“Jimin, where are we going?”
Jimin was driving her car. He smiled mysteriously at her as he guided the vehicle onto a familiar road. Anticipating the countryside that would eventually find them, Eileen glanced out the window. She smiled. She had a feeling she knew exactly where they were heading.
“You get two days with me—”
He glanced at her. “Three and a half.”
She laughed. “Three and a half days with me, and you want to spend the first day recreating our original first day together?”
Jimin’s intense eyes sought out hers. “I want to recreate the moments I fell in love with you.”
Eileen just stared at him. Her heart had just turned into a puddle at her feet. Suddenly, she had a vivid flashback. Jimin hobbling up to her car to apologize.
“Je suis desolé” had flown on a breeze coming through her open window that night in Jimin’s sweet, soft tones. She’d left him lying alone in the field. Hoping he’d fall asleep before she returned. But he had not. Worse than that, she’d discovered that he was afraid to be alone in the silence of the night. It had shocked her to her toes. She’d also laughed at the bitter irony. For being alone was never what she dreaded. She was always safe when she was alone. What a pair they made!
He’d wanted to hold her hand. It came back to her now. He had kissed her lips. Oh! What a kiss that first one had been! Yet, he had still longed to hold her hand. Even now, she could feel that first touch of his palm against hers, his fingers entangling her own. It had been its own form of ecstasy. Just like their first kiss. And it had made it all the harder to say goodbye to him.
As she leaned back against her seat, his song came back to her. The one he had spontaneously composed as they lay next to each other under the stars. He had begun to sing in his sweet, high voice to her.
“Under the moonlight
Your eyes are just as bright.
Pools of green
Has my Eireen.
A smile that takes me in,
Wrapping around my heart.
Will you stay near me,
So we never part?”
—
Jimin, on the other hand, was remembering something different. He was recalling later that night when he had watched her sleep under a full moon. His heart had been completely captured that night in the darkness. Simply by the outline of her face and the sheen of the moon on her forehead. It was, of course, absurd. Yet it was true. And the next day he’d kissed her with all the newly found passion for her that he harbored in his soul. And he had held her hand.
And he had known that he would have to leave her. It hurt him still. That he had left. That he had neglected her. That he had let so many weeks pass without contacting her. How badly had he wounded her?
He sighed. Later, he had awoken to find her shivering. No matter how many times he’d covered her with the blankets in the middle of the night, still she was shaking from the cold every time he woke up. The only solution had been to share his body heat with her. So he had pulled her into his warm embrace. Then he’d fallen asleep for the last time with Eileen snuggled close to him. Her head pillowed over his heart. That had been his favorite memory. Until later that morning…
He had awoken a few hours later to find the painting she’d left him. A beautiful birthday sun rising above his sleeping form. He’d met her at her car a few minutes later. And she had kissed him.
Eileen had kissed him. He had given himself to that kiss by pulling her into his arms and deepening the kiss himself. He’d been lost in the taste of her for a few moments. But her lips weren’t the only delicacy he would savor that day.
Eileen had planned some other tastes for him to delight in that special day. She had then pulled out all the wonderful treats she’d bought him for breakfast. She’d fed him that breakfast as they enjoyed the bright morning together. It had been the most wonderful birthday he’d ever celebrated with anyone.
—
He had reached out and touched her. Just the innocent brush of his thumb against her cheek. Why had she been so captivated? She couldn’t deny that she had been.
That was the moment that Jimin had first communicated to her that he loved her. His thumb had traced the words in Korean across her cheek. Repeatedly. Long enough that her painter’s mind had captured them. So she could later research the symbols to decipher their message.
Jimin.
She gazed at him now. Her heart was yearning for him. Had been longing for him for months now. She wanted to drink him in and never let him go. She could feel the sweetness of his spirit as he sat next to her in that car. He was gentle. Kind. Darling. How she had missed him! How she would miss him again.
