The Carmichaels

Chapter Two

The restaurant was as packed as a restaurant located in a tourist hot spot was expected to be. It was filled to the brim with bodies upon bodies but the food smelled so good as it carried from the kitchen, that River wouldn’t have cared if the restaurant was so full that she’d have to be squeezed between two men who hadn’t showered in hours.

After twenty minutes of waiting in line, a hostess directed them over to a seat by the window. River looked over at her car, trying to see if Hannah had sent anyone after her but no one had been sent yet. River knew she had told Hannah to rest for the night, but how in the hell hadn’t she noticed that her boss and friend of ten years was missing?

None of her troubles mattered anymore, though, after the food she ordered came to her table. A ropa vieja with yellow rice and black beans, almost immediately after the waitress had set it down, River was shoveling the food into her mouth, eating without caring that the food was hot enough to scald her tongue or without being aware of Seo-Jun who she found watching her with amusement when she finally looked up.

River cleared her throat, forcing herself to stop eating like a complete pig, and swallowed the remaining food.

“Are you sure you’re not hungry?” She had asked this question twice already, but now she asked it again, her eyes straying to the empty space in front of Seo-Jun and then to the glass of lemonade beside him.

“I ate already,” was his response. “Besides, you seem like you were really hungry.” River’s cheeks heated up at that—she couldn’t believe she had been eating like a pig in public—and scarcely heard Seo-Jun as he went on. “How long have you been out here?”

“What time is it?”

Seo-Jun pulled back the sleeves of the white button-down he was wearing to reveal a watch. After a moment of studying it, he said, “Eight.”

“Then I’ve been wandering around for four hours.”

Seo-Jun’s eyes widened. “You’ve been out here with no shoes, money, or phone for four hours?”

River nodded. She felt the slightest bit of annoyance rise through her. What in the hell was Hannah so busy with that she hadn’t noticed River’s four-hour disappearance? She was going to chew Hannah out when she got back.

River finished up her meal without incident and Seo-Jun paid. River felt guilty as she watched him pay for the food she had eaten. Never, since she had taken over as CEO for her family’s company, had anyone ever paid for her. In fact, usually, she was the one who was paying for both herself and others. It’s not like she particularly minded, she had a large bank account, and a meal worth a couple hundred dollars wouldn’t make her or break her. So, watching someone else pay for her made her uneasy.

She decided that she would try to pay him back once she was back to her old life. She would try to make amends for having him treat her to lunch; she felt it was the only way she’d be able to shake the uneasy feeling she got when someone paid for something for her. Seo-Jun seemed to be doing that a lot, in just the span of an hour, he was making her feel things she hadn’t felt before: embarrassment, electricity, unease.

Back in the heat of the Cuban night, nothing had slowed down. The line outside the restaurant moved forward, and River noticed it was longer now than it had been when she and Seo-Jun were waiting.

“Which hotel are you staying in?” Seo-Jun asked. They were standing off to the side so that their standstill would not affect all the people pushing through the crowds.

“La gran Cuba,” she said reflexively.

Seo-Jun looked like he was thinking hard before he murmured. “That’s a pretty far ways away.” And then he muttered something under his breath that River couldn’t fully understand. She caught the words, “I don’t know” and “cab.”

“You really don’t have to pay for anything else, Seo-Jun,” she said. “You’ve already done so much for me tonight. I couldn’t ask you to do more.”

“You’re not asking, though.” He grinned at her. “Okay, are you okay to do more walking?”

When he saw River’s face contort in confusion, he laughed lowly and reached out to pat her on the shoulder. The warmth of his hand seeped through the fabric and River couldn’t help but look at him in surprise. No one touched her so familiarly. Not even Hannah and the two of them had been friends for a long time.

“Not many cabs run around here. They usually run a little further down, near the Salsa club.”

River dimly remembered seeing a salsa club on her drive to the boardwalk. She gently dipped her shoulder so Seo-Jun’s hand fell away—the warmth of his skin made her pulse race to hectically for her comfort—and gave a small nod.

The two of them began moving forward, toward the boardwalk’s exit, and Seo-Jun struck up a conversation with her. He was an overtly friendly person, she realized, he often smiled kindly to people who passed and he greeted people every now and then. River wondered what it was like to be that way; she wondered what it was like to feel so…unafraid, so confident.

“So, where ate you from?” he was asking The Republic of America?”

She nodded. “And you?”

Seo-Jun smiled cheekily. “Last month I was in Japan, visiting my mom’s family. But before that, I was living in South Korea.”

River studied his features. To her, he definitely looked Korean—he had a certain K-Star air to him—but there was also something about his features that could have passed for Japanese, too.

“I’m half Japanese,” he said as if he had heard her line of thinking.

River looked at him in open surprise and he laughed. “Your thoughts are written all over your face. I could tell you were wondering.”

River wasn’t offended so much as she was confused. No one had ever told her that her thoughts were written on her face before. Actually, they said the opposite. She was too difficult to read, people said, her face was too cold, expressionless and she generally terrified most people.

Seo-Jun was a weird man.

“My mother was Japanese and my father was Korean,” he went on, either pretending not to notice or genuinely not seeing River’s intense gaze on him. “So I usually spend time traveling between both places. Sometimes I’m in Korea, sometimes I’m in Japan.”

“Where did you learn English, then?” she asked, curious.

“My mom lived with me in America for a bit before she passed away,” he said. “We lived here up until my fourteenth birthday. I moved to Japan with her family after she passed.”

River’s mouth parted in an ‘o’ of understanding. Now she was afraid that she had pried too deeply in his life, which hadn’t been intended at all, so she automatically said, “I’m sorry.” And she meant it.

River knew the pain of losing a mother.

Seo-Jun gave her that same unbothered smile, and his eyes were clear enough for her to know that smile was genuine. “It’s okay. I’m not going to fall apart. It happened a long time ago.”

They had reached the end of the boardwalk by now, and they were currently walking along the sidewalks. These were a little less packed with people than the boardwalk had been, but there were still bodies upon bodies pressed up against River, which prompted her to press closer to Seo-Jun, avoiding the touches of strangers.

“So, what made you decide to visit Cuba?” Seo-Jun wondered conversationally. He didn’t seem to take any note of the fact that River was pressed up against him as they walked along the busy sidewalk, even though it was all she could think about. She wanted very badly to step away from him, but the bodies packed on either side of them made that difficult.

“Oh, uh, business.”

“Really?” He seemed interested. “In Cuba? And you’re staying at La grand Cuba on top of all that. You must be pretty high up where you work.”

Feeling slightly uncomfortable, River said, “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” And she hoped to God he wouldn’t look her up after she was gone. For some reason, she didn’t want him to know who she was yet.

The salsa club was coming up fast. From it, River could hear the blaring of Latin music, the rhythmic beat that made one want to move their body to it. People were entering and exiting the club, and she couldn’t help but look on in curiosity. Although she had been to Cuba a total of four times in her life, this was the first time she was seeing so much of it. Normally, she’d come here, settle her business, and then leave.

Seo-Jun stopped on the corner of the street, prompting River to do the same. He held out a hand, hailing a taxi, and sure enough one settled along the curb near them, waiting.

Seo-Jun turned to River and smiled. “I guess this is where we say goodbye.”

“I guess so,” she said, feeling a little rueful.  “Thanks for everything you did for me today.”

Seo-Jun nodded. River began making her way to the cab, and only after she had slid inside and was shutting the door, did Seo-Jun lean his head in and say, “There’s a restaurant beside La grand Cuba. It’s called La Esquina, you’ve seen it right?”

River nodded.

He grinned. “Meet me there tomorrow, at noon. I’ll be waiting for you.” And then to the driver, he murmured in careful Spanish for River to be taken to her hotel and handed off a couple of pesos.

When the taxi pulled away from the curb, River watched Seo-Jun from the review mirror. She could see it clearly, even from her spot in the backseat, and she watched as he grew smaller and smaller until he disappeared from sight altogether.

For the first time that night, a small smile made its way to her face.

Seo-Jun waited until the cab had disappeared completely before he began walking back to his own hotel. Along the way, things would catch his eyes; lights that melded well against the dark, a woman who was singing and a man who was playing the guitar and the people around them who were dancing and lively, and he would stop for a bit to take a picture before he would continue on his way.

His hotel was no La grand Cuba. This hotel was not as polished and as structurally stunning as the famous hotel the woman he had met today was staying in, but Seo-Jun thought it had character. It was light against the darkened sky, and when he made his way to his room, he ran across the owner of the hotel—a graying man in his fifties with smooth brown skin and a jovial smile—and murmured a hello. It was probably the only word he was truly comfortable saying in Spanish. Although he was often told he was quite adept in the language, it wasn’t at all like Japanese or Korean or even English, all languages he had known since he was young. He had taken a couple of Spanish classes before coming to Cuba and although they helped greatly, he often found himself awkward with it, as one usually is with a language that they are not fluent in.

In his room, he removed the camera from around his neck and tossed it gently on the bed before flicking the light on. After the door was shut and he was sitting on the bed, Seo-Jun pulled out his wallet and looked inside. He had about fifty pesos left after the cab, the dinner, and buying a new pair of shoes for the woman he’d met today.

His stomach complained a little at that amount, but he ignored it. He’d just eat tomorrow when he met up with her at La Esquina.

Seo-Jun reached over for his camera and began flicking through the pictures he’d taken, looking for a specific one in particular. There it was. The picture of her. Elegant and poised as she stared out at the sunset, one hand on the concrete wall to brace herself and the other in her lap. Even with her back turned, you could tell she was pretty. Dark hair tangled in a light breeze, a slender, graceful neck.

The moment he had seen her, Seo-Jun had felt the need to film her. The moment he had glimpsed her red dress, standing out among the sea of people, drawing his eye to her like she was a beacon, he had stopped in his tracks. The people around him moved, some of them shoving past him none too kindly, but he had been unable to tear his eyes away.

He had been able to see her side profile; the eyes turned toward the setting sun and the colorful sky. The way the light hit her face and shone over her made her look like an angel. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from approaching her.

He gave a small smile and looked over the photo for a few more minutes before he placed his camera on the nightstand beside his bed.

As he rested his head on the pillow, he thought of River. How he might meet her tomorrow, how soft her hand had felt in his, and how slender her shoulders had been. His hand clenched and unclenched automatically at the thought.

There were two more days left in his trip. Two more days before he had to return to Japan.

While falling into the calm darkness that is sleep, Seo-Jun found he was happy that his last days in Cuba might be spent with River, the beautiful woman on the boardwalk.