Chapter 18

I dragged my feet towards the exit sign and watched as all the other students walked through the doors. The impending confrontation with Ryan had been on my mind all afternoon and after careful thought, I decided not seeing him was my preferred choice.

I waited till the hallway was considerably empty before walking towards the door and tiptoeing to look through the glass, transparent top. All I saw were a bunch of students walking and chatting and even though I couldn't see Ryan, I knew that he just had to be there waiting for me.

I walked backwards till my back hit the wall. I glanced at my watch –it was only fifteen minutes since school had let out. Any normal person wouldn't allow himself to be kept waiting for longer than twenty minutes so I was banking on Ryan's sanity. I reached into my bag for my iPod so that I could listen to some music and make the wait less torturous. After a few minutes, I'd finally decided on a song and was putting in my second earphone when my phone rang.

I growled when I read the caller ID. "Oppa, are you here already? Can you wait for like five minutes?" I begged.

"Why don't I do you one better and wait for thirty minutes?"

For someone who didn't know what punctuality meant, he sure knew how to get an attitude when he was the one kept waiting. "Come on, please. Just five minutes."

He chuckled. "Well, it's your lucky day. I was calling to tell you that I'll be late so I'll be there in thirty minutes."

"Thirty minutes?" I repeated incredulously. "What if they lock the school gates? Do you just expect me to stand out in the cold waiting for you? How is this fair to me? It's bad enough that you're always late but you're pretty much telling me to wait an hour for you."

"Nice rant. See you in thirty minutes," he said before hanging up.

Irritated, I threw my phone in my bag and walked back to the door to see if the coast was clear. I couldn't be certain but I was almost sure I'd heard a rumor about the building doors being on automatic lock and I didn't want to end up being the guinea pig testing the theory.

The door suddenly pushed inwards and I jumped back to prevent myself from getting hit.

"Sorry," Nancy, a girl from one of my classes, said as she walked through the door. "I'm sorry about that. Did I hit you?"

I shook my head. I'd been a little rattled but it was no big deal. "I'm fine."

She looked at me curiously. "What are you doing here? I just came back in to grab something I forgot in my locker. Why are you still here?"

I shrugged. "No reason. I just... anyway, are there still many people out there?"

She pursed her lips. "Not that many. Actually, it's pretty empty out there," she said, still looking very curious. "Why are you asking? Are you hiding from someone?"

"Of course not," I scoffed like it was the most ridiculous thing in the world. With her eyes boring into me, I walked towards the door. "I'll see you tomorrow," I said as I reached for the door handle. I heard her fading footsteps as I slowly opened the door and peeked through. The grounds had already begun to look like a ghost town so I straightened my back and walked through the door confidently. Phew! But did that mean I'd have to hide out like that for the rest of my days at Brighton?

I was about to take the sixth step down the stairs when Ryan popped out of nowhere. "Su Jin."

Surprised, I spun away from him at the same moment Nancy ran through the double doors. "No longer hiding in there?" she joked as she skipped down the stairs and ran towards the parking lot.

I took a deep breath in and turned back to the frowning Ryan. "I wasn't hiding in there," I said pointing at the door with my thumb. "I don't know what she's talking about. I just had a few things to do."

He didn't move a facial muscle. "Are you done now?"

"Ehm… I guess?" I was obviously trapped so I decided to accept my fate. He wanted to talk to me? No big deal - I was all ears.

"Cool. So why don't we sit and talk?" he said, walking up to the step I was standing on and sitting next to the railing.





***





I crossed my legs and tried to keep the hems of my pant legs close to my ankles to keep the cold air out. My mother had gone a little overboard hemming my jeans and now there was some space between the top of my running shoes and the bottom of my pants.

Ryan readjusted his butt on the step, smacked his lips then turned to me. "Are we fighting?"

I sighed. I hadn't expected him to be so direct but I'd anticipated a variation of that question and thus, already had a response prepared. I put on my friendliest smile and said, "No."

"Then how come I barely saw you last week?"

I shrugged. "I'm sure we were both busy. You're asking me why you didn't see me like I had anything to do with it. Did you look for me and not find me or something?" I said, jovially. "I'm here, you're there—"

"What are you talking about?" he interrupted without a trace of humor in his voice.

"Nothing." So much for trying to make light of the whole thing.

"Did I do something to you? Did Ali do something?"

I shook my head. "Like what?"

"Are you dating Jonathan Mendez now?" he asked out of nowhere.

My jaw dropped and I glared at him, hoping it was some kind of a joke but he was very serious. Since it wasn't one of the questions I had anticipated, all I could do was close my mouth to keep the flies from entering it. "What do you mean?"

"It's a yes or no question," he said looking directly into my eyes.

I picked up my key chain and showed him my ring. "You know I have a boyfriend."

He didn't bother glancing at my hand and instead, kept staring at my face like he was gauging my reaction, trying to see past the layer of what he might have thought was a façade. "You ate lunch together," he reminded me.

"So?"

He shrugged. "You guys looked really chummy and Ali said there was something on the notice board about it."

I groaned. "Is that why she ignored me the other day?" I'd seen her in the hallway the day after I'd eaten with Jonathan and when I ran up to talk to her, she turned around and walked away.

He chuckled. "She's been coming up with all these theories. First she thought you wanted to get permission from her to date him then next, she thought you'd picked sides and were no longer talking to us."

I shook my head and laughed at the stupidity of it all. "Gosh. Sometimes I really get sick of Ali's overactive imagination."

He put his hand over mine and I looked up at him, completely aware of the feel of his skin.

"So you're not with Jonathan?"

I rolled my eyes. "Of course not."

"Su Jin," he said softly, "if it's not about Jonathan then what is it?"

I pushed his hand of mine and looked away.



***

We sat in silence for a few moments before he said, "Initially, I thought it had something to do with what happened on the train but that's just ridiculous. There's no way you could blame me for what that man did. Or do you?"

I picked up my bag and slung it over my shoulder. "Hey, my brother might be here – let me go and look for him," I said, standing up.

Ryan quickly grabbed my hand to keep me from taking a step.

I looked down at him. "What?"

"If your brother comes, we'll see him from here or he'll call you."

I shrugged. "No. He wouldn't want to waste his daytime minutes," I said, knowing it was one hell of a dumb excuse.

Still holding onto my wrist he said, "Su Jin, why are you running away?"

I shook my head. "What's there to run from? I'm just—"

"Just sit."

"Ryan, I have to go," I said, pulling his fingers off my wrist."

"Your brother isn't here. Let's talk."

"I have to—"

"Please."

Something about the tone of his voice caused me to resign. I sat down dramatically and folded my arms. "What?"

"So it's about what happened on the train?"

I dropped my head and looked at my lap. "I don't know."

"It's not my fault that that guy attacked us."

"I know."

"So what is it then?"

I began to clean the dirt from under my fingernails. How do you tell a guy that you don't feel safe around him? And that you can't trust him to protect you especially when he had no obligation to do so and you didn't want to sound like a weak, pathetic excuse for a woman? "I told you that it's nothing."

"Su Jin," he pressed.

"It's nothing."

"Su Jin."

Why couldn't he just let it go? "Look, I already said it's nothing. What do you want me to say? I don't know, the whole thing was weird, okay? I'm not blaming you or anything. I'm just glad that those two guys came when they did. If they hadn't come, who knows what would have happened?"

He nodded knowingly. "Oh, I see."

"What? What do you see?" What kind of reaction was that?

"You think I'm a coward."

I instantly felt bad. "No, that's not it."

"I've relived that day a thousand times," he said, ignoring my response, "and every time I do, I wonder if I could have done it differently. Plus it doesn't help that I keep coming up with all these witty comebacks that I could have used to make that man feel really small." He looked skyward. "There are so many things I could have said to him but… but there are some times that I feel that I did the right thing."

"But you just sat there – you really didn't do anything."

His face colored. "I told him to leave us alone. What more did you want me to do? Punch him?"

Violence wasn't the cure to all ills, but would it have hurt to send the bastard home with a black eye?

"Punching him would have been stupid. If I had punched him, he'd have punched back. And even if I did manage to kick his ass, we'd both have been arrested once the train stopped and the day would have turned out much worse."

Since when did inaction become an action? "But you would have been right to punch him – you were defending yourself."

He shook his head. "No. If I punched him first, the police would say that I assaulted him and he'd have been the victim defending himself. I'd be the one being charged with a crime and it would have been much uglier than either of us would have wanted."

"That's bulls.hit. Punching him is defending yourself from his attack."

"Or it could have been worse. What if I hit him and he had a knife in his pocket and stabbed me? Then I'd have ended up in the hospital just because some assh.ole decided to tell me to go back to my country. Does ending up in a hospital mean that I'm brave?"

I shook my head. He was making sense but it still didn't sit well with me. "But it's because no one reacts that things don't change. If you just let them insult you, they'll keep doing it because they know you'll never do anything to defend yourself."

He shrugged. "The world isn't perfect. I understand what you're saying but at that moment, when he was there, all I could think about was protecting us. I wasn't trying to make a statement about civil rights and trying to make the world just – all I wanted was for us to get through it safely. I'm sorry that it makes you think I'm a coward but that was the best thing I could do at that moment."

Why did he have to sound so hurt? "Ryan, I don't think you're a coward."

***

We sat at the steps for a while longer and I listened as he shared anecdotes of how he and his family had lived in Dubai and that is was supposedly quite racist but since he was young and his family lived in a somewhat expatriate community, he hadn't really had any first hand experiences with it.

Then he talked about Houston and how it was different because there was more assimilation with Americans and how it was a city in its own right but not as flashy as Dubai and he spoke about his experiences there and what it was like being a foreigner yet again.

His basic point was that racism existed in the world, whether I liked it or not and he was sure that non-Koreans probably had some unpleasant experiences back home and while it was deplorable, it wasn't something I should dwell on on a daily basis.

I wasn't sure that I agreed with it or not but I was sure that I didn't want to go through life feeling that it was okay for some people to attack me and all I had to do was just brush it off and ignore them. But it was okay. I understood his point of view and I was glad to hear his thoughts on it. Plus for some reason, it made me feel like I knew him better.

"Do you want me to wait with you till your brother gets here?" he asked, standing up.

I did the same and we walked towards the parking lot.

The school had emptied out and I could only see one other person on campus but hey, I was a big girl and didn't need a bodyguard. "I'm fine."

He looked around and shook his head. "I don't think so. I'll stay."

"No. I'm sure my brother will be here any minute so you can leave," I said, pushing him towards his car.

He laughed as he let me push him. "Okay, if you insist. But I guess I can tell Ali that you didn't pick Jonathan over us."

'Us' huh? "The Ali and Ryan team?"

He raised his brow. "The what?"

I took my hands off his back and shrugged. "Nothing. But maybe I should find some new friends so I don't feel like an outsider," I half-joked.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked seriously.

"Hey, chill," I said, smiling at him but he didn't smile back.

We walked in silence till we arrived at his car. He unlocked the door then spun around to look at me.

"I guess this means we're cool, right?" he asked hopefully.

I laughed. "We've always been cool."

"I mean, for real. No more ignoring me in school and you're still doing the movie…?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Cool," he said with satisfaction. "And we're cool?"

I laughed again. "Yes, we're cool. You don't have to keep asking."

We shared some awkward laughter as he opened his car door. "Why do I feel like we should hug or something?"

I giggled. "I don't know." We weren't back to normal but I could bet that we would eventually.

He walked over to me and stretched his arms out. "Okay, come on, let's hug it out," he said with a flair.

"Are you serious?" I asked, laughing at the goofy expression on his face.

He moved closer and placed his hands on my shoulders. "Now, we're really cool," he said as he pulled me into a bear hug.

He was slightly taller than Min Ki and his body felt different. I laughed some more then pushed him off me. "Happy now?"

"Yeah," he said before getting into his car and turning the engine on. He drove for about ten seconds before stopping.

"What?"

"You know what? I'll just wait here till your brother arrives."