39. Amiyah
Chapter thirty-nine
Amiyah
The bowling ball crashes into the pins with a sound like a car hitting a dumpster, and somewhere behind me a kid screams. The ceiling speakers are bleeding a distorted pop track down over the lanes, and the air is thick with the greasy reek of diner food and the fermented damp of rental shoes worn by a thousand people trying to kill a Saturday night.
I am one frame into our second game, trailing Jae by fourteen points, and my pink clutch is sitting on the scoring table beside a basket of wings I’ve systematically destroyed while pretending I don’t care about the score.
Inside the bag, nestled against my keys and the Lullaby perfume roller, the glass vial waits like a dead weight.
Jae steps up to the approach. His shoulders are loose, his weight shifting forward with an unhurried rhythm. Four clean steps. The ball swings low and quiet, hooks late, and bites hard into the pocket. All ten pins explode backward.
He walks back to the table without a single flicker of satisfaction on his face.
“You’re not allowed to be that good at this,” I say, reaching for another wing. “It’s aggressive.”
“I’m not good,” he says, dropping into the plastic seat beside me. His knee knocks against mine under the table, solid and warm through my jeans. “I’m adequate. There’s a difference.”
“Adequate people don’t curve the ball like it owes them money. Where did you even learn to bowl like that?”
“I grew up in a country where children are selected for professional bowling leagues at age six based on hand-eye coordination metrics.” He picks up his soda, takes a sip. “But honestly, my scores would get me laughed out of any serious alley in Seoul.”
“That’s the most pretentious humblebrag I’ve ever heard, and I go to law school.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “You asked.”
“I didn’t ask for a demographic breakdown of South Korean sports.”
I lob a crumpled napkin at his chest. He catches it one-handed with a low, easy laugh, tossing it onto the table as a smirk pulls at his mouth.
My turn. I pick up a house ball that feels carved out of dead weight, march to the lane, and line up my feet. Four steps. Release. The ball plows dead center, clips the head pin, and leaves the seven and ten standing like two stubborn gatekeepers.
“Split,” Jae calls out from the bench.
“I can see the split, thank you.”
“Just checking.”
I turn around, giving him the tight, pinched smile I reserve for people who are technically correct and entirely annoying. “Your concern is duly noted.”
He salutes with two fingers, his dark eyes crinkling at the edges.
When I walk back, he’s watching me, one elbow propped on the armrest, tracking me with an intensity that makes my stomach dip. It’s annoying. I’m supposed to be running this operation, not getting flustered because a guy knows how to sit comfortably in a booth.
I plop back down, grabbing another wing and biting straight into the skin to give my mouth something to do.
Jae rolls another strike. Of course he does.
“Your form’s tightening up,” he says, settling back. “You were dropping your shoulder earlier. You kept it square that frame.”
“I’m not taking form tips from a guy who treats a Saturday night like a blood sport.”
“I’m coaching.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“I’m accurate.” He reaches over, his thumb swiping lightly across the corner of my mouth. The touch is fast, dry, entirely casual—and my heart stutters hard against my ribs. “There. You had sauce on your face. Can't have you looking a mess.”
I stare at him. His hand is already back on his cup, his attention drifting toward a group of screaming frat bros celebrating a gutter ball.
The clutch on the table feels heavy.
Second game, final frame. Jae is up by eight. He rolls a nine, leaving the ten standing, and turns back with a slow, knowing smirk.
I don’t smile back. I grab my ball, plant my feet, and throw it with enough force to rattle the deck. The ball finds the pocket. All ten drop.
Jae stands up. Slowly. His expression cycles through surprise, respect, and something that looks dangerously close to fondness before settling into a laugh—a full, unguarded sound that fills the space between the crashing pins and the terrible music.
He shakes his head, running a hand through his hair.
“You cheated,” he says.
“I absolutely did not cheat.”
“You did something. I can’t prove it, but I know it.”
“Your evidence is a feeling.”
“My evidence is that you’ve been trash all night and then you rolled a perfect spare under pressure like it was nothing.” He grins, and it’s the kind of smile that makes my chest ache. “That’s statistically suspicious, hotshot.”
“Maybe I’m just better than you.”
“At bowling? No.”
“At everything? Yes.”
He laughs again, softer this time, and reaches for his jacket. “Come on. Party’s probably already started.”
The frat house smells like the inside of a beer can that someone left in a hot car for three days, then sprayed with cheap cologne.
Bass hits the walls at a frequency that makes my molars vibrate, and the floor sticks to the soles of my boots with each step, a tacky grip that suggests someone spilled something sugary and never bothered to mop it up.
Red cups everywhere. Bodies everywhere. The lighting is exclusively provided by string lights that someone has draped over every available surface in what I can only assume was an attempt to make the place look less like a municipal disaster zone.
Jae materializes beside me, a red cup already in his hand, his shoulders loose and his expression carrying that particular ease of someone who has decided that tonight, for once, he is not going to overthink anything.
The bass drops, and fifty strangers shout in unison.
Someone spills a drink three feet to my left. No one notices.
“This is awful,” I say, raising my voice over the noise.
“It’s authentic,” Jae replies, his accent thickening slightly around the edges. He takes a sip, winces. “The beer is also awful. Very consistent theme.”
“At least they’re committed to the bit.”
A hand clamps down on Jae’s shoulder from behind.
I turn to see Marcus, a fellow third-year vet med student with sleep deprivation carved deep into the dark circles under his eyes, looking lit with the aggressive recognition of someone who has had exactly enough cheap alcohol to feel intellectually invincible.
“Kim! Holy shit, man, you’ve gotta settle this. Logan is trying to tell me that a canine gastric dilatation-volvulus can be managed with conservative medical stabilization alone if you decompress fast enough, and I’m about to drown him in this trash-can punch.”
Jae gets dragged into the debate before he can finish his sentence, pulled sideways through the crowd toward a cluster of bodies near the kitchen where Logan is already shaking his head aggressively.
Jae shoots me an apologetic glance over his shoulder—a quick tilt of his chin, the universal sign for I’ll be right back—and then he’s swallowed by the press of students arguing loudly about canine anatomy over pounding bass.
I move. Not fast—fast draws eyes. I walk with the measured casualness of someone heading to the bathroom, cutting through the thickest part of the crowd until I hit the makeshift bar setup along the far wall.
Two plastic storage tubs filled with ice and beer cans.
A handle of bottom-shelf vodka. A bottle of off-brand cranberry juice that’s been sitting out long enough to turn an unnatural shade of maroon.
A stack of red Solo cups, slightly dented from previous use.
I pour two drinks. Vodka cranberries, because it’s the only combination that won’t taste like battery acid and regret.
The cranberry hits the vodka with a soft fizz, the liquid settling into a deep, opaque red.
Foam rises, then subsides. Two identical cups.
Same fill level. Same thin ring of pale foam at the rim.
My clutch is already open, my fingers zeroing in on the tissue-wrapped Lullaby roller tucked beside my keys. The pink glass catches the string lights for a split second before I twist the cap, drawing the glass wand out heavy with clear, odorless fluid.
I hold the first cup steady with my left hand. My right brings the wand to the rim. One squeeze. The compound disperses into the cranberry vodka with a silence so complete it feels obscene.
I cap the rollerball. Tuck it back into the tissue. Close my clutch.
The entire operation takes eleven seconds.
I set both cups down on the sticky high-top table, arranging them with careful precision—his on the left, mine on the right, a clear mental map.
I reach out to pick them up, but before my fingers can close around the plastic, a guy stumbling past with a fresh six-pack careens hard into my shoulder and clips the edge of the table.
The high-top jolts. The cups slide six inches across the laminate, bumping into each other and spinning.
My stomach executes a slow, sickening freefall as I stare down at them.
They’ve shifted. I have no earthly idea which cup holds the compound and which one is just cheap vodka and cranberry.
Fuck. Fuck-fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck.
Panic prickles hot and sharp along the back of my neck. I can't stand here. I can't test them. I need to move.
I snatch both cups up before anyone else can slam into the table, my jaw tight. Spotting Jae cutting back through the crowd toward me, I lock down my expression, force the panic back down where it belongs, and step forward to meet him.
“You okay?” he asks, noticing the tight set of my jaw as he reaches me.
“Just overwhelmed by the volume,” I lie smoothly, holding out one of the cups at random.
He takes it without hesitation. I keep the other one in my hand.
We drift back into the press of the party, mingling shoulder-to-shoulder as Jae talks, his hand resting lightly at the small of my back.
I keep my movements casual, letting the noise and the crowd swallow us until we pass a massive, leggy potted fern sitting in the corner of the living room.
As Jae turns to laugh at something a guy in a backwards cap yells across the room, I casually tip my cup sideways, letting the dark liquid soak silently into the soil of the fern. Empty. Done.
I turn back to Jae just as he raises his cup to his lips and takes a long, easy swallow.
My breath catches. I wait for the drop. I wait for the sudden neuromuscular lockup, the gasp, the collapse.
One second. Five seconds. Thirty seconds.
Jae just smiles down at me, entirely unbothered, completely alive, and takes another sip.
Nothing happens.
I gave him the wrong cup, the realization hits me like cold water. I dumped the lethal dose into a potted fern, and he’s currently drinking plain, harmless cranberry vodka.
Before I can fully process the catastrophic failure of my mission, Jae sets his empty cup down on a passing tray, steps closer, and cups my face in his hands. His mouth finds mine, warm and tasting faintly of cranberry and citrus, a deep, unhurried kiss that makes my knees feel suddenly weak.
When he pulls back, his dark eyes are heavy-lidded and warm. “You’re quiet tonight, jagiya,” he murmurs, his thumb brushing my cheekbone. “Let me go get us another drink.”
He turns and heads back toward the bar, completely unaware that he has just walked away from an assassination attempt, leaving me standing alone in the sticky, deafening dark, technically holding a second empty cup and realizing I’ve completely blown it.