Page 66 of I'll Be the One

I swat his hand away, trying to ignore the fact that my face is burning hotagain. “Hush! Let’s check out the Himalayan salt room. That’s a childhood favorite of mine.”

Henry chuckles. “Okay.”

Steve does a pretty impressive job of shielding both Henry and me as we move to the Himalayan salt room. As we pass, people call our names. I look up instinctively the first fewtimes, before I finally manage to get myself to stop. It’s obvious they’re only calling us so they’ll have better photos.

Fortunately, the room is empty, since everyone is outside trying to get a glimpse of Henry. Steve stands guard at the door so we can slip inside.

The sauna looks exactly the way you’d imagine a Himalayan salt room to look, with pink salt blocks covering the entire space from floor to ceiling. Everything smells pleasantly clean, and I slowly breathe in the smell of the salts.

The temperature indicator outside the sauna showed that it’s 102 degrees inside, but it feels even warmer with Henry by my side. I’ve only been to saunas with my mom before, and most of those occasions were filled with her complaining away about something or someone. With only Henry and me here, the silence in the room is palpable.

Sweat slowly beads and drips down my face. I look down to see that gross stains have begun to form on my shirt underneath my armpits. Feeling self-conscious, I fold my arms against my chest. In the dim, steamy space, I can see just enough to make out Henry’s face.

When our eyes meet, he smiles and holds out a towel.

“Hey,” he says. “Do you know how to make those lamb towel hats that people always wear in Korean dramas?”

Although I’ve seen them on TV plenty of times, I never actually learned how to make one because Mom probably would have said they looked foolish. When I explain this to Henry, he frowns and says, “Here. I’ll make one for you. Or try to, atleast. I looked up how on my way here.”

With quick, deft hands, Henry folds the towel in half and then does it again, until the towel is long and thin. He then carefully rolls up each side, so both ends are curled up like cute little ram horns.

“Here,” he says. “Try this on.”

It takes some adjusting to make the towel completely cover my hair, but when I’m done, Henry’s face lights up into one of the brightest smiles I’ve ever seen on him.

“You look really cute,” he says. “I kind of want to take a picture of you right now.” He sees my expression and rushes on to say, “Not to post on Instagram or anything. But just to... capture this moment. The lighting is too dim for a decent photo, though.”

Henry thinks I look cute?The compliment makes my heart skip a beat, but I don’t let my face show it. In middle school, a couple of boys called me cute and then laughed at me when I looked pleased. Henry looks genuine enough, but he probably just means I look cute at this specific moment in time. I think I look cute on most days, but I doubt anyone who dated someone as flawless as Melinda would go for someone like me.

That’s when I remember how he’d suddenly stopped responding to my texts for several days before today. Part of me wonders if I should just leave it, but at the same time, I know it’s going to bother me later if I don’t ask Henry about it now. The fact that this isn’t the first time he’s ghosted me for a mysterious reason doesn’t help, either.

“Why did you suddenly stop responding to my texts? I thought you were sick of me or something. And then I was really surprised when you texted me back today.”

Henry’s easy grin drops from his face. He doesn’t even meet my eyes. “I... I guess I sort of panicked,” he says.

“Wait, why?”

He shrugs. I can see that he’s trying really hard to act casual.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been this close with someone. Not just physically but... everything else.”

“What, because of the whole no-friends thing?”

“Sort of.” His voice sounds strained and weird. It’s so different from its usual honey-like smoothness that it’s almost funny.

“But weren’t you close with the people you’ve dated?”

I think back to all those Instagram stories with Melinda. Theylookedpretty intimate in them, with so much kissing and hand-holding that it grossed me out sometimes.

“Not really. When celebrities date... it’s not always because of some emotional connection. Far from it. A lot of it is superficial. For example...” Henry exhales sharply. “You were there when Melinda and I had a huge fight, right?”

I nod, holding my breath. I still feel bad about intruding on their private moment, even though the cameras were also there.

“Melinda and I should never have gotten together.” Henry cringes at the thought. “When we first became a thing, I had really low self-esteem. I was new to the industry, was new to modeling and all that, and, well, I guess I thought I was luckythat she even liked me, even though I knew she only liked me because I looked like a K-pop star.”

“Ew, what?”

“Yeah... she called me oppa and stuff. It was weird. But anyway, when we broke up, she basically told me that I was good for nothing because I justlookedlike a K-pop star but had no talent to support that. And then she went ahead and auditioned for this competition herself! The fight on the first day was because I was trying to get her to not participate in the competition. I knew she was only auditioning because she was fetishizing our culture.”

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