21. Chapter Twenty-One #4
“Fuck,” he rasps, his hips snapping up to meet mine, the impact jolts through me so hard I bite down on his collarbone.
He curses again, grabs my ass with both hands and pulls me down as he drives up and the rhythm turns ragged and desperate.
I’m riding him and he’s fucking up into me and I can’t think, can’t breathe, can only feel the clenching heat building at the base of my spine.
His hand wraps around my cock, strokes in time with his thrusts, and I’m gone.
I come with a stuttered shout, spilling over his fist and across his stomach, my body locking tight around him.
Ryowoon groans and bucks up once, twice, and then I feel the hot flood of him inside me, the pulse and throb as he empties himself.
I collapse onto his chest. His arms come around me, crossing over my back, holding me against him. His heart pounds beneath my ear, fast and uneven, gradually slowing. My own matches it. His lips press against the top of my head.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he murmurs into my hair. “I’m done running.”
I close my eyes and hold on.
Two days later my mom arrives with lunch in a stack of containers that suggests she’s cooking for an army again. She sets them on the counter and looks around the store with wide eyes, turning in a slow circle.
“My goodness,” she breathes, touching one of the freshly painted shelves. “You two really did it.” She runs her fingertips along the edge, peers at the new lighting, the gleaming freezer cases, the polished counter. “Mrs. Nam wouldn’t recognize the place.”
“She’d find something to complain about,” I say, and my mom laughs because it’s true.
I watch Ryowoon through the back door as he hauls in the last of the inventory boxes from the truck, stacking them in the courtyard.
Yuro orbits him, tail going, nose jammed into the corner of every box as it comes off the truck bed, sniffing furiously.
Ryowoon nudges the dog away with his knee, muttering, and Yuro just circles back and shoves his nose into the next one.
Ryowoon looks down at him, shakes his head, and I catch the corner of his mouth lifting before he bends to scratch behind Yuro’s ears.
“Mom,” I say. “Sit down a second.”
She looks at me. At my tone. She pulls a stool out from behind the counter and sits, folding her hands in her lap, knowing a conversation is coming and prepared to listen.
I sit across from her. Through the back door I can see Ryowoon stack the last box onto the pile, dust off his hands on his jeans. Yuro sits beside him, tongue out, looking up at him with open adoration.
“We’re keeping the store,” I say. “Both of us.”
My mom nods slowly. Her eyes move from me to the view of Ryowoon in the courtyard and back.
“I’m quitting my job in Seoul,” I tell her. “Selling my apartment.”
She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t gasp or clutch her chest or do any of the things I half braced for. She just looks at me with quiet, patient attention. She nods again.
“I thought that might be coming,” she says. The corner of her mouth curves, warm and a little sad and mostly knowing. “I think Mrs. Nam probably saw this exact outcome when she left it to you.”
The old schemer. I smile despite myself.
“Where are you going to live?” my mom asks. Her eyes sweep the small store, the narrow hallway that leads to the single room in the back. “I know you two are close, but it’ll be cramped here for both of you. You know you can always stay at the house.”
I shake my head. Take a breath. This is the part that matters more than the job or the apartment or the store.
“No,” I say. “I’m staying here. With Ryowoon.”
My mom raises her brows. “Both of you? In that little room?”
“Mom.” I hold her eyes. My pulse kicks up, but I keep my voice steady. “I love him.” I don’t look away or flinch, don’t try to sugarcoat it. “Have since I was a teenager. Maybe always have.”
She blinks. Her lips part, close. Her eyes search my face, and I watch her finally understanding. It looks more like watching dawn come up over the harbor, the way the grey thins and color seeps in gradually until the whole sky has changed.
“Oh,” she says softly. Then, with more weight, more certainty: “Oh. I see.”
She looks past me, through the back door, at Ryowoon in the courtyard lifting a box onto the shelf he built against the outer wall.
Her gaze lingers there for a long moment and her face goes through a series of emotions.
Surprise, recognition, a flickering reel of memories reshuffling themselves.
The two boys who shared a bathtub. Who shared a bed whenever one of them was hurting.
Who never went anywhere without the other for eighteen years.
Her eyes come back to mine, overbright. “That’s what happened,” she says quietly. “That summer. When you came back from school.” She’s fitting pieces together, rearranging them into the picture that was always underneath. “Something happened between you two.”
I nod. Can’t speak for a second.
“And now you’ve figured it out,” she says.
“We’re figuring it out,” I say. “Yeah.”
My mom is quiet. I can hear Ryowoon out back telling Yuro to move, that the box he’s sitting in front of needs to go inside. Yuro doesn’t move. Ryowoon sighs and picks the box up over the dog’s head.
I watch my mother’s face and wait. For the hesitation. The careful phrasing. The are you sure or the have you thought about this or the gentle redirection that loving parents do when they’re afraid for you but don’t want to say so.
“Well then,” my mom says. And she smiles.
A full smile reaching her eyes, the same smile she gave me when I told her I got into college, the same one she wore at graduation.
She reaches across and takes my hand, squeezes it.
“That Mrs. Nam,” she says, shaking her head with a laugh of exasperation and admiration.
“This was her scheme from the very start, wasn’t it? ”
I laugh, startled and relieved and so full of gratitude that my eyes sting. “Yeah,” I manage. “Yeah, I think it was.”
My mom pats my hand twice, firmly, decided and settled and she’s moving on.
She pushes off the stool and starts unpacking the containers of food she brought, lining them up on the counter, and I watch her and breathe and feel the tightness I’ve been carrying in my shoulders for weeks finally let go.
She stays through the afternoon. Eats with us in the courtyard, the three of us and the dog, the containers spread across the platform.
She uses her chopsticks to pile pickled radish onto Ryowoon’s rice until he protests and she ignores him, and she tells us about Mrs. Yang’s stove breaking again and old Mr. Han’s ongoing feud with the stray cats.
When she gets up to leave Ryowoon walks her to the front, bows, and she pulls him down into one of her hugs that last a beat longer than polite.
She cups his face when she pulls back, her thumb brushing his cheekbone, and the look on her face is tender and fierce all at once.
She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t have to.
Ryowoon’s eyes get just a little glassy before he blinks and straightens up and clears his throat.
She turns to me next, hugs me tight, and when she steps back her eyes are shining with something I think she’s been holding back all afternoon. Joy. Simple, uncomplicated joy.
“Take care of each other,” she says from the doorway, looking between us. “And come by for dinner this week. Both of you. That’s not a request.”
“Yes, Auntie,” Ryowoon says behind me, I can hear the grin in his voice.
She waves and walks out into the cooling evening, her silhouette growing smaller as she heads up the hill. I stand in the doorway and watch her go.
I find Ryowoon’s wrist behind his back. My thumb traces a slow arc over the inside of his wrist, sliding down until it settles over the tattoo. The constellation. I press my thumb against it, hold it there, feel his pulse beating steadily beneath the ink.
I lean into his shoulder. He leans back. And we stand there in the doorway of our store as the sky turns orange and pink over the harbor and the first autumn wind comes up off the water, cool and clean and carrying the salt smell of home.