DITW 11-14: Magnitude

Hyun concocted an impromptu recipe for homemade cookies using the ingredients found in her kitchen. She didn’t keep cookies in the house very often, even for Sophie. Kimmy toasted sesame seeds in the countertop oven, and Hyun prepared a batter. “Where’s your honey?”

Hyun told her it was in the cupboard on the left side of the fridge, second shelf, and Kimmy retrieved it. As she heated the sugar-stuck lid under hot running water, she said over her shoulder, “Did you sing that song for me at karaoke?”

Hyun chuckled, saying, “Yeah. Who else would I sing it to?—we were the only ones there.”

“No, I mean, it just seemed . . . special.”

“Oh. Yes, it was special. I love that song.”

“Okay.”

She unglued the lid and opened the honey jar, turning to face Hyun’s back while Hyun stirred batter with a spatula. There had been a change in Hyun’s stirring movement, Hyun wondering why Kimmy would ask her about the song.

Still stirring, slower now, Hyun said, “What did you mean by special?”

“I don’t know,” Kimmy said. “When you sang it, it didn’t seem like karaoke. It seemed like you were, I don’t know . . . honest. You were conveying so much emotion. I’ve never seen anyone sing like that at karaoke.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really,” Kimmy said, turning away to spoon out honey into a measuring cup, but still watching Hyun over a shoulder.

Hyun paused, and rested her hands on the counter. Without turning around, she said. “It was special.”

Kimmy studied the lowered slope of Hyun’s shoulders, the bowing of her head. All signs of an admission. A confession. She set down the honey and turned around. “I thought so. I’m glad.”

Hyun quarter-turned. “You are?”

Kimmy stepped over to Hyun’s side of the galley and leaned on the counter at Hyun’s side so they could see each other. “I like spending time with you.”

Hyun’s sweet face traveled a cavalcade of unpretentious but ardent human emotion; confusion, hope, fear, worry. . . . The fear and worry rose from the apprehension of misinterpretation; of desire and longing superseding her practical thought. Hyun wanted more from their relationship, but believed she didn’t deserve it or it couldn’t ever be. But the revelation of an open relationship with Josh had opened the doors of possibilities in Hyun’s mind. Things that could be. And her struggle was one most likely of morality and propriety. Kimmy was married to her ex-husband’s cousin; Kimmy was her daughter’s proximal aunt. Hyun’s attraction would stoke a fiery internal consternation, a veritable tussle within Hyun’s psyche. But this recent presentation of the object of her desire’s wanton, wayward lifestyle would open up temptations impossible to resist.

All of this played out on the pale porcelain landscape of a face as pure and blameless as innocent Sophie; a naive ingénue.

Kimmy smiled and said, “Hey, I mean it.” She lured Hyun closer with waving fingers to come closer. Hyun did, and Kimmy hugged her in the platonic attitude of close friends. Hyun felt soft and warm and perfect in her embrace. “You make me feel good when we’re together.”

#

Later they were on the couch eating warm cookies and drinking tea. Hyun had abandoned wine for tea in sympathetic sobriety. The cookies were crisp at first but also chewy, coated in a honey-ginger syrup. The tea was chamomile and sweetened with more honey. Hyun sipped, watching Kimmy in silence over the curved edge of the pottery mug. When she set her mug down, she said, “How did it start?”

“How did what start? The thing...”

“Did it come out of the blue? Did he warm you up to the idea?”

“I don’t know where it came from. It’s Josh’s thing. If you asked me last year if I could see this happening in my future I would have said you were crazy. Josh is under a lot of stress. We were . . . we were pregnant. Now it’s all changed, and he’s moving up at work and . . . I don’t know what to tell you. It wasn’t all at once. It was inch by inch. And, look,” she said, setting her mug down too, “I’m not unhappy about it...” She shook her head, frowning, rubbing her neck. “I want Josh to be happy. Devlin is good to me. I fear this could hurt my career sometimes, but...” She sighed and grimaced in exasperation.

Hyun scooted a little closer and moved Kimmy’s hand out of the way and took over rubbing her neck. Kimmy slumped, and looked Hyun’s way, smiling and showing the psychic relief that came from her touch. “Josh has hangups. Like trauma from bullies in high school. Devlin wasn’t so nice to him back then. I want to do this for Josh because I hope he’ll have some breakthrough, or some sort of stalemate with whatever ghosts haunt him. It sounds crazy, but we talk about it, we talk about how it can reclaim Devlin’s historical power over him or whatever. It doesn’t make sense sometimes, but I think I understand.”

“I don’t understand it,” Hyun said, rolling the pads of her thumb and fingers on the sides of Kimmy’s neck, smoothing them up and down. Kimmy moaned and bowed her head forward. “But I trust you know what you’re doing.”

“I don’t know if I do.”

“You can stop if you want?”

“Of course.”

“Would Josh make you feel guilty about that?”

“About stopping? Maybe. He might try, but Josh is no bully. I don’t want you to think he’s making me do something I don’t want to do. I don’t do anything I don’t want to. Josh can’t make me, and I don’t know anyone else who could. And like I said, I don’t hate the act. I’m kind of, gosh . . . I like being open. I like being able to share parts of myself without Josh being jealous. There are parts of this that are pretty amazing, really.”

Hyun’s hand-rubbing slowed and stalled a moment. They both stayed motionless for seconds, then Kimmy turned to regard Hyun. “Do you want to have a real chill out night?”

“Sure,” Hyun said, timid, pupils darting over Kimmy’s.

“Like a sleepover night, like Sophie’s having? We can get comfy and watch movies and talk.”

“I’d like that,” Hyun said, looking like she would do anything Kimmy asked her right now.

“Like last week when you slept over—oh, we should climb into bed.”

“My bed? Yeah, okay. Yeah, we could do that.” A small sparkle in Hyun’s eyes pleased Kimmy; the little smile of excitement on Hyun’s face, the honest keenness in her reply.

“I’d really like to get horizontal,” Kimmy said, rubbing her own neck again.

#

Hyun’s bedroom decor was sparse, and the room tidy and organized, looking like nothing would be out of place. It looked unused, or like someone didn’t really live in it; a show room model. The queen-size bed frame was chunky brass, the quilt white with small embroidered roses.

What had it been like for Hyun when she split with Meyer? How would it be to go out on your own and not know what your life ahead would be like, when a moment before you’d thought it was set in stone? She had bought all this furniture for herself and her daughter, and done it alone.

Kimmy put one knee up on the bed, then lay down on it, curling up with her head near the pillows. Hyun turned on the bedside lamp and then went back to the bedroom door, closed it, and turned off the main light. She turned on the television, a small LCD on her dresser.

Hyun came to the other side of the bed and climbed up as well, not looking at Kimmy, but looking toward the television and working a small remote. Kimmy asked her, “What was it like when you went out on your own—when you and Meyer split and you got this apartment, how scary was it?”

Hyun still watched the television, thinking how to answer, caressing the remote’s central circle pad with her thumb. “It was awful,” she said in a barely audible voice full of anxious breath.

Kimmy put two hands under her cheek, laying her head on Hyun’s pillow. “What was the scariest part?”

“I worried about Sophie. I worried I made a mistake, that maybe I’m selfish, maybe...”

“I think you did the right thing. From where I look it’s clear you made the right decision.”

Hyun nodded. “At the time though, it was really scary.”

“I bet it was,” she said, then reached a hand over to lay it on Hyun’s “You’re happy now though.”

“Of course I am. Yeah, it turned out okay.”

“Did you ever wonder what other people would think? About Josh’s family, about me? Like what would we think of you?”

Hyun smiled a little, like the answer to the question was a resounding yes. She shifted where she sat, scooting lower so they both lay with heads on pillows, looking at each other. “My family’s in Guelph. I have to stay in Ajax, I have to be near Meyer. I can’t go home to Guelph with Sophie. All the Waters are east of Toronto, all the Kims are in Guelph...”

Kimmy smiled and touched Hyun’s cheek. “You were trapped behind enemy lines.”

“Kind of, yeah,” Hyun said. “But you guys were good to me, and Josh is Meyer’s favourite Waters. They’re like brothers.”

“They are. I think about that a lot. How weird it must have been for you. I’d hate to feel the way I pictured it.”

“It wasn’t that bad, Kimmy. It was Sophie I was concerned about. Meyer’s been great, and we get along.”

Kimmy sat up and hugged her knees, looking at the menu screen lit up on the television. “What do you want to watch?”

Hyun said, “Something sweet, or something funny.” Then Hyun’s hand touched Kimmy’s back, between the shoulder blades again, smoothing slow circles. Kimmy groaned a long feline sound once more, not even an act, just loving Hyun’s contact.

Hyun said, “I can rub your back for you. Is your back sore?”

Kimmy still made sounds of pleasure, chuckling a little in her chest. “I’d like that.”

“Really? You would?”

“I sure would,” she said and sighed, laying a cheek on the point of one knee, face angled toward the screen. She’d found the remote in the bedding near Hyun’s hand and clicked on the Disney app, then Hyun’s profile picture, a portrait of Donald Duck. Hyun sat behind her, her legs appearing on either side of Kimmy’s hips, closing Kimmy’s back in the V of her open thighs. Hyun began rubbing her back, running the curve of her thumbs upward on both sides of Kimmy’s spine, running them back and forth on her shoulders, caressing her collar. Kimmy sat straighter and removed her top, taking the light cotton tank she wore under her sweater along with it. She’d worn no bra tonight; her back was bare. There was a long, unending quiet, and the air seemed still, atmospheric ions coalescing in the damp air between them, the tension zipping an electric current between them.

At last Hyun’s warm hands touched her naked skin, laying pigeon-toed on her back, thumbs touching, like she tried to imitate angel’s wings, even spreading her fingers wide, angling them like feathers. When she drew her fingertips down Kimmy’s naked skin, those ions crackled and popped on her static skiff, and sent wild shivers through her central nervous system. She shuddered, and her skin tightened all over her body.

Hyun made an amused sound, then rolled the points of her nails in slow Spirographs that tightened her nipples so much they hurt. She pushed her thighs up into them.

Hyun said, “I think I have some almond oil.”

“That would be nice,” Kimmy said.

Hyun scooted back, got off the bed, then went to the bedroom door. She left, and closed the door behind her. Kimmy lay back on the bed without a top, bare chested. Hyun had balled her nipples up to hard aching buds. Her touch had set her scalp tingling, and even her ears felt ticklish on the insides. She shuddered again, listening for Hyun’s return. On the other side of the bedroom door, she heard Hyun opening and closing the apartment door, then re-locking it and putting the chain on. She returned through the bedroom door with a brown glass bottle of massage oil. This time she locked the bedroom door.

When Hyun looked up, she saw Kimmy laying on her bed, face up, shirtless, her breasts bared. Kimmy regarded her with an unbothered look, and put one hand under her head. Hyun’s eyes widened, and her lips slimmed to a nervous line. But Hyun didn’t stall, she walked to the bedside and sat down, turned and lay on her side, looking at Kimmy with the bottle of massage oil held at her chest in two hands. Kimmy rolled to her side and faced her.

“If anything happens,” Kimmy told her, “ you know it’s just physical.”