“Excuse me, have you seen our dog? Bark bark bark—”
Jiyeon hastened to explain before the argument spiraled into a full-fledged brawl. “They used to work for me. Phillip was my photographer and Colin helped with editing all the videos.” She aimed a puzzled glance at Jeannie. “You thought I might end up with Colin? Really?”
“He had a nice car!”
“Jeannie, he was married.”
“Just barely! They weren't even married for a whole year yet!”
Nicky clanged his spatula against the mixing bowl. “Okay, people. This is hard for me to say, because I'm very, very interested in all of this new information, but let's focus up. She still hasn't answered my original question.”
“Why did we get together? I guess it just happened.”
She fell into a relationship. She didn’t fall in love. That much became obvious early on, and yet she’d forced herself to avoid thinking about it for years. Who even fell in love, anyway? Wasthat something that happened in real life? It seemed like fiction, an urban legend passed down through the ages. A phenomenon that skipped her and happened to other people instead.
Jiyeon had dated as a teenager, sure. It was never long-term, never serious, and never Arthur. Romance fell to the wayside as she juggled cosmetology school with shifts at Gloria’s, but she was too busy to care about it much. Then came the big clients, the early years on social media, the later years when her life online went spinning out of control. Arthur had waited through all of that. It felt less like a love story and more like a foregone conclusion. He was the obvious answer she’d been dodging for years and years. Everybody told her so.
Her mood guttered like a candle flame. Jiyeon didn’t want to talk about Arthur, or even think about Arthur, or read the eleven text messages he’d sent her between last night and this afternoon.Hey Emms, did you ever change your username? I was talking to that guy from Prism and he made some good points. Emmie, look at this spot by the new grocery store. Much better than what you were looking at before. Emmie, you should go look. Emmie, Emmie, Emmie.
“There’s not much else to it,” she said, eager to move on. “Arthur planned this thing for my birthday. There was a food truck, and all our old friends were there from high school.”
Jeannie huffed at this. “So what? Ryan got you that little trophy from Lowell’s.”
“He did.” And she smiled at the memory, which was a personal favorite.
“You went out with him because of the food truck, or what?” From the expression on Max’s face, it was clear that Jiyeon’s response might alter his opinion of her forever. “It’d have to be one hell of a food truck, noona. That guy’s a freak.”
“He said it had always been me. There were a lot of people watching. I guess I felt like I had to. Or that I should? Like it was the thing I was supposed to do?”
Nicky winked at a customer, who stuffed another few dollar bills into their tip jar, mesmerized. He thanked them profusely. Then he turned to Jiyeon and said, “Ajumma, that story was even more boring than I expected. Let’s talk about this instead: how do you feel about the chemistry between your boyfriend and your ex-boyfriend—”
Max seized the spatula and shoved it into Nicky’s mouth, attempting to put an end to that line of questioning. Jiyeon responded, though. “I know he likes Arthur. It isn’t easy for Eunjae to make new friends, so I’d never tell him to stop. Things are hard enough, yeah? Why add more to that?”
Their last ten minutes went by without incident and staff offered to handle the rest. Max and Jesse were chomping at the bit, eager to buy churros and carve pumpkins. They ran ahead, taking Jeannie with them. The cameras trotted to catch up. Where did Eunjae go? She’d looked for him by the water, but he and Denny weren’t on the dock anymore.
Jiyeon was still weaving through the crowd with Nicky when Arthur made his grand entrance. He galloped into the festival square on horseback, no less. “A horse,” she murmured, watching this spectacle unfold. “Where’d he get a horse?”
Her companion finished sending a flurry of text messages, cackling all the while. “Never mind about that for now. Hear me out, okay? Let me just throw this out there. You said things are hard, but do they have to be?”
“Hmm? What do you mean?”
“I mean that it could be easy. We just choose the harder way, thinking it’s the only way, or the only right way. Your forbidden romance, for example.” Nicky pulled up an image on his phone: four guys who were obviously idols, their hair andclothes emblematic of the late ‘90s. “This is Orion. They were huge back then, the biggest moneymaker Zenith Media ever had, but they didn’t even make it to their fifth year before the first dating scandal hit. Amazing, right? I wish we could’ve matched them for speed. I’ve been so bored all this time, ajumma, you’ve got no idea.”
“I feel for you.”
“You should. Nothing’s worse than being bored. But anyhow, my point is that this guy,” he said, zooming in on an Orion member, “also had a forbidden romance. She was an idol, too. That’s the Holy Grail of forbidden romances in this business, okay? He went all out. Eyes on the prize. Experiment! And guess what? He didn’t try to hide it.”
Jiyeon saw Jungwoo waving to them, appearing and disappearing as he waded through the crush of people. She'd catch a flash of his hair, dyed a deep burgundy, the same shade as red wine. Then she would lose sight of him again. The crowd had swelled after sunset, with many drawn to the festival’s evening performances.
“Did it work?” she asked Nicky. “Was the group okay even though he went public?”
“Oh, yeah. Two more albums. Seven years. They even got married. You know our bigwigs at Emerald, the founder noonas? They went to the wedding.”
A group of preteens in soccer uniforms streamed around them, headed for the midway. Jungwoo reached them at last, saying they should head in that direction as well. “Hey, was that Arthur just now?”
“On the horse? Uh-huh.” Jiyeon decided to avoid the midway. She wanted to be wherever Arthur wasn’t. “You guys go ahead. I’m gonna look for Eunjae.”
“Wait,” Jungwoo blurted out. “I know where he is.”
