Now and for the Last Time

29 장

Surely Sehun had always been a person who hummed. I probably just hadn't noticed.

"Isn't it time for morning coffee run?" I asked him, as he launched into the second round of a popular dance song, wordlessly. "You know how my mom gets without her caffeine."

He paused at the instrumentals. "I thought you'd want to do it. To see Kyungsoo. Don't you?"

I shifted in my seat, then realized I was literally squirming at his question and made myself still. "I'm kind of deep in these place cards right now."

He looked over from his own stack, equal in size to mine. "You are?"

"Well, yeah."

I tried to sound easy. It didn't work, a face made clear when he gave me his full attention. "Hold on. I thought you guys had a good time the other night."

"We did," I said, folding another card. The paper was thick and embossed, each name done by a professional calligrapher. Ruin it, you pay for it, had been Eomma's directive. Never before had paper made me nervous. "I'm just, you know . . ."

Usually, when you trail off, people just finish the sentence for you in their own heads. Sehun was clearly still full of beats, because he said, "You're what?"

"I'm busy," I told him. "And it's your job."

He leaned back. "Gosh. Okay. Sorry. I'll go now."

With that, he pushed out his chair and got to his feet, then headed to the back office, where Eomma and Wooyoung were discussing with the valet parking company about Jeon Somin's rehearsal dinner, whistling as he went. I was sure he'd never done that before.

So he was happy. No crime in that. And just because he'd had a great time with Tzuyu the night before - he hadn't said so exactly, but the music-making spoke a lot - didn't mean he was going to win our bet and me lose. I only had to keep going on dates, just like I'd done with Kyungsoo. I wasn't humming. But I'd done it.

I winced to myself as I thought about this. After Tzuyu and Sehun had left the night before, Kyungsoo and I had talked for another hour or so, mostly about his writing, the conversation interrupted occasionally by Gayeon, coming to complain that the party sucked and she wanted to go home. Finally, around eleven, she bumped into some guy she knew from yet another food truck - the community was national - and decided to stay just as I was ready to leave. In the end, I got a ride with Kyungsoo on the back of his bicycle, where I felt every bump and rattle of the handful of miles back to my house.

Once there, I could tell he expected to be invited in by the way he kept glancing at the door. But Wooyoung's car was still there and I didn't feel like making introductions. In the end, we sat on the curb, the bike laying beside us. I was tired of talking, tired in general, and trying to come up with an excuse, but Kyungsoo was still going full speed about his writing.

"Really, it's all process," he explained to me. "You have to research, you know? Fiction is blood, sweat, and tears, man, all mixed together. Like a plant growing from the mud. If you nurture it, something beautiful comes."

I could admit this all sounded exotic and dramatic at one point. But that had been a few hours earlier, and I still didn't understand exactly what his book in progress was about. "That's cool," I said, a response I'd taken to alternating with a few others like "Wow," "Interesting," and, just for variety, "I never saw it like that." For someone so interested in words, he didn't seem to notice this repetition.

Now he smiled, like I was cute, before reaching out and rubbing his thumb along the side of my mouth, then down my chin. I was thinking maybe I had something on my face, and wondering for how long, when he suddenly moved in to kiss me. It was quick and sudden and took me by surprise, even before he leaned me back into the grass with one smooth movement. The sudden gesture wasn't exactly romantic and then his mouth was on mine, tongue wriggling.