He is not your boyfriend. Not anymore.
He should be no one to you. He should absolutely not matter.
But despite all of these obvious and logical facts, you can't stop paying attention to him.
From the bar he watches you dance like you're his personal entertainment for the evening. He takes a swallow of what looks to be a gin and tonic and grimaces at the taste. With heavy-lidded eyes he licks the alcohol off his bottom lip and stares at your ass in a way that reallyshould piss you off.
Unfortunately for your sanity, and for your long-standing hatred of him, it's only succeeding in turning you on. Bastard.
Not that you have one these days; a boyfriend, that is. Even if you did, it wouldn't be Yoo fucking Kihyun. The only problem is, he doesn’t seem to have gotten the message.
Your partner in crime for the evening, Kellee, notices immediately, snapping dramatically in your face. 'No.’
You raise your brows innocently. ‘What?’
‘I see who you’re looking at. Just ignore him,' Kellee says over the music. 'He's an ass.'
She tugs on your arm and you reluctantly take your eyes away from his annoyingly angular jaw and perfectly styled hair. She purses her lips at you and folds her arms with a mixture of amusement and annoyance as she dances in her mid-thigh, long-sleeve, black sequinned dress.
‘We’re here to celebrate, remember? Not take a walk down awful memory avenue.’
Right. New Year's Eve. Party at Cherry Blossom. How does he still make me lose track of space and time after all these years?
'I know,' you say, sighing loudly.
Kellee points a finger at you and laughs at the hesitation in your voice. 'Excuse me. We hate him, right?'
'He looks good though.' The cut of his crisp black dress shirt, the expensive Rolex on his wrist, the way his lips twist into a possessive smirk as he meets your eyes. You turn back to Kellee and feel your cheeks heat in embarrassment.
'Shit, he saw me.' You raise your eyes to the ceiling for divine intervention. Of all the nightclubs in all the boroughs in all of New York...
Kellee holds both of your wrists in her hands and forces you to focus on her through the haze of Vodka crans in your blood and the bass so heavy it vibrates along your skin. 'He ditched you the night of senior prom to hook up with Brandi Walters!'
Memories of him in high school flood your mind. The way the air felt like it was sucked out of your lungs when he smiled at you, blushing and asking you out. The tentative press of his mouth against yours for the first time. The enormous and cheesy and perfect poster he made to ask you to be his girlfriend, that’s probably still gathering dust in your closet.
But then...the look on Kellee’s face when she tried to hide the video from you. Brandi’s hands all over Kihyun, when he was supposed to be on his way over to pick you up for prom. Her mouth on his neck. Even college and two more years in between you can still feel how heartbroken you were that night.
