He hung his head for a moment before looking up. His eyes seemed to shine in the soft lighting.
“He said it would be better for you to have a clean break from us – from our world. From everything. Mate, I believed him.”
My fingers dug into my thighs. I was so sick of being the collateral damage. First him, then all of the other members – although honestly, their removal from my life made sense. He was their friend, their group-member. I’d only ever been the girlfriend. But Tae? I though that he’d been a friend I’d made for myself, independent of my other relationships.
“You had no right to make that decision for me.” My voice trembled.
He nodded. “I know, but at the time I really thought he was right.”
I exhaled heavily, and the breath I took to replace it juddered, filling my lungs unevenly.
The words hung in the air between us, little echoes reverberating through the stillness, even as in the distance,people cheered, and laughed. Two very different worlds. The one out there, the one in here, and the chasm between us.
“Y’know,” he said after several minutes had gone by, “it took my mum getting cancer for me to quit smoking.”
I looked up sharply.
“Yeah, I know,” he sighed. “I just compared this situation to that one.” One corner of his lips quirked ruefully.
I opened my mouth, then shut it. Opened it again. Then shut it again.
“Yeah, I’m gonna need an on-ramp for that to make sense,” I admitted, rubbing a hand down my face.
Tae huffed a laugh before he took a sip from his bottle. He uncrossed his legs and splayed them in front of him. For someone who moved with such graceful precision on stage, he was remarkably gangly in real life.
“My mum was diagnosed with cancer last year.” He began picked at a hole in his jeans, plucking the frayed threads like guitar strings.
“That sucks.” I said nodding slowly as visions of my mum started playing in a carousel in my mind. Watching her get out of the car that first day, bandaged so stiffly she could barely walk. I shuddered.
“Yeah. Anyway,” he carried on. “I went home last year as soon as the travel restrictions were lifted. I was fully vaccinated, but I had to isolate when I got there. I sat in a hotel for weeks, waiting until it was safe to go home.”
I nodded, remembering the way we had lived for so long that it had stopped feeling strange.
“And when I got home, my aunt was there, taking care of my mum after her surgery. You know the first thing she says to me?”
He glanced up, and while there was a smile on his face, it didnn’t reach his eyes.
“What did she say?” I had to ask, when he didn’t automatically continue.
“Get out.”
“Sorry?”
“That’s what she said. My auntie. I’d barely taken one step in the door when she stopped dead in her tracks, looked me up and down and said, ‘get out, right now’.”
I made a spluttering sort of noise, half way between a laugh, and indignation on his behalf.
“Why?”
He shrugged, going back to picking at those frayed threads. “Probably because I stank like I’d just smoked a pack of twenty in a sealed car.”
“Had you?”
He flashed me a quick grin.
“Maybe ten on the way from the hotel.”
I wrinkled my nose. “So, you smelt bad.”
