they won't have thoughts like that," he joked to the girl.
"Oh, you wish, guy. No, I'm staying with Rei, no matter what they say."
"But can you just imagine my parents' faces if that did come out in the paper, though?" mused Rei. "They'd be like, 'Rei-chan, you're coming back home NOW! See, I knew it was a bad idea to let her go live with her Canadian friend Marie. Canadian friends named Marie are always so awful.'" Rei made a face that looked exactly like that of an angry Asian parent, which continued the hypothetical situation and made the others laugh even harder.
Suddenly Tommy's eyebrows knit in the middle, and he looked curiously at the girl beside him. "Wait a second. Did she just call you Marie?"
"Yeah, that's my name."
"But…are you sure she didn't she call you something else when you guys were looking for each other, like, ten minutes ago?"
The girls looked at each other pensively for a minute. "I don't remember her calling me by a different name," said Marie cautiously.
"Oh, wait, I remember!" exclaimed Rei unexpectedly. The others turned their heads to look at her. "I called you Marie-kun."
"Yeah, that was it," affirmed Tommy.
Marie said, "You don't know anything about nihongo, do you?"
"What?" Now he was thoroughly confused.
The girls groaned. "Come on, I'll tell you all about it later," sighed Marie. "Right now,
I have to get home."
"Don't you mean you have to go to my apartment?" asked Rei.
"Oh, right," chuckled Marie. "See? I've only been back here ten minutes, and already I'm thinking of your place as mine." The two girls began picking up her luggage. Marie cast one last glance at Tommy. "See you, then."
"See you." He was reluctant to let her out of his sight, and she seemed to feel the same. Their eyes met, and Tommy got that same feeling as before, that he and Marie were the only two people in the room. But she broke away from it abruptly, and turned back to Rei. However, Tommy guessed that Rei hadn't missed that stare, because she looked between the two for a few moments, a bit confused; but then her face cleared and she smiled, and addressed Tommy.
"What do you say to meeting Marie and I at this really cool restaurant we know for some dinner after we're settled?" she suggested amiably. "You know, we can treat you to dinner, show you around…"
"Teach you Japanese," added Marie.
"Yeah, exactly. So, what do you think?"
Tommy smiled broadly when he looked upon the two expectant faces of the girls.
"Sure. Though I gotta tell you, whenever I've been in a situation like this, I was the one asking the girl out, not the other way around."
Marie came over and stood directly in front of him. "Well, how does it feel for you, being asked out?" she asked, looking up into his eyes as she did so.
He looked at her silently for a moment before answering. "…It actually feels pretty good." Her eyes captured him, and he began unconsciously leaning in to kiss her, and got a feeling of déjà vu when she pulled away.
"Oh no, man, you're not getting me that easily," she smiled.
Tommy grinned. He could get used to this.
A/N: I wanna kill myself. I just realized that I didn't put up this chapter. I have no friggin' idea why. I'm sorry, you subscribers, you're gonna get alerts for Chapters Three to Six and they'll be identical to the ones from before. I had to delete all of them and put them all in again. I'm SO sorry.
