TW: Rape
Taemin watched Magdalena as she made a cup of coffee in the snack room of the studio. All of her motions were fluid and compelling. She was the kind of woman that men couldn't take their eyes off of, no matter what she was doing. Taemin swore he could watch her scrubbing mildew off of a shower and it would look sexy.
When she finished making her coffee, she left the room without having even spoken to Taemin. He followed her out into the hallway.
"Hey," he called after her. "Slow down! I need to talk to you."
Magdalena stopped and allowed Taemin to catch up to her. "Listen, if this is about the kiss, I'm just going to say it. I'm sorry I kissed you back," she began before he could even speak.
"I'm not sorry about it," Taemin said calmly. "And I wish you weren't either," he added as he tried to hold her gaze, but she looked away.
"I'm a grown-ass woman. I have a teenaged son. I can't be doing shit like that," she replied.
"You're not that much older than I am," Taemin pointed out.
"Maybe not in years, but in life experience, I might as well be 100," she countered. "I'm in a totally different stage of life. You're in the work hard-play hard stage. I'm in the too-tired-to-remember-how-I-got-a-teenaged-son stage," she continued. "I haven't been in a relationship since, well --- ever," she said.
"What do you mean you've never been in a relationship?" Taemin asked. "How could you never have been in a relationship if you have a son?"
"That's cute how you think all pregnancies stem from healthy relationships," Magdalena replied. "In fact, that kiss of ours was my first kiss," she revealed.
Taemin was stunned. He was trying to wrap his head around the idea that someone had impregnated her without kissing her. Magdalena watched Taemin's face as it phased from shock to anger.
"How could somebody do something like that?" he asked, trying the envision the kind of evil one would have to carry inside to do something like this to another person.
"I was raped by my next-door neighbor," Magdalena explained, shrugging slightly as if it were no big deal. "Of course, he didn't kiss me because kissing is intimate. That's why prostitutes have a no-kissing rule."
Taemin reached out, trying to pull her into his arms, but she remained stiff and unyielding. "No matter how I dress or what I look like, the truth is, I've never actually had a boyfriend. After Mateo was born, there wasn't even time to consider it, even if I had wanted one --- which I don't," she added hastily.
"Well, think of it this way," Taemin said. "I could be the best boyfriend you've ever had. I can't screw this up because I'm only in competition with your pervy former neighbor."
"Listen, you should find yourself a nice younger girl who still has all her body parts in the right places," Magdalena advised. "Do you know what happens to a woman's body after childbirth?" she asked.
"Nothing looks out of place to me," Taemin replied, scanning her body just to make sure.
Magdalena laughed. "Baby, that's called Spanx and a push-up bra. Without this Wonder Bra, my boobs would sag so much, I could just tuck them in my pants," she joked. "You don't want a worn out, old woman like me," she concluded.
"Why are you so convinced of what I want and don't want?" Taemin countered. He was silent for a moment as he considered the astounding fact that she was older than he was but still had no dating experience. She projected the energy of a woman who had "been there, done that, brought home the T-shirt". And yet, there were parts of her that were still untouched --- her heart, for example.
Despite her confident demeanor, Magdalena was finding this conversation uncomfortable. It wasn't because she had admitted to Taemin that Mateo was the product of a rape. She had processed that trauma years before. Her discomfort mostly stemmed from the fact that she had admitted to Taemin that she had never been loved, for real. Magdalena had decided a long time ago, that if she was not to be loved, then she would be desired or feared. Either one of those two options was better than being unloved. She had found ways to weaponize her femininity. The more cleavage she showed, the more powerful she felt. She was like a sexy video game character who carried a knife in her bra, hidden under great mounds of breast tissue. There was a reason why they called a woman like her a femme fatale.
Taemin interrupted her thoughts. "So, what you're saying is that you have never been loved by a man because YOU wanted it?"
"Yeah," she answered. "I mean, it's not something to write home about. I don't think my mom, or my grandma, have ever been loved either," she admitted. "It just is what it is. So, yeah, I kissed you the other day because I wanted to know what it felt like to want to kiss someone, but it was a one-time experiment. I'm not crazy enough to do it again," she insisted.
"I can see how you got so jaded," Taemin conceded, "but don't you think it's about time you tried to find love? I mean, your son will be grown soon. Don't you want a man around when your son moves out?"
"My son's a far cry from moving out," Magdalena countered. "He's just a baby."
"Like you were when you had him?" Taemin pointed out. "You were the same age as he is now when you were forced to be an adult and have a child you never asked for."
"Hey, my son is everything to me!" Magdalena retorted. "Don't ever say I didn't want him!"
"That's not what I said," Taemin defended. "I said you didn't ask for him. It's not the same as not wanting him."
Magdalena nodded slightly, ceding his point. She scrolled through her phone until she found the picture she was looking for. It was a picture of her at her Quinceañera party in a puffy purple dress. Her hair had been pilled atop her head in a mass of controlled curls. She wore heavy eye liner and fake eyelashes, just as she did to this very day. She turned her phone toward Taemin. He studied the picture carefully. If you looked hard enough, he thought, you could see the evidence of a growing belly under her dress, but the huge bell-shaped dress hid it from more disinterested observers. Taemin realized that she was pregnant in this picture. Pregnant and abandoned by the age of 15. It had to have been a lot to take in. Taemin could concede that point, but he wished she would drop her tough-girl act long enough for him to have a chance to show her what she'd been missing all these years.
"So, back to my original point," Magdalena said. "What happened the other day isn't going to happen again," she stressed. "It was a social experiment, nothing more."
Taemin looked dejectedly at his shoe laces. "You know, for someone who has been through the shit you have, you would think you could have some empathy for others," he said pointedly. "I'm not your social experiment. I'm a person who likes you a lot, and you used it against me," Taemin added.
Magdalena nodded. "You're right. That was shitty of me," she admitted, in a rare moment of clarity in her muddled psyche. "That's exactly why I don't want to do it again. I already hurt you. I don't need to compound it by making the same mistake again."
"But why is it always a mistake, in your mind, to feel something real?" he questioned.
"Because I had a crush on my neighbor," Magdalena replied, exasperated. "I had a crush on him. So, my soft, squishy side betrayed me," she announced. "That's when I decided to kill it. I haven't heard from that bitch since --- until the other night," she admitted. "And I can't say I was happy to see her back."
आप पढ़ रहे हैं
Driving Me Crazy
फैनफिक्शनSHINee gets a new driver, a strong-willed Puerto Rican woman, who catches Taemin's eye. He tries to convince her to ignore their age gap and begin a relationship with him, but will she go for it?
