* 𝑩𝑳𝑨𝑪𝑲 / 𝒄𝒂𝒕

                                              she feels suspended as he repeats her question back at her, still like one of those mosquitos trapped in amber, unable to move as she waits for his answer. it feels like an eternity before he speaks again, although she knows it couldn’t have been, and yet emi’s not breathing until his words register. i don’t think i can hate you, emi. i don’t want to hate you. they repeat over and over like a siren, like a record that had been scratched, and she’s so stupidly happy she thinks she might cry. but he’s switching gears too fast, her smile twitching, her emotions struggling to catch up. “ i know i hurt you, ”  she manages to say, and her voice is soft, the hand that’s holding his against her cheek unmoving like she was scared he’d pull away if she let go.  “ but you’re wrong if you think it’s only about drugs. it’s so much more than that. the way i feel about you –––––  ”  she can’t finish the sentence, her throat closing has her heart leaps upwards, words sounding strangled as she chokes on it. emi thinks maybe she’s not breathing right again, like maybe she’d forgotten to inhale paying too much attention to the boy in front of her instead, the one who had her head spinning in a way she knew had nothing at all to do with the drugs in her system. she exhales, but then he’s talking again, saying things that have her heart lurching in all sorts of directions. “ i’m sorry i wasn’t there. ”  she hadn’t realized how long she’d been waiting to tell him that until she’s said it, the words leaving her lips the way confessions used to as a child at church.  “ i didn’t want to go, ”  she continues, but this time her voice wavers, and she’s smiling but it’s the sad kind, the type of smile that comes right before the tears well up at the corners of her eyes like tiny diamonds. her brain is a mess, thoughts racing past too quick to be sorted, the things she wants to tell him dying at the tip of her tongue because he’s looking at her and she thinks maybe another eternity could pass them by and she wouldn’t even notice because god those fucking eyes do something to her. and then he has his hands on both sides of her face, and her lips barely have time to part in surprise before he’s pulling her towards him, kissing her. emi had imagined this moment about a million times. she’d daydreamed about it the way you do when you have a crush, girlish and silly. she’d longed for it on nights her imagination took her to more private places, the type of dreams that were better suited for the darkness of her bedroom. she used to pray for this in rehab, those long months when she’d felt a loneliness so strong it had nearly killed her. no recreation of what it might be like to be kissed by heejun, however, compared to the real thing. his lips impossibly soft against her own. the hands on either side of her face suddenly something emi is very thankful for, because she’s sure it’s the only thing keeping her grounded in that moment, feeling so light she’s sure she could float away like an astronaut lost in space. and then ––––– nothing. he’s pulled away and she feels the loss like maybe he’d taken a part of her with him, too. it’s panic that creeps in first, and she feels the way she did on her kitchen floor that day, except this time she’s not sure she can take it if he walks away again.  “ no, ”  she breathes, and her arm reaches out to wrap around his wrist before she slides her fingers down into his hand the way he’d done to her earlier.  “ please don’t go.” and she hates herself for sounding so desperate, hates herself for the way she can’t even pretend he hadn’t turned her world upside down. “ i need you,” emi confesses, and it’s what she’d told him that fateful day, except this time she doesn’t stop.  “ i need you to stay here. and to kiss me again. and to hold me later when we fall asleep because i hate it when i’m alone. because i want it to be you ––––– because i need it to be you. ”  her eyelashes feel sticky, and emi has no idea if she’s crying or if she’s overheating, every nerve on fire as she waits to see if he’d stay or go.  “ it’s not just about drugs, heejun.”  his name is delicate, something she feels she has to whisper, like if she was any louder everything might shatter.  “ it never was.”    

                                             when they’re close like this, things blend into the background. the voices of their friends floating in from different rooms, the music someone had put on, even the sound of her own breathing fades the way the sound on a television might when somebody grabs the remote. all emi could focus on was the sound of his voice, the way his lips move to form a question that sends her heartbeat racing. when their eyes meet, she’s reminded of something she’d once learned in an astronomy class, one of those bits of information that sits in the back of her brain until something comes along and makes her remember. tonight she is venus at perihelion, and heejun is the sun. and perhaps in a way it’s always been like this with them –––––   two celestial bodies coming as close as they can to each other without touching. it drives her crazy now, the molly coursing through her bloodstream making her feel so damn affectionate, like she could lean forward and kiss him and somehow it would all be alright. she feels euphoric, so opposite to the numbness he’s emitting, and it takes everything in her not to say no, don’t move, i want you here always. emi thinks she must have lost that right, the right to a confession, everything she’d put him through since the moment she’d been sent away to rehab making even thinking about opening her mouth a selfish thing. but it was more than that. she was scared. scared that if she said stay, he’d still go, scared if she said she’d missed him terribly he wouldn’t feel the same. she was scared that maybe all he saw when he looked at her now was that desperate version of her with her knees scraped up sitting on her kitchen floor begging him for drugs. and then she feels his hand slip into hers, his fingers interlocking with her own like it was that simple, like she didn’t feel the way a star might right before it goes supernova. it’s the drugs. it’s the drugs and it’s him, the way it’s always been. “ ––––– we could talk about what ? ”  she asks, her voice barely above a whisper. she’s tempted then to do something, the urge to pull him into the bathroom or to place her hand over his chest and feel the way his heart thumped underneath tugging at her. instead she doesn’t move, save for her thumb brushing over his own once, her touch feather light.  “ i thought you hated me now. ”  she can’t mask her emotions the way he had, not in her current state, her intoxication the honest kind. the hurt is everywhere ––––– in those big dark eyes of hers as she looks at him, in the way her shoulders curve, in between every syllable of the words falling from her lips. “ do you ? ”  she says, and she can’t help it then as she lifts their joined hands, guiding his towards her cheek.   

                                         she’d only wanted to come to the bathroom for the mirror, something it wasn’t uncommon for emi to do when she was really high. how else was she supposed to make sure she she wasn’t actually vibrating, and that it was just the drugs making her think so ? she’s greeted with a closed door, a sigh blowing past pink lips, a piece of dark hair blowing away from her face with the exhale. emi lets her eyes close as she waits, liking the way it was easy to imagine herself as floating outside of her own body when she couldn’t see it. they shoot open, however, when someone crashes into her.  “ oh i’m so –––––  ”  she begins before she registers who had been in the bathroom, which only happens a few seconds before she registers the baggie of coke he’d dropped after their collision. the rest of her sentence dies at the tip of her tongue, suddenly at a loss for words. she had barely seen heejun since that day in her kitchen, and yet the memory of him grabbing onto her during the corn maze was something she hadn’t been able to forget, even high. it was confusing, as was the way he positions himself to block the bathroom door. “ i am, yeah, ”  she answers him, gaze dropping down to his bottom half before she looks back up at him again.  “ looks like you are too, ”  she murmurs, what he’d just been doing obvious even if he hadn’t dropped the coke. she fidgets on her feet, not really sure how she was supposed to behave around him anymore. once upon a time she could have grabbed him by the hand, pulled him back into the bathroom and asked him to cut her a line. once upon a time she didn’t feel like such a stranger in his presence. and yet as weird as it was now, she’d still missed him, missed standing as close to him as she was now.  “ ––––– what if i had to pee ? ”  emi suddenly blurts out before she could stop herself.  “ i mean, i don’t, but i could. and you’re blocking the entrance, ”  she says, stepping even closer, like she was testing whether or not he’d move.  

EMIKO: u could have just not sold to me /: u didn’t have to lie

EMIKO: so u lied to me

EMIKO: roy seriously 😐

EMIKO: i thought u stopped

EMIKO: wtf

emiko: do u want me to get in with u or do u want me to sleep

emiko: okay /:

emiko: promise?

emiko: like the other night

emiko: i like having u in my bed

emiko: come try in my room

EMIKO: omg this is the second time he uses a key smash i think we broke him

EMIKO: guess we’ll just have to make this fun for you...