I Think I Love You •Chaennie•

Chapter 4

Rosé's POV

I understand that lying on the couch with a brand-new teal IKEA pillow balanced on my face doesn't exactly communicate mental wellness, but it still surprises me when Dad walks into the room and immediately asks what's wrong.

"Nothing," I say without moving the pillow. My voice is muffled, but I leave the pillow there. I like it there.

Dad bends down to pat my leg awkwardly, and I tilt my head so I can see him.

"You don't look like nothing's wrong." He's looking down at me with the mail dangling from his fingers.

"Your new place is...nice," I say, looking around the apartment. It's a two bedroom, like we had before I left, back when I still had a functional family, but nothing else about it is the same. It's all new furniture, most of it from IKEA. I'm pretty sure I've seen this exact square coffee table in a million other apartments. The grey couch is cute-ish, I guess, but the hard pillows are making my back sore, and he got an armchair in the exact same design, which is way too matchy-matchy.

"I like it too," Dad says, not quite picking up on my tone as he looks around the little living room. I follow his gaze, wishing I could find any semblance of personality in the arrangements, but it looks like he re-created an IKEA showroom. The only sign that someone lives here is the mail he drops on the coffee table.

"The apartments in Paris are so much sunnier," I say with another sigh, eyeing the one little rectangle window in the living room, which is half-blocked by the window AC unit. The window is facing the wrong way too, so that it gets too much light in the morning, and none at all in the afternoon. At least the AC is on full blast, chasing away the late-afternoon heat. It's nice to be out of the beating sunshine.

Dad reaches for the remote and flicks the TV on. "Sorry this isn't living up to your grand Parisian expectations."

I force a laugh. "They have all these nice big windows."

We watch the news for a moment, though I don't pay attention. Hearing the news in English is throwing me off.

"Do you have any plans tonight?" Dad asks as a commercial break starts.

"I might go over to Taehyung's."

"That would be a good idea," Dad says. He doesn't take his eyes off the TV. "I'm going to be out tonight."

"Working?" I ask. He and Mom always used to alternate when they had to work late at their respective banks. But now that they're divorced, I end up alone whenever he has to work.

"Actually," Dad says, staring hard at the TV even though it's only an ad, "I have a date."

I choke on my own spit. Coughing, I sputter, "A d-date? You can't have a date."

Dad finally looks directly at me, his bushy eyebrows raised. "What? Your mother gets remarried, and I can't have a date?"

"I don't know who told her she could get remarried," I mutter to myself, but Dad doesn't hear me. I look up at him. "Fine. Have a good date."

He grins, patting my leg again. "Thanks, kiddo. I get it. It must be hard."

I sigh. He doesn't get it at all. If he did, if he knew that his stupid divorce and his stupid date were sentencing me to a lifetime of solitude, he wouldn't be going out in the first place. Plus, how can either of them possibly date or fall in love or get married again after what our family went through? Can't they see that love is a myth?

"No," I say, as light as a breeze. "Of course not. I'm going to Taehyung's, and you're going on a date. Everything is totally normal."

I swing my legs off the couch and trudge to my bedroom-also full of generic IKEA crap-to get my shoes.