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Winter nipped at the tip of Sandra’s nose. But a different kind of frost was nibbling at her chest, tugging at the fragile strings that kept her heart together.
The holidays passed by so quickly, taking with it the warmth of fireplaces, the low hum of silent but palpable excitement coursing through the streets, and the dream-like bliss that dulled her sense of time, that sparked a fire long snuffed out in her heart. Here in this small town blanketed in white, in the few days leading up to Christmas, the past, the present, and the future seemed to converge and wear the same faces, and Sandra no longer knew where dreams stopped and reality began.
It was just last week — or was it yesterday, she wonders, because it certainly seems she has been here in less than a day, or maybe it was a month ago because it feels like she’s been in this place forever — that Sandra arrived back in her hometown on a Wednesday afternoon.
Nothing much had changed. She left three years ago, leaving her mother’s fresh pancakes with hot maple syrup and her oak tree with the tire swing under it in a cloud of dust, her broken heart reflected in the rearview mirror. She came back to the same fresh pancakes with hot maple syrup and the same oak tree with the tire swing, but the broken heart she had left behind… now that had changed.
Or, perhaps more accurately, he had changed.
She felt like he had grown taller since the last time she saw him, though he told her on that cold morning when they bumped into each other at the bookstore that he hadn’t grown an inch since then. He still had the same deep voice that injected somnolence into her veins, and immediately she felt drowsy.
That’s strange, Sandra thought, fighting the sudden heaviness of her eyelids. Just seeing him and being with him made her feel so safe, she could feel the tension and exhaustion of the holiday preparations seep out of her body.
Wonwoo noticed right away. She wasn’t surprised. He politely offered to walk her home. Because she looked like she needed help. Because she bought a lot of stuff. Because it was getting dark. Because she looked tired.
But Sandra knew him well enough to hear the unspoken because he wanted to catch up .
On the walk home, he told her he was a music professor now at the local college. She told him she would be taking her bar exams soon, maybe less than a year. He said his father had passed away last year, and Sandra offered her condolences. She told him she would only be in town until after Christmas, and Wonwoo asked her if she wanted to lounge around town with him tomorrow.
Maybe it was his earnest gaze from under those round glasses, staring right through her and spreading warmth in her soul without even the slightest touch. Maybe it was the chilly air of the winter evening, robbing her of all common sense.
Sandra smiled and said she would love to.
They spent every waking moment together, with Wonwoo showing up at her doorstep first thing each morning. Sandra’s mother had gaped at him like a fish out of water when he had first come to visit, and she snuck glances at them from the kitchen as the old flames pored over photo albums and laughed over their shared youth.
On Saturday, Wonwoo invited her to his grandma’s place. Sandra remembered the little old lady and how much she adored her. Gladly, she accepted the invite and showed up with two boxes of red velvet cake, baked just the way Grandma Susie liked it.
Grandma Susie’s eyes were going blind and her mind would slip into far-off places at times, but the moment she saw Sandra, her lips stretched into a friendly smile and she opened her arms wide. Sandra felt more like a granddaughter than a visitor, and she spent the entire afternoon basking in the filtered sunlight that entered the living room, Grandma Susie’s hand placed deftly upon hers as she told her stories of her childhood. Wonwoo leaned on the doorframe, arms crossed and smiling gently.
It was Sunday when Wonwoo took her out strolling around town. They went to the bakery where they used to buy bread before heading off to school, to the park where they would ride their bikes on weekends, to the ice cream parlor where they had their first date.
He took her to the fountain where once upon a time, 17-year-old Wonwoo had tossed a coin and made a wish. Then, he turned to a 16-year-old Sandra and said that he had just wished that she would kiss him. Naughty smile on her lips, she stood up on the tippest of her toes — because he was always so much taller, and always stood towering over her — and planted a kiss on her lips.
Now, 25-year-old Wonwoo dug into his pockets and pulled out a spare coin. With a flip of his thumb, he tossed it into the fountain and Sandra waited for the plop! to sink into her ears, reverberating through her body.
“What did you wish for?” she asked.
He gave her a lopsided smile and said, “Don’t you know that wishes don’t come true if you say them out loud?”
She raised an eyebrow. “That wasn’t true for us, was it?”
His roguish smile suddenly turned sad. She could see it in the slightest change in his eyes, the deflation of his chest as he sighed so silently, his warm breath mingling with the chilly air. “But for this wish, it is. So I can’t say it.”
Monday saw them browsing through catalogues, window shopping at boutiques, waltzing around the local mall, playing dress-up in the dressing rooms, gorging on free samples. Tuesday sighed dreamily as it watched them play frisbee at the park, walking aimlessly around streets they knew by heart, rent bikes and ride them out to the lake, drinking red wine and eating quaint little sandwiches on a checkered picnic blanket.
Wednesday placed its bets on them, gambling with fate for a love that once was, and the whole universe held its breath as their faces drew closer at the end of a particularly mundane day spent quietly reading next to each other at the same bookstore where their paths crossed again after three odd years of thinking the only place they would see each other again was in their memories.
Wonwoo ended up stopping himself and letting out a slight chuckle, and Sandra smiled to hide her reddening face and wildly thumping heart as she retreated back into her house. Yet the universe held its breath still.
Thursday rolled around, lazily as it does, and Sandra spent the entire day trying not to stare at him for too long, fighting the urge to reach out for his hand, pushing away thoughts of the almost-kiss from the night before. But his handsome face painted by the hands of the greatest artists was too perfect not to stare at it, the spaces between his fingers felt as if hers would fit seamlessly, and his warm breath on her face from the night before brought a rosy dust to her cheeks.
“Auntie, I’m done with the potatoes and carrots!” Wonwoo called out from the kitchen, and Sandra did an about-face as her mother appeared in the doorway, removing her gardening gloves and smiling brightly.
“Sorry to make you do this,” Sandra’s mother apologized, but Wonwoo just smiled.
“Nonsense, Auntie,” he said, reaching for the onions to start cutting them as well. He was helping make pot roast for dinner, and though Sandra had insisted that he didn’t have to, he seemed eager to offer his assistance. “I really don’t mind. Besides, Suzy said she would look after Grandma today, so I’m free the entire day.”
Suzy was Wonwoo’s younger cousin, and she had lived in this small town her entire life, too. Sandra felt strangely indebted to her for being the reason that Wonwoo was free today, but she also felt conflicted about her own feelings, about last night.
“Sandy, why don’t you come help me in the garden?” her mother suddenly asked. Nodding, Sandra followed into the backyard, picking up a pair of gardening gloves on the way. She was mindlessly tilling the soil when her mother’s words pierced through her thoughts, “Are you getting back together with him?”
She stopped, then blinked. Was she? What did she want? What was she hoping would come out of this short holiday trip, this brief moment of reconnection?
“I… don’t know.”
Her mother quieted, and then spoke ever-so-softly, as a mother does, as she started tilling the soil again, “I just don’t want you to end up like last time. You know you’re going to leave back to the city again, right? And he’s going to be staying here. I don’t want you both to get hurt again. You remember why you left, right?”
Sandra gulped, then nodded.
“Has anything changed? Do you want different things now than you did three years ago?”
She shook her head.
“Don’t water a flower if you’re only going to leave it for dead, sweetheart.”
Sandra knew what she had to do. But maybe it was the hypnotic glimmer of the holidays whisking her away into a fairytale-like illusion. Or maybe it was the leftover feelings from three years ago, from the 21-year-old girl who was madly in love with the sweetest man in the world, a love to be reckoned with that was orphaned in her chest and now searching for a home.
Or maybe she was just weak — weak for his little light chuckles, for his fingers threading through the strands of her hair on drowsy afternoons, for his broad shoulders that rested her head when it was heavy with restless thoughts.
Whatever it was, she found herself entering his flat for a cup of coffee late that afternoon.
Whatever it was, she risked sitting too close beside him, and she risked not pulling away when his laughter fell silent and his hot breath tickled the skin of her face, just like it did last night, just like it did three years ago.
Whatever it was, her eyes fluttered close as he drew closer to her, blood rushing into her ears. Her breathing shallowed. His fingertips trailed sparks on her arms, and her slender fingers got tangled in his slightly coarse hair. Even after all those years, he remembered it so clearly — the prodding fingers slipping under her shirt and crawling along the delicate skin of her back that set her whole body alight, the sensitive skin on top of her breast that wrung out her breathy gasps, the delirious whispers in her ear that rendered her body weak, the searing touch along her inner thighs that made her knees buckle, the exact spot that would draw out her strangled moans. Her body and lips still melted perfectly into his, and the wayward girl didn’t find her way home that night.
In the darkness of Friday’s early morning, Sandra woke up beside Wonwoo. He was sleeping soundly, little puffs of breath squeezing through slightly parted lips. With the silence of a thief, she picked up her clothes strewn on the floor, put them on, and snuck out of the flat.
Friday was spent apart with the excuse of being busy tending to noche buena preparations. Sandra ignored all his calls and texts, faking smiles as she tried to power through Christmas Eve dinner that night. When the clock struck 12, she hugged her mother and wished her a merry Christmas. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She ignored it.
At five on Saturday morning, Christmas morning, long after all the guests had left, their front door opened and there were somber whispers before it shut softly. Sandra had been hiding in the kitchen. Her mother entered and sighed.
“Wonwoo was here.”
She nodded, grip tightening around the ceramic cup with hot chocolate. She knew.
Her mother sighed before planting a kiss on top of her head and returning upstairs to her room. She had seen this all before, how Sandra and Wonwoo would both grow despondent and retreat into themselves. It always happened after blissful peaks of euphoric happiness, after fairytales and rainbows, after moments of weakness when they allowed their feelings to take over their senses.
On the day after Christmas, Sandra’s bags were packed. Her mother was starting up the car outside, and she began hauling her suitcases down the staircase.
“You’re leaving already?”
Her blood ran cold at the voice behind her. She shut the car trunk and turned around, eyes lonely and lifeless. It was the spitting image of herself three years ago, Wonwoo thought, before she left for what he thought was for good.
“Yeah, I have to study for the bar exams,” she replied, wrapping her knitted sweater around herself, not closing the distance between them. Wonwoo nodded, shoving his hands deep inside the pockets of his sweatpants. “My future isn’t gonna wait for me, so I gotta go chase it now. Besides, I was only meant to stay until Christmas.”
Wonwoo nodded. They both fell silent, suddenly at a loss for words. What, after all, can you say to a person that was no longer yours to lose?
“Well, take care.”
She felt her heart crack at his words, but she braved a smile. “Yeah, you, too.”
These were the same words they had shared all those years ago, when she had taken the first step away from him. Sandra had always wanted to spread her wings and fly to other places; Wonwoo wanted to plant his roots and settle down in this small town, too small to carry Sandra’s dreams. They were too different . Wonwoo would never rob Sandra of all the colorful dreams that danced in her mind and sparked fire in her heart; Sandra didn’t want to uproot him and thrust him into a life he never wanted. They were too similar.
Perhaps it’s true that lightning only strikes once and shooting stars are burning rocks. The universe watches as their kaleidoscopic love loses its luster as the past, present, and future begin to separate and the illusory shades of the holidays lift from their eyes.
She smiles one last bittersweet smile before turning to enter the car, taking a deep breath as she prepares to leave her mother’s fresh pancakes with hot maple syrup and her oak tree with the tire swing under it in a cloud of dust. Wonwoo watches, and smiles ruefully as if sharing a silent joke with the universe. It seems that wishes, whether spoken or unspoken, could only be left to the hands that held fate itself. Because three years ago, he had wished on the fountain and then asked her not to leave. Now, he wished on the fountain and didn’t utter his wish, and yet she still left.
I guess I really just can’t make you stay, huh, he smiles, heart heavy inside his chest as he watches her drive away. With the last bit of strength he could muster, he lifted his arms and waved goodbye.
Sandra drives away from him again, tears blurring her vision,
her once already broken heart breaking again, reflected in the rearview mirror.