Now and for the Last Time

44 장

This was better. Of course it was.

"Are you going to finish that?" Mark asked, nodding at the last of the donut on my plate. This was a running joke, testament both to his endless appetite and the fact we always ended up eating together. Almost three weeks of dating, and these things happen. It was all normal, exactly how it was supposed to go.

"Go ahead," I said, pushing to the plate to him.

He smiled, then picked it up, taking a bite. "The day you deny me your leftovers, I'll know we're finished."

"That's how you'll know?" I asked. "You'll miss every other sign?"

"Food is my language," he explained, drinking his coffee. "That's the way it words with us stubborn types. We miss other, normal cues."

Another inside thing between us: how we referred to his tactics in asking me, and actually getting me, to go out with him. Already, we had A story, our own story: that semester of Economics, just friends, followed by the  Somin wedding and then multiple attempts to get together, all messy with his schedule or mine. Finally, he saw me driving home one night, pulled a U-turn, and followed me to the next intersection, where texted me an invite for pizza. I went, we ate, then kissed, and the rest was . . . well, this.

It was nice, the kind of you want to tell, but I couldn't help but recognize the tiny cracks in our origin tale's foundation that only I could see. Like how on That Night I'd been coming from Jihyo and Suho's wedding, still remembering everything Sehun had said to me. The fact that when I got Mark's text at that light, I was typing back no before I realized he was right behind me. Small details, I knew, not really part of the outcome. And that was what mattered, anyway, the fact that we'd ended up together, over two slices, everything unfolding in a normal way. No instant dislike, dragging across parking lots, stealing of dogs and other annoying behavior, not a single weird bet or secret left unrevealed too long. If our relationship was a wedding, it would've been proceeding Just Fine, with no surprises or real problems. Unlike me and Sehun and whatever we might have been, most likely a Disaster.

So, yes. This was good. And I didn't have to worry about dating other people, because I'd won the bet. Though it didn't feel like much of a victory. It didn't feel like anything.

"You have foam on your nose," Mark said now, pulling his phone out of his pocket. "It's super cute. Let's take a picture."

I made myself smile as I settled in against him, focusing my eyes on the tiny dot on his phone that was the camera. Mark was big into documentation of us on his Instagram and other social medias. This first few times I'd scrolled through his feed and seen so much of my own face it had been alarming, although now I thought it was cute. Most of the time, anyway.

"Aish," he said, sliding his phone back as I checked my watch out of habit, even though I wasn't expected at work. "That woman sure can talk. Does she really think we need to hear about her lab results?"

I followed his eyes to the Phone Lady, at the next table, was indeed deep in conversation with someone about a recent "scan and blood draw, ordered by the doctor, and you know that's never good." I hadn't even heard her until now, which said something about my level of attention. "She's always does that," I explained."I think it's like therapy for her, or something."

"Sharing her personal information with the coffee-buying public?"

"I didn't say I understood it," I said. "I'm just reporting the facts."

He smiled at me: three for three inside jokes  in one meal. This one he'd first said to me that night at the pizza place. That he knew we were both going off to school soon, and it was probably not a good time to get involved, but that he'd been thinking about me nonstop and had to take a shot anyway. "I'm not pressuring you," was his exact phrasing, "but these are the facts." Another tiny imperfection, how I had rephrased his words, but close enough.