TRACK 03
SUNSHINE
KYUNG
It’s only been like seven weeks or so since the night of the almost kiss.
There hasn’t been a single night that has passed that I haven’t spent with Lizzy.
We’ve taken our fair share of walks. We’ve tried many of the smaller restaurants along our routes.
Even the ones closer to her home, which she eventually let me see.
Of course, that was after our first kiss. Sitting in my chair at my computer, I cross my arms on my chest and swivel the chair back and forth as I lay my head back and think about it.
We’d been going on our late-night outings, or dates as we can call them now, for about two weeks.
We decided to take a new route to walk, and of course that’s the night the sky decided to open and try to drown us.
Since neither of us had thought of bringing an umbrella, we ran for the closest cover we could find: a small shop awning.
She’d laughed and pushed her hair back away from her face as she looked up toward the sky. I knew. That was the moment. I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my life than her standing there soaking wet, grinning like she’d never been happier.
“Liz,” I’d whispered, making her turn toward me.
Her gaze immediately went to my lips, and I had no choice but to lean down to give us both what we wanted. The moment they touched, it was like my skin started tingling. This kiss was like no other I’d ever felt before. Even my first one.
Everything felt so right.
Her lips parted on a soft sigh, and it was all the invitation I needed.
With my very first taste of her, I knew that I would be addicted.
The way that her tongue teased mine, making me delve even deeper for more of it, was enough to have me tucking her closer.
Our difference in size gave me the perfect angle to give us both exactly what we’d been driving toward for weeks, and I was so glad we waited.
I’m not sure how long we spent underneath the awning, but it’d stopped raining before I was able to pull myself away from her. We were both out of breath and our cheeks were flushed.
She looked at me like someone who was seeing the stars for the first time. “No one has ever kissed me like that.”
“Maybe that’s for a reason,” I murmured, watching the goosebumps rise across her arms and loving that my voice gave her that reaction. “Maybe it was saved for this moment right here.”
Smoothing the wet hair away from my face that’s been dripping between us and neither of us caring, she’d said, “I think you’re right.”
Every night since, I’ve found a way for my lips to touch her. Whether it be her cheek or her lips, or sometimes the back of her hands. I’m completely addicted and can’t get enough.
“What are you thinking about smiling like that?” Dav En asks.
He startles me, but not enough to give me a jump scare. Kind of get used to it when you’ve literally never lived alone. Perched on the corner of my desk, he’s got his arms folded across his chest as he looks at me, waiting for my answer.
When I’m not fast enough, he turns his head to the wall.
“Why do I feel like we’re not friends now?
I know we’ve been busy, and I was doing my stuff last month.
Ever since I’ve been back, though, things have been weird.
You’re never home at night. You barely talk to me.
I was going to see if you wanted to go to dinner last night, but I couldn’t find you and you didn’t answer my text.
Not to sound weird or anything, but I miss you. I miss my friend.”
“I’m sorry, Dav,” I tell him, knowing he’s right. It’s not like I’ve purposely been avoiding him, and I tell him as such. “Like you said, we’ve just both been really busy, and I have been more distracted than usual.”
His lips purse as he cuts his eyes back over to me. “You going to tell me where you’ve been going at night?”
“Yes,” I assure him, “but not today. You’re right. I’ve been keeping a big secret, but it hasn’t been on purpose. Would you be willing to wait until tomorrow, and I’ll tell you everything? We can hang out when we get home. Go get dinner or something.”
“Sure,” he says, slowly relaxing into the friend that I know. “Does your secret have anything to do with why you’ve been smiling a lot more lately and going harder in dance practices?”
I laugh. “I haven’t really noticed myself doing that, but yeah, I guess it must be.”
“You know that I’m happy when you’re happy,” he assures me. “No matter what the reason.”
Now, he’s got me curious as to what he’s thinking it is, but I don’t want to open the subject any more than it already is until he meets her. I shouldn’t have put it off this long as it is.
“Want to stay and game with me for a while?” I offer.
He huffs. “No thanks. I’ll stay, but I’m not gaming. You know I suck at those games you play. Be right back. I’ll grab my chair.”
I watch him leave and feel the worst kind of guilt.
Dav and I have been inseparable for a long time.
We even enlisted and served our military time together right before our debut.
I couldn’t imagine any part of my life without him.
Another one of the reasons why keeping that line between myself as a person and an idol separate is so important.
I never want to lose my best friend. It’s wild how quickly that line blurs, too.
“Want to do a live for our fans?” he asks, carrying his chair into the room and setting it next to mine.
“Sure,” I tell him excitedly. “We haven’t done one together in a while.”
For the next few hours, we hang out and do our live.
The fans seem as joyous as we are that we’re together.
Apparently, we’re not the only ones being neglected here.
The guilt just seems to keep stacking up further and further.
I just push that to the back of my mind as I spend time with them and my best friend, and hope that he’s not too mad at me tomorrow when he finds out my secret.
We ended our live after the first hour and spent the last couple just joking and laughing like we always do when we’re together. As the time got later, I had to break the news to him. “I’ve got to get going.”
When his expression drops as low as his shoulders, I clasp one of them and force him to look at me. “Tomorrow. I promise.”
“Okay,” he says with a small not-so-sad smile this time. Even though watching him pick up his chair and carry it back out of my room makes me kind of hate myself a little bit.
I could skip seeing Liz tonight and just hang with him, but who would I be doing it for? I feel like a completely selfish chud, but before I can make any kind of decision either way, he’s already made it to his room and shut the door.
Tomorrow. I promise in my head. To myself and to him. I’m not losing my friend.
I dress slowly, because I’m lost in my thoughts.
Liz will notice, no doubt, which sends me on this unraveling path of what kind of person she’d think that I am if she knew how Dav En, the most important person in the world to me, is feeling and I practically picked her over him.
Not a conversation I want to have with her.
It’s not one I even want to have with myself.
It’s selfish, but I just want one more night of keeping her out of the idol life.
Of course, it’s the only thing I can think of on my walk to her apartment. I’m halfway there when the universe decides to have a go at me. The bottom falls out of the sky, and by the time I’m standing on her stoop, I’m soaked from head to toe.
When she opens the door, her lips part in surprise, “Kyung! Where’s your umbrella?”
I shrug with a grimace. “I didn’t know it was going to rain tonight.”
“Come on,” she says, pinching a small portion of my hoodie and using it to pull me inside. We make a beeline for the stairs. “Hurry, you’re dripping everywhere and have got to be freezing.”
I hadn’t really noticed until she said that, but there is a chill inside the building that makes the wet clothes worse.
She leads us up to the second floor and unlocks the door on the left.
Whatever I’d expected from her place, it’s so different, yet exactly how I would’ve pictured it.
It’s smaller with a connected kitchen and living room space, and I can see the end of her bed through the only doorway other than the entrance.
We drop our shoes off on the little mat by the entrance, and I feel bad, but I take my socks off too so that I’m not walking on her floors with them soaked.
Grabbing that same spot on my sleeve, she tugs again, leading me toward her bedroom.
I look around and love seeing all of the small touches that are her.
The small colorful blanket thrown on the back of the couch.
The plants hanging from those pretty handmade holders out of the ceiling.
There are several framed photos scattered around the room that I want to look at too when I’m not dripping water everywhere.
She drags me into a small bathroom off the side of her room, grabbing a thick robe off the back of the door and handing it to me along with a towel. “Here, put this on and give me your clothes so we can dry them.”
I’m too stunned to move for a second, my brain having not caught up with the series of events. It isn’t until she speaks again from the other side of the door that my brain finally catches up and I do what she said.
“I guess we’re ordering takeout tonight. Any preferences?”
Even through the closed door, I can hear the smile in her voice. Pushing all the thoughts and feelings from earlier to the back of my mind, I decide to enjoy tonight with her. Even if it has the potential to be my last one since I don’t know how she’s going to react to the other side of my life.