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foxymoxynoona · 10 months ago

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Over the Falls (Ch. 6)

Sexy Banner & bar by @borabae-gx

Summary: Jungkook sees a lot of things as a pool tech. It’s… fine. It pays the bills between mornings on the water and evenings rocking out with his garage-band. His favorite thing to see on the job has been Grace Birch –older but a hottie, wealthy but nice, and unfortunately very married. At least until Grace learns what her husband has been up to behind her back. Now that she’s free, Jungkook finds himself wondering: what does it take for a guy like him to catch the eye of a woman like that?

Genre: Poolboy Jungkook x Rich Divorcee OC

Tags: Age gap (older woman), socioeconomic gap, Surferboy JK, drummer/guitarist/vocalist JK, Wealthy divorcee OC, househusband

CW: Mature/Explicit, Infidelity (not between JKxOC), language, alcohol, recreational drugs, lots of explicit sex, ageist/racist/classist remarks down the road, outdoor sex, beach sex

Chapter Five | Masterlist | Chapter Seven

The package sat loudly on the counter, unmoved from the spot Grace had set it when she brought in the mail yesterday. She’d meant to open it last night, obviously, but she’d been at the art gala with Stephanie until late and then decided to call her mom back –who scolded her for not coming home recently enough and threatened to visit, which would actually be kind of nice, except Grace didn’t want her seeing the new house until the renovations were done, or her mom would try to help and Grace wanted this place to be all hers. Then for obvious reasons it was no longer the right time to open the box.

But as Grace made her coffee the next morning, she eyed the box. It would be weird to open it now, right? In the morning? She’d paid extra for the rush shipping though so it felt stupid to then just let the box sit there. She could have just waited for standard shipping then. Not that money was the issue but there was morality in patience so she didn’t usually rush things. This time she’d made an exception after foolishly flirting with yet another man who committed only the crime of politeness –this time the guy at Best Buy helping her choose the right TVs for the new place, something she had never bought in her life and now she needed three and he’d just been so nice and supportive and non-predatory and good looking. She’d thought he was flirting. Maybe he was? After she’d made her purchase and booked the appointment for someone to come set them up, she began to worry he hadn’t been flirting. She hadn’t exactly done anything egregious, just smiled and laughed and felt flirty about it, but that was enough as far as she was concerned. She could not let her libido turn her into the sort of divorced woman who flirted with everything with a pulse. She didn’t want to be that kind of divorcee!

Not that she thought there was anything wrong with a woman fucking around if she had the opportunity, if she knew it was welcome, but Grace found herself uncertain about taking that sort of step without unassailable, undeniable proof it was welcome. She was worried about inviting the wrong guy into her bed and repeating the last ten years. She was worried about rebounding and getting attached and hurting herself just as she’d finally gained her freedom. She was worried about making a fool of herself at an age she was supposed to have figured things out by.

Grace set her empty plate in the sink instead of dealing with it now, and turned towards the box. Seconds before ripping it open with her hands –the tape on these things was so weak!-- she recalled the scolding from her nail lady and opted for the kitchen scissors instead.

Sure, she’d placed the order, but still her eyes went wide as she pulled things from the box: a long purple vibrator with a ridged end allegedly perfect for hitting just the right spot; a sparkly pink dildo that made her realize she did not understand measurements because was six inches really this big?!; a spray bottle of toy cleaner; and a plain bottle of unscented lube. The company had also thrown in several sample packets of flavored lube, which kind of ticked her off. What did she care if it was scented? What about her order made them think she had someone to try flavored lube on?!

The dildo was heavy in her hand. It had been at least ten years since she’d owned a dildo, and it wasn’t even one she’d bought; she’d been gifted one at her bridal shower amid ripples of giggles –largely from her own mother and grandmother. She’d never used it, didn’t even know what had happened to it so probably Tim had chucked it. Why would she, she had a brand new husband who’d seemed insatiably into her, willing to jump into the sack at the slightest lift of her eyebrow.

She recoiled from the memories now. They disgusted her. In the end, she hadn’t been enough –no. No, she had been enough, he was just an asshole. Not even a sex addict, just a horny bastard bored of the same sex with the same woman. Well she’d been bored of it too! He hadn’t satisfied her in years but she’d shrugged it off because she’d made a commitment that had nothing to do with good sex, it was about partnership and commitment. She would have endured a lifetime of no good sex…

Nauseating. No longer an issue, at least not for the same reason. She just needed to figure out how people did that. Not sex, she understood how sex worked, but how you got there in the first place. Could it have been as easy with that waiter as saying yeah I want to bang, let’s go? That didn’t seem right. What about… boundaries and condoms and sexual health and whether to stay or go afterwards? What about communicating what pleased her and understanding what pleased him? How the hell were you supposed to know what was good for someone you didn’t even know? And she sure didn’t know what was good for herself anymore, now that she’d let it get dusty down there. It seemed impossible she had ever been single and navigated this, but she had been a young pretty twenty-something and overly confident in her ability to choose good men.

Well. No time like the present. She eyed Foam, happily licking an extended leg within his favorite sunbeam in the empty room that would be the rec room –the walls of windows looking into the back porch didn’t seem appropriate for anything else so she was thinking of putting a wall of mirror on the other, installing a good fan, another TV, an elliptical and a bike.

Now wasn’t the time to get distracted with home projects. Foam looked like he was settling in for a nap and probably wouldn’t interrupt.

She carried her goods up the stairs to her master bedroom, the second room just about complete. The gauzy embroidered curtains she’d ordered for all the windows hadn’t arrived yet, nor the ornate rods she would hang them on, and she would take her time finding the right art for the walls–

Sex. Orgasm. Not tasks! Grace pulled the drab curtains closed for some privacy, but left the windows open because the early May morning was pleasant and the paint fumes from down the hall still needed airing out.

First she dutifully cleaned the toys in the master bathroom sink. Then she set them on a towel on her nightstand to dry as she pulled her pants off. It felt ridiculous to be doing this in the morning… like having a beer with breakfast, the timing was all wrong. But excitement was growing just at the suggestion of a satisfying orgasm, and she wasn’t going to stop now just for some silly notion of right time. She’d spent too much of her life trying to do things at the right time and now look at it all.

It also felt a little silly to have her shirt on but not her pants, but she decided to leave that too. She got settled in bed, under nice crisp sheets, before realizing she needed batteries for the vibrator. So she wrapped the throw around her body and shuffled downstairs to dig around for where she might have tucked them, feeling sillier by the minute for carving so much time out of her morning just for an orgasm.

Batteries found, back upstairs she went, only to discover it was actually a rechargeable and had blessedly come already charged.

The Cosmo article she’d been reading had suggested the dildo-vibrator combination for “earth-shattering orgasm,” hence the dual purchase. They had not mentioned that you might feel a bit silly smearing lube onto a dildo at 8:35 in the morning. Lube had been her least favorite thing about sex with Tim –time would tell whether the need for it was simply a fact of life beyond her twenties or if her flailing attraction to her own husband’s pathetic overtures was to blame. God, she couldn’t believe she’d tried to view their sex life as healthy at the time. It was so… pathetic now. So obviously terrible!

If she kept thinking about Tim, the whole bottle of lube wasn’t going to be enough. She propped her legs open and positioned the dildo at her entrance; the cold lube made her shiver and clench in a completely unsexy way. She grabbed the vibrator with her left hand and positioned it above her clit. When she clicked it on, the vibrations were way too strong at the start and she yanked her hand away with an actual squeak.

Why was she acting like a teen girl touching herself for the first time?! Grace had a healthy sex life before Tim, including a healthy solo sex life. Maybe dildos hadn’t been her thing but she’d been well-versed in vibrators from the time her mom bought her first one at sixteen with the sage warning use this before every date so you never make a stupid decision about a man. That and a very frank explanation of the birds and bees when Grace was eight, were the only thing her mother had ever directly said to her about sex; they just didn’t talk about things like that, though Grace heard plenty from her older sister Diana and slightly older cousins so she was decently well informed by her first experience which was had been, to be honest, rather unimpressive.

“Why am I thinking about all of this?” she sighed to herself. It was like her mind couldn’t stop long enough to even seek pleasure. That was exactly why she needed this! She slid the vibrator and dildo back into place. The vibrator felt good but the dildo just felt like being poked. There was no atmosphere, no mood, and certainly no technique.

She needed to be in the right mindset, not overly critical like this. She reached further back in time than Tim, but not back to those awkward first experiences. There had been some satisfying ones, back before Tim somehow stole her attention and her heart, before Oskar broke it –god, not the right time to think about him either. Before that, she’d dated around a bit, she’d had good sex that carried no emotional baggage for her now. Men who– well, young men, she’d been in her early twenties, which felt so long ago right now…

Shut up, shut up, shut up. This was a bust. She sighed and let the dildo flop heavily to the bed between her legs.

“No, you’re doing this,” she scolded, just as quickly. Even without the dildo, if need be! She slid the vibrator back into place and took slow, steady breaths, trying to empty her mind and focus on only what would be helpful now. She needed atmosphere. She needed touch, even if imagined. She closed her eyes and tried to picture a strong hand sliding down her thigh, skating between her legs, taking hold of the vibrator and the dildo. The nameless, faceless owner of the hand kissed her forehead, her cheek– no, too romantic, she wasn’t looking for that right now, she just wanted to cum. The mouth wasn’t important, just the hands sliding over her body, gripping, caressing, working her open with strong, tanned fingers.

OK, ok this was going better. She picked the dildo up again and slid it into place, envisioning the dark top of Nameless Guy’s head as he focused on positioning himself just where she wanted him to be. She pushed the dildo, just testing, as her other hand slid the vibrator a little here, a little there, trying not to come on too strong, but this was working, it was feeling good, and the clear head would feel worth it!

Suddenly music outside interrupted her daydream. She jolted just as the music lowered to a reasonable volume out of her own speakers. With a start she realized it must be JK here to work on the pool, and that she’d been so focused on her new toys she hadn’t even realized he was here.

She glanced at the rustling drapes and hesitated… she ought to stop but… why? He was working, it wasn’t like he knew what she was doing, she could go out and say hi after she finished and maybe took a cool shower… besides she’d been getting pretty close, why ruin a good thing?

So she closed her eyes and repositioned everything and took her deep breaths to get herself back to that place, to the imagined feel of those hands spreading and smoothing her thighs, squeezing her chest, gripping her ass while she pushed the dildo further in, slow, steady movements intended to mimic Faceless Nameless guy’s movements.

“For a while there it was rough but lately I’ve been doing better…”

JK’s voice had a sort of folksy rock twang to it that wasn’t usually there, but Grace had noted as she’d listened to him sing his way through his CD collection that he seemed to take on traits of the genre,. His voice had this chameleon quality to it, bending and stretching and pulling on a new style to fit any sound. What a skill! And right now that skill drifted up on the breeze and into her bedroom as clearly as if he was serenading her from the balcony. What was this ridiculous acoustic design? The last thing she needed as her vibrator buzzed against her clit was JK’s voice crooning into her ear…

Oh. Oh no. The dark head of Nameless Guy looked up at her and JK’s dark brown eyes sparkled up at her above that crooked smirk.

Grace resisted. She tried to blur his face, scratch out the identifying characteristics, make him just a dark-haired, tanned stranger again… if he had been that way to begin with…

It was wrong. Maybe that was a thing men did, but Grace couldn’t just use the image of her pool technician to get herself off!

And yet… things moved quickly as Nameless Guy refused to shed the face he’d claimed. Dark ink filled in on his shoulder and bled down through the other tattoos she’d observed only from a distance –the sharks inside his elbow, the compass on his bicep, the light lines on his wrist that looked like a sunrise. Her mind filled in the details it didn’t know, the dimples of shoulder muscles she’d never seen closely or touched–

She should not be letting JK sneak in like this. She couldn’t. She shouldn’t! But as the dildo parted her with its unnatural silicon weight in a way that wasn’t unpleasant, and the vibrator nudged her clit just the right moment, and JK’s voice hit the climax of the song, “I want you, I need you, oh God, don’t take these beautiful things that I’ve DONE”--

Well, Grace did too. Back arching, arms locked, body clenching around the shape of the dildo even once she’d pulled it out, the emptiness more intrusive than the feeling of fulness had been.

For a few minutes Grace just lay there, tingly and relaxed. She listened to the whole next song that way, eyes closed, running her own fingers soothingly up and down her arm.

Then methodically she cleaned the toys and stashed them in a drawer, and took a shower –just a quick rinse to remove any lingering trace of what she’d just done, ie masturbated to the mental image of her pool guy who was out in her backyard this very moment.

Shit. That was the opposite of what orgasming was supposed to do, help her be free of stupid, impulsive decisions about men.

God, that was so inappropriate! She hadn’t meant to. He’d snuck in during a weak moment. Obviously he was hot but she was not … like… into him or anything. Men did that, didn’t they? Just “borrowed” a person’s image because she was hot and they needed– ok but she didn’t want to be like a man!

But damn that orgasm had been better than she’d expected– due to the vibrator dildo combination, obviously! Not for any other reason!

She couldn’t ever face him.

“Hey!” she called, facing him anyway, because she had something to prove. She could be normal and kind and keep that oopsy mental image completely separate from the real guy because it was separate from the real guy! Probably she didn’t even have his tattoos right; it wasn’t like she’d ever made a careful study of them.

He waved at her call but didn’t stop singing this new song, something she didn’t know but it was the same voice as before –the one JK outsang at every bar. The songs were slower, more mellow than the stuff JK usually listened to when he worked on her pool.

“Who is this?” she asked the most casual question she could think of. “It’s good music for your voice.”

“Benson Boone,” he answered, finally looking up, squinting at a patch of sunlight that hit him in the face. His sunglasses sat uselessly atop his head, holding his hair back. It was a little longer than Nameless Guy’s hair –she liked JK’s better, to be honest, he seemed to be growing it out lately. OK, maybe it was centimeters different. The more alarming thing was that her mind had perfectly recreated JK’s face. Was she really so familiar with it?! Well, hadn’t she always been good with faces?

No, no she was actually pretty bad at faces. She’d trained herself to get good at remembering names.

“And thanks. I just got the album a couple of days ago. More folksy than I usually listen to but it’s good stuff,” he told her. “Thought you might like it.”

“I do but yeah, it doesn’t sound like your usual playlist.”

“Trying to expand my horizons,” he said, and skimmed a wad of leaves from the water to set on the side. “Ah, this is a good song. Happened pretty quickly, jumpin’ in with both feet I’ll go, though I can’t see nothing below, so ready to give up my soul. Movin’ past the boundaries, into waters so deep and so cold–”

The word “boundaries”, so beautifully articulated by JK’s lips, was like a smack to Grace’s backside.

“Yes, it’s great,” she interrupted. “Beautiful day, huh?”

“Perfect day to break in your pool,” he agreed.

“Beg pardon?”

He reached down to shovel the small pile of pool detritus he’d fished out into his bucket, then stepped back and gestured with a flourish, “I present to you, your pool.”

“You’re done? Already?” she frowned before she could think to stop herself.

JK laughed, “I’m not used to hearing that.”

“What?” Grace choked, mind leaping right back to what she’d been doing in her bedroom not twenty minutes ago. Had he meant that as a dirty joke?!

“You know, contractors take too long to finish the job?” he clarified. She could not tell from his face whether he knew the innuendo he’d made or if only her mind had taken a dip in the gutter this morning.

“Oh. Right. Well…”

“Are you happy with it?”

“Yes of course I am, it’s beautiful. I’m sure it’s going to be incredible to swim in,” she rushed out, forcing herself to look at it. The water sparkled in the morning sun, clear and cool, not a single tile left chipped or unpolished.

“I should have taken before and after pictures,” he sighed. “Bob won’t believe it.”

“I have pictures from before. I’ll take them and send them along,” she promised. JK deserved praise from his boss. He’d done incredible work, and more quickly than she’d expected –not that she had any frame of reference beyond what JK told her to expect. And she supposed this was within that timeframe but still, it felt too suddenly done, didn’t it?

“You don’t look that happy,” he admitted.

“No! I am. Obviously you did an amazing job. You just didn’t tell me you were getting close,” she said. Then quickly added, “To done. With the pool.”

He shrugged, “I got lucky, sometimes it takes longer to get the water just right but I tested this morning and it’s perfect. You could jump in right now if you wanted.”

She nodded, then shook her head and sighed, “I can’t this morning, but maybe tonight. I promise not to leave your hard work waiting for too long.”

“Good. That’s what makes it all worth doing,” he said, as if repairing her pool had been some higher calling and not a paycheck. He grabbed his tools, chucking anything that would fit into the bucket, then sliding his flip-flops back on. Like he was in a rush, she realized. He had somewhere to be. Other jobs to get to, now that he’d finished this long one.

“Thank you again,” she said, walking alongside him to his truck. She joked, “I mean it. Mornings are going to be so quiet around here now without you letting yourself into my yard and blasting music to harass the neighbors.”

“Well I’ll be back in a week to make sure everything looks good still and after that, every two weeks for cleaning, yeah?”

“Oh! Yes. I think I signed up for that? I’ll call Bob today and make sure.”

“Yeah my schedule is pretty booked but I’m sure I can squeeze you in.” He winked when he said it, then chucked stuff into the back of the truck with an alarmingly heavy thud. Before she could think of whether to tease or ignore about the wink –as if he needed to charm her into signing a pool cleaning contract– he continued, “Oh, and if you miss my singing before then, I’ll be covering one of those songs with my band at The Sand Bar this weekend. Saturday.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, we go on around nine, so not too late.”

“Oh! Let me get your CD before you drive off,” Grace realized. She ran to grab it while he stepped into his truck, then handed it through the open window.

“Think about it, huh? We’re pretty good and you like the music.”

What had that lyric been about boundaries? Grace felt like she ought to listen to it again –but probably not sung by JK with his band at a bar. Objectively she knew she had crossed a line this morning, that a line had already been crossed when JK first left her the CD with Tim’s video on it, and that no good would come from crossing further lines.

But he seemed so earnest, so sincere in the suggestion, like he really thought it would be cool and normal for her to just show up at the bar he was playing at with his friends.

Wait, was that a normal thing to do though? If her housepainter mentioned he had a jazz band that played brunch on Sundays and she took Stephanie and Ashley, that would be totally fine.

But she hadn’t just orgasmed imagining her housepainter screwing her seven ways to Sunday while she drilled herself with a dildo.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

“Ok good. The Sand Bar, Saturday.” He pointed his finger at her like a gun and clicked his tongue against his teeth while winking. She could tell by his response he had not understood her sidestep of the invitation, which was probably for the best. Probably he was being nice or trying to pull in an audience –he’d mentioned before that sometimes they got paid by heads when they played, though most of their gigs were unpaid. If he brought it up again, she would have some easy, polite excuse. That was one skill her mother had taught her well, how to politely manage an impossible social commitment.

Her pride in that was short lived as the gate closed behind the tail lights of his truck. The yard was suddenly so quiet with no music or conversation in it. She hadn’t known this was his last morning here or she wouldn’t have spent it all locked in her room… masturbating.

Ugh, the fact that’s what she’d done –instead of chatting or offering snacks for this final day of his work– was going to haunt her all day. Why hadn’t he mentioned he was almost done?

Not that it mattered, of course. Not that it was any big thing. In fact it was nice to have the pool done now. She could go swimming right now! It looked beautiful, a sparkling gem tucked back in the yard. She would swim in it soon and really enjoy all that carefully laid tile and the clarity of the water and the absolute lack of frogs. And when JK came back to clean it in two weeks, she would retain a professional, respectful boundary. And in the meantime, she would try to make some actual new friends so she stopped relying on the pool guy for company. And she would, you know, definitely not use his image in her masturbatory fantasy because that was just beneath her. That had been an egregious slip, it was embarrassing, and she would not make the same mistake twice.

Mara had called Jungkook on a Thursday night, hot and bothered and looking for a hook up so of course he had gone. It was simple sex, a good release after such a long stretch of nothing, and afterwards Jungkook fell asleep on the edge of her twin bed feeling pretty good about things. This was good to do. He’d been saying for a long time he needed to start fucking around more. Sex cleared the head and balls.

He didn’t need more than this. Sure, some people did the whole relationship thing, but he only thought that way when he went too long with getting laid, when he got sentimental from too many chick flicks or too much time around his enamored parents. He could get laid, even if it was just rotating through a few familiar women and an occasional surprise when the sun and moon aligned just right after he left the stage –was that such a bad life? It could be worse. He’d gone through dry-spells before that left him doubting everything about himself, but if it was just that no girl really thought he was commitment material… well yeah, ok, he didn’t think he was really that either. What did he have to commit? He still felt sixteen years old in his heart, sometimes. Often times. Someday he’d meet someone, he’d have the whole romance. It could still happen for him, even though he was twenty-six without any real long term relationships under his belt.

But he’d cummed out the self deprecating thoughts, left them knotted in a condom in Mara’s trashcan, and had a great night of sleep in her overly air-conditioned apartment. It left him reluctant to return to his own, because Jimin was worried about the environment lately after the governor or something said people should be more conscientious so they were letting their house sit a little warmer. Jungkook was fine with it, but it was making Jimin and Taehyung both cranky. Hoseok had even decided to sleep at his own place, alone, so that definitely hadn’t helped Jimin’s mood.

When Mara woke up, she looked hot as hell and ready to fuck again, stretching all cat-like along his side and pawing at his stomach.

Her fingers had just brushed his eager dick when his phone rang –never in his life a good sign. He fumbled it off the nightstand and answered instantly when he saw [Yoda] on the ID.

“Haewon? Everything ok?” he asked, sitting up and pushing Mara’s hand aside.

“Is that your sister?” Mara asked, her exasperation louder than the air conditioner.

“Hey. Are you awake?”

“Yeah I’m awake. What’s up?” He nodded at Mara and shoved out of the bed, grabbing clothes as he went because it felt wrong to go into big brother mode while naked in bed, half hard. The irony of it being with Mara –who’d dumped him in the first place for being too family-first– was not lost on him, but what was he going to do, hang up on his favorite sister?

“My car died and Dad said I can borrow his car while mine is in the shop but he can’t get me until later but I really need the car before lunch.”

“Why, what’s happening at lunch?” Jungkook asked, temporarily suspicious.

“There’s a seminar on–”

“Ok, fine, I’ll come get you and drive you over,” he interrupted. Seminar, of course. Yoojin would have a hot date but Haewon had a seminar, probably about the politics of poverty or immigrant rights or some other incredibly important but super boring thing Jungkook would never have been able to sit through. “Be there in… maybe an hour?”

“An hour? It’s not an hour from your place to campus.”

“Ah, well, I’m in Hacienda Heights… see you in an hour.” He hung up before she could ask questions yet, though she wouldn’t pester much. Yoojin was nosy; Haewon would rather not know, and that was one reason she was the favorite sister.

Mara crossed her arms and snarked, “I was going to ask if you wanted to get breakfast but I guess family calls, huh?”

“Little sister is having car trouble,” he confirmed, “so I gotta go get her.”

“Honestly, don’t you ever feel like you’re just living the same day of your life over and over?” she asked and showed him the door.

Jungkook did not know what she meant and for that reason kept thinking about it as he crawled his way through traffic. Huh? Living the same day over and over? That wasn’t true at all. For example, last night he’d got laid by Mara on a random Thursday evening after not talking to her for months, which made it feel like it was six months ago, not the same day as the one before, which he had spent surfing and cleaning pools and lifeguarding at the beach until the sun went down.

Haewon was on a cement bench when he pulled up near her dorm, arms around bent knees as two boys with skateboards talked to her. Jungkook thought they were trying to make her laugh. They had their baseball caps on backwards and he instantly didn’t like them for it. He beeped the horn once and Haewon sprang up but without any apparent guilt or worries about Jungkook seeing her talk to the guys. She waved at them, grabbed her duffel and her backpack, and tossed both in the trunk when Jungkook popped it.

“Hey,” he greeted as she slid into the seat beside him. “Friends of yours?”

“No, not really.”

“Only fuckboys wear their baseball caps backwards when it’s this bright out, you know,” he warned.

Haewon laughed and playfully shoved his head, asking, “How’s Mara?”

“Asked me a weird fucking question this morning,” he admitted, pulling away from the curb. He could change the subject from Mara and Haewon wouldn’t do a thing to press further, but she was smart and he realized he could borrow some of that right now.

“What’d she say?”

“Asked if I feel like I’m living the same day over and over.” He kept his window rolled down but the air on, because Haewon liked riding in the car like that; sometimes when they’d needed a break from the small family apartment when they were younger, he’d take her out in whatever beat up car he had at the time and they’d cruise through a tank of gas with the a/c on and the windows down and ideally the California coast out the window. They’d get Icees and drink them sitting on the hood.

“Well… do you?”

“...no? What does that even mean?”

“Like you’re just doing the same things over and over and not going anywhere in life, I think,” she suggested, and wiggled in her seat to pull a squashed packet of gum out of her pocket. “Want some gum?”

“Well I don’t feel that way.”

“Yeah, ok, good. Gum?”

He accepted and they drove through an intersection in silence, Haewon clearly letting him mull this over. She was smart, so that was probably exactly what Mara meant. Obviously Haewon and Mara had never met, and he tried not to give her too much of a glimpse into his dating life since she was his little sister and all, but she knew some things. Yoojin knew more, because sometimes he’d forget what she was like and vent to her because they were closer in age, and then she’d say dumb shit that made him regret confiding anything in her and he’d hold off for months. Haewon did more with less. She’d give advice about the female mind if you really asked, but preferred to just tease a little and then stay out of it. And frankly, Jungkook wasn’t hooking up with any women that had a thing in common with Haewon, so it wouldn’t have been a great help anyway.

“Why is everyone obsessed with going somewhere?” he finally asked. “I’m just… surfing. Swim out, ride in, swim out, ride in, take a water break, do it again, and have fun doing it.”

“Yeah so what’s the problem? Don’t worry about her. Bitches will say anything.”

“Hae!”

Haewon laughed and assured him, “She’s probably just mad that you’re happy and she’s not.”

“How do you know she’s not happy? She seemed happy to me.” Except for the fact she’d made it clear months ago she didn’t want to keep seeing Jungkook and then called him up for a fuck again on a random Thursday night. So maybe she wasn’t actually that happy. She’d graduated over a year ago and was working in film, camera work, but he didn’t actually know if she had a job or not. She hadn’t wanted to talk, just fuck. “But yeah, you’re right, maybe she was talking about herself.”

“Yeah don’t worry about it. A lot of times when women say something, it’s really about them, not you.”

That sounded right and true and he was immediately relieved.

“See? It’s totally worth it we’re paying the big bucks to send you to UCLA,” he teased, and rustled her hair while they were stopped at a red light. She scowled and pushed his hands away. “And not to date little shits who wear their hats backwards.”

“Oh my god, I said they’re not friends of mine,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“Yeah but I bet they want to be.”

“Maybe,” she admitted with a snicker. “But don’t worry about them. They can’t even show up to class on time, it’s completely…” She pondered the right word. “Disappointing.”

“Yeah well you just wait until a guy isn’t disappointing, that’s all. Keep your high standards.”

“You sound like Yoojin except she’s being sarcastic.”

“Don’t ever take guy advice from Yoojin,” Jungkook immediately scolded.

“Yeah but Max is so cute.”

“Just because she made a great little dude doesn’t mean she knows anything about the kind of life that you’re going to have. No pressure or anything,” he quickly added, because unlike the rest of their family he knew it wouldn’t do Haewon any good to feel like they’d piled their hopes and dreams on her. They hadn’t. They just all saw she was earmarked for something better than surfing the tide and they wanted that for her. She was going somewhere, and he wanted to be the wave that helped carry her, not the wave that overwhelmed and drowned her.

“Yeah no pressure. I’ve only got two years to raise the money for Yale…”

“We’ll get you there,” he said. “Fucker, use your fucking light,” he mumbled as a guy cut him off –no, not a guy, an older white lady with puffed up blonde hair and nails so long he could see them on the wheel when he swerved around her because she was going ten below the speed limit.

“You didn’t say anything to Mom and Dad about Yale, did you?” she asked.

“Fuck no, why? The only person I’ve talked to about it is Soyoon and you know she won’t say anything to anyone.” Soyoon and Yoongi had both gone to college, UC Berkeley where they’d met. Yoongi had dropped out in his third year to take care of his parents through a health scare and never gone back, but Soyoon had graduated with a degree in journalism and was his only source of personal knowledge about how to fund college educations because she worked in the financial aid office at UCLA, even though she hadn’t gone there. Her help had been huge in navigating scholarships and loans for Haewon for undergrad and while she didn’t know much about East Coast schools or graduate programs, she did her best fielding whatever questions Jungkook threw at her as he tried to figure out how to get Haewon to her dream school.

“Ok, good. Mom said something about New England the other day and how pretty it must be in the fall… I was like, what? Why are we talking about New England suddenly?”

“I didn’t say shit, hand on my Death Note books. Probably she’s just complaining about the heat and daydreaming about moving there,” he suggested, because she definitely did that. What he didn’t do was suggest Haewon tell their parents about her dreams of Yale Law School. He respected her desire not to stress them out about something she herself wasn’t confident she could achieve or afford. He was honored she trusted him with her dream, that she relied on his guidance to help her figure it out, and he wasn’t going to let her down no matter what.

So it was only his head that spun the numbers every so often: Yale Law School cost about $100k per year to cover tuition, housing, books, and food. But there were lots of scholarships available, even if his parents made too much money for them to qualify for some –which was laughable because what money? Haewon was potentially interested in going into public sector work afterwards which would help with loan forgiveness. They would figure it out, no problem. He, his parents, and Haewon were all saving too, for whatever scholarships couldn’t cover, and if they had to go the loan route again, they would. Haewon would get to go to Yale. Eventually she would have to tell them she was looking that far away, not somewhere West Coast, but that would be her news to share.

“It’s so nice. I can’t wait to be there and out of this heat,” she admitted. She rolled her window up and cranked the a/c, so he rolled his window up too. “Maybe you’d like it too.”

“Oh yeah? Could we get an apartment off campus together?” he joked. “What’s the surfing like in Connecticut? Big population of folks with pools that need cleaning?”

“I think you’d do more snowboarding than surfing but there’s lots of rich people, I bet they have pools they’re too lazy to learn how to take care of,” she pointed out. “And you don’t pronounce the ‘c’ in the middle, by the way.”

He ignored her and mused, “I don’t know if I’d like snowboarding… I like the sun and the sand.”

“That’s weird. Who likes sand?”

“It’s exfoliating,” he said, because he knew it would get a laugh from her. It did.

“You should find a way to sell that to rich people,” she suggested. “Like way overcharge them for a spa treatment but it’s just… I don’t, retrieving your surfboard.”

“First of all, I am not a conman, I’d have a lot more money.”

“Only if you’re a good one and I kind of think you’d suck at it. You’re not good at lying,” se teased.

“Second of all, you are definitely not a business major. That’s your great business idea? You have to sell it better than that.”

“Ok Mr. Business, make it sound better?”

“Look, I can sing you a song, I can clean your pool–”

“Have you been writing songs?” she interrupted. “I like that last one you let me hear.” Jungkook cringed. He regretted letting her hear, but he’d been really proud of it and had wanted to show off to her that he could do something cool too, something cooler than just playing the songs someone else wrote. But damn, writing songs was hard.

“That was two years ago,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, so? Chop chop, right?”

“I’m working on some things,” he lied, shrugged. “Maybe if it gets far enough along.”

“Can I come hear your band play? When’s your next show?”

“Don’t you have studying to do?” he countered.

She snickered, “Oh, too many sharks with backwards caps, huh? Is that your crowd?”

“Too many women flirting with me,” he corrected. “You don’t need to see that.”

“Yeah, yuck, I don’t need to see that,” she agreed. “Don’t you play all ages places ever though? I’m going to text Soyoon or Yoongi, they’ll let me come see you. Maybe you’re not even telling me the truth about how the ladies love you. You know you don’t have to impress me, right?”

She was teasing, he knew that, but still he insisted, “Yah, you doubt it? I’m charming as fuck!”

“Ok ok geez. I just think if that was true you wouldn’t be spending your nights with Mara.”

“What’s wrong with Mara? You’ve never even met her.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m not going to introduce you to the women I…” he trailed off. Ok, this was veering into not-appropriate-for-baby-sister territory. “Am acquainted with,” he suggested.

“Yeah thank god, I don’t want to meet them.”

“And I’m not failing at relationships or anything. I’m not trying to have one. I’m happy just…”

“Fucking around?” she asked.

“Haewon! Language!”

“Oh my god, does my own brother wear his cap backwards?” she teased. “Mo did.”

“Mo did,” Jungkook admitted and felt a pang. Yeah and Mo was a fuckboy the likes Jungkook could never aspire to. He was happily a fuckboy, successful, he loved the ladies and the ladies loved him to the bitter end. Jungkook could only dream of aspiring to Mo’s level of charm. Mo could talk circles around a woman until she was all knotted up and begging for him to unwind her. What few dates Jungkook managed to score on Tinder tended to go further downhill the more he talked. Context mattered for him; he needed the environment to make him look good, for his drumming or surfing to do the seduction for him.

“Well as long as you’re happy, I think it’s cool, but I’ve never heard anything about Mara that I liked so I don’t think she’s worth your time. At least don’t waste time with annoying ones.”

“Yeah, I know, I won’t.”

“Besides, you wear bucket hats. What would you warn me about guys wearing bucket hats?”

“Don’t date a guy who wears bucket hats either. Don’t you want to date a guy who wears like… a beret or something?”

“Uh… like a French guy?!”

“Rich, educated, maybe European…”

“Is that what you dream of for me?” she cackled in the passenger’s seat. “Oh my god that sounds terrible. I thought you liked me!”

“Yeah I just want you to wind up with someone really good! When you’re ready though. Right now, focus on your studies.”

“Ok dad, thanks. Anyway, what if I’m a lesbian?”

Jungkook considered this in earnest. As far as he knew, Haewon had never been close with a single guy, but she’d had some female friends. None that struck him as romantic, but it wasn’t like their family shared everything. She was keeping Yale a secret, maybe she had others too, even from him.

“Nah,” he finally decided. “I think you would have told me. I think you’re just school-sexual.”

“You say that like it’s lame.”

“There’s nothing lame about having more exciting things in your life!” he corrected.

“I don’t know what I am,” she admitted. “Everyone I’ve met is a clown. The guys would all waste my time. I know some cool girls but…”

Jungkook got very still. Wait, was Haewon coming out to him? He felt a mixture of panic and honor swirling in his chest. He hadn’t prepared for this. Honestly, despite half his friends being queer, he’d never much questioned that both his sisters were straight, because in the abstract Haewon had talked about a future boyfriend or husband, never anything else.

“That’s ok then,” he said, carefully.

“I don’t know how someone can date a girl though,” Haewon said. “Like they just make me feel crappy about myself.”

“You just haven’t met the right person,” he said, vowing from now on he would use gender neutral terms to make sure she knew he was cool with whatever she wanted in the future. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Well… do girls make you feel good about yourself?” she asked.

He thought about the safest answer to give his baby sister. The truth was that often women made him feel like a total piece of shit. But when it went well, when he fucked good or flirted good or played good, they made him feel like a fucking rock star, and he couldn’t stay away, he was constantly chasing that high, it carried him through the times he felt like a loser. Again and again he struck out but he kept swimming towards that ultimate dream, the one woman who could make him feel like a rockstar every day just with the touch of her finger…

“Yeah,” he said, keeping it simple. “But nothing feels as good as riding a really good wave though so I don’t think I’m in danger of settling down any time soon.”

“Maybe someday I’ll make enough money I can buy you a really nice beach condo and then you can just surf all the time and never worry about bitches,” she suggested, and he could see the twitch of her smile out of the corner of his eye, that she was trying to get a reaction from him.

“Are you just pissed you had to wait longer for me to pick you up this morning when you called me out of nowhere asking for a ride? Is that why you’re swearing like a sailor?”

“Yeah,” she giggled.

“Well stop it, you’re sounding too much like Yoojin.”

“Ok that’s one way to scare me.”

“Exactly, don’t do it.”

“Especially if I’m going to be the pride and joy of the family,” Haewon joked.

“Ok wait hold on now. I am clearly the pride and joy of the family,” he corrected. “I’m living exactly the life I want, the way I want it. That, my friend, is success. And I look fucking good doing it.”

“I don’t know, you haven’t written a song in two years…”

“I have! Just not any I want you to listen to.”

“Are they all about sex and drugs and things I’m not supposed to know about?” she asked, face curling up in disgust, intentionally pretending to be twelve again.

“Why couldn’t dad pick you up again?” he asked to change the subject. He didn’t want to write songs like that but finding something more profound to write about had left him spinning in circles for literal years. Maybe there wasn’t more to life than just doing what you wanted and having fun with your friends and being the best son you could and avoiding drugs so you didn’t break your family’s heart, but he didn’t think that song would play on the radio and he didn’t know how to put it into words anyway. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure he believed that, but he wasn’t like Haewon, he didn’t have some big career goal for his life. He wasn’t even like Yoojin, with a commitment that should be giving her direction and purpose in pursuit of the best life possible for Max.

“He took Max to his check up this morning,” Haewon answered, unphased. “Yoojin was working.”

“Do we really think she’s working?”

“You are asking the wrong sibling. I have hundreds of years of law and politics to learn, I don’t have brainspace for what’s going on with Yoojin and she doesn’t have brainspace for me either.” He wasn’t sure if she sounded hurt by it. He’d never pretended to understand their relationship other than that they had not seemed close in years.

“Yeah, maybe mom and dad shouldn’t have saved all the brains for you,” Jungkook lamented.

“You got a few of them.”

“Yeah, a few brains,” he agreed, then ruined it by adding, “But mostly I’m raw physical prowess.”

“You can drop me off here and I’ll walk.”

“I mean athletics. Drumming, surfing.”

“Sure you did. Don’t sound too much like Yoojin.”

“Sheesh. Fine. You didn’t have to punch so low.”

“That’s what you said a minute ago!”

“Yeah I’ve got to keep you in line somehow. Me? I don’t need lines.”

“Everyone needs lines,” Haewon argued.

“Spoken like a future lawyer.”

He’d meant it as a teasing insult but Haewon seemed pleased. At least she was going to be one of the good, non-asshole lawyers. She didn’t have it in her to be an asshole. Yoojin he’d be afraid to see show up in court because she was unhinged, who knew what shit she’d say or do, she’d get disbarred and her client convicted within ten minutes. But Haewon was going to change people’s lives, whatever type of law she went into, he was sure of it, and then their parents could be proud of at least one of their kids. And Max. Max was going to grow up great. And Yoojin… well, she could still turn out good if she just got her head on straight. Once she’d been funny and smart and charming too, before she got too wrapped up in men and dabbled in drugs and now sometimes it was like she just didn’t care anymore.

“Maybe we’re being too hard on Yoojin,” he mused as they neared his parents’ apartment. “She’s not all bad.”

“Did you know she has you as ‘Kevin’ in her phone?”

“Kevin? Who the hell is Kevin?”

“You know, like the Minion.”

“What? Why would she do that? And why would you know that?”

“She sent me a screenshot of your texts and didn’t realize I’d see. She’s sloppy with evidence.”

“But why?” he demanded. That Yoojin secretly named him after a Minion in her phone was so much more insulting than if she’d told him to his face.

“Do I look like the Yoojin-whisperer?”

“Ok, message received. Time to bully. Is Kevin even the cute one?”

Haewon gave him a baffled look and demanded, “Which Minion is the cute one?!”

“You know what, nevermind, I’m suddenly feel pretty unsafe.”

She had pulled out her phone and was grinning, he didn’t know if it was at him or at something on her phone.

“Hey, what am I in your phone?” he suddenly asked.

“Oppa.”

“Oh. Really? Didn’t I used to be JK? What made you change it?”

“One of my friends thought you were hot and tried to get your number from my phone so I had to put it into code,” she answered without even looking up. “Since none of them are Korean, now they think I text my grandpa a lot.”

Jungkook had no way of knowing whether that was the truth or not, since Haewon was the only Jeon kid who had any real skill in lying and simply chose not to do it (often) for moral reasons, so he took her at her word and asked, “Which friend?”

Her baleful look made him laugh.

“I’m not going to do anything. I just want to know. Who thinks I’m hot?”

“Girls are stupid.”

“That’s ok, for girls to be stupid,” he argued. “I don’t mind stupid girls. It’s hot.”

“Oh my god.”

“I’m joking! I’m joking. She’d be your age, right? Bleh, I’m not interested in a nineteen year old.”

“I thought guys love younger women.”

“Haewon, listen to me very closely. If a guy my age hits on you, it’s because women his age are too smart and he’s hoping to take advantage of–”

“Yeah yeah I know,” she sighed. “Date your own age. Again, unless he’s 300 pages long about civil liberties and is literally a book, I’m not interested.”

“Good girl,” he beamed. “Ok here we are. Looks like no one’s home.”

“I know, Dad will be home soon and I’ll take his car. I’ve got my keys, you don’t have to wait. But thanks for the ride.”

“Call me anytime,” he said and waved her off, watching until she was safely inside the apartment before he pulled away.

Where did Jungkook go on a day like today where he had no responsibilities, no work, no pressing demands on his time? It was a total coincidence he’d gone through his full week of pools and had no lifeguarding shifts today. The options were endless really. He could head to the beach. He could dick around with drums or guitar at home, maybe try to siphon lyrics from his brain again. He could do something productive like clean or grocery shop. He should definitely hit the gym today but he could do that later, after lunch. Right now, there was laundry or literally anything else…

He tossed his keys and wallet down as soon as he was in the house, announcing his presence, feeling in a good mood about it because they’d know he got laid and hadn’t come home without him even having to say anything about it. Only Taehyung was home, eyes glazed over as he stared at PUBG on the TV.

Jungkook zoned out standing behind the couch, just watching, until Taehyung hit a lull and could split his attention.

“Hey, you want to join?”

“Fuck yeah. Let me pack up my laundry for later and get a breakfast bar– you want anything from the kitchen?”

“No, you wanna do my laundry for me?”

“I’m not touching your stuff, half of it’s dry clean only,” Jungkook pointed out. Taehyung was an avid thrifter, found some incredible stuff that way, and one time a shirt of his wound up with Jungkook’s laundry, utterly ruined. The fight hadn’t lasted long, but if Jungkook was the type to hold a grudge, he’d still be upset Taehyung had gotten so mad over something that wasn’t even Jungkook’s fault. It wasn’t like he’d taken the shirt that Taehyung had paid too much for and stuck it in his own laundry.

But he didn’t hold grudges. Grudges made you old. Jungkook was chill –so chill he could hook up with a girl who’d dumped him and it didn’t make him feel bad about himself because why? It was just sex, the very definition of a meaningless good time. Like outside of trying to make a kid, it was the quickest way to feel good and chill out that didn’t require drugs. Empty balls, empty brain, full life as long as you could get some. And he could get some. Mara had called him up even though she’d said she wouldn’t again, so clearly he was the type of guy a girl kept thinking about.

Laundry packed up by the door so he wouldn’t forget to take it with him –laundromat and gym, big plans for the day– he grabbed a protein bar that tasted like a fool’s dream of cardboard but he’d grown to kind of like them.

“All right all right let’s do this!” he cheered, jumping over the back of the couch to land beside Taehyung. On a whim, feeling good, he decided to text Mara during the matchmaking, to see if she wanted to meet up again later this week.

She’d blocked him.

With a sigh and shake of his head, he decided Haewon was right, Mara wasn’t worth his time anyway. He had other options. It wasn’t like she was that good. Plenty more fish in the sea and Jungkook was a good fisherman, when the weather was fair and the waters were calm.

“You’re younger than I expected,” were the man’s first words as she shook his hand and welcomed him into the office. His name was James Alard, and he’d scheduled a meeting with Grace because he was interested in purchasing a new home in the Beverly Hills area. She had sold three homes in Beverly Hills already, but never been on the buyer’s side of a purchase there –whichhe ought to have asked but either didn’t think to or didn’t care. Grace deliberated whether to offer that information for transparency –it meant she wouldn’t classify herself as an expert in the neighborhoods there, but certainly she felt capable of it, it was nearby.

“So,” he said, leaning back in his chair, stretching his arms behind his head. “You do this full time or as a side thing?”

“I’m selective with the number of clients I take on to ensure each has the time and attention they deserve, and this is my career,” she answered, trying not to prickle at the question. There was just a way he asked it that annoyed her, it felt patronizing. It made her think of Tim, even though the guy didn’t look anything like Tim really, blond hair and green eyes and only a light natural tan to his skin.

“I bet you’re good at it,” he mused.

“I like to think so, yes. I’ve helped many people find their home, or sell their old one ahead of a move or upgrade, on terms they’re happy with. You’ll see plenty of satisfied testimonials on my web page –and I have no hidden bad ones.” This was practically a script, but still he laughed as if it were just a personal joke she’d made with him.

“You seem like the kind of woman who knows how to close a deal on her terms.”

Grace tilted her head before catching herself, not wanting to read into anything he said. Was he flirting or just testing her to see if he should hire her?

“When we’ve found the perfect house, I don’t settle for anything less than the best deal,” she agreed.

He laughed, a not unkind sound, and sighed, “All right all right, I get it. You can lower your shoulders. Not interested.”

“Not interested in helping you find a house?”

“It’s just not every day you meet a good-looking, hard-working woman,” he explained. “It’s usually one or the other, and I just can’t stand those leech women who cozy up to the nearest wealthy man in the hopes they never have to lift a finger again.”

Grace’s eyes flickered with annoyance, but she answered calmly, “I work because I want to, not because I need to. I don’t know that characterizing any woman as a leech for marrying well–”

“You choose to work, see? So you get it. It’s not just women, I’d judge a man who sat around on his ass doing nothing too! I’m not saying we all need to head to the mines but what’s the point of being alive if you don’t live it with some hard work and sweat, right? Even if I had as much money as God, it wouldn’t make me lazy,” he said.

Grace was not sure what to make of him. In theory she somewhat agreed with this, finding purpose was good, but she didn’t think it had to be a financial return, if that’s what he was saying. Chasing any passion in life could satisfy. She was glad to have her suspicion he was flirting concerned and even for him to recognize she was not responding, but she wasn’t sure why he was still off on this tangent.

“Answer me this, what do you do for fun?” he asked her.

She cleared her throat and tapped her pen lightly on the table before redirecting, “Let’s sidestep back to what exactly it is that you’re looking for.”

“I thought I knew,” he said. “But I admit you’ve got me all twisted around when you walked in here. I’m looking for a house in Beverly Hills, as I said in my message. Something big enough for my two kids and I to be comfortable, but not so big it feels empty. I don’t want them growing up wasteful. Our old house –it’s too empty, too many bad memories.”

Well, so much for moving on from her lack of interest. You’ve got me all twisted around, yeah ok.

“How old are your children?” Grace asked, thinking it a harmless question because it might influence what types of rooms or the layout of the house or whether he wanted a pool.

“Eight and twelve. Been widowed three years now and I thought it was better to stay where we were but it’s holding us in the past.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. Widowed was a different sort of tragedy than divorce, and his children had been so young.

“Thanks. It was hell, but I want my kids looking to the future now, I want to look to the future, and then you walk in here…”

She let out a sharp sigh and corrected, “Yes, a real estate agent, so let’s talk more specifics about what you’re looking for.”

“I didn’t know I was,” he said, and stared at her with a look that genuinely looked more longing than predatory, which was not what she’d expected. Grace could not for the life of her decide what to think about this. It wasn’t welcome right now, this was her place of business and she was trying to work. It was annoying and inappropriate, it didn’t matter how handsome he was. Maybe if he eased off and had met her in a different situation but he hadn’t so there, that was it.

“For a house?” she asked, intentionally not taking that bait. “since you are specifically looking Beverly Hills, one of my colleagues who’s more familiar with the neighborhood would better be able to help you,” she said, rising from her chair now that she’d decided. No point taking on a client who made her even a little uncomfortable.

He stood as well and leaned forward, hand out, earnest as he suggested, “All right, if that’s better, no conflict of interest. Does that mean I can take you out to dinner?”

“I… I don’t think…” She was stunned to be so blatantly asked and glanced at her empty ring finger. In the past she could always make a dismissive joke I don’t think my husband would like that very much, because that tended to get a more immediate acceptance than trying to champion her own personal lack of interest. No ring this time though and she couldn’t stomach pretending to still have a husband.

“I know a great place. Do you like seafood?”

“I’m afraid I’m going through a divorce at the moment,” she said, instantly regretting it because this man didn’t need any of her life story.

“So you could use a fresh start too. I promise I’m nothing like him,” he said. “I can’t say I’m entanglement free since I’ve got my kids but they’re great, don’t let that deter you, wonderful kids.”

“I… let me introduce you to my college,” she stammered out, and made for the door. “This is my place of work and it’s inappropriate and borderline harassment. I have not reciprocated your interest.”

The man quietly followed, not overly close which she appreciated. He behaved through the introduction and shook hands with her male colleague who seemed surprised by the generous hand-off of a potential client.

Before she left them to it, James Alard shook her hand and held it a bit too long as he apologized, “I’m sorry if I spooked you. I’m out of practice so I didn’t play my hand well, but I know a good thing when I see it. You have my email and my phone number. Please give it some thought and let me know if you’d be willing to give me another chance in a more appropriate setting.”

“Have a good day,” she said and couldn’t flee quickly enough.

Without a client to meet, Grace dug through her inbox to find a replacement to reach out to, then browsed some listings and sent some suggestions to her current clients about open houses or things about to hit the market that might be worth their time. She found it challenging to concentrate with James Alard still down the hall; even once she saw him leave the building, she found her thoughts lingering.

Had he been inappropriate or opportunistic? Was it flattering for a widower to be completely agog at first sight of you, or patronizing that he was looking for a “hard working woman”? Love at first sight was all over the rom-coms but she did not feel like that was what had just happened –though objectively she had been so confused and unenthusiastic about the come-on while she was working that it wasn’t like she’d really given James a good look. If they had met somewhere else, would she have been so quick to dismiss him?

Well, he was good looking, there was that. She didn’t disagree that having purpose was important –drive and ambition, within reason. Him having children of his own was neutral as far as she was concerned, unless he was a good father, in which case it was a plus. But she wasn’t exactly looking for a husband or commitment right now, which actually might mean it was a negative, especially if he was on the hunt for a new wife and a mother to his children.

Unwelcome advance, she decided. But he’d accepted the hand off without pushing his luck further. What if he was just a genuinely nice guy suddenly knocked sideways by a beautiful woman and it led him to be a bit out of pocket, but not egregiously so? Had that been egregious? Well, Grace had dealt with much worse come-ons.

No, Grace decided by the time she headed home later in the afternoon. She hadn’t even cut ties with her old commitment yet, she was certainly not looking to engage with a new one. Getting laid would be nice but she didn’t want more than that any time soon and a widower with children was probably not a good no-string fling.

Would he be down for just that? She considered this in her car. He was clearly interested in her, eager. He’d been skilled enough and charming enough to get a woman to marry him, and it wasn’t like his marriage ended because he was a selfish prick or anything. Could he be an easy path to casual sex? What if that’s all he actually wanted too?

Maybe she just didn’t know enough to make a decision about this. She needed to see him in another situation. Maybe it was worth a reintroduction, just to see if the miss had been because it made her so angry to be hit on while working. She needed to understand if he was already rushing to the altar because he thought she was pretty or if he was just suddenly awake to his own desires at the sight of her which was ok, right? It was endearing if a guy was just flustered into stupidity, so long as it wasn’t a permanent state.

Her phone rang, startling her out of her deliberation. She’d missed her mother’s last call so put it on speaker as she pulled out of the parking lot.

“Hi Mom.”

“Grace, honey, hello. Are you busy?”

“I’m just driving home. Everything ok?”

“Oh yes, I just wanted to call and check on you and also, I just had coffee with Shirleen Eckle, do you remember her? Well it turns out she has a son a few years older than you who just moved to LA!”

“Uh huh. I don’t remember her. Interesting, mom. Is he looking to buy a house?”

“Oh no, he’s already bought a condo in Santa Monica, he sold his startup and left all that behind in San Francisco to start something new here. You’ll have to ask him what it was exactly, I don’t know, but I thought it would be a great idea if you met with him, maybe you can introduce him around to what society there is in Los Angeles.”

Grace’s mom had never made secret that she found the transient and fresh wealth of Los Angeles tasteless at best. She pitied all who moved there, though always had a fantastic time at the gyms and spas and shopping districts when she visited. Society was lacking, but “some of the foundations there are good, I know some good people who’ve been convinced to move there and made the best of it.”

“Mom.”

“Yes?”

“Are you trying to set me up on a date?”

“Oh! No! No no of course I wouldn’t do that, you aren’t even officially divorced yet and I can’t begin to understand your taste in men,” her mother’s voice bubbled out of the speakers, every word making the lie more obvious. There most definitely was something pointed in her wanting Grace to meet Shirleen Eckle’s son.

“Mom, I appreciate it, but I’m really not trying to start anything new right now.” She did not think the son of an acquaintance of her mom’s was going to be the right outlet for sexual abandon. Besides… a startup guy? Grace was sure there must be some good ones. Somewhere. She hadn’t met any though and hey, if she was going to make her own choices and set her own boundaries and be honest with herself, cutting out tech startup bros as a whole class of people she did not want to land in bed with seemed fair. No CEOs either, she’d met too many and didn’t think there could be a single good female orgasm to be found in their collective histories. If one convinced her otherwise, ok fine, but considering what an easy time her mom had following the rumor mill from half a country away, Grace knew for a fact she could not have meaningless sex with this Eckle guy.

“Of course honey, I understand completely, except you must be lonely. Aren’t you? You were with Tim for so many years and now you’re in that big old house all by yourself…”

“It’s not that old,” Grace insisted, longing to be there already. “It doesn’t look its age. It has character. You’ll love it when you visit. And no, I’m not lonely. I have Foam.”

“... The cat.”

“For now, yes, that’s enough. I get to do what I want, when I want, and I just have to make sure I’m home to feed him and give him attention until he wants to go chase ghosts by himself again. That’s all the attachment I want.”

“I just worry about you.”

“I know you do, and I appreciate it. But things are getting better every day. I’m through the hardest part now, I just have to get this divorce wrapped up and then I’ve still got my whole life ahead of me.”

“Well…”

“Mom…”

“No, I know you’re correct, honey, it’s just that thirty-five is both young and not young. You don’t want to miss something good coming your way just because you closed your eyes.”

“My eyes are open, I promise.”

“But you’re not looking.”

“Is being alone really the worst thing in the world? I think it could be kind of nice for a while. I got married too young.”

Her mom’s voice was loving and heavy and serious as she admitted, “I was married by twenty-one, you weren’t exactly a child bride! I just can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine that for you. I want someone taking care of you, that’s all.”

“Maybe someday, but for now, don’t worry about me. I promise. Now I’m hitting traffic and need to concentrate but trust me, I am going home to my beautiful house to make a shrimp scampi and drink some fantastic wine and it’s going to be a perfect night. Far, far better than any evening I had while married.”

“Well that’s because you married the wrong man, honey. The right man will change everything.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Love you, mom, bye!”

She hung up before her mother could say anything to annoy her further. It was sweet her mom was worried, she knew that. But obviously she wasn’t going to tell her mom the only thing she’d been thinking about lately was sex –not a thing to discuss with her mom, though probably she’d be proud to know Grace had taken pains to buy the toys to prevent future bad decisions! Even though they hadn’t prevented Tim. But they would prevent James and Matthew, she was sure of that!

Traffic sucked but, like a divorce, once through it, things were better. They would be better. Her home looked inviting and cozy, more put together by the week. Foam was waiting for her by the door, probably drawn by the vibrations of the garage door. The bottle of wine was chilled to perfection and the smell of food cooking as she let Spotify play whatever it wanted made her life feel very full.

Did she want someone to slide his hands up under her shirt, swaying as they drank wine and cooked together, maybe bend her over the counter… Yes, sure she did. But then she’d be happy for them to go home and leave her to her space and privacy and things being just the way she liked them. She didn’t feel lonely right now in any way except sexually.

Was that weird, that sex was so top of her mind lately rather than romance or companionship or emotional intimacy? Was that a sign of divorce shredding her heart? But honestly, she didn’t feel shredded right now. In a way, she felt more whole and in control of her thoughts than ever before. A handsome guy blatantly came onto her and she was being very practical about what she wanted, whether she was interested. Picky, one might say, so she must not be too desperate yet.

And outside of sex, what good was a man to her? Tim had never been a bit of good, really. Her life had become so much easier without him that it was impossible to remember what good he had ever contributed, and thus she missed nothing without him. She had plenty of girl friends to socialize with, who needed a boyfriend? It would just be nice to have a hand other than her own wringing pleasure from her body. Orgasms on her own were fine but they didn’t feel quite like what she remembered from her younger days, which she hoped was a lack of technique rather than some sad evolution of her sex drive over the years.

It was normal to be horny when you’d been phoning it in on sex for years to convince yourself and your lying cheating bastard husband that everything was fine. It was ok not to want some close companionship when she’d been so completely betrayed and just wanted to support herself right now. It was perfectly healthy to be a woman in her mid-30s with no active sexual life to long for a good one. Regardless of what her mom said, thirty-five was not that old, and she would remind herself of that as many times as she needed to, because it was hard to remember sometimes. Tim had been ten years older than her and so often she forgot her own age. If you’d asked her, she would have said 40 without thinking about it but she wasn’t even 40 yet and it was time to reclaim that freedom to discover herself she had missed out on in her twenties.

Maybe it was even time to make some semi-reckless choices, chase what she was interested in just for the selfish thrill of it, not settle for anything less than her own happiness.

Which right now meant she wasn’t going to call James, or Matthew, even though she had both their numbers now, nor meet with Shirleen Eckle’s son.

But she was going to call Alicia and ask if she could show Grace the ropes for how to meet a safe, generous, clean, attractive guy who might be interested in showing a girl a good time, no strings attached. She didn’t want a widower to wonder if she was love at first sight for him, she just wanted to get fucked without worries or overthinking or expectations or risk of getting hurt or catching an STD or…

How do people do this beyond their idiotic twenties, she wondered, instantly backpedaling from reckless. You had to be willing to have some bad nights and mistakes and maybe a little chlamydia, was that right? She didn’t want a little chlamydia… Was she asking for too much?

Ok. Time to ask Alicia for help.

It was impossible to see beyond the first two rows of the bar; The Sand Bar had the stage lights way brighter than they needed to be. It was brutally hot because of them, even though the night had cooled off once the sun went down, and the ground was stickier, and the air smelled of salt and Malibu and weed. Jungkook laughed and shook his sweaty hair out of his face, smeared the beads of it from his chin and neck where they tickled in between songs. He’d been growing his hair out –for the look and to save on haircuts– but it wasn’t long enough yet to pull back, just long enough to drive him nuts.

There was no way to know for sure if Grace had come, but he suspected she hadn’t. The small chance she had, that he couldn’t prove it because he couldn’t see beyond the stage lights, at least let him cling to the fantasy. Just for fun. He poured his heart, soul, and sweat into the drumming that night, did his best chatter in between songs even though he was often the silent mumbly type and let Taro and Yoongi handle the banter. He felt compelled to be his best, not only in case Grace was there watching, but also because Yoongi had put his foot down on Jungkook’s behalf and insisted they keep the Benson Boone song in the set when Taro tried to cut it right before, claiming it would make them run over. It wasn’t even the last song in the set but god fucking forbid they cut one of her favorites.

The song stayed. It brought the house down, Jungkook didn’t think it was too cocky in saying. It was at the height of radio play right now, and a slight departure from the rest of their set, just enough to catch attention and bring back any wandering interest. Drumming and singing lead was a challenge but he felt like he nailed it, felt the victory of it humming through his blood and buzzing behind his eyes and warming his ears. There was no high in the world like playing live music on stage except maybe the short ride of a killer wave, but that was over and done with so fast. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he told Haewon.

“Nailed it,” Jimin told him, clapping him on the back and handing him a beer as soon as he walked off stage. Jimin wasn’t the only one, there were so many hands and fluttery grins and a true throng of people who circled them once they hauled their personal gear off stage to make room for the next act.

“Bet they regret not asking you to headline,” Taehyung said, which meant a lot to Jungkook and the others too, he thought. It certainly did to him, capped only by Yoongi clinking his beer against Jungkook’s and nodding,

“You fucked that song good. Glad we kept it.”

“Yeah me too. Stop trying to cut my stuff, Elizabeth,” he called over to her. She scowled and flipped him the bird, but a moment later draped herself over his shoulder.

“I admit it. It was great. It’ll be too played out for Flowerfest but you did good.”

“It’s too new to be played out,” Jungkook argued, even though it wouldn’t be on theme for Flowerfest anyway so he hadn’t been going to suggest it. “We should keep it in our set for a while.”

Soyoon nudged his arm and beamed, “I agree. Think you got quite a fan following, JK, why don’t you go talk to them?” She gave Jungkook a hard shove away from their group, towards several women who did in fact seem to be waiting to talk to him.

But for the briefest moment, he thought he saw Grace across the bar. It couldn’t be her… right? But it might be, he really thought so much that it might be her that he found himself missing whatever the closest woman said to him, just didn’t hear her completely, even though the next band was still setting up.

“Sorry, excuse me, I think I see a friend…” he muttered and walked right past them. Was that what Soyoon meant? But Soyoon didn’t know who Grace was. He felt a weird flip in his chest as he pushed his way through the crowd to where he’d seen her. It wasn’t really her, was it? She wouldn’t really come.

Oh fuck what if she did come to his show. What if she’d just seen that performance for real? Thank fuck it was a good one! He could be proud of that. He hoped she’d be impressed. He hoped she’d lean in close to tell him how good he did, and he’d touch her arm to keep her close so she could hear him offer to buy her a drink and thank her for coming and say how great it was that she’d come.

What did it mean if she came? Just that she wanted a night out, now that she was single? Maybe it would depend if she’d come alone or brought friends. If she brought friends, she just wanted to listen to good music, and he’d delivered. If she came alone…

He took several gulps of his beer as he reached the spot and looked around. She wasn’t here now. He turned and traced the path he’d taken, wanting to be sure they hadn’t just missed each other.

If she’d come alone, he’d buy her a drink and slowly lead her out to the part of the bar that spilled into the sand, so they could have some more space and talk. He wanted to hear what she thought. Maybe he’d suggest a walk, if it seemed like she wanted to get out of there. No, if she wanted to get out of there… well, his place was closer but no way could he take a woman like that to his bachelor rental.

He was getting way ahead of himself. Grace hadn’t come to his show to start something with him just because he’d fixed her pool. At best, maybe she came to listen to music and flirt a bit. At best best, maybe they’d drink together for a while, get closer, at most he’d put light moves on her –unless she wanted to start something… but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t start something with him. Unless…?

No, he was being stupid and hopeful based on nothing but beer and the adrenaline surge from coming off stage. He still felt the thud of the drum through his body and it made him want to feel a different kind of vibration, a more intimate collision. He craned his neck and looked around, trying to find her again, trying to ignore how ready and willing his body was to transition from stage adrenaline to beautiful woman adrenaline.

“Hi,” he barely made out as a hand lightly touched his back. He spun, only to be confronted with someone else, one of the women who’d been hanging out closer to the stage. Not Grace.

“Hi,” he returned. “Hey, did you see a woman around here, about this tall, like brown and blonde hair…” He trailed off, realizing he could be describing half the women in the bar. The woman looked confused and told him no, as if she couldn’t see half the women in the bar.

“Damnit,” he mumbled and stretched to look again, but he wasn’t seeing her now– oh! Wait, there?!

But the woman he’d spotted turned, and it wasn’t Grace, not even close. And now he felt more sure that’s who he had seen and gotten hopeful, confused.

Fucking fuck.

Yeah, no, but of course she hadn’t come. This wasn’t the kind of place she would hang out on a Saturday evening. She’d said she would keep it in mind, not that she’d actually come. She was probably at a wine tasting or a steak house or a private club along the nice parts of the beach tonight.

He got the impulse to text her, tease her about missing the song. But of course he didn’t know her like that, they didn’t have that kind of familiarity, and he didn’t have her number. Well, technically it was in her file, but not in his phone. Sure, she’d put Neosporin on his cat scratches, but that was it. They weren’t a thing. Obviously they weren’t a thing, because it was Mara he’d bumped two days ago, not Grace.

Could Mara tell he’d been thinking about someone else when he closed his eyes? Now he worried, wondered if that was why she had blocked him afterwards.

This was getting out of hand. He’d said before he needed to fuck whatever little crush he had out of his system and he was right, it needed to happen. If Grace had any interest in him, she would have come to see the show he directly invited her to. It had all only ever been in his head, whatever little flirtation he’d had with her, and now he was done fixing her pool so even that was done. He’d see her every two weeks to clean her pool and she’d leave some Cheetos out for him like he was a squirrel and that was that.

The woman was talking to him, he realized belatedly. He hadn’t heard a word. But she was attractive and tall and she had nice shoulders and long legs.

“Hey, do you want to get out of here?” he blurted out. Might as well make a move to get over his disappointment that Grace was in fact not the one here praising his performance.

The woman gave him a baffled look and said, “Um, no, as I was saying, I work for a clothing brand and I wanted to talk to you about some promotional outfits because your style is perfect.”

“Oh yeah, right, sorry, I meant so I can hear you better,” he flubbed a cover. “Why don’t you, um, email me? It’s hard to talk business in here.”

That seemed like the right thing to say, though he wasn’t sure she was actually going to follow through. Nothing worse than thinking a hot woman was hitting on you and realizing you were dead wrong. She was just trying to sell some shit. No, to get you to sell her shit.

Eesh. His ego needed a quick recovery so he wound his way back to his friends, one eye partially on the lookout for Grace but he was pretty certain by now he had imagined the whole thing. He wasn’t going to cry about it, but it was disappointing. She would have liked the show.

“My beer is empty,” he realized, holding up the empty glass he’d chugged through his embarrassment.

“Buy me another!” Corri called, waving her hand at Jungkook.

He made a face and snorted, “Yeah right, you can come with me and buy your own.”

“Charming.”

“I’m not trying to charm you, make Taro buy you a drink.”

Corri’s eyes got really wide like he’d said something shocking or horrific, which he couldn’t figure out.

Before he could think too much about it, Hoseok had draped his arms over Jungkook’s shoulders and practically shouted in his ear, “I’ll go with you!”

“Hey don’t hang on him,” Jimin scowled and grabbed Hoseok’s arm. “People are going to think you’re his boyfriend.”

“Then he’ll never get laid,” Taehyung sagely agreed.

“At least not by the people he wants to get laid by… you’d do numbers in a gay club, you know,” Jimin told him, not for the first time. Which Jungkook was obviously flattered by, even if the thought of being intimate with a dick left him absolutely and utterly blank. It wasn’t even a recoil, it’s just that it was a dick, what was sexy or appealing about it? The only good thing about a dick was getting his own sucked or fucked. Probably he could give a pretty good handjob, he’d thought of that before because he was familiar with his own, but it wouldn’t be gratifying to him.

Belatedly he added, “I did just get laid, so I don’t even care tonight. There’s more to life than fucking, you know.”

“Who’d you get laid by?” Jimin pressed, instantly interested.

“He spent the night with Mara,” Taehyung answered before Jungkook’s mouth even opened.

“How did you know?!”

“You always come back from her place kind of sulky.”

“No, man, that’s not true.”

Jimin and Taehyung both nodded though, and Hoseok, sliding off of him, agreed, “You do. Doesn’t seem like it’s very good sex.”

“That’s probably why you played so well tonight. Sexual frustration,” Soyoon teased, taking Jungkook’s empty bottle and setting it with others on a nearby table. “The worst kind, because you got it but the getting was not good enough.”

“It was sex! What’s not good enough about it?” But even as he said it, because he felt like he needed to defend himself, he also knew exactly what they were talking about. Sex with Mara didn’t feel like it counted. Sure, it was release, it was good in that sense. She was fine. He’d been satisfied at the time. Once he’d thought she was pretty good. It was better than masturbating and it didn’t require much from him since she initiated, but he wasn’t exactly broken up that she’d blocked him and there would never be another round. He’d been thinking of another woman during it anyway.

“I’m not sexually frustrated,” he argued, “and that doesn’t impact my drumming.”

“I think he drums better when he’s been well laid,” Yoongi argued, his only contribution. “He’s a little rushed when he’s frustrated.”

“Yeah, and I was fine tonight,” Jungkook agreed.

“A little rushed,” Yoongi beamed, then disappeared, clearly heading for the bar for another beer and then to make his escape to the outskirts, away from the crowd. That’s where Jungkook wanted to be too. He didn’t feel like talking about sex anymore; was that all they talked about?

“You’re all assholes, I’m getting another beer,” he said, and turned to follow in Yoongi’s wake. Jimin grabbed the back of his shirt to follow along like a tug boat, Hoseok behind him, all of them letting Jungkook fight his way through the crowd to their benefit.

Jungkook lost count of the beers and the time but he forgot his disappointment and just coasted on the vibes of a fun bar on a Saturday night. Eventually he was all laughter and smiles, easy-going, carefree, riding the high of a good performance and the handful of hot, flirty women it brought into his periphery. After striking out hard with the woman earlier when he was all distracted by the thought of Grace, he didn’t push for anything and mostly just stuck with his friends, but it at least bandaged his ego. See? Girls thought he was hot, even if Grace was unimpressed.

Damn, he wished he could impress her.

But he didn’t, and he really needed to stop thinking about her or it would turn into something pathetic like pining. He was not the kind of guy who pined. If something wasn’t working out, cut your losses and roll on. Pining led to disappointment and dissatisfaction and those things led to depression or drugs or both and that led to your family crying at your memorial every year.

What a relief that just as Jungkook started to get introspective, Hoseok jumped on his back and off they gallivanted to the sandy beach for an impromptu drunk volleyball game. Other friends had joined, Jungkook was surrounded now by people he liked, people he could just relax and have a good time with. Even when Seokjin accidentally hit the ball backwards, directly into Jungkook’s face, it was funny and it didn’t hurt too bad despite his watering eyes.

He took it as an excuse to collapse on the sand for a break. It was the kind of early summer night that had him sweating and shivering at the same time, a cool breeze tickling the sweat on his skin.

Nearby a gaggle of girls were sitting, clearly drunk and loud. One kept looking at him; he wasn’t sure how long it took him to become aware of it, but she was drunk and slow to look away, and erupted into giggles when he nodded his head at her. Instantly he regretted it; she looked young, probably Haewon’s age, and the older he got, the older his lower age limit was. He didn’t understand guys who wanted to fuck girls who couldn’t even legally drink yet. Couldn’t be him. The last thing he wanted was some young giggly drunk college girl right now, just thinking about it made his dick limper than limp. Nineteen was for baby sisters.

Two other women walked in front of him, headed towards the water, and his gaze was drawn immediately and entirely towards them and the way moonlight and beach lights glinted off their long dark legs. They had a confidence, an attitude to them; they had lived at least as many years as he had and he found himself drawn to that so much that it got him to his feet, walking after them to wade in the water a couple yards away.

He should just go over to them. He should flirt, be his best charming self. Ask if they’d seen the show, since they’d come from the bar. Lead the subject around to his drumming, see if they were into that, make a couple jokes laced with innuendo to see if they nibbled. If they did, it was an opening, an opportunity they’d be down to nibble something else later tonight, at least one of them. On a night like tonight, he could have good luck finding a new woman to fuck for a night, even if that’s where it ended. There was nothing wrong with a night of fun when you could string them together. Mara was out but he could find a new woman to enter rotation, yeah? Maybe one of those women, and he’d have a great time and so would she, and that was all that mattered. Some people in life had these over-arching purposes like Haewon, and others had purpose though a person or relationship like his eomma and appa, or maybe even Jimin and Hoseok because they’d been together for a while now, and the rest of them were just living life and having fun and fucking around and there didn’t have to be any bigger reason for it and he was cool with that! He didn’t need more than that and he wasn’t just saying that, he was satisfied. He could die tomorrow and he would feel like he’d lived the best life he could, given the circumstances. Sure, he could have lived better with a million dollars and no stress and a girlfriend, but c’est la vie or whatever. That was about all he remembered from high school French, which he had taken because there were more girls than the Spanish classes.

“Hey, aren’t you the drummer for the band earlier?” one of the women asked, suddenly noticing him.

He grinned, internally pumping his fist, and drawled, “Yeah… you ladies like the show?”

“It was amazing– oh my god, how old are you? You look really young,” one said and the fist pump turned into a shake at the heavens.

“I’m twenty-six, damn, you sure know how to flatter a guy,” he snorted. They couldn’t see his body in the low light, probably only his big beady eyes that yes, he was aware made him look younger.

“Oh my god, sorry, I didn’t mean it as a bad thing!”

Annoying. Women didn’t think he looked so young once he took his shirt off, but he had a youthful face, whatever. Old women loved it! Younger women didn’t mind!

“I bet you say that to every Asian guy you meet,” he joked. “You need a new pickup line.” The woman who said it looked shocked, but the other one was unbothered and smiling at him now in a way that still looked like it could be an open door. He might be able to land this one, and end his night balls-deep in a hot woman who had seen his show and enjoyed it. He wouldn’t let his mind wander like he did with Mediocre Mara. That was a mistake. He shouldn’t have bothered with her just because she was easy sex, so he thought right now when presented with more challenging sex that would therefore be more satisfying. Probably.

Besides, maybe his friends were right, maybe even Haewon had accidentally been right without even knowing what she was talking about: who wanted to have sex with someone you knew didn’t really like you? He was an easy lay for Mara and that was fine because it was easy for him too but… but something was missing. His friends were right, he was sexually frustrated. Mara was right too, she was too same-old for him. He needed someone new and exciting, someone who thought he was hot and cool and really admired him. It had been a while since he’d fucked someone new and exciting. He wasn’t the kind of guy who tracked the weeks any more than he was the kind of guy who kept a body count, but it had been too long. He couldn’t have told you how many women he’d been with if his life depended on it –which women had, and he made up a number based on what he thought they wanted to hear, but he always got it wrong in the end but he suspected they were usually looking for a way out by that point anyway. Which was cool, some people were meant for sticking or being stuck to and maybe he just wasn’t that person. The sticking kind.

He really, really hoped that someday he would be somebody’s sticking kind and that it would be worth the wait.

They were asking him about music, about instruments, about drumming technique. Jungkook smiled and nodded and flirted and ignored this weird part of his brain that kept tapping him on the shoulder. He didn’t want to hear what it said. He didn’t want to overthink this. He was cool, casual, slightly drunk Jungkook, he’d just go with the flow. The love of your life had to start somewhere, right? When you least expected it?

“So what do you do during the day?” one of the women asked. “Or is this your full time gig?”

Aw shit.

Jungkook wished desperately he had something cooler to say than the truth, and many a failed date slithered up to his shoulders, but he wasn’t the sort of guy who would lie for pussy.

“I’m a lifeguard and a pool technician,” he answered with a confident nod.

“Ohhh,” they said, almost identical intonation. This, this was the problem, and he refused to let it make him bitter but it was starting to make a dent. Women his age in this town didn’t want blue collar, they wanted white collar, or at least something sexy like I’m waiting tables because I want to be an actor or a model.

“That’s … cool. You must like to swim.” He could feel their eyes slide down and then back up.

“Yeah, I spend all my free time at the beach. I surf a lot.”

Sometimes that worked, but this time it did not. He could practically see their attention melting away.

“Cool,” one said. And Jungkook sighed. Honestly he didn’t even think he could salvage sex out of this, and there was definitely no budding romantic connection. Time to cut his losses and salvage his dignity. Which was fine, he’d had sex last night. If he was really eager, he could wander back to the stage and let a woman approach him and do most of the talking, that tended to work pretty well. Not for dates, granted, but if all he wanted was someone to go home with, it panned out sometimes.

His friends cheered over the game behind him and Jungkook got the restless feeling in his gut that he wanted to be anywhere but right here right now.

“Well I’m glad you both liked the show,” he beamed at them. “Hope you have a nice rest of your night.” He could see they were surprised by the abrupt departure but that didn’t stop him from turning and jogging over to jump onto Seokjin’s back just as the game was breaking up and demand, “What’s everyone doing? Where are we going?”

“Oh, aren’t you going home with one of those chicks?”

“Nah, I want to hit the beach early tomorrow. We calling it a night or going somewhere else?”

“You’re going to surf in the morning?” Seokjin laughed. “Won’t you be hungover?”

“I rarely get those.”

“Damn. Youth,” Seokjin sighed. “You won’t see me.”

“I’ve got work,” Hoseok sighed and flopped down on the sand. “Why can’t I be a kept man?”

Jimin laughed and kicked his leg, “Why can’t I be the kept man? You’re more capable than I am, you have to work.”

“We could both be the kept man.”

“Oh yeah? Who’s keeping us?”

“I’d keep you if I could,” Jungkook said grandly. “If I had a million dollars, none of us would have to work and we could just live like this all the time.”

“A million dollars really isn’t that much money,” Soyoon pointed out. She hadn’t been playing volleyball; Jungkook thought she had already left with Yoongi and was surprised to see her saunter over now. “You could take everyone on like one nice vacation.”

“Ok, I’d do that then,” Jungkook decided.

“Awww are you drunk and sentimental now? Is that why you bailed on ass to come back and roll around with us?” Jimin asked, curling around Jungkook’s feet and trying to drag him down. Jungkook easily lifted Jimin up, making him flail and shriek with laughter as Jungkook spun him in a circle and then tossed him back down with Hoseok.

“‘I’m not sentimental, I’m restless.”

“Yeah so go fuck one of those women.”

“Nah. Maybe I should take a break from sex for a while,” he mused. “It’s getting kind of boring.”

“Sex is… boring?”

“Bad sex is boring,” Soyoon snickered. “Bye for good Mara.”

“We talk about sex too much, it’s not that great. It always ends the same way. Let’s do something else tonight,” Jungkook insisted.

“You’re kind of weird lately,” Taehyung laughed, squeezing Jungkook’s cheeks together. “Extra weird.”

“Nah, I’m cool. Let’s go.”

“Drinks and games at home?”

“I’m going to Yoongi’s to smoke, if you want to join,” Soyoon shrugged. “And I’ve got my car and I’m sober to drive so…”

Jungkook didn’t really want to do that either, but he couldn’t put his finger on what he wanted to do. Maybe he didn’t even want to be surrounded by people right now but he didn’t want to be alone either, so being with his friends seemed like the next best thing, and he didn’t really want to go smoke at Yoongi’s place but that’s where everyone was headed so hey, he’d go with the flow.

Maybe Taehyung was right, he was being a little weird. Usually he didn’t bounce around this way. Even his own thoughts were bouncy. It felt like he was just trying to pass the time until something… but what? There was nothing coming up in his life. He had no plans. He had no goals. There was no upcoming vacation or party or anything like that. Flowerfest, but it wasn’t that big a deal. Why did he have that weird tingle of anticipation in his belly –which would have made sense if he was still flirting with the girls and hoping to score with one tonight, but he’d backed out of that.

Sex with Mara sure hadn’t fixed it, so fine, he’d see if weed with Yoongi did instead.

“Shotgun!” he shouted and tore ahead to Soyoon’s car, barely slowed down when Jimin jumped onto his back.

Nothing like a Tuesday morning spent across a table from Tim to ruin every modicum of contentment Grace had worked on for the last few days. Her weekend had been fine but busy bouncing between social engagements, followed by a perfectly fine Monday of work touring open houses with a client. Busy was good, she was busy with the things she wanted to be busy with. More exciting than that, she had already secured plans for Friday night out with Alicia, with Alicia’s guarantee Grace would end the night “fucked out beneath a hot guy.” Grace was desperately clinging to that promise because honestly she just needed some relief. Bonus points if the guy could want her, crave her, just be really overwhelmed with lust for her because damn did her self esteem need it right now.

“This is the breakdown of assets we agreed to take to the judge,” Lidiyah evenly reminded Tim and his lawyer. Robert Butts had the unfortunate appearance of looking like a butt with a deep cleft chin and jowls and only a thin layer of buzzed black hair, and looking at him filled Grace with rage because he was an idiot lawyer –Lidiyah had said it many times– intentionally saying and doing dumb shit to drag this whole thing out because that’s what Tim wanted.

“My client wants to revisit the list. He doesn’t think it’s appropriate to include assets for distribution that your client never interacted with,” Robert Butts argued. Grace looked at the sheet of paper they had highlighted things on –the pool table, the stair master, the TV from Tim’s man cave. Even the fucking dart board which couldn’t have been more than $250. The craziest claims though were the ‘66 Chevy Corvette Stingray convertible and the Mercedes Maybach EQS SUV, which he claimed were his and only his because she had never driven the Mercedes and the Chevy Corvette should be considered a gift for his 40s or at least only appraised at the original sales price because he was the one who had “funded restoration.” (With joint funds!)

Grace saw red when she looked at the list, but looking at Tim would make her even angrier so she looked at her watch instead. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how angry he made her. She wanted to look like she was unbothered, like she didn’t care, like this was just a waste of her time.

“That’s not what division of assets means,” Lidiyah said again. “These assets were purchased with joint funds, including the Stingray. It does not matter who touched what items in the house for how many seconds.”

Today was just supposed to be a chance to finally agree on the list and both sign it so it could be brought before the judge as part of the official divorce proceedings. Today was not supposed to be a chance to reopen the list and argue over every fork and spoon.

Grace tapped Lidiyah’s arm and leaned close to whisper, “As much as I hate this, I don’t care about this anymore, just give him the shit and let’s sign it.”

“Give me one week to fix this,” Lidiyah argued, just as quietly. “If we budge on this, it gives him space to reopen other things. I would almost have gone in on the TV and pool table but not those fucking cars. That’s ludicrous.”

Grace didn’t want to give Lidiyah even one more week, even though she completely and totally agreed it was ludicrous. What next, claiming all the funds that had come from sale of the house and were currently sitting in escrow awaiting settlement? She was ready to burst, sitting in the room with Tim never directly addressing her made her so angry. How had she ever been married to this man? She had to believe he had changed, surely she would never have been so stupid to love someone this petty and stupid and selfish.

But Grace trusted her lawyer and sighed noisily, “Are you really this hard up for money, Tim?” It was a well placed blow; he immediately began to shout at her and Robert Butts dove in to quiet him down.

“The list has to stand,” she argued. “If you really want to open it up further, my dad is going to want to revisit that loan he made which has never been paid back and which I think funded your Bentley alongside your career.”

“That was a gift!” Tim shouted. “An investment, not a loan!”

Lidiyah gave Grace a look, clearly annoyed Grace had poked, but she couldn’t stop herself. It was in Tim’s best interest that he stop dragging his feet about this and get it over with quick. In fact, her father had wanted to go after Tim for the money purely out of spite as soon as Grace told him about the divorce, but Grace knew Tim would fight it and it would slow things down. Now, since Tim was slowing things down so badly anyway, her strength was starting to waver.

“You aren’t going to find it called anything but a loan in any of the paperwork,” Grace mused, settling back in her seat. Tim’s rage made her feel stronger. See? She had more power over him than he had over her.

She didn’t like the person this divorce was trying to make her.

Fortunately the appointment didn’t last much longer; Lidiyah called a stop to it, stating this was a waste of her and her client’s time if Tim and his lawyer were not there to move things forward in good faith. They could send over a counterproposal for the asset allotment if they wanted, but if it wasn’t received in 48 hours, Lidiyah and Grace would send one over.

“Which you will like even less than this one,” Grace added before Lidiyah ushered her from the room.

“Don’t bait him, Grace,” her attorney reminded as they headed out to their cars. “Let him make an ass of himself.”

“At what point is he holding me hostage in this marriage?” Grace argued.

“I know. We’re getting closer.”

“Seriously, how long can he drag this out? I know you want the principle of it and I did too but I’m reaching my limit. At some point I don’t care about the money, I just want it all to go away.”

“What you don’t want is him trying to open the prenup,” Lidiyah reminded.

“He can’t. It’s ironclad.”

“He can try and it’ll drag this all out further.”

“So he has all the power right now. He can keep me from escaping –I just want to be free, Lidiyah.”

“I know. We’re getting closer. Just hang in there a little longer.”

Grace was tired of hanging in there. She got into her car and pulled a safe distance away with a plan to scream, just to get the bubble out of her chest.

She couldn’t go through with it. She couldn’t be as ridiculous as Tim. Instead she clenched everything way down tight and squeezed her eyes shut until she stars on the back of her eyelids.

It was bad enough, everything Tim had done, but she genuinely felt like this was worse than the infidelity. He hadn’t wanted her, so why the hell wouldn’t he let her go?She’d changed her name, she had a completely separate life and finances now, but she still had to dedicate brain space to divorce, time to these meetings, significant money to her attorney, and hey, you wanted to talk about principle, she had to still live with the knowledge she was legally bound to him right now. She had filed every paperwork she could making her family her beneficiaries, her emergency contact, her health care proxy. She’d taken every step she could to sever ties with him and yet he still had a chain around her wrist and she was about ready to strangle herself with it just to be free.

Her driving homeward was not the best she’d ever done but she made it unscathed, music up loud as she tried to drown out her own anger. She growled low in her throat as the gate took too long to open, then promptly shut up when it revealed JK’s truck parked in the corner. Well wasn’t that the last thing she needed right now, someone on her property who she didn’t want to be a bitch to right when she felt like being the biggest most outrageous bitch to someone because the small jabs at Tim were just not enough.

She couldn’t see him and tried to look casual as she turned her music down and waited for the garage door to open, but she hit the gas too hard and then the breaks too hard pulling in and the squeal of the tires definitely didn’t sound casual. She also hadn’t actually turned the music down as much as she thought because when she turned the car off, the sudden silence left her ears ringing.

Maybe she could sneak inside without him realizing she was here?

She leapt out of her car, yanking her purse so hard it sent the contents spewing across the floor of the garage. She clenched everything in her body so as not to scream, but instead it made her eyes prickle with the threat of tears. She emitted a choked scream instead, trying to hold it in and let it out at the same time. It hurt her throat.

“Hey, you ok?” JK asked from the driveway. She turned slowly, wanting to make sure she did not let any of this rage escape in his direction. He didn’t deserve that, just for innocently asking how she was at a really bad time. And he was so innocent, so kind, he’d been so nice and harmless and even supportive in the small moments her personal life had bumped against their professional relationship. He looked so sincerely concerned now, like he could see she was on the verge of going supernova.

“I’m having a bad day,” she said, hoping that would be enough. He took a step closer and it was too much because he was so handsome and nice and had never done any of the shit Tim had done, why couldn’t she have met and married someone more like JK, huh? JK wouldn’t act like this in a divorce, a divorce he had caused, she was sure of it, because he probably wasn’t the kind of guy who’d be screwing around in the first place. Or maybe he was! She didn’t actually know him or anything about him and her gut about men was clearly broken and couldn’t be trusted and she was going to ask Alicia to just point her to someone safe and that would have to be enough for the rest of Grace’s life because she could never go through this again. There had never been a golden time with Tim that was worth it now. It was not better to have loved and lost.

“Ah, sorry to hear that. You–” He broke off whatever he’d been going to say when she covered her face. Probably he thought she was going to cry. She wasn’t. She was trying not to scream again. She wanted to throw a tantrum like a toddler, she wanted to hit and scream and punch something –preferrably Tim’s stupid fucking face.

“Here here here, punch punch,” he suddenly said, voice urgent as he dove forward.

“What?”

He’d held his hands up and insisted, “Punch, really hard!”

“What?!”

“Come on, you won’t hurt me, just do it, punch.”

“I’m not going to punch you–”

“It’s just sparring! Boxing is the best way to get that feeling out. Come on, I can see you’re tense as shit, it’ll help, just punch my hand.”

“I don’t know how to–”

He grabbed her hand, curled her fingers with her thumb out, and warned, “Your nails might hurt your palm but… seems like maybe it’s worth it… come on, right here, just punch.”

“JK, this is…” But he had his hands up waiting, and the explosive rage hadn’t left her yet, and in the back of her mind she remembered the childhood guidance to punch a pillow or slam a stuffed animal against the ground if you were angry. Who had told her that? She couldn’t remember. Certainly not her parents; rage wasn’t allowed; there was no reason or room for rage in their privileged lives.

She hauled back and punched his palm, or rather glanced off the heel of his hand. He caught her hand, nudged it to the side, and said,

“Try again. Turn your body this time, not just from your shoulder.”

She followed his instructions, throwing another punch he easily caught. Her nails did dig into her palm a bit.

“Good, twist on your toes, keep your feet planted.”

She didn’t know how to punch. She knew she looked stupid as shit, but he didn’t laugh even a little, just caught her next punch, and the next. The thud of her fist against his hand felt good, good in a crazy way she couldn’t explain unless she was secretly a violent person and just hadn’t known all this time. Even the sound of it was satisfying. JK caught each punch until she’d done probably ten and her hands were hurting and she tried punching with the left one but over-balanced and nearly toppled to the side.

“Ok, body compression?” he asked.

“What’s what?”

“Uh… a really tight… hug? No? I don’t want to… overstep…” he said, hands up, eyes wide.

“I don’t know, will that help me not murder my still not quite ex fucking husband?” she spat out without meaning too, because the punching had helped but now she felt like an active live wire rather than an imploding one.

“Yah, I hope so, I just finished your pool, you can’t go to jail before you even swim in it,” he teased. She wasn’t in the mood for teasing yet, but apparently this was her support system right now and even though everything in her head screamed at her that she should just go inside and kick a pillow and keep her feelings private and professional until they passed– when JK stepped forward with open arms, she stayed put to see what this was. She didn’t want to be hugged right now. If he hugged her or said nice things, she was going to have to work really hard not to scream and kick him in the shins.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Ok,” she said, not sure what she was actually agreeing to. She felt wild with anger and frustration as his arms wrapped around her, tighter and tighter. He even adjusted her arms, pinning them against her chest between them. Then he squeezed tight, far tighter than was comfortable for a hug, so tight that when he leaned back, it lifted her from the ground. His skin was flushed and sweaty, which she couldn’t miss with her chin right on his shoulder. His t shirt stretched around his shoulder muscles as he squeezed tighter, so tight it would be uncomfortable to breathe, so she just held her breath.

She suddenly went limp in his arms. She couldn’t have explained it, but the tight hold pulled her tighter and tighter and tighter until suddenly her body just decided ok, enough, relax. She collapsed against him, so suddenly he stepped to catch her unexpected ragdoll weight. For one brief moment, her cheek pressed to his neck, his hands splayed across her back, and it felt like a normal hug –exactly the thing thirty seconds ago she thought would make her scream, but now felt warm and strong and safe.

When his arm dipped lower to hold around her waist, she realized this had turned into an inappropriate hug and that her pool guy was not the right place to be getting emotional comfort and also not the right person to see her throw a tantrum. She quickly stepped back, tripping over her own feet as her spaghetti-legs tried to firm up. He held her arms to keep her steady and gave her the sunniest, sweetest smile that had no place on a day like this. It was disorienting.

“What kind of hoodoo magic was that?” she stammered out.

“Ha, did it help?”

Her arms and legs tingled. Her back buzzed where his arms had pressed into it. Truthfully, she wished he would hold her tight like that again, maybe he could squash her down completely, legs too. Why did she want that?! She couldn’t explain it.

“You looked like you needed to punch something and I was worried you’d kick your car,” he said.

“I’m not a violent person.”

“Your ex makes me feel violent too.”

“He’s trying to completely break me in this divorce, fighting with me over nonsense,” she admitted. “He’s holding me hostage. I just want to be done with it.” She felt the anger rising again, the frustration, the helplessness.

“You’ve probably got a really good lawyer, right? You’ll be done soon.”

“I wanted to take the high road and instead he’s twisting me into this… violent, awful person,” she fretted.

“Eh, I don’t think that’s true. Needing to punch something is just like… that’s just physical, that’s just like fucking. You just need to get it out of your system when your body wants to… you know, uh… hey, want me to slash his tires?”

Grace stared at him, tugged all over by what he had just said. There was almost a kernel of wisdom in the first part, she thought. Maybe he was right. Fucking, punching, was any of it really that different from needing to go on a run or work out really hard? She needed the adrenaline out. Maybe that’s why her body had been so horny lately too, maybe she’d just been running too high for too long and her body needed to vent something besides tears. That would explain why her horniness had nothing to do with love or romance, she just wanted to get railed. Right now. If only–

“Oh my god you can’t slash his tires,” she gasped, the last bit catching up to her.

“I was kidding. Mostly.”

“I’m serious, you of all people have to stay away from him.”

“Me? Why me of all people?”

“He doesn’t know you took the video and I have worked hard to make sure it stays that way,” she insisted. “God, the last thing I need is him coming after you.”

“Eh, I’ll be fine.”

She rolled her eyes and, impulsively, gave a hard shove against his chest that barely budged him as she scolded, “I’m serious, JK. I don’t need a misguided knight in shining armor. Don’t be like that.”

“What do you need instead?” he asked, eyebrow arched. Grace’s brain short-circuited. Yeah if you could just bend me over that patio table there and fuck me senseless, I think I’d be set for the day. His chest had felt hard beneath her palms, was that why her brain had leapt right there?

“Why are you here today?” she asked instead. Then, considering it might have sounded excessively rude, she added, “Not that I’m not always glad to see you.”

He clapped his hand to his chest and laughed like he was playing along with a joke, and reminded, “I told you I’d be back to check your pool.”

“Oh, right. Need to show me anything?”

“Sure… want help cleaning up your stuff first?” he asked, and made to step around her. She couldn’t bear to watch him stoop to pick up her lipstick and kleenexes and keys from the ground though. That shit could stay down there, she was so angry at her purse for betraying her like that.

“Leave it,” she said, catching his arm, “I’ll deal with it later.”

“You might forget and run over your… diamond-encrusted lipstick,” he said, turning the tube over in his hand, the Swarovski crystal one her sister had given her for Christmas one year. Honestly she hated it, hence why it spent its days lurking in the bottom of her purse, forgotten. Jungkook popped it open and mused, “Bright red. That’s a good color.”

“I’ve never even worn it,” she sighed and grabbed it from hands to close it and tossed it back in the direction of her purse. She’d never worn it because Tim didn’t like that color, he thought it was too attention-seeking. “Whorish” was the word he’d used, actually. He liked darker shades which she didn’t think flattered her but she’d worn them anyway, trying to be the kind of wife who was adored by her husband.

“Yeah and you never will if you run over it.”

“I’ve dealt with enough consequences for one day,” she sighed.

“Ok ok. Need to punch some more?” he offered, hands going up.

She felt stupid to have let him goad her into that now. How silly. How immature. JK really just saw the worst of her all the time, didn’t he? It was mortifying, and now she felt her face heating up and a desperate urge for him to leave so she could be alone in her embarrassment.

“Just show me the pool please,” she asked, because she wasn’t sure how else to hurry him along.

“You got it,” he said, probably thinking she was crazy. She trailed him across the patio and down the path to the pool, which looked like a heavenly oasis, sparkling under the sunlight filtering through the trees. Once there he turned to her and motioned with his hands like she’d won a prize. “Your pool.” When she just stared, confused, he admitted, “I didn’t need to show you anything about it. I just came by to check everything and it looks perfect. I did a good job.”

“You did a great job,” she agreed. “It’s beautiful.”

“Have you used it yet? Any concerns or problems?”

Her sigh was probably answer enough as she admitted, “No, I haven’t even gotten to use it yet.”

“Well why not? You spent a lot of money on this thing.”

“I know, and you worked really hard.”

“Yeah,” he grinned. “I’d have been in this the second the pool guy drove away!”

“I mean to be, I just got… busy…” Busy maintaining social connections that were more important to her mother than to herself right now. Busy working on the house like she was in a rush to please someone other than herself. Busy trying to figure out a new normal that still somehow was not actually putting her needs first.

“You’re right,” she said. “Why the hell not?”

She then promptly leapt into the pool, fully clothed, one sandal dangling from her toes until the water swallowed her and carried it away. The water was cool, crystal clear, so clean she could see JK’s rippling figure leaning over the edge of the pool, staring down at her. She erupted up through the surface, her blouse and hair billowing around her.

“You really did that, huh?” he laughed.

“Yeah why not? It’s my pool, right? I can swim in it whenever I want.”

“Yeah.”

“Stop looking at me like I’m crazy,” she complained and splashed him, water arcing across his legs. “I guess I’m a little crazy today.”

“You’re not crazy. I worked fucking hard on this pool, I want you to enjoy it. Fully clothed? Ok, whatever you want.”

She didn’t know what came over her. Madness, recklessness, it didn’t matter. She splashed him again and demanded, “You come in too.”

“Me, huh?”

“You worked so hard on this pool. Come on in if you want. Or don’t! It’s whatever you want, JK. Do whatever you want. It’s a nice pool though, isn’t it? This pool guy I hired did an amazing job on it.”

She ducked under the water to push her hair back, wishing she had clipped or tied it today instead of leaving it down. She surfaced just in time for him to sail over her and land ass-first, sending a wave right into her face. She yelped and splashed back at him as soon as he surfaced.

“I didn’t say drown me!” she laughed.

“Oh you can dish it out but you can’t take it, huh?” he shouted back, paddling his hands to spectacularly outdo her attack.

“I can take it just fine, I–” she broke off as too much talking earned her a mouthful of water. They were like children, she felt juvenile and free and buoyant and couldn’t stop laughing long enough to clear the water from her nose and mouth. Suddenly he was gone again beneath the surface, the blue of his t-shirt and board shorts blending in with the pool tile. His dark hair stood out though, easily tracked as he surfaced right beside her, a hand sliding up her body to catch her arm.

Grace was not ignorant to the thrill that ran up her spine with his touch. She chalked it up to the crazy behavior of jumping into her pool fully clothed and inviting the pool guy to swim with her.

“What’s that? You’re drowning?” he asked. “I’m a lifeguard, you know.”

“I said you were drowning me–”

“I’ll save you!” he promised and caught her around the waist and dragged her to the shallow water.

“JK!” she laughed, grabbing at his arm, fingers sliding across smooth, firm muscle. Damn. Did she curl around him playfully, just because she could? She did, grabbing his other shoulder, remembering how tightly he’d squeezed her not long ago. It took him so little effort to carry her along. His arms felt like warm, strong steel beneath her fingers. The water churned around the twist of their bodies.

She was pretty crazy today, but he was sort of a strange person too, constantly ignoring proper boundaries and behavior anyway, so maybe it didn’t matter!

“I’m not drowning you, your shirt is. Dry clean only?” he guessed.

“Oops yeah,” she laughed. He wasn’t wrong about either account; the gauzy material flowed around them, clinging to both their bodies, ballooning uselessly and transparently. She had wanted to look professional and perfect and proper at the meeting with Tim and for why? It didn’t matter at all. Now it clung too tight around her neck and shoulders and she tried to peel the ruffles off her skin.

“Need some help with that? I’m a lifeguard, ma’am,” he reminded, in such a low and serious voice that she burst into laughter.

“Are you actually a lifeguard? They don’t sound like that.”

“Yes I’m– I’m actually a lifeguard,” he cried, suddenly so openly insulted that she doubled over. “I save lives!”

“How many lives have you saved?”

“So many, Grace!”

It was the combination, the fact that he’d shouted her name, the fact that he was insisting he was a life saver, the fact he couldn’t keep a straight face –she couldn’t stand it. Tears rolled down her cheeks, she laughed so hard as she battled her own clothing. At least her skirt was loose and less bothersome as it twined around her knees, unlike the shirt showing every ridge of her lace bra.

“So many!” she repeated. “Are you sure they aren’t just faking?”

His voice dropped again, lowered as his body rose from the water beside her, as he demanded, “Why? Why? Women don’t fake it with me. Don’t fake anything with me.”

“I would never,” she vowed, giggling nervously because he was suddenly so close. Women don’t fake it with me. Yeah they probably didn’t need to. JK seemed like the kind of guy who knew how to wring pleasure from a woman. “I meant faking drowning to get mouth to mouth from you,” she quickly clarified.

“You think so?” he asked, cocky grin, lifted eyebrow, water cascading from glistening arms making her head spin as he pushed his hair out of his face. One of his sleeves had bunched up, showing off more of his shoulder and tattoo and one little very loud corner of Grace’s brain suggested lick the water off. Jungkook sank down on the step beside her and playfully demanded, “You need mouth to mouth? Nearly drowning?”

“Yeah, I might be drowning,” she mumbled without weighing her own words and leaned in without thinking of the consequences of her actions.

He’d asked the leading question but she kissed him first, she was sure of it –as sure as he was that he’d kissed first, something they could argue about forever. In the moment though there was no first or second, only joined mouths and wet bodies suddenly pressed together as dripping hands pulled at drenched clothing and skin, tangled in hair with every caress. His fingers dug into her back, holding her so tight against his body she lost herself for a moment, lost her mind, lost all sense of time. Until the tug of her blouse disrupted her, tangled in the friction of their bodies until the neckline was chafing her neck.

“Wait, wait,” she gasped and instantly he sprang away. It gave her just the space she needed to grab the ruined fabric and try to wrestle it up over her head, where it tangled in her hair and around her ears. It was his hands that unhooked it, slid it free, and threw it to the ledge of the pool. She reached for his shirt too, then stopped her fingers just as they gripped the fabric. No, oops, too far, too fast.

He kissed her again in her moment of hesitation, and murmured against her mouth, “You want it off, take it off.”

So she did, eyes blatantly ogling as he helped her drag the shirt over his head and send it arcing through the air as well. So much naturally sun-kissed skin wrapped around her as she slid her hands up his shoulders, his dipping around her waist, pulling her flush against him again. It felt like his skin radiated sunlight, she could feel it rising through her palms and washing through her body. His fingers burned wherever they touched her, his lips dragged away all thoughts of breathing.

Should she stop this?

She should stop this.

She couldn’t stop this because she didn’t want to stop this.

His mouth pulled the sweetest sigh from hers, and his arms were so warm and tight around her, and frankly her body was on fire right now, held together only by him, like he had compressed her earlier and now unraveled her. She didn’t want to stop this. JK’s thumb tilted her chin up so his lips could trail down her throat and all she could do was wrap her legs around his waist so the water would stop dragging them apart and moan at what it felt like to be desired. It had been so long since anyone had grabbed her like this, kissed her like this.

She swore he called her beautiful, swore he nipped the word into the skin of her throat as she let her head fall back. His fingers dug into the flesh of her hip and thigh, exposed by her floating loose skirt. She didn’t know if he was trying to pull her but she ground against him anyway, seeking the friction her body desperately wanted.

He moved higher in the pool, dragging her into his lap until they became a tangle of arms and legs, lips clashing, needy sighs churning around the water.

“Hey,” he said around the kisses he didn’t seem any more eager to stop. “Hey, hey.”

“Hmm?”

He made a noise somewhere between a hiss and a groan as she rocked her body mindlessly against his, only this time angled in such a way she felt him between them, felt his body’s response to all of this. She wanted that, wanted it so badly that the only thing she could think to do was rub against him again, grinding the ache between her legs against his hardness.

“Hey, baby,” he interrupted, and this time lifted her, holding her above his lap in the water, his fingers digging into her thighs. Getting called baby by this smug twenty-something was as disorienting as the realization she may have just gone too far and made a fool of herself.

“Oh god, I’m so–”

“How far do you want this to go?” he asked her, and licked his swollen lips, chest heaving. He stared at her with dark eyes burning in a flushed face.

All the way. All the fucking way, she stopped herself from screaming. Her palms burned on his shoulders, her body ached for him, for fulfillment, for release. It had been so long since someone had done it for her, something more than the easy underwhelming release of a vibrator, and here was the hottest man she’d ever had her hands on holding her by the bare thighs asking her what she wanted and she didn’t trust herself to answer that she wouldn’t sound like an idiot.

She felt the shift as he started to lower her to the side, as he kindly suggested, “If you need to think about it we can–”

“I don’t know how to say it,” she admitted with a nervous smile, aware that something important dangled by a thread right now and she may not be smooth enough to pull it off.

“Say what?” he asked. His expression immediately shifted into a smile. His muscles twitched as he changed direction, pulling her closer again –but not quite, not close enough. “Just say it.”

“I…” It was mean, this teasing. He knew he was teasing, she could see it in his face, could feel it in the way he pushed her away again, sliding her back and forth in the water. Taunting her. It made her want to kick him. It made her feel crazy. It made her want to bite him and kiss him harder and latch on so he couldn’t push her away until she’d had her way with him, until she was left spent and exhausted on the edge of the pool.

“You look so shy,” he teased. “It’s cute. No one’s ever made you ask for it before?”

“I guess not...”

“Ha!” He threw his head back. “I knew it. Pretty girl used to getting what she wants, when she wants it.”

“That’s not true,” she scowled.

“Never has to ask to be dicked down. Well you have to ask me,” he said, pulling her close, so close she could almost press against him. She was hungry for him, but not sure about this power play, this bossiness. He was in her pool, and it wasn’t like he wouldn’t be getting something out of this. He knew she’d just got out of a terrible marriage where she did not get what she wanted, when she wanted it. He had to know she was wildly out of practice in the art of seduction and had no clue what she was doing and hadn’t even been properly fucked in years.

“If it’s such a favor I have to beg then–”

He yanked her close and this time ground himself against her, nearly making her eyes roll back as he breathed into her ear, “I want you so fucking bad, but I’ve held off this long so I can wait as long as it takes for you to really want it.”

Was he lying? Did he mean that? How long? If he was just saying what she wanted to hear, she didn’t care. He was playing his part perfectly.

“Stop holding back,” she insisted and slid her mouth along his jaw and nipped at his earlobe. His fingers dug painfully into her ass, dragging her across the hard ridge in his board shorts. She heard his breath stutter in his chest and thrilled that she’d be affecting him this way. It didn’t matter if she was one of a hundred women he’d spoken to like this, she had him worked up in the pool, she had him hard and wanting, and her body thrummed with anticipation. She refused to be intimidated by his little display of dominance.

“Come on,” she teased this time, grinding again. “If you want me so bad.”

“But what do you want?”

“You’re so mean,” she complained, and bit his ear, wishing he would just do it already. “A bully…”

“I’m a bully?” He grabbed the fabric of her skirt suddenly and rocked more quickly against her, both of them groaning at the contact even though it felt too sluggish, too muted by the water to be just right, but so close. “You’ve got me ready to bust in my board shorts, you’ve got us both aching, all because you’re too proud to admit you want to be fucked by the pool guy.”

Was she too proud? Pride wasn’t the issue. Fear was holding her back, it would keep holding her back from every opportunity that crossed her path if she kept being like this. If she wanted a safe man for her first time, JK was as good as it was going to get. He’d already seen her shame, would it be ok for him to see her need to? Could he be trusted with yet another secret? He hadn’t held the others against her.

“Please fuck me,” she gasped. “God, I just want to be fucked. Will you?”

He kissed her hard as he pushed her through the water, so hard she saw stars before she could catch her breath, not until the ledge of the pool pressed against her back. His mouth was hungry against hers, like she really had turned the key to unleash them both. She grabbed his head to hold him steady, to kiss him back more, but he escaped and kissed down her throat. He lifted her higher, further from what she wanted, but the complaint died on her lips as he pushed her bra up and sucked her nipple between those kiss-swollen lips of his. His tongue flicked, leaving her distracted and not expecting his thumb to brush along the center of her underwear. The water lapping against her stomach confused her mind, made it feel like she had two bodies each being worked. His wet kisses dragged along her chest to her other breast, she felt every lick and suck and swirl of his tongue around her nipple pebbling from the cold exposure. She also felt every single stroke of his finger as it slid underneath her panties and pressed around her clit.

“Oh god,” she gasped and slid her fingers into his dark hair tickling her chest, her body shuddering. He rubbed circles between her legs and sucked at her nipple and she felt sure she’d cum before he was even in her. If so, she wouldn’t say anything. She didn’t want this to end so soon. Everything he did felt good, everywhere he touched felt alive and electric in a way she did not ever recall feeling in her life. When his thumb circled her entrance and then sank in, she made a noise that had him chuckling against her chest.

“It’s just my thumb,” he teased. “Think you can handle the real thing or you going to cum too soon?”

“Well sorry, one of us is a little touch-starved…”

“Are you kidding? You think I’m not starving right now?” His mouth was impossibly sloppy up her throat, up to tongue her earring, and then slide down to her mouth, trails of saliva and pool water everywhere making her skin rise in goosebumps. She gasped and rocked her hips against his hand working her to the edge, twining her arms around his shoulders to give her leverage. He could totally make her cum this way. Was that pathetic?

His hand suddenly pulled away, leaving her reeling. She knew it showed on her face. She just stared at him, confused for the second until it was clear he’d pulled away to drag his boardshorts off –completely off, tossed to the edge of the pool as if he had no problem being bum-fucking-naked in her backyard. That drove her wild, for him to be so casual about it. Inspired, she unclasped her bra and tossed it aside, then dragged her panties down. He took them from her and threw them far away into the yard, grinning cheekily as he did so. When she reached for her skirt though he stopped her.

“Leave that.”

“Why?”

“Leverage,” he said, and bunched the fabric up by the waistband and used that to yank her close. Her naked chest against his, cold water against flushed skin, made her gasp. Oh shit. Oh shit, fucking JK in the pool, she wasn’t even drunk, what was she doing?

But she wanted this, wanted it so bad she didn’t care about the consequences, wanted it so badly she reached down to take hold of his cock herself and stroke. The moan that rolled from his chest delighted her; he kissed his next moan into her mouth, tongue dipping down to tangle with hers. He was naked, he was so naked and all wrapped up with her and Grace was somebody else right now, living an impossible fantasy.

“You got a plan for that?” he asked, taunting her as he slowly thrust into her palm. She wrapped her other hand around him too and dragged, trying to get another moan from him but driving herself crazy instead. She wanted that, she wanted it in her, her heart thudded up high and down low and anywhere but her chest, she felt wild with desperation to be filled by him. She tried to pull herself close enough to impale but the water was clumsy to move through, more resistant than she thought, and she found herself continuing to clench around nothing, longing for his thumb, his pinky, anything. But preferably the hard cock filling her hand.

Her back hit the edge of the pool again. He kissed her again, distracting, but not enough that she missed his fingers gripping the insides of her thighs, lifting and pressing them apart, leaving her so brazenly open for him and yet modestly hidden beneath the water. She guided his cock, rubbing the hard head of it against her clit, rocking her hips until she got him in just the right place and he sank slowly into her. A groan rushed from his chest and she devoured it, tightening her arms around his neck as he began to move into her, slowly pressing deeper and deeper, pinning her against the wall of the pool as his cock spread her –but not deep enough, she needed deeper, she could feel how shallow his slow, encumbered thrusts were.

“Stupid water,” he murmured, dropping her thighs to grab her ass instead and pulled her but his hands slipped. He grabbed the fabric of her skirt instead and yanked. His body bucked as if frustrated, his breath sounding like a desperate pant, and that made her feel even wilder, because this already felt so good she wanted to scream and he wasn’t even really getting to fuck her the way he wanted to, the way she wanted.

“Stupid water,” she agreed, and tried sinking her weight into him. It got him deeper, deep enough she finally felt full and she groaned into his shoulder. She slid her feet around him as he moved her away from the wall, not sure his plan, but forming one of her own: she lifted from him, then used her feet on his ass to drive herself down again. He quickly caught on and matched his thrust to her rhythm. It felt so much better, she felt so full and snug that she wasn’t even embarrassed by the satisfied moan that rushed out around his lips. Their synchronized rhythm, the full press and slap of their bodies against each other, even the twitching of his shoulder muscles beneath her forearms were enough enough it was more than enough.

Then he carried her up to steps so that she was mostly of the water and suddenly the jolt of his body fucking hers was much, much stronger.

“Oh my god,” she yelped with surprise when the kiss of water was gone, and she felt her full weight held aloft only by his arms. This time when his cock pressed into her, she felt it in ways she had not realized the water was muting.

“Fuck, there,” he groaned. His hands slipped around her thighs and ass, fingers grabbing all over, looking for the right grip on her slippery body. In a stroke of genius, he hooked his elbows beneath her knees, and for a moment held her aloft and fucked into her so hard she screamed.

“What! You ok?”

“Oh my god,” she gasped. “Oh my god, do that, do that more.”

“Oh that was a good– yeah–” She couldn’t believe it, him holding her like that. Without having to support her own weight all, it left her free to just take it and holy shit. She grabbed his shoulders and tried to press down into the rapid thrusts and wailed into his neck. He fucked harder, faster, fingers digging for traction, holding her tight so she couldn’t run away from her own building pleasure.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” she gasped against his neck and curled around his body and stopped making any noise at all as pleasure erupted from the drive of his cock all the way up to her scalp. A cry chased the silence as her body spasmed and jerked against him, unsteady, out of rhythm, her body reeling with the shock of orgasm, her vision blooming with impossible colors. She sounded like a woman drowned as she gasped for breath and felt like she couldn’t catch it, couldn’t find traction to hold onto him with her wet hands and feet, couldn’t re-solidy around the steady thrust of him into her humming core.

He must not have realized it because he didn’t ask if she’d cum and she didn’t volunteer the information and he didn’t stop. He wasn’t done and she didn’t want to be done either, she wanted more. It was just the prelude, she understood from her body. She’d never been a two-time kind of girl but she was lost in him right now, wrapped up in this impossible scenario being fucked by JK in her brand new pool, and she’d hide a dozen orgasms before she asked him to stop.

At first when he moved she feared he’d realized and was stopping before she’d got to see him cum.

“Don’t step,” she begged.

“I’m not stopping, don’t want to drop you,” he panted out. Her disappointment was short lived when he sat his bare ass on the side of the pool, her bundled in his lap, his hands now free to roam her body as she took over and rode him hard enough she could hear the softest whine in his breath. The angle of his cock was just as good here, when she tilted her right hip just a little it made her see stars with such strong pleasure that she lost the rhythm just as he was synchronizing his pulls with her. Their bodies were slippery, she couldn’t get the right angle and rhythm back and so just sank down on him deep, as deep as she could take him, and gyrated. It was the perfect moment to catch her breath. Her hands slid up and down his body, finally free to touch the muscles she’d worked so hard not to notice before. She kissed his mouth and chin and his ear and was rewarded with him briefly holding her still, panting against her neck, hands clenching against her skin. She thought he was cumming

He grunted some series of words she couldn’t understand, completely incoherent. She decided to be bratty and bit his ear as she jerked herself harder down on him. He pulled her off and slid back onto the steps of the pool, which she thought might be a punishment, but instead he gripped the twisted drenched fabric of her skirt and used it to drag her to the edge. She would have liked to see the water lapping at his ass, it wasn’t fair he had his cock out in her pool and she couldn’t really see but he wouldn’t stop kissing her and she wouldn’t stop it either.

“Your legs go so wide,” he grinned against her mouth, pushing them further and dragging her closer to the edge as he shoved his cock back into place.

“Yoga.”

“Fucking yoga,” he groaned, leaning his weight onto his hands behind her and pressed deep. The angle was a little awkward but she loved the bulk and surround of him, the way his muscles flexed to support his own weight over her, the way his hair dripped water down onto her heated skin. She pushed herself closer to the edge to fix the angle. Groans rose from deep in her throat when he dragged her even closer by that damn sexy wet fabric, so close to the edge she thought she was going to slide right into the pool, held at bay only by his hips pressing against her, his cock pressing her to safety.

His hands hooked under her knees, holding her wide; she caught herself with her hands to keep from falling backwards and his eyes dropped immediately to her tits, now pressed towards him. The slight distance gave her an eyeful too, of his tanned torso, taught muscles, the thatch of hair above his cock as pumped inot her. He was so hot, every muscle of his body flexing, his lips pursing with the effort.

“Oh god,” she murmured, feeling her body pull in tight around that thick intrusion. No, this was worse than before –worse in a good way– because now he had the leverage and freedom he had not had when trying not to drop her. Hard, hard, fast, so fast her breath hiccuped in her chest and her mind spun circles and she dug her nails into his shoulders to hold herself in place because it was the only help she could offer for her own undoing as her feet bounced in the air and the water churned around his thighs.

Suddenly he pushed her back onto the concrete and crawled over her, her knees still over his arms which slid down to cradle her, folding her, leaving her helpless beneath the frantic drive of his cock.

“Oh god, JK–”

“Yeah, pretty girl, scream, let me hear you cum,” he panted against her hair and she didn’t even mean to unleash it but it snuck out anyway as his relentless thrusts shoved her headlong into a second orgasm. She jerked and twisted beneath him but he held her in place, driving in faster, she thought, sloppier, until his stern expression crumpled.

He yanked out of her grasp and out of her body and stretched to the side to pump himself, cum shooting across the edge of the pool, then dribbling down onto his thigh. Without a thought in her head and barely any air in her chest, Grace reached out to smear her hand across the mess on his leg, her other hand gently rubbing her own clit to soothe herself back together.

“Are you still–” he started and slid his hand underneath hers to take over the task.

She twitched and flinched and gasped, “No, soft, soft, I’m… I’m done, I… I…” His hand slowed, brushing gentle and slower circles over her clit until he was still, such an intimate and soothing hold. She relaxed completely, boneless. His eyelids seemed heavy above his smile as he flopped onto his back with a satisfied groan, spent dick draped across his hip. She curled more modestly onto her side and waited for the heady rush to settle so she could think straight. She didn’t think she could even sit up just yet.

For several minutes they just lay there. Slowly she returned to the silence of the neighborhood, to the distant sound of cars, to the bubbling of the filter in the pool.

She ought to say something. She felt like she should.

“That was…” she tried.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“Amazing.”

“Fucking amazing,” he said. Their sentences were all twisted up and they shared a chuckle. “It’s harder to fuck in the pool than you realize.”

“Yeah,” she agreed.

“Easier if you wanted to be fucked slow but you wanted to be fucked, right?”

“I did.”

“So I was determined,” he said with a chuckle. “You asked so nicely.”

She shoved his head playfully but he caught her hand and deposited it on his chest. It was uncomfortable on the concrete though –rough, hard, hot, all sorts of things Grace had been oblivious to when letting JK screw her on it. Slowly she sat up, arms crossed over her naked chest as she looked around the yard. She had no idea if neighbors could hear or see them. And he was still so naked, sunning himself on the side of her pool, his feet in the water, full gorgeous body on total display.

In admiring him though, she saw too now the bloody scraped knees and one of his shins. His elbow too, one arm draped lazily over his forehead.

“Oh my god, you’re bleeding!” That was easier to comprehend than that JK had just fucked her through two orgasms in her pool.

“Huh? Oh, just my knees? Yeah, it’s fine. You’re not scraped up are you? I tried to keep you off the concrete–”

“I’m so sorry–”

“Clearly didn’t bother me,” he grinned at her. “I’m cool with a little pain mixed in.” She stared at his face, startled, stunned this had happened, and torn between that shock and the desire to slide up against him again and kiss more. He’d protected her from the concrete even while fucking?! Her bar for guys might be low, but that was incredibly sweet.

“Can I get you the first aid kit and an ice pack or–”

“Nah, it’s fine. Seriously, I’m a surfer, I’m always roughed up for way less satisfying reasons than… that.” He pushed himself up to standing, showing off a muscular ass which she denied the unbearable urge to slap as he untwisted his shorts and wrestled them on. It prodded her into motion: adjusting her skirt, tidying her hair. Her blouse was too tangled so she only clasped her bra back into place and looked down at herself and failed not to giggle.

He held his hand out to help her to her wobbly legs and laughed when she actually did teeter and had to grab onto his arms.

“Damn,” he beamed.

“Don’t get cocky.”

“Kinda think you like me cocky.”

“Bully,” she glared but couldn’t sustain even the pretense of it for long. She felt relaxed. At peace. Heavy and lazy and all kinds of wonderful things. This morning was a hundred years away. She wanted nothing in the world except a nap.

He’d been watching her face and when she looked away with embarrassment at whatever dumb emotion was to be found there, he just playfully tugged the strap of her bra.

“Well…” he drawled. “If you have no other questions or concerns about your pool… I really hate to fuck and run but…”

“Oh my god, seriously?” she laughed.

“I have three more pools to clean today…”

“What! JK,” she cried and laughed and gave him a playful shove. “Oh my god, you’re still on the clock… why didn’t you…” The look he gave her was answer enough. He wasn’t going to say no to pre-lunch sex when it fell into his lap. When the woman begged for it the way she’d done.

“Where’s my shirt…” he murmured and found it and wrung it out over the pool before dragging it down. She saw some scratches and rubbed pink skin. It was a crime to put his shirt back on and cover all that delicious warm skin.

He grabbed his bucket from the corner and she just watched as he scooped up some water and dumped it over the puddle of his cum. He gave her a playful grimace about it, then laughed at himself and ran his hand through his hair.

“Well, uh. Hope that was satisfactory.”

“It was.”

“Hope your day goes better,” he said. Grace wondered if he was waiting for her to say something. She had no clue what to say. If she said a single word, it would break the magic of this and she’d discover she had just slipped and hit her head in the shower and dreamed this whole thing up. She’d say something stupid and ruin whatever illusion she had cast to get JK to bang her on a Tuesday morning. She wanted to just savor this satisfied feeling.

Damn, she needed to buy some lounge chairs to sink into beside the pool. There was nothing, she had to just untangle her blouse and retrieve her underwear as he hopped into his truck. She waved as he turned around in her driveway and headed out. but didn’t see if he noticed or waved back.

Instead she had to stupidly gather her things from the garage floor so she could get her house key to even get inside, where the air condition made her teeth chatter. Despite being soaked, she sank down on the living room couch and pulled the throw blanket around herself because she still didn’t quite feel like she’d come down from the high and she just needed a moment more to catch her breath because her knees were still knocking together.

Damn.

Chapter Five | Masterlist | Chapter Seven

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