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Chapter 10: You Are My Daydream – June 29, 2019

As the boat sped along, Eunji joined Namjoon on a padded bench that lined the wall of the yacht.  She leaned back and enjoyed the cool breeze blowing through her hair.  She closed her eyes.  But her curiosity about the man she’d agreed to marry overcame her once more.

“Namjoon, did you leave behind many friends in Seoul?” she murmured as she turned her head to look at him.

His eyes speared hers.  “No.  I didn’t have time to make friends.  I spent all my time studying.”

Her heart dipped.  She knew that lifestyle well.  Except for Tae, Eunji hadn’t made many friends in high school.  She had also spent nearly all her free time on schoolwork.

“I understand,” she muttered.  “Tae has been my only close friend since I started high school.  There just isn’t time for anyone else.”

“Eunji, are you going to college in the fall?”

She glanced at him.  “What’s your opinion?  My appa wants to marry me off to you.  He says my responsibility is to take care of you and give you a couple babies.”

Bewildered, Namjoon stared at her.  “Is that what you want?”

She shrugged. “No one has ever asked me what I want.”

“I am.”

Her eyes connected with his, and that arc of blue electricity was buzzing between them again.  How had she forgotten that for four years?  Namjoon wasn’t just attracted to her.  He was asking her what kind of a life she wanted.  As though he cared.  And wanted to assure her that she could follow her desires.

She sighed.  “My dreams are totally unrealistic.  That’s why Appa has never supported them.  He would much rather I spend his money making him look good.  And now, doing the same for you, so your business can prosper.”

Sadness swamped Namjoon’s features.  He bent near her and whispered into her ear, “Eunji, tell me your dream.”

She shivered as his breath teased her neck.  She turned her head to look at him.  Their eyes collided again, and she felt her stomach flip upside down.  

“My dream…” she murmured.  

She suddenly remembered some of the wilder ones she’d indulged in as she’d tried to sleep that summer’s night when she was fifteen.  The night she had stood in a pool with Namjoon under the twinkling stars.  For a month afterward, every night she had indulged in fantasies about him.  But then his absence had dragged on, and Tae had been there to make her laugh, and she had packed her dreams up into a box marked “Namjoon” and stored it in the attic of her mind.  Towards the back.  

She hadn’t wanted anyone to know what she’d been dreaming.  She’d felt ashamed.  As though she’d been disloyal to Tae.  Even though he had never confessed any love for her.  And he still hadn’t.  All these years later.  Now she was destined to marry the man she’d fantasized about as a fifteen-year-old girl.  Should she unpack those dreams again?

“Once I dreamed of you,” she admitted in a low breath as her heart raced.

—

Namjoon’s eyes sharpened on her face.  “What?” he asked, startled.

“You didn’t think you’d set off wild fantasies in the heart of a teenage girl when you held me close under the stars and told me you’d miss me more than I could fathom?”

“You loved Tae.  You always loved Tae.  I was suffering from temporary insanity that night.  Your fight with Tae – coupled with the knowledge that I wouldn’t see you for four years – emboldened me to approach you that evening.  But I never really believed that I had any effect on you.”

She furrowed her brow.  “You didn’t?” she asked.  Shocked.

He shook his head.  “You didn’t kiss me.  And I could tell I was making you uncomfortable.  That’s why I let you go.  And went inside to get you a towel and some dry clothes.”

She still had those clothes.  Hidden away in a drawer at home.  A drawer no one ever looked in.  Except her.  Every once in a while over the last four years – especially when she and Tae had a fight – she would pull Namjoon’s sweatshirt out and wear it.  She’d never washed it.  So it still smelled like him.  Something woodsy, a clean scent that – if she were honest – she’d have to admit drove her a little wild.  She’d put his sweatpants on too.  They dwarfed her, but she didn’t care.

“I still have them,” she murmured.  Then she sat, horrified that she had admitted such a thing.

Namjoon sat up straight, and his eyes probed hers.  “You still have my clothes?”

Sheepishly, she nodded her head.

His eyebrows slapped his hairline.  “Why?”

“Girlish daydreams,” she admitted.

“You seriously indulged in daydreams?  About me?”  His heart was racing away with him.  Dare he hope that they could be happily married after all?  “Why?”

“You were the only boy who ever told me he would miss me.  You were the closest I ever came to being kissed too.  Until last week.”

His eyes brushed her lips then as he relived that amazing kiss on his back patio.  He wanted to re-enact it right now.  But the question was…did she?

She was beginning to squirm under his scrutiny.  “What about you?” she asked to shift the focus off of herself.  “Did you have a girlfriend at college?”

He stared at her.  “Really?” he whispered.  “You think I spoke such words to you, and held you in my arms under the stars, and then went and found another girl?”

She shrugged.  “It happens all the time.  That was four years ago, Namjoon!”

“Have your feelings changed in four years?  Do you no longer indulge in daydreams?”

“About you?”

He nodded.  

“I packed them away,” she murmured.  

His face fell.

“Until recently,” she admitted.

His eyes rose with hope shining out of them.

“How recently?”

She swallowed.  “A few minutes ago.”

But that wasn’t true.  She had taken those mementos out every time she’d dressed in his clothes over the past four years.  Several times a year.  She’d indulged in dreams that Namjoon hadn’t forgotten her.  But she’d never heard from him.  Not one letter.  Not one phone call.  Not one text.

“You never contacted me.  Clearly, you forgot me,” she uttered under her breath as she stared out at the sea surrounding them.

“I never forgot you!” he cried out.  “Not for one moment.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his billfold.  He opened it and withdrew a picture of her.  From four years ago.  Its edges were tattered but the center was still well-preserved.  As she stared at her face, she marveled at how much she had changed.

“Wow.  I don’t look like that anymore.”

“That is exactly what you look like.  Still.  A ravishing beauty.  You captured my soul that day on the beach.  You’ve held it firmly in your grasp ever since.”

Confused, she stared up at him as she turned to face him fully.  “What?  What day at the beach?  What are you talking about?”

“You were thirteen,” he murmured.  “You and Tae were playing around.  I hadn’t seen you for months.  You – you had grown up.  You weren’t a child anymore.  I mean, you were still very young.  But you’d begun to look like a woman.”

She stared in awe at him.  “You’ve liked me since I was thirteen?”

He nodded his head.  “Eunji, it’s more than that.”

“What?” she queried softly.  “What do you mean?”

He shocked her then by dropping down onto his knees in front of her.  He reached for her hands, but then he remembered earlier when she’d seemed to rebuff him.  He held his hands out in front of him, palms up.  There was a pained expression in his eyes.  She saw it before she glanced down at his hands.  Then she reached out with one index finger and began to trace his palm.  He began to shiver.  Her touch was undoing him.  

“Eunji,” he whispered.

She glanced up at him.

“I love you.”  He breathed the words out, afraid their departure would shatter him.  Or her.

Her eyes widened.  “What?” she asked breathlessly. 

“I love you.  With all my heart.  With all my soul.  This engagement – it was completely my idea.  I approached my father months ago.  And yours as soon as I came home after graduating.  I wanted you for my wife.  So badly.  Those daydreams you mentioned?  They have been my daily companion since I left you four years ago.”

She stared at him.  She couldn’t breathe.