Chapter 23
At Lake Monroe, the air hummed with all the candy-fueled energy you might expect from the weekend before Halloween. The water was a mirror, its gleaming surface burnished to a high, golden shine as the sun dipped below the horizon. Hay bales and ornamental wheat sheaves lined the sidewalks.
They'd been in the thick of this autumn extravaganza for hours. The producers had Apollo running a stall at the festival’s sprawling lakeside market, a pop-up version of Sunshine Diner.
The guys took turns dishing up pancakes and working the crowd, cameras ghosting behind them every step of the way.
Their stall was such a hit that Jiyeon lost track of time.
She lost track of Eunjae, too. It was ages before she realized that he was still out there on the nearest dock, surrounded by tourists.
He'd offered to take one family's photo, according to a report from Jesse, and then the requests wouldn’t stop coming. Selfies with the photographer were in as much demand as the photographer’s services.
“He’s gotten ten people by now, right?”
“More than ten. Ari’s good to go.”
“Good to go for what?” asked Jiyeon.
“Nothing,” came the weirdly synchronized reply.
“Huh. Okay.”
Jeannie focused on crowd control. Nicky handled the griddle, as usual, while Max and Jesse stacked pancakes on paper plates.
They needed to survive being jammed into this stall with one another for thirty more minutes.
Then they could close up shop at last. It would amount to a lot of disappointed people in line, but the producers wanted more footage of Apollo enjoying the event.
When would she have a chance to talk to Eunjae? He’d gotten back late last night, and he’d been so quiet since then. Jiyeon had no idea if they’d have time tonight, either.
“I need to get out of here,” she sighed, without really meaning to complain out loud.
“Ooooh, me too,” said Nicky. “But here's what else I need: the scoop. And the cameras just left, so let’s get into it while we can. What's with you and Arthur, ajumma? Tell me. I'm all ears.”
“Nothing’s going on there.”
“Exactly. Nothing. No chemistry.”
“Why would they have any?” Max groused. “That’s done. They broke up twice already.”
“Did you hear that, Jess? Bark, bark, bark. I thought the dog was here.”
“He does sound like Snowball, oh my gosh.”
“Whoa, whoa. Her name’s Uyu. That’s a flat fee of $499 if you’re changing it again.”
Jeannie leaned forward as though reporting the latest twist in a journalistic investigation.
“They didn’t have any chemistry back then, either.
" And when Jiyeon turned to her, eyes wide, she only doubled down on that assertion.
“What? It's true! You have loads more chemistry with Ryan than you ever did with Arthur.
You have more chemistry with literally any member of Apollo. I should know. I've seen it.”
Max stared at Jeannie, slack-jawed. “Gross!”
“Everything I'm saying is true. The equation works perfectly if you just switch out Arthur. Like, who was that photographer man? Phillip? Jiyeon and Phillip, cute. Jiyeon and Colin, also cute. I sorta thought that might go somewhere. Jiyeon and Arthur, though? Not cute.”
“Oh my gosh. Ohhhhhh my gosh. Who do I tell? I have to tell somebody—”
“Who’s Phillip?” Max demanded. He almost dropped a pancake on the ground. “And who the hell is Colin?”
“Excuse me, have you seen our dog? Bark bark bark—”
Jiyeon hastened to explain before the argument spiraled into a full-fledged brawl. “They used to work for me. Phillip was my photographer and Colin helped with editing all the videos.” She aimed a puzzled glance at Jeannie. “You thought I might end up with Colin? Really?”
“He had a nice car!”
“Jeannie, he was married.”
“Just barely! They weren't even married for a whole year yet!”
Nicky clanged his spatula against the mixing bowl. “Okay, people. This is hard for me to say, because I'm very, very interested in all of this new information, but let's focus up. She still hasn't answered my original question.”
“Why did we get together? I guess it just happened.”
She fell into a relationship. She didn’t fall in love.
That much became obvious early on, and yet she’d forced herself to avoid thinking about it for years.
Who even fell in love, anyway? Was that something that happened in real life?
It seemed like fiction, an urban legend passed down through the ages.
A phenomenon that skipped her and happened to other people instead.
Jiyeon had dated as a teenager, sure. It was never long-term, never serious, and never Arthur.
Romance fell to the wayside as she juggled cosmetology school with shifts at Gloria’s, but she was too busy to care about it much.
Then came the big clients, the early years on social media, the later years when her life online went spinning out of control.
Arthur had waited through all of that. It felt less like a love story and more like a foregone conclusion.
He was the obvious answer she’d been dodging for years and years. Everybody told her so.
Her mood guttered like a candle flame. Jiyeon didn’t want to talk about Arthur, or even think about Arthur, or read the eleven text messages he’d sent her between last night and this afternoon.
Hey Emms, did you ever change your username?
I was talking to that guy from Prism and he made some good points.
Emmie, look at this spot by the new grocery store.
Much better than what you were looking at before.
Emmie, you should go look. Emmie, Emmie, Emmie.
“There’s not much else to it,” she said, eager to move on. “Arthur planned this thing for my birthday. There was a food truck, and all our old friends were there from high school.”
Jeannie huffed at this. “So what? Ryan got you that little trophy from Lowell’s.”
“He did.” And she smiled at the memory, which was a personal favorite.
“You went out with him because of the food truck, or what?” From the expression on Max’s face, it was clear that Jiyeon’s response might alter his opinion of her forever. “It’d have to be one hell of a food truck, noona. That guy’s a freak.”
“He said it had always been me. There were a lot of people watching. I guess I felt like I had to. Or that I should? Like it was the thing I was supposed to do?”
Nicky winked at a customer, who stuffed another few dollar bills into their tip jar, mesmerized.
He thanked them profusely. Then he turned to Jiyeon and said, “Ajumma, that story was even more boring than I expected. Let’s talk about this instead: how do you feel about the chemistry between your boyfriend and your ex-boyfriend—”
Max seized the spatula and shoved it into Nicky’s mouth, attempting to put an end to that line of questioning. Jiyeon responded, though. “I know he likes Arthur. It isn’t easy for Eunjae to make new friends, so I’d never tell him to stop. Things are hard enough, yeah? Why add more to that?”
Their last ten minutes went by without incident and staff offered to handle the rest. Max and Jesse were chomping at the bit, eager to buy churros and carve pumpkins.
They ran ahead, taking Jeannie with them.
The cameras trotted to catch up. Where did Eunjae go?
She’d looked for him by the water, but he and Denny weren’t on the dock anymore.
Jiyeon was still weaving through the crowd with Nicky when Arthur made his grand entrance. He galloped into the festival square on horseback, no less. “A horse,” she murmured, watching this spectacle unfold. “Where’d he get a horse?”
Her companion finished sending a flurry of text messages, cackling all the while. “Never mind about that for now. Hear me out, okay? Let me just throw this out there. You said things are hard, but do they have to be?”
“Hmm? What do you mean?”
“I mean that it could be easy. We just choose the harder way, thinking it’s the only way, or the only right way.
Your forbidden romance, for example.” Nicky pulled up an image on his phone: four guys who were obviously idols, their hair and clothes emblematic of the late ‘90s. “This is Orion. They were huge back then, the biggest moneymaker Zenith Media ever had, but they didn’t even make it to their fifth year before the first dating scandal hit. Amazing, right? I wish we could’ve matched them for speed.
I’ve been so bored all this time, ajumma, you’ve got no idea. ”
“I feel for you.”
“You should. Nothing’s worse than being bored.
But anyhow, my point is that this guy,” he said, zooming in on an Orion member, “also had a forbidden romance. She was an idol, too. That’s the Holy Grail of forbidden romances in this business, okay?
He went all out. Eyes on the prize. Experiment!
And guess what? He didn’t try to hide it. ”
Jiyeon saw Jungwoo waving to them, appearing and disappearing as he waded through the crush of people.
She'd catch a flash of his hair, dyed a deep burgundy, the same shade as red wine. Then she would lose sight of him again. The crowd had swelled after sunset, with many drawn to the festival’s evening performances.
“Did it work?” she asked Nicky. “Was the group okay even though he went public?”
“Oh, yeah. Two more albums. Seven years. They even got married. You know our bigwigs at Emerald, the founder noonas? They went to the wedding.”
A group of preteens in soccer uniforms streamed around them, headed for the midway. Jungwoo reached them at last, saying they should head in that direction as well. “Hey, was that Arthur just now?”
“On the horse? Uh-huh.” Jiyeon decided to avoid the midway. She wanted to be wherever Arthur wasn’t. “You guys go ahead. I’m gonna look for Eunjae.”
“Wait,” Jungwoo blurted out. “I know where he is.”
“He does.” Nicky gave a thumbs-up with one hand while holding his phone with the other. Was he recording this? For what? “Rock and roll, son. Don’t keep the Chief waiting.”
“And this is all you want from me? You swear, hyung?”
Nicky promised him that this was it. No strings attached, no fine print.
They couldn't torture the info out of him, that's how seriously he took this business. To Jiyeon, he said, “Listen, ajumma. I’m not about transparency. I like secrets, same as you. But that was one time in history when telling the truth actually worked out for somebody, so I think it’s worth a look. I like to study the ways, even if they’re not necessarily my ways. ”
Still recording, Nicky indicated that she should leave with Jungwoo. For some reason, the latter was struggling to make eye contact. “Sorry about this,” he said. “I mean it. And can you tell Ari, too? Make sure he knows. I’m really sorry, but I don’t have much of a choice.”
She blinked at him. “You’re saying sorry in advance? For what?”
“This.” His fingers closed around Jiyeon’s wrist, transforming their interaction into a classic Korean drama scene. The only thing missing was a ballad playing in the background. “Come with me.”