Chapter 29
When wedding season hits, work is beyond busy.
People get marriage and true love on the brain when they’re forced to spend every weekend from May through September witnessing love over and over again.
A fun perk during wedding season is that we get the occasional engagement announcement of successful matches. It’s a hectic but fulfilling time.
Despite working a ton, I find time for Daniel because guess who loves digital organization more than me?
I’m responding to an email at my desk when Daniel texts me with a link to a shared calendar called “Daniel and Cassia Date.” It’s hard not to smile as I open it and find that he’s input all his availabilities for the next month.
I add mine, and within minutes, I get a calendar invite for a hike that weekend.
“You are a very outdoorsy Brit,” I say between huffs as we walk up a steep trail in Griffith Park. The sun is out and I am sweating profusely in my tank and shorts. I have the world’s biggest straw hat on because all headwear pride goes out the window after a certain age.
Daniel stops under the blessed shade of an oak tree, letting me catch up. “Excuse you, but Brits aren’t all dandies sitting around parlors. I’ll have you know some of us spent our childhood summers in the woods.”
“Did you?” I ask as I take advantage of our break to take a swig from my water bottle.
“I did,” he said. “My grandparents lived in Kent and I spent weeks tramping through the forest nearby.”
“Aw, like Christopher Robin,” I say and he sprays a little water on me from his bottle. But I gather all these little facts about him like a magpie.
We reach a peak overlooking all of Los Angeles, the sky a pale blue with a layer of gray hovering over the city. “This is one of my favorite spots in the entire city,” he says. “When I first came here I couldn’t believe everyone had access to all this nature.”
I take it in—the clear grid of streets, downtown a clump of buildings in the distance, the palm trees that outline this city like topographic borders.
Everyone in L.A. loves hiking, but it’s never really been my thing.
I didn’t grow up in a “nature” family—the trips I take on my birthday are usually my only jaunts into the wild for the most part.
“Thanks for sharing this with me,” I say. “I feel like it’s always the transplants that show me new stuff in my own city.”
Daniel comes closer and fans me with his hands. “Even if I make you hike in the middle of the day?”
“I won’t hold that against you. I know people who didn’t grow up here actually like the heat.” When I say it, he reaches down and kisses me. The temperature goes up a few degrees.
A few days later, I’ve scheduled a date for us—at a K-Town spa. On my way there, Mar texts, asking if I want to meet her at a bookstore for browsing and a coffee. I tell her I’m on my way to see Daniel.
Again? You guys have been hanging out like a lot a lot.
Yeah—fast forward courtship, baby!
No more communication with Ellis, then, huh?
I get annoyed and put my phone on Do Not Disturb.
Ever since the Echo Park Lake rescue, Mar has brought up Ellis a couple times and while I understand that he endeared himself to her by saving her child, I need her to stop bringing him up.
I’m in this with Daniel, and we’ve already been dating for a couple weeks, and I really wish she could just be one hundred percent behind me on this.
Daniel somehow manages to look good in the cotton T-shirt and shorts they provide for us at the spa. “It’s offensive how handsome you are,” I say.
He grins, comfortable with compliments in a way that makes him more attractive somehow. “Well, I am going to be judged by a bunch of halmonis, you know.”
“You will, and probably the halabujis, too,” I say as I lead us to the salt room.
“Oh, I know,” he says. “I just showered and sat naked in soaking tubs surrounded by very curious farsighted eyeballs.”
While I laugh, I wonder if there was something very worth looking at.
We haven’t slept together yet and while I’m not in a huge rush for it, I am starting to feel the embers of impatience whenever we touch, when our bodies hover near each other’s—the desire thick between us.
I have faith in our compatibility but…it would be nice to have confirmation.
The salt room is empty when we walk in—a dimly lit space full of pink salt and bamboo mats.
We lie down on the mats, resting our heads on contoured wood blocks.
The sound of woodwinds wafts over us. “According to my grandmother, the salt in this room is thousands of years old and when it’s infused into our bodies, it fixes an array of ailments. ”
Eyes closed, Daniel murmurs, “Hm. Sure, it’s also very relaxing.”
“That too.” I glance over at him and get a good look while he can’t see me. His strong profile and relaxed posture communicates so much to me: steadiness and strength. Confidence. Is that what has drawn me to him life after life? It does appeal to me, obviously. We’re an Excel-sheet power couple.
Later we grab lunch in the spa, sitting on the heated floors with a low wood table between us. The setting reminds me of the weird dream/vision I had at the sound baths. I can’t believe it’s been more than a month since my birthday. Ellis feels like both yesterday and a lifetime ago.
We immediately start sharing our meal, as though we’ve done it before. Daniel takes some soy sauce and scallion–covered tofu and puts it in my bowl of rice. I push the kimchi closer to him when I can tell he needs it. Everything is well-orchestrated despite us having had no practice.
Well, in this life anyway.
“So, how’s your first K spa experience?” I ask him.
“Other than being ogled by old men—great,” he says.
“You mean because of the ogling,” I say. When he laughs I reach for the soybeans and am reminded of Ellis’s love for the bland banchan. Cass? I say this with the utmost, gentle kindness to myself: Stop fucking thinking about Ellis!
“No, but honestly, I love it,” he says, dipping his spoon in the kimchi jjigae. “I haven’t had many Korean friends, even in Los Angeles, weirdly enough. I love having you as my tour guide to all the most Korean spots.”
It warms me, this vulnerability. “Well, I have yet to take you to the most Korean spot yet.”
“Really, and where’s that?”
“Costco.”
He throws his head back with laughter, the sound attracting everyone’s attention around us.
A few days later, we’re driving back from watching Reality Bites at a revival theater. “That movie is the right movie to lose your virginity to. Smooth move,” I say.
“Thank you,” Daniel says with a laugh, his hand on the steering wheel. “I owe Ethan Hawke some credit, I think.”
I pick music from my phone. What I’ve learned is that Daniel has no opinions on music and it is now my life’s mission to educate him. Otis Redding starts playing and I look at him. “Ethan Hawke in that movie almost ruined all men for me.”
“Understandably,” he says. “But we all know she should have ended up with Ben Stiller in the end.”
“My god!” My body does a full-body shudder. “He was a walking, talking boner kill.”
“He was just an adult!” Daniel protests. “Sue the man for having a job!”
“Touchy, touchy,” I say with a laugh.
He shoots me a look, still grinning. “I’m going to choose to ignore that because you’re so pretty.”
We pull up to his house where I’ve left my car. Daniel lives in a beautiful little Spanish cottage in Los Feliz, covered in hot-pink bougainvillea and shaded by olive and cypress trees. “Not native,” he had pointed out to me with chagrin when we met there earlier.
In the parked car, he leans back in his seat and looks at me. There’s a little something in his heated gaze, his face lit by the warm yellow of the streetlamp. “Would you like to come in?”
“Yes, please.” I’ve been dying to see the inside of his house. There is a bit of formality with Daniel in this way: He is a gentleman to the nth degree—always taking me out, paying, and driving. I sense it’s his old-fashionedness, about doing this “the right way.”
Everything feels oh so very right as we walk through his door, his house smelling like wood and expensive candles.
I have every intention of looking at his sure-to-be-immaculately designed home, but as soon as he hangs my jacket, I’m pulling him in for a kiss.
He’s surprised, and smiles against my lips.
“Well, okay.” His arms wrap around me tight, one hand spanning my back and the other gently gripping the back of my neck.
Our bodies are practically sealed together as the kiss gets deeper.
He walks me backward as we kiss, and I slip my hands under his navy sweater, his skin so incredibly warm and firm.
When my legs hit the back of his sofa, we disentangle long enough for me to pull the sweater off of him.
His eyes are hazy when he stops my hands and says, “Let’s go to my room.”
I’m sure his sheets are perfect and his mattress feels like heaven, but for once, I don’t want all that perfection.
I get flashes of sleeping with Ellis—laughing as we awkwardly figured out each other’s bodies.
The memories buzz in my brain and I need to shut them off.
I start unbuttoning my top—a silky blouse that puddles to the ground when I take it off. “I like your living room.”
He bends his head close, his lips hovering near mine. “Oh, do you? What color is the rug?”
“Mm, ecru,” I say as he finds a sensitive spot on my neck.
His laughter is warm on my skin. “Ecru? Such a specific color choice.”
Daniel keeps his eyes on my face, a gentleman until the end. I unsnap my bra and his jaw clenches as he keeps his gaze fixed on my eyes.
“You seem like an ecru kinda guy,” I say as I slide my bra off.
He swallows. Hard. “Yes, one of the finer, ah, off-white shades.”
My belt drops to the floor. Then my jeans. “Keep talkin’ color theory to me.”
His resolve breaks and he’s on me in an instant, his bare chest on mine as I wrap my legs around him. When he traces my shoulder with a fingertip, his mouth is by my ear when he asks, “Is this okay?”
I answer with my mouth on his, and when his hands roam over my body, a feeling of intense déjà vu washes over me.
We’ve done this before. I’ve felt this skin before.
When we touch, skin to skin, it feels like a homecoming.
And I know Daniel feels it, too, because when he looks at me, it’s with an intensity that seems to overwhelm him. “Cassia,” he whispers.
He takes me on the living room rug, which, I later find out, is actually a pattern of deep blues.