A shock of dark hair fell across his forehead as his eyes flashed with want. He was all that she could see; all that she could breathe.
Her heart raced as his jaw clenched with determination. And then he closed his eyes and leaned in.
God how she wanted him to.
Eyes open, she seized his tie with a fist and pulled him closer. Anything to make their lips crash together faster...
And then a shrill noise suddenly tore between them.
What the ... Dammit.
Kim Mi-rae buried her head deeper into her pillow as she groped blindly for her phone. Finally her hand met hard plastic in the depths of the duvet. She seized the offending device and flipped over onto her back with a heaving sigh.
Snooze. Snooze! Snooze!!!
She jabbed at the screen in desperation while trying to blink through the clumps of dried mascara on her lashes. Finally, the harsh reminder that morning had come too soon was silenced.
"Fuck."
She rasped the word to the indifferent ceiling yawning above. Her head felt thick. Her mouth was dry. She had fallen asleep without washing her face next to her phone.
And it was a workday.
Mi-rae rubbed her face furiously and then dropped her arms to her sides in a huff.
Even in my dreams nothing happens.
Mi-rae had fallen asleep thinking about him. Then she dreamed about him. And now she was thinking about him again. She felt like she was going crazy.
She picked up her phone and stared at the screen.
Nam Do-san, Associate Professor of Literature, Sogang University...
Nam Do-san, Chief Technology Officer, Cheongmyeong, A Leader in Self Driving Car Technology...
Nam Do-san, Electric & Plumbing, Busan....
Nam Do-san, Chung Nam Little League, Boxscore...
Daniel (Do-san) Nam, Certified Public Accountant, KPMG, Atlanta...
Mi-rae had scoured the internet from the darkness of her bedroom for hours all to no avail. Judging by his attire, he was a successful man. Yet none of these Nam Do-sans matched the man in the pinstripe suit. It was like he existed only in her imagination.
Why didn't I just ask for his damn number?
Then her stomach dropped.
But he didn't either.
It had seemed like they were on the precipice of something. And then everything suddenly became irrevocably awkward. She silently cursed the waitress again for bringing the bill at that very moment. Mi-rae was thirty five years old and had never had a one night stand. But if Nam Do-san had asked her to stay last night, she knew that her answer would have been yes.
Instead, he had walked her to hail a cab. And even after she worked up the courage to ask him not to remain lonely, Nam Do-san said nothing about ever seeing one another again.
Take a hint, Mi-rae.
It was a familiar battle between hope and self doubt. Mi-rae flopped back onto her stomach in frustration.
But he told me things.
The unshed tears in his eyes —the way his voice broke while opening up to her —were real. And it could not be a coincidence that she had met him last night of all nights. Mi-rae had gone to the bar as a maudlin ritual of marking the anniversary of her divorce with champagne. It somehow seemed less pathetic than drinking wine alone in her apartment as usual.
