15 Gemma
O n Sunday morning, a full two hours before Celeste and I are supposed to meet, I arrive at Peter’s, a nice coffeehouse that Val, Kiara, and I stop at often since it’s only a five-minute walk from their place. As locations go, I figure it’s the best option, since it’s a brightly lit, wide-open space, pretty much the opposite of the dark and cramped places I’ve been meeting Celeste outside of work lately. It also has such a nice, productive vibe that I hope will help us stay on track.
It’s foggy and cloudy today, and there’s enough moisture in the air that I bring an umbrella in case it rains. But that doesn’t deter people from being out and about. Traffic is bustling, and even from inside the coffeehouse, I can hear honking cars and sirens passing by.
I put on my earbuds and get started on work. The first thing I do is go over the footage and photos that Celeste sent me. As I review everything, I have to admit that it all works perfectly. The lighting, the angles, and the editing…
Celeste managed to set up all the components of the shoot flawlessly in a way that makes everything from Case’s rainbow-colored hair to even finer details like Will’s dimples really shine through the cameras. And she’s already edited out all the unnatural pauses and other awkward instances that occurred while the kids were speaking.
I’m finishing up the transcription of the second interview when Celeste arrives at 10:55 a.m., five minutes earlier than our scheduled meeting time. She sits down across the table from me and wordlessly watches as I type.
Before I begin a new line of dialogue, I pause the video and glance up from my screen just briefly enough to see that today, Celeste is wearing a nice white blouse with a turned-down collar and black square glasses that makes her look like a sexy schoolteacher. Intentionally or not, she’s perfectly executed the hot nerd look.
“Hey,” I say. “Sorry, let me finish this up before we start talking.”
Celeste shrugs. “No worries. I came early.”
She continues watching me work, and although I can’t see her face, the knowledge that she’s observing me is enough for my fingers to make typos they normally don’t, like spelling “girlfriend” girlfiend . I clear my throat, ignoring the heat rising up in my cheeks.
“Sorry, can you not look at me while I work?” I ask. “It’s distracting.”
When I glance up again, Celeste’s slightly widened eyes are blinking rapidly. “Oh, sure. Sorry, I didn’t think—I’m going to go get myself a coffee.”
As she hastily gets up and goes to stand in line at the register, I stare at her back in confusion. What happened? Why was she so flustered?
And then, I realize. After making sure Celeste still has her back turned toward me, I look at myself in my phone’s selfie camera.
Since I don’t have time to think much about how I look before hopping on the Muni in the morning during weekdays, I usually throw on whatever’s clean and don’t even bother with anything other than sunscreen. On weekends, though, I like to dress up and wear makeup, simply because I have more time to do so.
Both times I’d last seen Celeste, I’d been wearing my usual work outfits. This is the first time Celeste has seen me in full makeup and a dress since college. Granted, there could be a whole other reason why she’s acting like this. But even the slightest possibility of her becoming this worked up about me looking nicer than usual makes me blush even harder.
I barely manage to finish the transcription and hit save.
The café had almost been empty when I came in, but by the time Celeste comes back with her drink, it’s almost full, probably because it’s now pouring outside. Every table around us is taken with people either hanging out or just taking refuge from the rain. Friends catch up over lattes, and various individuals read books with their steaming mugs of coffee. There are even a few other people on their laptops, which makes me feel better about working on a Sunday.
Celeste sits back down, and I look up from my computer again. She’s gotten herself a hot Americano in a cute turquoise mug. Yup, Celeste is definitely staring at me, her eyes lingering on my currently pink-painted lips.
I clear my throat and push my laptop in her direction. “So, what do you think? I’m going to add more text to introduce and conclude the piece when we have all the interviews, and the design team is going to make the layout look more polished, but this is basically what I have right now.”
She slowly scrolls through what I have so far. From the way her eyes are moving, I can tell she’s going from the pictures she took to the text I wrote and vice versa.
“It looks amazing, so far,” she says. “I like the pictures you picked out. Great choices, Gem. I can tell you put a lot of care in selecting the ones you did.”
“Thanks. And yeah, I did my best.”
Celeste sent me a folder of all the photos she’d taken during the interviews, and it’d been up to me to choose which ones to use. It was hard to only select a few, but I tried to choose pictures that I thought best portrayed the subjects’ personalities, based on the time we spent with them.
“I love this picture of Case laughing,” Celeste says with a smile. “Their entire face is lighting up.”
I grin, too. “Yup, that’s why I chose it.”
Our eyes meet. Celeste’s gaze flickers down to my lips again before she looks away.
I go over some more logistical things with Celeste, explaining to her what Evelyn told me about the timeline for the project. Overall, compared to our previous encounters, it’s a very productive meeting. By the time I finish, the din of the coffee shop is so loud that I have to practically shout to be heard. “Do you have any questions or concerns?”
Celeste flashes a quick, professional smile. “No,” she says, also loudly. “Thanks for showing me everything. It’s nice to see how it all looks put together!”
She gets up quickly, bumping right into a college student rushing to meet her friends at the door. Books and papers fly from the student’s hands, along with her iced latte, which splashes all over the place. The girl’s friends gasp.
“ Shit ,” says Celeste.
I bend down to help the girl pick up her stuff. When I glance up again, Celeste is dabbing her chest with napkins from our table. My eyes automatically follow her hand and holy crap … her white shirt has gone sheer with the icy liquid, exposing the lacy bra she has underneath. I’m instantly turned on but also mortified for her. Neither of us has anything to cover her up. Since we’re so close to my friends’ place, I didn’t bother bringing a jacket.
“Hurry up!” says one of the other students at the door. “We’re going to miss the bus!”
“I’m so sorry,” the girl says. “But I have to go, bye!”
The student runs to her friends, leaving Celeste and me to stare at each other. Celeste has gotten as much of the stain out as she can, which unfortunately isn’t much. She wraps her arms around herself and shivers.
I don’t have to look out the window to know it’s still pouring outside. The rain is a steady drum that accompanies the café music, like it’s part of the track.
“Did you drive here?” I try.
She shakes her head. “No. I took public transportation. Didn’t want to deal with all the traffic and parking.”
A quick glance tells me Celeste didn’t bring an umbrella, like I did. I would just walk her to the train stop with mine, but she’s already shivering now from the iced coffee. And she lives on the other side of the peninsula, so a rideshare car will not only be expensive but also take forever because of the rain and afternoon traffic.
We look at each other for a long moment, and I want to groan in frustration. This is what I get for not picking somewhere that’s more in between the two of us.
“Do you want to come over to my place?” I finally ask. “It’s a five minutes’ walk away. I’ll lend you a shirt. And maybe an umbrella, too, if it keeps raining.”
Celeste raises her eyebrows. “Are you sure you’d be okay with that?”
“I can’t in good conscience let you go across the city like this,” I say. “Besides, I live with my friends, and they’ll be home. It’ll be fine.”
The truth is, I have no idea whether Kiara and Val are home or not. Knowing how late they went to sleep last night after playing Baldur’s Gate 3 , I’m pretty certain they are, though.
Celeste bites her lip. “If you’re sure. Thank you. I appreciate it.”
When we step outside the coffeehouse, it’s raining so consistently that it feels like there wasn’t a time when it didn’t rain.
My umbrella is small, really only meant to be used by one person. We’ll have to link arms and squeeze closer together to both fit underneath. I open it and extend my arm out to her as casually as I can.
“Here,” I say.
I hold my breath as she wordlessly loops her arm around mine.
At first, Celeste does her best to walk beside me, but that proves to be difficult since she’s almost a head taller than me. We don’t last more than a block before she has to take the umbrella from me and hold it for us instead. It’s uncomfortable at first, but once we find a good way to position ourselves, it’s admittedly cozy and nice, a little refuge while we walk through the cold, rainy city streets.
I hadn’t accounted for how just the warmth of her body pressed against mine would make my heart race. I swallow and do my best to avoid eye contact, even as my body heats up next to hers.
“Do you remember that one time it rained really hard in LA?” Celeste asks suddenly. “It’s one of the few times I remember it raining substantially while we were there for college.”
“Are you talking about the time during our junior year when the entire campus was almost empty, and some professors even canceled class?”
“Yes!” Celeste laughs. “After growing up in Korea, which has a whole monsoon season, I couldn’t believe my ears when my professor said we should cancel class for the day because of ‘rain and traffic.’”
I groan. “Oh yeah, you got to return home right away. I remember that. Meanwhile my professor stubbornly made us stay for a whole forty-five minutes and only gave up after he realized that more than half the class wasn’t going to show up.”
“We had fun after, though, right?” Celeste asks. “Since I made us Shin Black Ramyun, and we spent the entire rest of the day binge-watching a K-drama together.”
A faint smile plays on her lips at the memory. And before I can stop myself, I’m smiling back at her.
“Yeah. You always made the best ramyun.”
Although I did most of the cooking, the one thing Celeste made really well—her “signature dish,” as we jokingly called it—during college was ramyun. Instead of just using the packets that came with the instant noodles, Celeste would add in a bunch of other fresh ingredients like eggs, green onions, mushrooms, and dried seaweed. We’d always eat it out of the pot with servings of kimchi in our individual bowls. It wasn’t as impressive as the haejang-guk she made me more recently, but it was so good that I still make ramyun for myself that way out of habit, eight years later, although I’d somehow forgotten—or maybe I blocked it out—that I first learned how to do that from Celeste.
I’m so lost in thought that I don’t look where I’m going, or at least not until Celeste pulls me toward her.
Whoosh. A car speeds past us, splashing water onto the back of my dress.
I’m pressed against her now, the two of us standing at the edge of the sidewalk underneath my too-small umbrella. We stay there like that for a moment that seems to stretch on for several years, my heart pounding in my chest. It’s nice and warm in her arms, so much so that I can’t help but linger a bit before I step away.
Her eyes still slightly widened, she says, “ Joshim-hae ,” telling me to be careful in Korean. She tilts her head at my now partially wet dress. “It’s a good thing you live close by.”
I nod. “Guess we both got wet today.”
The comment leaves my mouth before I realize how it sounds. Celeste’s eyebrows shoot up before she quickly turns away so I can’t see her face.
But I see her shoulders shake with silent laughter, all the same.
“Wait, so, you live with two of your friends?” Celeste asks as we walk up the stairs to the apartment. “But they’re not your roommates?”
I wince. I knew this question would be unavoidable. But it doesn’t make me any keener to answer it.
“Yup,” I say. “Technically they are my roommates now, since we do live together. And I do pay my part of the rent. But I’m just sleeping on their couch until I can find my own place to live. I used to live with my ex before we broke up.”
“He kicked you out?” Celeste asks. The sudden fury in her voice catches me off guard. “In what world is that fair?”
“The condo is his parents’, unfortunately. And even if we had rented an apartment, I would have still been the one to move out. I can’t afford to live alone in SF. He can, thanks to his family.”
Celeste shakes her head. “Ah, that sucks.”
“Yeah, it’s okay, though. My friends have been very understanding while I get back on my feet. You’ll see when you meet them. They’re nice—”
I open the apartment door, only to find that no one is in the living room.
Desperation creeps into my voice.
“Hello?” I call out, hoping Val and Kiara are in their bedroom.
But no one answers. Not even Burrito. Celeste and I are completely alone.
“Fuck,” I say underneath my breath.
Behind me, I hear Celeste slip into the apartment, but I don’t look at her. Instead, I check my phone and see two message notifications from the group chat with my friends.
Off to take Burrito for his annual vet visit! Kiara says.
He didn’t pull off a jailbreak, so don’t worry, Val adds.
Both texts were received thirty minutes ago, before Celeste and I even left the coffeeshop. Only, I’d been too distracted by Celeste—and too overwhelmed—to take my eyes off her long enough to check my phone. I’m embarrassed that I hadn’t even thought to look.
To her credit, Celeste doesn’t say anything. She walks past me to sit on Clementine, and I get the weird feeling of my two worlds merging, like the one I used to get as a kid when I spotted a teacher at Costco. Even though I’m the one that invited Celeste into the apartment, my brain still feels like it’s short-circuiting.
Kiara and Val didn’t yet exist in my life when I met Celeste. And Celeste had long disappeared by the time I’d met my friends. And yet here she is now, quietly checking her phone on Kiara’s sofa. I can tell she’s patiently waiting for me, too polite to comment on the awkward situation I’ve put us in.
I turn around and face my box of belongings so my back is to Celeste. “Let me change really quick, and then I’ll find a clean shirt for you.”
I grab another dress for myself and dash into the bathroom. With the door safely closed behind me, I stand with my back pressed against the wooden surface and let out a slow breath. After a few more quiet inhales and exhales, I change into the dry dress and come back out into the living room.
Celeste looks up from her phone. “Hi,” she says with a small smile.
“Hi,” I reply before whipping back around again.
I search through my things for a shirt that’ll fit Celeste. My clothes all seem too small for her, probably since she’s taller and has wider shoulders.
I know I have a bigger shirt somewhere. I just have to find it.
“Anything will do,” she says after I fling a fourth shirt behind my shoulder. “Or I can wash my shirt here and dry it if it’s okay—”
“Found it!” I get up on my feet, triumphantly holding up a black, baggy T-shirt.
Celeste scoffs. “How big do you think I am?”
I hear her get up from Clementine and move toward me, but I don’t realize how close she is until I accidentally back into her.
“Whoa there,” she says, gently placing her hands on my arms to steady me. This is the second time today that she’s touched me, and unfortunately, I still can’t get enough.
I’ve never in my life been gladder to be wearing long sleeves, because the heat from her body is enough for my breath to catch. If we were skin to skin, I’d probably combust. Every cell in my body is aching to close the distance between us. Even though we did technically kiss back at the pub, I was too drunk to remember much of it. I want to remember this time, to fully feel every minute sensation of her lips on mine.
Snap out of it! I mentally reprimand myself.
I shove the shirt in her direction so it comes in between our bodies.
“Here,” I say. “I figured you’d want a shirt you can wear without a bra, since the coffee got on it, too.”
I was so one-track minded in my attentiveness that I’m wholly unprepared for how awkwardly my words hang in the space between us.
Finally, Celeste raises an eyebrow. “Oh, so you were looking at my bra?” she asks, her voice low and quiet.
She gets an intense look in her eyes, as if she’s stripping me in her thoughts.
“It was kind of unavoidable,” I explain. “The coffee did soak through your shirt.”
Celeste makes a low humming sound, and my eyes drop down to her red lips. My breath hitches, and Celeste’s eyes briefly flutter closed.
“Gem,” she says.
Almost instinctively, I lean forward.
And then she’s kissing me, rough and hard. She tosses the shirt I gave her onto Clementine before pushing me against the wall, resting an arm in a protective arch above my head. A small moan escapes from my mouth as our tongues entangle with one another, and at the sound, her eyes flutter closed with pleasure before she cups my chin with her other hand, angling my face so her tongue can press in deeper.
We stop briefly to catch our breaths before she pulls me to Clementine so we both end up on the couch, with me straddling her between my legs as we resume making out.
I unbutton the still stained but now mostly dry shirt of hers, the thing that got us into this mess in the first place. With a frustrated growl, I fling it to the ground.
Celeste’s eyes widen with amusement. “What did my shirt ever do to you?” she teases, but the humor is quickly replaced by pleasure on her face as I cup her breasts, slipping my fingers under her bra to sweep over her hardened nipples.
It’s almost criminal how much I missed these boobs.
“Undo my bra,” she begs, and I oblige, reaching behind her to unhook the back.
The moment it drops to the floor, I’m sucking on one of her nipples while massaging the other with my fingers. She gasps, and every remaining thought leaves my brain except the need to pleasure Celeste, to touch her and make her gasp and cry out again and again.
I’ve just come back up to kiss her lips when behind me, someone coughs.
“Um, hi,” says Val. “So, I’m assuming this is Celeste?”
Celeste’s eyes widen in panic, and in one quick motion, she grabs the shirt I gave her and flings it on. Then before I can say anything, she bolts out the door, leaving me to the clutches of my best friends and their cat.