Often (Book Two)

Chapter 4

Minji

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

I turned the key in the ignition and revved the engine hard enough for the RPMs to hit red. I wanted to peel out and tear down the street, leaving the sign of my frustration as black tire marks on the road.

I was tired. Fuck was I tired, and I hated to have to clean up other people's messes at work. I'd been working twelve-, fifteen-, hell, even eighteen-hour days for months, and the one night I was able to put aside time with Hanni at home, I was called in.

I paused as the word seemed to bounce around inside of my skull: home.

Whether we were at my place or hers, out with friends, or in that tiny little shithole Chinese restaurant she liked so much, it felt like home to me. The strangest part was that the house that had cost me a fortune had never felt like home until she spent time there. Was her home also with me?

We hadn't even had time to pick where we would live in New York. We had identified the new location for KMG, made a map of where each of our offices would be, drawn up blueprints of the renovations and hired a designer . . . but Hanni and I didn't have an apartment to go to.

Which was the greatest sign that old habits die hard, because in reality my relationship with her had completely altered my relationship to my job. Only a year ago I'd been committed to one thing: my career. Now, the thing that mattered most to me was Hanni, and every time my career got in the way of being with her it burned me up inside. I don't even know specifically when that had happened, but I suspect the change had been effected long before I would have ever admitted it.

Maybe it was the night Jay came to my parents' house for dinner. Or maybe it was the next day, when I fell on my knees in front of her and apologized the only way I knew how. Most likely it was even earlier than all of that, on the first night I kissed her roughly in the conference room, in my darkest, weakest moment. Thank God I'd been such an idiot.

I glanced down at the clock on my dashboard and the date, backlit in red, hit me like a fist to the chest: May 5. Exactly one year ago, I'd watched Hanni walk off the plane from San Diego, her shoulders set in hurt and anger at how I'd essentially thrown her under the bus after she'd covered for me with a client. The next day she'd resigned; she'd left me. I blinked, trying to clear the memory from my mind. She came back, I reminded myself. We'd worked it out in the past eleven months, and despite all of my frustration with my work schedule, I'd never been happier. She was the only woman I'd ever want.

I thought back to my previous breakup, with Lucy almost two years ago now. Our relationship started the way one climbs on an escalator: with a single step and then moving without effort along a single path. We started out friendly and easily slipped into physical intimacy. The situation worked perfectly for me because she provided companionship and sex, and she'd never asked for more than I offered. When we broke up, she admitted she knew I wouldn't give her more, and for a while the sex and quasi-intimacy had been enough. Until, for her, they weren't anymore.

After a long embrace and one final kiss, I'd let her go. I'd gone straight to my favorite restaurant for a quiet dinner alone, and then headed to bed early, where I slept the entire night without waking once. No drama. No heartbreak. It ended and I closed the door on that part of my life, completely ready to move on. Three months later, I was back in Chicago.

It was comical to compare that to the reaction I'd had to losing Hanni. I'd essentially turned into a filthy hobo, not eating, not showering, and surviving entirely on scotch and self-pity. I remembered clutching to the tiny details Haerin would share with me about Hanni—how she was doing, how she looked—and trying to determine from these tidbits whether she missed me and could possibly be as miserable as I was.