Twelve Months of Kristal: 50 Loving States Maine

She widens her big brown eyes at me. “I can’t do that. You need to meet Jae-Hyun, and like I said, I have to report back to the workshop.”

“Do you?” I ask. “Didn’t you say something when we met about this being your last year of service?”

“Yes, I did say that, but um…” She suddenly takes a great interest in the red and white striped socks on her feet. “Things changed and I decided to re-up for another year.”

My chest tightens with disappointment. I’d hoped to keep her with me in Tokyo as long as it took for me to tire of her. But her decision to spend another year at the workshop presents a definite obstacle to that plan. I’ll get around it, I tell myself, but I have to ask, “Why? Why did you do that?”

The phone in my hand vibrates with a call before she can answer. And my heart surges with hope when I see the name on the caller ID. It’s Declan.

“Is the plane prepared for takeoff?” I ask, without bothering with the usual polite greetings.

I’m more than ready to leave Maine behind, and Kristal will most likely be more open to my suggestion once she sees what my city has to offer. Plans to get her to stay on longer than a few measly days in Tokyo swirl around my head.

“Uh, not yet,” Declan answers. “I’m calling because I’ve got some news, Mr. Nakamura. News you probably aren’t going to like…”

26

You, Baby

“Oh, my Santa, you two are getting married!?” Kristal squeals, her face lit up with delight.

That morning I walk into the Inn’s noisy dining room, but Kristal runs, making a straight beeline to where Declan and Siobhan are having another small breakfast with Maeve.

“Who’s getting married?” a man wearing a pair of long john pajamas asks another man dressed in a much more formal suit.

“The new housekeeper’s son is getting married to the inn keeper’s niece,” a young woman with Farrah Fawcett hair answers from another table. She’s wearing a bikini. “He proposed late last night in the sitting room. It was so romantic!”

“But I thought he was arranging to go back to Japan with the oriental and the black girl,” the man in the long johns says.

“That was before he decided to propose,” the woman in the bikini answers. “Now, he’s going to stay here and he and Siobhan are going to take over the inn! Isn’t that the grooviest situation you’ve ever heard? Why I could just scream.”

“Oh, well, that certainly is romantic,” the man in the morning suit agrees. “Do you think they’ll have children? It will be so nice to have babies running around the inn again. I’d almost given up hope after Rodge took over.”

“Ssh!” says the woman in the bikini. “They’re talking about wedding plans. I want to listen in.”

“And remember, Rodge is longtime friends with the town clerk,” Maeve says to the happy couple. “He’ll probably be able to expedite a license for you.”

“There you go, volunteering me for crap again,” Rodge says, walking up to the table with a cup of coffee in his hands. “And you know Melvin and I aren’t friends anymore. We had that falling out back in October.”

“Then fall back in!” Maeve insists. “The sooner these two get married, the sooner I’ll get baby grands.”

“Here, here!” the man in the morning suit agrees.

“So, so dreamy!” the woman in the bikini says. She’s turned all the way around in her seat now and blatantly listening in on the conversation at our table.

Doing my best to ignore all the eavesdroppers, I glance over at Kristal, only to find her hunched over her sketch pad.

I grind my teeth. If she draws me one more picture of that old man…

“Has the pilot called yet?” I ask Declan, interrupting the argument between Maeve and Rodge. “I’d like to get back to Japan as soon as possible.”

“Nothing yet,” Declan answers. “And don’t worry, I’m checking every fifteen minutes. You don’t know how bad I feel about leaving you in a lurch like this.”

No, I didn’t know. Nor did I understand how my sensible driver could give up his well-paying job to manage a rundown inn in Maine with a woman he only reunited with yesterday.

But then again, who am I to talk? Kristal and I only spent one night together. But after obsessing over the elf for nearly a year, here I am trying to figure out how to keep her with me in Japan.

“You know, if you made up with Melvin, then Shuv and Dec could get married before Kristal and his poor abandoned boss fly out,” Maeve pointed out. “After all the work they did to reunite these two, don’t you think they at least deserve that?”

“Or his rich boss could come back in his private jet for a summer wedding,” Rodge answers, taking a grumpy sip of his coffee. “Bring the elf with him.”