We have to go. I’ll miss you.I glance at the screen to see Jihoon’s added a series of hearts and a photo of him blowing a kiss.
There’s no way I can get to the condo in time, but I’m going to see Jihoon and that’s it. I keep driving as I tabulate my options. I can go to the airport directly, but I won’t be able to say goodbye to him in departures like normal people.
I can’t make it back, but I have an idea. I text Jihoon.I can meet you.Then I give the GPS coordinates for a gas station off the highway on the way to the airport.
He sends back a series of hearts.Yes.
I hang up and don’t bother to check the time as I wait for the traffic to move.
The traffic gods bless me with a few breaks, but I’m late to the empty gas station. I check my phone.
We’re here.
Are you close?
Then, a few minutes later.We have to go for our flight.
God damn the sexy tool belt strippers. I text Jihoon.I’m sorry. Traffic. I’m here. I can’t believe I missed you.
I lean back in the seat. Should I call him? I will, the second the tears stop welling up in my eyes.
Now that Jihoon’s gone and the chances of seeing him in person for a long time—if ever—are very slim, I admit that I’m perhaps on the brink of something a little more than a crush. Beside me sits my laptop, and I throw it to the back seat with a vicious motion. Work. Was it worth it to disappoint Jihoon so I could be there as a just-in-case for Ines? Staring out the windshield at the bored gas attendant working the cash, I glimpse what Hana’s been trying to tell me all these years. Work is work, but it doesn’t have to be the entirety of my life. I ignored her because I had nothing else to turn to. Work becomes life when life is empty.
But Jihoon filled it. He slid into the fractures I didn’t realize were forming and burst it all open. Now he’s gone before I have a chance to smooth the cracks out. The road in front of me is as flat and featureless as the highway I drove down. Boring. Endless. Dull.
No. Come on, Ari.I’m being dramatic. I survived without Jihoon, and it’s not like I’m facing a life of hardship and deprivation because the guy I liked left the country. I have everything that matters—work, health, food, and shelter.
“Get it together,” I whisper at my reflection in the window. This isn’t like me at all. I don’t cry over this stuff because I hardly ever cry. “What’s the matter with you?”
The uplifting talk doesn’t help, probably because it’s not very good.
I pull out my phone and add to my distress by looking at StarLune videos so I can see Jihoon’s face. The screen lights up the inside of the car in a garish flicker as I stop on a subtitled interview StarLune did with a Japanese broadcaster. Jihoon tells the interviewer he has no time to date because his career and his fans were the most important loves of his life.
I frown and go to the next video, which features Jihoon and Kit. They’re in a practice studio with the video time-stamped two in the morning.
Then Jihoon in an airport, head bowed and almost invisible amid a sea of people.
Jihoon in the center of the stage, tears running down his face as the five members hug and laugh.
Hopes, Hana asked me. What are my hopes? What do I want? I thought I wanted to make my parents proud by being the best lawyer, to succeed at my career. That was my primary focus. It was why I worked so hard, why I felt guilty when I spent time on anything not geared to getting more clients, more money, more accolades.
Even when I loved doing other things. Like making useless itineraries for trips I’d never take. Like reading a book while Jihoon wrote in his notebook or watching a movie with Hana. Those weren’t productive, they couldn’t be billed, so I never considered them valuable.
The tears start to fall in earnest. There’s no one to witness my breakdown, so I let myself go until I’m flat-out crying with belly sobs as I sit alone in my car.
I wanted more time with Jihoon, and now he’s back to his old life. He’s not going to remember a lawyer he met in Toronto when he’s jet-setting around the world. I guess I suspected this would be the end, no matter what he said. We’ll text every day, and then one day he’ll be too busy and I’ll be too proud to call him twice in a row. Then I’ll be tired. A day will pass, then two.
Then it will be over, a slow and pitiful disintegration.
I don’t want that to happen.
Kit’s voice comes back to me.You’ve only known each other a month.He’s a dick but he’s right. This is nothing but an infatuation.
But I liked being with Jihoon. I liked the person I was when we spent time together. Who is the person I am now, on my own? What do I do now that he’s gone?
These are the kinds of questions that normally only come after a lot of wine, and sober me is not prepared to deal with them while sitting in the parking lot of a highway gas station. Nor do I like the fact that they center around a man or another person in general. At least when I’m focused on work, I’m the driver.
I pause and sniffle. No, I’m not. Work is Jihoon in another form—a dependency. I don’t like that either, but it’s all I know.