Even though it hadn’t been a choice, not really, I couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t also a part of him that felt like I’d chosen this.
I was pulled down by the guilt of leaving, but also shame that I hadn’t left sooner. It was a wonder the gravity of it didn’t pull me to the floor, trapping me under the weight of it.
Jihoon looked away. It was just a brief glance, but I saw it then. The hurt, the way he tried so hard to hold it in. It was in the line of his jaw, the brief, but quick flutter of his eyelashes, the bob of his throat.
“I miss you.”
It wasn’t an answer, not really, but I knew it was all he could say.
“I miss you, too.” I took a shaky breath. “It feels so weird being back here. It feels like…”
“Like what?” he prompted.
I couldn’t meet his eyes.
“It’s almost like the past year didn’t happen. Being back here. It’s like, maybe I just moved back home after I finished uni. Like I never went to LA. Never met you.” I swallowed. “It feels like an erasure of the past year.”
“An erasure of me?”
“Never,” I said vehemently and immediately. I shook my head as I forced my eyes to meet his.
He nodded, but said nothing for a moment, until – “I felt the same when I carried my bags upstairs,” he admitted. “It felt like a loss, like defeat.”
“We didn’t lose,” I said quietly, barely hearing the words over the thudding of my heart, a sick feeling churning in my stomach.
He took a shuddering breath. “I don’t know how to do this without you, jagiya.” His eyes shone, even in the dim light of his – not our – bedroom.
“Me either,” I said quietly.
He sniffed, dragging a hand through his tousled hair, and I could tell he was trying so hard. Watching him struggle and not being able to offer any real words of comfort, no assurances for my return, was a kind of agony I had never experienced before.
We’d thought we had made it. We had done the hard part; the months of long-distance, the time differences, only to be right back to where we’d started.
“We’ll be okay,” I said, injecting a beat of bravado into my tone.
Everything was too new, too raw. I felt too much.
Jihoon nodded and took a deep breath. “We’ll be okay,” he echoed.
But it felt like the kind of echo I now associated with our apartment.
Empty.
Chapter 4
Saturday 8th March
Irolled over in bed and stared at the watery dawn as it seeped through the gaps in my curtains.
I’d spent so long travelling and moving through time zones that I should be bone-tired. But mostly I felt… numb. Too much had happened and it felt like everything that needed processing was on a waiting list.
Sighing, I reached out to grab my phone off the nightstand.
My chest squeezed as I saw Jihoon’s message.
Joon
Good morning, sleepyhead. Saranghae.
