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The flight attendant grinned. “We have more.”
Nara nudged him. “See? She has more. Because she’s a saint.”
The attendant chuckled as she walked away. Nara set her can down and fished around in her bag until she produced her leather diary and a pen. He tried not to stare at it while she furiously scribbled down notes. Her private thoughts. Things he really had no right to wonder about.
He pulled out a magazine and flipped through it. The words and the pictures blurred together. He didn’t care about cosmetics, or hair extensions. He needed something to get his mind off the foreboding feeling in his stomach. Finally, after watching Nara writing for more than ten minutes, he leaned closer to her and nudged her arm. “Saying anything good about me in there?”
Her lips pulled down. Dang, even when she frowned she looked cute. “This isn’t really the kind of diary where I put good things.”
What did that mean? “It’s not?”
“No.”
He tried to process what she was saying. “So, you only write down bad things in there?”
She closed her leather book and pressed her pen on top, her cheeks coloring. “It’s difficult to explain.”
He gazed down at her. Why would she have a diary where she only writes bad things? He didn’t quite understand. Wouldn’t she want to put in there all the good things that were happening as well, so when she looked back on her life, she could remember the happy times? But he really wanted to understand. “Try me.”
She stared down at her lap, her fingers turning white as she gripped her diary. At first no words came out. Then, she took in a breath. “I had a very difficult summer after my mother left.”
He softened. He’d only been eight years old at the time, but he remembered that summer. “I know.”
“No, you probably don’t.” Nara’s face deepened in color and she shifted in her seat. “I grew so angry, I was uncontrollable.”
Sympathy surged in him. “You were just a kid.”
“I know. But I didn’t handle things well. One day, when my father was trying to get me to go to bed, I got so angry I threw a chair through the living room window.”
Derek didn’t know what to say. No words came out. But luckily, she kept going so it wasn’t so obvious. “My father freaked out and left the house. My grandmother was the one who calmed me down. She just cleaned up the broken glass without saying a word, then took me into the kitchen and sat me down at the table. She made me hot chocolate with marshmallows, and poured it into this tiny teacup with an equally tiny saucer. It was the last remaining cup from a children’s tea set she’d had in childhood. Even though it didn’t match any of the other dishes, and it had a chip in it, I adored drinking out of that cup.
“She told me that night that it was okay to get angry. It was okay to yell. But it wasn’t okay to throw chairs. Then she went into her room and came out with this book. She said she’d bought it for herself, but she was going to give it to me instead because I needed it more than she did. It was fancier than anything I’d ever had. Leather-bound with deckled edges. I remember feeling the smooth cover and thinking she was giving me a real treasure. She told me to write in it. To keep it always. She said the things I would write would be private, not seen by anyone else, so I could write whatever I wanted.” Nara swallowed. “So, that’s what I did.”
Derek’s chest tightened. “You wrote down all the hurt you were feeling from your mother leaving.”
“Yes. And I didn’t stop. I wrote in it when my father left on a business trip and wasn’t there for my seventh birthday. I wrote in it when my mother never responded to my calls. I wrote in it when my grandmother was the one who came to my school for Parent’s Day, because my father was too busy to bother. I wrote in it when my first crush broke my heart, and I couldn’t bear to tell anyone else about it.” She hugged her diary to her chest. “I wrote it all down. And it helped me cope.”
Derek wanted to pull Nara into his arms, but this wasn’t the right place for it. The bucket seats were not very conducive to that kind of thing. Instead, he put his hand on her forearm. “Where do you write your happy times?”
“I don’t.”
How depressing. “So, all you write are the painful things?”
She snorted. “Yeah, and I even call it my ‘book of pain.’ Isn’t that dumb?”
He shook his head. “Not dumb at all. It’s how you get through the tough times.” He just wished she would get another journal. One where she could write down the good things. The happy times. Maybe, some of the times they’d shared. Because after the two years were up, she would divorce him and there would be nothing of them left. The thought made him ache inside.
Turbulence shook the plane, and Nara gripped his hand. Then, she smiled. “Sorry. That startled me.”
Without thinking, he threaded his fingers through hers. It was a simple thing, but the second he did it, he regretted it. What if she hadn’t meant to hold his hand? Would she think it odd that he wanted to hold hers? But, now that he was, should he just leave it there, or remove it? It might be more awkward to let go of her hand, now that they were sitting there holding hands. And why was he overthinking things, now?
Nara didn’t seem to mind, though, so he didn’t move.
“Do you keep a journal?” Her deep brown eyes stared, questioning.
“No.” But he was seriously thinking about starting one.
“It’s therapeutic.”
