No Rest for the Wicked

Chapter 5

            Luna woke up the next morning, lying beside BM who was still sound asleep. His hand was still entwined in hers. They had held hands all night long. Luna was surprised that BM hadn't spent the night, tossing and turning, which was his custom. She watched him as he slept peacefully, his strong chest rising and falling with each breath. She was tempted to kiss him, but she thought better of it. No one wants to be awakened by an unsolicited kiss.

She pressed her free hand against his pecs and noticed how large they were. She giggled softly as she remembered reading that he had once said in an interview that he wanted to take care of his "man titties", which had given rise to a viral frenzy in which he was named the founder of the "Big Tiddie Committee". Soon the joke became an actual club, growing to include such names as Hongseok, Baekho, Bang Chan, Mingyu, RM, Wonho, Jay Park, and Johnny. What started as a joke about men with large, defined pecs became something more serious when the group donated $20,000 to breast cancer research.

Luna remembered her Woojin's unfiltered nature. When they were kids, she could always count on him to say the thing that everyone was thinking but no one had the guts to say. It was that very mouth of his that often got him in trouble in elementary school, but no one ever had to wonder what he was thinking.

Just then, one of BM's eyes opened half-way as he sleepily pondered how he managed to wake up next to Norma. Luna, he corrected himself silently. It was a bit difficult to remember her new name now that he knew who she actually was, but he was trying. He felt like it might have been a bit of an overkill to legally change her name, but he couldn't really say much about it since he had quite a collection of names himself --- Jinseok, Matthew, Big Matthew (BM), and Woojin. He knew the power that a name held in the reinvention of a person. He wondered why Norma had chosen to reinvent herself, and he wondered if anything had gotten lost along the way as she had begun to live her life as Luna, throwing off her given name.

And on that note, he finally opened both of his eyes and stared at Luna, who somehow looked incredibly fetching with her curly hair jutting out wildly and her glasses not yet on her face, but rather lying on the nightstand by a glass of water. She always looked lovely in glasses, but BM appreciated how clearly he could see her emerald eyes when she wasn't wearing them.

"Breakfast?" he asked with a crackly voice that had not yet been used that morning.

"I should really be going," Luna replied, trying to extricate her hand from BM's.

"Will you come back tonight?" he asked, sounding like a small child who is trying to learn to separate from his mother.

"Tonight?" Luna questioned. "So, you want this to be a regular thing, huh?"

"Why not?" BM replied. "We used to sleep together all the time," he reminded her.

"Yeah, when we were nine," she shot back. "I'm not sure how appropriate it is now," she added.

"Aw, who cares about that?" BM admonished her gently. "What was it you used to say? 'You drive your car, and I'll drive mine'," he quoted one of her favorite sayings that she had gleaned from her grandfather.

Luna nodded. "I know. It's just that I feel embarrassed about taking the 'walk of shame' in front of J. Seph," she admitted.

"Why should you be ashamed?" he questioned. "We didn't even have sex, much to my disappointment, I might add," he went on. "Listen, I'll bring you a protein shake, and you can wait here until J. Seph and I head for the gym," he reasoned.

"Okay," Luna agreed since the plan wouldn't involve her having an embarrassing run-in with J. Seph in the shared living space. "But listen," she went on. "I'm not sure I can be here tonight," she informed him, hoping to manage his expectations.

"But you're my human Ambien," BM said. "How am I going to get to sleep without you?" he questioned, sounding panicked.

"You've slept by yourself all this time. I'm sure you can do it again tonight," she assured him.

"No, I can't!" BM protested. "That's the whole point," he replied. "I can't sleep --- ever. I just lie here awake, night after night," he countered. "Sleeping with you reminds me of childhood, when our biggest problem was a scraped knee," he added wistfully.

Luna said nothing, but as she thought back over her childhood, she realized that she and BM, although living in the same city, had lived very different lives. She could not remember a time when a scraped knee was the worst of her problems. She considered telling BM the rest of her story, everything that had happened since they had parted ways in 6th grade, but she wasn't sure he was ready for it. Or perhaps, she was the one who wasn't ready to tell it. He knew who Norma was, but she wasn't so sure that he really knew Luna all that well. Sure, he had figured out her identity, but that was about it. The rest of her life was unknown to him, and she intended to keep it that way.

Luna's phone buzzed and she picked it up off the nightstand. "Shit," she whispered as she read the message.

"What's wrong?" BM asked, hoping it wasn't something that would keep her from sleeping over that night as well.

"One of the under 400 speakers of Mixtec has just died," she revealed to BM. "Every day we get closer to the extinction of this language," she warned. "I shouldn't be here right now. I should be at home on my computer, transcribing as fast as I can," she fretted. "Time is almost up for these people. With every native speaker that dies, we come closer to the end of the road for this language."

"That sounds like a lot of pressure you are putting on yourself," BM noted "I mean, it's not solely up to you to fix this problem," he reminded her.

"No, not entirely, but I'm the one most fitted for the job at the moment because my background in Mandarin helps me to hear the tones in Mixtec. Some dialects of it have at least 10 different tones, which can be hard for English-speakers to even catch," she explained. "That's why I need to be working and not pissing around," she added.

"Pissing around?" BM repeated. "Is that all this is to you?" he continued, sounding hurt.

"No, I didn't mean it like that," Luna amended. "It's just that I have to keep my priorities straight," she added.

"Right. Priorities," BM repeated after her yet again. "Do you want to know what I think?" he asked rhetorically since he fully intended to tell her whether she wanted to know or not. "I think you have a savior complex," he continued. "You feel the need to insert yourself into situations to be the heroine of the story," he charged.

"Well, don't we all do that?" she defended. "I mean, isn't that the point of life? All of life is about taking control of what you can, and steering your life in the direction you want it to go," she argued.

BM shook his head. "All of life is about letting go," he opined. "We have to live life with an open hand. The more you try to take control, the harder life becomes," he added.

"That just sounds like you not taking responsibility for your life and then trying to cover it by saying something that sounds wise," she charged.

BM stared at her for a moment, torn between concern and anger. She seemed to be calling into question the trajectory of his entire life and judging it as inadequate. Perhaps being a K-pop star didn't feed hungry children or stop any wars, but he didn't want to believe that his work was meaningless in the vast scheme of things.

"Listen, I need to go," Luna said as she got up from the bed and walked to the door. BM stood up quickly and opened the door for her.

"Adelante," he said, remembering one of the many Spanish words Norma had taught him when they were young. If you love something, set if free, he thought as he watched her walk away.