A PLAN FOR LOVE ✓

seventeen : yeonjun

Tutti fresh yogurt is heaven on earth.

I stare in awe at the massive buffet of toppings: fresh fruit, cookie dough, Oreos, sprinkles in every color imaginable. My one-size-fits-all paper cup is already filled to the brim with cookies-and-cream frozen yogurt, but now it’s bound for overflow.

My forearm is practically sore from scooping by the time I reach the end, and I glance up to see Beomgyu has added only one small scoop of Rice Krispies on top of his strawberry yogurt, like an actual psychopath.

“Of everything here, you get that?” I shake my head. “No wonder you don’t have a boyfriend.”

He rolls his eyes and jabs me with his elbow, giving me a Really, Yeonjun? look that I’ve become all too familiar with over the past two weeks.

Only this time, there’s a trace of a smile underneath it all.

We head over to the cash register and put our cups on the scale, mine probably quintupling the total. I pull out a stack of dollar bills I got from the tip jar this past weekend, but Beomgyu holds up his hand.

“I said it’s on me,” he says, swiping his credit card before I can stop him.

I feel slightly guilty considering my frozen yogurt cup is eighteen times the size of his, so I put a couple of ones in the tip jar for the uninterested teenager working behind the counter. He grunts a thanks, his eyes laser-focused on a YouTube video playing on his phone.

“Didn’t pin you for a stripper,” Beomgyu says as we grab our fluorescent-pink spoons and find seats by the wall of windows that capture a breathtaking view of a drug store, and an overflowing trash can.

I laugh. “You caught me. I was thinking of throwing a dance routine together for my final project in bio.” I point the spoon at him. “You’re welcome to work lights. End of the semester? Ass-crack of dawn on a Monday? Any availability?”

“I’ll see if I can pencil you in,” Beomgyu says as I dig into my top layer of whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles, unearthing the sea of cookie dough and cheesecake bites.

I jab at one of the blobs of cookie dough. “They’re actually from—”

“Oh wait, that food truck job! You got it?” His brown eyes light up, something about his excitement and the fact he remembered making my insides feel warm. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about it, with Soobin being upset at me this past week and my mom being… my mom. It feels good to have someone legitimately interested.

Besides, even if I could tell Soobin about it, he’d probably think it was kind of lame. He was always saying that about my job at Sweet Mirage, telling me he wished I didn’t work behind the counter and did something on the stage instead of watching from the crowd. I used to wonder sometimes if maybe he was embarrassed that I cleaned up glasses and poured drinks instead of banging out a sick bass line, but I shake it off now, just like I always have.

He said he loves me.

“Yeah! My boss, Jim, is… a little rough around the edges,” I say as I picture him ripping the food truck across three lanes of traffic, middle finger hanging out the window while I bounce around in the jump seat every other evening. “But I think it’ll be good. Pays in cash. And my hours are mostly on the weekends and at night, so it won’t fuck with school. Plus, I get a cheesesteak or a burger every shift.”

“Is the food good?” he asks, crunching on his Rice Krispies.

“Yeah! His cheesesteaks actually do justice, which is saying something.”

“Good,” he says with a satisfied nod, but then his dark eyebrows furrow as he points at my cup. “What’s that?”

I glance down to see a strawberry boba has surfaced from under the sea of rainbow sprinkles.