If You Return (3c/?): Perfect for You
Chapter IIIc: Perfect For You
Tiffany turned an amused smile on Jessica.
“Are you going to tell me it’s complicated?”
Jessica laughed uneasily. “No, I mean, we-”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with complicated.”
Krystal, Stella, Minyoung unni. At one time or another, they had all listened to Jessica recount the beginnings of her story with Yoona. They had witnessed Yoona and Jessica drifting together in their own course. But none of them knew the doubts that had sent Jessica all the way to Seoul; and now here she was, on the verge of opening her mouth to tell Tiffany about her girlfriend, an intimacy so unpredicted that even as she started talking, Jessica wondered where she would stop, and how.
*
“Her name’s Yoona.”
“Oh! She’s Korean?”
Jessica laughed again, a little less uneasily this time. She still felt the dull ache of anxiety deep in her stomach, even though she knew she could stop talking about Yoona any time she wanted.
“Well, she’s more Korean than me.”
“Did you meet her here?”
“No. No, she’s in the States. San Francisco, just like me. We go to the same school.”
“Nice. So…how did you guys meet?” Tiffany’s tone hit just the right note of neutral interest, and Jessica found herself relaxing a little more.
*
“I was at this restaurant in San Francisco, with my aunts.”
“Oh?”
“My parents were in Korea for a week, and they suggested that my aunts visit us. During the summer holidays.”
“…Did you want them to?”, Tiffany asked cautiously.
“I…suppose." Jessica hesitated. "They’re nice. They’re good people, in their own way. But-”
“But?”
Jessica shrugged. “I suppose they have their flaws, not that I'm saying I'm perfect. Anyway. I was having dinner with them, and we were about halfway through our meal when it was pretty obvious to me that this girl at the table behind us was arguing with her dad. No. I take that back. It was her dad, who…well, he'd obviously had too much wine, and was arguing with her. There was a second bottle of wine on the table. He'd just been knocking it back, and it wasn't like he was eating a lot with it.”
Tiffany winced. "But how did you see all that?"
“Well, my seat faced the wall. And there was a great big bronze mirror on that wall. I could see the table behind us, in fact, I couldn’t help seeing them whenever I looked up. And you couldn't help paying attention to them, you know what I mean? Her dad was getting louder and louder--yeah, the restaurant was noisy. It was a nice place, a French restaurant. Kinda expensive, lots of people, and her dad was so loud that I could hear him over all that noise. So I looked up to see who was being so damned noisy, and her dad was jabbing at the air-- " Jessica swallowed. "And--and slapping his wallet on the table-he was getting more aggressive-something about her lifestyle-And Yoona was trying to be reasonable." Tiffany nodded absently at this, and Jessica continued. "But she'd also had a glass or two, and she started crying while she was talking to him, but she didn't raise her voice or anything. Her voice was really steady, really calm-sounding. Her mom wasn’t really helping very much. He was talking at her too. And my aunts--my aunts were watching all this, while trying not to look interested.”
Jessica paused and the contempt within her rose again, though everything had happened more than a year ago. She could still see her aunts’ eyes sparkling with interest even as they looked away casually.
“--I could see a little of Yoona’s face in the mirror.”
“What did-what does she look like?” Tiffany sounded mildly curious.
“She…looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She looks like she could get away with murder.”
Jessica paused to think.
“We look kind of alike, I suppose.”
Tiffany snorted inelegantly. Jessica had made that statement matter-of-factly, with total and complete disregard for its implications.
“But she didn’t strike me as pretty, that day. I could only see a little of her face in the mirror, because they were behind us, but at an angle. It was a pretty face. She is pretty. You know, small face, big enough eyes, fair and pretty--but approachable. Nothing that, y’know, stands out in particular.” Jessica laughed.
“It’s such a Yoona thing to do, to remain pretty even when she cries.”
*
Jessica sighed. “I felt sorry for her. She was crying, because her dad was getting more and more in her face, but I think she was also ashamed.”
“What?”
“Ashamed that this was happening in public. To be hectored like that, by her dad who was unstoppably drunk. Or drunk and unstoppable. Whatever.” It had been like watching a train wreck in slow motion, with the cruel, faint hope that he might quiet down for good, every time he paused.
“Is there anywhere she can go for help?”
Jessica swung around quickly to Tiffany in surprise.
“No, no! It’s nothing like that. Nothing like that at all. “
“Ah. That’s good.”
“Nothing that calls for social services, at all. He just drinks a little too much and talks too much after he drinks. I’ve…met him before.”
“Oh..?” Tiffany let the question trail off, and Jessica understood.
“Just as Yoona’s...friend. He makes good money, doesn’t cheat on his wife, he doesn’t hit them-he just doesn’t really know how to…talk to her. You know.” Jessica found herself appealing to an unseen wealth of experiences that she thought they might share, her and Tiffany. She hoped that Tiffany would understand what she meant.
“That’s how it is.”
*
It was the painful embarrassment on Yoona’s face that had prompted Jessica to reach out awkwardly. Perhaps she had thought to match it.
“If she hadn’t been crying, if I hadn’t seen her like that, maybe I would have just looked at her and moved on. Looked down at my dinner and got on with it, I mean. Maybe it was because she was pretty, and wasn’t...wasn't bawling or yelling back at him, but trying to talk normally with tears streaming down her face-- I only knew that at that moment, I wanted to move towards her. I wanted to let her know that I was sorry that this was happening, that I was there, that I was sorry for the way my aunts were pretending to not look at her and the way they were looking at each other, you know?”
“Mm.”
Jessica pushed her hair off her neck. “But she was getting up to go. Her dad had already stomped out by then, and her mother was calling for the check. Maybe she had seen my aunts watching them; I mean, it was hard to miss their attention. I didn’t know what to do, only that I had to get up, rise from my seat quick and I folded my napkin neatly, like I was going to the bathroom.”
“Oh-ho.” Tiffany smiled.
“And then I started walking towards her. I covered the distance between us pretty quickly, you know! As I was about to move past her, I turned just a little, and…I smiled at her. You know, I tried to make my smile...convey everything I wanted her to feel at that moment. Comfort. Happiness. Relief. ”
“Did she smile back?” Tiffany sounded amused.
“Yes. Yes, she did. A little watery smile.”
“That was nice of you.”
“It was the first thing I’d ever done so for a girl I didn’t know, just because I felt like it. ”
*
“What happened after that?”
Jessica shrugged.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“When I came back from the washroom, they'd left. I didn’t think I would see her again.”
“But you did.”
***
Jessica had wanted nothing more than a love that was comfortable. Comforting. Stable and normal. Once you found a good thing, why leave it? Not for her the messy, sometimes literally painful breakups and hookups of the more visible lesbians on campus. So she had held back and held out for someone who was neither crazy nor an unavailable straight-girl crush. Preferably someone without too many hang-ups. She had enough of those herself.
***
“Gay-Straight Alliance mixer.”
“No!” Tiffany started to clap her hands together as she laughed in delight.
“Yes! And she approached me first too.”
***
Yoona had been the braver one. She had been the one to walk up to Jessica, to introduce herself, to thank her. Jessica felt that she would never have been able to do that. Hell, she would’ve fled the party had she been in Yoona’s place, just to avoid the potential embarrassment.
It had been Yoona who kept that first intensely-awkward conversation from crashing and burning, Yoona who suggested exchanging numbers, and Yoona who texted her to hang out, even though Jessica was the one who grew to dote on her. And it had been Yoona who came out to her first, though Jessica was the older of the two.
***
“I hadn’t expected to like her. We wer-are each other’s firsts, you know? And she’s like perfect for me, in so many ways. She’s pretty, she’s smart, she understands me-I mean, she cooks.”
“It sounds perfect.”
“Yes.”
“So why do you sound like you’re about to pass out?”
“Because-” Jessica rested her elbows on her knees. The nervy, swelling feeling in her stomach was back again.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
Jessica brushed aside Tiffany’s kindly-proffered distance; she had come all this way, and she needed to tell someone, anyone. It was now or never. “Because-”
Jessica found herself curled up, arms around her legs and her head resting on her knees as she tried to push the words out.
“Because I think I want to break up with her.”
***
The routine that Jessica had with Yoona, as close as you could get to playing house in the communal kitchens and their rooms, was all that she could have asked for.
***
“Is it…is it okay if I ask why? You don’t have to tell me, though.”
“I don’t know. I don't know how to put it.”
***
But Jessica knew what she felt. When Jessica came home late to Yoona and her steady breathing in their cramped, standard-issue bed, she felt reassured. Yet after Jessica flung off her shoes, washed up and nudged her way in under the covers as quietly as she could, she would feel restless. Not fidgety, not frustrated, but restless. Just like how she felt when she was trying to decide on that elusive major but couldn’t name it.
***
“I don’t know. She’s perfect for me, right? I mean, she’s not perfect, but she’s great for me. She gives me my space. I mean, I know she can tell that there’s something wrong with me. I’ve been withdrawing from her, and she never said anything. She just gave me my space. Even when I came here, God, she only called me once. And then she said I didn’t have to call her.”
“She knows that something's wrong?”
“Yes. She’s a smart girl.”
Yoona was also smart enough to know that giving Jessica her space would probably increase the certainty of their break-up, but she was not smart enough to help either of them, not when Jessica couldn’t figure out how to help herself.
***
The night before Jessica left for Seoul, she had arranged to have dinner with Yoona. It had been a pleasant surprise to see that Yoona had dressed up, which for Yoona meant wearing a dress. For some reason, Yoona had also decided that day to wear heels to match, a black suede pair from Steve Madden which Jessica recognized as a pair that she had insisted on buying for her earlier on in their relationship. On a whim, Jessica had suggested driving to the beach after dinner.
Yoona’s shoes proved to be a problem when they actually arrived at the beach. Jessica had walked down to the sand, but Yoona could not follow. It took Jessica a while to realize that Yoona hadn’t just slowed down behind her, but was stranded on the cement path. The setting sun glinted off the waves and made it difficult to look straight at them, but Jessica squinted and stayed where she was.
Jessica had wanted to turn back to Yoona to say something, but she could not bring herself to do so. To look at Yoona just then seemed to be an action fraught with overwhelming meaning; it would have been to acknowledge the unspoken and now-ironclad fact that there was something wrong between them, and that it was she, Jessica, who had walked away first. So they stood there, these two still, slim figures, watching as the sky glowed brighter and brighter in obscenely beautiful colors, and then darkened slowly.
***
“So what do you want?”
Jessica did not answer. She wished that Tiffany wouldn’t ask as if she, Jessica, had a ready set of answers because she did not. If it was that easy, if she had known, then she wouldn’t be here. She wasn’t like Tiffany, so sure about the right thing to do. So Jessica let her silence form a petulant rebuke, even if Tiffany did not understand it.
“But technically…you’re still together?”
Jessica’s ears were sharp, but they would strain to hear what lay behind the tentative caution of Tiffany’s words.
“…Yes.”
“I see.”
Jessica wasn’t sure if Tiffany approved of all this. Tiffany’s tone had been warm but neutral, like a true counselor.
“Well, thank you for trusting me with all this.”
Tiffany’s gentle touch on her back made Jessica realize that she was damp with sweat, and she shivered a little. But she felt better now, limp and relieved after talking.
***
End of Chapter IIIc
Teaser for Chapter IV: Ping!
“Let’s go to Lotte World.”
Chapter IV
A/N: Again, thank you to my beta-readers who whipped this chapter into shape, awkward dialogue and all, despite being busy.