Leave the Night On Pt. 05

She sighs loudly. It's what she does when I annoy her. "Next Friday. 7 p.m. Don't forget! We're popping the first bottle of last year's vintage!"

"I won't forget, Mama. Listen, I was thinking here..." I squeeze my phone between my ear and shoulder while I fill my hands with my questionable diet choices. "Your flight is coming next Friday morning, right? Maybe I could pick you guys up?"

"No!" Her answer comes fast and horrified. "No spoiling the surprise. Papa has already hired a chauffeur."

"Oh God, Mom! Did you just say chauffer?" In face of my indignity, a Kit-Kat falls to my feet. It's Cami's favorite. She'll kill me if I forget it. "Give me a minute, Mom."

"You're not paying attention to anything I'm saying, are you a child?" As she often does, my mother is talking too much, too fast, and I don't have enough coordination to carry candy to the counter while talking on my phone. "Listen, Mama. I'll be there Friday. Promise. I'm picking up my pills now. I'll call you la-"

Everything happens in a blink. I bend down to grab the chocolate I've dropped and I don't notice the man behind me until it's too late. My sneakers squeak on the linoleum resplendent floor at the same time I spin around and collide with his chest. All my chocolate, and my phone, dive to the ground.

"Oh God! I'm so sorry!" Promptly, I drop to my knees. My phone's screen has shattered into smithereens. "Fuck."

"Shit! Sorry!" A voice that immediately resonates inside my very core says, "It was my fault."

My heart rises to my throat. I whip my head up just as the man is crouching down and I'm suddenly drowning in the scalding coffee of his gaze.

"Julian."

I'm assaulted by a disturbing sense of disassociation that sends my limbs into paralysis. A bubble of deoxygenated blood gets trapped inside me and I can't breathe through the pain. I don't quite know if it's the pressure for clear air in my lungs or if it's the sight of him causing this hollowing feeling within.

He doesn't seem half as disconcerted as me. He holds my gaze steadily as unrecognition wades in, sweeping over his uncanny face. His mouth slowly thins into a line. "Actually, I'm..."

I rise to my feet in such an abrupt motion, I bump against the candy shelf behind me. "Forgive me," I say, realizing my mistake.

Julian's twin straightens to his full height, too. His presence is as tangible as it is surreal. The crook of his left arm is full of my candy and his eyes are lined with blatant curiosity. "You must know my brother," he says. There's a foreign cadence to the familiar timber of his voice. "I'm-"

"Henry," we both say.

His eyes lit up and I wonder if he's heard of me. Neither Henry nor I can disguise our mutual scrutinizing of each other. My furtive glances are all too obviously noting his tan-less skin, his tidier and shorter hair, his high-brand casual clothes and his overall distinction from his twin. He's a little broader than his brother although, strangely, he doesn't take as much space.

Under the too bright fluorescent lights, I'm an overexposed nocturnal creature. I'm self-consciously aware of my baggy hoodie, the cooling sweat on my skin, the wisping loose hairs haloing my head.

Henry Song is quietly watching me with a slightly amused expression on the face he shares with Julian. The lamp above us flickers, emitting a static sound and disturbing the thick, awkward pause. "I'm sorry," I repeat, swallowing my discomfort. "This must happen to you a lot."

He chuckles and the sound is antiseptic, in stark contrast with his brother's natural mirth. "Every single time I come home," he says.

If his brother is visiting from Korea, he must've skipped his trip this new year's. I can't not wonder why. As quick as I think it, I stump on the thought. I shouldn't care so much. Not anymore. The Songs are none of my concern.

I try to show Henry a courteous smile. "Again, I'm sorry about this," I say, conspicuously shifting towards the door. "Interesting meeting you, Henry."

The lightness I enjoyed while I was running is replaced by a sudden panic. I feign deafness and continue towards the exit when Henry calls after me. My heartbeats are wild fists banging against the bars of my ribs. Henry isn't him. Yet, he looks enough like him to trigger a physical response in me. The only train of thought I'm capable of following leads me to escape the shadow of his presence.

Frenzied, I push open the heavy glass door. The bell jingles once again. I clash with someone else. In a blur, my world tilts and I think I'm losing my balance only to find I'm standing firmly in place. Strong hands have a hold of me. Hands I know well. I recognize their color, the pressure of their touch and the unmistakable striation of protuberant veins crisscrossing forearms exposed by the rolled-up sleeves of his sweater.

This isn't our first encounter since the night he stormed out of my life. We had to bear seeing each other every morning and every afternoon for the remainder of my days at the school. None of those run-ins were anything like this happenstance, though. Here there's no cushion, nothing to sooth this accidental proximity. Here we'll be obligated to talk to each other.

Equally dumbstruck by our collision, Julian recovers faster. My skin senses the slight flexing of his fingers digging into the soft undersides of my upper arms. The exhale that leaves him is deliberately slow, an attempt at self control. I shrink a little, and he doesn't let go of me. I'm sucking air in through my mouth. I'm trying to avoid looking up at him and yet his eyes are on me, waiting. I feel their brush like an unwanted caress.

"Pearl." My name leaving his lips has never sounded so uncertain, so aloof. My first instinct is to brace myself for his nearness. For the acute pain it is causing.

"Julian," I breathe his name like it's forbidden. Finally glancing up at him, I expect to feel more of a shock but Henry's likeness has already done the trick.

I concentrate on the two anguished grooves that come to sit between his perfect eyebrows. His eyes peruse my face, gathering information, filling up the blanks left by almost two months apart. I rummage through him for any signs of my absence, searching for that kindred affliction. Is it possible I was so mistaken in him? Am I the only one feeling this vacuum gap his disappearance has created in my everyday life?

There's hardly anything different about him. Little is physically altered. His hair has grown. He's as good-looking as ever. Healthy. Composed. Unchanged. Nothing in him indicates these past weeks have had any damaging effect. Nothing in him tells of my absence. While I was there, I was seemingly inconsequential. While I'm away, I remain unimportant.

"Hi." His monosyllabic greeting catches in his throat. He sounds like he hasn't spoken in ages.

To me, he hasn't.

"Hey." I test a friendly tone. I can't allow him to see this corroding thing that's eating away at my heart at the mere sight of him. In spite of my efforts, I guess something shows. Whatever fleeting weakness escapes me, he catches it. The deepening of those two furrows between his dark eyebrows serve to tell me of my transparency.

I hate how clearly he sees me. I'm holding on by a thread. The last time he was this close to me, he was walking away after I'd revealed how I felt about him. In the narrow gap between us there isn't enough space for us to coexist. I'm breathing in his scent, the same smell that lingered on my bed sheets and that still perfuses every atom of my body.

Over his shoulder, a woman walks towards the drugstore. At the door, she stops and studies the scene before her. Her eyes take us in, assimilating the block we're creating. With rigid, uncertain legs, I attempt to sidestep Julian, but his hold on me doesn't give. He looks down at his own hands and we both feel the hesitance in him. There isn't a single part of me that doesn't register the singing weight of our connection.

With a pointed lack of grace, I shirk off his touch, fleeing his nearness. "Sorry, ma'am," I murmur to the woman, walking around Julian to stand in the middle of the sidewalk.

Julian whirls around and finally notices the lady, too. He removes himself from the door with an apologetic nod of his head to her, his eyes pinning me down the entire time. I contemplate running away even knowing I won't. Not now with the heaviness of his focus commanding me to stay.

He regards me for a beat too long then rakes a hand through hair that is longer and messier than Henry's. Longer and messier than it was two months ago. It is such a tiny change. Something so insignificant. So why does it bother me so much that it happened while I wasn't there to see it?

He is the one who cuts through the tension. "How are you?"

"I'm great." I exaggerate greatly. "You?"

He nods perfunctorily. "Yeah. Same," he mimics my lie. It's what you say out of politeness to someone you don't wish to know you too deeply. We stand like strangers. Like mere acquaintances. I hate it.

And then there's this wordless moment I don't know how to grasp. We're eye to eye; none of us is humble enough to be the first to look away. Against my best efforts, I feel my mask of indifference wanting to peel off. I feel him wanting to speak.

It's because of the way he's looking at me.

It's that sympathy in his coffee colored eyes. It's a softness that prods. Invasive and unwelcome, it burrows into my resistance deeper and deeper to a point I cave to an urge to seek comfort in him, to rest my head on his chest and have him hold me the way did that last night we had together.

A rolling wave of flaming, sudden lust washes over me. Even with this hurt I'm harboring inside, I can't help that my body is disconnected from my pain and I'm still attracted to Julian. My eyes still flicker over his mouth and this maniac need to kiss him tightens my skin. I want the feel of his calloused hands and their rough touch on me. I even long for it.

I clutch the fabric of my sweatshirt, balling it up in a fist over the spot below my belly button, which is exactly where the instinctive physical response Julian creates in my body is concentrated. His gaze captures my tense posture, the shortness of the breaths leaving my parted lips and I know he understands he is the cause of my disquiet. Out of pride, though, and before he has a chance to turn it into his advantage, I banish it all out of my body. "I just bumped into your brother," I say, trying to sound casual, friendly and unfeeling all at the same time.

Julian blinks a couple of times like he's just now understanding that the world is larger than us and this moment we're in. "Henry?"

"For a second there, I thought he was you." I don't know why I say this and I don't know why I elaborate on it. "You two seem weirdly different in your likeness. If that makes any sense."

"It makes sense. He'd tell you that's because seventeen minutes older," he says, with an air that's intimate and debonair, highlighting the contrast he makes with the man I met a moment ago.

I manage a wry smile. "He's strangely unlike you."

"It's the Korean air. It's affected him. Made him the handsome one."

With a start, I recognize our interaction as small talk. After months without any contact, we're throwing shallow, casual words at each other like two people who don't have enough to say when, in reality, the unsaid is bubbling to the surface.

"He's here for a visit?" It's an obvious, insipid comment. The stuff small talk is made of.

"With my sister-in-law, too. Umma wasn't feeling up to the trip this year, so they came instead," he tells me. "They're leaving tomorrow."

I wonder if his mother is well. Wondering is all I do. I have no right to question him about his private life.

"So...uh..." His eyes flicker down to his shifting feet then up to mine again. "How are the girls?"

"Uh..." We shouldn't be doing this. We shouldn't have to be here, searching for meaningless things to say. "Great," I mutter. "Cami just got back from Paris a few days ago. So, yeah, they're fine."

He nods again. "Good."

I'm out of words to say to further this strange conversation of ours. I think of Hannah and I want to ask about her. I don't, though. Anyhow, nothing good will come of my lingering here. "Well, it was good seeing you, Julian."

"Don't go yet," he blurts before I can turn my back.

Betraying me, my body heeds his words as if he's commanded me into stillness. I stop. My eyes get caught on his. Minutes, days, centuries pass between us while I sink into the brewing darkness of his gaze.

"Don't." I can't disguise the sharpness in that one word or fight the bitterness curdling my expression.

Julian opens his mouth, but the unsaid stays suspended in his breath. We're standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at each other, disturbing the pedestrian's traffic. People need to alter their course so they don't collide with either of us. I don't want to react to his sudden silence. Yet, something in me yearns to know what he's not giving voice to.

The bell over Mr. Rosenberg's drugstore's door jingles again, and Henry steps out. He says something markedly foreign to Julian, sounding even more distant from his twin. "What the hell is going-" He cuts himself short once he sees his brother's face. He spares me a studious glance and the next words out of Henry's mouth are in the language his mother taught him. Julian's reply is brusque and sharp, and equally unintelligible to me.

Between the two brothers speaking in their mother's tongue, I stand like an intruder. While I don't understand anything they're saying, I can guess at the subject. And whatever story Julian is fabricating to excuse my behavior to his brother, I don't have any obligation to stay and enact in it.

"Pearl!" Julian calls my name pleadingly, simply, plainly. I'm just Pearl now. Only Pearl. No longer his. No longer compelled to surrender to him. "Pearl! Wait!" I'm able to put a short, insignificant distance between us before his hand closes around my forearm. The momentum he creates whirls me around and pulls against his chest.

When our bodies touch, I begin panting, panicking like a bird in a cage. He's crowding me, dizzying me, disordering my thoughts. My anger should render me less affected by his presence. In reality, my pulse is pounding. My breathing is short. My blood is racing. My heart is still broken.

I shake my arm free, managing nothing to widen the distance between us. "What do you want?"

He deflates, casting his eyes down. It's the first glimpse of shame I recognize in him. "I wanted...I needed to talk to you. I want to give you an explanation."

I was wrong before. Closer as he is now, I notice he doesn't look the same. He's exhausted. Defeated. The brown of his eyes is a dull, cold color. Nothing like the earthly brown I love. However, there is nothing about him that repels me, nothing that helps me walk away.

He still arouses this heat in my core that settles low in my gut and beckons an irresistible humming need. I miss the soreness between my legs that succeeded our nights together. I miss the soft padding of his footsteps searching for me in the wee small hours of the morning when sleep deserted me and he woke to an empty bed.

I thought this longing had dulled. I thought his nearness would cause me only anger. Instead, the corrupted mixture of love and hate only intensifies my need for him.

I cling to this rage induced lust and turn it into my defense. "What do you want to explain? The fact that you were an asshole to me? You want to explain why you fucked me for months, illuded me into loving you and then left like I was your disposable fuck buddy?"

"Yeah," he mumbles, shoulders drooping. "If you'll let me, I want to explain everything."

I cross my arms over my chest in a protective stance, as if I could shield my heart this easily. Julian draws in a long, deep breath. "I know I was the world's biggest asshole to you. But Pearl...you are not meaningless to me. You are a rare kind of person. A truly incredible woman. The thing is, I don't... Things are out of my control. There's no space in my life for this."

I don't believe him for a second. The truth is, he doesn't want me filling up a space in his life. "What even is this? Because, clearly, this means different things to you and me."

"Pearl, you have to understand that my life isn't just mine," he says, and his gaze is full of a desperate hopelessness to make me empathize with his act. However sorry he may seem, every time he says my name that nakedly something constricts my windpipes.

"That's such bullshit, Julian."

"Things aren't so simple for me," he tries again, exhaling a frustrated huff of air. He's in my space and I can smell peppermint toothpaste on his breath. "I have...duties. I have obligations that go beyond myself. I have my mother. I have to think of Hannah before anything. She is, and always will be, my priority. Anything else I might want is a caprice I can't afford."

I flinch. All I heard is that I was a caprice. Which is exactly how I feel. Like I was a diversion, something to grant him temporary satisfaction until he decided to quit me. A minute ago, I was ready to go home. I wanted to avoid confronting him. I wanted to be the bigger person and keep my mouth shut. I'm not the one who fucked up. However hard I try, though, I can't defy my nature. I never could, anyway.

"I agree, Julian. Hannah comes first, as she should. Hannah who you left with your mother every Friday night so you could fuck me. Hannah who you dropped at your ex-wife's place every Monday night so you could fuck me. Don't you dare offend my intelligence by using Hannah as a weak excuse for your shitty behavior." My retaliation pokes at a wound. It's a low blow, I know. It warrants the way Julian looks at me, with something bordering on betrayal and disgust.

"Oh, come on, Pearl. That's not fair! What would you know, anyway? You have only yourself to think about. You're not responsible for anyone else! Your life is yours to do what you will with it. I don't have the same luxury!"

My nose starts prickling with the threat of tears. Everything he says just serves to further convince me I've been right all along. I'm the problem here. "You're right, Julian. What do I know about responsibilities? The world goes around my belly button. So what was your plan, uh?" He shakes his head, throwing his hands up in a gesture that reads to me like I'm the annoyance, I'm the hopeless, irrational one. "We were out of each other's lives," I say, intending to wound. "You found me again. You inserted yourself into my life and you allowed me to step into yours. Then, you disappeared. Again. You do realize this is the second time you've done your little disappearing act, right?"

Henry is a few feet back, watching us. People walking by stare, keeping a clear berth, but I'm beyond caring. "There is no space for this in your life? Great! Now tell me, why did you create a space for it in mine if you never meant to fill it? What am I supposed to do with this thing now?" I pound my own chest once, the echo of the hit drawing his eyes. "How do I get rid of this?" My voice starts to crack, betraying me. This peek into my vulnerability propels him to take a step forward, but I respond by retreating.

Adam's apple bobs, his face grimacing like be's swallowed stones. "I never dreamed things would go this far, Pearl," he says. "I didn't think you would...That I could make you..."

"What?" I goad him. "You didn't think I would what, Julian?"

The frown he's been wearing this entire time straightens, lending a soothing effect to his face. "I didn't think you'd ever come to feel the way you do about me. Not someone like you."