Street Dreams

Chapter 12 - Set Aflame

When she closed the door, Mel dropped her forehead against the door frame. What was she doing? Making moon eyes like that over someone else's fiance. Not only someone else's fiance, but the fiance of someone who was obviously trying to run from them. Though, despite trying to run away, she decided to go back. Why did Hana go back so willingly? Mel had offered her an out. She sighed. No matter what, the way she reacted to Ren was wrong. Ren was Hana's fiance, possibly a bad person, and she wasn't going to be a homewrecker a second time. The first time, she reasoned with herself,  telling herself she was like Camilla, who had been seeing the guy before he got married to someone else.  She learned the better of it, though, realizing after slowly befriending his wife, that she was just a way to escape the realities that came with marriage. She regretted it, and swore to never do it again.

When she gushed about Ren, though, Hana didn't seem to return any of the enthusiasm. It was an arranged marriage. Maybe Ren wasn't Hana's type. She had friends who didn't quite get her taste, either.  She pictured Ren's face and sighed. "That's a waste."

Her thoughts didn't stop at his face, though, rather, she had done her damnedest to keep her eyes above board when he was inside. However, when she ran into him earlier, having no idea who he was, she made no such efforts, briefly taking all of him in as she apologized. He was tall, with broad shoulders, a height that would have been shocking to her, if not for Asian basketball players. Maybe he could have been one. She swallowed thinking about how dwarfed she felt next to him. Lifting her head, she let it fall, repeatedly, against the door frame, punctuating each word with a thud. "Such. A. Waste."

Sighing, she stood up and walked back to the kitchen, grabbing the plates that were on the coffee table so she could wash them. "They probably won't be back." 

She'd helped enough people that she liked to think that she had a good grasp on when people were lost causes, for the moment. She thought it a shame, particularly since Hana seemed like such a nice girl, at least, that was how she came off. Once she got out of her bubble, she seemed quite lively. Mel thought it would be a welcome change to her rather sedate life.  She would have to tell Niall about it.  The dishes were done, dried, and put away with little fanfare. Her mind repeatedly chastising her whenever it wandered too close to inappropriate territory. She decided to admit that she was a little lonely. Maybe the next time someone offered, she should just take up the offer.

Going back out to the couch, she plopped down onto it, pulling one of the pillows into her lap to hug, and turned on the TV. She flipped through reality shows, fix-up shows, and a few sitcoms before ending up on TMC, watching Jupiter's Darling. She smiled, having caught it just at Esther Williams' bath  swimming scene where she had been singing "I Have a Dream." Leaning over toward one side of the couch, she laid down and settled in to watch, having had a weakness for classic movies, but especially classic musicals, no matter how bad they may have been.

Right around the point where Howard Keel was singing "Don't Let This Night Get Away," after he started to accept how he was feeling about Esther Williams, she heard a sudden loud ring. A soft buzz from beneath snapped her awake. First, she felt at her back pocket, where her phone was. But, realizing it wasn't her ringtone, she set herself to finding what it was.

It didn't take much digging under the cushion to find the offending electronic. It was a phone. Obviously, she told herself. Shaking her head, she looked at the screen and frowned.  The name was in Japanese, accompanied by a picture of a very lively-looking Japanese man with bleached hair and a big smile with his tongue half out. Plainly a selfie.  She shouldn't answer, but what if it was them? What if the person on the other end only spoke Japanese? Shit. And she didn't know where either of them lived, so it's not like she could just go return it.  While it rang, she weighed the pros and cons until it stopped.  At that point, she cursed her indecision, and told herself if it rang again then she'd answer.