I often am reminiscing about the first time I ever saw Grace, in the cafe back in New York. It was nearing toward the end of summer, but it was still reaching the high 90’s on certain days. I only walked in there by chance; it was the closest cafe near the building that the law firm was holding their meeting in. All I wanted to do was walk in a grab an iced americano before I stated my day, until I heard a huge pile of paper hitting the ground near me. I turned around and saw a young girl with fire red hair, kneeling towards the ground picking up the papers from the ground.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t help her with her papers. Even if I still did, what would have happened if I didn’t notice that they were case files for a law case? How would the rest of my day went if I didn’t speak to her at the cafe?
I watched Grace sleep on my couch, not knowing what would happen once she wakes up and realizes she’s hungover. She’s going to be disappointed, and I don’t know whether or not she’s going to want me to be around when she does. I would have left her at Skylar and Shawn’s place, but we both knew that Skylar wanted Grace out of there. Sahim had left her behind and Haram left me behind. No one wanted Grace.
“No one wants me around anymore,” Grace randomly said as she sat in the passenger seat of my car. She laughed in pity, leaning her head back on the seat and closed her eyes. “It’s why I don’t stay for too long.”
“That’s not true,” I said as I drove, trying to talk some sense into Grace. “You have friends and family that love you—“
“My own blood cousin just told an entire room of people about my past,” grace turned her head to face me. I glanced her to look at her, in which she looked pissed. “She literally told everyone something that she had no right in blurting out just because she was upset with me. It’s not right.”
“You’re right on that; it was not her place to say something like that to everyone in the room,” I began to say, trying to reason with someone that will not remember this even happening in the next couple of hours. “But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about you or want the best for you—“
“Do you really believe in that?” Grace asked, not believing anything I was saying. I guess the expression on my face was enough of an answer for her. “I thought so.” I didn’t know what to say anything after that; for someone as intoxicated as Grace, she ironically made a lot of sense in her reasoning. “What’s the point of even going back to America?”
“What do you mean? You live there,” I began to say, not understanding what point she was trying to make. “Your family, your job, your daughter—“
“My family is living fine without me, I can always quit my job, and my daughter probably doesn’t even miss me because I was always gone anyway.” Grace was silent for a moment, as if she was reflecting on the words that she said out loud. “Like for fucks sake, I am my mother’s daughter, and Willow will most likely turn out just like me to continue this vicious cycle of neglect–“ I stopped the car at he red light and immediately turned to look at Grace.
“Stop,” I spat out, now angry at Grace. “I will not sit here and let you wallow in your pity because you believe no one cares about you.”
“You’re the last person to talk,” Grace scoffed, looking at me straight in the eyes. She looked the most composed in this exact moment than she did all night. “You should be the last person to say that pathetic, cliche bullshit to me.”
“What’s that suppose to mean?” I asked, confused with Grace’s words.
“Forget about it,” Grace said, turning her body towards the car window. Her subliminal messages were the one thing I disliked about Grace.
“You also need to stop doing that too,” I added, annoyed at Grace’s attitude.
“You need to stop talking to me like that,” Grace spat back, turning back around to face me.
“Like what? Like someone that cares about you and wants nothing but you to succeed?” I spat out as I drove. “Clearly, you have people that love and care about you, so stop thinking that no one does and stop believing that stupid, negative voice in your head.” Grace was quiet after I said that; too quiet to the point that I had to look over at her to see if maybe she was crying or something. She kept looking out the car window without a word. I decided that it was best if we both kept quiet.
We got to my apartment later that night; Grace walked right in as if she was comfortable being in the space. I took off my shoes at the door; I let Grace keep hers on considering the circumstances. I walked directly into the kitchen and returned back to the living room with a bottle of water.
“Here,” I simply said, handing the water bottle to Grace. She looks up, but doesn’t take it.
“No thank you,” Grace said in a cold way.
“It wasn’t a question,” I sternly mentioned, handing the water bottle to Grace still. “You need to stay hydrated.” I walked away from Grace, trying to have her listen to me in order for her to get better. Grace doesn’t protest anymore; she opens the bottle and begins to drink it, chugging it the longer she drank. Of course she needed some water after downing that bottle of soju earlier. “I’ll get you something to wear so that you’re comfortable–“
“Jamie,” Grace gently said. I looked at her as she spoke, wondering what was it she was going to say. “Why are you even helping me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I said, walking towards the closet of spare pillows and blankets.
“You have a girlfriend,” Grace began to explain. “You should be with her, comforting her after this disastrous night.” She wasn’t wrong, even in her current state.
“We both should be with other people tonight, but here we are,” I responded, quickly getting off the conversation. Grace looked sad sitting there; she seemed like she was beginning to regret the decisions she made earlier. I walked over to her and sat next to her, hoping that just being her company would help her feel better in some way. I began to sit in my own head, thinking about what could’ve possibly led us to this moment.
Grace had her life put together, and I saw glimpses of it throughout the year. It seemed like Grace was the happiest when she wasn’t in contact with me, and she seemed to decline whenever she was juggling me in her life somehow. We weren’t friends; we weren’t even acquaintances, we were just two people that just so happen to have once known each other in a past life.
But if that was the truth, why do we constantly find ourselves in each other’s lives? No matter where we are in the world, we seem to always find our way back to each other in some capacity. What could it possibly mean? Why was this the case with us?
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out without any context behind it. Grace turned her head at me; she looked as much as confused as I felt.
“For what?” She asked.
“For… just… everything,” I finally admitted, reflecting back on the last couple of years with Grace. “Everything that you’ve dealt with for the last couple of years.” I think she understood what I was trying to say since she didn’t say or look up from her hands. I wonder if she was tired of going through this never-ending cycle. I wonder if she regrets ever having met me back at the cafe all those years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if she wished a lot of things happened instead of the way they actually played out.
“You too, Jamie,” Grace softly said before finally looking up to me. “We’ve both been through a lot.” Something came over us for a brief moment before we were able to stop it from happening. She slowly leaned in and kissed me on the lips. I should’ve stopped it; it was wrong, but it felt like we were magnetically connected to each other in that moment. It wasn’t fair to the people we were now seeing, and I quickly pulled away from her, looking at her in the eyes. Grace began to panic; she got up from the couch and began to pace around the living room. “Oh my god, no, I shouldn’t have— oh my fucking god—”
“Grace, it’s fine,” I tried to calm her down. Sure, internally I was panicking about what just happened. There’s a level of guilt I am feeling considering this was supposed to be a chapter of my life that I closed almost a year. Surely, this was a chapter that grace had closed herself a year ago as well. We’re both thinking the same thing: we just ruined a year’s work in five seconds.
“Fine?! Jamie, we are in relationships with different people! We just did something that many people consider cheating and—” Grace began to hyperventilate, losing her breath with every exhale she made.
“Grace,” I grabbed her by the shoulders to calm her down. I looked at her in the eyes, trying to reassure her that everything was going to be fine. I had to tell myself everything was going to be fine; it had to be fine. This had to be just a moment of weakness and that by tomorrow, this would be a thing of the past. But something about that thought bothered me; I knew that anything that had to do with Grace was never just a “thing of the past.” First meeting her isn’t a thing of the past. Exploring New York City in the winter with her isn’t a thing of the past. Our relationship, our dates, our conversations and what our lives were in that time cannot just be a thing of the past.
This time, I found myself kissing her first. This time, neither of us pulled away.
…
I immediately turned my head toward the front door when I heard a slight knock. I walked over to it and knew exactly who it was. I opened the door and there was Kevin, nearly half asleep with his hair unkempt.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” I said as I opened the door wider for Kevin to come in. I saw him glance over toward the couch, noticing who was asleep on it. He immediately turned his head toward face me.
“Hyung?” Kevin questioned.
“I know,” I said, directing him away from the living room area. “Let’s talk in my office upstairs.”
I gently closed the door behind us once we got into my office. I appreicated that Kevin kept his cool until we got up here, because I know he was feeling everything else besides “cool.”
“Hyung, why do you have Grace sleeping on your couch? Why is grace even in Korea in the first place?! What the hell is going on!” Kevin paced the room, trying to gather his thoughts.
“Ya,” I said as I sighed, trying to massage the headache away through my temples. “It’s a long story.” I looked up at Kevin; he stood there, waiting for me to explain this “long story” as if he had the time to listen to it. I sighed knowing that this was now unavoidable; this entire situation was unavoidable at this point. “Grace has been living in Korea for a year—”
“A year?!” Kevin repeated, shocked by the news. “Don’t tell me you—”
“Kevin, just me finish,” I demanded, trying to get to the point. “Grace has been here because she works for a dance company that is touring their production here for a year. I didn’t know this until Haram and I went on a date to see the show. By that point, Grace and I were not in contact with each other.”
“Then how is she sleeping so comfortably in your clothes, on your couch, in your house?” Kevin questioned in a snarky way.
“We made contact through Shawn and his girlfriend, which you know is also Grace’s cousin. We decided we would be cordial for the sake of their relationship because Shawn’s most likely going to marry Skylar—”
“Oh,” Kevin reacted, shocked. “I didn’t realize Shawn was… thinking about marriage.” I looked at Kevin, reminded that the falling out between him and Shawn was because of Skylar.
“He loves her, Kevin,” I emphasized, trying to prove my point. “And Grace and I knew that it was going to happen sooner than later.”
“So the solution you two came up with was that you’re going to be friends for the sake of their relationship? Despite how toxic yours with Grace had become at one point?” I looked at Kevin, hearing the same words he’s told me about Grace for years now. Kevin was mature now, and to some extent he’s able to understand the things you do when you are simply in love with another—
Love. Not “care”, not “wish the best for”, not “support in any way”; but “love.”
“We tried. I tried,” I began to say, now sitting on the small couch in the office. I felt my legs give out when I finally pieced together everything that was roaming in my head about Grace. “I tried, so hard, for the sake of her relationship and my relationship and…” I finally looked back up to Kevin, now staring me down with this serious look. After a moment, his face softened, and he pulled the chair from the desk to sit down and face in my direction.
“You’re still in love with Grace, aren’t you?” Kevin asked. Before I could even answer, he followed up with not another question, but with a statement that I think I was avoiding to ever say myself. “You’ve been in love with her this entire time.” Something that stings, tends to linger.
Letters From Liz. 