Page 95 of Somewhere Only We Know
He had the grace to look chagrined. “True, true. But you also brought out something else—I mean, wow. Everyone’s going to know you by tomorrow.”
She flushed but dropped her eyes modestly. “Thank you. It felt good,” she said.
“Youlookedgood, girl!” he said with cartoonish movements of his body. Everyone cheered again. “So, what’s your deal? You come on the heels of your Asia tour, correct?”
She nodded, bringing her hands together in her lap. I could see her wringing them slightly. I could see everything. The world was a blur, but she was crystallized into something sharp and shining. “Yeah, finished a couple days ago.”
“What was that like? Crazy, I bet?”
Lucky smiled. “That’s an understatement. I visited fifteen cities in two months.” The crowd made a “wowwww” kind of noise, impressed and reverent.
James raised his eyebrows. “Wow is right. What was your last stop?”
“Hong Kong,” she answered, quick and precise.
“Speaking of Hong Kong,” James said while glancing at the audience. A wink and nod in his expression. “There were some rumors online that you had an adventure there.”
I made a choking sound. No way. Were they allowed to bring this up? K-pop stars were so fiercely protected. Evenmentioningscandal was complete sacrilege.
But everything she’d done on the show had been sacrilegious.
Lucky’s features stilled. She went blank in this way that I’d seen on her social media—that familiar placid expression that insinuated a secret buried deep inside of her. Unreachable. I’d never felt so far away from her.
A few uncomfortable seconds passed, and you could see James glance at someone off camera, to see if he should shift directions. Then it was like a switch turned on in Lucky. A spark lit in her eyes as she twisted her lips into a grimace. “What have you heard?” Her voice was so conspiratorial, so full of mischief, that everyone burst out laughing.
His face turning red, James stammered, “Well, only that, well… you might have had a romantic kind of day.”
God, really, James Perriweather? I kept my eyes on Lucky, every nerve attuned to what she was going to say in response.
She leaned back on the sofa, pulled her leg up onto the couch. Like an ajumma about to trim some bean sprouts on her deck. It was so graceful and so Korean and so comfortable. “I had a good day,” she said with a big smile.
People whooped for a second, and then there was silence. You could almost feel everyone in the audience, everyone watching the show, lean forward. Including me. To await whatever she was going to offer next.
Not that my entire life was hanging on this one moment or anything.
With her arm draped around her knee, Lucky looked directly into the camera. “I took a day off after a long tour. And it was…” Her voice trailed off, her gaze shifting down toward the floor. “It wastranscendent.”
The word shot from the screen directly into my body, filling me with an intense heat—like the sun breaking from the clouds.
Her eyes moved back up to the camera, and she sat up, running a hand through her hair. I could almost feel the strands between my own fingers. After a beat that felt like a hundred thousand years…
She smiled, a soft one full of secrets. “I spent the day with a photographer. He’s going to release a very, very exclusive photo story on me. Look for it. By Jack Lim.”
I fell back into the sofa. She hadn’t given up on me, either.
ONE YEAR LATER
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CATHERINE
“Fern! MyGod!”
The Pomeranian stared at me, her chin held up defiantly as she hopped around on her tiny, stupid feet.
She had peed on my silver Birkenstocks. For the third time that month.
“I’m going to have you stuffed and perched jauntily on afedora!” I screeched.
