A Still Day or A Hurricane | Jungkook

Part 12

You sit on your bed, doing the breathing exercises your yoga instructor taught you when you start to feel anxious. But you're getting impatient and your racing heart isn't calming down.

You recall what your therapist had you do several times - naming things you hear, you smell, you feel, and you see.

It doesn't help, though, because all you find yourself hearing, smelling, feeling, and seeing, is Jungkook. His infectious laughter ringing in your home, his garlic and orange juice scent on your skin, the taste and feel of his lips on yours, the sight of his dejected eyes for that brief moment you looked at him, and his retreating form, walking away from you like you'd told him to do.

Your tongue licks your quivering lips, your teeth biting into the flesh as if desperate to taste him again, because much as you want to deny it, it's what you want. You want his hand on you, the way it was when he felt your baby kick and when it moved to cup your cheek, pulling you close so his mouth could meet yours, the gentle yet needy way he kissed you clouding your mind again like it did just an hour ago.

It felt so good, so right, and utterly scary once you realized how easy it was for you to fall into it. For once, you weren't thinking, you were feeling, and for a decade of your life, you'd been taught that once your emotions start to control you, that's when your downfall happens.

And you'd been so close. You almost completely gave in. You almost had him hold you; almost had him break down all your defenses and enter your heart to lay permanently in one of the spaces you'd left unoccupied for years.

You almost wanted to keep him, hold him yourself and not let go. You almost wanted more, to share in the life you'd painstakingly created for yourself and your daughter. You almost wanted him to be there with you and the little one inside you. You almost wanted him to love you.

And you had to push him away before any of those almosts became real, because the last thing you want is to give away the control you have over your life, afraid you'd crash if you shared it with him.

Your phone pings and you glance at the messages coming in, and you can't help the one tear that falls at the sight of his name on your screen.

[From: Jungkook - BS Chef] I'm so sorry for earlier. I didn't mean to cross a line or make you feel uncomfortable

[From: Jungkook - BS Chef] you have to believe me, please

[From: Jungkook - BS Chef] I hope I didn't screw everything up

**

The days turn into weeks, and you convince yourself that it's easy to forget that the afternoon in your apartment even happened. Sometimes you bring yourself to believe that you'd just dreamt it all up, that you only imagined kissing Jungkook, that he'd been the one to say he had to go, that it hadn't been you who pushed him out because he'd done something you didn't want - make him part of your plan.

But everytime you fall into that alternate reality you want so badly to be real, a message from him is all it takes to remind you that that Sunday indeed happened, and you'd been the one who let him walk away, and you're the one still keeping him out, even if the Jungkook-shaped hole in your life is telling you that you miss him, and there's nothing more you want than to hear his silly stories and hear his laugh again.

After leaving his daily messages unread, they stopped for a while, and you hated how your heart hurt at the sudden absence you'd forced him to make.

But they started coming again, the apologies now turned to asking how you are, what food you're craving, if you bought the baby grooming set you've been eyeing. It's as if that day didn't happen, like everything between you is still the way it was, and what hurt more was seeing the smiley faces and winks disappear, the messages getting shorter, the frequency, less.