Page 22 of Somewhere Only We Know
LUCKY
The first weird thing I noticed was the light.
What happened to my black-out curtains? I never woke up to sunlight.
Second was the faint snoring. Was that Ji-Yeon? Did she spend the night in my hotel room? She’d done that in the past when I had particularly anxious nights.
I shifted under the covers, then froze. I was still wearing my jeans and my neck was all crunchy-feeling. Why was I—
The hotel hallway.
The dude in the elevator.
The mall.
The bus.
The boy.
The bar.
The boy.
I shot up—brain fully awake and registering everything around me: The small bedroom crammed with a hodgepodge of black wood furniture. A poster of some old action movie. Threadbare floral curtains fluttering around a large window. The cracked-open door and the sound of light snoring drifting into the room.
OH MY GOD.
My hands flew to my mouth, muffling my involuntary scream. What in Sam Hill did Idolast night?
I spied my coat neatly folded next to my hotel-room slippers at the foot of the bed, placed side by side. Which led me back to the view of the other room… two feet poking out from a pile of blankets on a truly hideous sofa.
Was thathim?
I remembered the guy like a fuzzy dream. Tall. He towered over me. Lean but sturdy. I remembered himfeelingsturdy. Oh, good gravy. My face burned at some memory I couldn’t quite grasp. I tried to piece together an image of him. Thick, longish hair pushed back from his face, tucked behind his ears. His face, though… my memories couldn’t focus on any definitive features on his face.
I was so out of it last night and somehow ended up in a guy’s apartment. He brought me back to his place. He was a stranger. All my girl alarm bells were going off at the moment. I needed to get the heck out of here.
He was still asleep. Only needed to slip out of here unnoticed. I found my hat on the nightstand, pulled it low over my eyes, and practically slithered out of the bed, careful not to make any sudden sounds.
I dropped to the floor and crawled toward my jacket and slippers. Why was I crawling? In case the paparazzi were poised outside thewindow? A shudder went through me at the thought. Yeah, I had to get out of here like,now.
But the second my fingers brushed the slippers, the sofa pile moved.
I let out a low hiss and pulled back.Blast. Then I heard muffled cursing from the pile of blankets before a series of frantic movements began underneath them. I leaned back against the bed and froze, watching the blankets. Afraid of what would emerge.
First, a hand fumbled around the coffee table until it found a phone. The phone disappeared under the blankets for a second before all the blankets were thrown aside to reveal a real live boy sitting up in the middle of the pile.
Ah, there was his face.
Dark, heavy-lidded eyes, bleary from having just woken up. Finely sculpted bones—he had cheekbones I would murder for and a jaw that could cut glass. But it was his mouth that startled me. An outrageously pouty mouth. He looked like a bratty playboy from a K-drama.
I must have made some kind of sound, because suddenly he was looking at me.
Those sleepy eyes widened and hishow-daremouth dropped open. We stared at each other in silence for about .5 seconds.
I scrambled up and shot out of the bedroom, toward the front door of the apartment.
“Wait!” he called out from behind me, but I fumbled with the dead bolt until I was out the door. Halfway down the hall, I noticed the flickering lights and the smell of cigarette smoke.
