Sea Change by Gina Chung

Author:Gina Chung [Chung, Gina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

It was two in the morning by the time the party broke up. Things had gotten awkward after the bowl game, and people were calling cars and saying their goodbyes. When almost everyone had gone, Yoonhee found me in the kitchen. “Are you okay?” she asked, touching my shoulder.

I didn’t look up, just kept searching for a garbage bag to throw all the orphaned beer bottles and plastic cups into. “I’m fine.”

Yoonhee gave me the look that meant she knew I was lying, but she leaned in and gave me a crooked hug. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “Don’t stay up too late.”

I came out into the living room to find that Tae was standing by the door, the last to leave. The light from our hallway illuminated the lenses of his glasses. He was wearing a dark blue oversize coat with a turned-up corduroy collar, and he had his hands in the pockets. His eyes were slightly bloodshot from the weed, and I wondered if mine were as well. I resisted the urge to reach out and touch the stubble on his chin and upper lip, the wiry black hairs interspersed with a few strands of silver. “So our next show is in a few weeks,” he said. “If you give me your number, I can text you the details.”

My stomach fluttered as I put my number into his phone. He placed his phone to his ear and called me. “Well, aren’t you going to answer it?” he said with mock seriousness.

I picked up, the phone warm against my ear. “Hello?”

“Hey,” he said. “How did you get this number?”

“Oh, some weird dude at this party gave it to me.” It was strange, I thought, how I could both see and feel him smiling through the phone.

“Same thing happened to me,” he said. “This girl just walked up to me and insisted on giving me her number. She was really pushy about it.”

“Maybe they meant to get in touch with each other, and they got us by mistake,” I said.

“If that’s the case,” he said, “I’m glad that happened.”

Neither of us moved. From the living room, where my playlist was still going, Neil Young’s thin voice quavered through “Harvest Moon.”

“Well, I’ll see you around,” Tae said. Then to my surprise, he leaned forward and kissed me, somewhere between the corner of my mouth and my ear, right where my phone had been. When the door swung shut, I sat down on our couch alone, both exhilarated and incredibly sad, for reasons that felt as tangled as the garlands of paper flowers that Yoonhee had painstakingly hung up. And as I began to drift off to sleep, still surrounded by the silver balloons bobbing around the ceiling, I wondered what Tae had wished for.

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