UNRAVEL

It’s late as you arrive through the front door of your apartment. Just into the kind of hours that saw the lion’s share of your reckless decisions. So, it’s not unreasonable that you’d find her here now—sunk into the cushions of your sofa, finger against her temple, eyes halfway attending some novel she pulled off your bookcase—she more than knows what she’s doing.

Keys, wallet, phone all clamor and rattle as you set them down on the narrow table inside your foyer.

“I must’ve missed when we decided you could just let yourself in.”

“Well if we’re splitting hairs,” Jisoo says, waiting for the sound of a page to flip between her fingers, “You’re the one who gave me a spare key.”

“ If we’re splitting hairs Jisoo—it was for emergencies.”

“And?”

“ And.” You shove your hands into your pockets.

She closes the book gently, no effort spent to bookmark or dog-ear a corner, and rests it on her thigh. “What if you’d gone missing? Drank yourself to death or got pushed in front of a bus. That’d be an emergency now wouldn’t it.”

“So, just a hypothetical one then. Got it.”

A humorless laugh and she smiles, the unmistakable glow in her eyes reeling you into her. “Don’t act too happy to see me.”

You unsling your bag from your shoulder. “I don’t suppose you could’ve called?”

“Funny.” Jisoo tilts her chin up at you. “I was about to say the same thing.”

The step you take up into the living room as Jisoo rises from her seat is an apprehensive one. The lights are dimmed just barely bright enough to read by. And try as you may, Jisoo’s silhouette is the only thing your tired eyes can find a place to rest in. Maybe it’s how the moonlight catches her pale skin or the way she gets gently washed in those soft blues and greens of the city’s nighttime neon that pour diffuse through your windows. It’s almost necessary to remind yourself that it’s your apartment the two of you are standing in. Always there’s this precise, polished look about her — she owns every room she steps into.

Jisoo tucks a stubborn strand of midnight hair behind her ear before tapping a finger on the book she’d placed down on the coffee table. “It’s a good read by the way.”

You glance at its cover and a derisive laugh blows out your nose. “So what was all that then—about not reading anything that isn’t at least a hundred years old— time tested you called it.”

Jisoo hides a quiet smile as she lets her eyes wander a moment to her feet. “It’s close enough to a hundred isn’t it? Besides, it’s Gatsby, I can make an exception.”

“Speaks to you, huh?”

“There’s just something so magical about the way he chases Daisy, ya know? That’s the kind of love I want. Waking up every morning knowing someone out there needs you.”

“I’m willing to bet most readers end up sympathizing with Jay—all with the anguish of pursuing a woman who’s completely unobtainable?” You toss your work bag over the back of the sofa. “Just the kind of thing I’d hope mostly to avoid.”

When Jisoo squares her shoulders to yours, you find yourself swallowing at an impossible thirst in your throat. Brains, beauty, wit. It’s probably the hundredth time she’s run through your thoughts today, and you can’t still figure out anything you don’t like about her, at least not on paper. So, you continue on, unfortunately thinking so very often about her—the way she smiles when you hold her, the way her eyes soften when her face is inches from yours, the way she runs her fingers through your hair—perfect. That’s how you’d describe her; if perfect could ever hope to be a pejorative.

“I think you worry too much.” Her svelte figure finds itself easily in the space in front of yours and she wraps her fingers around the bottom of your necktie. She’s not even touching you and it’s making it hard to breathe. “Wouldn’t you say?”

Were you to flip through a calendar and search for the day you’d first undressed her in your apartment, you’d have to start by grabbing one more and then rifle back about eighteen months or so to put your finger on it. Only now should you have instead cut from those pages the time you’d actually spent together—most of it between the sheets mind you—you doubt it would manage to stitch together more than a few weeks. That was the nature of your relationship.

It’s not like we’re dating ya know.

Jisoo was always rather firm on this point.

And god, had you grown weary of hearing it. Usually a non-sequitur in its arrival, it would bounce and rattle around your thoughts for days, the warm voice behind it painfully clear and articulate. All because you’d made the mistake of bringing it up one time.

It really ought to be the kind of thing that closed more doors than it opened, answered more questions than it raised. The sentence probably deserved a period. Granted, there wasn’t yet an empty wine bottle in the sink nor were your clothes scattered about in different states of undress around the room, but you recognize the feeling—hanging on the end of a comma.

“I told you. I’m not going to do this anymore.” You begin to twist your arms out from the sleeves of your coat. “I felt like I was pretty clear about it.”

You were.

“What—in the hotel?” Jisoo sneaks behind you and helps coax the jacket off your shoulders, laughing to herself. “ That conversation? The one you and I had just fifteen minutes before you pinned me against the wall, pulled my skirt up and—”

“ Jisoo.”

“Yeah. How presumptuous of me to assume you’d changed your mind,” she adds, stressing a rasp in that ever-so-husked voice of hers. She ignores your protest, mostly because you let her; you always let her; she knows you always let her.

Quickly, her body against yours becomes a question, the racing of your heart its familiar answer.

“Jisoo,” you repeat, finding it difficult to search for an authoritative voice all at the hand reaching under your chin, the heat of a short breath against your jaw, those parted lips dragging against your cheek. Dig your heels in. “I’m serious.”

“Come to think of it—isn’t it a little late?” she asks, kissing you again just beyond the corner of your mouth. Her voice is cool, gentle breaths warm on your skin. “To just now be coming in the door? To be honest, I was starting to think you weren’t going to show at all.”

“Well don’t act surprised.” You gently pull her hand by the wrist away from your chest. “This is where I sleep.”

Jisoo fixes on you, those sweeping eyelashes keeping a pair of narrowed eyes entirely unreadable. “But that’s not always true now is it? In fact, tonight you were counting on sleeping somewhere else, no?”

“How do you figure all that?”

“Because your clothes smell like tobacco and cheap beer.” She raises an eyebrow and begins teasing the fabric of your shirt up from out of your pants. “Do you at least have a good excuse? Something creative maybe?”

“You really want a creative one?”

Her eyes become soft for a moment before narrowing again and her lips part into an all-too-alluring shape. “No, not particularly.”

“Fine then. Work,” you answer. “The team wanted to do a happy hour. Or maybe a few.”

“At anizakaya?” Her face tilts until it finds a look of skepticism that matches the inquisitive tone in her voice.

“Something like that.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Well I can’t say I’m sober.”

“And Rosie,” she says, blinking slowly, “you two met there or some place later?”

Chin up, you twist a confused eyebrow over the top of a dry laugh. “Now what might give you that impression?”

A smirk pulls up on the corner of Jisoo’s lip, and in one quick motion she pinches between her fingers at a long strand of golden blonde hair from just beneath your collar. “You’re still wearing her on your shirt, handsome.”

A deep breath marks your response as you bite softly into the inside of your cheek.

“ Thought so. Now, I’m not so brash as to ask for details, but considering you’re here, and she isn’t… I can’t imagine she invited you up for coffee after you kissed her outside her—”