My Summer in Seoul

Crap, focus, Grace!

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed… you’re in Seoul, not Hollywood…” He leaned in with a sad smile.

Yeah, he didn’t need to remind me how vastly different things were. Every day was a new learning experience with a severe learning curve.

Think Grace, use your brain! If I could make this better—by some miracle, cheer Lucas up and show that I was a team player—maybe they’d start trusting me more or at least drinking my coffee and allowing me to make them a snack without wondering if I was poisoning them. I felt like I finally had a tiny foothold in developing a relationship with the guys, and for some reason, this felt like a potential catalyst.

And personally, I was terrified of what would happen to Lucas’s mental state if he suddenly wasn’t allowed to go on the comeback stage. It actually made me sick to my stomach. He wasn’t okay, truly. I think he was trying in his own way, but when nobody was paying attention, it was like this darkness washed over him.

I hated it so much that I was even okay with him projecting all the negative feelings in my direction—anything to keep him from that roof.

Frowning, I looked down at the phone in my hands. “Do you have a clear picture of her? What’s her social footprint look like?”

Rae looked over at the couch. Lucas was still fully focused on the TV, his snack, and a notepad that he kept scribbling on resting on his lap. Rae snatched his phone, tapped the screen, and handed it over. He moved behind me, blocking me from Lucas’s view while crowding my space as his arm came around. His finger pointed, and it took a ton of self-control to focus on the phone and not how close he was standing or how good he smelled. “The picture is really blurry. All we really have are fan pictures posted online, in chats, and a name that’s clearly not a real person on social media…”

A smile spread across my face. “Text me everything you have. I think I have an idea.”

He barked out a laugh, and corresponding chills ran up and down my spine. I cleared my throat and stepped away from him, putting much-needed space between our bodies.

He ran a hand through his thick blond hair. “What? Are you gonna make a scrapbook?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, and add tiny little kitty stickers because nothing cheers someone up like some—” I stopped myself. “Cats.”

“Yeah, because that’s what you were going to say.” Jay suddenly appeared behind me like a ghost.

I jumped a foot. “How are you so quiet when you walk?”

He looked down at his slippers and grinned. “How are you not? Plotting world domination over here?”

“Yes. Maybe.” I put my hands on my hips then brought my right hand to my mouth, ready to chew off a fingernail only to have both guys give me disapproving looks. See? I couldn’t win. “You’re going to need to trust me.”

That earned me an eye narrowing from Jay and a long, intense stare from Rae before he exhaled. “Fine, so what happens when I send you everything? You just call up some brilliant hacker and…” His voice trailed off as I grinned triumphantly. “That’s exactly what you’re going to do, isn’t it?”

“Look…” I held my hands out in front of me. “What if Lucas releases an official apology, one that talks about how much he loves his fans and is working on a song just for them, get on their good side… and in the meantime, we find out who this psycho is and exactly why she’s trying to ruin his life. Maybe if we find out the why, we can fix it.”

“You can’t fix delusional.” Jay had the nerve to look me up and down as if to say, I give you exhibit A.

I glared. “I’m grabbing my laptop, and you’re going to be here and give as many details as possible.”

I ran into my room, grabbed my MacBook Pro, then came back out and set up in the kitchen connecting to the Wi-Fi, tapping my fingers on the counter while waiting for everything to wake up.

I didn’t realize how embarrassing it would be for the guys to look over my shoulder and see the picture of my best friend and me on the desktop in our graduation robes eating hot dogs until that exact moment.

Or the crazy number of songs I’d mixed on Ozone just for fun and for some of my assignments for senior year.

I quickly opened up FaceTime. “What you guys need… is a Kevin.”

“Eh?” Sookie repeated “Kevin” in a heavy accent, then added something in Korean, probably asking the guys for the tenth time if I was sane.

“A Kevin,” I repeated, then clicked on his name.