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“Uh-huh. I’m sure you do have something important to take care of tonight,” he says with a laugh. He shoves me on the shoulder, but before I can try to deny whatever ideas are going through his head, he takes off with the rest of the interns. “Have fun, Yoo-Jin-ah, I mean, Elijah,” he says over his shoulder playfully.
I watch the group walk away and not once do I take inventory on what brands they’re wearing or what their parents do for a living.
I walk to the coffee shop around the corner and through the window, I see Jessica already sitting inside. Her hair is no longer pulled back into the messy ponytail like earlier. It’s down in long waves cascading down her back. If I’m not mistaken, she also looks like she has makeup on. At the airport yesterday, and in the elevator earlier, there was a charm to her simplicity and natural beauty. All done up like this, she’s pretty, sure. But she looks a lot like the Korean girls back home.
She has her hands clasped in front of her, her back ramrod straight, looking capable and confident. The giveaway is her knee bouncing uncontrollably under the table. She’s nervous.
I’m surprised my own heartbeat is racing too. I don’t have designer clothes to hide behind. I’m wearing Jason’s borrowed T-shirt and generic underwear I bought at a store called Duane Reade where I tried to ignore that my friends also bought food, household cleaners, and toilet paper from the same place as my undergarments.
I don’t have a name to drop for a sought-after reservation. We’re at an empty coffee shop that looks like it has about twenty years of grime stuck to the table.
I don’t even know why I’m trying to impress a girl who shouldn’t mean anything to me. I just need to get some answers, figure out whatever game of switched identities is going on, and then be on my merry way.
“Hey,” I say as I reach the table, pulling out the chair and sitting down.
She looks up at me and tucks her lip under her teeth, biting down nervously. Her eyes are wide and round, and in this moment, I know that whatever fallout there will be for this, if any, I’m not letting Jessica Lee take any blame for it. It’s all on me.
My thoughts surprise me. I’m normally a selfish sonofabitch. But there’s something about this girl.
“Elijah Lee?” she asks.
“Ri, actually. Long story. But close enough, I guess,” I say. “I think what matters is, my Korean name is Lee Yoo-Jin.”
She closes her eyes and nods her head slowly as understanding washes over her features.
“What a coincidence,” she whispers and opens her eyes again, looking straight into mine. “I’m Yoo-Jin Lee too.”
“Also known as Jessica?” I ask.
She nods again.
I don’t know how I thought this conversation would go, but I’d hoped it would be something we could laugh about and move on from. But Jessica looks straight-up traumatized by this. I wonder if she’s ever made a mistake or broken a rule in her life.
“Seems our shared name is like a magnet for the two of us,” I say. “I was wondering why I kept running into you. I was beginning to think it had the makings of a summer romance or something.”
That was the in for her to laugh easily and break the tension. She didn’t take the cue. My cheeks flood with heat. So not smooth, Elijah.
“I guess I kinda hoped it all really was for me...” She stops as if she’s just caught herself talking to the wrong person. Maybe that’s exactly what she realized. “Never mind. Look, I know I’m not in the right place and I’m guessing you’ve figured out that you’re not either,” she says. “But I’ll pay for anything and everything I used last night. It was an honest mistake. I’d really like to be able to stay on with my internship at Haneul Corp.”
“Hey, hey,” I say quickly, raising my hands in an effort to show I come in peace. “It’s no skin off my back, seriously. No one even has to know about last night. And you don’t need to pay for anything.”
“I think they bought me a new wardrobe,” she mumbles.
“Ah yeah, let me guess, the clothes waiting at the house were all men’s styles?” I smile. “Not that I don’t think you could rock that look. Androgynous fashion is really having a moment.”
There it was. The first small smile to appear on her face. “I can’t even pronounce the names of the designers who made the clothes they brought me to wear. If anything is having a moment in fashion, I wouldn’t know unless it’s happening in the Target clothing section.”
“I’m wearing underwear that I bought at a drugstore last night that was displayed between the hairbrushes and office supplies,” I confess.
She lets out a husky laugh and her entire face lights up. I thought she was cute before, but I was wrong. She’s a fucking stunner. It feels like an iceberg has been broken in half between us and I let out a sigh of relief.
But the smile fades from her face quickly. “When I think about yesterday, everything was fishy starting way back at the airport in Los Angeles. But there’s no way I could’ve guessed it was this.”
“Right? I mean, shouldn’t the airline be more careful when checking people in for their flights? This is how dangerous things can happen.” Truly, if we’re going to assign blame, let’s go all the way back to the beginning.
“No one’s really to blame. Or, at least not just one person. Maybe we’re all at fault,” she says in a voice much kinder than the one I went with.
So maybe Ishouldhave sounded the alarm sooner when I knew something wasn’t right. But no one here knows who I am, or at least, they don’t care. They only see a teenage kid and decide I have no idea what’s right or wrong.
