Twenty-One Night Stand ✓

7 / party line

For two days, Maddie had existed in a state of mild disembodiment, going through the motions of her everyday life while her head floated in the clouds. Every time she stood opposite her father, he held her gaze until her eyes wandered off, her mind disengaged. After reading the letter, and the initial outburst at her father, she had thought that would be it, but the truth was far from it. Every time she managed to occupy herself with something else, her thoughts would scramble back to that damn letter. A part of her wished she had never read it; another part wished she had known all along.

"You in there, Maddie?" Her father stood over her at the kitchen table, two steaming plates of jjajangmyeon in his hands. "You look a little out of it, ttal." He set the plates down and sat opposite Maddie, pushing a pair of chopsticks over to her.

"I'm just thinking," Maddie said, and she hated how exhausted her brain was making her. It kept her up at night, rolling over and over the same thoughts until she was ready to tear her hair out. Shaking her head to dislodge the thoughts, she picked up the chopsticks before putting them down and standing.

"Everything ok?" Jung-min asked as he began to eat, chopsticks in his left hand and a glass of wine in his right.

"I need a fork," Maddie murmured, rooting through the cutlery drawer. Her father's face dropped for a fraction of a second. "It's just easier," she added, sitting back down with a knife and fork in her hand. Jung-min said nothing and sipped his wine. Maddie poured herself a glass as though she did every night, though she rarely drank with her father.

"You're going out tonight, aren't you?"

"Mmhmm. With Peter."

Jung-min's ears perked up. "Oh? Is that a party or a ... date?"

"Dad." Maddie rolled her eyes. "It's for a party. One of his tennis friends." She filled her mouth to avoid any subsequent round of questions.

"Ok," her father said, with a smile on his face. Maddie's response was the first time in a couple of days that he'd managed to elicit any more than a blank word or two from her. "Is he picking you up?"

"Yup," she said, and she checked her watch. "Not till nine though." She glanced over at her father and cocked her head at him. "What?"

"Nothing," he said, though a smile hid behind his eyes. "I hope you have a great time. You deserve a break."

He didn't need to clarify what exactly Maddie needed a break from, and she didn't have to ask, merely returning his smile. Exhaustion was her overwhelming feeling and she stifled a yawn as she ate, desperate to push through the weariness to enjoy a good night. A good night with Peter, she mused, and cancelled the thought as soon as it had sprung up. It would be a good night.

*

At half past eight, she was ready to go. Her make-up had taken significantly less time than usual, her hands working in her favour to get her eyeliner just right on her first go and she added mascara without it clumping on her lashes. A decent outfit showed itself to her as soon as she opened her wardrobe instead of the twenty minutes minimum it usually took to put together something that looked half wearable. With her phone and a bit of cash - just in case - tucked into a modest shoulder bag, she sat down on the end of her bed and sighed. Too early. The second hand of the clock seemed to tick tortuously slowly, slowing still each time she glanced in its direction, and she didn't know what to do with the extra time she had mistakenly allocated herself.

Scrolling through her various newsfeeds managed to kill a solid twenty minutes, keeping an eye on what her friends were up to without any engagement of actual meaning, until her alert ears picked up the sound of tyres crunching on the short gravel driveway outside, the only one on the street.