Chapter 10: The Reckoning

Since I didn't sleep well during the night, I ended up sleeping late into the morning, and Zen was sweet enough, patient enough to let me. I was semi-consciously aware of him getting up and going for run, and then coming back and making breakfast. I was pretty sure he was even making breakfast for me, but I was so tired, so unwilling to deal with events of the night before, that I continued to let myself fall in and out of sleep.

Finally, sometime after 11am in the morning, I felt Zen's fingers in my hair, brushing my face.

"Princess?" he said, gently. "It's nearly noon."

I rolled over, stretched and opened my eyes.

"Is it?" I said, like I didn't know. "Oh god."

"Yeah," he said with concern. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm feeling OK," I said, sitting up and swinging my legs over to the opposite side of the bed.

"Oh good," he said, sounding relieved. I felt his warm hand touch the back of my shoulder and I quickly stood up out of his reach.

"I think I'm going to get cleaned up," I said, making my way to the bathroom before he could respond.

"Uh, ok," I heard him say as I shut the bathroom door. His voice sounded deflated, which sliced my heart in two, but not so much for me to turn around and do anything about it.

Once inside the bathroom, I started the bath water. What the heck is wrong with me? Why am I acting like this? I asked myself. For all intent and purposes, my irrational mind was picking up right where it left off the night before by continuing to act according to its own impulses. Here I was, enacting my own worst case scenario, scene by scene as if on autopilot. I felt powerless to stop it.

I let the water fill the tub nearly to the brim and then lowered myself in. The water was a little too warm, but in in a minute my body would adjust to the heat. I leaned my head back on lip of the ceramic rim of the tub and sighed. What was I doing? I thought, feeling hot tears brim to my eyes again, for what seemed like at least the umpteenth time in the past 20 or so hours.

I lay in the tub quite a long while, searching my brain for reasons that made sense. Could this really just be about Echo Girl? No, there had to be more to to it than that. I lay there soaking in the tub, long enough for the water to grow cool and for my fingers to start to wrinkle like prunes. Not long enough for me to sort out my fucked up head.

Finally, there was a soft knock on the door.

"MC?" Zen said. "Are you still in there? Are you OK?"

"Yeah," I said. "I'm fine."

The sound of pure concern in his voice would have extracted empathy from the most heartless of villains, and since I loved him, you can imagine how much it cut me to the core. My voice was small and weak.

"I'll be out in a minute," I said. "OK?"

"Yeah, sure," Zen said, and I heard him shuffle away from the door.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't wipe the image of Zen looking at Echo Girl the way he looks at me. I furrowed my brow. If he could look that way at her, if he could look that way at me, he could look that way at anyone, right? I touched the space just below my chest. There was a familiar heaviness there, a tightness that left me gasping for breath. Before I knew it, I was shaking and getting all choked up again. He could leave me, I thought. He could really just leave anytime. It seemed so real… and so possible. Why?

I took a few more minutes to soap up my body, wash my face and steel my nerves before hoisting myself out of the water. I took quite a few more to towel myself off and put on the clothes I'd brought with me into the bathroom, a pair of jeans and my weekend Clash tee-shirt. Finally, after more than a few minutes, I emerged from the bathroom to see Zen sitting on the edge of the bed.

"What's going on, MC?" He said, his head lowered, hands folded between his knees. "You're not yourself."

"What do you mean?" I said, my voice a little irrationally high. "Of course I'm…"

"Cut the crap, MC," Zen said. He lifted his head to look at me in the eyes. He was wearing one of those faces I didn't recognize, one filled with anger, hurt and confusion. "Don't you think I recognize acting when I see it? God damn it, I'm an actor."

His response was so far from what I expected that I jumped backward. "I, umm…" I started, but he didn't wait.

"Last night," he started. "You were all silent in the car. I thought, fine, she's a little wasted. I'll just get her home safe, that's all that matters..."

I looked down at the floor, wrapping my arms around my waist trying to get small. A new feeling of shame began to burn and grow in body, showing up like a hot blush on my face. I still couldn't explain what was going on with me. I didn't have words for it yet.

"I mean, what the fuck, MC?" Zen said, his teeth clenched. I could tell he was biting back tears and suddenly it was all too clear what the difference between "acting and "not acting" was when it came to his actions. Yet I still didn't know what to say. All the things that came to mind - I'm scared, I do know if I can handle this, You're just going to leave me anyway - all sounded wrong and like show-stopper-relationship-enders, so I stayed silent.

The normal sounds of the room, the hum of the radiator, the air purifier and the low hush of music playing from the kitchen intensified as the silence between us grew. All I could do was continue to stare at the floor and clutch at my elbows helplessly. Finally, Zen spoke.

"Come on," he said, standing up suddenly and moving toward the bedroom door. "We're going out."

I heard him rummaging around the rest of the house, shutting off the radio, grabbing his jacket, his keys, opening the closet door to take out the two motorcycle helmets…

A minute or two later, his sliver head appeared back in the bedroom doorway, his eyes more red than I'd ever seen.

"Are you coming?" he asked. It wasn't a question.

"Umm…" I stammered. Some combination of how he looked, how he sounded and the guilt surrounding the pain I was inflicting on him propelled me into motion. "Yes, just a second…"

I quickly pulled my boots out from under the bed, grabbed a sweatshirt from the chair and followed him out of the room.

"Here," he said, tossing me my jacket. "You're not going to be warm enough."

"Where are we going?" I demanded. Zen smiled then, but altogether not a friendly smile. He was angry. He had right to be.

"You'll find out soon enough, Princess," he said.

I followed him into the hall and up the stairs to the driveway, where his motorcycle was parked. He tossed me a helmet, threw a leg over the vehicle and motioned to the seat behind him.

"Get on," he breathed. The fire in his eyes as he said this made my heart flutter and beat harder, and I complied.

"Where are we going?" I said again.

"You'll see," he said.

Zen revved the motor in response and with a surge of movement, we were on the road. I gripped my arms around him tight and buried my face in his back, feeling the cold wind rip through me on both sides.

I tried again to separate the pieces in my mind, to line them up and organize them in a way that made sense. It was very much like completing a puzzle. When completing a puzzle, it's helpful, usually, to have a picture of the puzzle you're completing. The next step is to piece together the border, the frame. Finally, you organize all the remaining colors into batches and fill in the bits that make the most sense. That allows the harder bits to finally reveal themselves, and you can complete the puzzle. In this case, I felt like l was working backwards. I pretty much had all the feelings and emotions (all the harder bits), but none of the context (the picture or the frame to help it make sense). It other words, what I had was a mess of colors I didn't know what to do with. Of course this was a fancy way to say I knew I loved Zen without question, surely, but I was also angry, and I also had doubts. Doubts about him surely, but also doubts about myself. There were also fears. Fears about what could and couldn't happen, and something about wondering if I could measure up. Finally, mostly I had fears about loss, and the safety of getting things over with before they'd even begun.

I took in a breath and blinked back tears as a memory stepped forward in response to The safety of getting things over with before they'd even begun.

VNM

Truth: My last boyfriend, technically the one before Zen, broke my heart. I was still at University, the same one Yoosung goes to actually, a third year student studying literature. When I met Kwang-jo, I'd just been granted a scholarship for a full-year study abroad program in the United States. The program promised something new, possibly an adventure, and it was nearly a year away.

When I first heard I got into the program, my roommate and best friend at the time, Kira, said she was happy for me, but her actions said otherwise. She started to pout at me and pick fights over smallest of things, i.e. crumbs in the toaster - when she wasn't even tidy. Sometimes, she'd even give me the full-on cold shoulder treatment.

Eventually we had to talk about it.

"I'm not leaving you, you know," I said, over drinks at our favorite bar. It was American-style, and called The LoveLord. They had Budweiser on tap and in the can.

"I know," she said, her grey eyes looking sad, more sad and more full of shadow than I'd ever seen them. "But you're my best friend."

"You can come visit!" I said, reaching a hand across the table to cover hers. "Plus, I'll be back."

"In a year," she said.

"Just a year," I corrected.

Nothing I said seemed to make any difference. Kira had decided I was leaving her, and leaving her on purpose, and that was that.

Kwang-jo came into the picture soon after that. I remember the first night we slept together. It was my birthday, I think. I was so surprised. I really didn't see it coming and honestly can't recall how it happened. He was wearing this dorky shirt, button-down with a small animal pattern that didn't suit him. To be honest, I didn't even find him all that attractive. Still, for whatever reason, I let him take me home.

And that was that. I totally didn't see it coming, as I guess you don't, but I totally ended up falling for this tall, lanky, weirdo kind of guy, and falling for him hard.

It wasn't one thing, it was a lot of things - the way he touched me like conversation, how he seemed to anticipate what I wanted, his mannerisms and the way he was so 'cool' about everything. He may have not been classically handsome or even cute, but god, how the sight of that moppy sandy-colored head grew to make my heart flutter, like a swarm of butterflies. Like I said, it wasn't just one thing, it was the full meaning and breadth of Kwang-jo that seemed to capture my soul.

After that first night I was pretty sure I was all-in with Kwang-jo, but I didn't have a clue how he really felt about me. Six weeks into our relationship, if you could even call it that, he had me turned upside down. He didn't return my texts, calls or emails, and often cancelled dates on a whim. The thing was, though, when we did get together, it was good, it was too good - like really I'm not exaggerating when I say it was all worth it.

"He's not good for you," Kira said, over and over again.

"I know," I said.

"Do you even know whether he cares for you?" she said. "He's like more like an addiction than a boyfriend."

"I know," I said, but I also knew there was no way I was giving him up.

Zen drove on and on, out of his neighborhood, through the city center and finally, out of the city itself. I watched as the primary colors of our surroundings gradually turned from gray and subdued to green and airy, until we winded upwards on a road I couldn't identify. Finally he turned off on a gravely turn-out, motioned me off and pushed his bike into the trees.

"Come on," he said, reaching for my hand. I took it and we started walking into what looked like forest. There wasn't a path, necessarily, but the grass where we were walking looked trampled and well-traveled, like at least a few dozen people had come this way before, or maybe it was just really well-known by one person, or a few. The trees surrounding us were high and beautiful. I could hear the breeze passing through their leaves, and it felt free.

"Where are we going?" I asked again.

"You'll see soon," Zen said. "Be patient, Princess."

I was so unaccustomed to so much silence between us. It made me feel anxious, scared and a lot of other things. I wanted to say something to acknowledge this, but bit my lip instead, chewing on a corner until I tasted blood.

VNM

Kwang-jo and I continued to see each other in that haphazard, not-so-good-for-me, on again/off again way for months. Then, somewhere along the way, for whatever reason, we started to hang out more and get closer. I don't know what precipitated it. Maybe we were getting closer because my study abroad trip was getting closer. Impending absence makes the heart grow fonder? Who knows? At any rate, a couple of months before I was scheduled to leave for California, Kwang-jo told me he loved me for the first time, and I said it back like it was the first time, although I'd known it had been true forever.

Things got hot and heavy after that. We started doing things like talking about the future. When would he come visit me in California? What would do with our lives when I came back? And then there were the letters…

Back in the forest, I put a hand on my stomach, that heart heavy feeling had returned and my chest felt tight. I had the urge to turn around and run, but I looked at Zen's face and realized more than anything I wanted to stay, even if it was going to be hard.

Zen was walking with an intensity I hadn't seen before.

"Are we there yet?" I said, trying to sound light-hearted, maybe even trying to crack a joke, smooth things over. He didn't laugh.

"Just about." Zen said. He didn't even smile.

We walked on and on.

VNM

Kwang-jo. I mise well remember the ending. I had been in California about three months. My new fresh start, my adventure wasn't playing out as I expected. I missed Kwang-jo and Kira terribly. I hung around the dorm a lot waiting for their calls. I haunted the mailbox for their letters, or should I say Kwang-jo's letters because it turned out Kira wasn't much of a writer. I found out that Kira and Kwang-jo spent a lot of time together in my absence - just "as friends" - they both assured me. They went on bike rides, visited farmer's markets, and went dancing. I can't say I wasn't worried or distressed, but I always trusted them, I had to. They were the two people who loved me most in the whole world - how could they do me wrong?

Then, I'll never forget the day I got the call. It was a Tuesday. It was from Kira. She was in tears and the first part of what she said was incomprehensible. The second part I could make out clearly. She kept saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry". This is the first time I remember getting the heavy, sick, tight feeling in my chest. I didn't understand everything she was saying, completely, but truth be told I didn't need to, I got the gist.

I wanted to die after that, I really did. To this day, I'm sometimes surprised I didn't.

Back in the forest, I looked up into Zen's face, set, determined and looking into the distance. God, I thought to myself with a great sigh of relief. I'm so glad I didn't, die that is.

"Here we are…" Zen said, breaking the silence.

A moment later we crested the trees and reached a clearing that opened up to one of the most spectacular views I had ever seen. I literally gasped in surprise.

"Ohhhh!" I cried. It was about all I could say. The scene had absolutely taken my breath away. One moment we were deep in the forest and suddenly we were on the edge of a cliff overlooking the city of Seoul. This place was at once majestic, both everything marvelous about the natural world, everything spectacular about the city.

"Oh my god," I said at last, knowing my words were still not big enough, nor grand enough to do it justice.

Zen pulled me toward a fallen log and we sat down. The necessity of looking down to find a place to sit made me notice the wildflowers surrounding the small clearing we'd encountered. Blue daisies, purple fawn lilies and yellow rapeseed flower littered the area.

"Ohhh!" I said again. So many colors, I thought. What a pretty puzzle this would make!

"Right?!" Zen said, equally marveled. "I love it here."

As soon as he said it, I knew.

"This is your secret place," I said.

Zen squeezed my hand and nodded. My brain cycled through a myriad of responses. First joy, because he brought me here - it was a place I'd wondered about since those first days we were getting to know each other in the messenger app, when he'd come here to escape the angst of a leg injury jeopardizing an important acting opportunity. My second thought was more sad, yeah, he'd brought me here, but under what circumstances? Every fantasy and previous thought I'd had about this first visit had been filled with happy moments. Things like secret picnics, moonlight stars and make out sessions. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever believe he'd bring me here to… my heart sank. What did he bring me here to do? Were we going to fight? Break up? I felt the familiar tight feeling in my chest like a villain and the tears started to well up after that. I did my best to choke them back.

We sat on the log, facing forward, staring at the view for what seemed like an exceptionally long time. Finally, Zen spoke.

"So, speak," he said.

My mouth fell open and shut. I still didn't know what to say, even though I was starting to make sense of what I was feeling. It was still only in pictures, like little comic montages within the larger story. My lips were still a line, unhelpful and silent.

"Ok," Zen said. "So I'll start."

He reached over to pick up my hand again and started caressing my thumb. That made me feel better. That made me feel hope. Then he started speaking.

"So, I'm guessing it was maybe not a good idea to sing with Echo Girl, even though you said it was," he started.

We were not looking at each other, but still staring at the cityscape in front of us. I sighed, and then opened and shut my mouth again. I was trying to figure out how to say that, at the time I said it, I did mean that it was OK, and how even in that same moment, in that same breath, it was not OK. Somehow Zen got the gist of this, even though I still couldn't speak words.

"So I'm guessing that maybe it was kind of both OK and not OK?" he said and then sighed. "I know, I get it, it's weird." He paused. "I didn't feel right about it, either, I admit… but then you said it was OK… and, well, um…."

I nodded, squeezing and caressing Zen's thumb in return. I wanted to give him that same feeling he'd given me - reassurance, even though I still didn't have words, still couldn't speak properly to represent myself. I think it worked, because Zen let out a long sigh, like he'd been holding it in, and then encircled my frame, pulling me close.

"God," he said. "I don't know where to start. How do I explain something to you I've been dealing with my whole life?"

He breathed another long sigh out and I waited.

"Don't you see?" He said at last. "This is exactly why I didn't want a girlfriend. I fucking knew this would happen, don't you see it?"

My heart sunk deeper in my chest. I did know exactly what he meant and I was afraid of what he was going to say about it next.

"I knew," he said. "I knew this would happen. There would be some sort of girl, and then this sort of rumor, and then this..." he fought for words. "Unpleasantness."

I continued to bite and suck on my lip with no response.

"Then there was you," he said, and a small smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. "God, I just love you… and I'm not sorry I chose you, or that you chose me."

He paused to wipe his forehead and brush his silver hair out of his eyes. He didn't have to say the rest about all the trouble it would be for him and his fans to actually have a girlfriend and break free from all the expectations there were about an actor and his image, etc. etc. I already knew the heartfelt choices he made, not just about me, but about how important it was to present himself honestly to his fans, about what a big deal that was.

"God damn it, MC," he said, finally, with fresh tears in his eyes. "You're worth it, make me believe that this was all true, that this was all worth it. Tell me you're not throwing it away."

There was a lot I wanted to say in response to this, but I didn't know where to start. I wanted to say I'm sorry and tell him everything, admit to every insecurity and every doubt I ever had, and I would, I think, just not yet. Right now I just needed to make it better, and the only way I knew how to do it justice was without speaking.

"Please." Zen said, his eyes nearly broken. "Please, MC."

Without a word I grabbed both his hands and looked him in the face. I imagined everything I was feeling, everything I wanted to say to him, every piece of our puzzle scattered on the floor. Then I kissed him.

The kiss was soft at first, gentle like this gorgeous spring afternoon, sincere. The next kiss was deeper, longer, more intense and searching. Our lips began to move together in a familiar rhythm, and then built with an urgency to fulfill a need. I clawed at him, pressed my body into him, needing to show him with all of my being how much I loved him and how sorry I was for hurting him. He responded by pulling me closer, kissing me harder, breathing me in and being greedy with me.

"Oh Hyun," I moaned, arching my back and pressing myself deeper into him. We still had all our clothes on but i could feel his urgency matching my own beneath his jeans. I reached my hands around his lower back and pulled him closer. I very much wanted to press myself inside him. I needed to feel him inside me. I needed him to be inside me. I wanted there to be no lingering question, no doubt about how much our love was worth. To me, I now knew, it was everything, so precious I was even ready to worth the risk losing it.

I now needed to feel his bare skin and so I slid my hands up inside his sweatshirt. I let my palms move over the smooth rippling muscles of his back, and then around to the front to feel his bare chest. When I let my fingers lightly graze his nipples, he moaned.

"God," Zen said coupled with a sharp intake of breath.

Taking that as encouragement, I let my hands sink lower toward his belt buckle. He stopped me halfway by grabbing both my wrists.

"MC," Zen said, his breath was ragged and his eyes half-closed. His voice was cracking just a little bit. "Here?"

When I bit my lower lip and nodded, his red eyes rolled completely back into his head. "Oh man," he said. "I don't know…"

Zen's mouth was saying "I don't know" but his hands were saying other things. He let go of his grip on my wrists and I gasped as I felt his long fingers slide up underneath the inside of my tee-shirt and over my bra. I held my breath as he reached around to undo the clasp.

"Oh god," I said when I felt Zen's hands on my naked breasts. I helped him lift the tee-shirt over my head and toss both garments to the ground. A light breeze grazed my bare chest and my body tingled. Yeah, it felt a little weird and a little wrong to be naked from the waist up outside and in the middle of the day, but yeah, isn't that what sexy is?

"You're beautiful," Zen said into my ear. Then a trail of kisses was moving down my neck, to my chest, plunging between my breasts. My body was humming, burning from the inside out.

Zen's shirt was next. Together we lifted it up and over his head. I spent a few precious moments tracing the lines of his muscles with my fingertips and pressing my lips to his skin.

I became very conscious of the dominate sounds - our kisses and our breathing. It reminded me of just how alone we were, how far away from everything and everyone Zen's special place was. It dawned on me, how easy it would be to take things further and how very much I wanted to...

With this singular goal in mind, I pulled away from Zen's chest and untangled myself from his arms. Doing a quick survey of the area, I spotted a soft looking grassy spot under a tree. I smiled semi-wickedly at Zen, almost like a dare, and then got up and walked over to the spot.

"Hyun, come here," I said, plopping down on my backside and motioning. "Come here now."

Zen didn't hesitate. With wolf eyes, he stood up, strode over and positioned himself on top of me. I reached for him and he started kissing me again in earnest. Using one hand to prop himself up on the ground so he wouldn't crush me, he used the other to start working the button and zipper on my pants.

Eventually, he had to stop kissing me for a minute and use both hands, one on either side of my hips, to tug at my pants and underwear. Instinctively, I leaned back and arched my hips up to help him wriggle my pants and panties from my body.

Now I was completely naked and lying in the grass and very conscious of Zen's hot red eyes roving over my body.

"Oh man," he said, his voice cracking completely. "You're like a goddess."

Then he was on top of me again. His mouth on my mouth, his free hand somewhere down between my legs, working furiously to drive me to my edge. I'd heard once that the human body has approximately 180,000 chakras and I was sure every one of mine was vibrating in unison.

"God, Hyun." I cried. "Please."

In the middle of this kind of pleasant desperation, my hands reached again for his belt buckle. This time I met no resistance. My fingers scratched and pulled at the strap and metal as best I could but, honestly, I was too far gone to figure it out. Finally Zen had to stop and sit back on his knees.

"You need some help there, MC?"

I nodded, helpless, weak and wanting.

Zen put a hand on his belt buckle.

"You sure you want to do this here, MC?" He said, smiling devilishly. "Because I'm certainly not going to try and stop you now."

"I don't want to be stopped," I managed to say. "I don't want you to stop, Hyun. Please don't stop."

Zen shrugged his shoulder and his grin grew bigger as if to say well, what can you do? My eyes grew bigger and wider as I watched him work the belt buckle and free himself. God, how is every part of him so god damn beautiful? A mistake from the gods, indeed. A mistake I'd be willing to pay for over and over again.

This time he got the condom on all by himself, and with only one hand. He was a quick study, this boy.

Later in the grass we laid in each other's arms - we'd both put our clothes back on because it was getting chilly. I grabbed one of Zen's hands with both of mine and turned to look him in the face. Finally, I think, I had the puzzle figured out, and now I was ready speak.

"First things first," I said, squeezing his fingers. "I promise… I do solemnly swear, never, ever again to treat you the way that I did today. Never, ever again will I attempt to shut you out or lie to you with half-truths." I paused to take a breath and he squeezed my fingers, encouraging me to go on.

"Honestly, I was scared," I said. "Umm, truth be told… well, I am still scared… I'm terrified actually of… well, um, losing you... so much so that I think I was trying to self-sabotage everything."

Zen put both hands around mine now. His red eyes full of concern. "Babe," he said.

"No, wait," I said, putting a finger up to his beautiful lips. "Just listen, OK?"

He nodded his beautiful head and I got momentarily distracted by the way the sunlight was playing with his hair. He caught on to this, and touched my knee gently.

"Princess," he said. "Please, for the love of god..."

I nodded and took a breath.

"Yeah, so," I breathed. "I got kinda out of control and jealous of Echo Girl last night, didn't I?" I said, pausing for courage, because I knew this wasn't just about Echo Girl. Echo Girl was only part of it.

I sighed and took another deep breath. I realized I hadn't told anyone about Kwang-jo and Kira, and it was more than a year ago now. Again, I felt the tight feeling in my chest and I touched the space low and between my ribs where I felt it the most. Breathe.

If Zen and I were going to have a relationship, a real one, a good one, there had to be no secrets between us. I couldn't hold back, even though telling him everything would be hard, and it might hurt him, too. He had to know all of me.

"The thing is," I started, again. "I don't think Echo Girl is all of it."

Zen's eyebrows raised in interest.

"Something happened to me before I met you," I started, and then I dove in. "I loved someone else, and that someone else broke my heart."

Zen let out a long sigh and squeezed my fingers. His eyes were so soft and so open.

"Tell me," he said.

And I did.