Chapter 6

What was the name of the perfume Rhys used?

Early in the morning, while jogging near the lake where he had first met Rhys, Dante pondered the question. Since Rhys’s apartment was nearby, Dante had been deliberately circling this area whenever he had time these days, hoping to run into him during his usual morning jogs.

He could not help himself. Ever since he had run into Rhys by chance at a café ten days ago, his lingering attachment had overflowed until it grew sticky and desperate. He wanted, somehow, to meet Rhys just one more time to talk.

It wasn’t easy. Dante’s apartment was down by Chinatown, a full twenty minutes by car from Central Park. Yet just to see his lover’s face—no, his ex-lover’s face—even once, Dante had kept up this insane behavior for ten straight days, whether he had the day off or had to go to work.

At first, he had loitered around Rhys’s apartment building, where the odds of running into him were much higher. Since the two of them had all but lived together, the doormen and concierge knew Dante well and let him in initially. However, Rhys had quickly caught wind of it and instructed management not to let him inside anymore. After that, he had been unceremoniously kicked out. Rhys’s voice ringing through the concierge’s phone that day had been so cold it gave Dante chills.

A Rhys with his face set was scary and, strangely, incredibly sexy. Perhaps the reason Dante had gotten chills was that he had felt a twisted sort of thrill. In any case, unable to abandon his attachment, Dante had begged the concierge to arrange just one “accidental” meeting, and as a result, he had nearly been reported to the police.

Dante knew perfectly well that his behavior crossed the bounds of common sense. Sad as it was, to anyone watching, he must have looked like a stalker. Saying he did it out of love would only be an excuse; to someone who had already sorted out their feelings, it was a violent act.

Normally, Dante truly hated people like that. Even when he had been dumped by his ex-girlfriends while still harboring deep feelings, he had never clung to them because he was terrified of frightening them. He had no intention of causing Rhys that kind of distress either.

But still…!

There were reasons he was obsessing over Rhys this much now. Reasons so rational that even his friends, who had watched his downward spiral from the sidelines, could somewhat understand what he was doing.

First, there was the issue of custody over Lily, the guinea pig they had raised together. In truth, Dante’s apartment did not allow pets, so Rhys had to keep him, but being forcibly separated from Lily, who was no different from family, was a cruel punishment. Dante’s messages asking if Rhys could at least send a photo had never reached him because he had been blocked.

The next reason was a purely practical one. It concerned Rhys’s credit card, which Dante still carried. Rhys had handed Dante a credit card and told him to use it when paying for their dates back when they had only been together a few months.

Dante had been terribly worried that Rhys would hand such a financial responsibility to an unmarried partner so easily; he had firmly objected and tried to return it. Over the next three and a half years, however, Rhys had made Dante use it so naturally that at some point the card settled permanently into his wallet.

After the breakup, Dante intentionally used Rhys’s card whenever he wanted to get Rhys’s attention—which meant essentially every day—and yet the card he expected Rhys to cancel still worked perfectly fine. He had bought this morning’s sports drink with it, too.

That meant Rhys had entirely forgotten the card existed. Although they had broken up, Dante still loved him, and because he loved him, he worried. He absolutely had to tell Rhys the card was still active. What an altruistic reason that was.

And the last reason—actually, the biggest one of all.

He just wanted to see him.

Dante felt a little embarrassed by such an indefensibly personal desire. He wanted to touch Lily’s plump little belly, which was always flopped somewhere sleeping, and he did want to return Rhys’s credit card, but what he wanted most was to look at Rhys.

Dante picked up his pace, breathing hard. Usually, running alone emptied his head quickly, but since breaking up with Rhys, he had far too many thoughts for it to be of any use. He had not agonized this long even when he was deciding whether to go to college. After more than two months of overthinking, he felt as if his brain cells had become excessively, agonizingly active.

It was undesirable. This world was far too harsh a place to live in deep, continuous thought. Because of his job, he tended to see plenty of things no one wanted to see, so Dante made a deliberate effort to avoid fixating on one topic for too long.

But when it came to Rhys, he could not do that. They had fit so perfectly together that Dante had truly believed Rhys was his fated partner. Even though he was being forced to acknowledge that they had broken up, he could not let go of his lingering feelings.

This was so painful he could go insane.

The speed of his feet striking the ground grew faster and faster, and by the time his lungs felt as if they were being squeezed to bursting, his sneakers skidded to a halt. He bent slightly, bracing his hands on his thighs as he caught his breath. Instead of feeling refreshed, he only felt a tight, suffocating knot deep inside his chest.

After breathing heavily for a few seconds, he could not bear it anymore and pulled out his phone. He hesitated for a fleeting second. Since the day after they broke up, Rhys had not answered a single one of Dante’s messages. Not once, through a total of thirty-four texts. Dante was sure he had been blocked, but he could not stop. If anything, thinking he was blocked made sending them feel easier. Messages that would never reach Rhys would surely make him look a little less pathetic.

Making that absurd excuse to himself, Dante slowly began to type. He preferred calls to texts, so his typing speed had originally been slow, but over the last two months, he had made dazzling progress. He could now type an entire sentence in under a minute.

—I miss you, Rhys. Please meet me just once.

After typing it out, he noticed he had sent the exact same thing four days ago. Hm. That really looks desperate. Dante hammered the delete button. After pondering a new sentence, he tried a different pattern this time.

—Listen. Lily showed up in my dream last night and kept scratching at the bars. Nothing happened to him, right? If it’s all right, could you send me just one recent picture of Lily?

Everyone always said that a pet raised together made an excellent excuse to meet an ex-boyfriend. Rhys, however, had not taken the bait once so far.

Though Dante called it an excuse, it was also true that he really wanted to see Lily. In the first place, Dante had been the one to bring Lily home.

Two years ago, his teammate Kirk had adopted two guinea pigs for his children. Unfortunately, he mistook their sexes and brought home one male and one female, which led to a spectacular development. He had made his children responsible for raising the guinea pigs to teach them responsibility, and within four months, the number of guinea pigs had increased to fourteen. As it turned out, guinea pigs could reproduce before they were even a month old, and their breeding cycle was terrifyingly short.

On the day the team all went to Kirk’s house to celebrate his happy event, Dante was watching the wriggling guinea pigs in fascination when he discovered Lily by destiny. The other guinea pigs were busily scurrying around, but one little white one sat curled up quietly in a corner.

When Dante asked Kirk about him, Kirk said the little guy had always been weak and sleepy, and that he did not know when he might die. At that very moment, Lily lifted his head and met Dante’s eyes. The instant Dante saw those black eyes staring up at him, he felt the pull of fate.

He named him immediately. Lily. He had deliberately given him a flower-like name, mirroring Rhys’s. With that snow-white fur and those deep eyes, how could the little guy resemble Rhys so much? Determined to save Lily no matter what, Dante brought him home that day. Kirk generously offered to let him take one more, or even all of them if he wanted, but Dante politely refused and adopted only Lily.

Rhys’s reaction on the day Dante impulsively brought Lily home had been adorable. When he discovered Dante holding the white, squishy ball of fur in one hand, he had smirked and said, “Was seducing people not enough, so now you’re seducing animals too?”

Ha… fuck… I miss Rhys.

Is it just me? Rhys, am I the only one who thinks of our past every day? How could you give up on me so easily after we spent four years together? Yes, I’m the one who said we should break up, but you always ignored that before as if you hadn’t even heard it. Why did you have to listen properly this time?

Am I the only one who thinks of you whenever I go to the cafés we used to visit? That filthy, boring-looking indie movie we said we’d watch when it opened came out a little while ago. Didn’t you think of me when you checked? When you look at Lily sleeping all sprawled out, don’t you remember the dawn when we brought him home? There are places all over New York where we walked hand in hand. While you move through this terrifyingly wide and lonely city, have you never once thought of me?

Memories he had forcibly hidden somewhere inside his head spilled out and buried him, like clothes shoved into a packed closet suddenly tumbling down over his head all at once. Every single one of them was steeped in heavy, suffocating longing. His throat tightened, his chest went numb, and the feeling was almost impossible to bear. He wanted to deny the reality before him like a child.

But child or adult, reality did not change just because one denied it. You either denied it endlessly and suffered, or accepted it and moved on.

That was all.

Dante was stuck somewhere in the middle: he accepted the reality, but he still did not want to end it. Since he had never intended to break up in the first place, he could no longer move forward at all.

As he stood rooted in place, glaring at his phone, his sweat cooled. Dante was not usually sensitive to the cold, but the morning wind today felt as chilly as midwinter. A faint shiver passed through him. He clenched his jaw, pressed his lips together, and deleted what he had written. Then, tossing aside every shred of pride, he typed a new message.

—Rhys, I looked at the calendar and realized next week is our fourth anniversary. I remembered you talking about all the things you wanted to do in Rome, so I’m sending this. I wish we could spend our fourth anniversary in Rome as planned. Would it look ridiculous if I went to Rome alone? It really might.

After hesitating for a moment, Dante sent one more message.

—I love you, Rhys.

The message was so drenched in lingering attachment it practically overflowed, but he did not regret it. After miraculously running into Rhys at the café not long ago, Dante had realized all over again that he was not at all ready to break up with him. If pressing forward like this could get them back together, he wanted to do it. He was even willing to cling more disgracefully. He had forgotten because Rhys had treated him so well until now, but clinging had originally been Dante’s specialty.

After sending the text, Dante stood there on the path and waited for a reply.

But five minutes passed, then ten… then thirty, and no answer came.

Just like always.

Nothing came back. On the bus ride home to get ready for work, Dante sighed heavily and slipped his phone into his pocket.

***