Boundaries

14. Retake

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

The line clicks over to voicemail. You hang up before you can say something stupid. Cursing internally, you press Jongdae's name again. You can't not leave a message.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Back to voicemail. All you have to do is leave a message after the beep.

Beep.

Damn.

"Hey, Jongdae. It's Kalani. I...um..." You don't want to lay it all out on the phone. After what you did, Jongdae deserves to hear your apology as it happens, not prerecorded on an answering machine. "So, I, uh...I need to apologize. I...I just want to talk to you again. I broke us, and I need to fix it. So...just...uh, please just call me back, okay? I know you're mad and hurt, but please call me back. Okay." You take the phone away from your ear and as your thumb hovers over the button to end the call, your last mistake slips out, "I love you." And then the line is closed.

Oh.

Shit.

It's not the first time you've accidentally ended a call with "I love you." You were so used to it from conversations with your girlfriends, with your boyfriend, with your parents—sometimes it just slipped out out of habit, like those times when you accidentally called a teacher "mom" or called your best friend by the wrong name. But of all people, of all the times for you to lose track of your conversation etiquette—it just had to be in your message for Jongdae.

Figures.

You speed-dial the number one more time, rehearsing the correction in your mind.

One. "Listen, about the end of that last message."

Two. "I'm sorry, it just slipped out. I didn't mean to say it."

Three. "I mean, not that I didn't mean it, but I know you probably don't want to hear that right now."

F—

"Hello?"

Damn.

You freeze. His voice crackles through the line again. "Hello? Are you still there?"

He's going to hang up if you don't force words through your constricted throat and your dry mouth.

"H-hello? Jongdae?"

"What do you need, Kalani?"

A list of a thousand valid but selfish responses runs through your mind: your forgiveness, Minseok's forgiveness, your arms around me, to spend the rest of my life with you, to—

"I just want to talk to you. I miss you, us, the sound of your voice—"

"Kalani."

You take a deep breath. "I'm sorry. That was out of line. But I need to apologize for what I did. I made my choice, and it wasn't fair for me to decide that I wanted to undo it just

because—"

"Stop."

Both of you are silent for a full minute. Did he hang up? Your phone reads that the call is still ongoing, but you can't even hear him breathing on his end.