by Maurene Goo
“It’s okay, you guys.” I took a deep breath. “I’ve got a backup plan.”
They exchanged glances. “What do you mean?” Fiona asked, her voice a little strained.
What I meant was that I was going to switch up my sassy K drama heroine into a whole other variety. The helpless damsel-in-distress kind. In the footsteps of that most famous of fakers, Jan-Di from Boys Over Flowers, with her last desperate move at the party in the very last episode.
“You’ll see.” I scanned the dance until I spotted him sitting at a table with Cassidy. She was gesturing with her arms wildly while talking to him and he looked pissed.
Luca wasn’t that far. In the physical sense, at least. I walked over to the deep end of the pool and stared into the water. This was it. I teetered on my heels and let out a little scream.
A little slip, a clumsy plunge, a giant splash—seemed fairly basic.
The lacy folds of my black dress floated around me in the water and I caught a glimpse of my sushi-printed underwear. Damn, didn’t think about that when I was getting ready. Oh well, can’t be sexy all the time.
I waited a bit, even doing a backflip in the water before I started swimming up to the surface. As I rose higher in the water, my movements grew more erratic; I kicked my legs spastically and waved my arms around, creating a riot of churning waves above me.
Once I broke through the surface, strains of dance music floated through the night air, mixed with the sound of people laughing. When I opened my eyes, water dripping into them, I saw a few people pointing at me—but did he see me? I looked over at the table, and there he was, looking in my direction, but I don’t think he even knew what he was looking at yet.
It was now or never. Like never-ever never. I threw my arms up in the air and screamed, “Help!” There was a beat of silence. If silence could sound dubious, it was the most dubious silence ever to have passed in the world. I let my head dip under the water for a second and took a chlorinated gulp before bobbing up again, spitting the water out to yell a choking, “Help! Please!” And as I floundered in the water, I spotted him.
He was pushing through the crowd. Running.
I dipped my head down under the surface to hide my smile, waiting for him to heroically jump into the water. But instead of doing that, he ran toward the wall alongside the pool and grabbed a long-handled leaf skimmer off its peg.
What in the world?
With the skimmer in hand, Luca ran over to the edge of the pool, knelt down, and stuck the skimmer toward me. “Grab it!” he shouted, the end with the net now a few feet away from me.
For crying out loud.
I splashed a bit more, halfheartedly this time, and reached for the net. When I grabbed it, I decided to add a bit of flopping-around flair—tossing my body backward so that my head went underwater again. But in doing that, I pulled extra-hard on the skimmer, and heard a loud splash.
Uh-oh.
I opened my eyes underwater and saw Luca’s body sinking. Well, okay, not exactly what I pictured but great, now he could actually pull me out.
Then I noticed something. Something off, something wrong.
Damn. It. All. To. HELL.
Luca couldn’t swim.
STEP 24:
Get Your Happy Ending
How the hell did Luca not know how to swim? His dad owned a boat, for God’s sake!
He was rapidly sinking to the bottom of the pool and I swam over to him, my arms slicing expertly through the water, my legs perfectly straight despite the weight of my dress tangled up in them.
I reached his thrashing body but when I tried holding him, he pulled us both down. His eyes were wide and I could tell that in his panicked state he was swallowing massive amounts of water.
Shit, shit, shit. I needed air, so I swam up to the surface and took a deep breath. For a brief second I could hear people screaming and a couple of people—one of them Wes, I think—jumping into the water. I had ducked down again and grabbed Luca’s arms when I realized with alarm that he wasn’t moving anymore. His eyes were closed. No.
Without his thrashing I was able to drag his body to the shallow end, where we both surfaced. People surrounded us immediately, and hands reached out and pulled Luca out of the water, from my arms. Wes and Fiona splashed to my side.
“Are you okay?” Fiona sputtered with water dripping down her face.
“I’m fine! I need to help Luca!” My dress was like an iron suit dragging me down as I struggled to get out of the pool. Wes and Fiona gave me a giant push so that I whooshed out, dress clinging to me. Violet and Cassidy were waiting on the edge to pull me out.
“He’s over there!” Violet pointed to the grassy lawn by the side of the pool. A few people were hovering over Luca’s body. I pushed them aside and dropped to my knees beside him.
“Luca!” I cried as I felt for his pulse. I frowned when I felt its weak rhythm beneath my fingers.
Violet ran over and stood by us. “Do you know CPR?” she asked while wringing her hands.
Just since kindergarten. I placed the heel of my left hand over the center of his chest and then placed the right on top of it. Then I pushed down straight onto his chest and repeated the movement every few seconds. He still wasn’t waking up, though, and I started to panic. Holy crap, I killed him. I killed my ex-boyfriend.
I was about to tilt his head back to administer mouth-to-mouth when his eyes fluttered open and he started coughing out some water.
A cheer rose in the crowd and he immediately rolled over and heaved water into the grass. The cheering faltered a little. “Ew,” someone muttered.
“Are you okay?” I gently pounded his back as he spit out the rest of the water.
After he finished coughing he looked up at me. “What … What happened?”
“You almost drowned!” someone yelled.
He looked over at the pool and it seemed to register. Turning around swiftly, he grabbed my arms and scanned my face. “Are you okay? Did someone help get you out?”
There was an awkward silence as everyone started to understand what was going on. I nodded, tears already welling up. “I’m fine. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine … I thought…” He was still trying to understand everything.
“Desi saved you,” someone shouted. “She’s, like, a trained lifeguard.”
Mother—! I heard Fiona groan behind me.
“What?” he looked at me, hair matted down, water dripping into his eyes. “You fell in, you were drowning.”
I was quiet. His confusion was replaced by pure fury.
“Are you joking? Did you fake that?”
The hollow space where my heart used to be constricted. “I—I didn’t know you couldn’t swim!”
A murmur went through the crowd. Luca stood up and grabbed his hair with both hands, like a tortured Shakespearean character. “Are you joking?” he yelled again. “You freaking faked it!” And there it was. The Rage. In all its glory.
I sprang to my feet, too, and the emotions of the past few weeks seared through me. “Who the hell doesn’t know how to swim? You’re from California!”
“I hate the water!”
“Your dad has a boat—”
“Have you ever seen me near the water? Why do you think I hate the stupid Carpe Diem so much?”
“I thought it was just part of your Daddy issues!”
He pointed at me. “Shush! Shush up, you! What kind of messed-up human does this? Did you not learn anything? What is wrong with you?”
My breath caught in my throat then and I felt two bodies come defensively to my side. Luca glared at them. “You guys are enablers. What, did you help her with this?”
Wes cleared his throat. “Um, actually we had no idea she would do this. Had we known—”
Fiona interrupted him. “Had we known, we would have helped, you little ingrate.”
And then I felt true loss. A void that even my friends couldn’t fill. I spoke, defeated and weak. “Thanks, but—it’s okay,
you guys. It was all me—it was always all me.”
Luca stilled and looked at me, eyes blazing. “Then, I repeat, what kind of demented manipulator does this kind of stuff? Why?”
“Because, you stupid idiot! Somehow I can ace a test with my eyes closed but can’t speak to a guy without my pants falling off!”
Some giggling erupted around me. I glared at everyone. “Oh shut up, like you guys are all so perfect.” I looked back at Luca. “Don’t you see that if I didn’t follow the steps, if I didn’t do absurd shit like this, you wouldn’t like me? I just … I knew if I could control how I got you to like me, I wouldn’t mess up!”
He stared at me, his expression incredulous. “Are you serious? You think that I like you because you staged a freaking car accident?”
It was then that I grew keenly aware of alllllll the people surrounding us. Oh, God. Not only had I blurted out my soul to Luca, I had done it in front of the entire freaking senior class of Monte Vista High School. I burned from my ears to my toes despite being sopping wet. Suddenly my magical black dress felt like a cheap witch costume. A damp one. The insanity of this latest stunt hit me like a ton of bricks and I wanted to sizzle into a puddle and die.
And then, in the world’s worst DJ timing ever, the music switched from dancey to a ballad. Apparently bored by Luca and me, the crowd dispersed and slowly made its way back to the dance floor. And there we were, Luca and I, staring at each other while surrounded by dancing couples and Adele crooning her ballad of lover’s lament.
His eyes flashed betrayal and hurt one last time before he started running in the other direction.
“Luca!”
But he kept running until he was just a darting figure in the distance. Luca, who never ran.
I slowly sank into the grass, my dress spilling around me like black liquid. The voices of my friends buzzed around me, indecipherable.
What have I done.
I closed my eyes and started to feel the finality of it all. Every bone in my body was tired. I was truly ready to give up.
Then I heard the voice that had helped me my entire life. You can always control how hard you fight.
My eyes snapped open. I sprang up, grabbed the sodden train of my dress, and ran. Fiona and Wes started to follow me but I yelled, “I got this!” They stood behind as I ran through the immaculate rolling green lawn, the sparkling night ocean within view. I heard Wes shout, “Hwai-ting!”
I didn’t stop running until I spotted Luca sitting on some craggy black rocks facing the ocean. Trying to catch my breath, I walked up to him slowly.
“Do you want to end up with pneumococcal pneumonia?”
He startled and turned around. “Desi?”
My heart was pounding, the sound drowning out the roar of the ocean. “You heard me, Mr. Delicate Constitution.”
He stood up and ran his hand through his wet hair. “Why are you here?”
I put my hands on my hips. Wonder Woman pose. “Because I need to, once and for all, explain myself. Without an audience.”
His anger was replaced by exhaustion. Luca looked so tired then. “I just don’t think I can believe anything you say, Desi.”
My legs shook but I kept my pose. “I know. And I get it. I’m so sorry that I almost killed you tonight. Truly. But here’s the thing. I’m not here because having a boyfriend validates something for me, because it checks off another box at being perfect or something.”
His expression was hard to read but I powered through. “It’s because … I like you, which is just a part of my being now, something beyond my control. But I’m choosing to do it despite knowing that you might reject me, that my heart could be broken again. It’s something I—I have no control over. And I’m giving it up. Willingly.”
Something changed in Luca’s expression then—a softness came over him almost immediately. “Why?”
I threw my hands up in the air in frustration, Wonder Woman pose thrown into the ocean. “Because I love you!”
I let the words hang between us—the thing that had driven me to insanity the past few months.
Luca stared at me, only moving to hastily wipe water off his face. Our eyes were going to be locked forever. My legs were shaking so hard I didn’t know how much longer I could stand there.
And then.
He strode over, pulled me into his arms, and kissed me. Not a gentle, sweet kiss—but an urgent one. I slumped into him and kissed him back, my hands tangled in his wet hair. I kissed him with the entirety of my remorse and the promise to be better.
And when we finally tore apart, my heart returned home—beating furiously.
He cradled my face in his hands. “I love you, too.”
The shitty heartbreak clouds parted and I felt warm again for the first time in weeks. “Really?”
“Why is that so hard to believe? Do you really think it was all those K drama stunts that made me like you?”
I nodded. He shook his head. “To be honest, I found all those incidents really freaking weird. Thought you were just super-unlucky.”
My laugh mingled with sniffles. “I was unlucky. With guys, anyway. And then you came along and I just didn’t want to be unlucky anymore.” I shook my head. “And I fully know how completely bonkers it all was, and I’m really, really sorry. Especially about endangering your life.” I paused. “Three times.” He laughed, releasing that embarrassing honk I loved so much.
“But Luca, the thing is, I wanted to make it happen no matter how completely bonkers the plan. I wanted to make it happen from the moment you drew this dress.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t even get me started on this dress.”
“Lillian helped me with it, you know.”
He sighed. “I’m not surprised.” Then he got very serious. “It wasn’t the K dramas. It was you. How can you not see that? Your hot brain. Your dedication to everything. Your hilarious snort. How you are with your dad … you’ve made me like my dad, somehow.”
He brushed aside a strand of my hair. I was incapable of responding, every part of me warming up with every word out of his mouth. “And you’re so strong, so determined not to be sad for the sake of your dad. To not hurt him. That’s … beyond. That’s special. You don’t need Stanford, Des, they need you. You’re a once-in-a-lifetime deal.”
Every part of me from my eyelashes to my toenails tingled. And then I smiled ruefully. “I’m finding out about Stanford next week.”
He shook his head. “Speaking of Stanford. Why didn’t you tell me you missed your interview? Why didn’t you tell me that day?”
I startled. “What? Who told you?”
“Your dad. I went to pick up my car this morning.”
What the heck! My dad hadn’t said a thing. But knowing his mushy romantic heart, I wasn’t surprised. I looked down. “I didn’t want to put that on you. It was my decision.”
“I never would have let you do it.”
“I know. But I wanted to.”
The admiration on his face melted away whatever insecurity was left in me, and I felt purified. Reborn. He pulled me into a hug so hard that I lost my own breath. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered.
I smiled into his neck. “Okay.”
He clutched my hand tightly as we started walking back toward the hotel. But then I stopped and he turned around.
“Luca. I can’t face them right now.”
He nodded. “Okay, I’ll go and bring my car around?”
I nodded and we held hands until the very last second, loath to untangle our fingertips. I watched him walk back toward the hotel and sighed, touching my hand to my chest. That’s when I felt something clinging to my strapless bra.
Oh, right. I pulled out the K drama list, sopping wet at this point. Pulpy and dripping ink.
I wanted to shred the thing to bits, to shove it in my mouth and eat it if possible. But the more I stared at the list with all its ridiculous rules and steps, the more I began to register why I loved those dramas. Not because th
ey were helpful, or because they were a useful tool for my own purposes.
It was because they were unapologetic love stories.
Yes, all the antics were fun, the clichés exhausting, and the drama dramatic. But in the end, they were about people sticking together through thick and thin, not knowing if it would work out. Real love: It was all about risk and having faith. There were no guarantees.
Luca’s car pulled up alongside me and my heart warmed at the sight of that Honda Civic, lovingly restored and given a second chance by my dad. I crumpled the list into a ball and shoved it back into my dress.
Then I hopped into the car and looked at this boyfriend of mine. “So where are we going?”
Luca shrugged. “I don’t know.”
And for the first time in my entire life, I was okay with that.
EPILOGUE
“Move your big head.”
“Pardon me?”
A pickle crunched in my dad’s mouth before he responded. “You heard me. I can’t see TV.”
“I have a big head?!” I screeched, turning around to glare at my dad from my position on the floor. “I have a perfectly normal-size head, because I got Mom’s, not yours.” Even so, I readjusted the pillow propping me up against the coffee table, tucking my chin into my chest as I slid down a little lower.
“Luca, tell her. You know the truth.” My dad stretched a leg out from his position on his recliner behind us and poked Luca in the back with his white-sock-covered foot.
Next to me, Luca’s shoulders started to shake with silent laughter and I squinted up at him. “Don’t answer that,” I warned.
“Don’t let her be bossy!” my dad said.
“Don’t be bossy about me being bossy!” I yelled back.
Luca reached over and gave me a K drama finger-flick to my forehead. “Don’t yell at your dad.”
I clutched my forehead while my dad laughed uproariously in the background. A little yap accompanied his laughing. I turned around and pointed at the brown furball sitting on my dad’s lap. “You stay out of this, Popcorn!” My dad’s puppy yawned in response, rolling onto her back so that my dad could rub her belly.
