Sincerely, Vantae

CHINESE FOOD

I remembered everything about last night. Every. Goddamn. Thing.

The way his lips felt against mine, the way he looked at me at the party, the way he rendered me utterly speechless when he undressed me in the bathroom. I'd never been kissed the way he kissed me, never felt it in every vein of my being and been left yearning for more. Much more.

Still, a part of me wanted to remain in denial, so I'd done my best to keep thoughts of him at bay today.

I looked at myself in a full length mirror, debating whether I should wear my hair up or down. My rescheduled date with doyoung was tonight and regardless of the fact that I could still feel vantae's lips on mine, I needed to get back to reality. The one where we were just friends and had a shared drunken moment.

My phone buzzed as I decided to go with an up-do. vantae.

Has your v been devoured yet?

Laughing, I pulled my hair into a bun before texting back:

Not yet...Give it a couple of hours.

A couple of hours for him to start or a couple of hours for him to finish?

Both....I'm sure he'll be down there a very long time. Something tells me you know nothing about giving and are all about receiving.

Something tells me that you don't know me as well as you should.

Before I could even begin to comprehend what he meant by that, he sent me another text:

Have fun on your date tonight. Let me know how it goes later.

Thanks...I will.

He sent me a colorful picture of a skeleton lying in bed with the words "I'll be waiting" and I laughed, now realizing that despite the amazing kiss we'd shared, and the outlandish sexual text he'd just sent, it didn't mean anything to either of us. We were just friends.

Just friends...Just friends...

I put on another coat of pink lipstick, and heard a soft knock on my door. "Yes?"

"lili?" My roommate, sooya, knocked once more.

"Yeah?"

"You got a minute?"

"Sure, come in." I leaned close to the mirror and plucked an errant hair from my eyebrow.

She stepped inside, smiling at me through the glass and I smiled back. When I'd first moved off campus and into our shared house, I'd thought that she and the rest of the girls would become some of my closest friends, but that never came to be. They were all majoring in medical studies, and since their schedules were practically the same, they tended to keep to themselves for the most part. With the exception of our early morning conversations around the coffee maker on the weekends, we always saw each other in passing.

"Me and the girls of the house wanted to give you this," she said, handing me a pink gift box. "It's a farewell present since you're the only one who's not staying in town after the summer."

"But I'm not going anywhere for another two months..."

"Yeah, but everyone is always all over the place now that we're working our residencies, and we can never all be here at the same time, so I didn't want to forget." She pulled a tiny blue box from her back pocket. "This one is for vantae."

"Why does vantae get a gift? He's not a roommate."

"No, but we see him just as much as we see you." She shrugged. "My boyfriend is downstairs now. I just wanted to give you that before we start watching our movie."