NOTE: This is the second short story in my upcoming collection. The first is here. This is a work of fiction.

I met Mariko on a cold January night in Tokyo. I had subscribed to Meetup.com, though I wasn’t using it much at the time. That night I did. A local band was playing — popular in their own right, and they sang in English. That detail mattered. It meant the room would be mixed: expats, bilingual Japanese, wanderers, people hovering between worlds.

I went to the bar, hung up my coat, and grabbed a vodka. The crowd was mingling before the show. I learned more about the band. They had hardcore followers — the kind who know every lyric, who close their eyes during certain songs, who treat a small venue like a cathedral.

Then there was Mariko.

I met her on the dance floor and we hit it off immediately. She was 32, lived in Tokyo, and worked in a corporate job she didn’t like. She spoke pretty good English, so we communicated in that language. It was easy. It felt as if I’d known her forever. I was into her. More than that, I wanted her.

Shortly after we started talking, another guy tried to make a move on her. I guess I really liked her because I was not going to let some blasted interloper come between me and her. I said, “Thank you, dude, but we’re talking,” and that was that. He buzzed off. She was essentially my date for the evening.

The band played and they were good. Mariko and I danced — close but not too close — and talked more during the breaks. There was another girl there, Saki, and a young American guy who had been talking with her a bit. We all decided to go to a second bar. It was still earlyish.

We found a wine bar nearby, but the young people thought it was too expensive. I offered to pay, feeling like it couldn’t be that much. We ordered a bottle and shared it. The bottle came to ¥12,000.

We talked and all got along well. Saki was younger, graceful and attractive, just starting her career. The young man was clearly into Saki, and Mariko and I were into each other, so it worked well. Mariko and I talked deep and soulfully, staring into one another’s eyes. We stayed about an hour and a half on the one bottle.

When we left, Mariko and I were on the same train — me back to my hotel, her back home. We talked and exchanged Line. As her stop approached, I said, “I’ll see you again,” and gave her a little kiss on the top of the head. It was a good night.

A few weeks later I was back in Tokyo. I was somewhat at a loose end in my job at the time and had a lot of spare time. I texted Mariko and we agreed to meet at a craft beer bar near my hotel in Shibuya.

We met, drank beer, and I ate tacos from the taco truck outside. That same feeling of familiarity was there right away. After that, we moved to a small, quaint wine bar. The woman running it asked for our music suggestions.

I chose Nina Simone’s “Black Gold.”

Mariko chose “Who Knows Where the Time Goes,” and then “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black.”

There was only one question between us: would we sleep together?

We did not sleep together that night, or any other night.

We wrapped up at the wine bar and headed to Shibuya Station. She said, “kairitakunai,” which means “I don’t want to go home.” That’s about as green a light as a guy is going to get.

I read her as meaning she wanted to go home with me.

But life is timing, as they say. Maybe I was faded. Maybe I had something else on my mind. The spotlight came on and I was backstage getting ready. Instead of inviting her back to my hotel — the objectively right move — I gave her a little kiss on the lips and said good night.

That was that for that evening.

Two weeks later I was back in Tokyo again and I met her again. We drank and had a good time, but something was not quite the same. We had had our window, and in that micro-moment I had blown my lines.

We parted at the train station again. This time I didn’t kiss her.

A little while later my phone died, and for various reasons I didn’t get a new one right away. When I did get a new phone, Line — the app we had been using to communicate — ate her contact along with a bunch of others. She was gone. I could not have reached her if I wanted to.

In a way, it was a clean break. No drama. No mess. Just a corporation fucking with the program. Life moved on and I didn’t think much about Mariko.

A year or two later I went back through all my Line chats just hoping, but no dice.

We ended as we began — strangers in the night.