Untitled, 2018

Chapter 64: Realistic

"Right now— what exactly are we doing?" I asked.
"Watching the stars." He answered, nonplussed.
I bit my lip. "What now?"
"Sorry?"
"Baek Hee—was she just a toy to you? Am... Am I a toy to you?"
Jimin looked confused, annoyed. "What? Do you even know how much you mean to me?"
I swallowed, getting overcome with emotion. "You haven't... said, or defined anything. What do you really want from me?"
Jimin looked a little affronted, "I don't want anything from you. I just want things to go back to the way they were!"

I involuntarily let out a sniffle. "The way they were? That's... not enough." I gazed into his eyes, pleading for him to understand. "We were different then. Aren't we different now?"

He looked like he definitely did not understand.

I spelled it out for him, "We had no obligations to each other, we hung out when we could, and we stopped talking whenever you wanted to too. That's the way we were, right?"

Jimin shook his head, "I wouldn't do that to you..." But you could if you wanted to.

"So it is different? How you feel about me is different?" I didn't know why I was pushing this so hard, but Jimin just kept quiet. "Because... the way I feel about you is different now."

Jimin's eyebrows knotted up with concern, "Riti, of course the way I feel about you has changed too. I thought you could tell."

"But—" I sobbed despite myself, "But it doesn't feel like it's different. It doesn't feel like what I imagined it to be."

He raised his voice shakily, and I could hear the emotion rising and choking him up a little too. "I broke up with Baek Hee because I realized how I felt, didn't I? I'm telling you how I feel about you, am I not? What do you want?!"

With anger and desperation, I snapped at him. "You! I want you! I..." I faltered, but it was clearer to me now. "I want someone so amazing that the world admires him. I want someone with a heart of gold he can share with me. Someone with unmatched dedication who takes time out of his day to dedicate it to me too. Someone who doesn't shy away but wants to work through our problems with me. I want someone whose humility and loyalty make him respectable and admirable, someone who sees what I'm worth and supports me. I want someone with so much love to give, but someone who chooses to reserve a special place in that love for me. I want someone who can breathe life into me, someone who can be there when I'm lonely, someone I can take care of and cheer on as he does for me, someone whose hair I can run my hands through at night and someone I can feel butterflies with every time I see them, someone that reminds the universe about love and passion when they're with me, someone with a place for me in his world, someone I can grow old with. That's what I want." I don't know why I'd kept talking for so long, but once I was done I couldn't keep my emotions bottled up any longer.

Tears were streaming down both our faces, and the sadness in Jimin's face stung me like a knife. He stuttered, "I'm... not half of those things."

You're wrong, I thought, you're all those things to me and so much more.
"You're right," I said, "you're not half the things I want, because the other half is that they feel the same way about me!"

I covered my face and sobs shook my chest, and I saw Jimin reduced to the same state I was in. Maybe he finally understood. We could never be together, could we?
He was Park Jimin. I was nobody. I wasn't even from around here. We could try and go back to the way things were, but in our hearts we knew that we truly couldn't, because we felt differently now, more intensely, more passionately, even if it was hard to put into words. I wasn't going to be his secret doll, he wasn't going to be my secret scandal.

"Why can't we just... get what we want?" He spoke softly.
I couldn't stand seeing Jimin crying, and I snaked my arms around him in a hug he reciprocated. We just held each other and sobbed, feeling what we had been feeling, mourning what we were to be losing.

"So is this all useless?" He mumbled as I felt his heart beat erratically. I nodded into his chest. "No matter what we do? What if I—" he continued.
"I'm leaving, Jimin. In a couple of weeks." I felt his body tense up, his breath catch.
We sat there for a while longer, our hug wringing our last sobs out.

"Then what can we do now? I don't want to stop seeing you." Jimin mumbled into my hair.
"Maybe we can pretend... Because I still like watching the stars with you."
Jimin managed to get out one of his soothing laughs. "Who said that has to be pretend? The stars are real, aren't they?"
I shifted my head on his chest so I could look out to the night sky and sniffled, a little in awe of the beauty of the night. "They are."

Once our heartbeats had both calmed down and I could feel Jimin pulling away a little, I lifted my head to look into his eyes with the adoration I had for him. I wanted to say something. Tell him to hold on to me. Tell him to stay as he was. Tell him to not fly away.

"In that case, will you be my girlfriend?" Jimin asked, which caught me a little by surprise.

I laughed at his cute expression. A little pretend couldn't hurt. "Yes."

Finally pulling out the box in my coat pocket, I handed it to him. "Here, boyfriend." He gave a delighted little "ah!" while sniffling slightly when he saw the rose pendant I'd picked out for him a while ago.
"From Little Prince, huh?" He laughed.

"So you don't forget your rose." I pulled my face closer to his and he instinctively pulled close too.
"As if I could."
Our noses were touching and I could feel his breath on my lips, but instead of closing my eyes and going for it, I pulled away a few inches and tapped his lips with my finger. They were soft and incredibly tempting, but I knew I had to hold back.
"Jimin, I think if I start I won't be able to stop, ever."
He nodded, as if saying, I know, me too.

So instead I kissed him on the nose and settled back down in his chest, and I felt a kiss on my head. It hurt so much, to be so close to what we wanted, yet so far away. To be cheated of something we both lay claim on. But for the life of me, I couldn't imagine a viable future together, even if for the longest time I'd called Jimin the love of my life. I hiccuped with the last bit of emotion I had in me, and he wiped my tears away.

"It's really late. People are going to worry about you." I told Jimin.
"Mhmm..." he said sleepily.
"Are you still free tomorrow?"
"I am."
He breathed in sharply and pulled away to look at me intensely. He just stared and took me in, until I was pink under his gaze. "What?" I whispered.

"Why two weeks? Can't you stay longer?"
"How long?"
"Forever."
I exhaled a little laugh, embarrassed by his cheesy nonsense, but didn't respond because the looming departure felt more painful by the minute.

Promising to meet again, we set off and took separate cabs in our separate ways.