I’m trembling inside at the turn of this conversation and annoyed that I keep giving him angles to have these heart-to-hearts. I walk myself into it every time, and he’s being so goddamn vocal and open, unlike him of the past, who would never share his thoughts and feelings with me, that it always catches me off guard. Trapped between him and his words while being faced with a sea of memories back when I thought Jyeon would be my entire life.
“So, what happens to her now? If I’m here and I remember everything. If you get your way and I stay married to you against my will? Does your mistress still stay in the picture too? One cozy little happy family.” I turn on him, thinking face-to-face, acting cold is the better option for this chat. Show him I’m not affected or that I care. That the bitch he hated before can still show face. To turn it back to something negative.
I’m startled to find him right behind me, staring at the back of my head, and he doesn’t shift back when I end up almost nose-butting him. A little unnerved by this invasive way he has of hemming me in.
“I honestly don’t know. She’s important to the R&D with Biochem. She’s been my friend these past two years without asking for anything in return……… For you, though, I would do whatever you asked. Because I know she only makes this more complicated between us.”
“There is no us….. Sounds like there never was from what things you’ve told me….. Did you at least love her?” I raise my brow, and as much as it kills me to lift my chin and look him in the eye for this, I know I need to. I need to kill whatever niggles and waivers I have in my heart for this man. Let him go once and for all. Remember the past, the pain, and the betrayal. Don’t forgive, don’t forget. Remind myself of the reason I took his car that night. Have him tell me he gave his heart to that woman and his body and affection and decimate what’s left of my love for him.
“At the time, I deluded myself into thinking it…. but…… No. I didn’t love her.” Jyeon doesn’t hesitate. His dark brown, almost black eyes intensely focused on mine. “All it took was seeing that you drove off peak point, and I knew. I will never forget that moment as long as I live. It’s imprinted in my head. How the air was sucked out of me, and I couldn’t breathe. How your face flashed through my mind and the last things I said to you… I wanted to take it all back, undo every second. I wanted it to be wrong, that they were wrong, and it wasn’t you.” Jyeon reaches up with his left hand and gently traces the hair from my temple back to my hairline with his fingertip, and I flinch away from him. Scolded by his tenderness.
“Nothing makes you face your feelings like losing the person you do love and realizing you spent your entire adult life pushing her away. Denying the truth about why you could hate her so venomously.”
I step out of his reach and wipe my hand across the burning traced path he left with his fingertips to remove the sensation. Screwing my face up as though I’m angered while battling my internal butterflies and chaos. Stomach tightening in response. Hating how he sucks the air from around me by being close.
“Don’t,” I mutter back at him, body bristling with how it reacts to him.
“I’m sorry, Sohla. For turning my back on you when we were kids, you did nothing wrong. For keeping my distance and pushing you aside to try and convince our parents to let us free. For convincing myself I didn’t care about you. I didn’t know how else to rebel against what they wanted, which made sense at the time and grew into something else. I left you to cope alone when I had always cushioned everything for you. You were my best friend, someone I fiercely protected and cared about…… and I shut you out, treated you coldly, and hurt you. If I hadn’t, if I had let nature run its course, realized I always loved you… then things would have been completely different. I see that now. I spent two years thinking about it, about everything. About how I was when we married, when you were pregnant, and why you did everything you did. I have so many regrets. I know I was the one who destroyed everything, and you became the way you did because of me.”
He's talking behind me, and I cannot stay still and listen. Pushing it out of my head and pacing away from the bookcase to escape him. He’s rubbing my heart raw, opening wounds, picking off the scabs to reveal the unhealed and making them bleed still. Two years are unraveling like we’re back in the kitchen that night, and he’s still so etched in my brain and soul that this is agony.
I close my eyes and regulate my breathing to not show him how I’m tearing up, and my face aches with how hard I’m trying to remain blank. I won’t cave to him. His words won’t fool me. He broke my heart more than once. I shouldn’t allow him to rewind his way in to do even more damage to me.
“What do you want me to say, huh?” Emotions get the better of me, and I spin on him, bubbling from inside. Pain and temper are taking over. “I forgive you?.... I can’t. Because…. Whatever happened, I don’t remember. You keep mentioning things I don't recall, and I don’t know the person you’re talking about. For all I know, you could be fabricating a past. Trying to convince me that you’re not the one who tried to get rid of me, for whatever reason. All of this feels convenient and like it’s not about love but control and something you need from me. Everything you said about our marriage, you’re contradicting it all. Confusing me while that girl still lingers too. It’s all bullshit.” My hands vibrate, my inner body pulsates, and my chest grows crazily tight. Clinging on to the lie of amnesia because it now feels like a shield that saves me from ever having any real headway with him about all of this. Denial is my only option.
Jyeon watches me with a tight expression before sliding his arm behind his back and fishing his wallet from his back pocket. Saying nothing, infuriatingly calm while I’m starting to unravel.
“Catch.” He throws it my way, and I impulsively scramble in the air to grab the freefalling black leather square.
“Why are you giving me this?” I frown at him in puzzlement. Grasping it tightly.
“Open it. Look in the side left slot. Pull it out. Tell me after that if I’m fabricating all of this. That there wasn’t a part of me that truly loved you. That held onto you despite what I thought I felt.”
I blink at him and then at the smooth expensive article before slowly flipping it open and sliding my fingers into the left side on autopilot. His wallet is fat with cards and cash, and there on the one side, which is so tight I have to struggle to get it out, is a folded-up thick paper. I fumble with it and manage to free it from its tight prison. Not sure what this is.
It's aged, slightly yellowing, and thicker than regular paper, with some pencil words written on it that are so faint I almost can’t make them out. The edges are overworked and split in places like he’s had this for a long time and frequently looks at it.
“This?” I hold it up and wave it slightly, seeing him nod. His eyes trained on me, and his expression unreadable.
“Open it. I’ve carried that in every wallet I’ve owned since we were young. No matter how we were, I always kept that.”
I put his wallet under my armpit, glancing from him to it but obeying him, so I can use both hands to unfold whatever this is. I'm curious and unsure what this is in relation to our conversation, but I’m intrigued enough to ask nothing else.
“Maybe you’ll remember something. Or at least believe me when I say I always loved you. If I had stopped and examined all of it, I would have seen it too.” He adds, watching me pensively.
It’s a large rectangle of folded paper. Six times bent to make it small. I flip it over, ignoring the childish writing on the back as it’s practically unreadable from years of being pulled in and out of his wallet. It’s seen better days.
It’s a printed image of two young children on paper, hand in hand, on a beach. Both have their back to the camera and stare into the sea, a little apart, with a completely still and serene posture. Relaxed and comfortable together. Looking like poster children for sweet artwork.
Perfectly captured softness, a setting sun, gentle waves, and the tones of the sand and sea contrast the little dark-haired duo dressed in pristine white formal clothes. The boy stands a head taller and is leaning in slightly to the little girl, her hand clasped so gently in his as though he’s telling her something, and she’s listening intently. Whoever took it got the composure and lighting perfect. The children look young, but there’s a sense of them being caught in their own bubble and oblivious to everything around them except the view. It’s cute and somehow tugs at my heart painfully with a foggy distant feeling of familiarity.
“What is this?” I honestly don’t have a clue what it is, even if the kids do strike a resemblance to Jyeon and me. I don’t remember this. But then I forgot a lot of things from when I was young. I’m sure most people do.
“That’s us. You were six, and I was nine. It was after a wedding that our parents took us to. You had your mom print it off for you; on the back, it’s a letter. Telling me that you love me and want to marry me one day. I'm your best friend in the world. That year, it was inside my birthday card, and I never threw it away.” Jyeon walks over to me, carefully takes it, eyes on the paper and not on me, and turns it over to display a very worn and patchy child’s scrawl. The odd word stands out, but mostly I have to squint to see them. I can identify the words love and marriage.
“After we were told we were to be married, and I started pulling away, you found it in my room and gave it to me again. I think it was your way of telling me we would be okay and that I should trust in you. To trust our bond. I kept it as a reminder of our happier times, when no one wanted anything from us, but I failed to understand its message.” Jyeon examines it and carefully straightens out the bent corners. I’m silent and shocked that he kept something like this, that was only between us, for all this time. It’s so unlike him to be sentimental and cling to something. Yet I genuinely don’t remember either occasion. I guess for me, it was insignificant memories, but for him, it was something he treasured.
“We could just be together, enjoy the view, and forget everything else. No expectations. No pressure.” He smiles at the image and gently runs his thumb over my figure. “You were always the prettiest girl, yet I got so caught up in my head, my feelings, that you became a symbol of my parent’s control. I hated how our parents mapped out every choice for us, so I couldn’t breathe and felt like my life was spiraling. I blamed you for existing and being everything they wanted for my future like it was your flaw. Instead of facing the fact they were doing it to both of us. I was selfish in my outlook.”
He folds it up carefully and slides the wallet back from me, putting it back where it belongs as though he’s afraid it might be lost or torn the longer it’s out of its safe hide hole.
“I could never throw this away, though. Even when I threw you away….. I wanted to be back then when things between us were simple and pure, and there was no pressure or motive or reason to force us to do anything. No reason to fight or hate one another. When I was allowed to love you without it having meaning. I would look at this anytime we fought and remind myself of who you used to be, to hold it in, to carry on.”
His words linger in my heart and bring a sense of heartbreak and anger. Hating him for this moment, but also loving him for it too. Keeping this stupid thing and what it symbolizes. Hating that he only ever compared me to the child of the past and ignored the person who was standing in front of him for years. All the while, I changed because he stopped seeing the girl he cared about and only saw a prison cell instead. All those years he persevered, and I wonder if it’s because he held onto a version I no longer was and stuck by out of loyalty to our once solid friendship.
“You should throw it away now. It no longer means anything. That girl is gone and lost; she hasn’t been her for a long time. She doesn’t exist anymore.” My voice catches in my throat and betrays my genuine pain. Broken inside because of everything that’s ever happened between us. How much possibility we had back then, and he’s only confusing me further.
My voice is raspy, and I swallow hard as tears fill my eyes and turn away. Jyeon spots it, though, and catches my face in his hand, turning me back to him and moving in close. Bringing me to submission. Closing the gap between us, he leans in and shares my air. Stealing my energy and refusal when his touch burns brightly, I’m caught in despair.
“It means everything. We could start over and go back to the beginning when we were together for no other reason than we liked to be. We could build something new. Something real by choice. We’re still those two kids who gravitated toward one another and had a connection I could never escape. Even when we were at our worst, Sohla, I still couldn’t stop caring. I always came back to you, followed you… I couldn’t outrun you.”
My broken heart needed those words from him a million times over the years, and it brings me heavy sadness to hear them now. When it’s all crumbled to dust, none of that life exists between us anymore.
“It’s not the same now. I don’t have the tie to the past you do. I’m a blank slate. Maybe I don’t want to remember or go back or start again. Maybe I moved on and started a new life because it’s what I needed.”
“Are you sure about that? For a girl who can’t remember, you seem to react as you do. The heart never forgets, Sohlly, and I know you loved me…. That you always loved me too. You can pretend you don’t feel something between us still, but I know better than that. I know you. In how you look at me, you tense up when I touch you and yet hesitate to fight it. The hurt and jealousy over Claire, then and now….. You contradict your own words with every mannerism and subtle reaction. You let me kiss you. You let me get close and choose to be alone with me when you could have brought Greta….. The way your breathing gets shallower, and you pause in anticipation when I move in like this.” Jyeon tilts his head in and angles closer, and for a second, my heartbeat ceases as I’m sure he will kiss me again, proving his point, despite myself.
I freeze and stop breathing, and all those inner defenses fail to function. Tensed still, head in chaos, and I can’t seem to find the ability to pull away. Eyes locked on his, and unable to blink as though mesmerized. I can deny it all I want, but everything he says is true.
The air sizzles between us, caught in his magical spell, and he moves in against me so that every hair on my body rises and my skin goosebumps. My heart rate kicks back to life and elevates, and I swallow hard. Still unable to get my limbs to make a shift and separate us. His presence pushes out the light, air, sound, and atmosphere around us, so it’s only the two of us caught in our bubble. A reminder that as children, my world commonly only seemed to hold him and me in moments where everything else ceased to exist, just like that picture.
I don’t want this… it’s stupid, yet my every ounce of being holds me captive and practically begs him to do it already.
I’m such an idiot when it comes to this man.
“I love you. I want you back with me. I need you. To be able to live and breathe again…… I won’t lose you a second time. I won’t let you run away. I’ll hold onto you this time because my life depends on it. It won’t be the same, and I won’t be the same. I’ll make up for every single time I hurt you and show you how much I love you, every moment from here on in.” He whispers it, so his breath tickles my lips, and my stomach flutters as I cave to him. Unable to fight the very real chemistry between us. His low and sensual words kill me and wreck my heart, so he pulls down resistance. His eyes are heavy with longing and piercing my soul.
He tugs me to him, holding me prisoner, and I can’t deny the simple fact that I never stopped loving him. For two years, I longed for him, and hated him, was living in despair of him, and yet cried so many times for dreaming of being back by his side. He never released me from his hold all this time.
My eyelashes flutter to a near close, and Jyeon’s nose brushes mine as he surrenders to his need to kiss me. His lips barely graze mine, and I let him. Time stopping still and caught in the moment.
“Master Park, their car just pulled up. Your mother and brother have arrived home.” The housekeeps words from the other side of the room act as a spring mechanism as I jump away from him, taking a gasping breath, and my legs go weak. Flustered that I was caught in his spell and glance away from him to avoid his gaze. My face is flaming with heat as my heart palpitates.
So close, so fucking close. I would have kissed him again, this time with a willingness not to stop, and then what?
Jesus Christ. I need to get a grip of myself.