Bitter Root

Chapter 7

"Hey, you," Dojoon said as he opened the door to find Dolores standing on the other side.

"Oh, hey," she replied as she walked through the door that Dojoon was holding open.

"I was on my way out. The other guys went to a café, and I was going to go catch a movie. We figured we'd give Woosung the house to himself for once. I didn't know you were coming over," Dojoon said.

"Yeah, actually Woosung doesn't know either. I just finished my dentist's appointment early and I decided to stop by," Dolores explained. "So, he's not expecting me."

"Well, I'm sure he won't mind," Dojoon said as he slipped out the door.

Dolores came in and sat on the couch. She was going to call out for Woosung, but she got distracted by a notification on her phone. Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of tan skin in the adjoining kitchen.

"¡Dios Santísimo!" Dolores yelled. "You're buck naked! What the hell, man?"

"Well, I don't see you turning away," Woosung pointed out as he stretched to reach a bottle of water above the refrigerator. It was true that Dolores hadn't turned away. Her mind had somehow gone to mush as she sat beholding Woosung "como Dios lo trajo al mundo" as her dad would say, just as God had brought him into this world. Woosung, for his part, seemed unbothered by his nudity.

"You know, you really should have done your research on me. It's all over the Internet that I walk around my house naked. This really shouldn't come as a shock to you," he defended.

Finally, Dolores put her hands in front of her eyes, but it was too late by then. She had seen all of him. She feared she would never get that image out of her head. It wasn't that he wasn't beautiful because he most definitely was. It was more that she was afraid that she wouldn't be as successful as she had hoped to be in keeping things light and easy between them. She wasn't sure she was ready for a serious relationship, but she knew that she would now be haunted by the memory of Woosung in all of his spender.

"Could you, please, go put on some clothes?" Dolores begged Woosung from behind her hands.

"Sure, all you had to do was ask," he teased as he walked past her and down the hall to his bedroom. Dolores opened one eye and watched through a crack in her fingers as his perfectly formed bottom walked out of sight.

"That man's gonna be the death of me," she whispered to herself. When he returned in basketball shorts and a T-shirt, Dolores still couldn't look his way.

"Hey, I'm de-nudified," Woosung said, fluffing her hair. "It's safe to look now."

"I still can't look," Dolores said from behind her hands. "That image is forever seared into my brain."

"Come on, it wasn't that bad. Do you know how many hours I spend in the gym every week to get those washboard abs?" Woosung said.

"Oh, don't say washboard abs!" Dolores squealed. "It's not that it was bad. It's that it wasn't bad. That's the whole problem. It was really --- good."

"Ah," Woosung replied, nodding his head in understanding. "I mean, if you prefer me the other way, I can go back and take this off," he teased.

"No!" Dolores blurted out quickly. "We don't need that," she assured him. "It's just that I feel like I'm not quite ready to be in a serious relationship yet, but I feel like we're on that path already. It's like part of me wants to hit the brakes and the other part wants to hit the gas," she said.