Somewhere Only We Know(71)

He cleared his throat. “I don’t know why you thought we didn’t want you to be a photographer. We were worried you didn’t want to do anything.”

I blinked. What?

“Please, Jack. Go for it. It’s why your mom and I do all of this.” He gestured toward the apartment. “I know you don’t want this exact life. That’s okay. I want you to have the life you want.”

The sincerity in his voice made me swallow hard, pushing down the lump in my throat.

“You got that?” he asked gruffly.

I nodded. “Yeah. And I’m sorry for slacking off so much with the bank, I—”

He shook his head. “I know you hate it. We wanted you to keep busy so that you wouldn’t become some backpacking hippie.”

I laughed. “What? Oh wait, you mean like Nikhil at the bank?”

My dad rolled his eyes. “Every rich boy and his backpacking trip of discovery.”

“Yeah, discovering the weed,” Ava said with a snort.

“Ava!” my parents admonished at the same time. Ava shrugged in response.

I was still shocked by their reaction. “Wow, okay,” I said. “I thought you wanted me to be a banker or something. And I didn’t know how to tell you guys that I didn’t want to do that. That I didn’t know what I wanted to do for so long. But now I know.”

My mom nodded. “That’s all we want, Jack. For you to work hard at what you want.”

Nothing could have made me happier than to hear those words. “Thank you. I promise, I will.”

“But you still have to finish your internship until you start college,” my dad said.

I nodded. College. The disdain I had for it had melted away with each second that passed since my fight with Lucky. “Okay, well, I still haven’t researched schools yet…”

Ava pulled out her phone. “I’ve already started a spreadsheet.”

My dad laughed and sprang up from the sofa. “Who wants breakfast?”

We gathered around the kitchen table—and I felt lighter than I had in weeks. Months. Years.



* * *



Once the task of talking to my parents was over, I was able to think about Lucky again. I spent the afternoon moping around my apartment since I had the day off from the bank anyway.

I kept wondering if her bodyguard actually gave the photo to her.

Wondering if she had even opened it or lit it on fire.

Wondering if she saw the photo.

If she saw the note.

I stared up at my cracked ceiling, sprawled across my sofa. Being brokenhearted was a drag. Was this what other people went through? It was freaking horrible!

The air in the apartment was stale and smelled pretty gross. Like boys and old food.

I finally dragged myself to a window and cracked it open. The soft yellow sunshine streamed into the room, highlighting every single mote of dust. It was also loud. The sound of shopkeepers yelling mixed with car horns drifted in through the window.

Something about the relentlessness of this city depressed me further. How did everyone keep living when I felt like this?

Oh my God. I wished I could slap myself.

My phone buzzed on the coffee table, interrupting my morose staring-out-window melancholy.

I dragged myself over to look at the text. From Charlie.

Hey, isn’t Lucky on the Later Tonight Show like … now?

I glanced at the time on my phone. It was past three o’clock. I did the math—we were fifteen hours ahead. Lucky would be on in a few minutes.

If I were a more stoic man, I would have coldly turned off my phone and stepped into the shower. Washed away the memories. Started brand-new, fresh and ready to seize the day.

Who was I kidding? I flipped open my laptop on the coffee table and found the streaming site for the network.

I crouched down by the table, hunched over and balanced on the balls of my feet. Like five hundred commercials later, the show started streaming live.

Some superhero actor dude was talking to the host, James Perriweather. “Come on!” I yelled at the screen, like these two smiley-faced goofs could hear me. But they wrapped up soon after and I clutched the edges of my laptop, my face so close to the screen that I could feel its buzzy energy brush over my skin.

It cut to a commercial.

I fell backward, my head hitting the sofa, my butt sliding on the tiled floor. The ceiling had so many cracks in it. Paint peeled off of it in small chunks. My thoughts raced, matching the rate of my heart. It was going to burst out of my chest and run laps around the room, it was thumping so hard.

Was I ready to see her? And not only see her, but see her as Lucky? Lucky who existed on a different planet from the girl I spent the entire day with?

The show’s theme music sucked me back into reality and I rolled onto my feet again, arms cradling the laptop.

I happened to be positioned in the one shady spot between the beams of dusty sunshine. Everything seemed to still—the fluttering of the curtains, the orbit of dust motes around my head.

James stood onstage, his hands clasped in front of him. “She has over ten million followers on Twitter. Her single ‘Heartbeat’ is the most downloaded song in history in Asia.” The screaming and chanting from the audience almost drowned out his words. He made a shocked face and grinned. “Enough said! Here to make her American debut, K-pop sensation Lucky!” James swept his arms up in the air and the camera panned to his left. The roar of the crowd distorted the sound on my laptop.