Vacilando.
On the Path.Them : an ending // the end.
Vacilando (v); Spanish. Travelling when the experience is more important than the destination.
There have been many men cleaving, bulldozing their way into her life—making demands they have no rights to—and the lot of them used their silver tongue, their eye-catching looks and old money. They are often bland, almost indistinguishable from each other—and they always, always regard her as beneath them.
Yes, he has the air of forsaken devotee torn between dogged curiosity and loyalty to adolescent romance. He frets at the possible committing accidental insults aimed for her, an apology ready in hand. He fumbles through their coupling, traces her skin with worshipping lips and adoring fingers, and she finds that endearing.
But he strips them by far.
A random stranger trapped in a foreign land. Makes the last moments shared with the man she stood in a wedding altar, pledging forever to, less pitiful and severed ties between once loving partners loses its potency to sting her.
His newly dry-cleaned, vanilla-scented clothes are set neatly, centred on her bed—a note written in cursive, felted ink indicates it’s a bribe for the non-functional light.
She places his clothes inside a cotton tote bag, with the words ‘carpe diem’ stitched on, and the bottom stained with the coffee ring, and a swathe of acrylic paint and an imprint of cherry-red lipstick.
Hyun frowns. “Wait, what are you doing?”
“I’m packing your clothes,” she says, punctuated with the brashly silent ‘duh’.
“What about your brother’s clothes?” he presses, careful to pace his steps on the narrow carpeted, spiralling stairs. He nearly slams face-first when she abruptly whirls around, and bites the inside of her cheek, and her lips pressed into a thin line.
She flickers a loaded glance at the blazer, then turns away.
“Keep it.”
“Wouldn’t your brother be pissed at you for giving his clothes to some guy you just happened to meet in France?” he hedges for confirmation.
“No, he won’t,” she says tersely.
“Seriously,” he pauses, holds his breath, and blinks.
“He doesn’t need it anymore.”
She lifts her chin.
His eyes drop to her rouge-painted mouth. Still waiting for a glare perhaps, maybe some silence, another chance to test if she’s the answer—
“Besides, it looks better on you than it was on him.”
For some inexplicable reason, he willingly presses his lips against hers, tasting that peppermint balm, bitter expresso, and sweet chocolate sauce. His heart still beats to an electrifying pulse, his breath locked in his throat, warm sizzling heat spreads all over and his palms are sweaty.
She breaks away, and lets out a tiny gasp; he feels curling into a smile, wrought with solemn and solace. Their foreheads touching for a blissful second; she tilts her head sideways, staring right at, gazing deep into his eyes, with a look that says we can never.
“Hey, we’re not going to do this, remember,” she says softly.
“I’m sorry, you’re right,” he blurts out, reeling.
He losses all that blustering curiosity, forces himself to conjure a hollow smile. “This is goodbye, then?”
She unlocks the doors of a vintage navy blue mini cooper, tossing that brilliant, breath-taking grin at him. “Now, get in. We wouldn’t want you to miss your flight.”
The drive to the airport is unexpectedly laced with tension and awkwardness. Nevertheless, Nara forges on—the day is too precious to end in a withering bad aftertaste. Witticism is a weapon she yields in the face of adversity. So as deflection.
“Don’t be too upset.”
“I’m not upset,” he bristles sparrow-quick, crosses his arms above his broad chest. The absolute paragon posture of blue-tipped indignation. “I’m just thinking.”
“I see. Didn’t know that sulking is a consequential part of deep thinking.”
He grits his teeth. “I’m not sulking.”
He mistakes their sole union for something beyond a night of mutual comfort and infatuation, she thinks and doesn’t begrudge his antipathy. Last night is a flurry of dreamy haze, shared pity and rare allowance of mistake, piled on misguided spontaneity, misplaced sympathy and a little intrigue and uncharacteristic audacity. Nothing more, nothing less.
“France was supposed to be a do-over. A new beginning. A fresh perspective on life. Past, present, future and all that shebang,” she pauses, her attention sliding to her right-veined hand—a pale circular band marring her finger—and back to the meadowed road.
“And I blamed it on all those feel-good movies for false advertising at its finest,” she melodramatically hisses.
He scoffs, and it’s a start for his frosty brooding thawing to an acceptance. “France was my escape too,” he murmurs. “Very cliché of me.”
“We’re all clichés,” she agrees. Honesty works better, she supposes, when two strangers, with secrets to confess, are trapped together in a rental car spluttering smog every now and then.
“Hypothetically speaking, would a girl like you and a guy like me work?”
He struggles to retain stoicism on his beautiful features; his sight has a way of drifting to the base of her chin, the bladed-line of her clavicle, and his long legs bouncing against each other.
His optimism is saccharinely admirable. The exaltation glimmering in his onyx eyes elevates his already gorgeous countenance to a divine level—and she takes her time to commit this look, this man, this besotted smile to her memory.
“Don’t let lust fool you. I’m not the one or the end,” she advises in the sincerity she could muster.
She intends to pay her debt to him. In spite of everything, when she drops him at the airport later, what they have—an acquaintance, a one night stand, a fling—will not resume beyond this one night in France.
“So what are you, if not the end?”
Perhaps she will meet another man to placate the void. Or maybe she doesn’t. But she knows this, she would not trade this encounter for any other.
“I’m just a pitstop for you to recuperate.”
He dips his chin; the smile he has is brittle and wistful. “And what am I to you?
“You’re a reminder, a wakeup call,” she says, in earnest.
“Of what?”
My worth, Nara wants to say. But she doesn’t. There is distance they must uphold after all.
Her lips arch into a brilliant curve that warrants no additional questioning.
The silence that comes after, shimmering between them, is a soothing concession.
Realisation batters him in a hail of mercurial bullets to his chest in the middle of a ghastly off-key duet; his eyes screwed shut and he’s screeching his lungs to the chorus, and his fingers accidentally scrape at the velvety cover of a gift box—he misses, needs, desires Seol-hee. When he digs deeper within, one night doesn’t abate, doesn’t erase his yearning for Seol-hee.
“We’re here,” she declares, hauling him out of his musing.
“Oh, we are?” He pokes his head out from the rolled down windows, shielding his eyes from the afternoon glare.
She parks the mini cooper—affectionately christened as ‘Maximus’ for being the greatest contributor to air pollution, or so she says—by the road side, ignoring of all the potential laws she might be breaking. Considering the tally of middle fingers raised and the many, many exchange of heated French words that he is adamantly sure are curses and insults, a hefty fine is to be expected at some point.
“Buy yourself an umbrella or a raincoat. England’s a lot rainier than France,” she reminds him, right at the airport’s entrance. “You might not be lucky the second time around.”
“Yes, mother,” he chimes, like a uniformed schoolboy.
“Call me mother one more time.”
“Mother,” he repeats.
She punches his forearm, and it takes most of his willpower not to scream ‘ow’, instead he clamps his lower lip hard, flinging his meanest scowl at her.
But she’s halfway back to the minicar, waving two fingers mimicking the ‘V’ alphabet to signal ‘ciao’ at him.
He feels a small amount of embarrassment, tiny bit foolish and flowering awkwardness for chasing, well skipping after her and hollering, “Hey, wait. Hey, hey, wait!” to a crowd of baffled onlookers.
He’s wheezing the entirety of his lungs out, leaning against the car’s door to gain his breath back. “Here,” he pants, placing a modest brass bracelet on her upturned palm. “It’s not much, but it’s something, you know.”
She raises a single perfect, uncertain eyebrow. “What’s this?”
“Payment,” he answers, hoping his gratitude is visible as polished silver. “Thanks for taking a chance on me.”
“Thank you for letting me.” She steps closer, tilting her head back. “Promise me something.”
“What is it?”
She takes another step forward, and she’s awfully close, leaning on the balls of her feet. The corners of her scarlet-lined mouth curving into that coy smirk he’s come to unabashedly adore.
“Name your firstborn, Maximus, in my honour,” she deadpans.
She leaves him tongue-tied, drowning in mild exasperation and bewitching confusion thrums in his ribcage. Just for a moment, it hums a peculiar and poignant French-melodied descant and he’s unreasonably pleased, somewhat sad and nostalgia already distorting his vision.
He swallows. “O-o-okay,” Hyun says, dragging the syllable longer into a question.
“Good.”
She kisses him back.
There’s a finality to that peppermint-tinged kiss.
This time though, it—she—tastes of eternal goodbye.
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