Awesome because he was going to keep doing something that he loved doing. Something that he was meant to do. But… painful because of what it meant.
I’d still slapped a smile on my face and kept it there. I’d hugged the shit out of him and kept on hugging the shit out of him since. I’d booked his plane ticket for him. I had even downloaded the app that may or may not work once he got to Japan so that he could see Mo at daycare through the cameras.
One week was all the team had been willing to give Jonah to arrive since they had already started practicing for the upcoming season.
One week didn’t give me enough time to leave with him. If I was going to.
The fact was: we could go visit him no problem. I knew that. He had already eyed his game calendar and circled off clots of days, times that he could squeeze a quick trip to visit, days when he’d be home for longer than three or four days so we could fly over for a visit. Bye weeks when we could meet up somewhere.
I’ll take any time I can see you both, Jonah had told me when we’d sat beside each other in the kitchen with his calendar. An hour. Three. A day. Whatever you can do, I’ll take.
Whatever I could do he would take.
Two days later, that comment still pounded away at my head. And my heart.
My entire fucking body.
I hadn’t said a word to Jonah about how much my chest hurt every time I looked at him—which was half the day because he’d been picking up Mo from Grandpa and bringing her to Maio House in the afternoons, where they would hang out with me in my office. Half of my family. Half of my heart.
And a fourth of it was leaving me in four days.
This man I fucking loved the shit out of.
He was going.
And he’d asked me to go with him. To fly halfway across the world, away from half of the people I loved with all of my heart, away from my job, my life. And be with him there. In Kobe.
I had no idea what the hell I should do. Leave everything behind or… not. It wasn’t just me I was deciding for. I had a ten-month-old life relying on me to do what was best for her.
I was in the middle of trying not to think about what was going to happen—and how I was being a selfish asshole and didn’t want it to happen—when the knock on my office door came. I called out “Come in” to whoever was on the other side as I minimized the screen I’d been reading, a thousand and a half thoughts going through my head that had nothing to do with Maio House or any of the guys and women in it.
The size of the shadow warned me it was Jonah, and my stupid-ass heart squeezed itself tight at his big smiling head as he came in holding Mo, his fucking mini-me from the color of her hair to her skin and eyes, in one brawny-ass arm. “Busy?” he asked, circling around and coming to stand beside my chair before he dipped his head and brushed that mouth over mine before giving me a peck on each cheek that had me smiling.
I grabbed Mo’s foot and pretended I was about to eat it, my other hand wrapping around the back of Jonah’s knee, giving it squeeze. “Nah,” I answered him once Mo had squealed and told me all about her day. I met my favorite eye color in the world and smiled up at him, even though I was pretty sure he could see right through me and what I’d just been in the middle of doing.
He didn’t disappoint me.
His index finger grazed my eyebrow as he stood right there, towering over me with our girl cradled in the crook of his arm, and asked, “What’s that sweet face for?”
How the hell was I supposed to go so long without seeing him? Could I do it? Yeah. But I didn’t want to.
I really didn’t want to. That was a fact, and it was always going to be, my gut said. What the hell was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to choose between the loves of my life?
“Honestly, I was thinking about how much I’m going to miss you, and how I don’t want to only see you…” I had to think about it for a second. “Eight times over the next eight months.” I’d already memorized the dates he’d circled.
That smile of his didn’t go anywhere, and his fingertip brushed over my cheekbone again as he hoisted Mo up a little higher. “We’ll make it work. It won’t be forever,” he told me with that sweet-ass expression on his face that said he totally believed every word coming out of his mouth.
“I know.” I blinked, soaking in what he wasn’t saying. What he wasn’t asking. And I hated feeling so vulnerable, hated not just being straight-up happy he was leaving, but… at least there was something for me to be sad over. I didn’t want him to be sad. I didn’t want him to lose something that meant so much to him again. Of course, I would rather him have this dream of his for a few years longer, even if it came at a cost to me. Of course, I would. After what had happened with his Achilles, I knew it was wishful thinking that he would get to choose when his career ended, but any more time he could get would and could be all I wished for him.
But…
I still couldn’t help but ask the one question that had been bouncing around in my head since that call about the Kobe Chargers had come in. “Do you not want us to go with you anymore?”
That handsome face fell so instantly, I felt bad, but before I could say anything, Jonah dropped to his knees after moving Mo to his other arm so that they were both looking at me. “Yeh,” he answered immediately, his gaze bouncing from one of my eyes to the other. “You thought I changed my mind?”
“You haven’t brought it up since you got the call,” I explained, lifting a hand to tap at a freckle right over the bridge of his nose as something uncomfortable slid into my chest. He’d mentioned us tagging along with him almost daily in the weeks before his offer.
But not since.
Mo slapped a little hand over her dad’s cheek then, and he smiled at her before dipping his head to give her a kiss that ended up on her mouth. When he turned his attention back to me, his eyes were brighter than I had ever seen, but his lips were flat, not in a mad or sad expression but more… resigned, I guessed. “I will always want you to be with me, do you understand? I know this isn’t a decision you can make in a day or a week or a month, Lenny. I know what you have here, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost hope that one day you’ll make that decision,” he said, gazing right into my fucking eyes. That same index finger as before made a loop around the shell of my ear, his gaze bright.
“Time and distance… that’s nothing for us, is it? Whatever time we have together, I will cherish every minute of.” That finger dragged over my cheekbone, and his expression went to the next level with the understanding and patience reflected in it. “My body is leaving, but the rest of me will be wherever you and Mo are, Lenny. I’d hoped I’d made that clear.”
Oh, this son of a bitch and his fucking words.
I pressed my lips together, soaking up every single one of his sentences and saving them for later. Later when I would need them. Later when he wasn’t around to say them in person and remind me that he felt the same way I did.
Later when I was going to miss the fucking shit out of him.
I loved him, and I wasn’t going to make him feel bad about this. I wasn’t. Not ever.
Sometimes you had to do the right thing for the right person, even if it hurt.
“I can’t leave just like that, Jonah,” I told him, not meaning to whisper the words out, but that’s how they arrived into the world. Weak. Sad. “I want to be with you. I’m going to miss you, but you’re leaving in four fucking days, and—”