The Double

ℰ𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉𝑒𝑒𝓃

MERRY CHRISTMAS or HAPPY HOLIDAYS to you, my readers!

The next two days are an easy schedule I enjoy. I settle my severance with Garcia Brothers and set up an inbox rule so all messages with a garciabrothers.com email go straight to Frank the Lawyer. I hadn't realized how much I dread opening my email and seeing one from Ben.

I devote most of my days to Duna practice and this time I do it right, listing all the ways she could be approached and my planned responses. If someone comes up to me on the street. In the washroom. Wants a photo. Wants a selfie, an autograph. I go on a binge of Duna content until I'm able to parrot her mannerisms to the point that I slip into my Duna persona even when I'm not in public. Taehyung assures me it happens to him when he gets deep into a role.

Because Taehyung, to my utter surprise, has become invaluable. Whenever he's not at the theater, we practice until it feels like second nature to turn to him with a smile and to see his affectionate look. Even if it's not an act, I'm no longer so naïve and desperate to see it for anything but what it is: support for a friend. He's doing this for Duna and her career. I'm only a tool. This hurts less than I thought it would, probably because now that I think about it, the idea of sweeping Kim Taehyung off his feet with my joblessness and lack of fame is so laughable.

It's too bad that his new friendliness makes him more appealing. Not physically, because you can't improve on perfection, but simply as a person. This Taehyung isn't cold and distant but goofy and charming. he's addicted to the 1990s Brit pop and sand all of Oasis's "Wonderwall" with me one evening to Duna's great delight, complete with overly emotive air guitar.

His jokes are terrible, like on the level of dad jokes, which is revealed when he sees him jotting down some notes. "Suzy, do you now why you shouldn't write with a broken pencil?"

"What?" What is he talking about?

"Because it's pointless. Have you heard the one about the sheet of paper?"

"Taehyung, are you okay?"

"Actually, it's pretty tearable." With a beautiful smile, he turns away, happy to have delivered two of the worse jokes in the world.

He's a fucking amazing dancer, which I find out by accident one day when I try to figure out how to do a fad dance I saw on social media. He watched it through once and then repeated it flawlessly as I gaped at him.

He shrugged it off. "My mother says I have good bodily kinesthetic intelligence. From her, naturally."

"There's no way I can do that."

"Sure you can. It's all in the hips."

Only after he spends a futile five minutes trying to teach me to do a body roll does he gives up. Thank God, because if I had to watch him thrust his hips at me while tracing his hands down his distressingly toned chest one more time I would have exploded. he doesn't notice the impact he's having and sits on the couch. "What were you doing before trying to dance?"

"Watching the Architecture 101 again." I decided that it would be good to have another viewing now that I was a little more used to being Duna.

"May I join you?" This Taehyung, too, is scrupulously polite compared to the old one.

"Sure, but you have to tell me the behind-the-scene gossip." I start the movie, then pause it. "Do you find it strange to watch yourself on-screen?"

"I never used to watch my own movies," he says. "Do you want popcorn."

"Yes." He gets up to nuke a bag and I wait for him to continue. "Well?"

"Well, what?" Taehyung bends down to open a cabinet for bowls.