Shatter (Club Grit Trilogy) (15 page)

I went to the end of the pier and dangled my legs over the side, wondering why the pier was so empty that day, as I sipped at my drink, not really thirsty, just trying to regain some semblance of normalcy in my life. The bubble tea was one of the few pics that I put on Instagram that was actually my own, that actually reflected my real life and wasn’t stolen from Tumblr or Google Images, and the purple taro was something people always thought was exotic and weird and pretty at the same time, because why would somebody want to drink a potato flavored drink? It didn’t seem that weird to me, given the fact that the boba themselves were based on a root’s powder, if I remembered correctly, and given that people put carrots into their smoothies, but I forgot, because I’m Asian and like some Asian stuff, even non-Korean stuff, I’m somehow weird and different and exotic. Oops.

The flavor was nutty and creamy at the same time, nutty from the taro, creamy from the smoothie base, which was surprisingly well blended this time. Sometimes, it had chunks of ice, but this time, it was like soft serve ice cream, so thick it was almost hard to get the boba up the thick straw, and into my mouth, where I could warm its iciness, relishing the texture of the soft and slimy outer layer before biting into the firm inner core, which hadn’t yet turned into a miniature sphere of black ice. The taro flavor was rich, the drink purple than usual, and it tasted like summers past.

I lifted up Ghost-Becca’s drink and turned it back and forth, looking at how the slush had already started to melt. I didn’t like the green apple flavor as much: it was too sour, almost like a liquid Jolly Rancher, but I sipped at it anyway. I’d paid for it, after all. The tartness hit the tip of my tongue and I felt my lips purse, but not closed to the point that the lychee jelly couldn’t slither into my mouth. The jelly was sour but less so, tasting more tropical and juicy, almost like pineapple. Ironically, the jelly, while thinner, clogged the straw more because it could twist onto itself and form a knot in the straw, and I’d have to suck hard at the straw to remove the blockage, sucking up too much slush at once and getting a brain freeze.

I took turns sipping back and forth at the drinks as I looked out over the ocean, the waves coming in and crashing onto a beach that wasn’t golden, but graying...graying? It was getting dark altogether too soon, and there were clouds rolling in from the west, towards the shore. The waves weren’t getting higher but a strong breeze rolled by, not the light kind that local weather stations exaggerate, but the kind that wasn’t expected in the area. As the hairs on my arm stood up at attention, I kept drinking my cold beverages and watching the clouds.

Nothing had been normal that semester, so why should the weather be any different, be exempt from the weirdness? I liked feeling uncomfortable, feeling small as I was forced to watch nature’s subtle majesty, a majesty that was hidden and blocked by walls of a concrete jungle, by the confines of societal constructs, a majesty I hadn’t thought about in a long time.

As the clouds moved closer, I could see the waves becoming slightly rougher and mottled with the pattern of raindrops falling, at first, lightly, and then in sheets. As the first few drops hit me on my upper arm and slid down to my elbows, I knew I had to get up and go. The wind wasn’t too harsh, but I knew I needed to get back to the car now if I didn’t want to get wet, so I rose and threw my beverages away, making my way back to where I’d parked.

However, when I got to the car, it wouldn’t start, and that’s when I realized I must have left my radio on and drained the battery. I rummaged through my boxes and found a cheap black umbrella, the collapsible kind, and pulled out a navy blue and yellow UCBH hoodie, which I pulled over my head, the large oversized hoodie looking ridiculous over my high-waisted denim shorts, and I pulled the hood up as I called the insurance card in the glove box, but there was no answer. The car was starting to get chilly, so I called the one person I didn’t want to call, but who, for some reason, I was sure could bail me out.

And, of course, he was there within thirty minutes, because for the man who has everything, anything is possible. Lawrence tapped at my window and I got out of the car, hood up, and opened the umbrella. “Thanks,” I said gruffly.

“It’s fine. Do you need a jumpstart?” he asked.

“Yeah, but I couldn’t get ahold of AAA,” I explained.

“It’s fine, I can give you one,” he said, and he opened the door of the car in front of me. I hadn’t noticed him parking, and I also didn’t know he had an old Volvo hatchback.

“Is that really your car?” I asked, slightly amused. I’d half expected him to roll up in a Royce or at least a Porsche.

“Yeah, I’ve had it since graduate school,” he said, reading my face and smiling because I was smiling, as if my happiness really mattered to him.

“And you know how to give a jump start?” I asked, not as amused as I was unsure.

“Well, it’s an important part of being a conscientious motorist, isn’t it?” he teased. “But yes, I do.”

“Well, you can’t do it now, it’s raining,” I said.

He shook his head. “It’s fine. I can just give you a jump and get you on your way.”

“But you could get electrocuted!” I blurted out. I hadn’t thought about how I’d get a jumpstart, and I’d thought maybe he had the kind of jumper cables that connected the cigarette lighter ports of two cars, not the normal alligator clip style ones. I hadn’t exactly failed physics in high school, and I still remembered that water plus electricity equals a bad time.

He crossed his hands as if to say it was not a big deal. “Not if I do it right.”

“You could just wait until it stops raining,” I insisted.

“So, we should just get back in our respective vehicles and wait for the rain to let up? Is that ideal?” he teased.

“No, it’s not,” I said with a laugh. This wasn’t going as I planned. I just wanted a jumpstart but now, I’d said I didn’t want him to hurt himself, and I had no idea what I wanted.

“Do you want to get coffee with me, Kim?” he asked.

I looked to the side and shuffled my feet back and forth, splashing water onto my ankles. I should have worn socks with the low cut sneakers. “Last time it didn’t go so well.”

“What, would you prefer a walk then?” he asked sarcastically. He didn’t expect me to take him by the hand, lead him down the concrete steps to the beach, and keep his hand in mine as we walked down the beach slowly, hand in hand, his suit covered by my umbrella, with his back hunched so he fit underneath.

“Do you want me to carry your umbrella for you?” he asked.

“No, I’m fine,” I said.

“Are you sure?” he asked again but it sounded like more of a statement.

I looked at him, hunching. “Sounds like you want to carry it for me. Can you just tell me that?”

He sighed. “Miss Lee, will you do me the honor of letting me bear the burden of your umbrella for you?”

I did a fake curtsy. “Of course, Mister Lamont,” I said in a fake Southern accent. “Bless my stars, I am so grateful to have a gentleman like you in my service.”

“I will be forever at your service,” said Lawrence in a far more convincing British accent, and he did a bow, but the umbrella grazed my hair and got it caught. I instinctively wiggled, making it worse, and getting wetter in the process, until Lawrence pinned my arms by my side. “I’m so sorry, Kim. I’m sorry. Let me just, ugh, sorry.”

“I’ve never heard of a clumsy billionaire,” I said curtly as I got back under the umbrella. The two of us were now much wetter than before, my straight hair lying flat and soaked against my head, his fluffier wavy hair now in twisted wet locks.

“They don’t make you recite the alphabet backwards while walking a straight line to get that last dollar,” he said facetiously. I grabbed at his hand to get the umbrella, but he switched it to his other hand, but didn’t let go of my hand, and I didn’t try to make him. We just walked down the beach silently until we were just standing and watching the waves.

“Lawrence?” I asked without turning.

“Yeah, Kim?”

“Why...did you come out today?”

“Because you called me, but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

“It’s because I made a promise to someone, Kim. I promised I’d always be there for you, and I promised that I’d make sure you were okay, and it’s a promise I haven’t kept before, a promise I should have started to keep earlier, and a promise I won’t ever break again.”

I looked at him, confused, but he was still staring out at the ocean, unflinching, undistracted. It was like when we’d looked over the crowds but instead of looking at a space that was full, we were looking at one that was empty. “You never promised me that,” I said gently.

“I never said I promised it to you,” he said, still not turning to look at me although I saw his eye instinctively flick over to meet mine before moving back to focus towards some random spot on the horizon.

“Then...to who?” I asked. I had to know. I couldn’t stand Lawrence having any more secrets, not the way I had to keep the one I still had.

“You don’t get it, do you? I’ve been in love with you since before I met you.” Lawrence opened his wallet and pulled out a small, worn paper square and passed it to me. On the back, it read “Korea, ‘07”, and my heart skipped a beat but I turned it over anyways.

There was the man in front of me...and the man that I hadn’t seen since he’d left home when I was just in middle school. There was my dad.

“How did you get this?” I asked, choking back the tears that I knew were welling up in my eyes, as the wind changed and rain dropped on the photo and mixed with the salty kisses my eyes gave my dad, who I had never talked about with anyone other than my relatives and Becca.

I could hear a lump forming in Lawrence’s throat, a lump as big as the one in mine. “I haven’t been completely honest with you, Kim, because I didn’t want to upset you, but I need to stop putting you on a pedestal. I love you, but I try to protect you by hiding things from you, like the fact I’m a billionaire and the fact that your father and I knew each other. He was a good man and the accident...”

“You, it was you. You were the American that brought his body back to Seoul,” I said, biting my lip. I knew exactly what had happened, I’d heard the story a thousand times from my mom, and I hadn’t wanted to believe it, but one day, as a high school student, snooping through my mom’s drawers, looking for a tube of lipstick, I saw the letter and read it. It had been as my mom had told me: my father had stepped on a rogue landmine when he was visiting relatives in South Korea, specifically...my mother’s father. My parents had never actually been married, legally, but my father had finally finished medical school and had finished his residency at UCLA’s medical program. He went with a friend he’d met through another, through his studies, to Korea, a friend who brought his body back to Seoul, every last bit, to be cremated, the ashes sent to my mother. My mother had never told me the man’s name, but I didn’t need to be told, because it was obvious.

“Yes, I am,” he said, looking at me and taking a gulp. In front of me was no longer a billionaire, but a man that I owed the closure after my father’s death. If it hadn’t been for him, my father’s fate would have been unknown, and as much as it pained me to know that I’d never see dad again, Lawrence had been the one that ensured I didn’t wait forever for him to walk through the front door. “Your father saved my life. I was the one responsible for your father’s death, Kim. I’m so sorry. I was the one who accidentally activated the mine, and your father pulled me off the landmine quickly, shielding me with his body so he took the brunt of the damage. All I was left with was the scar on my side, but your father...he lost his life saving me, Kim.”

“I had...no idea,” I said slowly and with a pause.

Lawrence sighed and turned out towards the ocean, towards the distant land he and my father had been in, together. I couldn’t imagine Lawrence with my father: they were so different, Lawrence was always so serious and my father, well, I was always smiling and laughing around him and he made typical dad jokes. Lawrence was younger than my father, even younger than the age my father was when he went on the trip, but still, acted like he was wise beyond his years. I was seeing him in a different light, in this all too different fog. “I know, and I wanted it to stay that way, but there’s just some things you have to know, Kim, and one of those things is that I’m in love with you. I never intended for it to happen: your father’s dying wish was for me to take care of you. He literally told me, as his last words, “Take care of Kim”. I didn’t know who you were, but I did my research and never stopped looking for you. I suspected you were his relative, and unfortunately, Kim is a very common name. However, I never gave up. When I tracked your father’s widow, sorry, your mom, down, and her name was Su-Hwa, not Kim, I didn’t stop looking. I found out you were a student at UCBH, at a sorority, and that’s why I purchased Club Grit, and that’s why Club Grit extended their invitations to your sorority. Once my staff told me that you had become a regular, I started to watch and try and figure out the best way to come talk to you, to let you know about the debt I had to your father, a life debt. I never expected to fall in love with you, and I never expected what happened at Omega Mu Gamma to happen either. All of this is my fault. If I hadn’t meddled, if I hadn’t tried to change you or your life, by playing the social scene like a marionette master, than so many of the innocents wouldn’t have been hurt. You have no idea what it’s like to live with this secret, Kim. You have no idea what it’s like to know that you’ve fucked up, royally, by falling in love with the woman you’ve promised her father that you would protect, and worse? By losing you, so many times. I can’t lose you again, Kim.”

“You don’t have to, Lawrence. You don’t have to,” I said, collapsing my umbrella and pulling him close into my embrace, the crook of his neck resting on my sweater, which was getting soppier by the second, but it didn’t matter, because the rain was the only thing that was hiding our tears.

“Kim, how can you forgive me?” he asked, pulling away and looking into my eyes as I looked into his, their light blues looking closer to gray, blending into the uncharacteristically cloudy Los Angeles sky.