Authors: Katie M. Stout
I toss up another quick prayer that Jason doesn’t do anything stupid.
We finally reach Incheon, and I jump out of the car on the street the Google map said the bar is on, searching for anything that says “Lotus.” I’ll even content myself with a picture of a flower. I’m afraid the name will be written in
Hangul
so I won’t ever find it, when I spot a familiar face in the crowd on the street.
He slouches against a crosswalk sign, his head hanging and shoulders slumped. His hair’s hanging in his face, but I recognize the jacket I bought him. People do a double take when they pass him, like they’re not sure if that’s Jason Bae.
“Jason!” Relief floods my body.
He looks up when I rush over to him, and a slow smile brightens his face but doesn’t reach his glazed, bloodshot eyes. When I get close, I can smell alcohol on him, and my heart sinks.
“Hi, Grace.” He takes a step toward me and stumbles.
I catch him, and he chuckles against my shoulder. “You smell good,” he says into the fabric of my shirt.
“Well, you don’t.” But my chest still tightens at the warmth from his body soaking through my clothes.
I make a quick scan of the people on the street around us, but no one has whipped out a camera or cell phone, so at least we don’t have to worry about any embarrassing shots showing up online tomorrow.
“We should get you home,” I say, steadying him.
“But I want to have fun.” He tries to pull away from me but almost falls. “Everyone thinks I’m a loser, so I might as well act like one!” he shouts.
People turn around, whispering to each other. A few cameras are pulled out, and an excited hum travels through the crowd gathering around us.
Sucking in a sharp breath through my teeth, I throw my arm around his waist and hold him upright. “Let’s get into the car.”
But when I turn around, the driver—and the car—is gone. I call him, but he doesn’t pick up. I’m stranded. With a drunk Jason. In the middle of a city of 2.5 million people who all know his face.
Swallowing my panic, I half carry, half shuffle him to the bus station, because that’s the only solution I can think of. He laughs in my ear the entire way there.
I dump him on the bench and ignore the staring and pointing from passersby. Relief floods me as our bus pulls up.
“Okay, let’s go,” I say.
He doesn’t stand.
“Don’t make this difficult,” I mutter. “I’m not carrying you.”
But I hoist him up from the bench anyway. He leans against me as we struggle onto the bus and shuffle to the back row. I sink into a seat beside him, shooting death glares at any passengers who dare to glance our way.
Jason leans his head back and closes his eyes. “Grace?”
“What?” I snap.
“Why are you here?”
“Because I’m going to school here.”
“No, not in Korea.” He jerks a finger between us, motioning at himself, then me. “Here. You told me you didn’t want anything to do with me.”
That’s a good point. Why do I even care? I steal a glance at him, at the uninhibited dependency, and my heart constricts. He needs someone. Everyone thinks he’ll be fine with the band’s breakup, but it seems like he’s the one suffering. And if Sophie isn’t going to make sure he doesn’t self-destruct, someone needs to.
But, beneath that, there’s something I can’t explain. Some instinct to be close to him, no matter how. Something deeper than my appreciation for the way his V-necks show off his collarbones and how his rare smiles light up his face. Something I’m not sure I’m ready to investigate.
We make it to our stop and somehow we manage to get back to campus without a fan mob descending on us. I should get a medal for this good deed.
“Get your key out,” I tell him when we’re at his building.
“Huh?” He hiccups.
“Your key.”
He stuffs a hand into his pocket, then tries the other three. His features twist into a puzzled expression. “I don’t … I don’t have it.”
“What?”
“I guess I uhh…” He laughs. “I guess I left it in my room.” He pats his pants like the key will miraculously appear in one of his empty pockets.
“I can’t believe this,” I mutter.
He deserves to sleep on the street tonight, but I can’t leave him out here. Should I go ask his RA to unlock the door? But the RA could take a picture of Jason or tell some gossip magazine about it, despite the ban on communication with the press. Jason’s reputation would just get worse.
After a minute’s deliberation, I make a quick decision, fighting the blush creeping up my neck. “Okay, come on. You’re coming to my room.”
He doesn’t respond, just follows me. Sophie’s visiting one of her friends from her old school who came down from Seoul, and they’re spending the night in a hotel. Convenient. Maybe God is smiling on me.
I glance at Jason as he stumbles over a crack in the pavement. Okay, maybe he isn’t.
When I get us to my room, it’s already past ten o’clock. Jason slumps into a chair and starts looking through the papers sitting on top of my desk, then digs through my drawers and picks up a photo I stuffed in there when I moved in.
“Who’s this?” He points to Nathan, who has his arm slung across my shoulders.
Panic jolts through me, and I snatch the picture from his hand, shrieking, “What are you doing? You can’t just look through people’s stuff!”
His face falls, and he looks so contrite I almost forgive him. “Sorry,” he says.
I blow out a slow breath. “It’s fine. Just stop acting like a kid I need to babysit.”
I search through my drawers for something modest but cute I can wear to sleep in. I am
not
putting on my dad’s old ratty T-shirt that I stole. When I come out of the bathroom in yoga pants and a tank top, I find Jason curled up on his side on my bed, snoring lightly, his shoes still on.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” I just stare at him, frustration mingling with the butterflies swirling in my stomach.
Muttering a few choice words, I yank off his sneakers and toss them onto the floor. I nudge him, but he’s out. I consider rolling him onto the floor, where he can spend the rest of the night, but my hospitable Southern upbringing kicks in and I can’t go through with it. Instead, I climb up onto Sophie’s bed and crawl between the sheets.
We’re alone in my room, and Jason is sleeping in my bed, and I may want to strangle him for getting wasted—but my pulse leaps every time I remember the way he leaned against me as we walked to the bus station, how his breath warmed my neck, and how I could still smell his cologne underneath the stink of stale alcohol.
I shut down those thoughts, refusing to let my mind linger on them, and instead fall asleep listening to Jason’s breathing, worrying that he has alcohol poisoning. But I wake up only a few hours later to the sound of him banging the bathroom door open. I sit up, blinking back sleep, just in time to hear him puke his guts out. I sit there a second, not sure if I’m awake or still dreaming.
KPOP superstar Jason Bae is throwing up in my bathroom.
Talk about surreal.
A groan floats from the bathroom, and it shakes me out of my reverie. I climb down from the bed and venture to look in on him. Jason is bent over the toilet, his forehead pressed into his arm, which rests across the seat.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He doesn’t look up, just moans, and I can’t help thinking of what he told me about his dad’s alcoholism. And connecting it to Nathan’s drug and alcohol addiction. My brother spent a lot of time on the bathroom floor when he was on tour—I got the full story from his drummer a few months before I left for Korea.
I sit down on the tiled floor next to Jason and rest my hand on his back. He flinches at my touch but doesn’t pull away, then empties the rest of his stomach. I swallow a gag of my own, rubbing my hand up and down his back like Momma did when I was sick as a kid—one of the few memories I have of her being maternal.
He pushes away from the toilet and leans back against the wall. “I’m sorry,” he says in a hoarse whisper.
“Don’t worry. You can clean it up in the morning.” Even I hear the strain in my forced levity.
He slumps onto the floor, his head resting on the mat. With a sigh, I scoot closer and put his head in my lap. He tenses, but I brush my fingers through his hair and his muscles relax.
“I’m totally using this as blackmail one day, just so you know,” I say.
He chuckles softly, taking my other hand and threading our fingers together. My heartbeat sputters, but I keep the butterflies under control.
“Don’t leave me, okay?” he mumbles.
“Okay,” I say around the lump in my throat.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
A shiver ripples down my spine, and I can’t deny it anymore.
I’m in love with this boy.
I love his hair that swooshes across his forehead, the jeans and colorful sneakers, and the way he sometimes cynically responds to life, like it’s something to be endured instead of enjoyed. But, more than that, I love
him
.
It’s not a crush. It’s not me just kind of liking him the way I liked Isaac.
It’s the L-word.
And that scares me more than anything I can imagine.
I lean back against the wall and marvel at this situation. It seems ridiculous, but I know this is where I’m supposed to be. Maybe it’s crazy. Maybe I’m attracted to him out of some twisted desire for a redo, to help him where I couldn’t help Nathan.
But what if Jason just gets worse? What if I let myself get close to him, and he self-destructs? Could I handle losing someone like that again?
But despite the fear, there’s no way I’m staying out of his life. I can’t leave him. I have to help.
Because that’s what you do for people you love.
“You may be trying to ruin your life, but I won’t let you,” I say, more to myself than to him. “I’m not going to let you turn into your dad.” I think back to the picture he picked up earlier, and my voice falls to a whisper. “I’m not letting you become like my brother, either. I promise. You and me? We’re pulling you out of this.”
And maybe when all this drama with the band is over, when Sophie’s forgiven him and life returns to the ordinary—when he’s not broken—we can be together. Maybe we can be normal.
The next morning, I wake up before Jason and throw on some clothes and brush my teeth before shaking him awake. I couldn’t sleep last night, waking up every hour to peek down from Sophie’s bed to check on him. But he slept under my pink sheets through the night.
“Hey, wake up.” I nudge his shoulder.
He turns away from me, muttering something unintelligible under his breath. I try not to notice how adorable he looks hugging the pillow to his chest.
“Jason.” I shake him. “Wake up.”
He bolts upright and knocks his head against the top bunk. Crying out something in Korean—probably a curse—he rubs at his forehead, then notices me laughing at him. He startles and glances down at the bed.
“Did I sleep here last night?” he asks.
“Obviously.”
The blood drains from his face.
“Get up.” I slap his arm before we can veer into awkward territory. “We’re going out for coffee, because you’re going to have a wicked hangover.”
He crawls out of bed and looks down at his rumpled clothes.
“Go get your RA to let you into your room, then take a shower. Change your clothes. I’ll meet you in front of your building in an hour.” I toss his shoes to him.
Avoiding eye contact, he slips on his sneakers and exits. I stand in the middle of the room and stare at the door, an emptiness settling in my chest in his absence. But I shake off any dark thoughts and spend the rest of the time getting ready.
Before heading out, I strip my bed. I poke my nose into the sheets and recognize a familiar smell—Jason’s cologne. My stomach somersaults.
My bed.
Smells.
Like Jason.
I have to wad up the blankets and stuff them into my laundry basket to curb my rambling thoughts.
I find Jason waiting for me, sitting on the steps of his building. He stands when I approach, and I smile at the anxious look on his face. I can’t remember him ever being this embarrassed around me before.
“Are you ready?” I ask.
He nods, stuffing his hands into his pockets and falling into step beside me. We head straight for the coffee in the dining hall.
We choose a table in a quiet corner, and he sips his coffee in silence, though I can tell by the way he winces when people talk too loud that he’s not feeling great. I slip a couple ibuprofens across the table, and he takes them with a weary smile.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he says.
“Don’t worry about it. No big deal.”
He grimaces. “Yes, it is. It was incredibly irresponsible of me.”
“Yeah, it was.” I shrug. “But that’s okay. Now you owe me.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “I do?”
“Yup, and I’m cashing in now.”
His face melts into a smile. “What do you want?”
“For you to get better,” I say, ignoring the nervousness growing inside me.
“Get better? What’s wrong with me?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
He stares at me in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I sigh. “Jason, let’s be real here. You’re depressed. I’m assuming it’s because of what happened with the band, but if I had to guess, I would say it started before that. Am I right?”
He bristles, frowning. “This isn’t—”
“Don’t deny it. I know the signs. Trust me.”
Though he doesn’t argue, he scowls at me. But I take his silence as a sign to keep going. I’m not an expert, but I know enough to realize he needs help. Maybe not counselor-type help, but at least someone to show him they care. And, apparently, I’m the only one lining up.
“If you’re having a hard time, you need to ask for help,” I say. “Whatever’s going on, you need to talk to somebody about it. And do other things that make you happy. You can’t wallow in your problems.”
“I’m not wallowing!” he cries, then winces and lowers his voice. “This is ridiculous.”
“Is it? Then why are you going out and getting wasted? Why are you missing school? Why don’t you ever hang out with your friends anymore?”