Somewhere outside of my sleep I sense a faint rumbling. I open my eyes and turn toward the digital clock. Red numbers glow in darkness: 2:00 a.m. The sounds grow loud, coming closer, roaring through the wide silence of the night like an oncoming train. The roaring builds:

One minute.

Two minutes.

Three minutes - then mysteriously stops.

Dead silence.

I sit up in bed, then walk to the window. A single street lamp casts a gilded shadow on the dark street and there in the center of the light is a motorcycle. The driver sits, legs spread wide, straddling it. Dark raven hair.

Jungkook.

He sits completely still, like a messenger from some other universe carrying a secret I'm destined to intuit.

No helmet, so unlike him. I run downstairs, but just before I get there, he starts the engine and quickly takes off as if he suddenly changed his mind.

"Jungkook! Jungkook!" I called out to the darkness, as my heart pounds faster and harder. There's so way he could hear me, but I call him again and again, overcome with desperation. Then a window creaks opens in the house.

"Suzy, are you okay?"

Damn. Irene. "Yes, yes, I'm fine," I call back. She accepts that. I can't imagine why.

I walk to the edge of the lawn, out of the view from her window, and wait, hugging my knees. I don't know what's happening or what it means, but my body has register high alert and my heart won't stop slamming in my chest.

For no reason, I whisper his name, so softly it's almost like praying.

"Jungkook."

In the distance, the sound of his bike gets lower and lower until there's nothing at all but silence. Still disoriented from being wrenched awake, I lean back in the grass and doze off, losing track of time. Finally, I get to my feet and head back to the house. I ease open the door to muffle its rusty noise. As it's about to slam closed behind me, the rumbling begins to build again. I catch my breath and stand completely still. Very gently I ease the door back open and step outside, catching it before it slams behind me. Irene has gone back to sleep, I'm sure.

I walk out to the road and wait in the darkness like a hitchhiker.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Three minutes.

Four minutes.

The roar grows in intensity. I step back as the blinding light flashes on and off as it follows the curves of the road and finally hits me directly. I raise my hand to shield my eyes as Jungkook slows the bike and stops inches in front of me. The engine goes silent.

His hair wild and windblown, his eyes red and rimmed with sadness. The stoic, repressed tower of strength has been replaced with a grief-stricken Jungkook who looks as though life has him.

There are no words to say. Nothing spoken that will change things, but his need for closeness is almost noticeable.

If only, if only. I don't let myself think what might be, I only think of what is right now. I climb behind him on the motorcycle as if it's my rightful place and cling to him, my legs pressed against his, two bodies joined as one. I think of being behind him on the surfboard. This time it's less clear who's saving whom.

He steers the bike out to the road again and picks up speed. I rub my cheek back and forth against the softness of his shirt, over the hard muscles of his back and he leans into me.

I have no idea where we're going - somewhere, anywhere, nowhere - it doesn't matter.

He slows finally at a beach and we park. The water is strangely still. Jungkook puts an arm around my waist and pulls me close to him. We walk for a while, then another as a stream of tears runs down his perfect face.

We stop at the water's edge and he stares out, lost in thought. I want to say something, anything, to try to make him feel better. "You lost the closest person in the world . . . He was a miraculous man."

Jungkook looks at me directly and nods his head. He drops to the sand, pulling me down next to him. "He was exactly that," he says. "Do you know what a shaman is?"

"Yoongi told me, he told me about his father."

"Well he was one too," Jungkook says, "even though he would never really admit it."

We sit in silence. Jungkook raises his head. It's almost as though he's listening to Yoongi in his head.

"What?" I ask for no reason. "What are you thinking?"

"About how he saved people," he says.

"Who did he save?"

He shrug, running a hand through his hair.

"Tell me, please?"

"People here who were sick . . . and once  . . ."

"What?"

He looks eye-to-eye with me. "A girl on the beach," he says, almost like a confession. "She was drowning. He swan out and saved her."

"And?" I don't know why, but I know there's more. I look at his face and see something about it that pains him. "Where were you?"

He shakes his head slowly.

"It's something I never told anyone," he says. "It happened a long time ago. You asked me a while ago if I had ever not saved someone . . ." He bites the corner of his lip. "I didn't tell you the truth . . . There was this girl . . . three years ago." He pauses again, reliving it. "She was . . . obsessed with me in some kind of sick way."

"What happened?"

"She was crazy . . . I don't know. She tried to get me to like her, to pay attention to her . . ."

I hold my breath, a knot in my stomach.

"She swam out too far one day and pretended she was drowning. I pulled her out even though I knew it was a ploy."

"So?"

"I didn't say anything, but then just a few days later she did it a second time. I told her I knew she was faking it. I said if it happened again, I would ignore her. I told her she was putting other people's lives at risk."

I wait for him to go on.

"Except she did it one last time. Only this time I think she really was trying to kill herself. She did just as I was walking off the beach at the end of my shift."

He sits still, staring out at the water, as if he's frozen.

"What happened, Jungkook?"

"I heard her scream, Suzy. I was back at the parking lot. Too far to hear her, but I did. I heard her and I ignored it. I thought she was faking, I didn't think she needed help. I didn't want to play that game. Only I was wrong."

"Did she drown?"

"She would have, but Suga saved her. He was leaving the beach too and he heard her. He heard the voice in his head and he ran back and swam out to her. She was far out by then, way beyond the waves broke. She never would have made it back, and I can't ever forget what I did nad what could have happened. If it wasn't for Suga . . ."

I reach out and take his hand. I can't stand the suffering in his face.

"I didn't do my job, Suzy . . . and then when you almost drowned -"

"You came as soon as you heard her . . ."

"But I couldn't get there in time and you were in such terrible shape - I began to relive something I had to tried to put out of my mind, something that haunted me. I thought it was some kind of divine punishment. And now there's no Suga anymore," Jungkook says, "no one to intervene. No one with that higher consciousness, or whatever you want to call it."

"You can't think that way. You have to make peace with yourself and go on."

"I know," Jungkook says. 

"And he left us so much."

He rises to his feet and pulls me up with him. "More than you know," he whispers.