He keeps texting me. Every day.
Stop, I text him. I need time alone.
I love you, he texts. I miss you. I haven't seen you for a week. Please, Mina. I need to see you. I'm going crazy without you.
Go away, I reply. I ignore the beeps, and trudge to the supermarket two blocks away. It's 3.00 pm, and it's getting dark. There's a light drizzle, but it's stopped snowing.
I grab a cart and head for the rear of the store, pushing past the bottles of Organic Cleansers and laundry detergents and brooms and mops. I throw seaweed cookies and baked chips into the cart and head for the ice cream aisle. I pass a woman wearing a shirt that says, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Turning down the ice cream aisle, I shiver.
"Cold?" I yelp, and swing around so fast my shoulder upsets a display of waffle cones, piled high into a triangular mountain.
I watch him pick up the boxes one by one, stacking them swiftly and efficiently. He smiles at me, his eyes amused.
"Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” The jerk. His eyes are dancing. He totally meant to freak me out.
"What are you doing here?" I narrow my eyes suspiciously at him. "Are you - are you stalking me?"
He laughs.
"Really. I don't know who you are. I've never seen you before in my life. I just happened to be in the neighbourhood. And I just happen to want to buy..." His eyes skim over the shelves. "...Thai chilli crisps." He grins. "My absolute favourite." His hands are in his pockets and he is bouncing up and down on his heels. "And seaweed cookies." He was totally stalking me. He drums his long fingers on the shelf. He is nervous beneath the brashness.
He's playing some kind of game with me. The Let's-Make-Like-We-Don't-Know-Each-Other game. We used to play it all the time, back when we were teenagers in love. I feel my heart start to pound.
"Do you live in this neighbourhood?" he asks politely. His eyes are wicked.
"Yeah." I smile slowly. Let's see who cracks first.
"My girlfriend lives here." He grins.
"Really?" I widen my eyes. My feigned surprise makes him laugh. "So," I say casually, opening one of the coolers. I pretend to stare at the tubs of ice cream. I frown in concentration, and he sniggers. "What's your girlfriend like?"
"She kind of looks like you actually," he smiles. "Very pretty and cool and smart. I'm crazy about her."
I snort. His shoulders are shaking with silent laughter.
"So why are you chatting me up when you should be..." I wave a hand vaguely, "wherever... you know, with her?"
"Ah." He leans forward, and murmurs in my ear, his shoulder almost touching mine. I feel a delicious tingle ripple down my arm, all the way to my toes. "She’s confused." I stare at him. "Yeah, confused." He nods sagely. "She wants to take a break," he taps his head, "to think. About us."
"Oh," I say nastily. "Then perhaps, you should let her do that, assh - I mean, mister." I glare at him.
"No, no, no." He sighs. "She's crazy about me, too. She's just...stubborn..." He smirks, watching my lips. "But that's one of the reasons I'm so crazy about her. Because she's so damn stubborn..." He stretches his hand, and lifts a strand of my hair off my shoulder, and tucks it behind my ear. I stop breathing.
"Would you like to grab a cup of coffee?" he asks. “I can fill you in on my whole sob story." The tingle at my feet works its way up my body.
"No," I mutter. "I can't. I'm um, busy."
"Yes, you can. Think of it as a favor to me." I cock my head. "I need someone to talk to - a new friend, someone who'd listen, someone...like you..." My mouth opens, and lets out an extended Pffffffff sound. He raises an eyebrow. His eyes are mocking.
"I’m not a good listener," I say, blinking rapidly. I shift from one foot to the other, distracting myself with a giant bar of Cadbury dairy milk chocolate.
"Ah." He smiles indulgently. "You like sweet stuff, huh? My girlfriend loves chocolates. You know," he murmurs softly, "maybe that's why I like you...because you remind me so much of her..." He gives me a beguiling smile. Oh, God. My knees are turning to jelly. He's turning on the charm full-blast, and he knows I can't resist him. The jerk.
"So, coffee?" he pleads, his eyes on mine. "Please?"
"Okay, coffee." I hear the excitement in my voice and cringe. I. Am. Disgusting.
"Good," he smiles. "Holly's coffee shop two blocks from here on the northwest corner. My girlfriend and I used to go there all the time."
"Thirty minutes," I say, calculating the time it would take for me to get home and calm myself down. Say you can’t make it. Say you have other things to do. But I don't say it. I don't say anything. Instead, I just look at him, and he's smiling at me, confident of his power over me, and I want to haul him to me, here, in the supermarket, in full view of everyone, and kiss him breathless.
“Thirty minutes,” he repeats, watching my lips. I purse them primly, and frown to hide my dirty thoughts, and he ducks his head to hide a smile. I turn and walk calmly down the aisle. I can feel his eyes on my back, making me tingle.
I run - I practically run back to my house! - how much more pathetic can I get, seriously? and dump my groceries on the kitchen counter, run up to my room, comb my hair in the mirror, slap on a coat of red lipstick, and groan out loud. All he has to do is crook a finger, and I'll go running to him. Gah. So much for sassy, new Mina. She's the same silly girl beneath all that shiny polish. She's still hung up over the guy who broke her heart.
The coffee shop is full of dark blue walls and mosaic patterns. It is intense and depressing and warm all at the same time.
He is waiting for me at a small table in the back corner staring absently at the tabletop. He lifts a white porcelain cup to his lips, and I get a flashback of him doing the same thing years ago, and my heart accelerates. He spots me when I am a few feet away.
"Hi. I got you a latte," he says, standing up. His eyes sweep from my feet to my face in one quick motion. I push a dark strand of hair out of my eyes nervously, and smile tightly. I am jittery, my hands are unsteady.
When he extends a hand toward me, I hesitate.
"Na Jaemin," he says. Oh, we're still playing the game. I shake his hand.
"I would say that I usually tell women my name before I ask them out for coffee, but I don't think it matters with you, because I feel... ," he leans forward, his eyes warm on mine, and says softly, intimately, "like I've known you all my life. Isn't it strange?"
I clear my throat.
"Yeah, it's strange..." I can't take my eyes off him.
I allow my hand to be swallowed in his. My hand looks so tiny and fragile, enclosed in his. The feel of his skin is so familiar, it makes my heart skip a beat. I close my eyes for a brief second and allow the absurdity of the situation to wash over me.
"Kim Mina. Thank you for the coffee."
We sit down, and I begin pouring sugar into my cup. I watch his face. He used to tease me about my coffee being so sweet it made his teeth hurt just looking at it.
"So what did you tell your girlfriend?" I ask, taking a sip.
I am swinging my shoe off the end of my big toe. I used to do this to annoy him sometimes when we were together. I got a kick out of seeing how much I got under his skin. He used to say that to me. You get under my skin, Kim Mina, he would growl, his eyes dark on mine. No one else gets under my skin the way you do. I sure as hell don't know why you get under my skin. I see his eyes reach my foot and for a second, I think he’s going to grab it to stop the motion.
"I told her I'd give her all the time she needed to think," he says. I nod. "But, it's been a week, and I'm going nuts without her." He rakes a hand through his hair. I remember his hair, silk in my fingers.The stubble on his jaw is a contrast; rough, scratchy, like sandpaper. "And I know I told her I'd give her all the time she needed, but here's the thing...it just made me realise that I need her, I'm like a fucking zombie without her..."
"I’m sorry," I lie. It feels good to see him so shaken. I give him a tiny smile. I think I look smug, for a change. Normally, he's the one with that self-satisfied smirk. It makes me feel wonderful.
He stares at the table, looking miserable. He absently traces a pattern of circles with his finger.
"Maybe, if you talk about it, you'll feel better. You know, share some more stuff about you and your, um, girlfriend." I can’t keep the laughter out of my voice.
"Talk about it. Sure. Why not? Maybe, we should start with something simple before I tell you my secrets. Like my favorite color." He smiles.
"What's your favorite colour?" I ask.
"Guess." His gaze is on my face.
"Blue," I say quietly. "Your favourite colour is blue. And mine is white. And yellow, in summer. Now we’re best friends."
"Blue it is," he says smiling.
I remember sitting in a pre-U workshop in a lecture theatre at the Seoul National University. I remember watching the sun slowly slide along the window sill, across the floor, as the afternoon dragged on.
He'd been wearing a dark navy suit over a pale blue shirt. I'd sat there in the row of seats, watching him say something, watching the way the sun slowly crept up his body like a rising tide. I could almost breathe in the scent of the fabric warming on his body.
I remember how he'd turned his eyes to mine, how flustered it had made me, my stomach twisting in half. He'd stared intently at me, and stopped, frowned, stared at his own PowerPoint presentation, then calmly resumed his talk.
Those eyes, flashing to my face, had made me jump out of my skin.
"I was remembering this seminar that I attended at a university when I was seventeen," I say. His eyes darken. "My boyfriend was a facilitator. He was giving a presentation. He was wearing a dark navy suit over a pale blue shirt. Midway through his presentation, he stopped..."
"Stopped?"
"Yeah. He just stopped, and then he gave me this look." My voice is throaty.
"Look?" His voice is husky.
"Like he was thinking about something dirty..." I smile slowly.
He inhales sharply. When he looks at me, his eyes are wild and dangerous.
"I was. You were wearing your white silk shirt with the pearl buttons. And this soft-looking cardigan. I looked at you, and I wanted to kiss you so bad. I stopped thinking." He swallowed. "All I wanted to do was kiss you."
I stare at him, my mouth dry.
"And then when I did the walkabout, when I bent down and looked at that questionnaire, all I could see was you, all I could smell was you." His voice is hoarse. "Your hair was falling all over your face, you looked frail and delicate and so exquisite, and I bent down, and your hair brushed against my lips, and I almost went crazy...your hair - your hair smelled like summer. It was intoxicating." His eyes are blazing. "I couldn't breathe."
"I need you, Mina." His voice is a husky whisper. "I need you so badly. It feels like an eternity since the last time I kissed you." His eyes are anguished.
He stretches out a hand, and brushes a feathery thumb along my bottom lip, so lightly it feels like a whisper.
"I'm dying here, Mina. You're killing me. Please, don't make me stay away."
My insides begin to quiver with excitement, and when I look into his eyes, there it is - that spark, flaring up as quick and breathtaking as a flash of lightning, making those eyes burn silvery fire and smoke, his gaze so intense that I am hot and shivery all at once.