Pastiche

You can’t shake the feeling that something, somewhere is out of place—that it shouldn’t just happen like this—the you and her, the drinks and the chatter and then her hands in your hair as you fuck for a third, fourth time and collapse out of sheer exhaustion. As if it’s meant-to-be, scripted and fated; no chance encounter like this should just be that easy, be so casually attainable. A happy ending. Like what cosmic damage should that cause, a certain romantic turn of phrase, a laugh and a grin, and suddenly you can just fall for whoever you want and everyone lives happily ever after?

It’s nonsensical—but also, you’re pretty sure that’s what’s happening.

Or maybe there’s just a bit too much fantasy inherent to every first date. All that about pedestals and prevarications. (Note: neither of you are calling it a date. Not explicitly. It’s too presumptuous. You thought it’d be fun, or nice, or whatever the hell you said, just to have the afternoon to get to know her better—and she thought the same. The fact that you wore your best shirt is entirely unrelated.)

For exactly this reason; there’s an airy sort of haze, a sepia-filter over everything you both say and do. It’s how everyone manages to act so out of character; like they’re performing in a romantic comedy all of their own narrative. You wonder if anyone else even goes to an aquarium for reasons other than the soft lighting and ambience, or what on earth those reasons could be.

Look—you’re a writer, you write; you’d recognize fiction from reality better than most.

Said fantasy could very well be Eunha; she more than looks the part. She’s wearing this outrageous pair of thigh-highs—and this just for starters—cinched with silk ribbons, tied into elegant little bows and probably not staying up that high by their own accord. You have it on good authority that girls like this are rare and unnatural; the god-blessedly gorgeous type, shoulders loose and voice slow like she has all the time in the world. Her heels click when she walks. Click, click, click—sounding off a warning you have no idea how to interpret. You only keep thinking about peeling the sheer tights down her calves, tugging them off with your teeth, showing her just how nice your mouth can be. You stare at her hair the whole time, pink waves streaming down her back, like silk and snowfall.

The fish are looking at you as though they know. You keep wanting to hold her hand.

But take for a moment the premise that girls like her do exist, fingers tucked lightly in the crook of your arm as the two of you meander slowly about. Consider briefly that she’s not the most impractical, indecent, irresponsible, preposterous, idealistic, intangible woman you’ve ever met.

“Hey,” Eunha says, hooking her chin over your shoulder, pointing vaguely toward the tank of vibrant anemones and looking past the rippled glass—and you’re staring at her, trying very hard not to imagine the curve of her jaw, her tiny wrists, her waist in your hands. “Doesn’t that one look just like you?”

“The octopus?” you ask, dryly. “Excuse me, what?”

“Right here.” Eunha traces a shape at the bottom of her tank with her fingertip against the glass. You don’t remember ever having a crush in high school or college, but you are vaguely, nauseatingly, unhelpfully reminded of one anyway.

“Yeah,” you tell her. You follow her fingertip’s path: black, orange, white, red. “Resemblance. Uncanny.”

Eunha laughs—silvery, staccato, the sound’s too pretty for its own good. You shrug it off, not wanting to put that into words. You’re so painfully aware of her wandering, curious eyes that you can barely talk without your words tripping over themselves. God. Girls shouldn’t look that good in dresses like hers: tight, figure-skimming, right above their knees. Lacy straps just loose enough on her shoulders to drive you up a wall.

(Hey, if the two of you just pretend hard enough.)

Eunha stops looking at the tank, the sand, the octopus—stops, for a second, her attention fully on you, something playful tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“What,” she says, expectant. There’s a tiny, sideways smile shadowing in the corner of her mouth.

Your collar is tight around your neck.

“Nothing,” you say, smiling right back.

And before you exit, you decide she is as impractical, indecent, irresponsible, preposterous, idealistic, and intangible a woman as can possibly be, and if that doesn’t quite disavow her then surely her laughter does, catching your gaze like a taunt and grinning at you like she’s fucking giddy, high on this moment, this mundanely temperate early-spring day.

***

Take, please, a break, an intermission, an interlude. The fish aren’t going anywhere. They can’t, actually.

Eunha wanders the gift shop, snags a pin, a plush and a phone case. It takes ten minutes or so; you stand back and watch as she figures out what she likes—incessant hovering, purposeless humming, finally smiling when the cashier shows her one specific candy that he can only grab from under the counter.

You’re remembering there’s this weird-ass poem from like, five-hundred-million years ago, a Latin sonnet or something—it’s the kind of pretentious thing your creative writing professor assigns you in undergrad, for some reason; he says it’s an easy warmup, to help get your brain going and shake away the nerves, or to take the mind elsewhere while you write. It’s about a girl, it’s called Silver & Rain, and the girl’s in love or about to die or something or a combination of the two, it’s really unclear, and you hate it because it’s old-world poetry and probably grossly misogynist, but the problem is that the poetry itself is actually, ridiculously gorgeous.

The professor knows every goddamn year, the same exact girl in class will always ask—it’s the sort of question meant to be disarming, flirtatious, the kind that gets a rise and a stutter, which will just bring the room into fits—but the professor usually plays along, for some reason. Always seems to.

“What does that mean, exactly,” she asks, blinking long-lashed and expectantly, and, somewhere in the middle of it, she shakes her head and her hair moves, and she is all at once someone entirely new—because it’s just the shade of her pink waves, how it shimmers, the way she pulls it away from her neck and the curve of her skin is highlighted in this dim classroom—and suddenly, you can imagine what she is when her voice goes quiet, what she could sound like, the breath in her words, if they were all spoken to you.

“To love,” the professor tells the class, evenly. He’s an old, ponderous sort of man. He could read the wash instructions text on the tag of your jeans and make it sound proverbial. “Is to lay siege.”

To this day, you still don’t know what the fuck that was about.

***

Four years of those kinda classes, and you’re still terribly uncreative. More craft than artistry; you walk to the park and get gelato at an ungodly late hour simply because it feels like the right thing to do; something else instinctual has you fixating on her mouth. The chocolate she wipes from the corner, the perfect curve of her lips.

It’s a crime, actually, that she’s sat down across from you—at a café table and beaming under starlight, looking like a fucking revelation in her minidress, ankles crossed under her chair. She tilts her head and all her pink hair falls just-so—like something out of a picture frame, some syrupy-sentimental soft-focus cinematography. Eyes following every movement—of you and your hands and the words on your lips— attentively, vividly. She has her tongue peeking out as she licks a stripe up the back of her spoon, then runs it across her bottom lip, chasing the taste of hazelnut.

It’s obvious. She has a good sense of humor; she keeps saying your name; her mouth always stretches into that cute wry grin when she catches you staring.

You decide it can’t be helped: you’re gonna kiss her, after coffee. You have to.

“I like the way you smile,” Eunha tells you, later, while she’s walking backwards at a leisurely pace and you’re right there to catch her when she stumbles over herself. She says it so casually: like it’s not something embarrassing, just one person admiring something trivial about another.

“Yours,” you say. You like the way it sounds. “It suits you.”

“Suits me?”

You run a single finger along her collarbone—so bare—and rest it at the dip of her throat, light as a brushstroke.

Eunha looks up at you. Eyes big and luminous under the lamplight, waiting.

In theory, this is how it begins: you think of everything she is right now, with your mouth moving on her, with her arching her neck for your touch; you, your hands on her bare body, with the smooth dip of her ribs and waist, the way your fingers will slip down her stomach and find her slick and gasping and hot; her, and everything that is unwritten and uncanny and unsure.

You imagine this perfect symmetry and kiss her.

She gives this little, listless sigh when you pull her into your chest. You’ll make sure to set the story straight later, that she didn’t even try to resist.

So you kiss her without even considering the possibility of losing her right after, just to know what she feels like for a moment, close-lipped and gentle and divine. It’s a bit much, but you don’t let go until you absolutely have to.

“I never said you could do that,” Eunha says, a bit enigmatic, eyes still flickering open. She doesn’t pull away, or reach to cover her mouth with her hand. She lets the moment linger on. “Do you always steal girls in the middle of a conversation? Maybe you’re not quite the stand-up guy I took you for, huh?”

“Who says I want to steal you?” you murmur. “What if you’re just something that wants to be kept.”

“Worrisome things,” Eunha whispers. “And they never end well.”

You try to laugh. She swivels in your arms—only so she can arch her neck, just barely—and kisses you next, inexplicably, tongue hot and sticky-sweet. Then again, again. Over and over—all messy, laughing, blotted kisses on your chin, the edge of your jaw, the spot at the base of your throat that makes you melt.

“You’re trying so hard,” she says when your fingers recoil from the clasp of her bra. It comes out sing-songy and almost kind. She draws out the syllables like she’s making up the words on the spot.

You roll your eyes, just so it’ll seem like you’re not quite that affected. “Am I supposed to be doing something else?”

“No.” Eunha’s expression smooths into a bemused grin. “You’re doing well, I think,” she tells you, reassuringly. “Perfectly fine.”

“Perfectly fine,” you echo.

“Mhm.” Eunha pats you on the cheek. “So, take it from there.”