Evolution of a lover's heart | jjk

51

During the ride home, all you do is try to empty your mind. If you think about Jeongguk, imagine him, distraught, calling his friends for help to choose flowers, terrified to do wrong, you'll sob. And you don't want to make the poor driver more uncomfortable; he already saw your teary eyes when he pulled up outside the bar.

The building is quiet when you enter it, and the first thing you do inside your apartment is to down a glass of water. Then, you stand in your dark kitchen with the empty glass in hand, looking out the window and at the quiet world below.

Suddenly remembering the promise you made Jeongguk, you fetch your phone from the counter where you left it and open up your conversation.

Without thinking too deeply about it, you type a message.

'I'm home now'

Just before locking the device, you catch a glimpse of the numbers. Only thirty minutes past midnight.

There isn't even enough time for you to place the phone back on the counter before it vibrates.

'Thank you'

You take a deep breath, and then you head toward the bathroom to get ready for bed. This certainly wasn't how you expected the night to end.

---

Sleep doesn't come to you. To be fair, you've only given it fifteen minutes tops, but you know your body and mind well enough to know when it's a lost cause.

So you throw the duvet off you, and you let your feet take you back to the kitchen, this time with a notebook and pen in hand.

You're a writer, you write. You take your feelings, especially when they're big and heavy, and you put them into loosely related words.

But just like slumber, they don't come to you when you sit at your kitchen table in the dark, the only light source being the light reflected by the moon.

Sad. Heartache. Guilt.

Of course, you don't write those down; that'd be a waste of paper.

Before you know it, you're finally sobbing. You wonder if Jeongguk ever thought you'd punish him for doing something he considered wrong? Was he scared you'd throw the heart-shaped pizza in his face? Rip the tiny little Forget-me-nots into pieces?

Ask him to leave because he forgot a date?

The parallels cut through your chest. More so because you also left him at the bar. You didn't even stop to think more about the situation than that although his abuser was there so were his friends, and you didn't doubt they'd be there for him.

Unlike you.

Lights moving on the street make you wipe your tears and lean closer to the window. You watch a car pull up and a door open. It's Jeongguk, and because you know him so well, you can tell not only by his clothes but the way he moves.

He enters the code and disappears behind the door. You wait a few moments, checking your phone in the meantime. One a.m. He must've ordered his own uber not long after you left.

Soon enough, light floods a few windows on the sixth floor in the complex across the road. You sit there with your pen in your unmoving hand, and that's when you remember your parting words.

Or more specifically, his.

'And just... call me. If you wanna hang again.'

If

You put your face in your hands as another sob wrecks your body. He didn't expect you to want to see him again, did he?

For ten minutes, your pen scribbles in the notebook, and although one or two more tears slip through, you manage to calm down, at least a bit.

Then, dressed in your navy pajamas and with two keys in your hand, you cross the street.