Somewhere Only We Know(39)

The words were out there in the world and I couldn’t take them back.

She slowed her steps and didn’t look at me right away, as if turning the words over in her mind. Examining them.

My palm grew sweaty in hers.





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE


LUCKY


Seriously, though, why was it such a big deal to show me that you like me, Jack? The slickness of his palms really drove the point home. This is the most noncommittal fling you’ll ever have, bucko. Thank your lucky stars.

“Cool, now we can acknowledge the suffocating sexual energy that you’ve been giving off all day,” I declared.

He laughed, almost running into two guys pushing a cart full of metal rebar. “You’re the one giving me hornball eyes,” he responded.

I thought of the warmth from his fingers as he pushed them into my wrist, the flash of his teeth before he bit into the unspooling thread. This shameless jerk. “You mended my clothing with your mouth. Don’t even.”

I waited for a blush but it never came. Instead, it was that stupid, slow smile. “It was a matter of practicality.”

“Oh, shut up.” But I smiled back, and there we were. Two smiling fools, holding hands, walking down a busy street. This was something I dreamed about. The love songs I sang, the bumping and grinding, the moon eyes I made—it was all hinting at this feeling.

As we walked, I noticed a lot more women in hijabs, schoolboys speaking Arabic, and halal restaurants the farther we went. “Oh my gosh, can we get good shawarma here?” I asked.

Jack nodded. “Oh yeah.”

Even though we had eaten our weight in bao, my stomach grumbled. I was never able to satisfy my Middle Eastern food cravings in Korea.

We stopped by a small storefront lit by fluorescent lamps and run by an older South Asian man wearing a loose cream-colored button-down shirt. Jack ordered us a couple sandwiches and we ate them at the metal counter, facing the street. I was adding up today’s costs in my head, keeping them stored away so that I could remind Ji-Yeon to get Jack paid.

Delicious. The lamb fat dripped off my chin. It was perfect, a balance of crisp and tender. Paired with crunchy pickled veggies and a rich tahini sauce. I didn’t bother wiping the fat off and didn’t mind that Jack watched me eat with undisguised interest.

“You’re kind of a pig,” he said affably.

“Truth.” I peeled back the foil wrapping on my sandwich. “I rarely get to eat like this. So, YOLO, right?”

He was quiet for a moment, munching on his sandwich. “Are you on a diet?” He looked uncomfortable after he said it. “Sorry, that was a rude question.”

“It’s okay. I brought it up. Yeah, I’m on a diet.” The bitterness of the word scraped down my throat, resting like a rock in my stomach. I had been careful with how much of my real life I revealed to Jack. Subtle things dropped here and there, trying not to lie too much. “I don’t remember when I wasn’t on one.”

The second I entered training school, I, and everyone else, was put on a diet. We were weighed every week, equally judged on that as we were with our dance skills. And it’s not like it was a secret. The public acted outraged on your behalf, about things like the “one cup” diet (everything you ate for the day fit into a tiny cup). There was always a temporary discussion about eating disorders when someone had to drop out of a group to go into rehab.

But then it was forgotten. The management labels laid low until the coast was clear. And then all the old rules were enacted again.

And, honestly, whose fault was it? Starving teenagers marked for life with eating disorders that would never leave them? Was it the management labels and entertainment companies? Or was it the insistence on a standard of beauty in the culture?

A girl has to be pretty more than anything else, my grandmother would say, so matter-of-factly. In Korea, strangers felt comfortable commenting on your appearance from “Wow, you’re tall!” to “You need to use more moisturizer.” In America, it was a lot more undercover, but it was there. Women and girls were held to different standards everywhere.

So was it any surprise that when you reached a level of stardom in Korea, you were expected to be the most perfect version of yourself that you could be? There was no hiding that.

You got used to it. And then it felt normal.

At least it felt normal until you were around food. Eating like a regular human being made me realize—wait, this was not normal! Food is freaking delicious, my God!

“I’m glad you get a diet break, then,” Jack said mildly, taking a sip from a paper cup full of sugary soda.

I smiled at that because he didn’t expand on it. Even when well meaning, anyone having an opinion on other people’s eating habits got my hackles up.

A couple of boys in soccer gear walked by the window and waved at us. I waved back with a smile, not worrying about being recognized at that moment. I wouldn’t normally venture outside of touristy spots in any city I visited. I barely left hotel rooms. The ironic terribleness of that was those central tourist spots were where I was most likely to be spotted. So I was this helpless prisoner stuck in my (literal) glass tower, being fretted over while at the same time worked like a horse.

I don’t know if it was a false sense of anonymity or what, but here in this regular neighborhood, I felt like I could really, truly relax.