Prologue - I Found It!
Carly
New Year's Eve
Some people ring in the new year with champagne, their friends and family, and diets they’ll never follow through with.
I’m about to ring in the new year by losing my favorite piece of jewelry at H-Mart, of all places.
“Are you sure you didn’t leave your ring back at home?” My best friend, Ali Rios, asks for the third time as we look through the shelves stacked with trail mix.
After dropping my brother, Carson, off at the beach with his girlfriend, Ali and I agreed on a movie night. However, our pantry is pretty barren after eating just about everything during finals week while we pulled all-nighters. Don’t ask.
“Yes, I’m certain.” My maternal grandmother gifted me my Claddagh ring before she died. That ring is super important to me, and I don’t know what I would do if I lost it.
My mother might kill me, but I prefer to live long enough to see my college graduation. So finding it is a top priority, and I will flip this entire store upside down if I have to.
Okay, maybe I’m being a little dramatic, but I ran out of fucks to give a while ago.
“We’ll find it,” she assures me, but I’m not sure I believe her. Considering that we’re in the middle of H-Mart, which sells just about everything, the odds of finding a ring with a band as thin as my hair are about as slim as Wes Anderson creating a stereotypical rom-com.
Ali rummages through some massive bags of candy and comes up empty. “This is where you last remember having your ring?”
“Yes!” I exclaim before growling. “No…ugh! I don’t fucking know. One minute, I was grabbing those mango gummies and playing with the ring. The next? I’m grabbing a bottle of saké, and I don’t see it in my hand!”
“Carly, we already looked at the alcohol,” my best friend reminds me. “Do we wanna look again?”
I check my phone and notice how it’s almost ten p.m. The store is about to close pretty soon, and we’re shit out of luck.
Where’s my ring?
“You know what?” I think out loud. “I’ll retrace my steps, again. Maybe it fell on the shelves with the sodas or something.”
Ali doesn’t take her eyes off the shelves as she nods. “Okay, you do that.”
I stroll away from the candy aisle and through the sodas, carefully tilting one bottle after another, looking deeper into the shelves. I swear, if I find my stupid but special ring sitting in plain sight—
“Do you need help?” A deep voice asks me. I can hear the hesitation peek through, although it’s subtle.
“Nope,” I call out. “I’m doing just fine, thank you.”
“I’m a little worried if you think squeezing your head between soda bottles is your definition of fine.”
“And you wouldn’t?” I challenge. Ugh, it’s not there. You know what? There are many more aisles left to look at—I can just stick my head in them like a normal person.
Except I’m not normal, whatsoever.
“Most people would just stick their hand in there,” he remarks. “Instead of their head.”
I let out a breath of slight annoyance. “Luckily for you, I’m not most people.”
When my head is finally free from the soda packs, I turn around to see who could have possibly stood by to watch the spectacle that was my butt in the air and my head in the sodas, only for all annoyance to disappear when I make contact with eyes so dark I’m pretty sure they’re black, like the night sky or undeveloped black and white film.
All annoyance may have disappeared thanks to a pretty pair of charcoal eyes, but embarrassment fills the space when I realize that I just had my butt out in front of someone. Since H-Mart is about to close, the last thing I cared about was people seeing me run around like a madwoman, yelling, “Where’s my ring??”
Sure, I wasn’t shouting, but I practically stuck my ass out in front of Crew Shentu, who just happens to be one of the most acknowledged former actors in my age group.
I can feel my cheeks burning up because of it. “Can I help you?”
