USA LOVES JEONG JINWON
I blink in disbelief, feeling like I’m floating outside of myself as I stare at these cryptic signs, trying to figure out what any of them mean.
Finally, with my heart hammering in my chest, I wheel my suitcase behind a pillar and do what I probably should have done in the lobby of the hotel last night, before he carried me into his bed, before we had drinks in the bar, before I even followed him upstairs to shower.
I google Alexander Kim.
And holy shit.
My phone’s browser immediately fills with photos and links to articles, interviews, fan sites in Korean and English. Photographs of him in Seoul, in London, in New York. And then, I see one image in particular and register that I am the world’s biggest idiot.
Yes, maybe I recognized him because he’s Sunny’s brother and my first crush, but that wasn’t the only reason his face was familiar to me. And the reason I felt like I’d just seen him was because I had. His face is on promotional posters in probably every other tube stop in London.
BBC exec coming here for meetings with American networks?
That’s shockingly close, actually.
I fall back against the pillar, deflating. I am astoundingly stupid.
It’s called The West Midlands.
If I could find a way to make the floor of LAX open up and eat me, I would.
In the background, pulsing frantically in time with my heartbeat, the crowd begins to chant, Alexander Kim! Alexander Kim!
The roar grows louder and then the entire terminal explodes into screams as four men in black suits step through with Alec just behind them. His security team keeps the crowd away with arms outstretched, creating a path to pass through to, I assume, a car idling at the curb. But Alec stops short, gaping in surprise at the scene waiting for him. Sure, he was able to move around Seattle largely unnoticed, but had he forgotten the way Los Angeles loves its celebrities?
With a winning smile, he accepts a few items to sign, pauses briefly for a couple of photos, and then tries to press his way through the crowd. Meanwhile, I’m stuck in place in an empty stretch of floor about thirty feet from where he’s surrounded, realizing that I spent the night with a man I really should have recognized for the right reasons; realizing I’m apparently so deep in my journalism niche that I didn’t recognize one of Korea’s, London’s—and now the world’s—biggest stars; realizing Alec could have told me a hundred times who he was but didn’t even try, didn’t bother to share that part of himself with me while I went on and on about my job and Spence and—
And I’d wanted to thank him for being real.
While I stare at this man whose face and mouth and body I kissed and touched and took pleasure in, I register this is exactly what he meant this morning.
This will sound weird, and you’ll understand it later.
I mean it when I agree this was exactly what I needed.
I’m really happy to be here with you.
Exactly how it was last night.
Whatever happens after this, I want you to promise to remember that.
Okay?
Well, how nice for him that he got to have exactly what he needed, exactly how he wanted it.
I figured out who he is, I text Eden. There was a huge crowd waiting for him at the airport.
Good God, I bet she could have told me if it had even occurred to me to tell her his name.
Wait, what?? Who is he???
His name is Alexander Kim.
She replies immediately, a string of incoherent letters and symbols as if she’s just crashed her hands down on a keyboard.
I look up from my phone as Alec’s head turns and he gazes out in disbelief into the distance, scanning the size of the crowd. Our eyes meet. Betrayed, embarrassed tears rush up my throat, burning my eyes, and I break away first—just as his mouth forms the shape of my name—turning and exiting the doors just behind me.