For Them

“If you wanna get technical, we were never an item in the first place. Not for real. So what’s with all the hurt feelings and sad angry looks?” Yasu was furious with this former lay of hers. There was no way he could be feeling this now, a few long years later. He had already changed her life, both for the worse and for the better. She felt guilty for feeling that her life had changed for the worse, it wasn’t anyone’s fault but her own.

“I come back to find all this,” the man waved his arm, almost his whole body, to the somewhat messy apartment. When you have a small child, the house doesn’t really stay clean. “…and I’m not supposed to be upset?” That was it. The woman with the sparrow tattoo to match her namesake had had enough of this international pretty boy pop star having a tantrum in her home when she had to pick up her son in an hour. Enough was enough.

“Camui, there was nothing to our relationship. Hell, there wasn’t even a relationship to begin with! If there was one to you there sure as hell wasn’t one to me. You fucked around so much I don’t even think you remember half of them. But if you wanna get mad at me, go right ahead. I should’ve known that I was getting involved with Japan’s newest behind-locked-doors personal porn star.” She didn’t stick around to see the beyond shocked look on the pop idol’s face.

Koizumi Suzume, more commonly referred to as Yasu, was not a woman to tempt. Be it with passion, love, anger, or violence. She loved deep and hard. She always would. She had made the mistake of falling for this man she was yelling at—stupid on her part really. He had broken her heart in a hundred different ways, all she could forgive but one.

He didn’t know his son.

The thought twisted the blue eyed woman’s heart hard as she threw on her jacket and collected her bag. Little Ren was her light, even if she hadn’t been ready for that little boy. He had made a woman out of an overgrown girl who went through life in a haze. Her life had been screwed up for so long, Little Ren had changed so much. Her mission in life was to do right by him, whatever the cost. She owed him that much.

Yasu made it back to the living room to see the father of her child and ex lover staring at all the photos of his son and mother. Four years ago her heart would’ve fluttered, some vague and vain hope that he would reconcile and come back, be part of a family. Now she knew better, or maybe she didn’t care all that much. ‘Not like he could handle not being the only man in my life anyways.’ Ren was her number one nowadays. It’s amazing what four short years can do to your heart.

“You can stay here or come with me to pick him up. Your choice Camui but make it fast, I’m gonna be late as it is.” She waited for a minute, watching—nay, enjoying the internal struggle taking place on this playboy’s face. Sadistic? Who, Yasu? You bet.

“Will he know who I am?” His quiet, slightly tortured tone didn’t phase her in the slightest—sign of the times and her changed forever life.

“He will, I’m not gonna keep him in the dark about his father. I’m not that cruel.”

“I can drive us… It will be faster that way.” No way he was going to get to pay attention to the road, distractions were not going to work. Besides, Yasu was getting hungry and there was a place that had really good kimchi on the way to his school.

“Not in this traffic, we’re walking.”

“Do I get a say in this?”

“No, the place we’re getting lunch doesn’t have much parking anyways.”

“You’re the boss.” He shrugged his jacket back on, only he could make that look cool enough not to be considered a total self absorbed douche. Oh wait…

“Damn right I am.”

==========================================

It was night now, today had been utterly exhausting. Yasu was thankful for the hot tea in her cup though she wanted something decidedly stronger. She could still make a really good Chambord cocktail, lemon made the flavor all the more amazing and sweet. Making them would give her something to do instead of pacing from window to window. Camui was putting their son to bed, something told her there was a large amount of bedtime stories and hard questions. Ren was too smart for a three year old, but she was glad he was. It would serve him well later in life.

One drink later brought Camui out, looking emotionally exhausted. Good.

“He’s smart for someone so young.”

“He asked you why you haven’t been around, didn’t he?”

“You told him I was ‘very very busy’.”

“I did.” Yasu took a sip out of her glass, giving one to the man who seemed in desperate need of alcohol and nicotine.

He didn’t say anything, instead downing the drink his former lover had given him and concentrated on the flavor.

“I don’t even know where to begin… I can’t, not really. Sorry doesn’t even begin to cover it…” He finished the drink and went for another.

“Would it make you feel better if you apologized?”

“I don’t even know,” he was angry now. In Yasu’s mind, he didn’t deserve to be angry. Not one fucking little bit. Sure they had made a child together and she had kept the news from him but to what end? How the fuck would the man who said he didn’t want children of his own react to the news that he would be a daddy? Yasu hadn’t wanted to find out, no hint of the A word would come from a man who didn’t know he was a father. She couldn’t risk it, maybe that spoke to her opinion of him but she had been afraid. More than afraid, her life had changed with one little stick of plastic and two blue lines.

She wouldn’t deny that she had her own mess to clean up and pile of shit to repent for but she wasn’t going to take all the guilt that was about to be hurdled at her head like a granite ashtray. This was going to be difficult.

Yasu faced those angry eyes that burned through those artificial blue lenses, ready to face whatever he had to throw at her.

Some weeks later==========================================

It was morning again, Yasu knew because of the smell of eggs and toasted bread.

“Wait a minute…” She sprang from sleep to full wakefulness and into her kitchen to see something she wasn’t fully prepared for.

Camui and Ren, in adorably hilariously decorated aprons, making breakfast, and not burning the building to the ground. Plus they had made coffee. This had to be a dream.

“Can you really flip an omelet?” Ren looked up at his dad with wide cute eyes the color of the sky. Holy crap those two looked scarily alike.

“Of course I can, watch.” And just like that, he flipped the omelet.

“I remember when you tried to make me an omelet.” Apparently Camui had been to fixated on making sure Ren could flip an omelet that he hadn’t heard her come in.

Yasu hadn’t realized that both of them had the same rather high pitched feminine squeak. Ren had an excuse, Camui didn’t.

=============================

Once again, night had fallen. Ren was once again in bed, listening to his mom and dad read him his favorite bedtime story. His intense like of Grimm fairy tales might have bothered Yasu but half the kids books and films these days were worse, so they bounced between an Astro Boy film and Grimm Brothers. The kid had a sense like his mother, slightly twisted but rather interesting.

“Can we talk?” Those three words had never been good news in Yasu’s world, poised right when they had snuck out of the sleeping child’s room and made it to the living room in one piece.

“What about?” Yasu found her favorite place on the couch, Camui followed.

“I’m sorry Yasu, for everything I put you through. For not being the kind of person who you thought could handle being a parent.” This was going somewhere fast, Yasu wasn’t sure she liked it either.

“Where is this going?” She could see him swallow hard, like he had the worst cast of cotton mouth imaginable or trying not to bolt out the front door and not return.

“I want to take you to dinner tomorrow night. Just you and me.” Yasu wondered what was so bad about that.

“Why does it look like you’re being dragged up to your execution then? I know I’m an outright bitch most of the time but I’m not quite that bad.”

“No no no! It’s not that, it’s that I’m a chicken shit.” Okay, that made her laugh a little.

“Now that’s something you don’t hear every day. Camui Gakuto admitting he’s a chicken shit,” she giggled somewhat to herself but let him go on just the same.

“I want to talk about… An us.” That made her stop laughing.

“Camui… Didn’t we try that already? Are you really so different now than you were four years ago?” Yasu got up and paced on the pretty throw rug, the one speck of color in an otherwise monochromatic apartment.

“I’m not saying I’m going to change overnight but I will change and I will make amends for what I have and have not done.”

“Please don’t be angry when I say I’m having a hard time believing you.”

“I want to be but you’re right. I don’t have the best track record in the world.”

“No shit Camui.”

“Can I have a chance? Just one.” She thought on it like she had a thousand times in the past months. A part of her wanted this, just a tiny part she thought had died. Maybe it wasn’t so dead but she had other things to think about now.

“For Ren, I can give you a chance.”