Chapter Ten #2
I walk to the bathroom on unsteady legs and close the door behind me.
My hands are shaking as I pick up my toothbrush, and when I look at myself in the mirror, I barely recognize the expression on my own face, cracked open and terrified and wanting so badly it hurts.
I brush my teeth and splash water on my face and grip the edge of the sink until my knuckles go white.
I tell myself to get it together, that I can’t say yes to something this big while I’m still lying to him about the most important thing in both our lives.
But God, I want to.
Hongjoong drives. I sit in the passenger seat of the absurdly expensive sports car he picked from his collection this morning, watching the city slide past the tinted windows as we cut through midday traffic.
Hongjoong has one hand on the wheel and the other resting on my knee, his thumb rubbing absent circles against the inside of my leg through my pants.
I let him because it’s easier than making a thing of it.
He pulls into the lot outside my apartment building, and I unbuckle my seatbelt, reaching for the door handle. “I’ll be quick,” I say, already calculating how long it’ll take me to throw a weekend bag together. “Fifteen minutes, tops.”
I push the door open and step out, and I’m halfway around the front of the car when I hear the driver’s side door open too.
I stop and turn. Hongjoong is climbing out, stretching his arms above his head with a groan, his jacket riding up to flash a strip of tattooed skin at his hip.
He shuts his door and clicks the lock, pocketing the key fob as he rounds the hood toward me.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Coming with you, obviously.” He falls into step beside me like it’s already been decided, sliding his sunglasses up onto his head as he squints at the building’s facade.
His eyes move over the cracked concrete of the front steps, the rusted railing, the intercom panel with half its buttons missing.
“I’m curious about where you’ve been living all this time. ”
I hesitate with my hand still on the car door I haven’t fully closed, my fingers tightening around the edge.
The request isn’t unreasonable. He’s been inside my life in every other way for weeks now, inside my body, inside my head, worming his way back into the spaces I sealed off fifteen years ago.
But the apartment is different. The apartment is where Sungyoon lives, where his school photos hang on the fridge and his soccer trophies line the shelf above the TV, and his shoes sit in a messy pile by the front door.
It’s the one place I’ve kept completely separate from Hongjoong, and letting him walk through that door feels like inviting a lit match into a room full of gasoline.
Hongjoong arches an eyebrow at my silence. “Is that a problem?”
I run through it quickly. Sungyoon left this morning for his school trip, I watched him pack his bag last night and reminded him twice to set his alarm.
His bus was supposed to depart at eight.
It’s past noon now. The apartment should be empty, nothing in it that can’t be managed as long as I’m careful about what’s visible and what isn’t.
“No,” I say, and shut the car door. “It’s fine. Come on.”
We take the elevator up because the stairs smell like mildew and I’d rather not subject Hongjoong to that particular charm of the building.
The elevator isn’t much better, a narrow box with flickering fluorescent lighting and a panel of buttons where the numbers have been worn smooth by years of use, but Hongjoong doesn’t comment.
He stands beside me with his hands in his jacket pockets, his shoulder brushing mine in the tight space, and when the doors open on my floor he follows me down the hallway without a word.
I unlock the front door and step inside, toeing off my shoes on the mat and moving aside so Hongjoong can enter behind me.
The self-consciousness hits me the second I see the apartment through his eyes, or through what I imagine his eyes must be seeing.
The entryway is barely wide enough for two people to stand side by side.
The shoe rack is overflowing, Sungyoon’s sneakers and my dress shoes and a pair of old sandals all crammed together on the bottom shelf.
The overhead light flickers once before catching, making the narrow hallway slightly yellow.
Hongjoong’s head is on a swivel as he steps past me, his gaze moving across the small living area with its secondhand couch and the coffee table I assembled myself from a flat-pack kit that was missing two screws.
The cramped kitchen is visible through the open doorway, clean dishes drying in the rack beside the sink, a row of mismatched mugs on hooks beneath the cabinet.
The worn furniture, the thin carpet, the narrow hallway leading to two bedrooms with their doors standing open.
I keep the place clean and tidy because that’s the one thing I can control, but it’s tiny, a fraction of the size of Hongjoong’s apartment, and though Hongjoong doesn’t say a single word about it I can see the displeasure settling into the crease between his brows, the way his mouth tightens at the corners as his eyes catch on the water stain spreading across the ceiling above the kitchen doorway.
I’ve called the building manager about that stain four times. Nothing ever gets done.
“I’ll just be a minute,” I say, moving past him toward my bedroom. “Make yourself comfortable. Or don’t, there’s not much to be comfortable on.”
“How long have you lived here?” Hongjoong asks from behind me, his voice carefully neutral enough to tell me he’s working hard to keep his opinions to himself.
“Since just after my son was born,” I answer over my shoulder, pulling my weekend bag from the top shelf of the closet and dropping it onto the bed. “It was what I could afford at the time and it’s been fine since.”
Hongjoong follows me into the bedroom, and I watch him take in the narrow bed pushed against the wall, the single nightstand with its reading lamp, the bookshelves I mounted myself that hold a mix of paperbacks and reference books and a few of Sungyoon’s old picture books I never got around to giving away.
He sits on the edge of my bed, the mattress dipping under his weight, and leans back on his hands as his eyes scan the spines on the shelf nearest to him.
My stomach clenches. I move to the side as casually as I can manage, positioning myself between Hongjoong and the shelf where a framed photo of Sungyoon in his soccer uniform from last summer sits propped against a stack of paperbacks.
While Hongjoong is occupied reading titles, his head tilted to follow the vertical text on the spines, I reach up and turn the frame face-down, tucking it behind the books with a quick push of my fingers.
The soft scrape of the frame against the shelf sounds deafening to me but Hongjoong doesn’t look up.
I step into my small closet and start packing, pulling shirts from hangers and folding them into the bag with shaky hands. Pants, a belt, underwear, toiletries from the shelf inside the closet door. I’m almost done, reaching for a pair of socks from the drawer, when I hear the front door lock beep.
The electronic chirp cuts through the quiet apartment and I straighten so fast my back twinges. I step out of the closet and look down the hall, my blood going cold in my veins, and I see the front door swinging inward.
Hongjoong looks up from the bookshelf too, glancing toward the hallway with mild curiosity. “Is that your son?” he asks calmly.
I swallow. My mouth has gone completely dry. “Hold on,” I say, putting my hands up in a gesture I hope reads as casual and not panicked. “Stay here.”
I step out of the bedroom and into the hallway, my heart hammering so hard I can feel my pulse in my fingertips, and walk toward the front door.
Sungyoon is hurrying inside, dressed for his trip, his backpack slung over one shoulder. He stops when he sees me and his face breaks into an easy grin, the one that shows his dimple, and I have to lock every muscle in my body to keep from visibly flinching at the sight of it.
“Hey,” I say, and I’m grateful that my voice comes out steady. “Why are you still here? I thought you were supposed to be on the bus already.”
Sungyoon kicks his shoes off onto the pile by the door.
“I forgot my swim trunks,” he says, already moving past me toward the hallway.
“Jihoon’s mom offered to swing by so I could grab them on the way.
It’ll only take a second.” He pauses and looks at me, his sharp eyes flicking over my jacket, my bag visible through the open bedroom door.
“I thought you were supposed to be out already too.”
“I am,” I say. “Just packing up.”
Sungyoon nods and starts down the narrow hallway toward his room at a quick clip, his backpack bouncing against his shoulder, then he stops dead.
I turn to see what he’s seeing, and the floor drops out from under me.
Hongjoong has stepped out of my bedroom and is standing in the hallway. He and Sungyoon are looking directly at each other.