Someplace Like Home |n.j

9.

"Here is your receipt, you may pay over there before leaving." I gesture to the cashier, before handing the customer his cocktail.

It was approaching midnight, and the music grew to become more melancholic than the previous upbeat tunes, accompanying everybody as they drowned out their sense of time with alcohol.

Soft jazz played through the speakers as I cleaned the counter. Scrubbing the once dirty rag underneath the faucet, a co-worker came along with a tap on my shoulder. I straighten from the crouched position and turn off the running water, "Yes?"

He hands me a small note, "Someone passed by last night and asked for you. They left this."

I take it, not giving it much attention as I mindlessly stuff it into the pocket of my uniform. It's probably Hoseok. He's been coming to the bar for the last few days, hoping to catch the lady I've been speaking of. It's only to tease me. I told him she wouldn't come, in hopes to finally shoo him from my workplace. He didn't show up today. Perhaps he's finally given up or got tired of missing out on his usual chaotic parties.

"She said to tell you that it's her number."

It's a 'her'? I quickly dig it back out and smoothed the crumpled paper. I look at the number and feel my lips jerk up at the sight of her slanted handwriting. Eyes not leaving the note, I nod to dismiss the co-worker, "Got it. Thanks."

***

My breath mixed with the midnight air as I stood outside the bar, waiting to hear a familiar voice after the telephone beeps. I didn't take her as an early sleeper, but then again, I'm working on pure assumptions. She could be asleep by now.

My assumption was proved correct when she greeted me from the other side of the call, I feel my breath being sucked out of my lungs, "Hello?"

She spoke with a tone of hostility and uncertainty, as anyone would upon receiving an unknown number. Something about her voice makes me feel like flying.

"Hey. It's me, Namjoon. I got the note." Shuffling from her end told me she was in the middle of something when I called.

"Oh, okay." It made my heart jerk somehow, to hear her tone shift upon hearing it was me. It's like she considers me as someone she knows, someone that's in her life. I don't know why that excites me this way. I was never one to crave someone's attention like that.

I bite my lip, wondering what else there was to say next. I called wanting more than just to confirm that it was the right number. Maybe she's regretting it right now. Would Nami still wish for me to have her number after that night? Or does it still not make a difference to her?

The bar's door was left open by a small gap, with the music leaking to the streets, and apparently into the call as well.

"Ray Charles."

I scrunch my brows at her sudden comment, "Huh?"

"You're playing Ray Charles? 'How Long Has This Been Going On', right? Quite a long title." Her quiet chuckles invoked a feeling of shyness within me, causing my bottom lip to hide under my teeth. I didn't even know this song.

"Where are you? Are you at the bar?"

I hum in reply, then followed to tell her that I was off work, "And you?"

My eyes wandered to the cars zooming down the road and the bright traffic lights as I listened to her voice, "Oh, I'm working, in my studio, obviously. I'm usually nowhere else."

It sort of bothered me that we were chatting while completely disregarding the new history between us. She doesn't seem like she was ashamed of it, yet she never talked like she intended for us to be anything more. So did it never happen to Nami? Or did it?

"Hey," A new idea probably popped into her head when she spoke up with a higher pitch, "Are you in a hurry to go home? You can come to pick up your clothes if you'd like."

***

So I did. The entire walk to her studio apartment was filled with the loud noise of my thoughts, something that hasn't happened in a while. Usual it's purely silent. I never think much. I'm always either blank, or miserably blank.

But I couldn't shut out all the thoughts I had of this specific girl. We've only known each other for a little while, I've yet to know that many things about her to be able to think as long as I had.

Even if there wasn't much to think of, she still stayed on my mind. I grabbed for anything to linger on. Her outgrown bangs, her warm brown eyes, or the way her fingers would articulate as she spoke, anything. I couldn't think about anything or anybody else. And I realized that I didn't want to.

Before I could digest what was to happen, I found myself before her door, knuckles already tapping against the wood. It opened briskly and revealed the woman that so easily occupied my thoughts.

We exchanged no greetings, and I stood there willingly as she pulled me into the studio with her lips clasped onto mine.

It didn't surprise me. Maybe the hints lied somewhere within the note, or her voice when she asked me to come over. Somehow, with no words needed, we both knew what I was really here for.

I knew she would kiss me. And she knew I wouldn't fight her. I wouldn't fight her when she decided to run her hands down my chest, nor when she unbuttoned the vest of my uniform, and not even when she pushed me down to her mattress and slid off her dress.

I remember the first and last time I came here, she said she didn't allow people on her bed if they weren't in pyjamas. But I got on her bed with my uniform, and by the end of the night, I'd fallen asleep with them scattered on the floor.

Nami wasn't drunk this time. No, she was very much sober. So sober that she'd planned this the moment I had called. She was sober when her nails raked down my back, when her hips rolled against me with her lip between her teeth, and when her body shivered as her breath blew hot on my neck. She was sober through all of it, but it had left me drunk as I laid on her bed, wondering what I'd done, and how the fuck I let myself end up here.

I think I always knew. But I wanted the answer to be something else, so I pretended that I didn't, as if I was still searching for another explanation that ultimately doesn't exist.

I knew that very morning when she told me my clothes were at her house. I knew when I received the note from my co-worker. I knew when I walked in the middle of the night to her front door.

But it all came so much clearer when I woke up the next morning in her bed, seeing the same familiar image of her smoking furtively on the other end.

The answer was as clear as day. I was just busy hallucinating purple clouds.

We've become friends with benefits, and I've taken up the piteous role, wishing secretly that we could be something more.

—
A/N:
this is what Nami looks like, just in case if anyone is curious!

(this reference is a photo of Nana Komatsu. She stars in a movie called My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday. If anyone hasn't had the chance to watch it yet, I highly suggest you do. It's a beautiful movie.

Photos other than this one do not represent Nami's appearance - just because the actress normally has thick bangs and this photo accentuates her moles lol but nami has more. but her overall features are like Nana :)