Twelve
The appropriate thing would be to get up and apologize.
Instead I sit and drink my wine and pretend I don’t know he’s home despite being very aware of each movement he makes. There’s the slight tap of his phone as he places it on the counter. The sticking noise of the fridge door and the creak of a cabinet.
Then a long silence where I imagine him standing in the middle of the living room. I try to act normal, but my hand feels almost numb, and my arm jerks unsteadily when I lift my glass.
Apologize.
It doesn’t make you weak to say you were overreacting when you were in fact overreacting.
His steps come toward the door.
I put the glass down with more force than necessary and twist around.
“I’m sorry.”
We both blink at each other because Jihoon hasn’t even echoed my apology—he said it at the same time. He’s at the balcony door, arms crossed over his chest so he can grip his elbows.
“I was in a bad mood, and I took it out on you,” I say, speaking to his left armpit because I don’t want to look in his eyes. “It wasn’t cool for me to make you feel unwelcome.” I take a breath. “I’m glad you’re here. I like being with you.”
That was honesty in action. Hana would be proud, but I feel a bit nauseous. This communication thing sucks.
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” he says. “I was upset by that call from home.”
“I get it.” I point at the bottle. “Drink?”
“Please.” He fetches a glass and sits next to me. Some tension remains but it’s bearable.
“It was my work,” he says. “On the phone.”
I nod, trying to hide my relief. Work problems are better than hearing about his busted relationship.
“I’ve always known what I wanted,” he says. “From my life, I mean. I had a goal, and I worked hard.”
“I get that,” I say.
“I love most of my life. I’m lucky, so lucky to be able to do what I do.”
“Okay.”
“I want more, though. I feel trapped by my luck. It’s like being successful has put me in a cage.” He buries his head in his hands, and when he speaks again, his voice is muffled. “I’m ungrateful.”
“Hey.” I reach out and grab his hands to pull them away from his face. “What you feel, that’s valid.”
“What?” He looks at me, eyes reddened.
“They want you to keep making the same magic happen in the same way so you don’t mess with a good thing, but it feels like you’re repeating yourself.”
“That’s it,” he says, eyes on the ground. “I worry about going against them, but I want to grow.”
“Change is scary,” I say. “Can you leave for a new job?”
Jihoon is shaking his head even before I finish. “I love my team and leaving would put them at a disadvantage.”
“That’s tough,” I say. “How about making small changes you can build on? It might be easier for you, too.”
“I tried.” He rubs his face. “The bosses told me to stop, more or less.”
“Messing with the formula.”
He smiles at his glass. “Yeah.”
“The opposite thing is happening with me,” I say. “You know the change you want. I always thought I knew what I wanted at work. Now I don’t.”
“You want to make partner,” he says. “That’s your goal.”
“I guess.”
“It’s not anymore?”
“I don’t know how I feel. I never used to have doubts about what I did.” I look at him. “Did you?”
“Not until I got what I wanted. Then I didn’t know if I had been wanting the right things.”
“Me neither,” I say.
“I’ve never said that to anyone,” he muses. “Not even my friends. I don’t know if I’ve ever said it out loud even to myself. It felt good.”
I frown. “Really? Because I hate it.”
“Why?”
“I like to have a plan,” I say. “To know what I’m doing. Now I’m not sure. I don’t do well with ambiguity.”
“No,” he says. “I’ve seen your to-do lists.”
He waits until I’m done laughing, then he says, “You bought flowers.”
It takes me a moment to remember the bouquet I left on the table. “Got them at the store to cheer up the place.”
“One looks like a tiger flower,” he says. “My birth flower.”
“Your what?”
“At home, each day is associated with a flower. That’s mine. When were you born?” He checks online when I tell him. “Primrose,” he reads from his phone after a moment. “It means loveliness. How accurate.”
Normally I’d shrug a comment like that off or laugh, but his compliment feels so genuine that it makes me warm.
“We should eat,” I say.
We both stand and reach for the wine at the same time, banging our heads together like a Three Stooges sketch. Instead of grabbing his own head, Jihoon reaches for me, his face creased with concern.
“I’m fine,” I say as his fingers touch my head. “You?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, his hand moves over my hair, which has fallen out of its knot. “Your hair is down.” He runs his fingers through it, his eyes on mine. “You only wear it down at home, or with me.”
“I like it better this way,” I say, hoping he doesn’t notice my shaky voice. I step back into the shadows. “Do you want some ramen?” It isn’t my favorite, but it’s fast and easy. Plus, thanks to Jihoon stockpiling it, we have a lot.
“What?” His eyes go huge as his mouth drops open.
“Ramen. For dinner?”
“To eat. Ramen to eat, you mean.” Jihoon starts laughing, but I don’t know what’s funny, and he won’t tell me. He shakes his head and blinks before he smiles at me. “Another time. Today we can cook together.”
He leads the way to the kitchen, and although the moment is lost, all I can think about is his hand on my hair and his eyes on mine.
I want more.
After dinner, Jihoon lies on the couch with his notebook propped on his knees. It’s warm in the room, and he’s shed his sweater to lounge in a V-necked shirt with short sleeves wide enough to show half his chest if he raises his arm. He seems completely unaware of how hot this is, and I beat back the urge to have him reach up and pass me things from high places.
I curl on the chair with a book I’ve been meaning to read for ages, but as usual I have trouble concentrating. My eyes are on the page, but my mind drifts away from the gritty but delicate coming-of-age story. Instead I think about Phoebe, of all people. We used to read in the library during summer afternoons, when the heat made time feel slow and endless. I thought those days would last forever, and now look at us. Barely talking. Estranged and uncaring. Or too scared to care, which might be even sadder.
Uncomfortable with these thoughts, I toss the book away and lie on the chair with my head on one arm and my legs on the other. Jihoon has unbuckled his watch and is staring at it with intent focus as he twirls it in a circle.
“That’s a nice watch,” I say. It’s got a modern 1960s look, with little lines instead of numbers on the white face and a brown leather band.
“It’s my favorite,” he says idly. “A masterpiece of craftwork. This is the watch that made the Swiss watch industry cry for mercy after they tried to change the rules on the Japanese.”
“What, that?”
“Yes, this.” He rolls it between his fingers. “I bought it to remind myself that improvement is iterative and constant and the work is up to you.”
I take the watch, still warm from his wrist, when he holds it out to me. It’s a classic watch design and doesn’t look special to me.
“The magic is underneath, because work happens under the surface,” he says. “The Japanese kept improving the mechanics until it looked like it might win a very prestigious Swiss competition. You can imagine how they would have taken a Japanese firm winning.”
“What happened?”
He buckles the watch back on. “They closed the competition and, when they reopened it, changed the rules so only Europeans could enter.”
“That’s so unfair!”
“Very.” Jihoon gives the watch a loving pat. “But who were the real winners in the end?”
I look at his notebook. “Is that what you’re working on? A song about watches?” This might be nosy, but I told him about my notebook. I’m owed a secret.
“A song that might be about watches. Or something else.” His frown deepens to cover his forehead in lines. “It’s not going well.”
I shimmy around to see him better. “How do you even write a song?”
He rubs the back of his neck. “I’ve been asking myself the exact same question.”
I toss a pillow at him. “Seriously. Do you start with the words?”
“Sometimes. Usually a melody. Occasionally an idea or a feeling.”
“What do you have so far?”
He sits up and smiles at me. “Would you like to write a song, Ari?”
That makes me laugh as I stretch my legs. “I’m not creative.”
“We’re all creative,” he says. “Every single person is, but some have been discouraged. Give it a try. Help a poor, lost songwriter.”
Why not? “What are you stuck on?”
Jihoon tosses the notebook aside to pace the room. “There was another mural in that alley, beside one of a flower. It was a clock painted in a cage. And I think of this.”
He hums a part of a song to me, and even without words, I have a sense of longing and desire. “That sounds like the singer wants something.”
“They do.” Jihoon looks pleased before he taps the side of his nose with his pen. “The question is what they want.”
I point at the watch. “They want time.”
He gazes at his watch. “Time,” he muses.
“Watches break time up,” I say, thinking of my billable hours. “The act of measuring makes us think differently about it.”
Jihoon’s head is bent over his notebook as he writes. “Keep talking. Please.”
So I do, about not much and everything. And Jihoon listens and writes, and again I have that sense of being not only listened to but heard.
“Do I get a songwriting credit?” I ask when I take a sip of water.
Jihoon looks at me with wide and shining eyes, his smile huge. “I’ll give you anything you want, Ari.”
Anything could be interesting. I restrain myself from looking down to where his shirt has ridden up to show the edges of that tiger tattoo and instead wish him a good night and leave him on the couch writing away.
As I go to bed, I wonder what the song will sound like and if I’ll ever hear it.