Eight a.m. and I'd run out of staff paper, but no way was I gonna leave the bed to get more. I'd filled pages with the pulse of the ocean's heartbeat, the melody of our breaths tumbling like the surf, the ostinato rhythm of the music that Will had turned us into. The melody had echoed in my head long after we'd nestled together, sharing drowsy kisses until Will had fallen asleep.
I'd slept badly of my own volition, planting kiss after helpless kiss on Will as he'd slept, pressing close to absorb all the warmth I could from him, all the time my fingers twitching to try out his music on the grand piano.
At first I'd doubted that it could stand as a real piece of music, the barest shell of a composition, only existing for a short time in the warm cocoon of Will's arms. But at two a.m. I'd crept out of bed to fetch staff paper and pencil to capture the piece before the night took it to my dreams, or hid it forever on my cluttered brain-shelves.
I'd written down what I could remember, expecting it to be a silly curiosity to laugh at over breakfast. But I'd woken up to find the notes for an entire movement scrawled onto staff paper. I didn't even have to test it on the piano; I knew that it was a beautiful little étude, light and airy in C major. Maybe it could be a late birthday present for Will.
Will's music was forgotten as my eyes fell back to the slow rise and fall of his chest, an arm thrown above his head, the other arm over his torso, like a dancer who'd been enchanted to sleep mid-arabesque. Fuck, he was so beautiful. How was I gonna bear to be away from him during the day when he went back to work? How was I gonna bear to be away from him forever when I went back to Busan?
You're not in Busan yet, Zeph.
I swung my legs out of bed to go make coffee, but Will's arms were already winding around my waist, his laughter sending a sub-sonic vibration through my ribs as he pulled me back into bed.
"Hey! You were asleep a second ago!"
"I'm still asleep," he said.
More laughter, and more kisses. Slow and deep. Like we were never gonna make it out of bed. Will ran his finger along the cord of my necklace, scooping the shell up into his palm, before pressing it to his lips and settling it back against my chest.
"I've been doing that too."
"Del be del rah daré[1]" Will said, smacking kiss after kiss onto my knuckles before pulling me onto him.
"Gloria told me what that means, you know. Persians are so melodramatic."
"We're not melodramatic!" He sulked under the covers for a few moments, before emerging to pepper me with kisses again.
"OK, if you're not melodramatic, what's the most romantic phrase you can think of in Farsi? I bet it's gonna be totally over the top."
"It won't be." Will settled against the pillows, eyebrows furrowed in thought, as if testing line after line of flowery Persian poetry to find the most saccharine. "The most romantic thing that people say to each other in Iran is probably jigaré mani."
"That's short. I was expecting some long-ass poem." Will chuckled at that, taking my hand in his and turning it over to kiss my fingertips, my palm, my wrist. "So? What does it mean?"
"It means I'm your liver."
It wasn't the sentimental Persian fluff that I'd been expecting. "You're...my liver? As in...you're one of my internal organs? And that's meant to sound nice?"
A torrent of laughter spilled out of Will. "It sounds super-romantic in Farsi." He pulled me closer, pressing his lips to each knuckle of my right hand, then moving on to the left.
"Yeah, super-romantic for a serial killer."
"Jigaré mani," he said, his voice silk-smooth with bass notes. "So what's the most romantic thing you can say in Korean? It's probably way more sentimental than anything in Farsi."
After rooting around on my brain-shelves, I had to conclude that Korean didn't have many corny phrases that Will and I could laugh at together. Koreans were kinda honest about what we were feeling, and we didn't pretty shit up with elaborate metaphors like Persians did.
As if in response to that realization, my brain rebelled, and one word suddenly took up all the space in my mind. A single word in Korean that I was sure Will had learnt weeks before. I couldn't possibly say it.
Looking at Will made it worse, the word slowly burning itself into my gray matter like a brand, obliterating the plethora of idiotic romantic Korean nothings that had danced around my brain just moments before. Saranghae[2].
Tell him, Zeph. He knows anyways.
But my throat was suddenly dry, and the cracks in my heart started to ache. I couldn't say it. What would be the point if we were gonna be torn apart in a couple of weeks' time? Wouldn't saying it out loud just hurt us more?
"Korean's the least romantic language ever," I said finally.
"Come on, Zeph." Will ran a trail of kisses along my cheek to encourage me, but I'd already started missing him, even though I was right there in his arms.
How many days would we last before it hurt him too much, and he made me move out for real? Will's eyebrows wriggled with worry at my sudden reticence.
"Why did you change your mind?" I asked. "Last night you...you wanted me to move out." The pain was still so raw and red in my heart: the vision of Will telling me to leave, his eyes numb, dead inside.
Will shifted in the bed, drawing the blanket over us. "I'm so sorry for hurting you last night. I thought that I was...being sensible. Keeping my distance. But...there hasn't been any real distance between us for weeks. And I realized that...I wasn't being sensible anymore. I was just...being a coward. And last night was my last chance to be brave. Brave like you, Zeph."
It wasn't as simple as that. Will wasn't a coward, and I wasn't brave. He was just in a different place. Mourning a mother who'd been his whole life, recovering from major surgery, constantly managing his mental health. He couldn't afford to take risks like I could. I understood how dangerous I was for him.
"It's OK if you can't handle this. Us. If it's too much, just tell me, and we can go back to being just friends for the next couple of weeks. Or I could move out. Anything you want. I'd understand."
He took me into his arms. "I love being like this with you, Zeph. I don't wanna be just friends again. I wanna be with you until I can't be anymore."
I slid my fingers into soft curls. "Me too. Until we can't be anymore." We had two weeks together, probably less. We'd make it worth the hurt.
"I'm still waiting for a cute Korean phrase," he said, nestling us into the pillows.
"For real, Will. We don't even have sexy words in Korean. All our sexy words are in English."
"Then why is kiss bbobbo?" he teased.
"A regular kiss is bbobbo, but a sexy kiss is kiss."
"Zeph?" He looked down at me with those stupid fucking pretty eyes of his, flecks of gold appearing and disappearing from his irises in the changing shade of the bedroom as the sun climbed. "Kiss haedo dwae[3]?"
Touché, Will.
We fell back into kisses and laughter. And more kisses. And Will's fucking phone ringing. He eyed the screen with a groan.
"It's Charlotte. Why is she calling me so early?"
"I'm gonna go make coffee." I peeled myself off Will and clambered out of the bed in search of my clothes. "Don't tell her about us or she'll deport me."
"I won't...Hey Charlotte." Will watched me stumble around the room putting on whatever clothes he'd discarded the night before. "How are you? I'm fine. Zeph? Zeph's er...Zeph's...really really good."
I put my head in my hands. Will was so fucking terrible at lying it was unreal.
Will was eventually released from Charlotte's interrogation and made it onto the porch for his coffee, the moka almost empty from where I'd downed two espressos in panic at whatever the fuck relationship advice Charlotte was giving her baby bro.
"What did she say?"
Will collapsed onto a porch chair next to me, sliding a warm arm under my T-shirt. "She wants me to go to her place tonight."
"Shit. Why? It's nothing to do with her. Unless one of the conditions of my visa was never to touch my guarantor's dick under any circumstances."
Will's boom of laughter echoed around the porch, frightening resting gulls which scattered toward the open water.
"Not to talk about us. To talk about the apartment. Need to go to Maria Friday afternoon to get my Mom's paintings and books back. I'll be home Saturday if I work fast."
I relaxed a little, but my heart ached at the thought of Will wasting two precious days away from me.
"If Charlotte asks about us, I'll tell her it's not her business. And that you're amazing."
Kisses over breakfast, kisses in the shower, kisses in bed. This time, I was ready for Will.
I hadn't expected the music to be there a second time, but within seconds of taking Will in my arms, a tinkling arpeggio and a broken bassline appeared out of the sun-warmed stillness of his bedroom.
The music of the night before had been created by Will's caresses, the melody shaped by each moan he'd stroked out of me, interspersed with the rhythm of our breaths, and my heart beating a ratcheting tempo in my ears. But our daytime music was different, a gentle lilting piece, wandering back and forth between C major and A minor, like morning breezes shivering over the beach.
The music pulsed and crested and changed direction, like zephyrs colliding with the circling gusts on the shore. The time signature and key smeared into rainbow colors, making me wonder if it would even be possible to transcribe its complexity on paper. But I gave myself up to the melody, somehow knowing that Will's music would echo in my ears long enough for me to capture it somehow.
Will unraveled under me, his exhaled breaths tapering into little gasps as the waves reached higher over us both. I wished that time would stand still and keep us suspended together, forever locked in the harmonies between resonating piano strings.
Will's grip on me tightened, and he caught me in a final gaze, his smile almost pulling me under the rollers that were cresting around us. He was so beautiful; I'd remember the vision of him lying there, in resonance with me, for the rest of my life. Eyes fluttered closed, hiding their golden fire, eyebrows pinched in muted ecstasy, and he came in my arms.
I couldn't bring myself to get up, and lay drinking in his impossible beauty for long moments. When I looked up he was smiling, having caught me gazing at him for too long. He looked as blissfully sleepy as I felt. I dropped kiss after kiss on him, scouring my mind to think of something eloquent to say to him, something that could capture a hundredth of what I was feeling.
"Was it good?"
Wow, so eloquent, idiot.
Will's smile widened. "Good is an understatement."
"Wow. So eloquent, Will," I groaned as he pulled me down into the pillows for a kiss.
The crash of the porch doors roused us from our post-lunch doze on the sofa, Will stirring in my arms at the sound of Jules's voice.
"Wow. Look at you." Jules slumped onto the sofa opposite, watching us with a satisfied little smile on her face as we reluctantly re-entered the waking world with stretches and yawns.
Jules's arrival wasn't gonna keep a yawning Will from his nap. He leisurely untangled himself from me, then offered Jules a sleepy smile before nestling against me and closing his eyes.
Jules hadn't left her house since Lars's arrest, but she looked OK, kinda Youtube-ready in matching lilac yoga pants and vest. The fact that she was visiting meant that humiliation and heartbreak weren't gonna keep her down. But it would only be a matter of time before Selena told her that I'd been the informant who had put Lars in jail.
"How are you, Jules? You feeling better?"
"Yeah. I'll survive," Jules replied. "I just came to see it for myself."
"See what?"
"My Mom called me when she saw you kissing on the porch. And Katelyn texted me when she ran past you kissing on the porch. And Julián-"
"Seriously, can nobody in this village kiss in peace?" I whined, arms outstretched at the porch doors, like Will's back yard wasn't an exposed three-kilometer stretch of public coastline. Will chuckled into my shoulder, eyes still closed.
"I got a ton of V.I.P. passes for Shot Keys at Lavanderia tonight. You guys gotta come! Everyone's gonna be there. And I seriously need to get wasted."
Will opened an eye. "Sorry, Jules. I gotta see Charlotte tonight," he said. He patted smooth the fabric on my shoulder like a cat, before resting his face on me and shutting his eye again.
"I'm gonna chill here tonight, sorry Jules."
I needed to spend every precious minute I could with Will; I couldn't waste it getting drunk. And I'd been hoping to run away to Korea without ever having to face up to what I'd done to Lars. I wouldn't make it through a night of drinking without breaking down and confessing my treachery to Jules.
"Come on, Zeph! It's Memorial Day Weekend! We need to dance!"
Will opened an eye again. "Go, Zeph. You'll love it," he murmured. "I'll pick you up when I leave Charlotte's."
Perhaps a few hours away from Will would be bearable if I was distracted by drinking and dancing. I owed it to Jules. "OK. I'm in."
"Perfect! See you at my place at seven!" called Jules, sweeping out of the porch doors. "And wear the cute outfit I bought you!"
Shibal.
Spray-on jeans were the least of my worries. Perhaps if I admitted everything to a drunken dancing Jules, she wouldn't hate me. Not until the hangover, at least.
Author's Notes:
[1] Del be del rah daré: Farsi, "there's a pathway between two hearts"
[2] Saranghae: Korean, "I love you"
[3] Kiss haedo dwae?: Korean, "can I kiss you?"