Chapter Eleven - His Place

"We're going to my place, okay?" Nikau said in the car from the airport. His right hand stayed on the wheel, the other holding mine as always. "I've been wanting to bring you there for a while. Just never found the right moment."

"And now the moment's right?"

"Yes," he said, a small smile aimed at the road ahead. "You just saw me at my most—" He paused, hunting for the right word. "—undone. Feels only fair that you get to see all of me."

His loft turned out to be in an area I never would have guessed — an apartment he'd converted into something that felt like an old industrial building reborn. Exposed brick, high ceilings, and vast windows facing the Jakarta skyline from a height that turned the city lights below into miniaturesI stood rooted in the middle of his living room, taking it in. An open bookshelf, its titles arranged far more neatly than mine ever were. One black-and-white family photograph hanging on the brick wall. Green plants that were clearly tended with intention, not bought as filler décor. 

On the display shelf near the window, one object kept pulling my eye back: a brass Zippo, clearly old, its casing engraved with a pattern worn soft by decades of hands. It sat alone under the light like it had been curated — an antique, I assumed. Decoration, like everything else arranged just so.

"So this is you," I said, echoing the sentence he'd once said stepping into my bedroom.

"What do you think?" He smiled from behind me, wrapped both arms around me, and kissed the side of my head.

"More ordered. Nothing random."

"Including you," he whispered low, and kissed my neck.

The doorbell rang before I could explore further. Nikau let go to answer it, took a small package from a courier, then walked back and opened the box right in front of me.

"What's that?"

Inside lay a new charm — a small, exquisitely detailed seashell.

"Ordered it last week," he said warmly, fingers deftly working it onto my chain without further explanation. "For Lombok."

"You ordered this before we left?"

"I ordered it," he said, meeting my eyes, "because I knew something would happen in Lombok worth remembering forever. I just didn't know exactly what."

I looked at the tiny spiral shell now hanging at my wrist, then up at him. "You were that sure?"

"About you?" His expression was simple, and dense with honesty. 

"Yes."

 

 

Unlike at my house, in this loft Nikau moved in a way that felt far more... relaxed. More entirely himself. No residue of a guest's carefulness — this was his territory, his 'habitat'. He knew where everything lived, how the afternoon light fell, which corner of the sofa was best.

And when he pulled me close in the middle of that living room, Jakarta glittering behind the glass, there was something different in how he touched me. More certain. A man finally on his own ground, no longer adjusting himself to someone else's space.

"None of your gang can barge in here," he said between kisses, his voice low and rough. "No Sary suddenly yelling from the front door. Just us."

I laughed against his mouth, still lucid enough to be tickled by it. "Oh, so we're here because you don't want interruptions?"

"Yes," he answered, assertive, his gaze darkening on my lips. "Is it so wrong that I want you to myself?"

I was not given time to answer.

 

The way he kissed me was different that night — still dense with tenderness, but with an absolute confidence underneath it I'd never felt before. In Lombok he had coaxed. Here, on his own ground, he led, and some newly unlocked part of me had stopped bracing against it. His hands no longer moved in the grammar of asking. 

His fingers seemed to have memorized exactly where every touch would land, and used the knowledge without hesitation.

He brought me to his bed, and for the first time in my life, I thought of nothing in this world except the man above me.

"I want to hear you," he said against my throat, when he felt me swallow a sound the way I always had — reflexively, discreetly, the lifelong habit of a woman trained to keep her reactions behind glass. "All of it, Sei. Don't you dare edit yourself for me.”

"Nik—" It came out unsteady.

"None of your gang can barge in here, remember?" A low breath of a laugh against my skin. "No walls thin enough. No one to perform for. Just me." He lifted his head so I could see his eyes, dark and certain. "And I want the real one. Not the composed one. Give her to me.”

And I — God help me — did.

The first sound that escaped me unguarded made me flinch out of old habit, the instinct to apologize for taking up space. He caught it immediately.

"There," he murmured, and there was something almost reverent in it. "That. Don't hide that from me. Do you have any idea what it does to me, hearing you?”

He read every reaction like a language he'd been studying for months — because he had. Every hitch of my breath, every place my body tensed and released, every involuntary sound; he filed them all and answered them, and when he found the ones that undid me he stayed there, relentless and unhurried at once.

"You like that." Not a question. He'd felt my whole body confirm it. "Tell me if you want more. Tell me if you want it harder, sayang — I need to hear you ask.”

I had spent fifty-one years never asking anyone for anything I could get myself. I asked him.

And the way his eyes lit when I did — the way he watched my face sharpen with anticipation before he even moved, like my wanting was the most beautiful thing he'd ever been handed — dismantled something in me that no gentleness alone could have reached. He liked that I was greedy for it. He liked that I'd stopped managing my face. When my expression gave me away, when my eyes went wide and bright waiting for him, he made a sound of pure male satisfaction and gave me exactly what I'd asked for.

"That's it," he breathed, moving harder now, watching every flicker cross my face. "Look at you. Look how you shine when you let yourself want something." His forehead dropped to mine. "Don't ever let anyone tell you to dim that again.”

"You okay?" he'd whisper now and then — not from doubt, but because my comfort always came first, threaded through even now.

"Don't stop" was the only phrase I could still assemble.

And he didn’t.

I could hear my name leaving his mouth like something precious he worshipped, not merely spoke. And when the wave finally broke over me, hitting with an intensity that had me gripping the sheets, my own voice cracked into a sound I had never heard from myself — loud, unguarded, entirely without permission or apology.

I braced, out of ancient reflex, to be embarrassed by it.

"Sei." He whispered it against the skin of my neck, breath ragged, and there was no embarrassment to meet — only awe. "You can be as loud as you want. No one's listening but me. And I could listen to that for the rest of my life.”

And for the first time in a long life ruled by rigid control, I let myself go completely. No more managing my volume. No more arranging my face to look composed. I just let myself feel — wave after wave, one after another — until I lost count, lost time, lost everything except his body over mine, my name on his lips, and Jakarta glittering far outside the window.

"That's it, sayang," he whispered, protective. "Just like that."

 

 

When the storm finally settled, I lay peacefully on his chest, my breathing still uneven, our heartbeats falling into almost the same rhythm.

"That was—" I ran out of definitions.

 "I know," he said softly, kissing the top of my head. "I felt it too."

"I've never—" I stopped, suddenly shy about admitting how different tonight had been from anything before it.

"You don't have to explain," he said quietly, his palm tracing slow, soothing lines down my bare back. "I'm just happy I could give you that.”

I fell asleep that night feeling full, truly calm, and completely held — without any fear of losing myself.

 

Two days after that long night at the loft, we were back at my house. And I had absolutely no idea Arga would come home that morning.

He had told me he was returning to Jakarta for his semester break — but per my work calendar, his arrival was still two weeks away. What I didn't know, until it was far too late to prevent, was that my son had deliberately moved his flight up to surprise me.

And because I'd never changed the door code since he left, he didn't need to ring the bell.

He walked straight in through the side door, both hands on his suitcase handle, hair wrecked from an overnight flight — and was greeted by a kitchen scene he was in no way mentally prepared for: Nikau, shirtless, casually frying eggs at the stove, and me, still in satin sleepwear, perched at the kitchen island with a coffee cup in hand.

For two full, suffocating seconds, none of us spoke.

"Uh," Arga said finally, setting his suitcase down with exaggerated slowness, as if a sudden movement might make the awkwardness in the room somehow worse. “Hi."

"HEY, NAK—" I nearly dropped my cup. I shot up too fast, simultaneously yanking my collar tighter and firing an emergency look at Nikau to — I didn't even know what. Vanish? Get dressed? Both at once?

Nikau, on the other hand, showed zero panic. He calmly turned off the stove, wiped his hands on a kitchen towel, and walked toward Arga with the relaxed bearing of a man for whom this crisis was the most normal thing in the world.

"You must be Arga," he said warmly, extending his hand. "Nikau."

Arga looked at the offered hand, then at Nikau's face, then finally at me — standing rigid behind the kitchen island, praying for a hole to open in the floor and swallow me whole.

And slowly, something in my son's expression mutated from shock into... amusement.

"Arga," he said at last, taking the handshake. "Nice to finally meet you.”

"So you've heard about me?" Nikau asked, a little surprised.

"Mama was being vague a few months back," Arga said, a mischievous grin spreading. "She definitely didn't mention you were—" he gestured up and down Nikau's entire athletic frame, "—like this.”

"AR!" I nearly shrieked.

"What? It's all good, mother." Arga casually planted himself on a bar stool, in no hurry whatsoever to leave the room, studying Nikau with an interest that leaned much more toward curiosity than a son's anger. "So you're the one who finally got Mama dating again?”

"I think you had the bigger role there," Nikau replied, smiling easily. "Your mom told me a lot about your video calls."

Arga turned to me with one eyebrow sky-high. "You told him about that video call too?”

"I told him MANY things," I said defensively, still frozen in place. "Because I did not expect you two to meet in a ridiculous situation like— Nik, PUT ON A SHIRT!”

"Oh." Nikau looked down at his own chest as if noticing it for the first time. "Right. Sorry.”

He strolled off toward the guest room for a shirt — in absolutely no hurry — while I stood petrified in the middle of my kitchen, processing the insane fact that my son had just made casual small talk with my shirtless boyfriend.

"Ma," Arga said the moment Nikau's back disappeared, his voice full of laughter fought down in his throat. "You look like you're about to faint.”

"I did NOT want my son coming home to find him half-naked in the kitchen.”

"I'm fine, honestly." His laugh finally escaped. He stepped in, pulled me into a warm hug, and kissed my forehead. "Really, Ma. He seems like a good guy. And honestly—" he glanced toward the corridor where Nikau had vanished, "—you look happy. That's what matters to me.”

Nikau returned minutes later, fully dressed in a soft cotton tee. Calm as ever, he offered, "Breakfast, Ar? I'll make you an omelette if you want.”

Arga glanced at me — at his mother's face, clearly not yet recovered from the morning's shock. And whether he read my rattled state correctly or was simply kind enough to give me air, he shook his head.

"I'm good," he said, kissing my cheek before grabbing his suitcase. "Still jet-lagged, gonna crash upstairs. But thanks, Nik.”

"Sure," Nikau answered warmly.

The moment Arga's tall silhouette disappeared up the stairs, I finally exhaled the breath trapped in my chest, sat back down, and hid my face in both hands.

"That," I said, frustrated, in Nikau's direction, "was embarrassing."

He took the seat beside me and kissed the top of my head. "I thought he was pretty chill, Sei. Pretty funny, to be honest.”

"Funny for YOU. My son just saw you half-naked in my kitchen."

"He seemed okay." The amused smile stayed firmly on his face. "More than okay, actually."

And though my face still burned with residual shame, a small laugh escaped me anyway. Because he had a point — beneath all my corporate panic, Arga really did seem fine.

Far more than fine.

Though the morning's surprise, it turned out, was only the opening act of a day that would spiral far beyond anyone's predictions.

 

That evening, after Arga woke from his jet-lag recovery sleep, the three of us had dinner together in the living room. The awkwardness hovered for the first few minutes, then melted far faster than I'd predicted. Arga, it turned out, was enormously curious about everything Nikau — from how we met, to the meaning of every charm on my rose gold bracelet, which had just gained its sixth: the spiral shell from Lombok.

We shared all of it, of course, in a version strictly censored of adult content.

The next day, Nikau went back to his apartment to handle some work. On Arga's second day home, after lunch together, my son settled onto the bar stool beside me with a glass of juice.

"So," he opened. "Nikau."

"Yes."

"How long, Ma?"

"A few months." I watched his face closely, reading the micro-expressions. "You're really okay with this, Ar?"

"I'm really okay, Ma," he said, smiling sincerely. "Just surprised. But I'm happy seeing you like this. Really."

"Is he good to you?" he asked, his tone turning serious now.

"Very," I said quietly — and I couldn't suppress the proud curve of a smile that appeared on its own.

Arga studied me in silence for a moment, then gave me a smile so genuine it ached. "Okay. I trust you."

 

I don't know exactly when Arga called Vino, his father. Probably that same night before bed — an old habit he kept even though the two of them were never truly close after the wreckage of our divorce settled. Probably just a short check-in, the kind of routine I had always pushed Arga to maintain, no matter how much I dislike the guy. What I know for certain is that two days later, my phone lit up with a notification that made my chest tighten and my stomach turn.

Wiwin sent the first emergency message, hurried: Bu Sekar, I'm so sorry, but you need to see this now.

A screenshot from Threads. Posted from Vino's official account — tens of thousands of followers, the residue of his glory days as a media figure before mismanagement ate most of his assets.

 

"Imagine: the ex-wife who ruined you, now exposing your own son to her promiscuous lifestyle. Parading her boy toy through the house your son grew up in. Some of us are seriously weighing whether the courts should get involved. A father protects."

I stared at those lines for several minutes, processing every vicious word.

Ruined you. As if he were the wounded victim — not a man caught cheating because his own mistress posted photos of the two of them in our bed. In the house we had shared.

Promiscuous lifestyle. His label for one healthy relationship, with one man, months deep and serious.

The courts. A laughable threat over an eighteen-year-old studying abroad, who legally required custody arrangements from no one on this earth.

The comments had hit the thousands within hours — some defending Vino blindly, some asking who the ex-wife was, and several anonymous accounts already guessing my corporate identity with detail that made me nauseous.

My phone buzzed again. Arga.

Ma, I just saw Papa's Threads. I swear I didn't say anything that could be twisted like this. I just casually told him I was back in Jakarta, and he asked "so the boyfriend stays over with your mom?" and I answered honestly because I thought it was safe, and I never thought Papa would go this insane—

I read my son's message, set the phone on my desk, and sat still, fighting to keep my breathing from tipping into panic.

Arga appeared at my study door minutes later, pale, his eyes red with held-back emotion.

"Ma," he said, his voice cracked and hoarse. "I am so sorry. I really didn't mean to cause this — I only told him because I was happy seeing you like this. I didn't think Papa could be this cruel—"

"Ar." I stood immediately, crossed the room, and pulled his tall frame into my arms before he could finish destroying himself. "It's okay."

"But I'm the one who told him—"

"You told your father about your own life, Ar. That's normal," I said, holding him tighter. "What is not normal is your father deliberately weaponizing it to attack me in public."

And then Arga was crying in my arms — my eighteen-year-old, taller than me since junior high, shaking like the little boy he used to be. I fought to keep my own tears back, forcing myself to stand solid, to be his safest shelter instead of surrendering to my own unraveling.

"I hate this," he mumbled roughly into my shoulder. "I hate that Papa used me to attack you. I can't talk to him anymore. This is too much."

"I know, baby. I'm sorry I put you in this position."

Minutes passed before the crying eased. He pulled back, wiped his face with his sleeve, and looked down at me from his hundred and eighty-two centimeters — a viewing angle that still startles me, remembering the boy who once stood no taller than my hip.

"How are you so short, Mama?" he said, trying to kiss the top of my head, hoarse but reaching for lightness.

"I might be short," I said, looking straight up at him, "but I can still kick your ass."

"No doubt," he said, and for the first time since the storm broke, he laughed — small, but real.

I laughed with him, pulled him into one more hug, and for a moment we just stood there in my study, holding on, laughing at the chaos detonating beyond our control.

On my desk, my phone buzzed again.

Through the gap of Arga's sleeve I saw the screen light up — a message from Nikau, whom I'd been ignoring since the storm surfaced, too overwhelmed to answer anyone. Wiwin, I'd learn later, had briefed him within the hour. Of course she had.

"Sei, please talk to me."

I felt Arga's muscles stiffen slightly in my arms. And when I looked up, I knew my son had read that line on the screen too.