Somewhere Only We Know(40)

So relaxed that I burped. I stared at Jack after doing it, daring him to make some comment about how unladylike it was. But he merely burped in response. We cracked up, which earned us a stern throat clearing from the café owner.

It wasn’t only the neighborhood and the anonymity that made me relax, I realized. It was also Jack. Everything was easy with him. Comfortable.

We finished our sandwiches and stepped back outside, the afternoon sun casting a rich yellow glow on everything.

There were an awkward few seconds when we started walking. My fingers twitched, reaching out toward his, in some clumsy, ghostly movement.

The butterflies, the giddiness at these moments always struck me as eye-rolly when I watched them in K-dramas. Like, get over it, you touched hands, my God get a grip.

But I got it now. When I reached for his hand, I felt that tumult in my chest, the flip-floppy hyperventilating movement in my lungs. He reached for mine last time, but it still felt uncertain and, I don’t know, vulnerable? To reach out for his hand this time.

And then a flash of sunlight beamed out from behind Jack’s silhouette, and he clasped my hand before I could his.





CHAPTER THIRTY


JACK


At what point did Lucky’s pretending blend into reality?

This day wasn’t just thrills for some spoiled pop star—it was a break from a life that she didn’t enjoy anymore.

The guilt that had been a tiny ember was now firmly smoking into a warning.

She had eaten that shawarma with such gusto that I couldn’t stand digging into her terrible eating restrictions further. Instead, we were walking in sunshine holding hands.

I was going to have to say goodbye to her at some point. My hand gripped hers harder.

When we stepped into the bookstore, an airy space inside an old eighties-era mall type building, the air-conditioning hit us.

“Jack!” A petite Chinese girl in a red beanie and pleated pink skirt waved at me from behind the register, where she was perched on a rickety wood stool.

I smiled and waved back with the hand that was clasped with Lucky’s. “Hey, Sissi!”

Lucky glanced between us with an uneasy smile. Jealousy was pretty cute on her.

“Sissi, this is Fern. Fern, this is Sissi. The best bookseller in the city.”

Sissi rolled her eyes and pushed up her round-framed glasses. “You’re full of it. Hi, Fern. That’s a nice name.”

Lucky smiled and ducked her head down. “Thanks.”

Crap. I hadn’t planned on introducing her to anyone today—totally birdbrained to bring her here, where people knew me and might be curious about this girl I brought in.

But there wasn’t any recognition on Sissi’s part. I couldn’t imagine Sissi listening to pop music, to be honest. She played anime soundtracks, exclusively, over the bookstore speakers.

Lucky dipped into the bookshelves, disappearing quickly.

Sissi snapped her fingers. “Oh, Jack! That book you ordered finally came in.” She shuffled around under the register looking for it. “It was very hard to find. Here it is!”

I took the large book from her and eagerly flipped through it. It was a rare collection of photos by Fan Ho, a Hong Kong–based photographer. Probably the most famous Hong Kong photographer, really. I flipped through the glossy pages, already getting sucked into the black-and-white images—shirtless men lined up along a street waiting for steaming food, the small figure of a woman walking between the giant shadows of buildings, sunlight filtering through an alley and hitting the stooped back of an old man. I could look at these all day.

“This book isn’t cheap,” Sissi said as she craned her neck to look at the photos with me.

I nodded. “I know. I saved up for it, though.” I paid her and then went looking for Lucky, excited to revisit the book later.

I found her settled on the floor in the poetry section, reading a slim volume. I snapped another picture of her. She was sitting with her knees bent, holding the book up to her face as she rested her elbows on her knees.

It reminded me of those old photos of Marilyn Monroe curled up with a book. Moments where she was so absorbed in her reading that she was able to shed her sexpot image for a brief moment, to drop the act and be some version of herself that she hid from the public.

“What are you reading?” I asked as I crouched down next to her.

She was engrossed already. “Mm. A poetry collection by Gwendolyn Brooks. I get a lot of song inspiration from poems.”

Both of us froze. I tried to keep my voice light. “Oh, do you also write your own music?”

She closed the book and tapped it against her knee. “I do.”

She did? Probably not the stuff that was popular. In my research last night, I found out that her managers hired top hit makers for that.

Every new bit of info was more intriguing than the last.

“That’s so cool. Um, is it about … God?” I asked.

She stared at me and then we both burst out laughing.

“I’m being serious!” I said.

Lucky was laughing so hard that people nearby threw us dirty looks. She covered her mouth and after a while was able to wheeze out, “I don’t live for church choir, Jack.”

I picked up the book she had dropped in the process of laughing. “So, you write for yourself?”