The One I Love

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she is so naked and singular.

she is the sum of yourself and your dream.

climb her like a monument, step after step.

she is solid.

as for me, i am a watercolor.

i wash off.

- anne sexton.

Jennie keeps her hands in her lap, the sharp edges of her nails digging into the soft skin of her palm. She takes measured glances at the man driving, his long bangs falling into his face with the gentle breeze of the AC. He looks like he used to look, but everyone does in her eyes. Everyone does in some way.

(She sees him everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.)

His jaw is tensed as he mulls over his words. They drive on an unlit path.

"Make me understand, Jennie." He speaks after a dragging silence.

"I just don't think it'll work out."

"But why?" He turns his head to look her in the eye. Her body tenses as his attention is taken off of the road.

"I don't feel a connection between us."

"What if you gave me another chance?" His knuckles go pale as he keeps a tight grip on the steering wheel. "Wouldn't that be fair?"

She knows what they say about her. That she's easy, that she'll go out with any guy at least once.

Only once.

She no longer recognizes her neighborhood in the dark. They are no longer driving toward her house. Her eyes widen as the buildings become increasingly indistinguishable.

"Relax, I'm going to drive you home." He catches her panicked glance, a bite of annoyance in his voice. "I just want to talk to you."

"You're making me uncomfortable, Jaewon. I don't want to talk, I just want to go home."

The car comes to a sudden stop. Jennie jerks forward, the seat belt digging into her throat. She unbuckles the belt, gasping as air flows back to her lungs more freely.

"So you're really just a first date queen." Jaewon sighs, leaning back in his seat.

"You're crazy! Why did you stop in the middle of the road?" Jennie wants to hit him but doesn't. She looks out round the outside of the car. Even if she ran there wouldn't be anywhere she could go.

With a defeated sigh, she leans back against the seat.

"So what's the backstory? Still hung up on your first love?"

"Maybe." She replies quietly, caring less and less what happens.

She sees her reflection in the mirror, her neck covered in an angry red mark. His hand finds her throat, the soft pads of his fingers tickling at the friction burn. It stings, but she won't cry.

"I'll make you happy." He whispers, and it feels like a lie.

Jaewon has dark and wild eyes like an animal's but he doesn't scare her. He couldn't hurt her, not as much as she'd already been hurt. She had been balancing between the world of the living and dead for a while now.

"I'm not the one who gets the happily ever after." She sets her gaze on Jaewon, but she doesn't look at him - she looks through him. She thinks about the man she sees in every man she meets.

The man she hasn't actually seen in years, not since he made his choice.

"I'm the second lead."

---

it wasn't love at first sight.

he had occasionally spent time at her house, his father worked and his mother was in the hospital. their mothers were childhood friends so it was natural that her mother look after him while his own was sick.

she fell in love through a stolen moment. she found him hunched over beneath the stairwell, hands covering his face as he sobbed. she had never seen a man cry before, it was honest and painfully tender.

she felt like she was seeing inside him.

time passed at a languid pace as she watched him, unable to look away. he eventually raised his head, their eyes meeting briefly. neither spoke.

after that, he'd recognized the shift in their dynamic and began to treat her differently. he spoke to her more often, and with more depth than simple small talk. he eventually started to catch her on her way home, and they walked together. they had a three year age gap between them, and knowing him gave her a sense of sophistication and maturity to her classmates. she bragged about their friendship and wrote his name over and over again in her journals.

minho, minho, minho.

she loved him innocently and earnestly. it was one sided, but it sustained her.

there wasn't much she knew about the world but she knew that he would never leave her. she could rely on him like a mountain. she would never lose sight of his broad-shouldered back ahead of her as they walked along familiar paths. she would never love anything as much as his smile, or the quirk of his eyebrows as he laughed.

and it was because she was always focused on him in front of her that she didn't realize until too late that someone else was moving beside him.