Page 25 of Hamartia
It’s on the tip of my tongue then. The apology. The truth of that moment. What it meant to me, what it’s done to me every day since. But I can’t force it past my lips. Can’t make the words form. Instead, I nod.
“Why? I do not understand any of this…” He looks around, a little lost.
“Me either,” I admit.
Beside me, Jaehyun shivers.
“Are you hungry? I’m starving. Maybe we can sit down somewhere, eat something, talk?”
He gives me a look of surprise. Then nods. “Yes, I am hungry.”
Two blocks from the pier is my favorite Chinese restaurant in LA. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, or the inside actually, but it has the best Kung Pao Chicken on the west coast and it’s almost always open.
Much like the beach, it’s not busy this time of night: 1.45 a.m, but it’s not empty either. We find a booth near the back and I slide in first, watching as Jaehyun takes a seat opposite, his back to the restaurant. He keeps his woolen hat on but slips out of his coat and hangs it on the little hook at the end of the booth. We order a pot of green tea and water and the tired–looking older waitress scurries off to get them.
We read the menus—which stand in as placemats—in silence for a few minutes until the tea arrives. Then we place our order. Jaehyun orders number ‘12’ a pork noodle dish which I’ve had and is great, I tell him, and I get my usual chicken Kung Pao. Not that I’ve an appetite now. I think I lost it at some point between the walk from the pier and the sight of him blowing softly on his cup of green tea.
The proximity of him, the reality of the situation, the strange note of nervous anticipation singing over my insides filling my stomach with something else.
“This is somewhere you come a lot?” he asks me, finally breaking the silence.
I nod. “Yeah. When I’m home. Probably a few times a week. I really love the food.” Obviously, I love the food.You think he thinks you’re here for the décor, you tool?
He doesn’t seem to notice, just nods softly as he watches me over the rim of his teacup.
“Do you like Korean food?” he asks. It’s a simple question but it feels layered somehow. Important.
“Yeah, I do. Kimchi is amazing!”
This time I want to take the knife in front of me and cut my tongue out with it. My cheeks feel hot from embarrassment. I shake my head.
“Fuck, I’m sorry. That sounded racist or something. I know it’s more than fucking Kimchi.”
Though right now, I couldn’t think of another Korean dish if someone did hold a knife to my tongue. My eyes dart around the restaurant desperate for something else to focus on that isn’t his…perfection. The peeling Formica table, the paper menu, the steam curling out of the teapot. When I chance a look at him, he’s smiling. Soft and small. He looks amused. Like I amuse him.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
He shrugs. “It is fine.”
“Do you like American food?” I ask, chancing a smile.
He makes a show of thinking about it. “I think so. French fries are amazing.”
I can’t help but laugh and then Jae is grinning over at me. It’s a sweet looking thing that accentuates his sharp cheekbones. It melts away when he takes another sip of his tea.
I tell him about some of my favorite American foods: philly cheesesteak, the po’boy sandwiches you can only get in New Orleans, my mom’s thanksgiving turkey dinner, pizza pie in Chicago, and my favorite sushi restaurant in San Francisco. I tell him I know it’s cheating cause it’s technically a Japanese food. He corrects me, gently, by saying that Sushi was invented in China. As our dishes arrive, he tells me how good it is, and what Korean foods it reminds him of. He tells me some of his favorite foods too; samgyeopsal, sundubu jjigae, and fried chicken. Korean not American, he clarifies.
My appetite makes a reappearance as soon as my chicken is put down in front of me and we talk about food we loved in other parts of the world—his favorite is Japanese and Thai—before we move on to just talking about what countries we’ve visited that we loved.
It’s surprisingly easy to talk to him. Or, rather, at him. He says he understands English better than he speaks it, but I don’t notice that, apart from when he pauses to take his time finding the right word for ‘monsoon’ and ‘alligator’ and ‘avalanche’.
The swirling, nervy anticipation in my blood ebbs away as we eat and drink and talk. He smiles and nods a lot. Laughs softly whenever I say something he finds funny. Smiles shyly when I say how he should have won tonight and how amazing his performance was again.
We accept the offer of more tea from the waitress before he gets up to go to the bathroom, and I pay the check while he’s gone.
When he returns, I notice it immediately. The slight shift of his mood into something a little more serious. Into something similar to how it was when I first turned round and saw him standing on the pier. The echoes of laughter gone from his eyes and mouth. I twist my fingers around each other atop the table as I try and decide what to say now. Whether to suggest we head out, that it’s getting late, that maybe we could—
“What have you wanted to say to me since Paris, Raphael?” he asks, making my stomach drop out of my ass.