A PLAN FOR LOVE ✓

thirty one : yeonjun

I try not to spill my fresh drink on about a million people, until I finally spot Beomgyu leaning up against the black-painted wall outside the bathrooms.

“Dude, what are you doing?” I ask, pointing my thumb back toward the corner of the bar we left Taehyun and Taehyun at. “You can’t just leave your date. Have I taught you noth—”

“I don’t like him,” Beomgyu says, cutting me off midsentence. His face is about as serious as it gets, dark eyebrows pulled together in a frown.

“Taehyun? What do you mean you don’t like him?” I ask, wondering where the hell this conversation is going. They just flirted their way through the Daydream Lullaby’ entire set.

“No. Soobin.”

I give him an incredulous look. “What? You don’t even know him.”

Beomgyu leans closer, no trace of timidity. “I know enough to know you deserve better than that. A lot better.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“I don’t like how he treats you,” Beomgyu says, crossing his arms over his chest.

I shake my head, letting out a laugh, even though this doesn’t feel funny at all. A flicker of the past few weeks of him icing me out and hanging up on me flashes through my mind, but I push it away. I have to stand my ground. I’m not running away now.

“Well, if the last month has taught me anything, it’s that you don’t know shit about relationships, Beomgyu.” I take a step closer, glowering down at him. “I mean, you can’t even ask a guy out without a detailed tutorial.”

Beomgyu.flinches but doesn’t back down. “I know what a healthy relationship looks like, Yeonjun, even if I haven’t been in one. And that is not it.”

“Well, sorry, but we weren’t all raised in the perfect little family, with a white picket fence, and two-point-five kids, and a good lady for a mom.” I size him up, from the determined look on his face to the white-knuckled fists his hands have balled themselves into. “Why do you even care? You’ve got your dream guy.”

The fists tighten, his jaw locking in frustration.

“Because I’m trying to help you, Yeonjun, even though you’ve been ignoring me all night. You’re my—”

I don’t let him finish. I don’t want to hear him say the word “friend”… for too many reasons. “Well, we’re done helping each other, aren’t we? You got Taehyun. Soobin’s back. The plan is done, if there really ever was one. You know, I just made up all the steps, because you needed them so much. Who gives a shit about step five anyway?” I gesture between us, me and him, us. “We don’t have to do this anymore.”

And then the words tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them. The ones I can never take back. “We don’t have to pretend we give a shit about each other.”

Instantly I see them hit their mark.

And it is… even more awful than I could have possibly imagined, watching the small piece of Beomgyu’s heart I managed to find a home in over the past month absolutely shatter.

His eyes widen, and he takes a step back, accidentally knocking into the wall behind him, tears forming at their corners.

I look quickly down at my scuffed converse, squeezing my eyes shut as he brushes past me into the crowded room of people.

“Nice going, Yeonjun,” I mutter, kicking at the wall.

I turn my head, watching as he grabs Taehyun’s hand, and the two of them disappear out the door and into the night. Into their happily ever after.