the 1 | chaennie

9. Sparks Fly

The way you move is like a full on rainstorm And I'm a house of cards
You're the kind of reckless
That should send me running
But I kinda know that I won't get far

And you stood there in front of me
Just close enough to touch
Close enough to hope you couldn't see
What I was thinking of

Drop everything now
Meet me in the pouring rain
Kiss me on the sidewalk
Take away the pain
'Cause I see sparks fly whenever you smile

Get me with those brown eyes, baby
As the lights go down
Give me something that'll haunt me when you're not around
'Cause I see sparks fly whenever you smile

-

"Looking back on it now, do you think that you were meant to meet then? Like it was fate?"

Laughing, Rosie shook her head, amusement flickering in her brown eyes. "No, no. Nothing of the sort. I was just ... I was going through a rough patch. Love had essentially been ruined by me by my ex-"

"Who you still haven't named."

Pausing for a moment, Rosie's eyes widened as she froze before a slow smile spread across her face. "Ah. I suppose I didn't. Bae Suzy."

"The singer?"

"The very same."

"She's much older than you," Nayeon said an incredulous look on her face.

Giving her a bitter smile, Rosie nodded. She'd written a song about everything that had been wrong with that relationship. How her mind had been messed with, how she'd been drained by the constant games, how her mother had worried about her and how she'd been so naive that she'd ignored the whispered rumours that followed Suzy and all of her exes. In hindsight, it was all so obvious, and Rosie had wished she was able to pass on the warning. She'd been lucky to get out of that relationship before it had turned into anything serious, although now, after years of reflection, she doubted Suzy was the kind of person to ever let anything get serious with another person. Everything about that relationship had been wrong.

"Well ... let's just say there was a lot that was wrong with that, the age difference the least of them. It took me some time to get over that, and then there was a period of about eight or nine months where I just ... I lost that magic. You know that rosy-coloured idea of love? I realised that it wasn't all a fairy tale or straight out of a movie, and it took meeting Jennie to accept that."

"Oh. She didn't bring back that magic?"

Blushing slightly, feeling like the young woman she'd been back then, barely twenty years old and enamoured by Jennie and everything she'd brought, Rosie let out a soft laugh. Her expression turned tender and she fiddled with the rings on her fingers.

"No, she did. It just wasn't the fake kind that you see in old films. It was confusing to me at first because I was completely taken with her, but it wasn't the shiny new feeling of love - or rather the idea of it that we romanticise because that's all we ever see - but I just- I knew. I knew that there was some magic there. It was in the calm that she brought. With how crazy my life had gotten, and how broken I'd felt after Suzy, and how homesick I was in my new apartment, she was just this calm presence in my life. It was like I'd stumbled into the eye of a tornado, and everything was falling apart around me, except with her. Of course, not right at the beginning; but things slowly got worse and it was because of Jennie that I managed to bear it."

"I'll admit, I'm still a bit shocked by this," Nayeon said with wry amusement. "You were publicly known to be friends with her, but not until a while later, if my information is correct."