always have been, always will be | jensoo

Still Prone To Care

"Do we really have to eat lunch with him?" I was a little outraged. We hadn't eaten anything but alone for the past three years of high school. I didn't want our streak to end.

"He's my boyfriend, Jennie." Jisoo intoned, "And you're my best friend. You should get used to spending time with him."

"The things I do for you, Jisoo."

She groaned at my righteousness.

"No, seriously." I rested my chin on my hand, gazing at her. I felt compelled to go on, but held back. "But whatever. Are you sure you two don't want to be alone?"

Jisoo looked at me like this was hilarious, and made a face. "Uh, no. Stay here."

"What, you don't want alone time with your boyfriend?" I nearly spit the word, hardly teasing. I couldn't help it.

Jisoo immediately softened. "I'll always prefer your company." She reaches across the table to lay a palm against my chest, pressig her words into my heart. I do not doubt her.

"Ladies!" Jinoyung put a hand on Jisoo's back, appearing out of nowhere. He leaned town to meet Jisoo in an impromptu kiss that made me cringe.

Jisoo carefully avoided looking my way for several seconds, giving Jinyoung her best smile. "Hey, sit down." She cheerfully moved books out of his way and he sat his big lummox self down, grinning at me.

"Jennie."

"Jinyoung."

Things got vastly different. The tail end of our junior year, all I can really recall is Jinyoung. Not because I focused on him, but because I focused a lot of my resentment on him.

He actually wasn't that bad of a guy. A typical boy, to be sure, but he was always relatively nice to me. I just could barely stomach seeing the two of them together.

I saw right through Jisoo, of course. She refused to sit with him at lunch, but he was readily available every lunch period to sit with us at our table, across from me and Jisoo, chatting our ears off about whatever stupid thing passed through his thoughts. I hated these conversations because I was aloof, a petulant child not wanting to share. They had to struggle to include me, but those days I was not forthcoming. I figured I had good reason to be.

When my heart wasn't being mangled, it was being toyed with like the ball on the end of the string connected to a paddle. Jisoo got different.

Her touch wasn't the same; before, it had been an open, friendly caress. A marker of our deep friendship, something people even expected.

But Jisoo grew bolder, more flamboyant. Now that she had a label declaring her Jinyoung's Girlfriend, she was a lot more free with me. Intimate touches that showed me she knew their meaning, and wanted me to know, too.

She would hold my hand under the table, stroking her thumb over my skin. On our movie nights, Jisoo and myself no longer being the only participants, she would crawl across the couch and into my lap whenever Jinyoung would leave the room, ruining any scene that was playing and giving me a tight hug around the neck.

Sometimes I would swear she was working her way up to kissing me, eyes glazed over and hypnotizing me with every touch, paralyzing me with anticipation. She would pull back, realizing what she was going. Or Jinyoung would walk in the room, oblivious to the moment he was wrecking.

I think we were always both silently thankful to him, blundering into our quiet bliss. Neither of us had to courage to take it anywhere else but where we already stood. I felt more pathetic with each passing of the day, but I never objected to her slow advances.