Page 72 of The Encore’s Crown

The message delivers. I stare at it, convinced it sounds cold enough that he'll suspect I’m in a hostage situation. Before I can decide whether to follow it with something less socially awkward, his contact information fills my screen. Incoming call.

From downstairs in the kitchen, Mama shouts, “Natalia! The onions!”

I stare my phone while it continues vibrating in my hand.

Then, finally, I take a deep breath and decide to answer.

Chapter 30

Fun

Natalia

Ilook at my screen before I swipe to pick up the call. He's simply K in my phone. Obvious, sure, but no one should be rummaging through my phone anyway. I added his number in Nagoya right before I left, once he’d finally stopped being ridiculous and handed me his phone. He watched me type my name into his contacts, only to take the phone back and change it to something in Khmer he refused to translate.

“Hey,” I say, nerves taking over out of nowhere. “I’m home.”

“That's good.”

Two words and that’s all it takes for every warm, stupid feeling inside me to disappear. I wait but nothing follows. No joke about my family smothering me the second I walked through the door. No question about whether Mama had already tried to feed me. No soft, private version of my name that he only uses when no one else can hear. No Kroppy this or that. Just that's good.

“That’s it?”

“I said that’s good.”

His voice is wrong. Flat and measured. Careful in a way he hasn’t been with me since Seoul. I pick at some fuzz on my comforter along the edge of my bed.

“Why do you sound weird?”

“I’m tired.”

“No.” My fingers tighten around the phone. “You’re doing that thing again. The first-day thing. Where every word has to get past six armed guards before you let it out.”

He exhales quietly. There it is, that sigh. The one men use when they’ve already decided you’re being difficult for noticing what they’re doing.

“You’re just used to hearing me in person,” he says.

I actually pull the phone away from my ear and stare at it, then put it back resentfully.

“I know weird. You’re being weird.”

Silence, but not the comfortable kind we’ve developed, when we could lie together in the dark without needing to fill it. This silence has edges. It’s waiting to hurt me, and I can already feel the fear crawling across my skin. My stomach begins to sink.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Then stop talking to me like I’m some girl you barely know.”

His silence answers. I stand because sitting suddenly feels like suffocating.

“Look.” The word is quiet, controlled. I close my eyes as he continues. “It was fun and all.” At first, I genuinely think I’ve misunderstood him. “I had a good time with you. You had a good time with me.”

His voice sounds distant now, like he’s reading something he wrote down or from a teleprompter for some interview. He interrupts my thoughts before they can continue to spiral into oblivion.

“But that’s all it was.”

The room spins and I grip the edge of my dresser.