The Domino Effect (Chaennie)

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Kim Hanbin.

The first domino in a series of heartbreaking, failed love affairs, each one controversially more depressing than the last. Rosie might've been able to say that he was her first love.

Well, the closest she could get to love at the ripe age of 14.

She was smitten when she had first met him. Enamored really. He had moved in right across the street just before their freshman year of high school. She had seen him carry a guitar case up into his house on his move in and that's all it really took for her to become infatuated.

She and Alice had brought over a plate of brownies a few days later, and despite Alice's comments on the fact that his head looked like a chia pet, Rosie swooned and sighed, and easily started dating him at the beginning of the school year.

It was perfect in every way that mattered. He was sweet and liked to watch musicals with her. He even bought her milkshakes from the Grill and walked her home, and as a fourteen, turning fifteen year old, there wasn't much else she could ask for.

It was perfect enough that when Rosie started to notice Hanbin's wandering gaze on Jennie Kim, she chose to ignore it.

Rosie couldn't even pretend to be surprised when a year later, a month into their sophomore year, Hanbin broke up with her in one lousy speech. He said that his heart wasn't in it anymore and that he still wanted to be friends. Rosie knew this was Hanbin talk for I don't like you anymore, but I don't want you to hate me.

Hanbin asked Jennie out a week later.

Jennie said yes.

Part of Rosie wished the other girl would've said no. Wished that she would have at least waited a month or two before she initiated anything, but Jennie didn't owe her anything. She knew that for sure.

So now in their senior year, when Rosie looks down the long end of the lunch table and sees the curly haired boy with his arm slung over Jennie's shoulders, staring at her like she invented the toilet, Rosie's heart barely aches.

It aches for the boy she knew she could've epically loved, and it aches for the auburn haired girl who used to push her swing at the park.

The feeling is barely there, like the feeling of a butterfly resting on the sleeve of a thin shirt. Just the faintest of feelings, but it flutters in Rosie's chest nonetheless.

Rosie only snaps out of her reminiscing when she feels a crumpled napkin hit her right on the nose. She turns to the culprit sitting directly in front of her and shoots her twin an annoyed look.

"Um, hello?!" Alice shoots her sister an angry glare. "I was talking to you! Don't tell me you were moping over Frodo."

Rosie pouts and looks down to avoid her sister's look because she was moping, just a little.

"I wasn't." She lied. "What were you saying?" She asked to hopefully get Alice to move on.

It works, but only because Alice lets it work judging by the you're not getting away from this conversation that easily but I'm dropping it because I have more important things to talk about look.

The only reason Rosie was able to gather all of that from Alice's expression was solely because of their twin senses.

"I was asking" she pauses with an annoyed huff, "if you wanted to go home before my game, or if you just wanted to wait at school with me."

"I'll just wait with you so you don't have to pick me up later."

Rosie still didn't have her license, but not for a lack of trying. She had taken the test, twice, but  apparently when you mix up the brakes and the accelerator, or drive up a curb, you end up failing.