I wasn’t lying to Victor about my self-study Korean not progressing all that well.
“I am only here for a little while,” I tell the tutor in halting Korean. I have to switch to English to add, “Then I'm moving back to Pittsburgh. But thank you for the offer.”
The tutor looks between Victor and me, his expression confused.
But in the end, he replies in English, “Well, good luck to you.”
I mumble back a similar platitude before waving goodbye.
Victor walks his apparent new tutor to the door and shows him something on a word app.
“Yes, I had fun too. I'll see you on Thursday,” the tutor answers in Korean.
With that, the old man leaves, and Victor closes the door behind him.
Before turning around to look at me.
“How may I help you this time, Dawn?” he asks with a smirk twisting his lips.
I hold up my stapler like I’m one of the guys in 300, facing down the oncoming horde with a shield. “I ran out of staples.”
Victor crosses the room to his desk, not taking his eyes off of me as he does.
He opens the middle drawer of his desk with precise movements and takes out a box of staples. As he does, I noticed something on his wall that I didn’t before. It's a picture of him and me. But not from Hello Kitty Land. It's the picture I drew for him fifteen years ago, the cartoony sketch of us kissing in the Zuisen-ji Temple’s famous garden, my messy curls and his much longer back then hair blowing in the wind.
“You still have that?” I ask, an unwanted thrill zipping through me—along with quite a few mental edits. Wow, it’s hard to look at old artwork from high school.
Victor glances at the picture. But then, instead of offering an explanation, he holds the box of staples out to me.
“Should I open an account for you at our local office supply store?” he asks after I take it. “You seem to run out of things. A lot.”
My face flames with embarrassment. But I hold my line. “No, don't worry about that. I have everything I need back in my home office in Pittsburgh.”
Perfect come back. Totally nailed it.
Which is why it's such a pity when I ruin it in the next moment by asking, “Why did you get a new tutor?”
Victor regards me for a moment, then asks, “Do you truly want to know?”
Why do I have the feeling the answer to that question should be no?
But I nod, nonetheless, my curious heart refusing to allow common sense.
Victor comes back around the desk to stand in front of me. Again so close, there’s only enough room left to see signs. “I replaced my tutor because I don't want you to feel jealous. I never want you to doubt me again. I'm done playing games.”
He leans forward, his face lining up with mine.
And I wait. I wait for him to claim my lips like he did in the garage.
But then, he steps back.
“You said I didn't give you choices before. You left me in August because you said I was too controlling,” he reminds me, his signs stiff and terse. “So now the choice is yours. Our relationship can be anything you want it to be. It's up to you. And as you keep reminding me and everyone else, you plan to leave at the end of this week. Meanwhile…”
He walks over to the door he closed after the tutor and opens it again, “I have work to do.”
25
DAWN
It's up to you to decide…
I thought Victor was diabolical before. But this choice of his puts me in a whole new level of hell.
This whole time, I've been on my guard that he would try to make all the decisions about our future relationships using the baby as leverage. But now he's done the opposite. He said what happens next is up to me.
And for some reason, I can’t just state the obvious choice. That after signing a custody agreement, we should go our separate ways.
Instead, I leave his office in a daze of confusion.
Forget work. I spend the rest of the afternoon trying and failing to put together the projection report for the Cal-Mart deal we just landed. If not for Yolanda and Lucy, picking up my slack, I’m pretty sure I would’ve set us behind by a day.
That night, I toss and turn, and it only has a little bit to do with the thunderstorm raging outside the house’s windows.
After hours of trying to settle, I give up and decide to go downstairs. Maybe a glass of water will help me calm down.
However, I stop in the hallway when I see the light spilling out from under one of the closed doors, orange and warm.
That door leads to Victor’s room…the forbidden one I’m not supposed to enter. Unless we're reunited.