Somewhere Only We Know(17)

I tried to dry my eyes with the long thermal sleeves peeking out from my coat and swiped up some stringy snot along the way. Oh, God.

My eyes flew up to Jack’s face. Jack, who would be taller than me in heels. He tried to avert his eyes but it was too late.

“You saw my komul right now!” I wailed. Certain words, like snot, would always be Korean first no matter what.

Jack coughed while trying to hold back his laughter. “No, I didn’t!”

“Yes, you did!” I turned away from him, my face planted into the wall. The rough brick scratched my cheek, but I didn’t care.

“I swear!” he said from behind me.

But with my forehead pressed into the cool building, the surroundings dark, I felt my eyelids droop. And I gave in to the exhaustion.





CHAPTER TWELVE


JACK


You know what’s difficult? Carrying a human being on your back. Especially a human being who is dead asleep.

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, and Fern let out a complainy sniffle. So sorry, literal monster on my back!

If I were famous, some paparazzo like me would snap a photo of this moment.

How did my night turn into this? From being worried about a cute girl falling asleep on a bus to piggybacking her home? Not her home. Mine.

She had absolutely no identification on her. I had a feeling she was staying at the same hotel as Teddy Slade, where I first saw her in the elevator. But bringing a drunk girl into that lobby without knowing anything about her was probably not a good idea. And no way was I stepping back into that place after the stunt I pulled today. Celeste Jiang had known what I’d done and I didn’t want to risk it.

I had dug through Fern’s pockets earlier, hoping to find a phone, to call someone to pick her up. But nothing.

It was like she fell out of the sky.

By the time I got to my apartment building, I felt like I was going to die. Like, blood pouring out of my eyes type of death. I heaved her off my back as gently as possible. She slumped down onto the granite-tiled floor in the entryway. The medicinal herbs shop on the ground floor of my apartment building was closed for the night, the metal grate in place, but its scent was still strong around us. I fumbled to enter the code to let me into the building. When the door unlocked with a loud clang, I propped it open with one foot and reached for Fern, draping her arm across my neck and heaving her up by the waist with my other arm.

Why did I live in a walk-up? All of my life decisions that led me to this moment played in my head like a punishing movie montage, and I cursed every single one of them.

When I finally reached the fourth floor, I was panting and my entire upper body was cramped with pain. Leaning both our bodies against the wall, I tried to dig my key out from my pocket but Fern immediately slid down onto the floor.

I let her sit there for a second while I unlocked the door. I grabbed a shoe from the entry, one of Charlie’s rubber house slippers, and wedged it into the door.

Fern was a limp noodle of a human being now, completely slouched over, her slippered feet pointing in opposite directions like the Wicked Witch of the East.

After a few attempts to move her, I was sweating. Christ, why was this girl so freaking difficult to move! I was finally able to grab her under her armpits and drag her into the living room. Straight-up hiding-a-dead-body style.

I heaved her against the sofa, where she continued to slump.

“Oh my God,” I said to the ceiling, dragging my hands down my face. There was so much that could go wrong.

One, if Fern woke up and didn’t know where she was, and saw me, she would freaking flip and I would look like some creeper who probably roofied her at the bar. Two, if my landlady caught wind of this somehow, I would literally be beaten to death with a shoe.

I took a deep breath. Okay, it’s cool. Keep your head on straight, Jack. You excel in crises, right? This is your jam. You can get out of anything.

I rolled up my shirtsleeves and threw the extra dead bolt on my door. In case my landlady decided to pay a surprise midnight visit. Which wouldn’t be the first time. She was an insomniac and got bored easily. I glanced at Fern to see if the sound stirred her awake.

With her head dropped forward and her limbs splayed like a rag doll, there was no chance of anything short of an EDM concert waking her up.

I grabbed a pillow and a blanket from the bedroom and tossed them on the sofa.

As I stood there staring at her and the fake leather sofa cracking and peeling with age, I felt guilty. Maybe she should get the bed. That seemed like the right thing to do?

If Charlie only knew. We actually shared the bed—switching off every other week, one taking it while the other slept on the sofa. We each had our own set of sheets and changed them every week. It was straight-up Wild West, but it worked.

What would he say if he knew this strange girl was sleeping in our bed?

Fern was fully slumped over now, her head almost touching her knees.

Time to move her.

I closed my eyes, willing my overtired muscles to be cool with it.

Oof. Fern’s foot hit my calf as I hauled her into the bed. After looking at her for a second, those silly slippers stuck out at me and I sighed deeply. I lifted one of her feet by the back of her ankle and quickly tugged off the slipper. Trying not to linger too much on touching her skin, I made quick work of the other slipper as well, my fingertips barely touching her.