Chapter 45
It was late when I eventually left the bar. The other reporters and I had watched the entire show. Drinking, talking and writing notes. By the time I’d peeled myself off the stool, I’d had a half-written article, although who could say how coherent it was.
I’d managed to drag myself into the shower to wash off an entire day of nerves, and hours spent in a bar. By the time I was done, I was so tired that I fell into bed still wearing the fluffy, white robe.
I don’t know what time it was when I jerked awake. Disoriented, I looked around, looking for some landmark, or time marker in my pitch-black hotel room, trying to figure out what had woken me up.
The sound came again, and now I knew that was what had woken me up. Three firm knocks that had me bolting upright, drowsiness forgotten, even as my head still spun a little.
“Who the fuck is that?” I quietly asked the darkness.
Not expecting the darkness to provide me with an answer, I pushed to my feet and looked across the room, where only a faint sliver of light shone from underneath the door. As I watched, a shadow moved across the strip of light.
I fumbled for the switch next to the bed, turning on the reading lamp that barely illuminated the room.
The knock at the door came again, fainter this time, as though the person on the other side was rethinking knocking on my door at… I glanced down at my watch, 02:12 am.
Wary, I padded towards the door, pulling on the ties of my robe to cinch it tighter around my waist.
I leaned in to look through the peep hole, and pulled back almost immediately, hand flying to my mouth.
I considered my options for maybe four or five seconds. Then, with trembling fingers, I unlatched the door and swung it open.
He leaned against the door frame, as if only a second ago he’d been resting his head against my door. His hair fell forwards into his face. His suit was rumpled.
He stared at me.
Jihoon was standing in my doorway. Staring at me.
“How did you know what room I was in?” I asked quietly.
“Money.” His voice was pitched so low I had to read his lips to catch the word.
I wanted to feel indignant about how he’d presumed to buy my room number, but I couldn’t seem to move past the fact that he was standing in my doorway.
His shirt was unbuttoned at his neck, and I watched his throat bob as he swallowed. My eyes were focusing on the minutiae of the man in front of me, cataloguing at an almost frantic pace, trying to ascertain if I was dreaming.
Real, or not real.
“Let me in.” It wasn’t a request.
I opened the door wider. He moved past me, and I inhaled reflexively, catching the scent of something spicy. I closed the door, leaning against it for support and watched him move further into my room.
My heart hammered in my chest as I tracked his movements, feeling as if taking my eyes off him would cause him to disappear, and this would all turn out to be a dream.
My fingers ached, and I realised I was clenching them so hard in the fabric of my robe, that my knuckles had turned white. I forced them to relax.
I pushed off the door and moved further into the room, following in the wake of his steps before I made any conscious decision to do so. I forced myself to be still, and I folded my arms to disguise the way my hands shook.
I finally found my voice, and I used it to say, “Why are you here?”
He turned to face me, and I forced myself to meet his eyes. He looked away under my scrutiny, and I took the time to study his face, looking for something, anything.
“Because I could not stay away.” His voice was pained, and a flare of something ignited in my chest that was almost, but not quite painful.
“But I will go, if you tell me to.” He paused, and the air seemed to still between us as I said nothing to fill it.
He sighed, almost imperceptibly, and moved around me, back towards the door.
He turned as he passed, keeping me in his sight, and a small part of me wondered if he was taking in every detail of me, as I was of him, even as I tried not to look for too long.
Drawing an image of him in my mind from glimpses, desperate in a way that made me furious at myself. I tightened my arms around my torso.
“I should not have come.” He avoided my eyes as he backed away, and somehow this made the maelstrom in my blood worse, thundering in my veins with an intensity that made my whole body feel like it was vibrating.
He took three wide steps towards the door when I halted him with one word.
“Stop.” I didn’t even need to raise my voice. “Turn around.”
He turned back, only then raising his face, and his expression was ruinous. He didn’t even try to hide it.
I should feel triumphant. But I couldn’t. Broken people don’t triumph over other broken people. We only tried to pick up the pieces of ourselves around each other.
It was too much. I spun around, padding over to the window, pretending to look out at the view of LA.
Even at this hour, the city shone with life.
Sparks of light illuminating the buildings, delineating the life within.
I imagined someone looking out their window and counting the dim light of my window in the same way.
My eyes roved to the side, snagging on the reflection of Jihoon in the glass. He was so silent behind me, he could have been a statue. But then I saw him raise his arm. He wiped a sleeve across his face.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the cool glass.
My breathing eventually slowed enough that I felt capable of turning around.
“Why did you come?” I asked.
“I told you. I couldn’t stay away.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“What do you mean-”
“Why now? Why now after three years?”
Why now, when I’d finally accepted that I would never get closure, never get the answers that had haunted me with the endless possibilities. Why now when I’d finally – finally proven to myself I could exist in the same world, without him.
He hung his head. I waited for him to say something – anything – but only silence answered me. I swallowed hard and nodded.
“Please leave.”
I swallowed the tremble in the words, forcing myself to take deep breaths, willing my heart to stop it’s ceaseless pounding before it broke through my ribs.
“Jagi–”
“Don’t.” Please, don’t, I nearly begged, pressing a hand to my chest, trying to keep myself upright.
His shoulders heaved with an inhale so heavy it could have been more than air he breathed in. He dragged his hands down his face, leaving them there as if he was ashamed of whatever expression he wore.
“Every day,” he said, voice muffled behind his hands, before he dropped them.
“What?” I frowned, momentarily pulled out of my spiral.
And then he did something that pulled the air from my lungs. He dropped to his knees.
“Get up,” I croaked.
“No.” He shook his head violently, his hair falling around his face in chaotic strands he didn’t bother to push out of the way.
“Get up,” I said louder, taking a half-step towards him before rooting myself in place.
“Not until you listen to me.”
I threw my hands up in the air and let out a tiny sound part frustration, part devastation, because God forbid I ever be fully healed from this man.
“Every day,” he repeated, dropping his hands to his thighs. “Every day is how often I thought about calling you. About getting on a plane and going wherever you were. Every. Fucking. Day.”
“Then why didn’t you?” My fingers clenched in the folds of my robe.
“I couldn’t.”
“Bullshit,” I snapped.
“I couldn’t!” His voice cracked on the word, and whatever rebuke I’d been about to fling back at him fell at my feet, denials broken in to so many little pieces.
Jihoon fell into a silence so loaded it felt explosive. I watched him warily.
In the next moment, his face crumpled before he seemed to drag some measure of resolve from deep down, cementing it into something more resolute.
“Will it help you to have an answer to what happened? I don’t expect you to forgive me, but…” He closed his eyes. “Will it help?”
Air whooshed out of me like the words had hit me in the sternum.
An answer? What answer could there possibly be?
“What more is there to say?” I rasped. “You left me. You decided you didn’t love me anymore. End of story.” I flung my arms out as I threw the words at him.
He reeled back on his heels, as though my words had hit their mark, staring up at me.
“Is that what you thought? That I stopped loving you?”
I laughed, but it burned my throat.
“What was I supposed to think? You literally told me you didn’t love me anymore.” I covered my face with my hands, taking a second to calm down, before dropping them back down to my sides.
“What the fuck are we doing here, Joon? What’s the point of this? Didn’t you hurt me enough the first time? What, are you just back for round two? Really hammer the point home? Fuck!”
My hands clawed through my hair as I began pacing back and forth.
Why wouldn’t he just get up and leave?
But he didn’t get up, only pivoted to keep me in his sights, like he couldn’t take his eyes off me.
“Jagiya-”
“–Don’t call me that,” I warned, turning to look at him for long enough to make myself clear, before tearing my gaze away as I continued pacing.
He paused, inhaling deeply before saying, “That is not what I said. I never stopped loving you.”
I stumbled, but caught myself. Just like I’d been catching myself for the past three, damn years.
“You said-”
He cut me off.
“I said I couldn’t do it anymore. Not that I didn’t love you.” His voice was low, pleading, but his words made no sense.
“It’s the same thing!” My voice rose, and I clenched my fists, swallowing hard. “Get up off the damn floor!”
“I need you to hear me,” he said in a tone so even, I began to wonder if I’d missed some signs, that somehow, I had misinterpreted something crucial. But, no, I knew I hadn’t. I hadn’t imagined our last conversation, just like I hadn’t imagined the last three, fucking years!
I raised my hands to my eyes and blinked furiously.