Somewhere Only We Know(37)

He nodded his head with a grim smile that was all, “Carry on.”

I sat down next to him. “Are you seasick?”

The word “seasick” made him gag slightly. “Oh, sorry!” I patted his arm. “This thing is barely moving, you must be super sensitive.”

He gave a small nod, closing his eyes and breathing deeply.

“Why did you want to take the ferry if it would make you this sick?”

After a few seconds, he answered, his eyes still closed. “Because I thought you’d like it.”

That lodged a warm little nugget into my chest. Yeah, this was a guy who dragged a washer up three flights of stairs for an old lady. I looked at him, the handsome features of his face. Smooth brow, serious eyebrows, a straight-up sensual mouth.

Did you kiss me like that because you actually like me?

“I do like the ferry,” I said.

Another deep breath. “Good.”

Everything about Jack was charming and magnetic and the overall effect was setting off alarm bells.

But this wasn’t a normal situation. In a normal situation, I would be cautious. But today? Today was today. The usual rules did not apply.

I would eat all the buns, all the rice, all the sweets. And I would grab every bit of heat, sweetness, and fun with this guy. I’d leave as quickly as I came and the memory would sustain me for whatever was ahead.

So I threw caution to the wind on that ferry. “And I like you, too, Jack.”

Saying those words out loud was an insane release. I wasn’t nervous about it—it felt right. Easy. I stared at him, waiting for some comical reaction, like his eyes snapping open and his body boinging out of the seat like, “Wha-ha-ha?!”

What I didn’t expect was his eyes to remain closed and a horrible smirk to appear on his face. I could punch that perfect face of his.

“Hello?” I poked him in the arm.

His face slackened immediately and I regretted it. “I’m going to let this reaction go because you’re near death,” I mumbled.

Finally, he said quietly, “I’m not near death.” His eyes opened and he gazed at me. Heavy-lidded, tired. It shouldn’t have been hot but it was. “I know you like me.”

I imagined heaving his body into my arms and tossing him over the side of the ferry like a sack of rice.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said with a laugh. “You kissed me. I figured you wouldn’t kiss someone you hated.”

My face felt hot, again. “Well, there’s an ocean between ‘hate’ and ‘like.’”

“Is there?”

Something about seasick Jack made everything he said sound oddly sage. His gaze was still on me, hyper-focused now. “Why is it that in rom-coms people always go from hating each other to like, ripping each other’s clothes off?”

I pulled my coat tighter around me. “There shall be no ripping off of clothes. Calm down, sir.”

His hand reached out and tugged at my sleeve. “Don’t worry. I can barely move right now.”

“Good.”

“So why is it, then? Why is hate so hot?”

I squirmed. Jack with a depleted battery was still lethal. “I don’t know! Maybe because hate means you feel something strongly. And people you’re not attracted to don’t bring out anything that strongly. It’s a whole lot of nothing.”

I thought of the many polite interactions I’d had with various K-pop guys in Korea. None of us were supposed to date, of course. But there were hookups and covert dating. It was all very romantic for the ones who did it. But I never did.

When I met these guys, I discovered that what we brought out in fans was so separate from who we actually were. So, then, when we met it would be awkward because we felt that expectation: that two attractive people were supposed to culminate into something fiery. Fueled by the adoration of thousands. Millions, even, for some of us. But it’d be this cold, strained thing.

Today, though, after a few hours with this stranger, this guy who I knew wasn’t telling me the full truth about himself, I felt it. The thing. I understood how you could go from wanting to punch someone to kissing them.

It was chemistry, for sure. But it was also the way I remembered him taking care of me last night. His genuine pleasure in my enjoyment of this city.

Goodness. I was actually falling for this guy.

“So you feel strongly about me, then?” Jack asked, still touching the sleeve of my jacket. His fingernail got caught on the shirt underneath and when he pulled his hand away a strand of thread unraveled from it, the fabric puckering.

I huffed. “Yeah, I strongly feel that you are annoying.” I tried to pull my arm away to yank the hanging string off, but he held my wrist up to his face, examining the thread.

“What are you—”

His gaze moved from the thread to my eyes. And without looking away, he brought my wrist up to his mouth, placed the thread between his teeth, and pulled.

The thread broke off and fluttered to the floor.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


JACK


I wanted Lucky to stop talking about her feelings. But after that piece of thread fell to the floor, the look in her eyes wasn’t something I was anticipating.

Her pupils turned black black black, filled her entire eyeballs almost. The heat in them almost knocked me over.