Page 77 of A World Apart
“I don’t think so,” he said, frowning, “it’s going to be busy. The crew will be here to film us packing, and then we travel there in the morning…”
“I get it, it’s okay.” I tried to sound reassuring, or at least not whiny.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to speak to you when we’re in Jeju,” he admitted. “Even when they’re not filming, there’s crew everywhere. Minjae-hyung got a lot of online comments last year about being on his cell all the time, the managers weren’t pleased.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes; of all the things to get pissy about. I supposed it was the question of who he might have been contacting that had gotten the fans riled up, although I hadn’t known about that particular scandal. I was rarely on top of K-Pop scandals and salacious gossip as a lot of it went over my head, I just didn’t understand why half of it was such a big deal.
“It’s okay, I understand,” I said again. “We’ll talk when you’re home. I just hope you have a good time and get to do fun things!” Jihoon smiled, but then frowned when his watch vibrated again.
“You need to go,” I said.
“Yes.” Jihoon sighed. “I’ll message you when I can.”
Okay. Have the best time!”
He smiled. “Bye, Kaiya.”
The Next Week
“So, I was thinking,” Becka began, spreading cream cheese across a toasted bagel as we enjoyed a lazy Sunday morning together.
“Dangerous, but go on,” I joked, taking a sip of coffee.
“Is it weird? You and Jihoon? Now that you’re kinda… a thing?”
“Which part?” I huffed, “the fact that he’s a best-selling artist with millions of fans and I’m a complete nobody? Or that I’m a complete secret, and will always have to be? Or that he’s in Korea and I’m in LA, or that he is literally brain-meltingly handsome and I’m cute on a good day?”
Becka held up a finger and pointed it at me with a dangerous glint in her eyes.
“That’s my best friend you’re talking about, you better put some respect on her name.”
I rolled my eyes but couldn’t deny the quiet warmth her loyalty sparked in me. “Or is it that we’re not technically together? We’re in a...” I couldn’t think of the word.
“Situationship,” Becka supplied, nodding sagely.
“Yes,” I clapped, “exactly. So, yeah, which part of that do you think is weird?”
“Okay, yeah, sure, all’a that,” she said, waving her hand in a circle, “but more specifically, I meant the part where you’re in a…”
“‘Situationship?’” I supplied helpfully.
“Yeah, that. Is it weird dating someone this way? I mean, it’s been more than three months, you guys talk more regularly than most couples I know, your camera reel is stuffed with photos you have to either delete or encrypt, and you don’t even know when you’ll see each other again.”
“Yeah, thanks for the reminder of that,” I said, sipping my coffee.
“I didn’t mean that!” Becka protested around a mouthful of bagel.
“Animal,” I muttered and Becka rolled her eyes at me, but took the time it took to chew and swallow before saying, “I guess I mean more like… do youfeellike you’re in a relationship? Like, are you unofficially exclusive? Mark asked you out and you fobbed him off with some excuse about having a guy back in London, so like, are you dating, or…?”
I took another sip as I contemplated my answer.
“Okay, well first of all, Mark wouldn’t stop looking at my boobs the whole time we talked, so really, he asked my boobs out, not me.”
Becka choked on a bagel bite, slapping her chest while I tried not to laugh. Politely, I waited for her to get her breath back before I continued.
“And secondly… yeah, I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t know what we are, I don’t know if we’re exclusive, although I get the impression we are.” I frowned. “I really don’t know.”
“God,” Becka exclaimed, doesn’t that chafe the hell out of you?”
