Broken Promise | Monsta X Jooheon

35//Glad You Came

"The sun goes down. The stars come out. And all that counts is here and now. My universe will never be the same. I'm glad you came." — Glad You Came, The Wanted

I'd never been to this side of town before, never really had a reason to, and to say I was utterly confused was an understatement. All the houses were small and squashed together side-by-side where you could really see how similar they looked.

Also, as I've previously just gone wherever I want and never had to remember or follow directions, I was just now learning about my naturally poor sense of orienteering and it was a good fifteen minutes before I could finally decide to swallow my pride and call Veronica.

She'd given me a description of her place and vague directions to get there suck as make a right at the green mailbox but I was going to need a specific address to plug into Google Maps unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life trying to get out of these winding endless suburbs.

"You called five minutes sooner than I expected." Veronica cackled on the other end of the line as I rolled my eyes.

"Shut up and send me the address, idiot!" I hissed before hanging up, Veronica's amused laughter still ringing through the speaker as I hung up.

Ten minutes later, I still had no clue where I was but at least I was at the correct destination, bookbag slung over my shoulder and steps hurried to escape the icy snow and stinging winds that whipped around my hair.

I'd finally caught up on all the work I shirked out on at the beginning of the school year but still kept my studying pretty frequent to stay on top of current topics in school and Veronica proved to be a pretty good study partner.

But as the weather grew colder, the uninsulated library became a worse study spot by the day and after my second sold and Veronica's third, we'd both decided to meet up at each other's houses until the weather warmed up again.

Thankfully, it didn't take long for Veronica to open up, I hadn't really dressed for the weather, and a simple scarf, beanie, black sweater, and cargo sweatpants weren't nearly enough to block out the icy temperature outside.

I was still getting used to the concept of actually caring about my health, even though Jooheon, Shownu, and Kihyun have definitely sped up the process with their constant nagging.

"Took you long enough," Veronica said with a grin as I wiped the crusted snow and dirt off my shoes and onto the welcome mat, body shivering and confused from the sudden change in temperature.

"Learn to give directions better."

"Learn to follow directions better."

I could say nothing to that and wasted no time dropping my stuff in Veronica's room before emerging to greet her mom before we immersed ourselves in our work.

I didn't know much about Veronica's family other than the fact that she had an older brother in college, a twelve-year-old sister, and a nine-year brother. Her only parental figure was her mother and she'd never mentioned her father or any of her sibling's fathers so the last thing I wanted to do was pry and pour salt on old wounds.

The closer we got to the kitchen, the more I began to hide behind Veronica even though I was taller and more built than her and it didn't really work very well.

This was my first instance having to actually make a decent impression on parents and it didn't take a genius to figure out that I really didn't have any good qualities to anyone over the age of twenty-seven besides my grandma.

Besides I really like Veronica and she holds her mom in quite high esteem so I felt obligated to be on my best behavior so she'll at least tolerate me.