Her hair was down and wild, wine-red even in this light, and her mouth was slightly open.
Strawberry girl. He tried again to remember what he’d thought the first time he saw her. He tried to remember how this happened – how she went from someone he’d never met to the only one who mattered.
And he wondered … What would happen if he didn’t take her to her uncle’s house? What would happen if he kept driving?
Why
couldn’t this
have
waited?
If Eleanor’s life had caved in next year, or the year after, she could have run to him. Not from, not away.
Jesus. Why couldn’t she just wake up?
Park stayed awake for another hour or so, fueled by Coke and hurt feelings. Then the wreck of the night caught up with him.
There wasn’t a rest stop around, so he pulled off on a county road, onto the gravel that passed as a shoulder.
He unbuckled his seat belt, unbuckled Eleanor’s, then pulled her into him, laying his head on hers. She still smelled like last night. Like sweat and sweetness and the Impala. He cried into her hair until he fell asleep.
Eleanor She woke up in Park’s arms. It caught her by surprise.
She would’ve thought it was a dream, but her dreams were always terrifying. (With Nazis and babies crying and teeth rotting out of her mouth.) Eleanor had never dreamed anything as nice as this, as nice as Park, sleepy-soft and warm
…
Warm
through.
Someday,
she
thought,
somebody’s going to wake up to this every morning.
Park’s face, asleep, was a brand new kind of beautiful.
Sunshine-trapped-in-amber skin.
Full, flat mouth. Strong, arched cheekbones. (Eleanor didn’t even have cheekbones.) He caught her by surprise, and before she could help herself, her heart was breaking for him. Like it didn’t have anything better to break over …
Maybe it didn’t.
The sun was just below the horizon, and the inside of the truck was bluey pink. Eleanor kissed Park’s new face – just under his eye, not quite on his nose. He stirred, and she felt every part of him shift against her. She ran the end of her nose along his brow and kissed his lashes.
His eyelids fluttered. (Only eyelids do that. And butterflies.) And his arms came to life around her. ‘Eleanor …’ he sighed.
She held his beautiful face and kissed him like it was the end of the world.
Park
She wouldn’t be on the bus with him.
She wouldn’t roll her eyes at him in English.
She wouldn’t pick a fight with him just because she was bored.
She wouldn’t cry in his bedroom about the things he couldn’t fix for her.
The whole sky was the color of her skin.
Eleanor There’s only one of him, she thought, and he’s right here.
He knows I’ll like a song before I’ve heard it. He laughs before I even get to the punchline.
There’s a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes me want to let him open doors for me.
There’s only one of him.
Park
His parents never talked about how they met, but when Park was younger, he used to try to imagine it.
He loved how much they loved each other. It was the thing he thought about when he woke up scared in the middle of the night. Not that they loved him – they were his parents, they had to love him. That they loved each other. They didn’t have to do that.
None of his friend’s parents were still together, and in every case that seemed like the number one thing that had gone wrong with his friends’ lives.
But Park’s parents loved each other. They kissed each other on the mouth, no matter who was watching.
What are the chances you’d ever meet someone like that? he wondered. Someone you could love forever, someone who would forever love you back? And what did you do when that person was born half a world away?
The math seemed impossible.
How did his parents get so lucky?
They couldn’t have felt lucky at the time. His dad’s brother had just died in Vietnam; that’s why they sent his dad to Korea. And when his parents got married, his mom had to leave everything and everyone she loved behind.
Park wondered if his dad saw his mom in the street or from the road or working in a restaurant.
He wondered how they both knew …
This kiss had to last Park forever.
It had to get him home.
He needed to remember it when he woke up scared in the middle of the night.
Eleanor The first time he’d held her hand, it felt so good that it crowded out all the bad things. It felt better than anything had ever hurt.
Park
Eleanor’s hair caught fire at dawn.
Her eyes were dark and shining, and his arms were sure of her.
The first time he’d touched her hand, he’d known.
Eleanor There’s no shame with Park.
Nothing is dirty. Because Park is the sun, and that’s best way she could think to explain it.
Park
‘Eleanor, no, we have to stop.’
‘No …’
‘We can’t do this …’
‘No. Don’t stop, Park.’
‘I don’t even know how to …
I don’t have anything.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘But I don’t want you to get …’
‘I don’t care.’