Page 131 of When Worlds Collide
I was a dark, twisty version of myself.
“Have you been awake long?”
He walked towards me, and even as I wanted him to stay away, I craved the nearness of him.
“A while,” I muttered, not trusting myself to look at him.
He seemed to hesitate, made unsure by whatever he saw on my face, and I thought he’d step away, maybe busy himself in the kitchen, but then he walked towards me with purpose. Before I knew what he intended, he’d stepped in front of me, scooping me up in his arms as easily as if I were one of the sofa cushions.
“Hey!” I said in surprise, flinging my arms around his neck to anchor myself, but he only sat down where I had been a moment before, arranging me in his lap so I sat against him, my ear pressed to his chest, where I could hear the steady thump-thump, thump-thump of his heart.
He was just as warm as I’d known he would be, and for a moment I allowed myself to relax into him. He didn’t complain once as I curled my cold fingers against his warm skin.
I thought he might say something, some comforting platitudes, but he didn’t. He just held me close, allowing me to block out some of the noise in my head and replace it with the steady beat of his heart.
Today was Saturday, and we had plans later with the rest of the group to have dinner together.
But I already knew I couldn’t face it.
I wasn’t ready to tell anyone about my mum, and I equally wasn’t ready to put on a brave face and pretend like my world hadn’t just been smashed into by an asteroid so large the resulting debris was blocking out the sun.
“I don’t know what to do,” I mumbled, rubbing my face against his skin as though that might block out the traffic in my head.
His voice rumbled through his chest. “What do you feel like you need to do?”
I was scared to say it out loud.
I was scared to keep it silent.
In the end, the words were wrenched from me.
“I don’t know how to not be there, with them.”
Jihoon’s hands stilled their soothing journey across my back, leaving trails of cold where his hands had been, but now were paused.
“You want to leave Korea?”
I could tell he was trying to keep his voice calm, and measured. I could always tell, because his accent became more formal, more clipped, less easy. It was as though he had to put more thought into the English words.
“It’s not as simple as ‘wanting’ to leave.” I began, the frustration I felt creeping into my tone, “I just feel so useless here.”
“What could you do if you were there?”
It was a perfectly reasonable question, and rationally I knew that, but I wasn’t rational right then, and the words were like flint to my tinder.
I pulled back to look at him, feeling the sharp way my eyebrows fell together, the pinch of my lips.
“Probably nothing, but maybe more than I can do here. Stranded.”
His eyebrows pulled together in what I imagined was a mirror to my own.
“Is that how you feel? Stranded?”
The bite in his voice, the spark of hurt that I knew damn well I’d put there, only seemed to fan the spark growing in my chest, and I pushed away from him, needing to be away from the heat of his body. It suddenly felt less comforting and more suffocating.
I was too hot. I needed to cool down. I got up and paced away.
“No. Yes! No, fuck! I don’t know.”
