Somewhere Only We Know(43)

He shook his head. “She’s actually kind of … a saint. And driven and smart. She’s going to do something spectacular one day. Which is good, so my parents can have one reliable kid.”

“One?” I asked. “You also seem driven and smart.”

An appalled expression came over his face. “Take that back!”

“What? You don’t want to be smart?” I laughed. My pulse was now at a normal pace and I pulled my hands back up to the table, reaching for my teacup.

“I’m fine. But I definitely don’t have my life figured out like Ava does. Her like, patronus or whatever, would be a spreadsheet.”

Tea went up my nose and I choked. “Shut up.”

He grinned. “I’m funnier than her, though.”

“I doubt it,” I said, dabbing my face with a napkin.

“Anyway. I’m kind of … messing around until I figure it all out,” he said with a shrug.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Not everyone can be Ava.”

“Or you,” he said pointedly. It was complimentary, and my cheeks warmed. I’d hit every record in K-pop stardom, and having this guy compliment me casually made me turn into a beet.

I tapped the photography book in front of me. “What about photography? Seems like you must like it if you special order books.”

He shrugged again. “I do like it, a lot. But it’s not … exactly a career path for me. Art, I mean.”

It took everything in my power to keep my lips sealed. To not blurt out, “I am the living embodiment of making art a career!”

Instead I cupped my tea. Waited a few beats before I asked, “Well, what is your path, then?”

The question seemed to dislodge something in him. The confident swagger left and an uncertain hunch in his shoulders was all that remained.





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


JACK


If anyone else had asked me this, I would have a BS answer ready, while being inwardly annoyed by the question. But coming from Lucky, it felt different. I wanted to respond to her, even if my answer wasn’t all that great.

I cleared my throat to break the conspicuous silence. “Well. That’s the thing. I don’t have a path and I’m okay with that.”

She nodded. “Yeah, we’re young. That’s okay.”

But I could hear the strain in her voice. To remain neutral. I knew what Lucky did to get where she was. At the age of thirteen she had decided what she wanted to do with her life and she did it. Someone like me—aimless and unsure—was a mystery to her.

“I do some photography work on the side,” I said cautiously, suddenly needing her to know that I wasn’t someone without any interests.

Her eyes lit up. “Really? So you are a photographer! What kind of work do you do?”

Quick, Jack. Something completely unrelated to the media … something safe …

“Weddings.”

She exclaimed, “Oh! That must be nice. Witnessing love over and over again.”

It was like she punched me in the chest. Because what I did was the opposite of witnessing love. It was witnessing adultery. Someone popping into rehab. Decadence and excess. People either at the lowest point in their lives or at their worst.

“It’s a job to get by,” I said with a shrug. Feigning nonchalance. But as I said the words, it occurred to me that with this story, this could turn into more than a job to get by. That I would be committing to rising in the ranks of tabloid photojournalism. And only yesterday, that had felt exciting. And now? It felt flimsy. I shifted in my seat uncomfortably.

Lucky munched on a cookie thoughtfully before she spoke. “Well, then maybe you can build your portfolio with these wedding photos and apply to photography programs!”

I could see the gears turning in her brain. She was already envisioning some future for me that allowed me to have dreams. I swallowed hard at the lump in my throat. No one had ever been excited for my future before.

“My parents won’t be down for that,” I said. “Can you imagine Korean parents paying for you to study photography for four years?”

Confusion clouded her expression. “Yeah, I can?”

Right. Her parents probably helped pay for her entrance into K-pop. It wasn’t cheap—all the training before you were even signed on to a label. Vocal coaches, dance classes, the works. Not to mention all the travel abroad.

I sighed. “Well, some of us don’t have the progressive-thinking kind of immigrant parents. Mine are very firmly in the camp of, we work this hard so you can have a stable future. No-nonsense.”

Lucky frowned. “But stability doesn’t have to be some path you don’t want. Who says photography can’t be stable? You could do the wedding stuff and do the kind of photography you want on the side.”

I smiled. “Have you ever seen that Onion headline? ‘Find The Thing You’re Most Passionate About, Then Do It On Nights And Weekends For The Rest Of Your Life’? That’s probably what I’m destined to do.”

“Well, that’s bleak,” she said with a huff, dusting the cookie crumbs off her hands. “No one says it’s easy to turn your passion into a job. You just have to believe you can do it.”

There was something bothering me in this pep talk right now. Not only the slightly self-righteous delusion of it. But what it meant coming from her. If she believed in this, why was she with me today?