Untitled

the knock on your apartment door comes at exactly ten o’clock - just how it usually does.

you swing open the door with your 2 year old daughter, Aria, balanced on your hip, her tiny hands wrapped around a stuffed, green duck that’s missing one wing.

“daddy!” she squeals and kicks her legs, trying to slide down your hip.

Riki’s expression softens instantly.

there’s something unfair about it, actually. how easy he smiles at her - how familiar he looks standing in your doorway dressed in that black hoodie and grey sweatpants. like he belongs there.

but he doesn’t. not anymore.

he reaches for her automatically, lifting her up and squeezing her tightly. “hey, princess.”

you watch him pull Aria against his chest as her little arms wrap around his neck.

and then he looks at you.

then there it is - that awkward pause, the one that happens every weekend.

“hi.” he says quietly.

“hi.”

neither of you move - neither of you say anything else. because what is there to say, honestly?

“have a good weekend”

“see you on sunday”

“i miss you”

the last one never makes it past either or your lips.

“okay, princess. shoes on.” Riki says, after clearing his throat, as he places her gently on the ground in front of you. you kneel and help her put on her trainers, fastening the velcro with shakier hands than you’d ever admit. you hate how he still affects you.

“there we go,” you smile at her before standing.

the silence settles again - it always does.

you watch as your daughter turns to pick up her bag, the hoodie you’re wearing slipping off one shoulder. his hoodie. at least, it used to be.

Riki tries not to stare. he really does. when your miniature self holds up her backpack to him and he doesn’t take it, you look up at him. he’s staring at you.

at his hoodie you’re wearing. at the necklace he gave you a few months before you told him you were pregnant. at your nails which were now a different colour from when he saw you last weekend.

“daddy!” Aria exclaims, her bag becoming too heavy for her little arms.

he looks down instantly, shaking his head, and picks her up. “sorry, love.”

“she ate breakfast already,” you say quietly. “there’s some snacks in her bag.”

he nods simply. “okay.”

you nod.

neither of you say goodbye when he turns towards the open door. because somehow, after all this time of being apart, saying it out loud feels too permanent.

your daughter saves you both.

“bye, mommy!”

you laugh, stepping closer to kiss her forehead. “i’ll see you on sunday, okay? have fun.”

then she turns to him. “let’s go, daddy!”

he should leave. but instead, his eyes lift to yours once more.

you’re smiling. tired. soft. pretty.

the same smile he used to wake up beside. the same smile he hasn’t stopped missing.

his throat becomes tight as he peels his eyes off your face and turns to leave one last time. Aria waves at you as he carries her down the hallway towards the elevator.

you stand at the door until they’ve disappeared around the corner. and only then do you exhale the breath that felt like you’d been holding since he knocked on the door.

—

the walk to his sleek, black mercedes feels much longer than it actually is. he can’t help his mind racing with thoughts of you. the way you smiled at your daughter so lovingly. the way your face completely changed when you caught him looking at you for a moment too long.

he shakes his head and sets the tiny human into her car seat before bucking the seatbelt. he checks it twice before shutting the door and sliding into the driver’s seat.

he should drive away. he turns the key, the engine purring to life beneath him, but he doesn’t pull away from the curb. he almost gets back out of the car before Aria speaks softly from the backseat.

“daddy?”

he blinks, his fingers loosening from the steering wheel. his knuckles are white.

“are we going?” she asks and he turns to look at her over his shoulder.

“yeah,” he smiles lovingly before shifting the car into gear and pulling away from the curb.

the drive is quiet. Aria tells him about the picture you helped her draw yesterday and how she wants pancakes for lunch.

he answers when he’s supposed to, but all he can think about is you. standing in the doorway wearing his hoodie, the sleeves pulled tightly over your hands, looking at him like he’s still someone you want to know.

“daddy!” Aria exclaims.

“hm?” he doesn’t take his eyes off the road.

“you forgot,”

“forgot what, baby?”

she frowns like it’s obvious. “to say goodbye to mommy.”

his fingers tighten on the steering wheel again. he doesn’t take his eyes off the road.

for a long moment, the only sounds in the car are the low hum of the engine and the blow of the air conditioning. then he swallows.

“i don’t think…” his voice comes out more unsure than expected. “i don’t think i’m very good at saying goodbye to mommy.”

Aria tilts her head to the side. “why?”

he laughs because how is he supposed to explain this to a two year old?

how is he supposed to tell her that every time he stands in the doorway, some part of him expects you to let him walk back inside. that every time you smile at him, he remembers what it felt like to come home to you.

he blinks hard and lets out a small breath through his nose. “i just miss her sometimes, princess.”

“i miss you too, daddy.” she says softly.

he swallows hard. he almost stops breathing. he glances in the rearview mirror and sees Aria looking out of the window, her little legs swinging slightly beneath her car seat like she hasn’t just shattered his heart.

he exhales shakily. “you do?”

she nods. “yeah. when i’m at mommy’s house.”

silence fills the car and his fingers grip the steering wheel tighter than ever. because he misses her when she’s gone. every week he counts down the days until he gets to see her again.

because somewhere between missing his daughter and missing you, he’s started to hate sundays.

—

at some point during the drive back to Riki’s house, he thinks Aria had fallen asleep in the backseat. she was silent, clutching her stuffed duck to her chest like it was the only thing keeping her there.

“you okay, baby?” Riki speaks softly from the driver’s seat. his daughter nods.

minutes later, he pulls up in the driveway and puts the car in park. he rounds the car and unbuckles Aria’s seatbelt before helping her out and grabbing her backpack.

once inside, he immediately begins taking off her trainers before heading to the kitchen to make the pancakes she asked for.

he watches her run into the living room and drop onto the rug before pulling a colouring book out of her backpack. then he blinks and she’s beside him.

“can i help?” she smiles, already struggling to drag over a stool from the counter.

he laughs and helps her up onto the stool.

he’s always careful with her. always making sure she washes her hands after using the bathroom. always making sure her laces are tied and that she’s wearing a jacket or a coat before going outside.

and he loves her just as much as he loves you.

that evening, Riki lets Aria help make the pancakes, laughing when she makes a mess all over the counter, before they settle onto the couch together to eat. he shakes his head when she asks silly questions. “daddy, do you like dinosaurs?” and he reads her three bedtime stories before she finally lays down and falls asleep.

once she’s finally asleep, he sits on the edge of her bed and watches her for a while. because in five days, he’ll miss this. again.

when you told him you were pregnant, he almost jumped for joy. he’s always thought about it - the three of you cuddling up on the couch together watching a movie and eating snacks, wearing matching pyjamas, and taking walks through the park with his hand on your lower back while your child jumps beside him.

except, this is everything he didn’t want.

—

“daddy, look! it’s a dinosaur!” Aria exclaims from the living room.

Riki walks towards her and stares down at the green blob on the paper. it’s definitely not a dinosaur but he nods anyway. “it sure is.”

“and this is you!” Aria beams, holding up the drawing proudly.

he squints at the tiny stick figure beside the green blob. “wow. don’t i look handsome.”

his daughter giggles. “no, daddy. you look silly!”

he presses his hand to his chest as if he’s physically hurt. “me? silly? i’m offended.”

her laughter fills the kitchen; its bright, loud, the kind of laugh that makes him laugh too.

actually, he hasn’t laughed that hard in months.

she’s sitting on the rug with a box of crayons scattered around her while the waffles she didn’t eat for breakfast go cold on the coffee table.

“daddy?”

“hm?”

“pink.”

he looks down as Aria holds out a pink crayon. “what about pink, baby?”

“you need pink.”

“for what?”

she points at the paper. “sit.”

Riki laughs. “you’re bossy.”

Aria grins. “sit.”

he sits.

she immediately begins scribbling and he doesn’t even ask what she’s drawing. he just watches her tiny hand move across the page.

at some point, she sticks her tongue out in concentration and his heart does that thing it always does. the thing where it feels too full.

he thinks maybe you’re his favourite part. not the cartoons, not the park, not even the pancakes. just this.

her talking nonsense, her colouring. being here.

being his.

“daddy?”

“yeah, princess?”

she looks up. “i like weekends.”

Riki smiles. “me too.”

she giggles and turns back to her masterpiece.

and suddenly, his chest aches. because weekends end; they always do. he glances at his phone.

sunday. already. too fast.

he swallows hard and looks down at his daughter, specifically where she has green crayon on her cheek. he doesn’t tell her, though.

instead, he just reaches over and gently tucks a wild strand of hair behind her ear. she doesn’t look up - she just keeps colouring.

as if he’ll still be here tomorrow. as if he doesn’t spend every week counting down the days until he gets to see her again.

he blinks once and then stands. “come on, baby.”

she finally looks up. “hm?”

“let’s get you ready.”

she pouts. “already?”

his heart drops to his ass. “yeah.”

she looks down at her picture and then back up at him.

“i stay longer?” she tilts her head.

silence. god, he wishes more than anything she could stay longer. he crouches beside her and cups her cheek with his palm.

“mommy’s waiting for you.”

she thinks about that. blinks. and then asks softly: “can you come too?”

Riki forgets how to breathe - because she’s two - she doesn’t understand why daddy has one house and mommy has another. why weekends happen, why sundays happen.

Aria just knows she likes being with both of you.

he swallows hard. “not today, princess.”

she nods slowly like she’s disappointed but she’s accepting it before reaching for her daddy. “carry.”

Riki immediately lifts her up and she buries her face into his shoulder while one tiny hand fists the fabric of his hoodie. he holds her a little tighter knowing that tomorrow, this house will be quiet again.

his chest tightens. Aria is getting bigger and both Riki and you know she is. her words are becoming clearer, her clothes keep getting too small, and she keeps asking questions he doesn’t quite know how to answer.

but right now, she’s still small enough to fit perfectly in his arms. so he holds her tightly like she’ll disappear if he lets go just a little.

“you ready to go see mommy?” he asks quietly while carding his fingers through her locs.

Aria nods against his shoulder. there’s none of the excitement she’d had when she arrived at his house on friday. she’s tired… and so is he.

Riki grabs her stuffed duck from the couch before stuffing it into her backpack.

he turns around to scan the living room for anything he might forget. but all he sees is one of her socks peeking out from under the couch, a tiny cup with cartoon animals on it, and her crayons still scattered on the rug.

little reminders that she’s been here - little reminders that in a few minutes, she won’t be.

his chest feels unbearably tight.

every weekend. every weekend he gets this; two days of cartoons and little giggles and tiny arms around his neck.

and then it’s over in the blink of an eye.

he shakes his head before flicking off the light and heading for the door.

the evening air is cool when he steps outside. his fighter is tucked securely against his chest as he makes his way to his car. she yawns, long and dramatic, before her body goes even heavier in his arms.

a small laugh escapes Riki’s throat. “you tired, baby girl?”

she nods once. small.

“you had a busy weekend, huh?”

another nod.

Riki smiles and presses a gentle kiss to the top of Aria’s head.

by the time he reaches his car, he thinks she’s already asleep in his arms. he unlocks the door with a beep of his keys and swings open the back door before lowering his tiny human into her car seat.

she makes a small noise of protest as he peels her away from his chest. her sleepy eyes blink open just enough to find him.

“there we go.” Riki mumbles as he buckles her seatbelt.

she doesn’t say anything, just watches him with heavy eyes. then, quietly: “daddy?”

he looks up. “yeah?”

“i had fun.”

he stills. it’s such a simple sentence, four little words, but somehow they hit in right in the chest. then he smiles back at her. softer this time.

“me too, baby.”

Aria smiles once more before her eyes slowly drift shut. Riki doesn’t move; he stays crouched beside the open car door for a moment, watching her breathing softly.

the he slowly stands and closes the door.

he walks round to the driver’s side and slid into the seat before resting his hands on the steering wheel. for a few seconds, he doesn’t start the car - he just sits there. listening to the quiet because he already misses her… and she’s still right behind him.

eventually, he starts the engine. the soft hum of the car fills the silence as he glances in the rear-view mirror.

Aria is still sleeping, her head tilted awkwardly to one side. her curls are messy from her exciting day with daddy, and there's still a faint mark on her cheek from the green crayon.

he almost smiles. almost.

his heart aches instead.

the drive to your apartment isn't long; Riki's done it enough times to know every turn, every shortcut, every set of traffic lights.

he also remembers driving this same route two years ago with you in the passenger seat. you were exhausted after a long night with the baby, your head resting against the window while he drove aimlessly to get Aria to sleep.

you'd looked so tired, so perfect, when you looked at him and smiled. "you're a good dad, you know."

the memory hits him unexpectedly and he swallows hard.

the light ahead turns red, forcing him to stop, before the car falls silent again. he glances in the mirror at Aria's sleeping form, a tiny frown has appeared on her face.

a few more minutes pass before familiar buildings begin appearing outside the window.

no matter how normal this arrangement has become, no matter how many months have passed, his throat always tightens as soon as he turns onto your street. because you're here and you'll open the door in a few minutes and he'll see you and pretend everything is normal... and then he'll have to leave again.

he pulls up outside your apartment and turns off the engine.

silence.

the curtains are drawn. the hallway light is on.

home. not his - not anymore.

he exhales slowly and unbuckles his seatbelt before rounding the car to the back door. she’s completely out and he smiles despite himself.

“hey, sleepyhead.” he murmurs.

nothing.

he carefully unbuckles her seatbelt and slides his arms beneath her warm, sleeping body. Aria stirs slightly before immediately tucking herself against his chest.

like she belongs there.

he kicks the door shut gently with his foot before walking towards your apartment. each step feels strangely heavy, and by the time he reaches the elevator, his breaths are coming a little too fast.

the elevator doors ding and slide open as he places a kiss to the top of Aria’s head.

by the time he reaches your door, his hands are shaky. he shifts her in his arms and raises an arm to knock.

then he waits.

—

the door doesn’t open straight away. Riki stands there silently - your daughter pressed against his chest, her little hand fisting his hoodie.

the dim light casts a soft glow over the two of them in the hallway, and for a moment, all he can hear is her slow breathing and the tv from one of the neighbouring apartments.

then he hears the footsteps and his heart does a stupid jolt when the lock clicks.

the door opens. and there you are.

your hair is messy, like you’d tied it up but given up halfway through. you’re wearing an oversized jumper and a pair of shorts - looking comfortable, tired, like you’d been curled up on the sofa waiting for them to get back.

looking like home.

neither of you say anything first. then your eyes drop to your daughter curled up in his arms. the corners of your mouth curl into a small smile at the sight - her sleeping silently on his chest.

then your eyes lift to his and something changes… it’s so brief he almost thinks he imagined it.

but your smile softens even more. because his hand is rubbing softly up and down her back, because he’s holding her carefully…

because he looks exactly like he did two years ago when you used to take turns getting up to warm a bottle for a crying baby.

“she fell asleep?” you ask quietly, your voice barely a whisper.

Riki blinks. “yeah,” his own voice softens more than he’d intended. “about ten minutes before we got here.”

you smile again, glancing down at your daughter. “looks like she had fun.”

neither of you notice how close you’ve gotten - or maybe you have but neither of you say anything.

for a few seconds, everything feels strangely normal.

“oh… come in.” you smile awkwardly as you step to the side to let Riki inside.

he steps inside and immediately heads to Aria’s bedroom.

you follow close behind him, watching the way he moves down the hallways of your apartment. like he’s done it a thousand times before. he has. like he still lives here. he doesn’t.

you stand in the doorway and watch as he leans over her bed and gently places her down under the duvet before slipping off her shoes.

you watch how he’s so careful with her, like one wrong move will break her. like she’s the most precious thing in the world. but to him, she is. and to you, she’s your everything.

he pulls her blanket up to her chin and strokes her cheek twice before quietly stepping back, careful not to wake her.

the apartment falls silent as you softly pull Aria’s bedroom door shut. when you turn around, Riki is standing there, hands tucked into his pockets. waiting.

neither of you speak at first. you both just stand there, looking at each other as if you both know this feels wrong. as if you both know this isn’t how it was supposed to be. as though you both know, deep down, it doesn’t have to stay this way.

“two days with her doesn’t feel enough anymore.” Riki speaks, finally turning your attention to something other than the weight on your chest.

“if you want more time with Aria, we can talk about it.”

he shakes his head before you can finish. “it’s not just that…”

your brows knit together. “then what is it?”

“i know i don’t deserve to ask this after everything that happened,” he breathes, his voice barely above a whisper. “but if there was even the smallest chance that we could try again, i’d take it.”

you sigh and cross your arms over your chest. “Riki, you know we can’t-“

“but we can, y/n!” he steps closer, his eyes search yours frantically. desperate for a sign you haven’t given up. not yet.

“you know we can. if you’d just let me-“

“Riki-“

“no, listen, y/n.” he says firmly and you close your mouth instantly.

he runs a hand over his face before taking the remaining step to fully close the distance between you. his hands land on yours and he threads his fingers through yours. “every sunday, i bring her here, tuck her into bed, and then leave.”

a humourless laugh escapes his throat. “it never gets any easier.”

you blink up at him, speechless.

“you know we’re both standing here acting like this is normal. it isn’t! not one bit.” his hands squeeze yours like he’s afraid if he lets go, you’ll turn and walk away. “we could be better and i know you know that. please give me another chance. for Aria.”

that last part shattered you.

for Aria.

those two words echoed in your mind, pounding on every wall you’d spent months building around your heart.

the thing is, you do know this could be different. you just refuse to be hurt again. you refuse to feel stupid like last time. you can’t ever let yourself become that vulnerable. not again.

“please, baby, give me another chance. i want us to be the family Aria deserves. i don’t want her growing up wondering why we stopped trying.” he whispers.

tears sting your eyes as you let out a shaky breath. “do you think i haven’t imagined it? every single day?” you whisper.

“then why are we still standing here like idiots pretending we don’t still love each other?” his voice shakes and you almost break down right there.

“because you don’t know what you’re asking, Riki.”

“i do.” his brows pull together.

you shake your head. “no, you don’t. if we try again and it falls apart… Aria doesn’t just lose the idea of us, she loses us all over again.”

Riki’s shoulders fall and his expression softens. “i know,” he says quietly. “i know that’s what you’re afraid of.”

his thumbs are tracing small circles on the backs of your hands now. “but i’m not asking you to pretend nothing happened, y/n, i’m asking you to let me earn it.”

the silence settles once again as you stare at the floor, refusing to look at him. because you know if you do, you’ll crumble.

every part of you wanted to believe him. to pull him into a hug and believe this time it’ll be different.

and… that’s exactly what happens.

you look up at him, eyes searching his face for any sign that means he’s lying. any hint that means whatever he’s saying will end up as another broken promise.

you don’t find one.

instead, you see the same boy you fell in love with. the same boy that held your hand during labour. the same boy that kissed your forehead and cooked dinner when you were stressed about work.

only now, he’s standing in front of you practically begging you to take him back. asking you to let him own up to his own mistakes.

you let out a shaky breath.

“okay…”

Riki’s eyes light up. “okay?”

you nod as tears stream down your cheeks before you can stop them. “one more chance.”

for a long moment, he just stares as you. almost like he’s convinced he heard you wrong.

“really?”

a small smile finds it’s way onto your lips.

“we’re not doing this just because of Aria,” you nod. “we’re doing it because i still love you. even after everything. i never stopped, Riki.”

his eyes glisten and he releases the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

“i love you too.”

taglist: @binsown @testingspider @yoruse @tsumiyaa

You’ve also started to believe that Sunghoon and Jay have developed a personal vendetta against you. To make it sound more complicated, you do not care whether Jake and Riki go to parties, usually waving them off with a simple, “It’s none of my business, do what you want.” Except Jake has stopped going altogether, despite your repeated encouragement for him to exercise his individuality, because apparently he would rather spend his Friday nights watching animal documentaries with you.

No hate from the boys of course, they just think you’ve stolen their man from them.

With that, Jake had also met your father formally a month ago over dinner, even though formally was a loose term considering your father already knew him as the Sim boy from charity galas and those adult conversations where surnames mattered in the financial sense. 

Still, you had done it properly by telling your father ahead of time, warning Riki not to say anything stupid that involved 100 bucks, and also warning Jake not to say anything charming enough that your father would invite him golfing (he did, they have one scheduled next weekend).

The dinner itself had gone well at first. Your father was polite, Jake was polite, Riki, by some divine intervention, managed to go full minutes without mentioning illegal outsourcing or the fact that Jake had once technically been hired to romance you against your knowledge.

For most of the meal, your father asked Jake about school, soccer, his parents, his plans for college, and Jake answered because he’s always been charismatic and charming the way networking was always going to be an easy thing he can do (your dad was already smiling differently at him like he was that golden jackpot son-in-law). He was respectful, but not stiff; confident, but not cocky. He somehow managed to make your father look interested in a conversation that did not involve stocks, real estate, or golf.

The most unsettling part that might have made you twitch a little — mostly because some still really mad part can’t help but act out — your father turned to you and asked about one of your classes, and when you answered, he actually listened. Not the distracted kind of listening he usually did, where his eyes were on his phone and half his attention remained somewhere else. He actually looked at you and asked a follow-up question like he was interested, and not because it was another thing to check off his to-do list. 

You told him about a professor you didn’t like, and he laughed. For a while, it felt normal, and close enough that your chest loosened far more than you would have let it. 

You started thinking that maybe it was not too late. That maybe your relationship with your father was not something permanently broken, maybe things could recover slowly through dinners and questions and laughter that did not need an audience to exist — which was stupid.

Then your father smiled across the table and said, “See? This is good for you. I should’ve gotten you a boyfriend years ago. Maybe you would’ve smiled more and mothered Riki less.”

Then you go back to hating him.

You return to that one crime documentary about the daughter who killed her father and start understanding the cinematography on a deeper level. Especially when he keeps smiling like he did not just undo fifteen minutes of character development and storyline progress.

However, because your life had recently developed the irritating habit of becoming emotionally productive, you did eventually understand what happened. It took a very long conversation with Jake in your room that night, where you sat on your bed with your arms crossed. He was careful not to sound like he was defending your father too much, because he was fond of living.

“I’m not saying you have to forgive him,” Jake said.

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying maybe he’s trying.”

He did not tell you your father deserved anything or to let it go. He didn’t flatten the years of hurt into one inspirational sentence and expected you to make it easier for a father that made your life harder. He only said that your dad had been home more recently, that he had been asking about your classes, that he had started remembering Riki’s schedule, that maybe it was too late, or maybe it wasn’t, but either way, he was trying.

“But,” he added, “you might want to know what happens if you try too.”

So, against your better judgment and several documentaries, you decided to try his advice. Not because your father had earned a dramatic reunion scene in the rain or because one decent dinner could undo years of making you the emergency contact for everyone’s inconvenience, but because maybe you owed it to yourself too.

So you stopped actively ignoring him when he was in the house, which was a humanitarian effort, really.

You smiled when he entered the kitchen. Sometimes you even stayed there instead of pretending you suddenly had urgent business upstairs, and also answered when he asked about school. You laughed once when he made a decent joke, then immediately regretted encouraging him because he spent the rest of dinner trying to be funny.

You also agreed to play golf with him one of these days, which Riki called “the most disturbing thing he’s ever heard in his life,” and Jake called it “progress”.

The house became slightly less cold in the places where your father stood. Which was how your father ended up hosting another barbecue in the middle of spring.

Someone’s wife had brought pasta salad in a glass container large enough to feed a small province, but most of the guests were still your father’s friends, which meant executives with white hair and expensive watches that actually were there for casual gatherings in t-shirts and shorts.

You had been standing with them for maybe seven minutes because, weirdly enough, you were fond of them. They were like uncles who had seen you grow up, called Riki “little man” even after he outgrew half of them, and still somehow believed you were fourteen.

Mr. Han tilts his head at you like he suddenly remembers something very important. “Do you remember Beomgyu? He’s in college now,” he says, “Business administration. Very sharp boy.”

Another one of your father’s friends nodded beside him. “Good head on his shoulders.”

Mr. Han looks back at you with a smile. “You could learn a few things from him, you know. Business, discipline, networking. He also plays pickleball now,” he adds, like that is meant to sweeten the offer. “Very popular these days.”

“Right,” you say, because what else were you supposed to say to that? Congratulations to Beomgyu and his racket?

Your father, standing a few feet away with a beer in hand, laughs and shakes his head. “Han.” he points at him lightly. “I know what you’re doing.”

“I’m just saying, they’re around the same age.”

You laugh again, awkward and thin, because this is still technically a barbecue and not a marriage market with grilled meat. “I’m sure Beomgyu is great.”

You take a sip from your cup and consider walking away blatantly right now, until a very familiar arm settles over your shoulders.

“Pickleball?” Jake says easily, stepping into your side like he had been there the whole time. “He’s already where the board members are.”

Your head turns slowly, but Jake does not look at you. He only kept smiling at them, pleasant and entirely shameless. 

That earns him a smile from Mr. Han, then a point with the same hand holding his beer. “Exactly. Smart guy.”

Your father laughs like Jake has just said something personally rewarding to him, then steps closer and claps a hand over his shoulder. “Jake Sim,” he says, and somehow says it with the same pride as he would introduce his favorite child (Jake is his favorite child now). “You know his father.”

Recognition moves through them almost immediately. “Ah,” Mr. Han says, nodding. “Sim’s youngest son.”

“The one in engineering?” another asks.

Jake smiles politely. “Trying to be.”

Your father looks far too pleased. “He’s dating my daughter.”

Then Mr. Han’s expression shifts into something amused and knowing, because old men truly hear two surnames in one sentence and start seeing stock prices. “I see,” he says, looking between you and Jake. “So that’s where your head is at. Very strategic.”

“Tying the families early, aye.” one of the other men says.

Jake’s arm stays around your shoulders, but you feel him laugh under his breath. 

You stare at him, deeply irritated by the fact that he had arrived twenty minutes late and immediately became the most likable person anyway. They started asking him about engineering, golf, and whether he had considered business on the side, and Jake answered smoothly while keeping his arm around your shoulders. Every few seconds, his thumb brushed lightly against your upper arm, calm and absent, as if he had not just inserted himself into the middle of a soft-launch arranged marriage attempt.

You let him talk for another minute, then you step on his shoe when it’s enough.

Jake’s smile does not move, but his arm tightens around you and you can see the slight twitch on his face. “Ow.”

You smile at the men. “Excuse us for a second.”

Before anyone can answer, you take Jake by the wrist and drag him away from the drinks table, past Riki and his girlfriend, who were sitting on the outdoor couch with matching plates of barbecue.

Riki looked up. “Trouble in paradise?”

You ignore him and continue pulling Jake toward the side of the patio, near the narrow space between the house and the garden wall where the noise from the backyard softens. The second you’re out of view, you pinch his side.

Jake flinches, laughing. “Okay, okay.”

“You’re twenty minutes late. You said you were on the way!”

“I was.”

“From where? Another country?”

Jake lifts the paper bag he had been carrying and pulls out a small white box. He watches your face carefully, already trying not to look too pleased with himself when familiarity settles slowly. “Compensation.”

You narrowed your eyes. “What is that?”

“Open it.”

Your suspicion weakens immediately, which is unfortunate and frankly humiliating. You take the box from him and open it to find the dessert you like from the bakery across town, the one that was annoying to get because parking was terrible and the line was always long for being a local icon.

You look up at him. “You drove across town?”

He shrugs, trying to be nonchalant but his perfectly straight teeth are flashing you already. “They had one left.”

You try to keep glaring at him, but the dessert is sitting pretty in your hands and he’s looking at you like he knows exactly how close he is to forgiveness. You hate that a smile is threatening to curve on your lips, so you shove the box against his chest instead. “You’re still late.”

He steps closer, smiling softly now. “But compensated?”

You look up to argue, but he’s already leaning in. His hand comes to your waist first, gentle and sure, and then he kisses your forehead.

He pulls back with the smallest smile. “Hi.”

You stare at him, though with a glare. And because you’re a woman of discipline and emotional restraint, you pinch his side again, which makes him laugh and catch your hand before you can do it a third time. 

Jake looks down at you, still smiling. He lifts the hand he already caught, turns it over, and presses a kiss to your knuckles.

By the time the two of you return to the backyard, the whole place has settled into something warmer and looser. The adults are spread across the patio with beer bottles and paper plates, sunglasses pushed into white hair, laughing too loudly. 

You stay close to Jake without thinking too much about it. Sometimes your shoulder leans briefly into his when one of your father’s friends makes a joke. Or sometimes Jake’s arm is around the back of your chair while you eat the dessert he brought you, his body angled toward yours without even noticing it.

When you reach the grill, your father immediately starts explaining some trick about heat zones, and Jake listens because he is apparently very committed to being everyone’s favorite. He demonstrates what he learned by shifting a few pieces of meat to the side and saying something about indirect heat and the physics behind it.

For about six minutes, it works — until one side comes out almost burnt. He gives you a wounded look, which you ignore.

Eventually, the two of you end up in the lounge area by the pool with Riki, his girlfriend, and a few other people around your age. The outdoor couches are low and wide, arranged under the shade with plates balanced on knees, bowls of fruit on the table, ribs stacked on paper trays, and drinks sweating in the heat. 

Everyone talks to one of your family friends about college plans, thumb moving slowly as an absent habit now. You lean back against the armrest with a plate of fruit in your hands, listening while Riki complains about how everyone keeps asking what course he wants to take as if your father hasn’t already pretty much decided his career trajectory and started informing stakeholders.

The backyard is warm, the pool is bright under the spring sun, Riki is happy beside his girlfriend, and Jake is sitting there with your legs over his lap. Every now and then, when he thinks no one is looking, he leans in close enough to kiss your temple or the side of your head, quick and quiet, like he still enjoys getting away with it.

You keep telling him people can see. He keeps doing it anyway.

In the middle of one of the most boring stories ever told, a familiar voice comes from behind you.

“Don’t tell me Nishimura finally brought out the famous ribeye.”

You go still.

Your whole body reacts before your brain fully catches up, your shoulders dropping, your face changing so quickly that Jake notices it before he even turns his head. One second you are beside him, half-listening to someone talk about golf club renovations, and the next, you are staring past everyone like a celebrity just walked back into the yard.

A guy stands a few feet away from the lounge area, sunglasses pushed into his hair, one hand in his pocket, smiling beside his father, whom he has very clearly outgrown in height.

You literally gasp. Riki looks up too, and his expression shifts with recognition.

The guy’s smile widens when he sees you. “There she is.”

You do not even think (that is the first strange thing).

You just stand so fast the plate of fruit almost tips from your hand, set it down somewhere without looking, and cross the space in three steps. He opens his arms at the same time, like he already knows you are coming, and you walk straight into them.

It is not a polite hug, first and foremost.

Not one of those stiff family-friend greetings where everyone performs affection for the parents watching. It is both arms, no hesitation, your face pressed briefly into his shoulder, his hand landing at the back of your head for half a second before sliding to your upper back.

Woahh.

The kind of hug that says this has happened a lot before. The kind of hug that does not ask permission because, at some point in your life, permission had already been given.

Jake stays seated. His hand, still resting near the arm of your chair, slowly curls against nothing.

Because you do not hug people like that.

You barely hug your own father without looking like you are surviving an obligation. You act like affection is something to tolerate, not step into. But here you are, laughing into some guy’s shoulder like your body remembers him before you remember to be difficult.

The guy leans back first, still holding your arms lightly as he looks at you. “You got prettier.”

You hit his chest immediately. “Shut up.”

And you smile, which isn’t polite nor controlled, not the little smug one you give Jake when you know you have won something.

Jake’s hand, now empty on his lap, curls once against his knee.

Riki stops talking mid-sentence when he realizes who it was, his girlfriend also looks. The guy laughs as he holds you. “Wait,” he says. “Did you get taller?”

Your smile drops. “Shut up. You know I’ve been this height since I was fifteen.”

He laughs, then reaches up and ruffles your hair.

Jake’s eye twitches because as far as he knows, that was his thing that he can only do to you. Turns out he doesn’t know a lot at all!

You laugh, and Jake’s mouth stays in a polite line while he psychoanalyzes the guy that got to tease your height, hug you, touch you, and mess your hair — which feels like a shit ton of information to process right now. The guy finally lets you go, but he keeps one hand briefly at your shoulder, squeezing once with old familiarity. 

“I missed you, scary girl.”

Now he gets to say I miss you?

You giggle again, softer this time, before you ask him about college, about where he’s staying now, about whether business school has successfully humbled him. He tells you he’s fighting back with bad expectations that hit his pressure points. You ask about his mother, his younger sister, the dog they used to bring over when you were kids, and he answers each one easily, like no time has passed at all and the two years between you was nothing.

Jake stays seated for another second, not because he is upset.

Obviously not.

He is a mature and reasonable person, someone who understands that family friends exist and that not every man who hugs his girlfriend needs to be interrogated the way you used to with people.

Still, the way you keep smiling at him feels like he needs to be the way you used to operate. He’d really appreciate it by asking his background prior to the name.

Before Jake can stand, Riki clears his throat beside you. “Wow,” he says flatly. “No one missed me?”

The guy looks over at him, and his face brightens again. “No way.”

They do the manly dap up, pulling him into one of those half-hug greetings boys do. “Little Rik,” he says, laughing. “You’re as tall as me now?”

Riki immediately stands straighter. “Taller, actually.”

“You were literally up to my shoulder last time I saw you.”

You laugh, and Riki points at the guy like this is a legal offense. “See, this is why I didn’t miss you.”

“You definitely missed me.”

“I missed your mom’s cooking.”

The whole thing is familiar in a way that makes the air around you shift, because it’s lived in and the exact setting that didn’t make you feel out of place before. It’s the kind of familiar that does not need explanation, because Riki is smiling, you are laughing too easily, and the guy fits in like someone who used to belong there.

Riki glances at you when the other one’s distracted, eyes moving from you to Jake, then back to you with the expression of someone saying, Are you stupid?

“Oh,” you say, turning quickly.

Jake smiles when your eyes find him, but there is something slightly off about it. Unfortunately, you don’t notice things when you’re too excited.

“Jake,” you say, reaching a hand toward him. “Come here.”

He does. Very normally, or at least that is what he tells himself.

You glance between them, still smiling in a way that is not exactly helping Jake’s current emotional stability. “Jake, this is Hyunjin,” you say. “My childhood friend.”

Hyunjin turns to him fully.

“And Hyunjin,” you continue, shifting closer until your hand brushes Jake’s arm, casual but clear. “This is Jake.”

You pause for half a second.

“My boyfriend.”

For a second, Hyunjin only stares, then his jaw drops. “No way.” he points at Jake, then at you, looking genuinely stunned in a way that is far too dramatic. “Someone is dating you?”

You scoff, offended. “What the fuck?”

“No, I mean, good for him.” Hyunjin looks Jake over, then nods like he is congratulating someone for surviving a difficult licensing exam. “Brave guy.”

Hyunjin then steps forward, offering his hand, which Jake takes and it immediately turns it into another dap. Jake follows smoothly because he is Jake Sim, and because social skills do not abandon him just because his girlfriend has apparently been hugging men from her childhood with the comfort of a weighted blanket.

“Nice to meet you, man,” Hyunjin says.

“You too,” Jake answers.

Usually, Jake’s charm comes easily.

It is one of the more irritating things about him, actually. He can walk into a room where nobody knows him and somehow make himself feel familiar within ten minutes. Warm smile, easy laugh, eye contact, just enough confidence to make people comfortable without making them want to humble him.

Today, however, that version of Jake has apparently taken the afternoon off.

He stands beside you, smiling when he is supposed to, nodding when Hyunjin says something, but none of it lands right. The timing is there, as well as the expression, so technically, the boyfriend is functioning.

Emotionally, he is not.

You are too distracted to notice, too caught in the weird rush of Hyunjin being there at all, of seeing someone who knew the house before it became something you had to manage. Before Riki became less like your brother and more like your full-time unpaid internship, and before your father became someone you even ever had to forgive.

Hyunjin looks around the backyard like he still knows the map of it.

That is what Jake notices first.

Not just the hug, though God knows he noticed the hug. He noticed the way you walked straight into it without thinking, the way your face pressed briefly into Hyunjin’s shoulder, the way his hand landed at the back of your head like he had touched you there before and survived it.

Jake noticed all of that.

But now Hyunjin is looking around your backyard and naming things. Small and stupid things that should not matter, except they come out of Hyunjin’s mouth like he has had them stored somewhere safe for years.

And you smile, not polite nor amused in the controlled way you get when someone makes an unfunny joke. It is easier and younger than that. A smile Jake has seen before, but rarely, and usually only after working very hard to earn it.

Hyunjin gets it by remembering a broken swing.

Great. Fantastic. Jake was hoping for exactly that.

He smiles too, because everyone else is smiling, and he is not insane. He is perfectly normal.

Hyunjin knows things Jake does not.

That is normal too — obviously. People have histories, childhood friends exist, memories do not expire just because someone gets a boyfriend.

Jake knows this. He also hates knowing this.

Hyunjin looks back at you with sudden recognition, like another memory has just come loose. “Do you still know how to make your mom’s mango strawberry smoothie?”

Your smile shifts before you can stop it.

It goes softer, sadder at the edges, like the memory has touched something old enough to still hurt. The word mom has always existed in your house like a glass sitting too close to the edge of a table. Everyone knows it is there, and they move carefully around it. Nobody wants to be the person who knocks it over.

But Hyunjin says it so easily.

You let out a small laugh, looking down at the cup in your hand. “I haven’t made that in years.”

Hyunjin’s face warms with the memory. “Your mom used to make a whole pitcher every time we came over.”

Jake smiles because everyone else smiles.

Normal boyfriend behavior. Healthy. Stable. Very mature.

Except Hyunjin knows what your mother made when the house still sounded like children running around and someone calling from the kitchen. Hyunjin knows your mother as a person who made pitchers of smoothies, who had routines people can remember without making the room go quiet.

Jake only knows her through half-sentences you never finish.

My mom used to… I don’t know, it’s not important.

And then you stop every time.

Jake has never pushed because he knows better. He knows that part of you is locked, and he has been standing outside it with both hands in his pockets, pretending patience does not ache.

Then Hyunjin walks in and the door opens.

Not for Jake. For him.

Jake looks down at his shoes and decides, very calmly, that he possibly hates fruit as a category.

“You should make it again sometime,” Hyunjin says, still smiling. “I’ve been craving it for years.”

You look at him, and for a second, you seem younger and smaller, somehow — but never weak. Just closer to a version of yourself Jake has only ever met in pieces.

You shrug, trying to make it nothing. “Maybe.”

Hyunjin leans back. “I’d pay good money.”

“You cannot afford me.”

He laughs as you laugh. Jake also makes a sound that might count as laughter.

Before Hyunjin can answer, your father calls him from across the yard. He excuses himself with a small laugh, stepping away from the lounge area and toward the adults. His father is already near yours by the grill, both of them smiling like they are about to discuss something boring and expensive.

You turn toward Jake then, finally. Your hand comes to his arm, fingers rubbing lightly over his sleeve. “I’ll just go over there for a bit,” you say. “Catch up with the old men.”

You are smiling at him, a little apologetically, like you know you got swept up in seeing Hyunjin again and are trying to make sure Jake does not feel forgotten.

Which should help (it does not). Jake is currently very aware of the fact that your hand is on his arm, but your attention is already halfway across the yard.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding once. “Go.”

Your smile softens. “I’ll be quick.”

Hyunjin says your name from across the yard, and your head turns immediately. You squeeze his arm once, then walk away.

He watches you go because, unfortunately, he has eyes and no survival instinct.

You slide easily into the small circle with your father, Hyunjin, and Hyunjin’s dad. Your father laughs almost instantly at something Hyunjin says, clapping him once on the shoulder with that proud, familiar affection that makes Jake’s jaw tighten before he can stop it. Hyunjin’s father gestures between you and Hyunjin with his beer bottle, saying something that makes you roll your eyes and smile anyway.

Jake stands there, suddenly feeling very stupid.

Great. Really great.

He returns to the lounge area with Riki beside him, sits down, and reaches for the beer on the table. He takes a long drink, which Riki watches over the rim of his cup. “Damn. Slow down, man.”

Jake lowers the bottle, eyes still across the yard. “I’m fine.”

Across the yard, Hyunjin says something to your father. Your father laughs again. You stand between them with your arms crossed, smiling in that slightly exasperated way Jake loves.

He takes another drink, deeply bothered by a conversation that does not involve him. His jaw tightens, fidgeting with the bottle in his fingers. “They seem really close.”

Riki grimaces immediately before he picks up a piece of fruit from the bowl, mostly so he has something to do with his hands while choosing exactly what words to say. “Yeah, our families were really close.” he gestures vaguely with the fruit, like that should explain anything. “Our parents used to joke about them getting married after college.”

Jake goes very still.

“Mostly joke,” Riki adds, which is somehow worse.

The backyard noise continues around them, and Jake watches it happen with the emotional stability of a man reading his own autopsy report. Because he feels like he’s dying as they speak right now, as Hyunjin looks at you with a smile because he was never scared of you. 

“What does that mean?” he asks.

Riki makes a face. “I mean, our dads were close. Same circles, same charity things, same boring conversations about properties and expansion and whatever. They thought it would be good if the families stayed connected.”

“Through marriage.”

“It was rich business people insane, yeah,” Riki says, like this is an important legal distinction. “They kind of kept pushing her to date him.”

The sentence fucks Jake up with a fucking Ak up his ass at this point, and the trigger pulls when he hears Hyunjin laughing with your father over the goddamn music.

Family plans, apparently, that involve marriage jokes the adults obviously actually meant.

“She thought it was stupid. Hyunjin too, I think. They were close, but not like that.”

Jake says nothing.

Riki leans forward a little, lowering his voice. “Bro, I’m telling you this as someone who has made many mistakes involving your relationship and a couple hundred dollars. Don’t be dumb.”

Jake exhales through his nose, almost a laugh but not quite. “I’m not being dumb.”

Riki looks at him for a second longer, then slowly glances at the beer bottle in his hand. “Okay.”

Jake leans back into the cushions, which is not the body language of a man doing well. It is the body language of a man who has decided to sink into outdoor furniture and let spring swallow him whole. He keeps his eyes across the yard, watching you talk with your father, Hyunjin, and his dad like this is all very normal and not a psychological test.

Beside him, Riki and his girlfriend have gone back to their own conversation, which should be less irritating because it has nothing to do with him, except they have started doing that thing where they speak quietly and smile too much at each other. Jake watches it happen for three seconds and then takes another drink.

He has a decent tolerance, usually. But apparently his tolerance does not account for emotional sabotage through childhood friends and smoothie history, because after almost half an hour, his head starts to feel pleasantly unclear in a way that is not helpful at all. 

Across the yard, Hyunjin says something that makes you laugh again. That makes Jake look down at the bottle in his hand and decide the beer is responsible for the shitty jerk in his chest.

“Dude,” Riki says.

His girlfriend looks at the bottle, then at Jake, with gentle concern. “Maybe slow down?”

Jake sits up a little. “I’m slowed. And comfortable.”

“And very obvious too.”

Before Jake can respond, your shadow falls over him. You are standing in front of the couch with one hand on your hip, eyes moving from his face to the bottle in his hand, then back again. “What are you doing?” you ask.

“Sitting.”

You narrow your eyes at Jake, and he smiles up at you like he is very normal and not currently being held together by jealousy, ribs, and fermented grain. Then your hand reaches down for his. “Come on.”

He looks at your hand, then at you. “Where?”

“We’re playing billiards.”

Riki sits up while Jake processes that that was an actual sentence said to him. “Dad’s table?”

“Hyunjin brought it up.”

Riki’s girlfriend brightens a little. “That sounds fun.”

You tug Jake’s hand. “Up.”

He lets you pull him to his feet, mostly because refusing would be suspicious and also because your hand is warm around his. The moment he stands, the yard tilts for half a second, though not badly — just enough that he becomes very aware of the fact that maybe he should have listened when Riki’s girlfriend told him to slow down.

You notice immediately, your hand tightening around his. “Are you okay?”

Jake nods. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

He nods again, then leans down before you can say anything else. His forehead brushes yours, warm and a little unsteady, though his smile is still soft enough to make your concern shift into something else.

“Yeah,” he says. “I just missed you.”

You blink before you giggle, which is probably unfair to him. Your hand lifts to his cheek, palm settling against his very warm skin. His eyes are focused on you with that specific heaviness that makes your suspicion return immediately. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”

He shakes his head. “No.” His smile grows slightly, lazy at the edges. “I just feel warm around you.”

Riki makes a noise from the couch. “That was disgusting.”

His girlfriend elbows him lightly. “It was cute.”

You ignore them and press a kiss to Jake’s other cheek, mostly because he is being stupid and warm and looking at you like you are the only thing in the backyard that has managed to make sense all afternoon.

He stares at you with a strange, softened expression, because you’re softer today. Somewhere in the reasonable part of his mind, Jake understands that you are allowed to be sweet to him without it becoming a federal mystery. You are his girlfriend.

Still, it feels different right now. It has no resistance in it, no insult tucked into the corner, no eye roll, no little shove afterward. Just your hand on his cheek and your mouth against the other, easy and warm — which should make Jake happy. Unfortunately, it also makes him suspicious, because apparently jealousy has turned him into someone who sees affection and thinks it’s too easily given.

Did Hyunjin do this?

That is an insane thought.

Did seeing Hyunjin make you softer? Did laughing with someone from before make the house feel easier? Did remembering your mother through mango strawberry smoothies loosen something in you that Jake has been trying, carefully and quietly, to reach for months?

Was Hyunjin the reason you were smiling like this? Was Hyunjin the emotional WD-40?

Terrible thought. Horrible and deeply undignified.

Jake smiles, but it comes out bitter and sharp at the edges. “Why are you so happy?” he asks.

For a second, the backyard noise fades strangely around you. “What?”

“I mean,” he says, then stops. “You just. You look really happy.”

Your brows pull together. “And that’s bad?”

“No,” Jake says quickly. “No, it’s not bad.”

He should say more after that, like something normal, preferably. But nothing comes to the brain that’s usually reliable enough for charm and math and conversations, which simply sits there with its hands folded.

Your expression stays confused for a moment longer before you sigh. You pat his chest once, light and dismissive, but your mouth still curves a little like you do not fully mind him being weird. “Come on, you’re on my team.”

The pool table sits in the sunroom. Riki picks the least chipped cue stick, and immediately starts chalking it like he is about to get serious. Jake, for the first time in thirty minutes, feels something close to purpose. 

Because billiards, he can do.

Billiards is math, angles, force, control, clean shots — his area. This is where he can stop being a jealous idiot with a beer bottle and start being impressive again. A man with skill and composure, a man whose girlfriend will watch him sink a perfect shot and remember that he is, in fact, her boyfriend.

You pick up a cue stick and walk around the table, studying the rack like you know exactly what you are doing. Jake watches, already softening despite himself, because you look focused in that way that always makes him want to kiss you and also stay out of your path. A complicated emotional position, but he has adapted.

“You’re breaking?” Hyunjin asks, amused.

You glance at him. “Do you have a problem?”

“No,” he says. “I just remember how bad you were.”

You hit Hyunjin lightly with the back of your stick, just against his arm, and he laughs like he expected it. Worse, he looks at you while laughing, like getting hit by you is part of the experience he’s so familiar with.

Terrible start for Jake, actually. He feels like he’s breaking.

You scoff and turn back to the table, leaning down to line up your shot. Jake’s attention immediately gets divided between your form, Hyunjin’s face, and the strong moral belief that Hyunjin should stop knowing things.

You break the rack, the cue ball hits the triangle, the balls scatter weakly, and all the balls stop nowhere near a pocket. For half a second, everyone is quiet, until Hyunjin laughs so obnoxiously loud.

You turn and point the cue at him. “I will hit you harder.”

Great. Jake’s convinced you’re actually hitting on each other.

Jake steps forward, calm and polite and completely deranged in a quiet way he never ever is. “Solids or stripes?”

You look at the table. “We haven’t decided teams.”

“I thought you said I was on your team.”

“I did. But we’re five—”

“Good.” Jake circles the table once, assessing the layout with too much seriousness for a backyard game. “Then we’re solids.”

And that makes the room go quiet, horribly quiet enough that you make eye contact with Riki. Neither of you says anything, but the conversation is clear.

You turn back to Jake, trying not to look amused before the game even really began. He leans over the table, lines up his shot, and hits the cue ball cleanly. One of the solids drops into the corner pocket.

Hyunjin lets out a low whistle. “Okay.”

Jake lines up the next shot and sinks another one.

Riki looks at you. “Your boyfriend’s kind of intense right now.”

You look at Jake, who is already walking around the table with his cue in hand, studying angles like there is money on the line. “I’ve noticed.”

Jake misses the third shot by a little, the ball knocking against the edge of the pocket before rolling away. He straightens, jaw working once like the table has betrayed him.

Hyunjin steps forward. “My turn?”

Jake moves aside with a polite little gesture. “Go ahead.”

Hyunjin takes his shot and gets one stripe in, clean enough that he looks pleased with himself to even look at you. “See? Still got it.”

Riki reacts. “You’re pretty good.”

Hyunjin shrugs. “Used to play here.”

Jake’s hand tightens around his cue because of course Hyunjin used to play here, of course the pool table has lore, of course every object in this house has apparently been emotionally notarized before Jake ever arrived in your life.

Hyunjin laughs, and Jake decides, with full awareness of his own pettiness, that he now has to beat him badly.

Hyunjin then leans for his next shot, although this one he misses. 

Jake says, very calmly, “Tough angle.”

Hyunjin looks at him, amused. “Was it?”

You step up next, deciding to ignore all the tension that’s not supposed to be there, and lean over the table to line up your shot. Jake watches from beside you, one hand around his cue as you hit the cue ball, and it rolls past the pocket by barely an inch.

Jake immediately steps closer. “You rushed it,” he says.

You stare at him for a second, already irritated. “Did I ask?”

Hyunjin, leaning against his cue on the other side of the table, smiles a little and says, “Yeah, she hates being coached.”

Jake looks at him only for a second, but you catch it. The quick glance, the small clench in his jaw, the way he immediately looks back down at the table like he is trying to make his face behave.

“I know,” Jake says.

Riki’s girlfriend clears her throat, probably sensing that the room needs another person to do literally anything else. She reaches for Riki’s cue and steps forward. “My turn!”

She leans over the table, takes barely three seconds to aim, and hits the cue ball cleanly. One of the solids rolls straight into the side pocket.

Riki immediately stands straighter. “Yup. That’s my girl.”

You laugh, and his girlfriend looks pleased in that quiet way, trying not to smile too much while Riki points at the table like he contributed to the shot through moral support.

Jake goes next when she misses the next. He gets one in, of course, because physics is on his side the way emotional instability isn’t. The next shot does not go as well though, it hits the edge of the pocket then rolls away.

You make a small sound to tease. “Tragic.”

That gets the smallest real smile out of him, which feels like progress until Riki takes his turn and misses so badly the cue ball barely touches anything. Everyone laughs at once, and he turns to his girlfriend immediately like he needs major reassurance that she still thinks he’s attractive.

“That was the table,” he says.

She pats his arm. “Sure.”

Your turn comes again after that, so you move around the table, trying to ignore the fact that Hyunjin is watching with that amused little look like he already knows whether you are going to miss.

You lean down and study the shot, and Hyunjin shifts beside the table. “If you angle it a little more to the left, you might get it.”

Jake moves before you can answer and you feel him behind you before he speaks. “Not left,” he says, voice calm. “You’ll hit the stripe first.”

He’s close enough now that you can smell the beer on him, faint beneath his cologne, so when you look at him over your shoulder you see him watching you carefully, waiting for you to decide whether he gets to stay there.

For a second, neither of you says anything, and somehow the whole sentence is there anyway.

You look at him a moment longer, still mildly irritated, then you turn back to your shot without telling him to move away. Because that is answer enough.

Jake steps in quietly behind you, careful now. He does not crowd you, but he is close enough that his chest nearly brushes your back when he leans over to see the angle. “A little straighter,” he says, low enough that it feels meant only for you. “Not hard. Just follow through.”

You let him adjust the angle, his fingers brushing yours for half a second. It is stupid, how warm your face feels from something that is technically just billiards advice. Stupid, and very inconvenient, and unfortunately not helped by the way Jake’s voice drops when he says, “There. You’re good.”

You stare at the ball. “You smell like beer.”

He smiles behind you, his hand still on yours. “Focus, baby.”

No one else sees it, mostly because everyone else is looking at the table. Jake's other hand drops briefly to your butt, giving it a quick smack before he steps back like he did absolutely nothing.

You freeze for half a second, warmth curling in your abdomen. But you pay him no mind: you shoot. The ball rolls cleanly across the felt and drops into the pocket.

You straighten immediately, refusing to look too pleased. "I would've done that anyway."

When you glance at Jake, it is only for one second but he sees the warmth on your face, the way you look away too quickly, and the tiny effort it takes for you to pretend you are completely unaffected. His smile settles softer, but there is still something smug at the edge of it.

“Of course,” he says.

Jake only smiles and steps closer when you line up for the next shot. This time, you let him hover without making a comment, mostly because the last one went in and you are unfortunately results-oriented. He leans in just enough to look at the angle, one hand resting on the table while the other points lightly near the cue ball.

“A little softer this time,” he says.

“I know.”

“Okay, sorry.”

Still, you take the shot the way he suggests. The cue ball hits yours cleanly, but the angle is off by a fraction, and the ball taps the edge of the pocket before rolling away.

He hums, very softly, but no coaching because he knows you know. 

Hyunjin takes his turn after that, still amused but smart enough not to say anything about whatever just happened. He leans over, lines up the shot, and sinks one of the stripes cleanly. He straightens, grinning. “Watch and learn.”

You scoff. “Luck.”

Jake steps in beside you suddenly, though not abruptly, his arm slides around your waist again, a hand settling low at your stomach. He does not even look down when he does it, he just keeps his eyes on the table, calm and unreadable.

You look at him though he keeps his gaze at the table, nodding when Hyunjin gets it. “Nice shot.”

Hyunjin glances at Jake’s arm around you, then at his face, and Hyunjin’s mouth curves like he is trying not to laugh. “Thanks.”

You lean your shoulder back against Jake’s chest for one second, just enough for him to feel it. When Hyunjin misses the next shot, Jake’s thumb moves once over the fabric of your shirt. 

You do not look at him when you say, “Your turn.” 

Jake’s mouth curves near your temple, like he doesn’t want it to be his turn yet. 

“Impress us.”

“Us?”

You glance at him now. “Me.”

He looks at you for a second longer, and the jealousy does not disappear, not entirely, but it goes quiet. Then he steps away from you, lines up his shot, and sinks the next solid with the kind of calm that makes Riki groan into his drink.

Jake lines up for the next shot with that calm, focused look on his face, which lasts all of three seconds before Riki says something from the side of the table purely to be irritating. It works, because Jake’s shot goes slightly wide and misses the pocket by a long way.

He straightens slowly and looks at him. Riki looks back with his drink halfway to his mouth, suddenly pretending innocence while Jake lifts the cue slightly in his direction to suggest that being hit with the equipment has been a possibility.

Riki’s girlfriend takes her turn, because honestly she has been quietly carrying the game while everyone else deals with whatever strange male pride thing has started happening around the pool table.

You are standing near the side, waiting for your next turn, when Hyunjin ends up on your left and Jake ends up on your right. It is not intentional, probably, but it feels intentional enough that you notice the way they both stand a little too straight beside you.

Hyunjin glances past you toward Jake. “You’re pretty good. You play a lot?”

Jake leans lightly against his cue. “Enough.”

Hyunjin nods. “Could tell.”

“Yeah?”

“You take it seriously.”

Jake’s smile stays polite. “Yeah,” Jake says. “Usually depends who I’m playing against.”

You look between them and see that they’re both smiling, but neither smile is friendly enough to be trusted or even be remotely comfortable to be sandwiched between.

Hyunjin shifts his cue from one hand to the other. “Well, this table has a way of humbling people, so,”

Jake glances at the table, then back at him. “Must be nice. Having all that history with the table.”

Hyunjin laughs under his breath, because that one lands exactly where it is supposed to. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

Jake looks at him with the kind of pleasant expression that would pass anywhere else. “But I’m a fast learner.”

Hyunjin raises his brows, more amused that he expected to be.

The silence after that is not long, but it has enough weight to be embarrassing. You roll your eyes. “You’re both acting like kids.”

Hyunjin looks at you, brows knitting like he has no idea what you mean. “What? It’s just small brotherly banter.”

Jake laughs, but it’s cleaner and flatter, polite enough to pass but not warm to belong to him. “Yeah,” Jake says, still smiling. “It is.”

You ignore them, mostly because they are right and you hate that. Then you point your cue toward the table. “Can I take my shot now, or do you two need to finish whatever this is?”

Hyunjin steps back immediately, hands raised. Jake steps back too, quieter. “All yours.”

You take your shot without either of them telling you what to do. The cue ball rolls cleanly across the felt, clips the solid at the right angle, and sends it straight into the corner pocket. You then line up the next one, hitting it softly, and it drops into the side pocket.

Hyunjin laughs. “No coaching needed, then.”

You glance at him, but only briefly, because your eyes move to Jake almost on instinct.

For the record, you do not even mean to do it. You just look at him first, like his reaction is the one that matters most. So when your eyes find his, something in his expression shifts — a bit smug and pleased.

He lifts his brows slightly. “Nice.”

You try not to smile. “Just nice?”

Jake’s mouth curves. “You want more?”

You roll your eyes before the smile can fully happen and shove lightly at his arm. Jake barely moves, but he looks very pleased anyway, which is the problem with him.

The game continues for multiple rounds like that for a while, with everyone getting less serious and somehow worse at the same time. Hyunjin keeps making comments under his breath whenever you line up a shot, Jake keeps giving advice only when you let him, and Riki keeps acting like the table is shitty and therefore needs to be replaced. His girlfriend, unfortunately for his pride, remains the best player by accident, sinking balls with very little effort while Riki stands beside her looking proud of achievements that are not his.

At some point, Hyunjin flicks Riki off after Riki calls one of his shots ugly. Riki flicks him off back, misses his next turn completely, and then has the nerve to blame the table again.

It gets easier after that. People laugh more, the adults call over from the patio every now and then, and Jake actually exchanges a few light messages with the childhood memory shape of a man. Once when Riki took a shot, the cue ball clips the edge of one ball, ricochets wrong, hits the side rail too hard, and somehow jumps slightly before bouncing off the table entirely.

By the time your turn comes around again, the game is barely organized with exhaustion. You lean over the table, aim for the 8-ball, and hit the cue ball carefully. It rolls cleanly across the felt, catches the ball just right, and sends it into the corner pocket with a neat little drop.

Hyunjin claps once, grinning. “Wow. Good job, scary girl.”

You laugh, still pleased from the shot, and Hyunjin lifts his fist toward you. It is automatic enough that you meet it without thinking, knuckles tapping lightly against his before you turn back to the table, still smiling like the whole thing is nothing.

Jake watches it happen, obviously, because it’s not like he can’t.

It is literally a fist bump, an action so harmless it should not mean anything at all. There is no reason for it to land wrong — but it does.

Because you and Hyunjin are apparently a team now. You and Jake won the round, you are on Jake’s team, you chose him, you looked at him first after your shot, you let him help you, and he knows that because he saw it with his own two eyes, which are currently being extremely unhelpful.

Still, Hyunjin says a childhood petname, and you laugh because he doesn’t annoy you. 

Jake should feel like he won, but for some reason, he feels like he just lost.

He sets his cue back against the wall a little too hard, loud enough that you guys look over immediately. Jake ignores it, already stepping away from the table and pushing a hand through his hair like he is only hot from the weather and not quietly becoming unwell near recreational furniture. “I’m gonna check on the food,” he says.

You turn toward him, smile still half-there. “What?”

But Jake is already moving, not even sparing you a proper glance before he steps out and heads toward the grill.

For a second, you just watch him go. He is standing near the grill now, beside your father, who is talking to him about something with tongs in hand. Jake nods at the right places, smiles when he is supposed to, but even from where you stand, something about it looks off. 

Hyunjin looks genuinely confused, which makes the whole thing worse because he really has not done anything wrong. He only showed up, hugged you, remembered too much, and existed near your boyfriend too much.

His mouth curves, but gently this time. “He jealous?”

You stare at Jake. “No. He doesn’t get jealous,” you say, like that settles it. “He’s not insecure.”

Hyunjin shrugs, clearly not convinced but smart enough not to argue with a woman who is already looking mildly irritated. “Okay.”

You look over at Riki instead, who’s standing near the edge of the pool table with his girlfriend beside him, both of them suddenly very invested in doing nothing. Riki meets your eyes for half a second, then looks away with the exact expression of someone who knows something and would rather be medically sedated than involved.

So you give up and cross the yard.

Jake is apparently left in charge of the meat while your father has gone inside to get more sauce. He stands there with the tongs in one hand, eyes on the lamb chop, and when he realizes you’re near, he does not look at you right away, but you see it anyway. The slight pout sitting at his mouth, the stubborn set of his jaw, the very obvious attempt at looking unbothered.

You stop beside him and glance at the grill. “Dad trusts you enough with this?”

Jake flips one piece of meat and does not answer. You wait but he keeps looking at the grill, clearly more invested in it than he is with your presence.

You slowly tilt your head. “Are you ignoring me?”

Jake exhales through his nose, still not looking at you. “Thought you were busy entertaining your fan club.”

There it is.

You blink once, then press your lips together because laughing feels dangerous. Not because it would hurt him, exactly, but because Jake looks genuinely annoyed, and it is made about ten times worse by the fact that he is holding tongs and standing beside barbecue like a wounded suburban husband.

“My fan club?” you repeat.

He finally looks at you, and the pout is still there, faint but visible enough to ruin his entire case. “Yeah.”

You stare at him. “Hyunjin?”

He looks back at the grill. He flips another rib, then immediately frowns at it. “He’s nice.”

You scoff. “He is.”

“Great.”

You look away to hide the smile that starts pulling at your mouth, because there is no possible way you are letting him know that his sulking is doing anything except making him look ridiculous.

His jaw shifts, and he turns one of the meats again with far too much attention for someone who is not emotionally projecting onto barbecue. “Do you two always act like that?”

You look back at him. “That’s very specific.”

Jake gives you a look, then immediately looks back at the grill, because apparently maintaining eye contact during jealousy is where he draws the line. “You know what I mean.”

You sigh, crossing your arms. “Yeah, kind of. We grew up together.”

He scoffs loudly and dramatically. “Right,” he says, tongs clicking once against the tray. “I almost forgot.”

You stare at the side of his face. “Jake, you sound insane.”

He gives the grill another unnecessary look. “Wow. Good to know.”

You press your lips together again, because now you are definitely trying not to laugh. It is not funny, technically. Your boyfriend is clearly upset, and you should be taking that seriously. But he is also standing there in front of your father’s grill, pouting at lamb chops because another guy called you a childhood nickname.

Jake looks over at Hyunjin across the yard, long enough to make himself worse.

Hyunjin is standing by the pool table still, laughing at something Riki says, his posture easy, his expression relaxed, the whole package annoyingly well-adjusted. He is older than both of you by maybe two years, which is not a lot, but apparently enough for Jake’s brain to start acting like Hyunjin is far more superior in your type list.

You like responsible people. Hyunjin is responsible, the kind that comes with business school and a clean laugh. He also has seniority, not just some random guy trying to impress you now. He is the original file, the older family-friend version, the one who knew you when you were a child, when Riki was small enough to be called Little Rik without irony, and when your mom was still around.

Jake has spent four months learning how to be close to you, and Hyunjin had a decade-long free trial.

Terrible. Unfair. 

Jake looks back at the grill and flips one meat with unnecessary aggression and drama.

You see all of it and before you can say anything, Hyunjin appears beside you.

He stands there with both hands on his hips, looking far too casual for someone walking into a situation that already has smoke coming off it — emotionally and literally. “Riki and his girlfriend want to try your mom’s smoothie thing,” he says. “You should make it.”

Jake goes very still and then he sighs so loudly that it sounds like he has just been asked to blend his own downfall with ice and honey and evidence, right in front of your father’s grill.

You look at him quickly, but his eyes don’t meet yours.

Hyunjin, unfortunately, does not seem to realize he has just thrown a grenade into the barbecue area and asked if anyone wants a straw. “If you still remember how.”

You open your mouth, but your father comes back at the same time, sauce mixture in hand, completely oblivious to the fact that the three of you are standing in a very strange triangle of old history, jealousy, and grilled meat.

“Here,” your father says, reaching for the tongs. “I’ll take over.”

Jake gives them up immediately.

Your father starts brushing sauce over the ribs, already talking about heat and timing and whatever else men say to impress 20-year-olds with backyard cooking. You stand there, still watching Jake as he runs a hand through his hair, jaw tight.

Then he is already walking toward the house, no glance at you, least of all an attempt to make it look normal. He just turns and goes inside without another word — which is concerning, because Jake never ever gets passive with you.

Your father keeps brushing sauce on the ribs. Hyunjin looks between you and the door, finally starting to understand that maybe something really is off.

Before Hyunjin can even say anything, you turn to him.

“Leave me alone for a while.” It comes out sharper than intended, but you do not take it back. You are too annoyed now, with Jake, with Hyunjin, with the smoothie, with the fact that everyone keeps remembering things out loud like your life is a group activity.

Hyunjin raises both hands, surprised but not exactly shocked. He has known you long enough to recognize when you are about to become unpleasant to be efficient. “Okay,” he says. “Yeah. Sorry.”

You do not answer, you only turn and follow Jake inside.

The kitchen is cooler than the backyard, the noise outside turning muffled the second the sliding door closes behind you. He’s standing in front of the open fridge, one hand gripping the handle, staring into it like the composure might be sitting behind the orange juice.

“What the hell is your problem?” you ask.

Jake does not look at you. “I’m getting water.”

“You walked out.”

“It was hot.”

“Jake.”

He reaches for a bottle, closes the fridge, then sets it on the counter without drinking from it. Truly natural behavior from a man who definitely came inside for hydration and not because he was one memory mentioned away from combusting truly.

You cross your arms. “Are you seriously ignoring me now?”

“I’m not ignoring you.”

“You left without looking at me.”

He exhales, rubbing a hand over his face. “Sorry.”

“No, keep going. This is very mature.”

He looks at you then, and there it is again. That weird, tight expression, which is not anger exactly, just something more embarrassed than that, which somehow makes him look even more irritated.

“I said sorry.”

“No, you’re being a dick,” you say, genuinely this time and you hold his stare. “And you’ve been acting weird all day. Literally what, over a smoothie?”

Jake looks at you — irritated, unimpressed, still unfairly hot, which feels disrespectful given the situation. 

Then he says, “Yeah. I was jealous.”

You blink, thrown off by the honesty. “What?”

“I was jealous,” he repeats, slower this time. “That’s what you wanted me to say, right?”

You stare at him. “Over Hyunjin?”

“Obviously.”

You laugh once, but it comes out more shocked than amused. “Jake, he’s my childhood friend. He’s basically family.”

“I know.”

“You met him literally today.”

“Yeah, and he already knows more about your life than I do.”

That makes you pause.

Jake looks away first, jaw tight, like he hates that he said it but not enough to take it back. “He knows the dog. The swing, the pool table, the smoothie, your mom. He walks in and everyone just opens up around him like he never left, and you looked so happy.” He exhales sharply. “And I know that’s not a crime. I’m not stupid. I know you didn’t do anything wrong.”

You cross your arms tighter. “Then why are you acting like I did?”

He scoffs. “I’m really not.”

“You walked out.”

“Because I didn’t want to stand there and keep watching it you,” he says, finally looking back at you. “With him.”

Your face shifts. “There’s nothing with him.”

“I know. He didn’t flirt with you. You didn’t flirt with him. Nothing happened but it still felt shitty.”

You look at him for a second, trying to decide whether to be mad or confused. “Because he knows old stories about smoothies?”

“Because he knows old stories I’ve been too scared to ask about.”

That lands in a way that makes you shut up and tighten your arms around yourself.

Jake rubs a hand over his face. “I don’t ask about your mom because I know how you get when people even come close to that. I know you’ll tell me when you want to. I’ve been trying to respect that.”

“And I appreciate that,” you say, voice tightening. “But that doesn’t mean I can suddenly talk about it just because you feel left out. You can’t just force that out of me, Jake.”

“I’m not asking you to suddenly talk about it —”

“It sounds like you are.”

“— I’m asking you to stop acting like I’m insane for feeling something,” he says. “Hyunjin said your mom like it was easy, and you let him. I can’t even say her name without feeling like I’m about to hurt you.”

The kitchen feels too cold now.

Outside, the barbecue is still going, muffled voices and laughter coming through the glass like nothing inside has shifted. Your father is probably still brushing sauce over ribs. Riki is probably eating something he did not cook, living his happily ever after with a girlfriend who isn’t even half as difficult as you.

And Jake is in front of you, looking jealous and hurt and too honest for how angry you still want to be.

“He was there,” you say. “That’s why he knows. That’s it. Not because he’s on some leverage like you’re making it look like.”

“I know that.”

“Good. Also know that he didn’t earn anything like dumb arcade tickets to know ‘lore’ about my mom. He doesn’t get more of me because he knew me first.”

Jake’s mouth tightens. “It felt like he did.”

“Well, he doesn’t. You should already believe me on that!”

“I do,” he says quickly. “I believe you. I just don’t know what to do with the fact that you looked at him like he was home.”

You go still, completely frozen.

His voice drops. “And I was right there.”

You stare at him, the anger in your chest suddenly turning uncomfortable, because that is too close to something you do not want to sort through in front of him.

“Hyunjin isn’t home,” you say. “He just remembers what it used to feel like. And maybe I missed that,” you add, quieter. “Maybe I missed someone remembering it with me. The smoothies, the dog, Riki being small, my dad being different. I don’t know.”

Jake looks at you for a long second, being careful with what you're telling him.

Then he asks, “And I can’t be that for you?”

Your throat tightens. “Jake.”

“No, I’m asking.” His voice stays low, but there is hurt under it now. “I know I wasn’t there. I know I can’t remember it with you the way he can. But I can listen. I can know it now.”

You look at him. “Don’t make me feel bad for not saying everything to you.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“You kind of are.” Your voice rises before you can stop it. “I need time with things. You knew that when we got together. You knew I don’t just open up because someone cares about me enough.”

“I know that.”

“Then act like it.”

“I have been acting like it,” Jake says, sharper now. “That’s the whole point. I’ve been waiting. I’ve been careful. I don’t push because I know you hate it. But today, Hyunjin walked in and touched the exact thing I’ve been scared to even mention, and you looked at me like I was dramatic for noticing.”

You stare at him.

He exhales, rough and frustrated. “I don’t think I earn your pain because I waited. I’m not treating your life like a prize. But I am allowed to feel like shit when someone else gets to stand there and talk about your mom like it’s easy.”

“It’s not easy,” you snap.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. You saw me laugh and thought it was easy. I shouldn’t have to tell you to know that either, because you should.”

“Baby,” he huffs, “I’m not a mind reader.”

Your mouth parts like you have an argument ready, but nothing comes out.

Jake looks at you, breathing harder. “You left me there.”

“I went to talk to someone I grew up with.”

“Right. And completely forgot I was beside you.”

“I didn’t forget you.”

“It felt like it.”

You laugh once, sharp and disbelieving. “So you get to be a dick about it?”

“I wasn’t being a dick. I didn’t disrespect anyone out there. I didn’t say anything to Hyunjin. I didn’t even say anything to you.”

“That’s not the defense you think it is.”

“I walked away,” he says. “That’s all I did.”

“You walked away from me.”

“Because I didn’t want to stand there and keep feeling stupid.”

You stare at him.

Jake’s jaw tightens. “I wasn’t trying to punish you. I wasn’t trying to embarrass you. I just didn’t want to stay there watching you and Hyunjin talk about your whole life like I was some random guy at the grill.”

“You’re not a random guy at the grill — you’re the guy I like. You’re the one who comes over. You’re the one who eats in my kitchen, drives Riki around, and holds me when I don’t want to talk.”

Jake’s face shifts, but you keep going because now you cannot stop.

“Hyunjin knows old things because he was there. Fine. But you know me now. You know when I’m mad. You know when I’m quiet. You know when I’m about to cry and pretending I’m not. He doesn’t get this.” You gesture between you two. “He doesn’t get us.”

Jake stares at you. And then he gets quieter, “But he gets the part I don’t know how to reach.”

You blink.

“That’s what I’m jealous of,” he says. “Not because I think he owns it. Not because I think you owe it to me. I’m jealous because I want to know every part of you, and there’s this huge part I can’t even ask about without feeling like I’m going to hurt you.”

Your throat tightens.

“And I hate that he can stand there and remember it with you,” Jake says, voice rough now. 

“He’s my childhood friend.”

“And I’m your boyfriend.”

“Exactly,” you snap. “So why are you still jealous?”

“Because I love you.”

Both of you stop.

The whole kitchen goes still.

Your mouth stays slightly open, the next argument still sitting there, suddenly useless. He freezes too, eyes on yours, chest rising once like even he did not know the words were coming until they were already out.

Jake looks absolutely horrified.

Not because he regrets it, but because this is probably the worst possible way he could have said it. No perfect timing he planned to do it, no nice romantic moment, just him standing in your kitchen, jealous, upset, holding too much hurt in his hands until the truth slipped out and hit the floor between you.

You blink. “What?”

His jaw works once, and he looks like he might take it back. The whole thing is so violently unplanned that even the universe seems embarrassed.

But then he exhales.

“I love you,” he says again.

He looks at you like he is done pretending this is about Hyunjin, or smoothies, or who knew what first. Like he has finally reached the actual ugly center of it and has no choice but to stand there.

“That’s why,” he says. “That’s why I’m jealous. Because Hyunjin knows a part of you that I don’t,” he says. “And I hate that.”

Your throat tightens.

“I hate that he can say something about your mom and you understand him immediately. I hate that he can bring up some old thing and you just know what he means. I hate that he was there for things I can only guess about.” His voice drops. “And I hate that I’m jealous of that, because I know it’s not fair.”

Jake lets out a breath, almost embarrassed. “But I am.”

The kitchen feels too small again, but not in the angry way anymore. 

“I love you,” Jake says again, softer this time. “So yeah, I want to know those parts too. Not because I think I deserve them.” His eyes flick over your face. “I just want to be close to you there too.”

Your lips part, but nothing comes out.

For once, Jake does not push. He only stands there, looking at you with all that hurt still on his face, but also something warmer now. Something scared and hopeful and very, very him.

“I don’t want Hyunjin erased from your life,” he says. “I just hate that there’s this part of you I want to take care of, and I don’t even know where it is.”

Something about that sounds worse than the jealousy, worse than the smoothie, worse than the fan club comment and the meat abandonment and every dumb thing he has done since Hyunjin arrived.

“I don’t want you to take care of me,” you say, but your voice has lost the sharp edge it had before.

Jake nods immediately, like he was waiting for you to say that, like he understands the difference even if it took him a terrible amount of jealousy and one emotionally damaged barbecue to get there.

“I know,” he says. “I know.”

He steps closer, he only reaches for you carefully, hands settling around your elbows, warm and steady. He looks down at where he is holding you, then back up at your face.

“I want to love you,” he says.

Your chest tightens so hard it almost feels inconvenient.

He swallows, but keeps going. “Not fix you, or take over, or push my way into things.” His thumbs move once, barely there, against your arms. “I just want to love you. All of you.”

You stare at him.

For once, there is nothing sharp ready in your mouth, which has been the only thing he can do: disarm you.

Just Jake, standing in your kitchen with the fridge humming behind him, looking at you like loving you is not some heroic thing he is offering, but something he is already doing badly and honestly and trying to learn how to do better.

“I don’t know what to say,” you admit.

Jake closes his eyes briefly, and you are standing close enough to feel the way his hands pause around your arms. 

“It’s okay,” he says.

You stare at him. “Jake.”

“I mean it.” His hands loosen slightly, like he is preparing to let go of you before you can ask him to. “You don’t have to say anything. I didn’t say it so you would.”

“I know.”

“I just said it because it’s true. But I don’t want you to feel pressured,” he says. “Especially not after tonight.”

You look at him for a second, then shake your head. “That’s not why I don’t know what to say.”

Jake goes still, and he watches you swallow, annoyed by how difficult every word feels. “It’s not because I don’t feel anything.”

His eyes stay on yours.

“It’s because I do,”

You stop at that because that is apparently as far as your vocabulary can go before it starts failing you completely. Big surprise. You have always been terrible with words when it meant your feelings, which is deeply inconvenient for someone who has built most of her personality around sounding like she knows exactly what she is doing.

Jake looks at you carefully, still holding himself back — that makes it worse, because he’s so worth it.

You do the only thing your body seems capable of doing. You hit his chest very lightly, more of a tap than an actual hit, but he still looks down at the spot like you have given him a formal complaint.

“What was that for?” he asks, voice quiet.

You do not answer.

Instead, you grab the front of his shirt and pull him down to your height. He barely has time to react before you kiss him.

For half a second, he goes completely still, probably because his brain has not caught up yet. One moment you were arguing with him in your kitchen, and the next, your hands are in his shirt and your mouth is on his, giving him the answer you cannot say properly.

Then he exhales against you.

His hands move from your arms to your waist, careful at first, then steadier when you do not pull away. He kisses you back like he is relieved and still scared of being relieved, like he does not want to assume too much but cannot help holding you closer once you let him, pushing his tongue into your mouth and you gasp.

It is messy and badly timed and still a little upset around the edges, with barbecue smoke clinging to his shirt and a water bottle forgotten on the counter beside you. His first I love you is still sitting between you, dramatic and unplanned, but now your hands are curled in the fabric of his shirt, and Jake is kissing you like maybe this is enough of an answer for now.

When you pull back, neither of you speaks immediately.

His eyes open slowly, stuck on your mouth then your eyes.

You look at him for one second, then glance away because his face is unbearable. “Don’t look at me like you won.”

His mouth curves, soft and stupid. “Did I?”

You hit his chest again, just as lightly. “You’re so annoying.”

Jake’s smile grows, but his voice stays careful. “As annoying as Hyunjin?”

Despite yourself, you giggle. It comes out small, caught somewhere between disbelief and exhaustion, but once it is out, you cannot pull it back. 

“No,” you say, still smiling. “You’re more annoying than Hyunjin.”

His brows lift. “More?”

“Significantly.”

He looks down like he is absorbing the insult with the seriousness it deserves. “Wow, after the big three too.”

You roll your eyes instead of answering and pull him down again.

This kiss is softer than the first one, less like an argument trying to find somewhere to land and more a response that speaks for itself. Jake’s hand comes back to your waist, careful, before sliding to your back to pull you closer.

You pull, looking back up at him. “Come upstairs.”

Jake stares at you, but you do not explain, and maybe that is its own explanation.

Your room is quieter, the backyard noise distant through the walls. The second the door shuts behind him, the air changes again, but not in any sharp way. 

When he reaches you, you grab the front of his shirt again. You pull him closer and kiss him again, not to answer everything, but because he is here, and you want him here.

Jake kisses you back gently, hands resting at your waist. When you pull away, he does not chase it — he only stays close, forehead touching yours. 

Your fingers move to the hair at his nape, playing with the ends lightly while you keep your eyes somewhere near his collar instead of his face. Jake stays still, like even that small touch is something he is trying not to react to too much.

You frown. “I hated that. It felt like you were ignoring me.”

Jake looks at you for a second before his mouth curves in that smug and arrogant way.

“You wanted my attention?” he asks, all fake sympathy and quiet teasing.

You shift closer instead of answering, which is already enough of an answer and unfortunately humiliating for you as a person. “Whatever,” you mutter.

Jake’s smile grows, because he obviously enjoys you.

“Whatever,” he repeats softly.

His arms move around you more securely, pulling you closer like he has decided not to waste the opportunity. You let him, because apparently your pride has left the room to get water and will not be returning soon.

You close your eyes for a second, hating how good it feels to be held like this after being mad at him. “I don’t like when you go cold on me.”

He nods.

“You’re not allowed.”

His mouth brushes lightly against your temple. “Okay, I’m sorry.”

For a while, neither of you says anything. It is quiet but doesn’t feel empty, while he keeps you close, one hand slow against your back, the other resting at your waist. Then he pulls away a little, just enough to look at you properly.

You look up at him through your lashes, still frowning a little because it is easier than looking as affected as you feel. His eyes move over your face carefully, like he is checking whether you are still mad.

Then he whispers, “I love you.”

Your breath catches and Jake catches it immediately. Something in his expression changes, quiet and pleased in a way that makes your stomach flip. You just shift a little closer without meaning to, and that is enough for him.

He leans down, bypassing your lips as his meets the soft skin of your neck.

“I love you,” he whispers against your pulse.

The hand on your waist slides down to the hem of your pants, until his hand glides inside and underneath your panties. The pad of his fingers touches your clit, and your bodies tenses against him as a small and soft gasp escapes your mouth.

“Jake—”

He rubs on you softly, while the hand on your back pulls you impossibly closer to him. His long fingers slip in between your folds, stroking from your clit to your hole.

“Compensation, my love.” he says as he kisses your neck, just before he gently backs you against your bed. 

“On your stomach.”

You were better now, in ways that mattered. Not kinder, exactly, not in the way that made you softer or easier to digest, but more patient and less convinced that every person who entered your life needed to be assessed for specific requirements. Maybe you were a bit classist in the sense that it has nothing to do with class, you didn’t care if someone was rich or poor, actually. You cared if they were stupid, careless, or suspicious.

You had learned how to pause and consider how people would react to you. Sometimes. On good days. With enough effort without giving more than necessary — you’d never give in work for people you couldn’t care less about. Your mouth remains a separate legal entity that needs strict supervision, far greater than your own, wherein Jake actually steps in.

Now, he didn’t have you tethered on a leash, because that would mean he had control over you, and Jake doesn’t believe in fairy tales. He also believed in dismantling the kind of patriarchal system that insisted difficult women only became lovable after a patient man sanded them down into something more socially acceptable. So to say your boyfriend has managed to tame you down and has completely changed you for the better of fitting in social codes! is bullshit and is something that would never happen. That was propaganda. That was something a man with a podcast would say.

It was more of… he had emergency preparedness.

Which was why, by the time you finished preparing food, Jake had already arranged the plates on the dinner table to help you out without getting in your way and letting you do your own thing. Forks on the left, knives on the right, napkins folded neatly beside each plate. He even set out water glasses, juice glasses, and, for some reason, wine glasses.

Riki stares at the table. Then at Jake. “Why are there wine glasses?”

Jake scoffs, like Riki was unreasonable. “For drinks.”

“She’s seventeen. She doesn’t drink wine.”

“I know.”

“So why are there wine glasses?”

Jake picks one up and inspects it like this was a very normal conversation. “For juice.”

Riki blinks. “Juice.”

“You can put juice in a wine glass,” Jake says.

Riki only stares at him for a long second before looking at you, as if expecting you to step in and restore reason to the room. Unfortunately for him, you are too busy adjusting the serving dish in the center of the table, making sure it sits exactly where it should.

“It looks nice,” you say simply.

Riki exhales, defeated. “She’s just coming over for dinner.”

You glance up. “I’m aware.”

Still, you leave the wine glasses where they are.

It is not that you are nervous. At least, that is what you tell yourself while wiping the counter for the third time, checking the food twice, and pretending not to notice Jake quietly moving around the dining area in the way he always does now, helping without getting in your space. He knows better than to take over. He only fills the gaps you leave behind, setting down plates, moving chairs, handing you a towel before you ask for one.

“You’re doing too much,” Riki says finally, watching as you wipe the edge of the counter one last time.

“I made dinner because she’s coming here for the first time.” You glance at him, and for once, there’s no sharpness in it. “I want to put effort,” you say. “She’s important to you, so I’m going to treat her like she is.”

Before anyone can say more, the doorbell rings.

Riki freezes dramatically — shoulders stiffen, his hand goes briefly to his hair, and for one second, he actually looks seventeen with his first love, scared because you’re meeting her. Your expression softens before you can stop it, watching him mumble a few things beneath his breath and reach for the foyer. 

You straighten, inhale once, and deliberately relax your face. Your eyebrows loosen first, then your jaw. You try to make your mouth sit neutrally instead of in the natural line that has apparently made several people assume you find their presence uncomfortable. You even relax your cheekbones, which is a ridiculous thing to become aware of, but you do it anyway — only to try and smile anyway.

Jake notices, obviously. He comes to stand beside you, his arm slipping over your shoulders, warm and easy. You glance at him, trying not to ruin your work. “What?”

He presses his lips together, but his eyes are already amused. “Nothing.”

“You’re laughing.”

“I’m not.”

“Are you making fun of me?” You glare at him, but unfortunately, ends up ruining all the work you have just done.

He laughs under his breath and pulls you a little closer, not enough to make a scene, just enough for his thumb to brush once against your shoulder. “No. You just look cute.”

The front door opens, which makes you and Jake both go quiet at the same time, though his arm stays comfortably around your shoulders while you immediately stiffen.

“Relax, okay?” he murmurs, low enough that only you hear him.

“I am relaxed.”

“You’re not.”

“I was,” you whisper back, eyes fixed toward the hallway. “Riki is making me tense. You’re also making me tense.”

His mouth twitches. “He’s nervous.”

“He said it himself, it’s just dinner.”

“I know, baby.”

“You’re not helping.”

“I’m literally holding you.”

“Exactly, now I’m tense again.”

He laughs under his breath, and you glare up at him again, which, unfortunately, ruins your face for the second time. He only looks more amused, his thumb brushing slowly against your upper arm as if trying to smooth the tension out of you by touch alone. From the foyer, you hear Riki’s voice, lower and softer than usual, which makes something inside you pause. He says something you don’t catch, then a girl answers, her voice careful but sweet. There is the quiet sound of shoes being removed, then footsteps moving closer toward the dining room.

Jake’s hand starts moving lightly over your arm, not enough to distract you, just enough to remind you to breathe when he can feel that you’re growing nervous too.

You’re nervous because for the first time since Jake, you care about being liked.

Riki appears in the doorway first, already looking embarrassed before anyone has even done anything. His hand hovers at the small of her back, not fully touching, just guiding her forward like he wants to be careful with her but does not want anyone to notice. That alone makes you want to be nicer immediately, though instinct comes first and you also want to make fun of him.

The girl, neat and pretty, exactly the kind of girl you expected Riki to like. Not loud kind of pretty, or trying too hard to be noticed. Just soft-faced and carefully put together, with her hair tucked behind one ear and both hands holding a small paper bag in front of her. She looks nervous and polite, but not helpless and boring. There is something bright in her expression when she glances at Riki, something that makes his ears go red when he catches it.

He clears his throat. “This is her.” He immediately looks annoyed with himself for a shitty introduction. “I mean, this is my sister.”

The girl smiles at you, a little shy but trying. “Hi. It’s nice to meet you.”

You make sure your face is still behaving before you smile back, lifting your eyebrows and relaxing your eyes. “It’s nice to meet you too.”

“And this is Jake,” he says, already sounding tired before the sentence is even finished. “My friend. Her boyfriend.”

Jake smiles. “Hello.”

For a second, it goes very well. 

Riki’s shoulders lower slightly and Jake’s arm loosens around you. Riki and the girl steps further into the dining room and she notices the table, the food, the glasses, the napkins, the ridiculous amount of effort you had pretended was casual even though you really did give more than you would.

“This is really nice,” she says, smiling so wide and bright, then seems to remember the paper bag in her hands. “Oh, I brought something. It’s just pastries. My mom said I shouldn’t come empty-handed.”

“That’s sweet,” you say, already nodding in appreciation.

Then she adds, with a small nervous laugh, “Especially if it’s you.”

What the fuck does that mean?

You pause, though it isn’t a big, dramatic thing. To anyone else, it probably looks like you are simply processing what she said like a normal person. But unfortunately, everyone in the room knows you and knows that you are not doing that. Riki freezes first, because he has lived with you long enough to understand what careless words mean to you, his face going blank. 

Then you nod slowly, because the worst part is, you are not even mad. You are curious, deeply curious, academically curious, the kind of curious that has ruined evenings before because you’re an older sister who can’t let things slide.

“Sorry,” you say, still polite. “What does that mean, exactly?”

She looks suddenly unsure. “Oh. Riki just told me you’re a bit unhinged sometimes. So I wanted to put my best foot forward.”

She is smiling, though not plainly rude, she looks like she has said something funny and is waiting for the room to understand it as a joke. Riki seems to understand this too, because he lets out this small, awkward laugh, like he is trying to help her land the joke before you set it on fire. Jake does the same thing, smiling polite and easy, to smooth the room over, but his arm tightens around your shoulders, and he straightens beside you, casual enough that it might pass as posture.

You, however, are not laughing yet. You are looking at her, a little amused, even impressed. Because she is standing in your dining room, holding pastries with both hands, looking sweet and proper, and somehow still had the nerve to call you unhinged to your face before the dinner you made yourself.

Interesting. Very interesting.

You nod once, slowly. “Okay.” then you breathe. “Calling me unhinged five seconds after walking in is —”

Then Jake’s hand covers your mouth. 

One second you are speaking, the next his palm is gently but firmly over your mouth, cutting off whatever fire had been lining itself up behind your teeth. The room goes silent, then you slowly turn your eyes up to him. Jake smiles at Riki’s girlfriend like this is normal, like he did not just manually mute you in your own house. 

“She thinks you’re funny.” 

You make a muffled sound against his hand.

He glances down. “You do.” He keeps his hand there even when you glare at him.

Riki stares at the two of you with a mixture of horror and resignation. “Yeah. They’re like that. Sorry. It’s kind of their dynamic.”

His girlfriend looks between you and Jake, then at Riki, then back at you. For one second, she seems unsure whether she should apologize, laugh, or leave the pastries on the nearest surface and run — which is what most would consider the safest option, but instead, she laughs. It is small at first, but it turns real when she sees the way Riki’s ears have gone completely red and the way Jake is still holding you like a person trying to keep a cat from knocking a glass off the table.

“I’m sorry,” she says, smiling now. “I really meant it as a joke. I just thought of breaking the ice a little.”

Jake slowly lowers his hand, but his arm stays around you just in case. You hate that, you hate being treated like a rabid animal (you are, in this scenario, you really are). You inhale through your nose and fix your expression with as much dignity as possible. “I know. I understand the joke.” but you’re not laughing.

You nod once, polite. “I just think it’s very brave.” Jake’s eyes close for half a second. “It takes a lot of confidence to walk into someone else’s house shamelessly —”

Jake’s hand covers your mouth again, faster this time around. More resigned, like he knew the first intervention had only delayed the inevitable and was now dealing with the consequences of optimism.

You freeze beneath his palm, offended all over again.

Jake smiles at Riki’s girlfriend. “She appreciates your confidence,” he says smoothly. “And the pastries. We’ll eat them for dessert.”

Your eyes narrow, attempting to talk but your words are muffled. He keeps his hand there.

Riki, who looks like he is aging in real time, turns to his girlfriend with a stiff smile. “Let’s just eat. She cooks great food.”

The sudden rushed compliment makes you pause, which works better than Jake’s hand. Your irritation loosens by half an inch, and only then does he slowly remove his hand from your mouth, before placing both his hands over your shoulders and gently steer you toward the kitchen.

The second you reach the kitchen, you whip your head to him and whisper, “She called me unhinged.”

Jake reaches past you for the serving spoon. “Technically, Riki did.”

You stare at him. “And she repeated it. In my house.”

“She was just joking, baby.”

You grab the bowl of pasta from the counter, still whispering because you are civilized, apparently. “And you covered my mouth twice. That was crazy of you.”

He sighs. “I had to.”

“No, you did not have to.”

“You were about to call a seventeen-year-old shameless.”

When you freeze because he did make a point without having to rub it on your face, he then exhales a laugh and takes the heavier dish from you before you can protest, carrying it like he knows you’ll keep arguing better with your hands heavy. “You’re doing fine. Just be careful with her, she’s new.”

You inhale once, slow enough to remind yourself not to speak in weapons, then head back to the dining room with Jake following behind you, dish in hand and looking far too pleased for someone who had just done censoring. Riki and his girlfriend are already seated when you return. She sits neatly with her hands in her lap, taking in the table with careful politeness, while Riki looks like he has not breathed properly since he opened the door.

You smile again, because she’s new and you don’t want to scare her anymore. Jake catches it and has the audacity to look fond. You then sit across from them while Jake sits beside you, close enough for his knee to brush yours under the table, which you pretend not to notice.

For a few moments, dinner begins normally.

Plates are passed around, the wine glasses are filled with juice, as Jake planned. Riki relaxes little by little, especially when his girlfriend compliments the food and you do not immediately ask her for a detailed explanation of what she means by that — even though you want to ask just that. You only say thank you, which makes Jake glance at you like you have just performed a miracle.

Then Riki reaches for the tongs. “What do you want?” he asks her, voice quieter than usual.

She looks at the food, still shy. “Maybe just some of the crab rangoon bread.”

He nods and puts a few on her plate, carefully enough that you have to look down at your own plate to stop yourself from smiling too hard. Because it is sweet, sweeter than the teenage boy had ever been to anyone.

Unfortunately, Jake also notices. Without a word, he reaches for the tong, mimicking Riki’s careful expression so obviously that when you realize, you immediately swat his hand away.

“Stop.”

Jake bites his lip, trying not to smile. “What? I’m just serving you.”

“Stop it.” you hiss before you give him a look, but he only lowers his head and reaches for his glass, still smiling into it like he thinks he is subtle. He is not subtle. He has never been subtle a day in his life when it comes to annoying you.

Across the table, Riki stares at both of you. “Can you two stop?”

Jake, unhelpfully, says nothing, while you sigh and apologize.

Dinner continues after that, though with the fragile peace of something that knows it has survived two near-death experiences already. Riki’s girlfriend eats carefully at first, then relaxes when you ask if she wants more pasta instead of asking for her full academic history. Riki, to his credit, keeps checking on her without making it too obvious, which unfortunately makes it very obvious. Then she looks around the dining room, her eyes moving from the shelves to the framed photos, the organized sideboard, the little dish near the entryway where keys are kept. “I really like your house,” she says. “It feels so put together.”

You glance up from your plate. “Thank you.”

She smiles, encouraged. “Riki said you did most of the organizing.”

You are in the middle of taking a bite of pasta, which means the thought arrives before the social filter does. You chew once, swallow, then ask very casually, “Did he also tell you why I had to?”

Jake nearly chokes on his juice, the liquid gurgling in the cup though not loudly, but enough that his hand immediately goes to his mouth and Riki looks like he has just aged another five years in front of the girl he likes. Under the table, Jake’s hand lands on your thigh so fast it might as well have been an emergency brake.

You look at him and he looks back at you, eyes wide, expression painfully calm. His hand squeezes your thigh once, gentle but firm, because apparently this is what your relationship has become now. Morse code for please be more careful.

Riki’s girlfriend looks between everyone, confused but still polite. “Oh, I mean, he just said you’re really responsible.”

“That’s one word for it,” you say.

Jake’s hand tightens again, which makes you look down at his hand, then back at him. “What?”

He smiles at the table. “Nothing.”

Riki puts his fork down slowly. “Can we not?”

His girlfriend presses her lips together, trying not to smile, and the effort makes you pause. She does not look scared this time, because if anything, she looks like she is starting to understand the rhythm of the room. She’s starting to understand you beyond Riki’s unhinged stories about you, and for the second time, another person doesn’t feel like scurrying away.

That should embarrass you. And it does, at least a little, because you’ve learned social awareness. So you pick up your glass and take a sip, choosing to let the subject die before it grows bones and starts walking around the table. After a second, you say, “Sorry. Thank you. I do most of the organizing.”

Jake’s hand relaxes on your thigh and Riki exhales. His girlfriend smiles, warm and careful. “It’s nice. It feels like someone really takes care of it.”

That lands softer than you expect, and your spine relaxes so profoundly. For once, you do not make a joke out of it. You only nod, looking down at your plate. “I try.”

Jake’s hand stays warm on your thigh for another second before he lets go and reaches for his glass. He looks across the table, eyes moving between Riki and his girlfriend. “So,” he says, lighter now. “Where did you two meet?”

Riki pauses with his fork halfway to his mouth. “School.”

Jake nods slowly. “Wow. Detailed.”

You huff a small laugh before you can stop it, and Jake glances at you, pleased with himself. Riki glares. “What else do you want me to say?”

His girlfriend laughs softly, then looks at Jake. “We got paired for a project.” Her shoulders loosen a little more. “He was really serious about it. I thought he didn’t like me at first.”

Jake turns to you, voice low but not low enough. “He’s your brother.”

You nod solemnly. “Unfortunately, yes.”

His girlfriend smiles wider now, looking more comfortable than she had when she first walked in. “It was cute, actually.  mean, he was responsible,” she says. “During the project. He kept checking if I was done with my parts, and he fixed the slides when the file got messed up.”

No one says anything right away, not even Jake who usually teases the shit out of the younger boy. Not because there is nothing to say either, but because Riki looks so embarrassed that teasing him feels too easy, and maybe a little unfair. His ears are red again, his fork held loosely in his hand, his eyes stuck on his plate like looking up might make the compliment worse.

You look at him and feel something quiet pull at your chest.

Responsible and nice.

It is strange hearing someone else say that about him, not because you do not believe it, but because you know him differently. You know the boy who forgets to answer his phone, who leaves his shoes by the door, who argues about curfew every time. You know him as your brother before anything else, the one you have to keep taking care of. But she knows this version too, the one who fixes things, checks on people, and doesn’t freak out when there’s a problem.

You clear your throat and look back at your plate before your face can do anything embarrassing. “That sounds like him.”

When you glance up again, Riki is looking at you. Not shocked exactly, because he is not unused to you caring. His expression shifts, small and unsure, like he does not know what to do with being seen properly by you. Not just as someone you have to worry over, but as someone who could be responsible without you standing over his shoulder. Maybe you have been so busy seeing him as a problem waiting to happen that you forgot he could also be someone else when you were not looking.

Maybe you have been unreasonable, and once the thought settles, you look down at your plate and take another bite before your face can fully betray you.

Jake notices anyway. And so he takes over for you.

He sits back, smiling now. “So, what tricks did he pull out of his ass after the slides? Did he act mysterious? Pretend he doesn’t care?”

His girlfriend laughs, and this time it comes out easier. “A little.”

Riki looks at her immediately. “No, I didn’t.”

“You kinda did.”

You and Jake laugh before you can stop it, and Riki points his fork at you. “Don’t laugh,” he says.

His girlfriend smiles into her glass, clearly enjoying this more than she expected to. The nervousness has not disappeared completely, but it has softened enough for her to look around the family table without looking like she is waiting for someone to test her. 

After that, the questions continue, though you make sure they sound less like a background check and more like actual interest. The stories come out between bites, one after another, most of them harmless, some of them embarrassing, and nearly all of them at Riki’s expense. Jake keeps the teasing light, Riki keeps hating it, and his girlfriend keeps laughing in a way that makes him look down at his plate every few minutes like that will hide the fact that he likes hearing it.

The room relaxes in small things.

Riki stops sitting so straight, his girlfriend reaches for the juice herself, and Jake’s chair shifts closer to yours without either of you saying anything. At some point, you stop trying so hard to manage the room. Jake does most of the talking now, the three of them fall into conversation easily, voices overlapping, laughter coming in small bursts.

You let yourself sit quietly while you continue eating your food, listening more than speaking, watching Riki talk to someone who looks at him like he is not a problem to solve or a boy to keep alive through constant reminders. She looks at him like he is someone she likes, someone she chose willingly.

At some point, his girlfriend glances across the table and catches your eye. You know you could nod politely or look away or pretend you had only been reaching for your glass.

Instead, you smile at her. Not the careful one you had built earlier with relaxed eyebrows and softened cheekbones. But a small and sincere one.

And she smiles back. Something quiet settles between you, not approval exactly, because you are not her teacher and she is not there to pass. Just an understanding that she is trying, and so are you.

Later, when everyone has started moving around after dessert, the room breaks apart naturally. Riki and Jake end up near the sink, arguing over who is actually helping and who is only standing there only trying to look useful, obviously not wanting to get an earful from you. Your brother’s girlfriend gets pulled into the conversation for a while, laughing softly when Riki complains that Jake is “too comfortable” in the house, but eventually the noise settles behind you as you slip out to the front porch with one of the pastries she brought.

You lean against the railing, pastry in hand, and take a small bite. It’s good, soft, sweet, and clearly homemade, which makes you feel slightly worse about almost interrogating the girl who brought it.

The door opens behind you a minute later. You glance back and find her standing there, hands clasped in front of her like she is not sure if she is allowed to join you.

“Hi,” she says.

You swallow. “Hi.”

She looks at the pastry in your hand, then smiles a little. “Is it okay?”

You look down at it, then back at her. “It’s good.”

Her face brightens, visibly relieved. “Me and my mom made them.” She steps out slowly, leaving enough space between you like she is still learning the proper distance. You appreciate that more than you probably should.

For a moment, both of you just stand there, looking at the front yard while the muffled sound of Riki’s voice carries from inside. She breaks the silence as she says, “I’m sorry again. About earlier. The unhinged thing. I really thought it would be funny.” she winces.

“It was funny,” you say. She gives you a look like she does not fully believe you. You take another bite. “Eventually.”

That makes her laugh, small and careful, but real. Still, you notice the slight rigidness of her shoulders, and her fingers when they fidget with one another. She’s trying, that becomes obvious because you don’t recall anyone willingly staying alone in one room with you — not before or after Jake.

You take another bite of the pastry, buying yourself a second before you say anything too sincere. “I’d like to think that I’m not scary all the time.”

She smiles. “I know.”

You try not to snicker. “You don’t know that yet.”

“I kind of do,” she says, then looks embarrassed by her own confidence. “I mean, Riki talks about you a lot.”

You lower the pastry slightly. “Does he?”

She nods. “Yeah. He complains, but not in a bad way.” she says, laughing softly. “It’s more like… he’ll say you’re annoying, but then he’ll mention you picked him up from practice. Or that you made him eat before school. Or that you texted him because it was raining and he forgot an umbrella.”

Inside, Riki says something loud enough to make Jake laugh, and you remain quiet here. His girlfriend looks toward the door, her expression softening in a way that makes you pause, because you recognize that look. It’s the way Jake looks at you when he thinks you aren’t looking.

“He acts like he hates it,” she says. “But I don’t think he does. I think he likes knowing someone checks.”

You do not answer immediately, because there is nothing funny sitting close enough for you to grab. No sharp comment or an easy correction, just the truth, standing there on your porch in the shape of a seventeen-year-old girl who somehow sees your brother clearly.

So you nod once. “Maybe.”

She glances at you, then says, quieter, “I like him a lot.” Her eyes widen slightly especially when you look at her, like she has surprised herself by saying it directly. “Sorry. That was sudden.”

“No,” you say with a chuckle. “It’s okay.”

She tucks her hair behind her ear. “I know we’re young, and it’s not like I’m gonna marry him right now or anything. I just wanted you to know I’m not trying to get him in trouble or make things harder for you.”

It isn’t some grand statement, but it makes you freeze. It is actually the plainness of it that gets you, the fact that she says it like she understands there is something to make harder.

You are not Riki’s mom, you have never been his mom, and you will never be his mom. But somewhere along the way, between your mother leaving and your father forgetting the smaller parts of parenthood, you had become the person who checked the locks, remembered his schedule, asked if he ate, picked him up, got mad when he lied, and stayed awake when he was late. You gave up so many normal years to make sure he was safe, and he gave you so much shit in return, so much stress, so much noise.

A boyfriend too, apparently, which was still deeply annoying.

You blink once, but your eyes are already starting to sting.

She notices immediately. “Oh my God, I’m sorry.”

You let out a small laugh and look away, wiping quickly beneath one eye with your finger. “No, you’re fine.”

“I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

You sniff once. “I’m barely crying.”

That makes her smile, nervous but relieved. You both stand there with the porch light above you and the muffled sound of boys arguing inside, just before you take another breath, then glance at her.

“He told me,” she says softly. “Uhm. Just. About your mom. And your dad.”

Your face stills and she rushes to explain, eyes widening. “Not in a bad way. He wasn’t gossiping. He just said you had to do a lot. That you’re strict because you had to be. And I think I understood that more after meeting you.” She smiles a little, almost apologetic. “I mean, yes, you’re scary.”

You laugh despite yourself, and she laughs too. “But not in the way he made it sound. It’s more like...” She pauses, searching for the words. “You were kind of just left with him.”

It ruins you enough for your throat to tighten and your eyes to grow wet again before you can stop them. She looks panicked again, hands up like she wants to hold you. “I’m so sorry. That sounded so sad.”

“No,” you say quickly, laughing under your breath as you wipe at your eye again. “No, it’s okay.” You nod, then look down at the pastry in your hand because it is easier than looking at her. “It’s just weird.”

“What is?”

“Hearing someone say that,” you admit, voice quieter now. “Other than Jake.”

Her expression softens and she laughs quietly, looking down at her hands. “Riki talks about him too.”

You blink. “Jake?”

“Yeah.” Her smile grows a little more embarrassed, like she already knows what she is about to say will sound too sweet. “He said Jake is the only one who can tell you to calm down without making you mad.”

You stare at her as she glances toward the door, then back at you. “I think I get it now. It’s just nice. The way he looks at you.”

You immediately look away. “Okay.”

“I know. Sorry. That was cheesy.”

“It was very cheesy.”

“But very true.”

You take another bite of the pastry, mostly to give yourself something to do that is not react like an idiot. “You’re bold.”

“I’m learning from you.”

That makes you laugh. “You’ll need it,” you say, glancing at her. “If you’re going to be around a lot.”

For a second, her face goes completely still. Because the meaning seems to land, and her whole expression brightens before she can stop it, which isn’t loud or dramatic, just this shy, happy thing that she immediately tries to hide by looking down at her hands.

Riki appears halfway through the door a second later, squinting at the two of you like he has walked in on a meeting he was deliberately not invited to. His eyes move from her face to yours, then immediately to the pastry in your hand. “What are you doing?” he asks, already suspicious. “Are you threatening her?”

You give him a deadpan look. He stares back, of course.

“I’m eating,” you say.

His girlfriend laughs softly and steps closer to him. “She’s not threatening me.”

He still does not look convinced, but his hand finds hers anyway, like he has forgotten to be embarrassed for half a second. She lets him, smiling down at their joined hands, and the sight makes your face do something dangerously close to softening.

Jake then appears behind Riki. He takes one look at the porch, at the way Riki and his girlfriend are standing together, then at you. He steps around Riki and comes to your side, his arm slipping around your waist before he presses a quick kiss to your temple.

Riki’s face twists immediately, while his girlfriend, however, makes the worst possible sound, somewhere between a laugh and a squeal she clearly tries to hold back.

Jake ignores them completely, looking down at you instead. “Can I steal you for a bit?”

You barely get to frown before he guides you back inside with a hand at your waist.

“Steal me?” you repeat under your breath.

“Borrow,” he corrects, smiling.

The kitchen warmer from the leftover food and the light above the counter. Jake brings you there gently, not cornering you exactly, just turning you until your back rests against the counter and he stands in front of you, hands on your hips while yours stay on the pastry.

He only looks at you, then his gaze drops to the pastry on your hands, just before you take another bite. “I wasn’t done.”

“I can see that.”

“It’s good.”

His brows lift, innocent in a way that has never worked on you. Then, without looking away from you, he leans down and takes a small bite from the pastry in your hand. He straightens slowly, chewing while eyes remain on yours. For some reason, that makes your face warm faster than anything else he has done all night.

Then, very maturely, you say, “Ew.”

Jake laughs immediately, the sound low and pleased, because he knows you well enough to hear what you are actually doing. You take another bite from the same pastry anyway, mostly out of principle, and his smile only gets worse. Then he leans closer, pressing his forehead down against your shoulder with a quiet laugh. His hands stay at your hips, warm and steady, keeping you there without really keeping you anywhere.

“You’re so mean,” he murmurs.

“You know what you got into.” You huff, but it turns into something too close to a laugh when he presses a kiss to your shoulder. Then another, higher, near the side of your neck, soft enough to still feel like teasing. You try to keep eating like this is not affecting you at all, but Jake knows you too well, and the small smile against your skin says he caught it.

“Stop,” you mutter, though you make no actual effort to move.

He lifts his head just enough for his mouth to brush near your jaw, playful and warm. “Did she call you unhinged out there too?”

You glare at the cabinet over his shoulder. “No.”

“Did you call her shameless?”

“No.”

His brows lift, impressed. “Really?”

You swallow the bite of pastry and give him a flat look. “I don’t like how surprised you sound.”

His smile tilts. “‘Cause I know what I got into.”

You stare at him for a second before realizing he has only thrown your own words back at you, and you roll your eyes, but the smile slips through anyway. Instead of saying anything, he lowers his face and rests his mouth against your hair. Not quite a kiss, just there, warm and quiet and resting. You sigh and lean into him too, your weight shifting from your feet to him, and Jake takes it without needing to adjust.

“I like her,” you say after a moment.

His lips move against your hair. “Yeah?”

“A lot.”

Jake lifts his head just enough to look at you, and his expression is teasing, but his eyes are too soft to fully sell it. “Wow. A lot?”

You narrow your eyes. “What?”

His gaze drops to your mouth for half a second before returning to your eyes, entirely too pleased with himself. “I thought I was the only person allowed to understand you and survive.”

A laugh slips out before you can stop it, light and embarrassingly fond. He lets out a faux disappointed sigh, shaking his head but his smile is kinder. “Now there’s competition.”

“She brought pastries.”

“Very strong opening.”

His thumb brushes once at your side, your throat tightens before you can stop it. Jake lowers his voice. “I’m still the one who gets to hold you after.”

You only look at him, standing close enough that the kitchen feels smaller around you, the pastry forgotten between your fingers, his hands steady at your waist. Jake looks at you for another second, like he is waiting to see if you will tell him to stop.

You do not.

So he leans in and kisses you, soft at first, careful enough that you almost hate him for it. Your eyes close before you can think better of it, and the hand not holding the pastry slips up to his shoulder. Then his hand tightens at your waist, just a little, and the kiss deepens enough to make your thoughts go quiet. Your other arm finds its way around his shoulders too, pastry and all, awkwardly trapped somewhere behind his neck.

He laughs against your mouth, a smile pressing into yours. When you pull back to breathe, he does not go far, his mouth drifts to your jaw instead, and you let out a small, helpless laugh before you can stop it.

“Jake.”

“Hm?”

You tilt your head anyway, trying to sound annoyed even though you are smiling. “Behave. They’re still here.”

He pauses against your jaw before he laughs, low and quiet, his forehead dropping to your shoulder again. “These fucking kids, bro.”

You laugh properly this time, unable to help it, and shove at his chest with the back of your hand. You point the pastry at him. “You’re literally twenty.”

Jake lifts his head, face still tucked too close to yours, and shrugs like you have just made his point for him. “Exactly.”

He only smiles, then wraps his fingers around your wrist and gently brings your hand closer to his mouth. He does not even ask this time. He just holds your gaze, entirely too pleased with himself, and takes another bite from the pastry you were very clearly threatening him with.

You stare at him. “You have a problem.”

Jake swallows, still smiling. “You’re my favorite problem.”

Your eyebrows pull together immediately.

His smile drops by half. “Wait.”

“I’m a problem?”

“No.”

“You just said I’m a problem.”

Jake presses his lips together, clearly trying not to laugh because he knows that would only make this worse. His hand is still around your wrist, but now he looks like he has realized he is holding evidence at the scene of his own crime.

“I meant,” he says carefully, “you are my favorite person who causes problems.”

You stare harder. He closes his eyes for a second. “No. That’s worse.” He exhales a laugh. “Okay. You’re not a problem.”

“Good.”

“You’re just a lot.”

You scoff. “Wow.”

“No, no.” Jake’s hand tightens on your hips you try to pull away, though he is smiling too much to look even slightly sorry. “I like a lot. I love a lot.”

Your face warms before you can stop it. Then, because apparently he has decided to make it worse for your health, he shrugs. “I’m greedy.”

A laugh breaks out of you before you can hold it in, sudden and helpless. You turn your face away, but he follows just enough to catch it, smiling like he has been waiting for that sound all night. “You say terrible things.”

Jake’s smile softens, but he still looks entirely too pleased with himself. “I’m being honest.” His hands settle at your waist again, warm and steady. “You’re scary that I like. Mean that I like. Bossy that I like.”

You stare at him for half a second before another laugh slips out, softer this time, shaking your head because he is genuinely ridiculous. “That is not how compliments work.”

“It worked.”

You hate that he is right.

You hate that he is looking at you like that again, like every difficult part of you is something he has already made room for, and does complain about it. Like he is not trying to soften you into something easier. He’s seen it, and still somehow looks at you like you are the easiest choice he has ever made.

So you stop arguing. You catch the front of his shirt, fingers curling into the collar, and pull him down to you. Jake’s breath catches a little before your mouth meets his again.

This kiss starts soft, but only for a second. Then his hand tightens at your waist and your arm slides around his shoulders, the pastry still trapped awkwardly in your other hand, and you cannot bring yourself to care.

Riki and his girlfriend are somewhere outside. The dishes are still in the sink. Someone could walk in and you should probably be thinking about any of that, because it’d be embarrassing to be caught pressed on the counter like this.

But you do not. Your mind goes blank in the simplest, stupidest way, all because Jake is here.

Jake is close, the warmth under your hands, the smile against your mouth, the person holding you like he already knows where all your sharp parts are and has never once thought to let go.

So, for once, you let yourself stop thinking. You just kiss him back.

The worst part was that none of these rules came from his father — a man who, at first glance, seemed exactly like the kind of parent who'd enforce discipline, high standards, high expectations, strict curfews, and strict grades. Except he wasn’t.

These rules came from you, his older sister. Scratch that — his terrifying older sister that’s also been known as a heinous bitch. You somehow managed to be nineteen years old and forty-seven years old at the same time, right after hearing Beyonce talk about girls running the world, and ultimately decided to make it your entire personality.

You remembered appointments, you knew where every important document in the house was, you made sure groceries appeared in the fridge, and you knew the hardware store. That was a good thing, especially since your Mother is a long story and has been gone from the picture since you turned eleven. It should be a good thing, because while your father forgot that he was meant to be a parent, you managed to step into the role for the then nine-year-old boy. 

The bad part was that you also happened to be ruining his life. 

"Don’t drink." you state.

Riki looks up from his phone, brows furrowed and eyes wide with confusion. "Why?"

You roll your eyes. "Because you're seventeen."

He stands up, his hands raised in even more confusion. "So are half the people going!"

You didn't even look up from your laptop, just continued on with your academic duties as the poster-child and perfect student you exactly are. Everything that Riki isn’t (he doesn’t give a fuck, he’s actually glad he isn’t as tense as you are). "Be home by ten."

He groans. "It's a party." 

You narrow your gaze at him. "Then leave at nine-thirty."

He had barely been there twenty minutes before somebody handed him a drink and accepted it immediately. He didn't even know what was in it, but it was blue and it was something that would give you an MI, which practically made every sense for him to take it. 

A hand suddenly smacked the back of his head. "Ow — what the fuck?!"

Riki turned around to find Jay looking unimpressed and clearly annoyed, arms crossed like he was already embodying your spirit for you. “Your sister would freak the fuck out if she saw you.” he says.

Riki scoffs, shaking his head before taking more sips. “Good thing she isn’t here.”

“Wow, someone’s bold.” Jungwon snickers.

Sunoo lets out a laugh from where he's leaning against the counter. “I can already count the amount of times she’ll call me tonight because you won’t be answering your phone.”

The worst part was that none of them were exaggerating. Most people heard the words overprotective older sister and pictured somebody mildly annoying that decided the takeouts. You were something else entirely, you were a mean person with good intentions, who treated Riki like a highly intelligent houseplant that couldn't be trusted unsupervised. Which, admittedly, was only a little unfair.

Jake looks significantly less invested in the conversation than everyone else, which makes sense considering he'd never actually met you before. He knew who you were, obviously. He had seen you around school a handful of times, though only in fragments, passing through hallways with your books tucked against your chest, standing behind podiums during assembly speeches, moving through student events with a clipboard in hand, and occasionally appearing in Riki’s house whenever his friends came over, though never long enough for Jake to understand what everyone meant when they talked about you like you were a natural disaster.

You didn’t hover during those visits, maybe because Riki was already home and therefore safely within the borders of your net, which meant Jake never had any firsthand evidence of the so-called atrocity people kept describing, no grand personal encounter with the hornless devil of a woman they swore you were. To him, you were just Riki’s older sister, put-together, sharper than most people, and clearly the kind of girl who knew how to keep things from falling apart.

He shrugs as if the entire conversation had been blown wildly out of proportion. “Honestly, she can’t be that bad.”

They all try and fail to hide the biggest smiles, until Riki finally let out a laugh so unhinged it sounded like Jake had just said the stupidest thing ever invented. “You’ve never met her, then.”

Jake frowned. “I mean, she just sounds responsible.”

That only made the laughter worse, because how exactly did someone describe you without sounding dramatic? How did anyone explain a girl who could build furniture, schedule doctor’s appointments, cook dinner, maintain perfect grades, and still somehow have enough energy left to lecture her younger brother about road safety, curfew, peer pressure, and why riding in a car with anyone named Jay was apparently a preventable tragedy? 

“She’s like…” Riki started, then stopped, because there genuinely wasn’t a normal word for you, only some abstract painting of red and black, wrathful but organized, terrifying but color-coded.

Jay stepped in with both hands raised, like he was trying to translate a myth. “Imagine your mom, but if she had anxiety.”

“And a planner,” Riki added immediately, “and a superiority complex, and an attitude, and the ability to track your location and all your friends’ locations. She has everyone’s number saved, too, just so she can call around and make sure I’m actually where I said I was.”

Riki smiles though, because the way Jake shrugs it off and doesn’t think you’re that bad makes a terrible idea begin forming in his head. If he felt that way about you, maybe some things could be arranged. 

The thing was, if anyone could survive you, it would probably be Jake. He was patient enough, he was also the kind of person teachers liked, parents trusted, classmates voted for, and strangers somehow ended up telling their life stories because he was just so easy-going. He was responsible enough to get good grades without making it his entire personality.

It was weird how the two of you had somehow never interacted despite orbiting the same school, same academic events, same kind of reputation, and yet somehow the universe had kept you separated for years. Now potentially united because of a very dumb idea.

Riki takes another sip of his drink while the idea starts taking shape. If Jake was as patient as he seemed, maybe he could handle you, if Jake could handle you, maybe he could distract you, and if somebody distracted you — Riki's life would finally begin.

Riki clears his throat, staring directly at Jake, with the kind of focus that makes Jake slowly lower his cup and narrow his eyes in suspicion.

"Why are you looking at me like tha —"

“Have you ever considered dating my sister?”

Jake simply stares, because a question that insane and honest has never landed on him before. The more Riki thinks about it, the better the idea becomes, which is unfortunate for everyone in the room because his expression slowly shifts from impulsive desperation to genuine, terrifying conviction. 

“No.”

“Why not?” Riki asks, genuinely offended, like Jake is the unreasonable one here.

Jake looks at him as if he has lost his mind. “Because she’s your sister.”

Riki waves a hand, dismissing the concern as if family relation is just a minor technicality on a form. “You don’t have to like her. Just take her out.”

Jake shakes his head, “What?”

“Take her out,” Riki repeats, slower this time, like Jake is the one struggling with basic comprehension. “Dinner, coffee, whatever girls like. Somewhere outside the house where she can’t govern my life.”

And for all the ridiculousness of the conversation, something in his face turns a little more serious. “Look, she’s always busy. Always. If she’s not studying, she’s doing house stuff, and if she’s not doing house stuff, she’s worrying about me, and ruining my life. Anyway, I think she needs to go outside and be a normal nineteen-year-old.”

“I’m not dating your sister because you want fewer curfew checks,” Jake says, though his voice has lost some of its earlier horror.

Riki stares at him for a long second, and whatever dignity he has left seems to lose the fight somewhere between desperation and the thought of another month spent being interrogated. So he will compensate. “Okay, fine,” he sighs, “I’ll pay you a hundred bucks weekly,”  

Unfortunately, the offer is not completely ridiculous in the financial sense. Your father might have forgotten how to parent somewhere along the way, but he had certainly remembered how to compensate for it by making sure money was never a scarce resource in the household. You're both pretty spoiled.

Jake was not desperate, of course, and he was not exactly suffering in the financial department either, because the Sim family had enough money for philanthropy. He did not need a hundred bucks a week, did not need to be paid to sit across from a girl at dinner, and definitely did not need to accept what was less like a favor and more like an internship. Still, there was something almost offensively easy about the idea of it — a challenge.

The proposition is ridiculous, the girl in question sounds even more ridiculous, and yet the more Riki talks about you, the more Jake finds himself wondering what kind of person could make everyone so terrified.

Jake exhales slowly, then shakes his head like he is disappointed in himself before finishing the rest of his drink. “When do I start?”

By the time the party began thinning out and people started calling rides home, Riki had graduated from slightly irresponsible to actively incapable of functioning like a normal human being. By his fifth blue drink, he started a speech about oppression that was very clearly about you and was dangerously starting to sound like a prick to the hard-earned established feminism that Jungwon had to cover his mouth. Jake was also unfortunately present for all of it, because he has to drive Riki home.

"You're a good man, Jake."

"I'm aware."

"No, like, a really good man."

"Thank you."

"The best."

Jake adjusts his grip on him, while Riki is leaning heavily against his shoulder, forcing most of his weight onto the former as they make their way up the front path of your house. Every few seconds he stumbles, nearly dragging both of them into the bushes.

"You know what my problem is?" Riki asks. "My sister."

Like he managed to summon you with a single call, the front door opens. And for the first time in his life, Jake finally sees you and not as a passing figure. The first thing he noticed was that you looked nothing like the distant, polished version of yourself he had seen around school. Those glimpses had always been quick and incomplete, a neat figure behind a podium during assemblies with your hair done properly and your expression fixed into something polite enough. Standing on your front porch at midnight, however, your hair loose, a few loose strands escaping around your face, and you're in sleeping clothes. The porch light caught the irritation on your face clearly, and you exactly had a face that looked like it had been designed to ruin a person’s confidence.

Your gaze landed on Riki first, and whatever thin thread of patience you had left snapped immediately. “You’re dead.” you said, voice flat enough. 

Riki, drunk and useless, pointed at you before looking back at Jake. “See?”

Jake could see, yes, but not exactly what everyone else seemed to see.

“I told you not to drink,” you said, already stepping forward.

“Technically,” Riki started. “You said I couldn’t drink too much, and I think —”

“No.”

Riki shut his mouth, which Jake found impressive considering he had spent the entire car ride arguing. You reached them and immediately took over, not gently, but not aggressively either. One second Jake was supporting most of Riki’s weight, and the next you had somehow taken your brother’s arm, and dragged it over your shoulder.

“You are seventeen years old,” you muttered. “Seventeen. Not grown enough to survive every stupid decision your friends encourage.”

Riki groaned and sagged against you, deciding, with the cruelty only younger brothers possessed, to become completely boneless. You nearly stumbled beneath his weight, and your annoyance sharpened so visibly that Jake almost took half a step back. “Stand properly,” you snapped. “I swear to God, Riki.”

“Uh,” Jake said, because apparently he was articulate, just not under porch lights and direct eye contact.

You paused, like you had forgotten he was there, then turned your head just enough to look at him. “What?”

“I can help.” The words left his mouth before he could fully decide whether he meant them, and for the first time that night, your attention shifted from Riki to him.

It lasted maybe two seconds, three if he was being generous, but it was enough for Jake to finally get a proper look at you and realize, with a strange and deeply inconvenient sense of betrayal, that nobody had mentioned the tyrant had pretty eyes. 

You looked at him like he was another problem that had arrived, taking in his face, his clothes, and his car behind him. Your expression did not soften, in fact, it became even more unimpressed. “No,” you said. “I’ve got him,”

You turned away before he could say anything else. The door closed a moment later, leaving Jake alone on the porch with the cool night air, and the silence of having been dismissed by a girl who had barely given him enough time to become charming.

For several seconds, he just stared at the closed door. 

That was it? That was his grand introduction to the infamous sister everyone had sworn was some terrible, unbearable monster? He had spent the entire night hearing stories about you, had driven your drunk brother home, had offered to help, and all he got in return was a death sentence aimed at Riki, two seconds of eye contact, and a rejection so cold.

Wow. Okayyy.

You’re sitting alone beneath one of the trees lining the courtyard, legs crossed neatly at the ankle, a planner open on your lap. Your attention is fixed on whatever system of color-coding you have, your neat cursive filling the page in careful lines. Even from across the courtyard, you look overwhelming. The Miu Miu loafers, the Bottega Veneta resting beside you, like you were deliberately trying to repel anyone who didn’t belong in the same tax bracket as your family.

Jake walks over easily, casually, friendly in the way he usually is without trying.

“Hey.”

You look up, not startled nor pleased, just disturbed. He smiles automatically, the kind people return before they even realize they’re doing it, because he has the sort of face that makes friendliness look charming instead of invasive. Your eyes move from the top of his head to the tips of his shoes, slow and blatantly judgmental, before returning to his face.

He waits, yet you close your planner, stand up, pick up your bag, and leave.

For a second, he just stands there while every gear in his brain grinds to a halt. Nobody has ever dismissed him that cleanly and efficiently, like he had been a minor scheduling conflict you decided to remove from your day. Obviously, he follows. You hear his footsteps behind you but you don’t react, your pace remains even, your expression unchanged, and by the time he catches up beside you, you still don’t give him so much as a glance.

“So that’s how this is gonna be?” he asks, amused despite himself. “You pretending you don’t hear me?”

You finally look over briefly. “Hi.”

Jake practically lights up at that; his smile widening, eyes brightening like he has just won something ridiculous, considering all you did was say hi. Still, he takes it as progress, watching your profile as you keep walking with your attention already returned to your planner. 

He raises an eyebrow. “Do you remember me?”

That barely gets your attention. “Yes, Jake Sim,” you say, your voice stays perfectly even. “You’re one of Riki’s friends.”

The answer comes instantly, and Jake has no idea why you saying his name feels satisfying. “So you do know me.”

You only look back down at your planner as he flashes another smile, the one that usually makes people start talking, or laughing, or tucking their hair behind their ear because what is anyone supposed to do with all of Jake Sim’s attention? Unfortunately, you aren’t looking at him at all.

He exhales a quiet laugh through his nose. “Have you always been this friendly?”

“No.”

He frowns. “So it’s personal.”

“No.”

Before he can decide whether to be offended or impressed, you push open the door to a classroom. He follows one step too close, only for you to stop at the threshold and turn around, leaving him outside. Your eyes land on him properly, sharp and unreadable, and his thoughts stumble over themselves for half a second.

“What exactly do you need?” you ask. Your tone is calm, but somehow it feels like an insult wearing perfume.

Technically speaking, he needs nothing. This becomes obvious the longer he stands there saying absolutely nothing, and from the way your eyes narrow, you reach the same conclusion at the exact same time. “If you’re looking for assistance regarding academics, facilities, or student concerns,” you say politely, “I suggest you start by talking to a member of the student body.”

He opens his mouth, but you continue before he can speak. “Although,” you add, giving him one last slow once-over, “the nurse’s building might be more appropriate.”

For a second, Jake genuinely cannot tell if you’re joking.

You are not. You offer him the smallest smile imaginable, neither warm nor friendly, but decorative at best. Then you shut the door directly in his face — which, for the record, is the second time you have done that since he met you. He stands there, staring at the wood, while inside the classroom he can already hear you speaking to someone else in a perfectly normal voice, as if he had never existed at all.

Jake spots you three days later in the library, clearly because he was looking, but this time he has a plan, and for some reason, he still believes plans work on you.

Afternoon sunlight slips through the tall windows and stretches across the desks in pale strips, and Jake finds you near the history section, seated at a wide table with your laptop open and your papers arranged so neatly. Your curls are pinned back from your face, loose pieces framing your cheeks, your eyeshadow soft and precise in a way that makes you look even more put together. You are highlighting something when he sees you, chin resting lightly on your hand, completely absorbed and completely unreachable.

Naturally, he walks straight toward you. The chair across from yours screeches when he pulls it back, loud enough that two people at another table look up. Your eyes lift immediately, widening at the earsplitting sound before narrowing at him with such open irritation that he almost feels proud for earning a reaction at all.

“What are you doing?” you ask, voice low.

Jake drops into the seat with the confidence of someone who has already survived two doors being shut in his face and is somehow eager for a third. “Studying.”

Your gaze moves from him, to the empty table behind him, to the empty seats beside you, then back to him. The silence that follows is not confused, just judgmental. “And you chose the only occupied table in this section?"

“It had the best lighting.”

“It has me.”

“Exactly.”

You stare at him for another second, face unreadable except for the small, unimpressed lift of your brows. Then you look back down at your notes, clearly deciding he is not worth the strain of further expression. For about twelve seconds, Jake pretends to open his textbook for a real reason — flips one page, glances at your highlighter, then at your face. “Can you help me with something?” he whispers.

You don’t look up. “No.”

Jake’s mouth parts slightly, then closes. He has been rejected before, technically, but never with so little effort. It bothers him more than it should, especially when you do not even look pleased with yourself. You simply continue highlighting, lips slightly parted in concentration, as if dismissing him is just another item on your to-do list.

“Fine,” he says, leaning back. “I need help with economics.”

Your highlighter stops moving, and for one hopeful second, Jake thinks he finally got you. Then your eyes lift from the page, slow and suspicious. “You got a ninety-four.”

He blinks. “So?”

“You have the second-highest grade in the class.”

“You know my grade?”

“I’m the TA,” you say flatly. “That isn’t special.”

It lands with embarrassing accuracy. His smile falters for half a second before he recovers and leans forward again, lowering his voice like the two of you are sharing a secret. “Maybe I want to be first.”

This time, you do smile, but it is not warm. “No,” you say, “Because I’m first.”

The corner of his mouth rises before he can stop it. “Then I definitely need your notes.”

“You need attention,” you correct, closing your highlighter with a soft click. “There’s a difference.”

You turn a page, your tone still calm after shutting him up. “You ask questions you already know the answers to. You sit where you clearly aren’t wanted. You make jokes because you think being charming is the same thing as being interesting.” Your eyes lift to his again. “It’s not.”

Jake stares at you. Around you, the library stays quiet, and the air feels suddenly too still, like everyone else has been kind enough not to watch him being quietly dismantled. He tries to laugh it off. “Wow.”

“You asked for help.”

“I asked for economics.”

“And I gave you something useful.”

His mouth opens, but nothing decent comes out of it — the worst part of it all. Usually, he has a joke, a grin, a way to make people soften, but with you, every easy thing he reaches for turns useless in his hand.

You begin packing your papers into your bag with that same infuriating grace, not rushed, not flustered, not even angry. You stand, bag over your shoulder, eyes catching the light when you tilt your head slightly. “Also, next time you want to sit with me, try having a reason that isn’t your ego.” Then you walk away.

For a long moment, Jake just sits there, staring at the library doors after they close behind you. The silence settles back into place around him, heavy and humiliating. He exhales slowly and comes to one devastating conclusion: he can’t do this.

“Come on, dude! It’s barely been a week and nothing happened yet. I already gave you the cash!” Riki practically begs on his knees.

Jake frowns from the other edge of the pool table as he chalks the cue, the crumpled bills still existing somewhere in his pocket because, technically speaking, he hadn't earned them. At this point, the arrangement felt less like a job and more like repeated exposure therapy that would actively ruin his psychological welfare rather than heal it. 

“No.”

Riki stares. “No? Jake.”

“No.”

Across, Jungwon looks up after his turn in billiards, with the expression of someone witnessing a familiar trainwreck but still expecting it from a mileway anyway. “What happened?”

Jake isn’t entirely sure where to begin. Maybe the front porch, then the devastating situations after it. Collectively, all encounters had taught him one important lesson: you’re impossible, not in the fun way people usually meant when describing someone to be cute — but actually a pain in the ass.

“She’s difficult,” Jake finally says while adjusting the cue against his purlicue. Jungwon just shrugs because such inference wasn’t surprising at all, I mean it’s you. 

“She doesn't want anything,” he adds. “There's usually something. People want you to laugh, they want you to like them, or they want attention. Dude, people want conversation — or literally anything.” Jake scoffs. “And she doesn't.” he exclaims, coming out more frustrated than he intended, resulting in a miscue.

Social interactions followed a pattern and Jake knew that well, even if he wasn’t the most outgoing person on this planet, he still spent his entire life understanding that pattern. With you, it felt like throwing pebbles at a castle wall that decides public embarrassment for his punishment. Normally, being Jake Sim worked. He was hot, smiley, handsome, smart, well-spoken, and had great, healthy hair too. You treated all of that the same way you'd treat a weather report; filed away and forgotten before opening up an umbrella. 

The more Jake thought about it, the more absurd you seemed. You’re nineteen years old and somehow functioning as a parent, a student, a volunteer, and whatever terrifying responsibilities that you could have stowed in that pink planner. There was probably a reason you looked perpetually exhausted, and why every conversation felt like you were mentally checking a to-do list. Also probably why you looked at Jake the way someone looked at a pop-up advertisement — unnecessary. 

“Please,” Riki says, and for the first time all afternoon there was genuine desperation in his voice. “Just keep trying.”

Jake groans. “No.”

“Please.”

Jake rubs a hand down his face, because he already knows he’s going to lose this argument. Not through Riki’s annoying persuasion, but because somewhere between getting his face ignored at the Humanities building and getting dissected in the library, Jake had become painfully curious. Every interaction left him feeling like he'd only managed to scratch the surface of an entire unearthing no one yet has discovered. He hated that a lot, the mysteries and the unfinished conversations because you just can’t seem to bear him. 

Most of all, of course, he hated that he was already wondering where he'd find you next.

A few days later, Jake finds himself in a bookstore three blocks away from campus, flipping through a poetry collection he absolutely does not want to buy. His teacher has insisted on physical copies because apparently PDFs are destroying the educational experience, while Jake personally believes the educational experience would improve significantly if the book cost less than a decent meal.

The bookstore is small, old, and crammed from floor to ceiling with shelves. It smells like paper, dust, and someone’s grandmother’s living room. He is still pretending to care about Shakespeare when the front door chimes, and he barely looks up until he hears your voice. You step inside with a headband pushing your hair back, still dressed like you came from school, except this version of you looks nothing like the girl he has been trying and failing to understand. For one thing, you are smiling, which isn’t polite smile you use like a weapon, but something real and easy.

“Hi, Mrs. Park,” you greet.

The elderly woman behind the counter brightens immediately. “There you are.”

Jake stares because, apparently, his brain has decided blinking is no longer necessary. A fat orange cat sprawled across the counter lifts its head when you approach, and you reach over to scratch beneath its chin. The cat melts instantly, stretching into your hand while you coo at it under your breath. He has seen you annoyed, composed, sharp, and dismissive, but this version of you, smiling at an old woman and whispering sweet nonsense to a cat, feels almost impossible to place beside the girl from campus.

It startles him how much he wants to keep watching.

After telling Mrs. Park you are only going to browse, you turn toward the shelves and move right into his aisle. Jake steps back instinctively, half-hidden behind a row of books, but the sensible part of him lasts for about four seconds before he decides, unfortunately, to bother you.

“You come here often?” he asks, leaning against the shelf like this is a normal thing to say and not the opening line of someone who has clearly run out of better ideas.

Your hand pauses on the spine of a novel, expression already rising from irritation. Slowly, you look at him, then around the aisle, then back at his face. “What are you doing here?”

He blinks, as if the answer should be obvious. “To read books.”

You stare at him for a second before your expression flattens. “Wow. I didn’t know you knew how to read.”

His face shifts into immediate offense. “I know how to read.”

You hum, entirely unimpressed, and continue walking down the aisle. “Coloring books don’t count.”

He laughs under his breath, dragging a hand over his face like he is trying very hard not to look too entertained. Or annoyed at how plainly rude you are without masking it. “Wow,” he mutters, following after you. “For the record, real books. Little Women. The Bell Jar. Percy Jackson.”

You stop walking and turn to him properly, huffing once through your nose. “Percy Jackson is new. Is that a thing now? The male campaign for feminism?”

His eyebrows lift. “All I’m hearing is you also read Percy Jackson and that we have something in common.”

Your eyes lift to his, flat and unimpressed, but there is the faintest twitch at the corner of your mouth. “Right, how exciting it is to bond over a children’s fantasy series.”

“Well,” he says, smiling. “It’s a start.”

You turn away, but he catches the tiny pause in your movement, the almost-smile you refuse to let happen. It feels ridiculous, how much that small reaction does to him even though he has won games in front of cheering crowds and accepted medals in crowded auditoriums, yet somehow, getting half a smile out of you in a dusty bookstore feels more victorious. “Since we’re apparently literary equals now, do you want to get coffee?”

You just stare at him, brows drawn together, lips parted slightly, as if you are trying to understand what series of events in his life has led him to think that was an appropriate thing to say to you. “No,” you say.

The answer comes cleanly, and he just blinks. “What? Why not?”

“I have coffee at home.”

For a second, he just stands there, disbelieved and a little done. You turn back to the shelf like the matter is settled, fingers skimming over another row of spines while he processes the fact that you have somehow rejected him without remorse or politeness.

“That’s not the point,” he says.

You scoff. “Then why did you ask?”

He opens his mouth, then closes it again. Instead, he exhales a laugh, softer this time. “Because most normal people actually understand that getting coffee means spending time together.”

You hum, still not looking at him. “Then you should have asked that.” You reach for a book on the higher shelf, and when you glance at him again, there is the faintest flicker of amusement in your eyes.

He laughs under his breath, and this time, he doesn’t even bother hiding how entertained he is. “You’re impossible.”

“And you’re predictable.”

“Fine,” he says, straightening a little. “Go out with me?”

You stop moving for barely a second, but Jake sees the tiny pause in your hand against the shelf, the way your face goes still like the question landed somewhere you didn’t expect. For once, he doesn’t grin.

Then you pull a book from the shelf and shove it against his chest. “No,” you say, coming out quieter than before, less mean than before. “Read your book.”

Jake catches it automatically, turning it a little to see that it’s the poetry collection he came here for.

By the time he looks back up, you’re already walking away, but not before he catches the smallest curve at the corner of your mouth. And, unfortunately for him, that feels a lot like a maybe.

The annual charity gala occupied all three floors of the Grand Ballroom, transforming an expensive venue into something that looked less like an event and more like a display of wealth (though, yes, it is). Guests emerged draped in custom couture and tailored suits, while somewhere near the entrance, a string quartet played softly enough not to interrupt conversation. Crystal chandeliers hung overhead in cascading tiers, fresh floral arrangements towered from the center of each table (imported blooms flown in specifically for the event, you coined in the suggestion of peonies). Waiters moved soundlessly between guests carrying silver trays lined with champagne flutes. 

You had spent your entire life in diamond rooms where people discussed acquisitions over appetizers and spoke about money like it was weather. You'd sat beside CEOs at dinner because they were family friends, and investors shared laughter with your father over barbecue in your backyard. Without the pretense of acting remotely impressed, you boredly made your way through the halls as you passed by familiar faces. You smile, greet, remember names, and pretend you enjoy hearing about quarterly growth projections — your father did tell you to learn from what the older ones tell you, but now you learn to breathe deeply through your nostrils so as to not yawn.

The Elie Saab Spring 2003 gown skimmed against your legs as you moved through the ballroom, pale fabric catching the chandelier light whenever you turned. It was just something your father had pulled from storage for tonight, another piece of old couture that had spent more time preserved in garment bags than actually being worn. The fabric itched, the fit was annoyingly snug around your hips, and entirely wasted on you considering all you could think about how little room it left for dessert.

You'd just escaped a conversation about market expansion into the rural regions of the country when you reach for a glass of champagne from a passing tray.

"Wow."

You freeze immediately. Because you know that voice. Know it well enough that your eyes roll before you even turn around. Jake Sim stands a few feet away, hands tucked into his pockets, looking entirely too entertained by something.

Specifically you.

"What?" The question leaves you sharper than intended, but he has always had a talent for earning it.

His gaze sweeps over you once, slowly. It isn’t enough to be inappropriate, just enough to be annoying. "Nothing."

You narrow your eyes. Jake, unfortunately, appears completely unbothered by this, like he’s finally used to it and finds it amusing rather than frightening.

For a moment, the two of you simply stand there, shoulder to shoulder, watching guests drift across the ballroom that it almost looks normal — respectable, even, as if you’re two people attending the same charity gala with poise and tact instead of a high school bizarrerie of a situation this has become.

"You clean up well." His gaze drifts back to you for a brief second before returning to the ballroom. 

You turn so quickly towards him he actually laughs. "I always clean up well."

"Right."

"I do."

He bites the inside of his cheek, clearly trying not to smile. You take a sip of champagne as he steals a glass from a passing waiter, mirroring your movement to sip from his. "What are you doing here?" you shoot back under your breath.

He blinks at the question, looking almost offended on behalf of his own presence. "Are you asking why I'm at a charity event," he begins slowly, "or are you accusing me of stalking you?"

You practically glare at him but quickly shift to a warm smile when a familiar older face greets you, wrinkly and your father’s acquaintance. Once she leaves, you clear your throat and shrug casually. "I’m starting to think it's reached concerning levels."

That earns you a look — a long, disbelieving stare. He gestures vaguely to himself, as though presenting evidence before a jury, and that he clearly belongs here about as much as anyone else in attendance. "Come on." he chuckles as his eyebrows rise. "I look like this and your conclusion is that I trespassed just to see you?"

You hate how your eyes give in to immediately flicking toward him because, God, he's annoyingly right.

The black suit fits him unfairly well. His hair, usually left to do whatever it wants, has actually been styled for once, pushed neatly away from his face save for a single strand that has somehow escaped and fallen across his forehead. Standing beneath the chandeliers with a champagne glass in hand, he looks less like the guy who regularly shows up during the most random times and a prince, unfortunately.

You clear your throat and look away before that thought can do any more damage. "You make it hard not to think that way."

You almost forgot just how affluent the Sim’s are — that is, in your defense, was just a detail you overlooked. He isn't some random idiot who keeps appearing in your life through increasingly unlikely circumstances, his family name actually appears in newspapers and annual reports and conversations your father has over dinner. 

You drain the rest of your champagne before he can say anything. "Well," you say, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle from your gown, "it's been lovely speaking with you, Mr. Sim." The title earns an immediate snort, and you continue before he can interrupt. "Please extend my regards to your family." Satisfied with yourself, you offer him the sort of polished smile that had been drilled into you and turn to leave, as you’ve decided that you will stop entertaining the jest.

A hand settles lightly at your shoulder. “There you are.”

You turn at the sound of your father’s voice and immediately straighten. It happens before you can stop it, your spine aligning, your expression smoothing, every loose, irritated part of you folding back into place like a napkin at a five-star restaurant. “Hi, Dad.”

He then guides you aside with the kind of effortless authority. “You’ve been doing well tonight,” he says.

The compliment should feel nice, and it does for half a second until you remember who it’s coming from and how rare it is, and suddenly it feels less like praise and more like something you have to catch carefully. “Thank you,” you say.

His eyes drift past you, scanning the room. “Where’s Riki?”

Your fingers tighten slightly around the stem of your champagne glass. The room remains warm with bodies and lights and expensive alcohol, but somehow you feel cold all at once. “He probably forgot. He had practice earlier, and his workload’s been heavy.”

Your father looks at you then, and you immediately hate the expression on his face. Because it’s disappointment dressed up as responsibility, one you know too well. “You’re his older sister,” he says. “You know how he is. You should have made sure he came.”

For a second, you only stare at him, at the neat way he fixed his hair and made his collar. Somewhere near the stage, the host tests the microphone and the feedback screeches faintly through the room. “I can’t force him to come,” you say carefully.

Your father’s mouth presses into a thin line. “You’ve never had a problem controlling him before.”

Something hot sparks behind your ribs. You didn’t care for anyone to think that way about you, but the way your father had borrowed the notion feels shitty. “He’s seventeen, he’s going to be careless — that’s expected. But you know better.” he looks at you this time. “So do better.”

For a moment, you can’t speak. Because how can you be nineteen, and somehow old enough to be held responsible for everyone else’s failures. “I should talk to some friends,” you say as you take a step back.

Your father nods, already looking toward another guest who has begun approaching him. “Good.”

You turn before your face can betray anything and walk away, heels clicking against the marble floor. By the time you reach the hallway leading away from the ballroom, irritation has burned through whatever hurt came first — your jaw aches from clenching and your chest feels tight with things you can’t say. You turn the corner too quickly and a hand catches your wrist, a gasp spilling as you’re pulled backward, your shoes skidding slightly against the polished floor before another hand steadies you just enough to keep you from stumbling.

Then you look up to see Jake. 

“What the hell?” you hiss.

He raises both hands immediately, though one stays close in case you lose your balance again. “Okay, bad approach.”

You stare at him, breath uneven. “Are you insane?”

“A little,” he admits. “But I just came from the restroom and you came out looking very mad.”

Your expression shifts before you can stop it. “Move,” you say, trying to step past him.

However, he doesn’t move. “You need air,” he says.

“I need people to stop telling me what I need. And I need you to stop appearing everywhere.”

His mouth twitches. “Fair.”

You narrow your eyes again. “Then move.”

He glances behind him toward a side door at the end of the corridor and you follow. Beyond it, you can see the faint spill of garden lights through the glass, and when you look back at him, you can see the words in his eyes. “Two minutes,” he says.

“No.”

“Then one.”

“Jake.”

“You can yell at me outside.”

You should go back into the ballroom, smile at executives, pretend your father didn’t just hand you responsibility for a brother he barely remembered to parent. Instead, when Jake gently reaches for your wrist again, you let him anyway.

The garden outside is cooler, quieter, and beautiful. Tall hedges line the stone pathway, trimmed carefully beneath strings of warm lights while white roses climb the trellises, their petals pale and some aging. The distant sound of the ballroom fades behind the closed door until it becomes nothing but a muffled noise as you walk further.

The cold reaches you almost immediately, slipping through the thin fabric of your gown and settling against your skin, but you refuse to shiver in front of him. For a while, neither of you says anything as you only tighten your arms around yourself, pretending it’s irritation and not the cold making your shoulders rise. He watches you for a second, like he’s debating whether saying anything will get him killed faster than staying quiet. Then, with both hands tucked into his pant pockets, he nods toward the stone path. “Walk with me?”

You stare at him, unimpressed, but eventually follow because the alternative is going back inside and smiling until your face cracks in half. The two of you move beneath the garden lights in silence, your heels clicking softly against stone while his steps stay slower than usual, like he’s matching your pace without making it obvious. You keep your arms crossed tight, eyes fixed on the roses ahead, while Jake walks beside you with his hands still buried in his pockets. For once, he doesn’t fill the silence just to fill it.

Which lasts forty-seven seconds.

“Riki told me he wasn’t going.”

Every strange thing that had happened to you recently could be traced back to your brother tonight. When you open your eyes again, Jake is looking ahead, hands still tucked in his pockets. “Right. You’re friends.” you say as you remember. “So he just tells you things.”

He shrugs. “Occasionally.”

“About me?”

He looks like he already regrets opening his mouth, but only halfway. “Not that much.” He falls into step beside you again, catching up with your pace. “Him not showing up must be why you’re upset?” he says carefully.

You turn your head slowly and he immediately lifts both hands, palms out, although the smile pulling at his mouth ruins the surrender. “I’m just asking.”

“You’re nosy.”

“Well, yes.”

You stare at him for a second longer, trying very hard to remain annoyed. Unfortunately, Jake has this terrible habit of making honesty look harmless. Although, he is very much a threat, maybe not the loud or dramatic kind, but the sort that slips past defenses because it smiles and asks questions and walks slower beside you when your feet are hurting.

You look away first, only for him to take that as permission, because he continues. “Let me guess. Your dad’s pissed because he didn’t show up.”

“No.” Still, your jaw tightens. And he notices. His expression shifts slightly, amusement dimming into something quieter. “You’re shitty at guessing.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He nods like he’s accepting the challenge. “Then maybe it’s the champagne. Bad year?”

You give him a look. “It’s champagne.”

“So yes.”

“No.”

“Is it the gown? You keep tugging at it.”

Your hand immediately stills at your hip, growing a little insecure. “I am not.”

“You are.”

You glare at him, but there’s a traitorous twitch at the corner of your mouth that you immediately force away. He catches it anyway and his eyes brighten. “There it is.”

“There’s nothing.”

“Well, I think there is something. The garden’s very enchanted tonight.” he sighs in relief, looking very pleased with himself.

“You are so annoying,” you mutter, turning your face away before he can catch the smile fighting its way onto your mouth.

“I’ve been told.”

“Frequently, I hope.” You roll your eyes and keep walking, but the anger inside your chest has loosened slightly, enough that breathing doesn’t feel like swallowing flute glass anymore. It irritates you a little that he helped without doing anything grand, only so much as walking beside you, filling the silence with stupid guesses, making it impossible for you to fully sink into whatever your father had left behind.

He looks at you again. “Is it one of the donors?”

“No.”

“Board member?”

“No.”

Then, because Jake really is bad at guessing, he says, “Or maybe it’s about a guy.”

Your head snaps up. “A guy?”

He shrugs, trying for casual and failing spectacularly because there is something too deliberate in the way he doesn’t look directly at you. “Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe a boyfriend.”

You actually laugh, disbelieving. “A boyfriend?”

“A shitty boyfriend,” he clarifies, like that makes it a more reasonable theory to hypothesize tonight. “Maybe he said something stupid. Maybe he’s the reason you look so grumpy in couture.”

You stare at him before you scoff, shaking your head as you look away. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

The silence that follows is immediate and loud. He doesn’t say anything, and because he doesn’t say anything, you look back to see he’s looking ahead now, with the corner of his mouth lifted just slightly.

“Good.”

Your heart trips over itself. You stare at him, horrified by the fact that your face feels warm. “Good?”

His mouth twitches. “Yeah.”

“You’re being weird.”

He turns back to you then, eyebrows raised. “How?”

You open your mouth but nothing comes out. Explaining it would mean admitting that you noticed the difference between his usual and this one; it would mean admitting that you were paying attention to the boy that’s making space for himself in your life, little by little. So instead, you do the mature thing of looking away and walking.

He hums, pleased with himself, and the sound makes your hands tighten around your arms again without the cold having to do with it at all. For a few steps, neither of you speaks as the garden path curves around a fountain, water spilling quietly over stone. Out here, your hair has loosened from its pins and the night air has cooled your cheeks after learning warmth a little too much tonight.

“You know,” he says after a while, softer now, “for what it’s worth, I don’t think Riki skipping tonight is your fault.”

Your throat tightens before you can stop it, continuing to stare ahead. “I didn’t ask.”

For once, he doesn’t tilt his head with that pleased little smile, doesn’t turn your sentence into something lighter just because he can. He only keeps walking beside you in silence, letting the water from the fountain grow louder as you near it. You almost wish he would say something annoying, just so that it would give you something to swat at, something easy to roll your eyes over, something that didn’t require you to stand there with all the ugly feelings still sitting in your chest like stones.

A bench sits just in front of the fountain, tucked between two rose trellises and half-hidden from the ballroom windows. One second you’re walking, the next you’re lowering yourself onto the bench, careful with the fabric of your gown, your hands folding tightly in your lap like you’re trying to hold yourself together through posture alone. He stops a few feet away and after a careful pause, he sits on the opposite end of the bench, far enough that there’s a whole stretch of cold stone between you, choosing to understand that closeness right now might make you run.

He isn’t looking back when you look at him, his hands are clasped loosely in front of him as he stares at his fidgeting fingers instead, giving you the sort of space he knows you need. The kindness of it is small. A boy sitting a respectful distance away from you in a garden at a charity gala, saying nothing while you pretend you don’t feel miserable.

You bite your bottom lip, contemplating whether you’ll entertain words sitting at the back of your throat, heavy and stubborn, and you tell yourself not to say them. You don’t even know him like that because he’s not your friend; he’s Riki’s friend, an irritating hallway apparition, a boy who somehow knows too much and still not enough.

Your eyes stay on the building across the garden, right where you both came from. When you speak, your voice is quieter. “It’s not just because Riki didn’t show up.”

Jake remains still, but you notice the way his attention sharpens a little. “I told him about tonight,” you say. “I reminded him. I even texted him this morning.” Your fingers tighten around each other in your lap. “And he didn’t come. Which is annoying, yes, but it’s also just Riki. He forgets things, gets distracted, acts like nothing bad can happen to him.”

The fountain fills the silence for a moment, the ballroom doors open briefly, spilling faint music and laughter into the garden before closing again. “I don’t do it for fun,” you say, almost under your breath. “The controlling thing.”

You hate that word and how easily people use it, like it explains everything, like you woke up one day and decided being difficult was easier. “I don’t know how to parent,” you admit. “I know he’s my brother, not my child, but somehow it became my job anyway.”

Jake does not interrupt, he only looks at you, steady and quiet, and that makes it worse because it makes you want to keep talking. “My mom’s a long story, and my dad…” You laugh softly, but there is no humor in it. “He pays for things. He’s not cruel. He just doesn’t know the small things. When Riki has practice, or when he has exams, or when he’s sick and pretending he isn’t.”

You look down at your hands. “He doesn’t know who to call when Riki doesn’t answer his phone.” Your throat tightens. “And I do.” The words sit between you, heavier than you meant them to be. “I just did what I thought was right. I’m not a mom. I don’t know what I’m doing. But then my father looks at me tonight and tells me to do better, like I haven’t been trying since I was eleven.”

For a moment, Jake doesn’t say anything. His expression shifts again, losing the last of its teasing until all that’s left is something quieter, something you don’t quite know how to hold without feeling embarrassed.

He looks down at your hands. “Is that why you’re upset tonight?”

You press your lips together before you nod. His gaze lifts to your face again, his voice gentle when he asks, “Is that why you’re upset every day?”

The question catches you so off guard that you laugh, a soft and helpless sound that slips out before you can stop it. 

Then you nod again and he smiles a little too. “Okay.”

You huff, wiping beneath your eye quickly before anything can happen there. Somehow sitting beside Jake Sim in the cold garden after admitting the worst parts of yourself feels less humiliating than it should. Maybe because he hasn’t moved closer, even though some terrible, traitorous part of you wonders what would happen if he did. Instead, he stays on his side of the bench, careful and warm from a distance.

You look at him finally. “Do people really think I’m a bitch?”

He freezes instantly, so immediate that you sigh for even asking. His eyes flick to you, then away, then back again, like he is suddenly trying to navigate a conversation with several live wires tucked into it.

You raise your brows, but you’re smiling. “So yes.”

“No.”

He exhales, rubbing the back of his neck, looking genuinely shy, which is oddly enough to distract you from your own misery. “I mean, I don’t think that.”

You tilt your head, amusement softening your face. “Okay, so what did you think?”

His tongue pokes the inside of his cheek. “I thought you were scary.” He looks at you, then immediately adds, “I still think you’re scary.”

Your eyes narrow, almost to a glare. “You’re scared of me?” You try to make it sound like a joke but it doesn’t quite work.

His mouth tilts. “The first time you shut the door in my face? Yeah.”

A breath of laughter escapes you as you remember a very irritable night of a brother coming home drunk. “You should’ve stopped then.”

“I considered it.” He leans back slightly, looking at the fountain instead of you now. “But then you smiled at a cat named Chicken.”

Your head snaps toward him. For a second, he looks like he wants to physically pull the words back into his mouth after saying it too easily and comfortably, like the memory had been sitting there the whole time and slipped out before he could decide. He exhales, rubbing a hand over the side of his face. “I saw it,” he admits. “You were with Mrs. Park, and then the cat got up, and you just...” He stops, suddenly aware of how much detail he is giving. “You looked different.”

Your face warms despite yourself, but you keep your expression sharp. “So you were watching me.”

He lifts one hand like he is surrendering in court. “I know how it sounds. I just mean I noticed you before you noticed me.”

You fold your arms, still looking at him like he has committed some minor felony against your privacy. “And you remembered the cat’s name?”

“You called him Chicken.”

“Because his name is Chicken.”

“Which is insane, by the way.”

You almost smile at that, but you press it down immediately. Unfortunately, Jake sees the attempt; fortunately, he has enough survival instinct not to mention it, and to choose his words with more care this time. “I guess I just didn’t expect you to look less angry.” His gaze flicks to yours.

You scoff, but there is barely any bite in it. “So you watched me because I looked less angry?”

“No,” he says, then pauses. “Maybe. A little. I don’t know.” He exhales, looking down at his hands. “Everyone talked about you like you were this impossible person. Then I met you and, yeah, you were mean to me.”

A laugh slips out of you before you can stop it, quiet and a little disbelieving. “Yeah, well,” you say, looking away first, “I wasn’t exactly making myself likable.”

His smile softens at that, not teasing this time. “I’m not saying you made it easy.” His eyes stay on you, steady enough to make your chest feel weird. “I’m saying I still wanted to get to know you.”

For once, you don’t have anything sharp to say back. You study him, searching for the joke, the little loophole where he gets to wriggle away from accountability. But he only sits there on the far end of the bench, shoulders slightly hunched, looking embarrassed enough that it almost feels unfair to keep glaring. The two of you listen to the fountain where water spills over stone, soft and repetitive, while the ballroom continues humming in the distance like another life waiting for you to come back and behave.

“You know,” you say slowly, “normal people introduce themselves.”

He glances at you. “I did.”

You give him a look. “You followed me through campus.”

“I said hey.”

“That is not an introduction, that was stalking.”

He laughs, and you roll your eyes, though the smile threatening the corner of your mouth makes the whole thing less convincing than you probably want it to be. He turns his body slightly toward you, still careful not to crowd your space, his expression shifting into something softer beneath the amusement.

“Okay,” he says. “Then let me redo it.”

He straightens a little, smoothing one hand over his suit jacket like he is preparing for something far more formal than a conversation beside you. It should look ridiculous, but then he looks at you with an earnestness that makes your guard hesitate before you can stop it.

“Hi,” he says, offering his hand. “I’m Jake Sim. I’m Riki’s friend. I have a border collie named Layla. I play soccer, I’m good at math, and I’m apparently terrible at approaching girls who scare me.”

You stare at him. Surprised. Confused. Heart fluttering a little.

His smile softens, but he keeps going, quieter now, like the next part matters more than the joke. “I also know I made a bad first impression. And I know you had every reason to think I was annoying.”

“You are annoying,” you say automatically while your hand reaches his to shake.

“I know.” His smile grows a little. “But I’m trying to be less annoying.”

“Unlikely.”

“Probably,” he admits. “But I’d still like to try.”

For a second after that, neither of you says anything. Your hand slips out of his, and both of you look away at almost the same time, like you’re both processing that you’ve just held hands. Jake clears his throat and fixes his posture, sitting up straighter as if that might undo the way his smile is still refusing to leave his face. 

“Well,” you say after a moment, folding your hands over your lap, “you’re the first person who’s actually lasted this long with me.” You say it lightly, almost dismissively, but your eyes stay in front of you. “Most people usually give up before this part.”

His smile fades just a little, not into sadness exactly, but into something more attentive. “Because you push them away?”

You huff out a small laugh. “Friends, mostly.” Then your mouth twists, like you’re deciding whether to soften the words or not. “Apparently, people can’t handle a heinous bitch for very long.”

He huffs a small laugh, looking down at his fidgeting hands. You glance at him, confused. “What?”

He shakes his head once, like he’s amused by something private. “Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

His gaze lifts to yours again. There’s a strange look on his face now, which isn’t teasing exactly, but not shy either. 

Then he says, “I’m not trying to be your friend.”

The sentence lands so cleanly that, for one impossible second, your entire brain goes quiet. You stare at him and Jake stares back.

Somewhere behind the doors, people are still drinking champagne and discussing donations and waiting for you to return as the version of yourself they understand, while here, on this bench, Jake Sim has just said something far too simple to be misunderstood.

Your mouth parts slightly. “What?”

His confidence seems to flicker only after he realizes he has actually said it out loud and not something he kept in his head. His ears go faintly red, but he doesn’t look away, keeping his legs crisscrossed on the bench like an idiot prince, looking at you like he knows exactly what he meant and is terrified by it anyway.

“I mean,” he starts, then stops. He exhales, laughing under his breath, embarrassed now. “I mean, I can be. Your friend.”

“That is not what you said.”

“I know.”

“You said you weren’t trying to be my friend.”

“I know what I said.”

Your face feels hot. Horribly, unmistakably hot.

His eyes drop for half a second to your mouth before returning to your face so quickly you almost think you imagined it. You look away first because if you keep looking at him, something very stupid is going to happen to your composure.

You clear your throat. “I should go back.”

His gaze lifts immediately, but he doesn’t argue. “Yeah.”

You expected a joke, a dramatic sigh, maybe some irritating line about how tragic it is that society needs you more than he does. Instead, he only nods and begins unfolding himself from the bench. “You’re not going to convince me to stay?” you ask before you can stop yourself.

Jake stands, brushing one hand over his trousers. “Do you want me to?”

He looks at you, and something in his expression grows rigid again when he realizes what he just asked. So he corrects himself. “I mean,” he says, “I can. But I can also walk you back.”

You look away, pretending to adjust the fabric of your gown. “Fine.”

His mouth curves. “Fine?”

“Yes.”

He laughs under his breath, and you hate that you smile. You stand carefully from the bench, smoothing the skirt of your gown with both hands, only to freeze to find the pale fabric is stained. It’s not ruined, necessarily, but definitely marked where the garden path must have turned soft near the fountain, with a faint smear of mud that darkens the edge of the gown, and when you glance down at your shoes, the thin straps and pointed toes have flecks of dirt on them. You’ve spent all night holding yourself together, only to end up in a garden with Riki’s friend, exposing everything you’ve kept to yourself, and now covered in mud at your father’s charity gala.

“I can’t walk back in like this.” you can only sigh.

He grins, then his eyes drop again to your shoes, while the amusement fades into thoughtfulness. “Do you want me to carry you?”

You look at him so fast your neck nearly protests. “What?”

His face changes instantly and his ears go red again. “Sorry. I mean, not like that. I just meant because of the mud, and your heels, and the dress, and the path is kind of wet. It might get worse. Aren’t your feet tired?”

You stare at him as he exhales, glancing away for a second before looking back at you, steadier this time. “I can carry you back.” The correction is soft, because it’s not a question that leaves you to decide whether accepting makes you ridiculous. It’s an offer.

“In front of everyone?”

“No,” he says quickly, then gestures toward the side path. “Not everyone. There’s another entrance near the hallway, right? The one we came out of. I can take you there.”

You blink and the idea is absurd, too much for everything that has happened tonight. “I’m not letting you carry me.”

“Okay.”

You shake your head, but you’re smiling again, and this time you don’t try to hide it anymore. 

The two of you start down the side path slowly, your steps careful over the damp stone and softer patches of grass. The garden seems colder now as the breeze slips beneath the thin fabric of your gown, crawling across your bare shoulders until you can’t stop the small shiver that runs through you. You tuck your chin, tighten your arms around yourself, and keep walking like your body hasn’t just betrayed you in front of the most observant boy alive.

One second he is walking beside you in his perfectly fitted black suit, and the next, warm fabric settles around you, heavy and soft, falling over your bare shoulders with a carefulness that makes your breath catch. You stop walking, letting his hands hover for half a second near your shoulders to make sure the jacket doesn’t slide off before he pulls them back.

You look down at the jacket, then back at him with a glare of concern. “You’re going to get cold.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re in a dress shirt.”

“And you’re shivering.”

“I was not.” You glare at him, but it has no teeth now, no bite, which he seems to know that too, because his smile turns softer. 

“Just wear it.”

The two of you continue toward the side entrance, slower than necessary, slower than you have ever been. Your gown brushes against the grass, stained hem gathered slightly in one hand, while his jacket hangs around your shoulders.

You should worry about the mud, the whispers, your father, the fact that Jake Sim’s jacket is currently covering your gown in a way that feels too intimate for something so practical. But you haven’t cared even though the vintage and expensive dress you wear is dirty. Instead, you laugh again when your heel sinks slightly into the damp ground. Your heels click against the marble as you step back into the hallway, the sound suddenly too clean after the wet grass and stone path outside. You can already hear the faint swell of conversation beyond the ballroom doors waiting at the end like a mouth full of gold light and noise; the clinking glasses, the polite laughter, the entire world you are supposed to return to with your posture fixed and your expression arranged.

You reach for his jacket before you can think too much about it. He takes it carefully, his fingers brushing the fabric where your hands had been. You smooth the front of your gown, trying to rebuild yourself enough to step back inside. “If you tell anyone what happened...”

“I won’t,” he says, before you even finish. “I won’t.” he repeats, softer.

For some reason, you believe him immediately. So you nod once, gathering yourself before pushing the doors open. The warmth and noise rushes back in at once, golden light spilling over your face as you step into the room again. 

It takes less than a minute for your father to find you, and once he does, his eyes move over you, first your hair, then the faint mud near your dress, then your shoes. His brows draw together. “What happened to you?”

Normally, you would straighten, explain and apologize, but this time, you only shrug. “I had a bit too much champagne,” you say lightly.

By the time you returned to your room that night, the mud had already dried along the hem of your gown, your hair had loosened almost completely from its pins, and even though Jake Sim’s jacket had been returned before either of you stepped back into the ballroom, the warmth of it still seemed to sit stubbornly across your shoulders — surreal until beneath the covers.

That was the irritating part, really. Things were supposed to end when they ended. Jackets were returned, doors were opened, conversations were folded away with the rest of the evening, but the garden did not leave with the night, nor did the memory of him sitting across from you on the bench, careful with the distance, looking at you like he had seen the worst parts and somehow decided they were not enough to scare him away.

Neither of you talked about it after. Not properly.

There were moments where it almost happened, which was perhaps worse than if nothing had happened at all, because the next morning at school, when you saw him across the courtyard with Riki and the others, laughing at something Jay said, his eyes found yours through the movement of students and sunlight, and for one strange second, the entire campus seemed to narrow into the space between you — before Riki shoved his shoulder like a dumbass.

Jake learns fairly quickly that he is feeling (concerned, of course, that’s all) for you. And it’s inconvenient.

At first, that is the only word he lets himself use, because it sounds harmless enough. It is easier to call you inconvenient than admit that somewhere between a porch light, a bookstore cat, and a garden bench, his original reason for approaching you has started to rot quietly in the back of his conscience.

Riki had paid him.

Not in a serious way, or in a way any adult would consider legally binding or morally sophisticated, but still enough that Jake sometimes thinks about the crumpled bills and feels something unpleasant crawl under his skin. At the beginning, it had meant a task, this whole idea of keeping you occupied so Riki could have room to breathe. You were a challenge then, a sharp-tongued older sister with a reputation, a schedule, a glare that could salt the earth, and a list of rules for a brother who needed to survive for his benefit.

It was getting harder to think of you as a job when you showed him what you thought were the ugliest parts of yourself, and he could only think you still looked pretty. 

He is also actively trying not to think about it on the pavement when his phone buzzes in his pocket. 

“Bro,” Riki says the second Jake answers, voice low and hurried. “I need you to take my sister out tonight.”

He pauses with one hand still on Layla’s leash, standing on the sidewalk outside his house while the dog sniffs a bush. Jake’s starting to think that Riki’s a bit more insane than you are, because he always asks the most unhinged favors. “What?”

“You know,” Riki says quickly, then seems to think about it. “Our deal. I need it badly tonight. I have plans.”

Jake’s expression flattens. “What plans?”

“A date.”

There is silence — one awkward silence.

Layla tugs at the leash and Jake lets himself be pulled two steps forward before asking, very carefully, “Does your sister know?”

“No, obviously not.”

“Riki.”

“It’s not bad,” Riki insists immediately. “I’m just going out with this girl from school, and I’ll be home early, but if my sister’s home and I’m not, she’s gonna start calling people and asking questions again. It’s part of her rules that I’m not allowed to date ‘til I’m eighteen.”

Jake rubs a hand over his face, already feeling the shape of the problem and disliking how familiar it has become. Especially not when he was just trying to control his little growing trouble that made up of you and your pretty eyes and adorable smile. “So your solution is to make me distract her.”

“I pay a hundred bucks a week for that!”

Jake almost laughs, because three weeks ago he might have been amused enough to play along with the joke, but now the whole thing sits differently in his chest. There is the old agreement, of course, the stupid one made at a party over drinks and Riki’s desperation, but there is also the garden, your face under the lights, your voice beside the fountain, your hand taking his jacket before you stepped back into the ballroom, and the way you had looked at him like you did not know whether to trust him but might have wanted to.

“I’m not doing this because you asked,” Jake says.

Riki makes a confused sound. “But I did ask.”

“I know.” Jake says, watching Layla sit neatly at his feet and look up as if even she understands this is going badly. “I’m saying if I take her somewhere, it’s because I want to.”

Then Riki says, with the kind of slow horror that proves he has begun realizing his plan may have developed organs and free will, “Oh.”

By the time evening settles over the city, you are in your room with your hair clipped back and a half-finished movie open in front of you when your phone lights up with Jake’s name, which is already annoying because he has apparently become someone whose name makes your attention trip over itself before you can discipline it with strict rules and bad parenting.

You stare at the screen for two rings. Then you answer. “What?”

There is a brief pause, and you can almost hear his smile through the phone. “Hi to you too.”

His voice slips through the speaker in a way that makes your room feel a little more warm than it did a second ago. You hate that he can do that now, that he can enter a space and rearrange the air without even being physically present, as though your life has become embarrassingly vulnerable to boys with good timing and probably bad intentions, because who calls at 9PM?

You lean back against your headboard. “Why are you calling me?”

“Because I’m going to the night market across town,” he says. “There are food trucks, stalls, probably overpriced shit,”

You cock a brow at relevance. “Okay?”

“Come with me.”

The sentence is too simple. Not do you want to come, or are you free, or any kind of question you can fold neatly into an excuse and return unopened. 

Your fingers tighten around your phone. “No.”

He doesn’t answer right away, and you expect him to push immediately, because that is usually what he does. He appears in hallways, sits at your library table, follows you through conversations until you leave, but now he only lets your answer sit there for a second.

Then he says, “Okay.”

You blink. The movie on your laptop continues playing in the background, but your attention has already abandoned it entirely.  “Then why are you still calling?” you ask.

On the other end, there is a small pause. 

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I guess I don’t really want to hang up yet.”

The movie keeps playing in front of you, bright colors moving across your laptop screen, but the sound has become nothing. You stare at the monitor instead, and try to ignore the way your face has warmed.

“That’s a terrible reason,” you say quietly.

“Yeah.” he laughs after. Neither of you speaks for a second until he breathes out softly. “I just thought you might like it.”

You smile down at your phone, suddenly brave because he can’t see your face. “You sound nervous.” 

He goes quiet for half a second before answering, softer, “I am nervous. A little.”

You press the phone closer to your ear without meaning to. “Why?”

Then, quieter, “Because I asked you to come with me and you said no.” he lets out a soft chuckle, like he can’t believe himself for what he’s about to say, “But I’m going to be there,” he says. “And I’d rather go with you.”

There it is again, that careless honesty of his, the kind that does not ask for anything too loudly. Despite the oddity of the situation, your brain is less of a shamble than it is mellowed out — which you should probably question and panic about. Later.

You stare at your laptop for a long second. And for reasons you cannot fathom, you wonder what’s so bad about going somewhere tonight. With Jake. “How far is it?”

He does not answer immediately, maybe busy weighing in what that means already. You can practically feel him trying not to sound pleased. “Across town,” he says carefully. “Twenty minutes, maybe.”

You still for a moment, playing with your blankets in between your fingers while you think this through. And like he can sense your hesitance, he helps you. “Give me one hour,” he says. “If you hate it, I’ll take you home.”

You shake your head, still smiling. “You’re very confident for someone I haven’t technically agreed to go out with.”

The silence that follows is immediate as your eyes open wide, just realizing it at the exact same time he does. You sit up straighter, heat rushing to your face because you didn’t mean it like that. “I mean go out to the market.”

“Yeah,” he says, voice quieter now. “I know.”

Fifteen minutes later, you step out of the house in comfortable clothes, locking the door behind you before you can think too hard about the fact that you came out at all. The night air hits your face immediately, cooler than expected, and you hug your arms loosely around yourself as your eyes find him near the curb.

Jake is leaning against his car with his hands in his pants pockets, head slightly lowered, looking unfairly casual in a hoodie layered beneath a jacket, his hair falling over his forehead like he did not spend even one second thinking about how he looked before coming here. Which is ridiculous, because some people look better when they try, but Jake Sim has apparently been designed by nature to look the most when he appears completely unaware of himself.

His gaze travels over you once, slow to take you in. You usually look like you’ve been assembled by clothing that make people feel underdressed by association, but tonight you’re in sweatpants and a fitted tank top beneath a jacket, hair loose, face bare. He looks at you like he is taking in the fact that you came downstairs for him.

“What?” you ask, already defensive.

He shakes his head, but the smile gets there before his denial does. “Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

He pushes himself off the car, one hand already reaching for the passenger door handle. “You look cute.”

You physically jerk to a stop and your face warms immediately. “You’re weird.”

“I’ve heard.”

“You can’t just say things like that.”

He opens the passenger door and looks at you, smiling in a way that is trying to be innocent and failing by a devastating margin. “Get in.”

You narrow your eyes. “You’re bossy tonight.”

“Please get in,” he corrects, still smiling.

You stare at him for another second, mostly because your pride requires a brief fight before surrender, then walk past him and slide into the passenger seat with as much dignity as possible. He closes the door once you are settled, and through the window, you catch the small smile he tries to hide as he circles around the front of the car. 

The ride’s quiet with the memory of Jake flirting with you in the gala garden — it makes you feel warm despite how cold the night is. You look out the window, watching streetlights slide over the glass, trying not to notice how different this feels from every other time you have been near him.  The night market appears before you in scattered pieces first, a line of cars, a spill of warm lights, people crossing the street in groups, then the whole thing opens up beyond the parking area in a bright, crowded stretch of stalls and food trucks and lanterns strung overhead.

You step out of the car and immediately pause, because it’s loud and crowded, which means it’s not your thing. There is smoke from grills twisting into the cold air, music blasting everywhere, laughter rising and falling in waves — which feels less like a market and more like a small fair.

You look at the crowd, then up at Jake. “This is busy.”

He closes his door and comes around the car, following your gaze. “Yeah.” He laughs, but softly, and when you look at him, he is already looking at you with that careful smile again, the one that does not make fun of you for being cautious. He looks at the crowd, then back at you, and for a second you think he might offer to leave, which would be considerate and therefore deeply inconvenient, but instead he reaches over and gives the sleeve of your jacket a small tug.

“Come on,” he says.

Before you can decide whether to argue, he starts walking, slow enough that you can follow without feeling dragged into the crowd. You hesitate for another second, but then the smell of something fried and warm cuts through the smoke, and your stomach chooses betrayal.

At first, you keep maneuvering to avoid everyone. You move through the crowd with shoulders turning at sharp angles, arms tucked close, stepping aside whenever someone comes too near. He notices after the third time you dodge a stranger by nearly stepping into a potted plant.

He laughs and you sigh without looking at him. “People have no spatial awareness.”

“People are walking.”

“Badly.”

Jake looks like he is trying very hard not to enjoy you, which makes the smile on his face even worse. You are halfway past a food truck with skewers smoking over a grill when you stop so abruptly that Jake nearly walks into you.

He catches himself at the last second. “What?”

You are staring at a small stall tucked between two larger ones, steam curling from bamboo baskets stacked in neat towers while a woman behind the counter folds dumplings quickly with practiced hands.

“I’ve been craving dumplings.”

The sentence leaves you softer than intended, and his expression changes in a way you do not have time to analyze because you are already in front of the stall. He follows without comment. A few minutes later, the two of you are walking again, slower this time, both eating from your trays with the market moving around you in bright, noisy pieces.

For a while, neither of you says anything, though it is not uncomfortable. You take another bite, then he glances at you. “Do you want a drink with that?”

You nod, mouth still full, and he’s already turning toward a nearby cooler display. He comes back with two cheap glass soda pops, the kind with bright labels and caps that need to be opened on the side of the stall counter, and hands one to you without making a thing of it.

You take it, fingers brushing condensation. “Thanks.”

“Was that gratitude?”

You look at him over the rim of the bottle. He lifts both hands in surrender, still holding his own drink. 

You walk with him after that, and slowly, your shoulders unintentionally begin to loosen. The crowd is still loud, still too close, still full of strangers with elbows and sauce and terrible directional instincts, but it becomes less unbearable now. He notices when your attention starts catching, but he never comments, which is the only reason you allow yourself to drift toward a booth crowded with little trinkets and charms. There are cats, dogs, bears, strawberries, cherries, tiny books, moons, stars, and one orange cat keychain with a round face and a deeply unimpressed expression.

You pretend your decision is practical, of course, like owning a tiny orange cat charm is somehow a necessary purchase. He watches quietly while you pay, your expression focused and pleased in a way that makes him look away for half a second because apparently he has some survival instincts left.

You attach it to your bag immediately. He looks at it, then at the rest of the display, and his mouth twitches. “That one looks like you.” You follow his gaze to a small cat charm with narrowed eyes, pointed ears, and an expression so deeply displeased it almost feels personally designed to insult you.

Your face flattens. “No, it does not.”

He picks it up. “It does.”

You glare at him and he smiles at the charm. “See? Same expression.” he says as he holds it up beside your face to compare.

“Put it back.”

Instead, he pays for it and you stare at him. “Why did you buy that?”

He looks at it once, and then pockets it without explanation. “Come on.”

“No, why did you buy it?”

“I liked it.” He keeps walking, and you have to follow because the crowd is moving again. For some reason the gesture bothers you more than the teasing does. 

The next booth that caught your attention is almost obnoxiously catered to your weaknesses, with neat stacks of sticker sheets, tiny memo pads, washi tape, highlighters in soft colors, planner tabs, bookmarks, stamps, and pens arranged in little acrylic containers. You stop so completely that Jake has to step aside to avoid blocking a passing couple.

For the next several minutes, you become very busy with the most random things, all as Jake stands slightly behind you, holding his soda and yours because at some point you handed it to him without looking, and he accepts this responsibility without saying anything. The two of you keep walking after, and you look more relaxed now than you did at the entrance, less like you are bracing for the world to touch you and more like you have forgotten that you disliked it. You stop at stalls, drift toward anything cute or useful, and Jake continues to follow at your side with no complaint, carrying your soda when you need both hands and slowing whenever you slow.

Then, just as you lean slightly toward a booth selling handmade bookmarks and tiny pressed-flower frames, a pair of kids comes rushing through the gap between stalls, chasing each other with glowing toys in their hands. He moves before thinking, his hand finds the space near your lower back, hovering as he shifts closer to keep the children from bumping into you. His other arm angles subtly between you and the crowd, and he looks over his shoulder just long enough to make sure they pass without catching your side.

You do not notice because you are too busy looking at a bookmark with a little painted cat on it. For some reason, that makes him smile to himself as he lets his hand fall away before you can feel the absence of it.

You turn to him a second later, holding up the bookmark. “This is cute.”

He looks at the bookmark, then at you, still smiling faintly. “Yeah.”

At some point, the crowd gets worse, which you didn’t even notice at first, but then the path in front of you disappears almost entirely, swallowed by families, couples, groups of students, people stopping without warning, people cutting through gaps that do not exist — just people. For a moment, both of you stand at the edge of the crowd, watching everyone press forward in a messy current of shoulders and laughter and swinging shopping bags.

You sigh. “This is ridiculous.”

He looks thoughtful for a second, then makes a decision you do not see coming at all. His arm lifts slightly, hovering behind your shoulders, and you immediately turn your head to look at him.

Jake, to his credit, only looks mildly nervous. “It’s practical.”

Your eyes narrow. “Is it?”

He glances toward the crowd like it might help him build a better defense. “There are a lot of people.”

He presses his lips together, fighting a smile, but his arm stays there, careful and waiting rather than assuming. It should not feel like such a big thing, but it does, mostly because he looks like he is giving you every chance to refuse. “You don’t have to,” he says after a second, already starting to lower his arm.

You hate that the consideration makes it worse. So before you can think too much about it, you roll your eyes and step closer, letting his arm settle around your shoulders like this is somehow the most casual thing in the world (it is not). Jake goes very still for half a second, like he did not actually expect you to allow it, and the brief pause is so obvious that your face warms immediately.

“This is practical,” you say, staring straight ahead.

“Yeah,” he answers, voice lower than before. “Very practical.”

You glance up at him despite yourself, and he is already looking away, but the corner of his mouth is lifted, and his ears have gone faintly pink beneath the market lights.

“Are you blushing?” you ask.

Jake looks at you then, and the smile finally breaks loose. “No.”

“You are.”

“It’s cold.”

You should move away after that because the path opens slightly, enough for you to walk without being separated, and there is no official reason for his arm to stay around your shoulders anymore. But he keeps it there, loose enough that you can step away anytime, steady enough that no one can push between you.

So you stay.

He walks half a step beside you, not dragging you, only guiding when the crowd tightens again. His shoulder angles gently through the busiest parts, his arm drawing you closer whenever someone cuts too near, and each time it happens, your side brushes against him.

You stare ahead and try to remember that this is for crowd navigation, nothing else. Then someone with a swinging tote bag steps backward without looking, and Jake reacts before you do, pulling you in carefully until your shoulder presses against his chest for one quick, breathless second.

“Sorry,” he says near your ear, already loosening his hold. “You okay?”

You nod too quickly. “Fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

You hate how much easier it becomes after that. Not the crowd, because the crowd is still awful, still shifting and pressing and stopping without warning, but moving through it with him is easier. He notices gaps before you do, and he shifts when people come too close. At some point, without asking, he takes the unfinished cake cup from your hand too, tucking the little wooden spoon beneath the lid and holding it in his free hand like carrying your dessert is normal.

You do not protest, and that is the truly alarming part. For once, your brain gets to go quiet. Not completely, of course, because you are still you, but some strict part of you loosens just enough to let him lead. It should bother you more. It does bother you. But it also feels good.

By the time you finally return to the car, the one hour has become more than one hour by a margin neither of you mentions — you both had stopped checking the time altogether. 

He only opens the passenger door for you, takes your bags long enough for you to get in comfortably, then hands them back once you are settled like this is all very normal. You start to think that’s the kind of person who knows where your hands are too full and fixes it without asking (which is bad because it detangles the wires in your brain). The drive back is quiet because you’re both tired, and the city slips past the windows in streaks of light while you sit with your head turned slightly toward the glass. He keeps one hand on the wheel and the other resting loosely near the gear shift, his posture relaxed now, his eyes on the road.

When he finally pulls up outside your house, you both sit there. Then Jake unbuckles first, getting out already, and by the time you open your door, he is already there with your things gathered carefully in his arms.

“I can carry my own stuff,”

“I know.”

He hands you the paper bag first, then the little pouch from the trinket stall, then your phone, which you had somehow left in the cup holder without realizing. With your things in your hands, you stand across the passenger door while he leans back against it, spine resting against the car, hands slipping into his pockets after he has nothing left to hand you. He is closer like this, enough that the porch light catches the tired softness around his eyes.

Jake looks at you for a moment, and for once, he does not seem like he is trying to come up with anything clever. Then his voice goes soft. “Did you have fun?”

You look down at the paper bag in your arms, thinking that you could say it was fine, or tolerable, or simply that dumplings were good. Instead, you think about his hand around yours in the crowd, his laugh when you dragged him away from the flowers, the way he never made you feel strange for relying on someone.

“A little,” you say.

His smile appears slowly, like he is trying not to let it happen too fast. “A little?”

“Don’t get greedy.”

“I feel greedy.”

Your face warms immediately, but he seems to hear himself a second later because his smile widens just slightly. “I had fun,” he says and you hold his gaze. 

Your fingers tighten around the handles of your bag. “You’re very easy to entertain then,” you say.

“Only tonight.”

“Because of the market?”

“Sure.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “What was it then?”

He leans his head back lightly against the window, still watching you through half-lidded eyes, his smile barely there now. “You really wanna know?” he asks.

You smile despite yourself, shaking your head before he can answer. “No.” because you know what he’ll say, and it feels dangerous to hear it out loud.

He laughs softly, head still leaned back against the window, the porch light catching the slope of his cheek and the tired softness in his eyes. For a second, he looks less like someone trying to win an argument and more like someone who would be perfectly fine just standing there with you until the night runs out. “I figured.”

You lift the paper bag in your hand. “The dumplings were good.”

He sighs, disbelieving but still completely okay with it anyway. “I’ll take it,” he says.  Then he straightens slowly, pushing himself off the car like he has finally accepted that the night has to end, but even after he says, “I should go,” he does not actually move.

You nod. “Yeah.”

Neither of you moves.

You should say goodnight, walk up the steps, unlock the door, and pretend the whole drive home had not gone quiet in a way that felt different from tiredness. But your feet stay planted near the passenger side, your bags looped awkwardly over your fingers, your phone pressed against the paper bag in your arms. The porch light spills softly over the driveway, catching the side of Jake’s face, and he looks tired in the gentlest way, hair slightly messy from the night air, hoodie sitting loose on his shoulders, eyes still on you like he is waiting for something without wanting to ask for it.

That is the worst part: he does not push, he does not tease, he does not make some stupid comment that would make it easier for you to roll your eyes and leave. He just stands there, patient in a way that makes your chest tighten.

“You should go,” you say, even though you are the one not stepping away.

His mouth curves faintly. “I know.”

“You’re not going.”

“Neither are you.”

You look away first, irritated by the truth of it. This is awful.

It is awful because you are used to handling things yourself, used to needing no one, used to being sharp enough that people stop trying. And then Jake Sim shows up, too warm, too persistent, too easy to like when he stops trying so hard, and suddenly your own brain feels like it has been rearranged.

He watches your face, his smile fading into something softer. “What is it?”

You shake your head. “Nothing.”

“Okay.”

He says it like he believes you have the right to keep it, and somehow that makes it harder to keep anything at all. You glance at him again, and he is still there, hands tucked into his pockets now, shoulders relaxed, giving you every chance to go inside.

You hate that. You hate him. You hate that you don’t hate him at all.

“You’re thinking really loud,” he says quietly.

You let out a small breath, almost a laugh, but not quite. “You’re very annoying.”

“I’ve heard.”

“No.” You look up at him properly this time, and your voice comes out softer than you meant it to. “You’ve been very inconvenient.”

He tilts his head, confusion crossing his face. “Inconvenient?”

You hate that he genuinely does not seem to understand. It makes the whole thing worse, somehow, because of course he would stand there looking at you like that, soft-eyed and patient, after spending the entire night making it harder and harder for you to pretend he was still just Riki’s friend.

“Yes,” you say, almost sharply. “Inconvenient.”

His mouth opens, probably to ask another stupid question, but you cannot handle another second of him being careful with you. So you drop your bags at your feet, step forward before you can change your mind, grab the front of his hoodie, and pull him down.

Then you kiss him. 

He goes completely still beneath your hands, so still that your heart drops almost immediately. The courage leaves you as quickly as it came, replaced by a sharp rush of embarrassment that burns all the way up your neck. You pull away before he can even react, fingers slipping from his hoodie as your eyes fall anywhere but his face.

“I —” You swallow, already stepping back. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have —”

But you’re already turning before you can finish. You barely make it half a step before his hand catches your wrist, gentle but certain. The next second, he turns you back toward him, and you stumble straight into his chest.

Jake is looking at you now like he has finally caught up with himself. His hands find your waist, careful for only a heartbeat before his grip firms, pulling you closer, and he kisses you back. It is warm and firm and breathless, like he is making up for the second he lost, like he cannot believe you almost walked away again. 

Your hands grab at his hoodie again, more out of surprise than anything, and he leans into you just enough that the whole world seems to narrow down to his chest against yours, his fingers at your waist, and the quiet night around you. He towers closer, holding you tighter when your knees buckle underneath you, especially when a gasp slips out of your lips and his tongue enters your mouth.

When he finally pulls back, he does not go far. For a moment, both of you just stand there, close and silent, breathing unevenly under the porch light. Then Jake lets out the smallest, stunned laugh, his forehead pressed against yours.

“You have no idea,” he says quietly with his hands steady at your waist. “How long I’ve wanted you to stop walking away from me.”

For once, there is no sharp answer on your tongue, no insult, no eye roll, no clean little exit you can use to save yourself from the way he is looking at you. There is only Jake and you.

“You froze,” you whisper, because it is the only thing your pride can still manage.

His laugh comes out breathless. “You surprised me.”

“That’s your excuse?”

His hands tighten at your waist, like even now he cannot believe you are still arguing with him. “That’s my apology.”

You lift your chin slightly. “It wasn’t very good.”

His eyes drop to your mouth for half a second before coming back to yours, and this time, the smile he gives you is softer than it is teasing.

“Then let me do better,”

You barely have time to pretend you are annoyed before he kisses you again. This one is slower at first, like he is giving you the chance to pull away, but your hands are already gripping his hoodie and pulling him closer before either of you can pretend otherwise. You feel him smile against your lips as he deepens the kiss.

When you part again, your face is warm, his hair is a little messed up from where your fingers had caught in it, and both of you are breathing like the night has tilted beneath your feet.

You look toward the door, then back at him, suddenly shy now that the night has become quiet again. “Do you want to come in?”

His gaze lifts to yours, and the look on his face changes so quickly it makes your breath catch. The teasing is gone now, the stunned smile from earlier fading into something quieter, heavier, like he understands exactly what you just asked and is trying very hard not to make you regret saying it.

For once, he does not say anything clever. He only looks at you and nods.

You unlock the front door carefully, as if the sound itself might become suspicious, then step inside with him following after you. The house is dim, only the soft light over the staircase left on, and for a second the two of you stand in the entryway like you have smuggled the whole night in with you.

He closes the door quietly behind him as you slip off your shoes. Neither of you says anything, but when you glance back, he is already looking at you. You step toward him first, his expression shifting like he has not fully learned what to do with you when you are the one closing the distance. For once, he does not move first. He only stands there, still and watching, as your fingers curl into the front of his hoodie. You pull him in and his breath catches softly, then you reach up and kiss him again. He responds after half a second of surprise, hands lifting to your waist, like even now he is keeping some part of himself gentle.

The kiss is still sweet, still careful, but there is less hesitation in it this time. Your hand stays fisted in his jacket, and when he leans closer, you feel his smile against your mouth before he kisses you back properly.

He pulls away just enough to breathe, his face still close, eyes warm and slightly dazed in a way that makes your stomach turn uselessly soft. “You’re getting very bold,” he whispers.

You glare at him, which is difficult when you are still holding onto him. “Are you complaining?”

His smile breaks wider. “No. I’m not.” Then he kisses you again before you can argue, which is unfair because arguing has been your only reliable defense against him and he has apparently discovered a much better strategy. His hands stay at your waist, warm and steady, not pushing, only holding you close enough that you forget to keep track of where the hallway ends and where he begins.

Somehow, between one kiss and the next, your back meets the front door. You do not notice right away because all you notice is him, the warmth of his mouth, the careful way he keeps slowing down like he is reminding himself to let you breathe, the way his thumb shifts at your waist when your fingers tighten in his jacket. The whole house is quiet around you, but your heart is being so loud it feels impossible that he cannot hear it.

Then he pulls back just enough for his words to brush against your mouth. “I want to be your boyfriend.”

You go still, and his eyes open, searching your face. You look at him for a second, breath still uneven, then whisper, “Think you can wait a little bit more?”

His expression softens immediately. The shift is quick; the want in his face makes room for patience again, how fast he understands. He nods once, small and serious, his hands loosening at your waist like he would let go the second you asked him to. “I can wait,” he says quietly.

And he looks like he means it. Like he would stand there in your hallway with your lipstick slightly smudged on his mouth, with his heart in his hands, and let you kiss him while still waiting for you to decide what to do with it. Like he would take every almost, every maybe, every not yet, and still look at you like you are not being cruel for needing time.

Your hands slide up from his jacket to his hair, fingers threading carefully through the soft strands at the back of his head, and his eyes flutter like that small touch just ruined whatever patience he had left. You lean in again and he goes still for one startled breath before he melts into it, a quiet laugh slipping against your mouth as he realizes, too late, that you were not saying no. Your hands stay curled in his jacket, keeping him close, and this kiss feels different from the others, still soft, still careful, but warmer now, more certain, like an answer you are not ready to say out loud.

When you pull away (barely), he is smiling so openly that you almost regret letting him have this much evidence. His smile turns stupidly happy. “That sounds like a yes.”

“It sounds like you should kiss me again before I change my mind.”

He laughs, quiet and breathless, and does exactly that. Somewhere between the hallway and the kiss after that, the two of you become very bad at making responsible decisions. 

In whispered laughs and careful footsteps up the stairs, with your hand around his wrist and him following behind you like he is trying not to smile too loudly. The house stays dim around you, every creak in the floorboards suddenly dramatic enough. By the time you reach your room, your heart is doing something ridiculous again. You open the door slowly, letting the faint light from the hallway spill over your bed, your desk, the half-finished planner still open from earlier, the ordinary pieces of your life that suddenly feel less ordinary with him stepping into them behind you. He looks around for half a second, not nosy, just quietly taking it in.

You step toward him before he can say anything worse, catching the front of his jacket again, and he lets you pull him down with an ease that makes your stomach turn soft. The kiss starts as a way to shut him up, or at least that is what you tell yourself, but then his hands find the small of your back to steady you, careful and familiar now, and suddenly the room feels smaller.

You back up without thinking, until the backs of your legs meet the edge of the bed, and he stops immediately. He pulls away just enough to look at you. “Okay?”

You hate that he asks. You love that he asks.

Instead of answering, you sit down on the edge of the mattress and tug him gently. He follows, careful even when he looks like every bit of caution in him is being tested. The bed dips beneath both of you, your knees brushing first, then your hands finding his jacket again, pulling him close enough that he has no choice but to lean over you when you lie back against the pillows.

For a second, he just looks at you. It is almost funny, how still he goes, hands planted beside your shoulder like he has forgotten what to do with himself now that you are the one inviting him closer. His eyes move over your face, not rushing anywhere else, and something about that makes your chest feel warmer.

“You’re overthinking,” you whisper.

Jake lets out a quiet laugh, but it sounds strained in the softest way. “Yeah.”

“You usually have more to say.”

His smile appears, small and helpless, before he leans down and kisses you again. It is still gentle and careful, but being this close makes everything feel bigger. The quiet room, the faint light from the hallway, the warmth of him above you and being in between your legs, the way his breath catches when your fingers slip to the back of his neck. 

He pulls away, not far, just enough to look at you properly, his eyes searching yours. “Still okay?” he whispers.

You nod, but he does not move immediately, like he wants the answer to be something you choose twice. So you smile, softer than you mean to. “I’m okay.” The relief on his face is quiet, but obvious.

“You’re very careful.”

His mouth lifts faintly. “With you? Yeah.”

You look away for half a second, because that is a terrible sentence to hear while he is this close. He sees it, the way the gears turn inside your head, the way you’re suddenly pushing his jacket off him and your knees are tightening against his waist. He swallows, struggling as he keeps himself over you, trying not to dive into something he’s not sure you want.

Except, you do. And it is very obvious.

You pull him down again, kissing until you know you’ve bruised his plump lips, until his tongue finally slips into your warm mouth as you make a sound against him. You gasp when you feel his hips press in between your thighs and his breath hitches, like he’s in between behaving and giving in. He pulls away abruptly, mouths detaching with a pop, and you visibly grow annoyed.

“God,” he lets out an airy and startled laugh, “What the fuck.”

He hates that he really likes the way his growing bulge is pressing against your ass. The warmth of his body makes you so needy, embarrassingly enough, though you only pull him closer. “Why are you so far away?” you whine.

“We should probably stop,” he says, but it comes out more like a breathless laugh, his forehead dropping for a second.

But you frown. You grind your ass against his hips, feeling the imprint of his cock. “Your dick says otherwise,” God, you are so mean, and he loves it. 

A hand lifts from the mattress and slips towards your bare thigh that’s pressed against his waist, squeezing the soft fat there. You practically melt at the sight of veiny hand smoothing over the skin, until the tips of his fingers carefully disappear into the fabric of your shorts. You squirm against him and he shoots his eyes back up at you, eyebrows furrowed down to his lids. 

 “I don’t have a condom,” he says lowly, voice made of velvet and restraint.

You smile, evil and insatiable. “I don’t care.”

He sighs, disbelieving of how you’ve completely turned to a 180. “I’m trying to be good,” he says. “You’re making it impossible.” Yet he slips his shirt off his body, exposing the toned muscles of his abs, the deep grooves carved. His chest is flat and broad, expanding to the sculpted arms that are solid without looking heavy, just all quiet strength.

“Tell me to stop,” he says quietly, “And I will.” right before he bows down to kiss you again. His tongue brushes into your mouth, meeting yours as your hands find the privilege of slithering down his exposed skin, fingers grazing against the muscles that twitch from your soft touch.

He kisses your cheek next, then your jaw, until his lips reach the soft skin of your neck. He sucks there, until it’s littered with hickeys. “This isn’t good, baby,” he whispers, contradicting himself when he continues to bite the flesh above your pulse. You can only smile and moan, fascinated with the way he’s quickly losing composure.

He helps you out of your sweater next, carefully lifting your upper body up. “Arms up,” you follow, staring into his eyes once he takes it off you. His hand slides to your back, leaning down a little where his lips ghosts above your forehead, then presses a kiss there as he unclasps your bra, the black material slipping off you. You grow a little shy, lips pressing to a line while your own arms curl around yourself. He chuckles softly, then reaches for your wrists with careful fingers and gently uncrosses them. “Where did all that attitude go now, hm?” he murmurs before leaning down to press a kiss to the inside of your wrist, then another just above it, slow enough to make your breath catch.

He circles your arms back around his neck and you pull him closer to you, so he presses a soft kiss to your lips right before he bends down to your chest. “You’re making this too easy,” he whispers. “I thought you liked arguing with me.” You can only bite down on your bottom lip when he takes your perked nipple into his mouth, all wet and warm, before he sucks and bites down gently. 

“Shut up.” you somehow still manage, and you can feel him smile against your breast.

His tongue swirls around the bud before he pulls away, then takes the other one into his mouth next. After he fondles your breasts, caressing you gently but firmly, he moves down your belly, his soft tongue trailing down your skin slowly. He presses kisses on the swell of it, smiling when you tense against him. His large, veiny hands tightens on your waist, attempting to memorize the way the dip feels under his palms. They find your hips next, thumb teasing the hem of your thin shorts, slipping into the fabric just to feel how soft you can get underneath.

“Miss Attitude is so fucking soft,” he murmurs. “They have no idea.” 

He hooks his fingers over the hem of your shorts and slides it off you along with your panties. You’re already feverish when his face meets your cunt after, his breath fanning your folds, large hands holding your thighs so tightly you know it’d mark. 

He can smell how sweet you are, your wetness glistening with so much arousal. He looks over you, sharp eyes through the hoods, like he wants to make sure you’re watching him. “I’ve got you.” Then, because he’s so cruel and careful at the same time, he presses soft kisses on your folds first. Then he kisses your clit next, a deep breath spilling out of you, your hands locking through his hair, attempting to pull him closer. 

He licks a stripe this time, from your hole to your clit, your sensitivity reaching an all time high. “Fuck, Jake, come on,” you practically whimper.

With a prideful grin, he pins your thighs back against the bed. Then he buries his face into your cunt, his tongue laps inside your folds like you’re his favorite meal. He kisses the flesh, then sucks on it like he’s mad, sounds so wet and frenzy.

“Oh my God — Jake, fuck —” Your eyes shoot to your ceiling before your eyelids shut. He groans against you, sending vibrations through your pussy, his moans muffled while yours echo in your bedroom. He stuffs his face in, tongue slurping your entrance before his lips latch onto your clit next, sucking it dry. Your fingers tug at his roots, while your thighs threaten to clench around his head. 

He pushes his long tongue into your hole next, the tip of his nose nuzzling your clip as he buries himself deeper, making sure to coat his face with your sweetness and his saliva. He thinks he can do this until the sun sets again and again, just latching his lips around your clit and holding your shivering thighs around his head. 

He shakes his head slightly, just drinking your juices and moaning into your cunt, not being able to have enough of you. When he pulls away, he’s breathing heavily and you’re pouting, unsure why he’s stopping. Though the sight’s going to kill you still anyway, black hair soaked in sweat, brushing over his eyes while his plump pink lips and chin glisten with your juices.

“I want more, please…” you sigh, attempting to reach for him.

His hand lowers from your thigh to your cunt now, thumb gently grazing over your clit before spreading the folds apart. Practically glimmering with how drenched you are, he teases by pushing his thumb in and pulling back right after. He watches your face, at the way your brows knit together and how you flush into a puddle for him.

He smiles, all of his teeth showing, before he leans back down. “Prettiest pussy I’ve ever seen.” Then he inserts his middle finger in, impossibly longer than yours, stealing a gasp from your throat when he pushes his digits so deep inside, reaching his pink knuckles. 

The squelch of your walls squeezing around him should be sin, as he feels just how soft you are. He sneaks another one in, two fingers buried deep into your pussy that you clench so tightly. “S-shit — s-so fucking good…”

“Fuck,” he huffs a chuckle. “So tight. How would my cock fit you?” 

He licks his lips, swallowing the remnants of you from his mouth. Then he dives back down, open mouth attaching on your clit while his thick fingers pull, push, and curl inside you. Your legs spread for him while you whine his name as if in a desperate prayer.

He continues to retract his digits before pushing it all back inside, carefully picking up the pace with the thrusts. He sucks on your clit hard, the sheer overstimulation of both his mouth and hand working on your pussy makes you a whining mess, loud and fucked, that you have to cover your mouth with your palm.

Though it’s no use, your brother definitely knows now just who’s fucking you with just his fingers and tongue. After a few more thrusts, the tips of his fingers touches that spot that makes your cunt clench tighter and your spine curve against your sheets. 

“I-I’m gonna cum — Jake, c-cumming —” He drinks up all your liquid but then abruptly pulls back, fingers leaving your entrance and his mouth detaching with a wet pop, leaving you so bare.

You feel empty without him filling you up, that you’ve got to open your eyes and look over your breasts and belly, where he sits up, adjusting his weight on his knees while his face and fingers are sopping with your arousal, somehow still making you embarrassed. He licks it off clean, making sure not to waste any of you that you’ve given to him, and you sheepishly curl a little in your bed.

He leans forward now, propping himself on his hands as he hovers over you. Your hands reach up to soothe over the muscles of his traps, warm and bulky under your palms, before you find his hair again, stroking through the black locks. “You’re such a fucking tease,” you mumble, soft and spent.

Jake only has to bite his bottom lip to keep from grinning, eyes soft with the kind of fondness that makes you want to look away. Your gaze falls on the veins protruding from his arms, trailing up to his elbows that you just have to turn away again because is his dick just as veiny? When you look back up at him, there’s something unbearably gentle in his eyes, like he’s looking at the prettiest thing he’s ever been allowed to keep close. Without any words, he leans down, kissing you again, soft but firm, but he presses you deeper into the bed. 

He lifts your leg again, spreading you wider than your dignity lets you, taking your thigh against his hip before he jerks forward, pushing his clothed bulge against your exposed pussy. Your kiss stutters and he pauses a little, pulling away suddenly to let out a shaky breath. “S-shit…”

You whine, weak but pitched. “Take it out, Jake, please,” You buck into his cock, feeling the heavy outline of it slide into your folds.

He doesn’t even argue this time, he just nods, breath uneven, eyes fixed on yours like whatever fight he had left in him disappeared the second you said his name. His hand finds your waist like he’s been waiting for permission all night, squeezing you tightly.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, voice low and completely gone. “Okay.”

He lets go of you for a bit to push his sweatpants off, revealing his boner so prominent and practically hanging in his boxers. You can see his hands shaking a little as he takes his boxers off next, before throwing them into a corner of the room.

His cock practically springs forward to you, desperate and leaking. He’s thick, long, veiny. And pink at the tip.

You don’t even pretend you’re not staring anymore, and you don’t notice the tips of his ears flushing pink this time, a little hint of sheepishness. You’ve never really considered yourself a sex addict, much less even lustful, but the way your pussy throbs at the sight of his pretty cock makes you think maybe you’ve been wrong about yourself in many ways. You want nothing more but to see how he tastes, or how it’d slap against your tongue. He strokes himself, thumb playing with his own slit, spreading his pre around his thick head.

“No condom, baby, I’m so sorry,” His mouth twists into a pout before he can stop it, eyes wide and miserably apologetic. “I’ll pull out, I promise.”

“I don’t give a fuck, Jake,” you urge him closer to you, hands roaming down his abs. “I need you inside me, please — “

If his cock wasn’t twitching in hand, begging to be inside you, he’d probably let out a chuckle at how cute and eager you look right now, practically squirming and begging underneath him. But he’s no better than you, so he adjusts himself forward, leaning once again before aligning the head against your pussy. He nudges your clit, a gasp tumbling from his mouth at the contact. 

“It will only hurt for a second,” he warns and you swallow, staring at his dick as you wonder if it will even fit at all. “Breathe, baby, okay?” You nod, biting down your lip. 

You lift your hips slightly with the help of his hand against your hip, letting the tip nuzzle against your entrance. He’s breathing heavily, taking one final inhale before he pushes forward and lets the head of his cocks slide past your folds, meeting your gummy walls. You gasp as the stretch, making you tense up and clench around him.

“Fuck, t-that’s so tight — ah —” Jake’s forehead rests against yours, the feeling of your pussy squeezing him in, practically sucking his cock inside until you feel him brushing your cervix. He finally sinks in fully, and all he can think about is trying not to fucking cum right now. Not even 10 seconds in and he’s gone like a horny loser, but seeing you so spread open just for him is undoing him anyway.

He sets a pace, slow to stretch you out, having to bury his head against your neck just to suppress his groans, shallow thrusts getting deeper and deeper. The way his member touches rubs on your walls draws the prettiest whines from you, his name coming out as uneasy breaths as his rhythm picks up. Your hands thread through his hair, pulling him down for another kiss, and so his veiny hand settles beside your head, balancing himself on top of you. You claw at his back when his tongue slips into your mouth, his thrusts growing faster.

“J-Jake,” you whimper, just as he pins your thighs down the bed. Your legs spreading wider pretty much heightens the feeling in your pussy, letting you feel his cock as he begins to pound into you. He shifts slightly, grinding on that soft spot that makes your eyes roll back and whine his name again.

“Y-you’re clenching — shit, you’re clenching too hard, baby —” he moans, sweat dripping down his neck to his chest. His hips snap forward harder and faster, breath coming in ragged gasps. 

Your brain is short-circuiting and your skin is on fire, hot coil tightening in your abdomen. He continues rutting into you, bodies warm and sweaty, while your nails dig deep into his back. “I-I’m coming, Jake — fuck, I’m — “

He steals your mouth for another kiss when you finish, your orgasm striking through you, pussy clenching tight around his dick as you feel white ropes spill into you, full and so fucking hot. “S-shit…” he breathes against your mouth, riding out the last few seconds of your pleasure. 

Jake rests his forehead against yours, catching his breath while his hand caresses your waist so firmly, soothing the skin up and down like a lover. His panting slow down, breathing matching yours as the height of your drives lower, his twitching cock coming to a stop inside you. He pulls out, drawing a wince from him, his cum oozing from your hole as he does. 

“Fuck,” he curses, licking the inside of his cheek. You can only laugh tiredly, wiping the sweat from your forehead.

“I did not fucking mean to,” he clears his throat before looking back up at you, “cum in you.”

You hit his arm without any real force, a tired smile etching on your face as you pull him back down. He kisses you, and you try not to melt at how slow he does it, at how much deeper it is compared to the others. When he pulls away, he presses a softer one on your forehead. He straightens on his knees, sharp yet weary eyes looking over your naked body, enjoying every dip and curve, hand somehow never separating from your thighs and hips. You get sheepish, despite it all, giving a quiet groan when he admires you shamelessly. “Stop staring,”

He can only smile, his hand reaching for yours in which you give. His thumb moving slowly over your knuckles, then he lifts it to his mouth and presses a quiet kiss to your fingers before leaning over to kiss your forehead. He kisses near your temple after, voice low when he speaks again. “I’m gonna go to the store.”

Your brows draw slightly, “Now?”

“Yeah,” he gives you a sly smile, “For Plan B.”

You give him a look, but it barely has any strength behind it. Then you laugh, shaking your head at how ridiculous it sounds. Jake gives you a look back, brows lifting slightly. “What?”

Before you can give a proper answer, you sit up and place your palms against his shoulders, pushing him down the bed. He follows obediently, eyes on yours as you find yourself climbing on top of him, legs bracketing either side of his hips once he’s laid down. His cock twitches against your pussy, slowly growing again.

“I’m trying to be a good boyfriend,” he says under his breath, uneven and clearly strained.

Your lips twitch before you can stop them. “Boyfriend, hm?” you hum as your hands feel his abs underneath your palms, taut at your touch.

Jake throws his head back, Adam's apple bobbing before he mutters a quiet curse. “Jesus Christ,” he whispers, almost laughing under his breath. “You’re gonna kill me.”

Your face heats, not being able to stop the smile that creeps to you. Your hands slide to his chest, and your ass rubs against his hardened length, a soft moan coming out of you when it slides against your wet folds. 

“Later, okay?” is all you say before you manage to slide his cock back inside you, stealing a startled gasp from his throat. 

The next few days have been… a turn.

Not an immediate one, because you are not the kind of person who wakes up one morning and becomes soft just because a boy fucked you to make your thoughts trip over themselves. It starts with stupid things, like letting Jake carry the heavier paper bag when you leave the convenience store instead of wrestling it back from him on principle, or handing him your empty cup before you can think too hard about why your fingers already moved toward him, or looking up from your phone in a parking lot and realizing he has already stepped to the side closest to the road.

The first few times, you still fight it, naturally, and there are moments when you hear your own voice sharpen before you can stop it, asking him whether he thinks you are incapable of holding a bag, opening a door, ordering your own drink, or to even function as a person, but Jake never flinches when your tone gets mean. He never waits for you to become easier. He only looks at you with that patience of his, and says, “I know you can,” like your competence was never in question, and the entire point is not that you cannot do it yourself, but that someone else can do it for you too.

You are used to being needed, to people looking at you when something breaks, when Riki disappears, when your father needs something handled, and you are used to stepping in so quickly. Needing someone has always felt too close to failing, and depending on someone has always felt like handing them a knife and hoping they do not use it on you, but Jake does not treat your reliance like victory, does not look smug when you finally stop arguing, does not make a monument out of every time you let him help. He just helps, and it gives you nothing to push against.

The hot stuff hasn’t ended either. At first, you both did try to be normal for the sake of your upheld pride of refusing to be easy, even to your own boyfriend, and his respect for your decision. It does come to an end right after 4 days it happened, when he comes over again and your father’s never home and Riki’s somewhere you don’t know, having a hot boyfriend in your room would always mean he’d end up pounding into you. Or that you graciously ride him so well that he has to run to the store for Plan B again.

Jake never ever made you feel like you have to do things for him, nor did he ever urge you to have sex with him. There were a few occasions though, when you two might have went against your own moral code when he fucked you in his car in the school parking lot — did you regret it? No. Would it happen again? You hope not.

You might have had a hidden trait that’s been opened after a few nights together. There were a lot of moments when Jake had to take a pause because he genuinely gets scared at how you look at his cock, all excited and famished (sorry for the lack of better term). And his nose, just before he lies down on your bed and lets you sit his face.

You never have prioritized sex, nor did you think there was anything good about having a wet pussy 24/7 other than it was pure lust. You did, however, also find out that you really liked being pushed against Jake’s desk and fucked at the back.

After that, things get a little more cliche, of course. You start expecting his hand at the small of your back when a hallway gets crowded, start assuming he will keep track of where you left your phone, when you start sending him photos of readings with a single question mark and receive back highlighted screenshots, voice notes, and brief explanations. You start asking him to pick you up without building a whole argument on why it’s practical. You start trusting him with the ugly middle parts of your day, not only the polished version you usually hand people.

Then, because you are still princess-y, petty you, you also start getting annoyed when he does not anticipate things fast enough. 

One evening he sits beside you at a café and does not immediately take the extra books from your arms because he is answering Sunghoon’s text, and you feel offended — makes no sense, of course. Now you stand there with your books pressing into your chest, glaring at the side of his head until he finally looks up and pauses. “What?”

“Nothing.”

His gaze drops to the books, then returns to your face, and the slow realization that crosses his expression is so unbearable. Jake reaches for them anyway, careful enough to give you time to refuse, smug enough that you want to kick him, and when you let him take the stack from your arms, he murmurs, “My bad, baby. I’ll be faster next time.”

With Riki, the change makes him jump quietly (of course) in glee. You do not stop worrying, because that would require medical intervention, but you stop overthinking every hour. Sometimes you don’t ask where he is until he tells you first. Riki starts texting more because the texts no longer feel like constant interrogation, and you start responding less as you remember that seventeen is not the same as helpless.

Then one day passes without you talking to him at all. You do not realize it until you are brushing your teeth and your phone lights up with a message from Riki that only says, alive btw. You stare at it for a long second, toothpaste foaming at your mouth, and the first thing you feel is panic because how did you go an entire day without checking — someone will kill you, for sure, right? Then the panic fades into the shape of relief. He is fine, he told you, comfortably at that too.

When you tell Jake later, expecting him to make some joke, he only nods and says, “That’s good.” then reaches for your hand like it is the easiest thing in the world. “You did good.”

You don’t have to be soft all at once, nor do you have to surrender your sharpness just to wake up as some easier version of yourself because someone decided to stay. Embarrassingly, it makes your brain turn off when your boyfriend takes the problem from your hands and solves it before you can turn it into another reason to hate yourself. You can still be competent, still be difficult, still be the girl who knows what to do in a crisis, while also being the girl who lets Jake highlight her readings, carry her books, order her coffee, pull her away, and hold her against his chest when she finally remembers it’s okay to be tired.

He does not make you less capable, he just makes you less alone with it. Most importantly, he does not act like the softer version of you is the only one worth liking.

Jake and Riki manage to convince you to go to a house party on a Friday night, which doesn’t take much, weirdly enough.

Riki starts first, of course, he says you never do anything fun, which makes you refuse again. Jake, unfairly, does not argue the same way, who only leans against your kitchen counter with one hand curled around a glass of water, watching you over the rim with that calm expression he gets when he knows you are already halfway annoyed. He tells you “it does not have to be a big thing, we can leave whenever you want. I’ll stay with you the whole time if you want me to”, and if you hate how kind he is. Which makes you say yes.

The house is already full by the time you get there, music pressing through the walls before Jake even parks. Cars line both sides of the street, voices spilling through the open windows, laughter breaking over the bass in uneven bursts — you’re not exactly uncomfortable, only uneasy in a way that this is not something you’re used to, not like how Riki and Jake soothes right in. 

Then Jake’s hand settles at the small of your back. “You okay?” he asks, voice low enough when he leans down to you.

You look at the room in front of you, then at Riki, who is already greeting someone. “This is loud.”

“Because that’s how parties usually work,” Jake’s mouth curves when you give him a look, before his hand rubs the small of your back up and down. “But we can leave.”

That is annoying, mostly because it is thoughtful, and you have learned there is very little to do with Jake’s thoughtfulness except either accept it or be a bitch about it and watch him keep being thoughtful anyway. You glance away before he can catch whatever your face is doing and mutter, “We’ll stay.”

He gets you a drink from the kitchen, not from one of the abandoned cups on the counter but from an unopened bottle in the cooler, twisting the cap and you take it without arguing. 

His friends find you almost immediately. Jungwon lifts his brows when he sees you beside Jake, then smiles. Sunoo says your name with delighted surprise, Jay gives you an exaggeratedly respectful nod that makes you narrow your eyes, and Sunghoon and Heeseung offers you a small, careful smile. They are nicer than you expected them to be, or maybe they have always been nice and you were too busy seeing them as Riki’s friends (with connotation, at that).

Jake does not leave your side at first, and tries to make sure not to make you feel tense. He notices when the kitchen gets too crowded and nudges you toward the living room without making you feel like he is moving you. He notices when someone you barely know tries to pull you into a conversation you clearly do not want and cuts in so smoothly that they don’t even realize. 

For a while, you stay like that, your back against his front, his mouth near your ear every now and then as he leans down to murmur things meant only for you. His eyes flick toward Jay guarding the snack table like a personal estate, toward some boy near the speakers dancing with more confidence than rhythm. You laugh quietly at first, then more openly later on, your head tipping back slightly against his shoulder for half a second as you both judge people’s tipsy decisions.

Someone nearby starts setting up beer pong on a long table, cups arranged into triangles, people crowding around with immediate excitement. You take one look at the cups, the ball bouncing once against the floor, the wet ring marks on the table, and the enthusiasm dies on your face so visibly that Jake folds forward against your shoulder with silent laughter. 

You stop paying attention to the shape of the night, and your guard lowers enough for the party to become just a party, not a list of potential disasters. With his hand on your hip, even when Riki’s off your field of view, you’re less anxious.

He brushes his fingers lightly against your wrist, making you turn to him slightly. “I’ll be quick,” he says. “I’ll just get another drink.”

For a minute, you stand alone near the edge of the living room, watching him disappear through the crowd. You decide to find his friends, partly because they are people you know now, partly because you are not yet the kind of girl who can stand alone in a house full of strangers. 

The hallway is too crowded, so you head for the front door instead, slipping past two people arguing over someone’s car keys and stepping out into the night air. The music dulls behind the walls as you walk down the porch steps and follow the narrow side path around the house. You only remember seeing Jungwon and the others near the backyard earlier, and going through the side seems easier than forcing yourself through the crowd. The side of the house is dim except for the spill of light coming from the backyard, and voices grow clearer the closer you get.

A voice says something you do not catch, followed by a louder laugh, and you stop before fully turning the corner, half-hidden behind the hedge lining the side yard. You do not mean to listen, but you hear Riki first. “Dude, I’m just saying,” he says, laughing carelessly. “I should’ve done this months ago.”

Someone snorts, Jay, probably. “You mean hiring Jake?”

Your steps slow before you fully reach them, deciding to still behind a stupid bush.

Riki laughs again. “I mean, clearly the money worked.”

“He really put those hundreds to use, huh?”

There is laughter, easy, stupid, and thoughtless laughter from boys who have no idea that the joke is standing right there, turning rigid again.

“Taming the lion,” someone says.

Your throat goes dry as the laughter grows again, freezing completely when someone says your name next.

The scary sister, the impossible girl, the controlling bitch with a curfew and a brother who apparently thought your entire life could be negotiated down to a payment and one patient boy you thought saw you differently — yet each memory with him reaches backward for a new shape, forming into one joke shared by teenage schemes.

Someone inside says, “Nah, but seriously, Jake deserves a raise. She actually smiles now.”

Riki says something you cannot fully make out, but it does not matter because your mind has already started blurring.

Then Jake’s voice cuts through, appearing through the patio door. “Hey, have you guys seen her?”

“There he is,” Jay says, too loud, too cheerful. “Man of the hour.”

“What?” Jake asks, distracted.

Then there is the sound of palms meeting, boys greeting him the way boys do, easy and stupid and physical. Someone daps him up, someone else claps his shoulder, someone mentions how great he did for convincing you to go to a party.

“Congrats, bro,” one of them says, laughing. “Hundreds well spent.”

Jake does not speak. Maybe he is processing, maybe his face has changed in some way you cannot see yet. Maybe, he would push the hand off his shoulder and tell them to shut up. But you do not get that far, because you turn a little to see him, and his eyes finally lift past them and land on you.

He sees you standing there, one hand around the bottle he opened for you, your face completely still. For one impossible second, you look at him and he looks back.

And it is awful, how quickly his expression breaks, because it isn’t confusion nor innocence, just the face of someone who knows. His eyes widen, his mouth parts slightly, and panic moves across his face so plainly that it feels like another admission you’re not supposed to hear.

Behind him, Riki turns and the color drains from his face when he sees you. Your name leaves Jake’s mouth once, low and ruined but you’re already stepping away.

You turn and walk.

Someone laughs from the inside, someone trying to go to the back bumps your shoulder and apologizes, but you do not answer. It’s a little shitty how your whole body feels strangely calm now, the way it does in emergencies, when adrenaline doesn’t need you moving your feet to handle something first.

You can hear Jake behind you, cursing under his breath, sharp and panicked, nothing like the careful voice he used when he told you to let him take care of you.

“Wait,” he calls, closer now. “Please, just wait.”

The front yard is crowded, so you shove through them and into the night air with your lungs burning and your hands cold around the bottle you forgot to leave behind. The street outside is quieter, only then do you realize how badly you needed it, how trapped you had been inside that house with all those walls and all that laughter and every memory of Jake rearranging itself into something ugly.

You make it halfway down the front path before his hand catches your wrist, not hard but you pull away like it burns.

He stops in front of you, breathing unevenly, hair messier than before, eyes wide in a way you used to love, but now it only makes something sharp twist in your chest. Behind him, Riki stumbles out onto the porch, face pale, panic written all over him like a child finally realizing the stove is hot after touching it, even after you told him no.

Jake takes half a step forward, then thinks better of it. “I can explain.” His jaw tightens. “It’s not what they made it sound like.”

“Really?” Your voice stays calm. “Because it sounded like my brother paid you to distract me, and your friends think you deserve congratulations for doing it well.”

Jake’s face goes white. Riki moves down one step. “It was my idea.”

You look at him then, not with the sharp little look you usually give him when he says something stupid, but actually look at him. For one strange second, he looks like the nine-year-old boy who used to stand in your doorway, the one who would deny crying even while his eyes were swollen, the one you learned how to comfort while you comforted yourself because mom is gone and dad is never home.

That is what does it, your eyes water before you can stop them. “You paid someone to get me out of the way?”

He shakes his head too quickly. “No. I just wanted you to have something else,” he says, and the words come out in a rush now, messy and panicked. “I thought if you were busy, if you were happy, maybe you’d stop worrying about me all the time. I didn’t know how else to get you to stop. You never listen to me. You never believe me.”

Your eyes return to Jake, and the worst thing is that part of you still wants him to fix it. Some pathetic, exhausted, newly softened part of you wants him to say the exact right thing, wants him to reach for the memory of every night you trusted him and pull it back from the edge. 

You hate that part of yourself instantly. You hate that it exists because of him.

“Is that true?” you ask.

His eyes flick down, then back to your face, desperate now. “At first,” he says, voice rough. “At first, yes, but it stopped being that.”

You stare at him.

“But I gave the money back,” he continues, voice rough. “I told him I was done. I told him I didn’t want any part of it anymore.”

Your throat tightens. “After I slept with you?”

He goes still.

That is the answer.

You stare at him, waiting for him to save it anyway, because some stupid part of you still wants him to. You wait for him to say no, to say you got it wrong, to say there was some other version of the story where he did not let you give him that much of yourself before telling you the truth. But Jake only looks at you with his mouth parted slightly, eyes wide and ruined, and every second he does not speak feels like another hand closing around your throat.

You shake your head once. “You let me think,” your voice is low and calm, “that for once, someone just wanted to be there. You let me trust you with the parts of myself I don’t even like,” you say. “And you knew. You knew what they didn’t.”

The gala. You see the memory land in him, the garden lights, the fountain, your stupid dress, the way you sat on the far end of a bench and told him things you barely knew how to tell yourself. Your mother being gone, your father being absent, Riki being more yours than he should have been. You remember how carefully he listened, how he stayed far enough not to scare you off, how safe his silence felt then, how you laughed with him because he saw you and didn’t think you were cruel at all.

He takes a step toward you. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice breaking around it. “I should have told you that night. I know I should have.”

“I thought you chose me,” you say.

“I did.” His eyes go red. “I did choose you.”

Your mouth trembles once, then stills. “For a hundred bucks?”

He looks like the words hit him somewhere physical.

“No,” he says, too quickly, too desperately. “No, not like that.”

You nod once, not because you believe him, but because your body needs to do something other than fall apart in front of them. “I want to go home.”

Jake straightens immediately. “Okay. I’ll take you home.”

You turn away from him and reach for your phone with shaking fingers. “No.”

His breath catches. “Please.”

You unlock your screen and open the app, feeling stupid because you can’t see through the blur as you type it in. 

“I can drive you,” he says, voice quieter now.

You keep your eyes on the street until the headlights appear at the end of the road, the car pulling toward the curb. You get inside and do not look back.

You hate men. Enough that you can prepare a presentation on the subject with credible sources, historical examples, and a conclusion about betrayal as a gendered epidemic. Evidence would be your absent father, your fraudulent ex-boyfriend, your seventeen year old brother, and his demonic friends.

Hating your brother is inconvenient because he lives in your house, eats your food, leaves his stuff everywhere, and now lives without you telling him what to do. For the first time in years, you do not ask what the hell he’s up to anymore. You simply sit at the kitchen island with your laptop open, spoon in hand, eating directly out of a tub of ice cream at seven in the morning. 

Historically, you have always cracked first when it comes to him. Historically, you cannot help yourself. Historically, your entire body starts to prepare for anything if it concerns Riki.

But history is dead. Men killed it.

Jake is hard to ignore only because he is not physically in the house, which means he tries to get creative. He texts first, of course, just once in the morning, once at night, and sometimes in the middle of the day — because he knows exactly how to overwhelm you. Then he leaves an iced latte with your name on top of your desk in one of your classes. You stare at it on your desk for a full minute, before you give it to your seatmate.

By the fourth day, you have finished the second tub of ice cream — not your proudest moment, but it is also not your worst, which says more about your week than your character. You have attended classes with perfect notes, no late submission, reorganized your planner, ignored messages from Jake, and pretended not to notice that Riki has started texting you when he arrives places without being asked.

On Friday night, Riki finds you on the couch in your oldest pajamas, hair tied messily back, third tub of ice cream open on the coffee table, watching a documentary about deep-sea creatures with the blank focus. 

“Jake’s been driving me from and to school,” he says carefully.

Your spoon pauses in the ice cream, before you resume. Onscreen, a glowing fish drifts through the dark, hideous and peaceful, which feels aspirational. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, then sets his bag down properly.

“I’m sorry,” he says but does not step closer. “I know sorry doesn’t fix it. I just wanted to say it.”

You keep staring at the television, where the ugly little fish continues glowing alone in the dark, refusing to pay him any mind. 

By Saturday morning, Riki had started acting like a ghost. He moves quietly around the house, closes cabinets softly, and pe picks up his shoes before you can even see them. At one point, you find him wiping the kitchen counter after making toast, which is very disturbing. 

At school, Jake looks worse than he ever did. He waits by your classroom once, but you walk past him without slowing down, your expression polished into something calm. He says your name but you keep walking, because you refuse to give pieces of yourself to men, more than you already have.

Riki has also learned that you are not going to pack his lunch, remind him about assignments, ask whether he has practice, or save him from his own time management. This would be liberating for him if freedom did not apparently require the ability to know where his own socks are.

Your phone buzzes on the nightstand, and your eyes slide toward the screen, just long enough to see Jake’s name there before the notification fades and the room goes dim again. A few seconds later, there is a knock on your door. It does not open but Riki’s voice breaks through. “Jake’s here,” he says. “He has food. He said he’ll wait ten minutes, and if you don’t come down, he’ll leave.”

Riki stays there for another second, clearly wanting to say something else, but maybe he has learned enough to know that pushing right now would only make you worse. For a while, you do not move and only tell yourself you are not thinking about it, that you do not care what food Jake brought, whether it is something you like, whether it’s because he’s making sure you ate.

At eight minutes, you sit up. At nine, your feet touch the floor. At ten, you stay where you are.

Then outside, his car starts. You sit at the edge of your bed with your hands curled into the blanket, listening until the sound disappears completely down the street.

The week passes, and you remain committed to silence. You do not speak to Jake. You do not speak to Riki unless it is absolutely necessary. 

That night, Riki knocks on your door. You do not answer, but unfortunately, he opens the door anyway and stops at the sight of you buried in bed, laptop balanced near your knees, looking at him like you have been for the past weeks: exasperated.

“What?”

He stays by the doorway, one hand still on the knob. “I’m hungry.”

You stare at him for a second, then look back at your screen. “Then order something.”

“I don’t want delivery.”

“Then make something.”

“I want to go out.”

You pause, because that is exactly the kind of sentence he used to say before you started the lectures about curfew, rides, locations, and whether he had enough sense to come home alive. This time, you only shrug against your pillows. “Then go out.”

Riki shifts his weight. “No,” he says, quieter. “With you.”

You keep your eyes on your laptop, even though the movie has become impossible to follow, because looking at him would mean seeing guilt, probably; hope, maybe. Both would be extremely inconvenient because you learned to soften when he used it.

“It’s late,” you say.

“I know.”

“And you have Jake, apparently.”

He flinches a little, and the guilt on his face finally becomes too obvious to ignore. You hate that it still gets to you, how young he looks when he is sorry, like some part of him has folded back into the boy who used to stand outside your room when he was scared and he had no one else but his older sister.

He swallows. “I don’t want Jake.”

You hate men. You hate your brother. You hate that the sentence works.

With a long, irritated sigh, you close your laptop. “Get your shoes.”

The drive is quiet, Riki sits in the passenger seat with his hands tucked into his hoodie pocket, looking out the window instead of at you. You keep both hands on the wheel and do not ask if he has eaten lunch, even though the question sits on your tongue the entire way there. The diner is still open when you pull up, its neon sign glowing red against the dark. 

When the food comes, the table fills with baskets and paper-lined plates, greasy burgers, fries, and mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce in a plastic cup between you. Riki burns his fingers because he has never once believed in waiting, and you call him an idiot before you can stop yourself. The two of you eat in silence after that — not the awful one from the house, but not comfortable either. It sits between you, filling the space while both of you act invested in fries and melted cheese.

Then Riki clears his throat. “I have a girlfriend.” Your hand freezes halfway to the basket.

For a second, the entire diner seems to mute itself around that one sentence. You look up slowly, genuinely caught off guard, and Riki looks terrified in the way only someone who has been hiding something huge.

“What?”

He shifts in his seat. “I have a girlfriend.”

You lean back against the red vinyl booth, trying to process this new piece of information without immediately becoming the girl who asks for her full name, address, grades, family background, and emergency contact. The questions rise anyway: Who is she? How long? Does she treat you well? Does she know you are stupid? Does she have standards? Does she encourage you to drink blue things at parties? Does she know about dad?

Riki looks down at his plate. “When Jake started taking you out, I was also taking her out.” His fingers pick at the edge of the paper liner. “That’s why I wanted more time and freedom. I know that doesn’t make what I did okay.”

You look at him, face unreadable.

“It was bad,” he says, before you can say it for him. “I know it was bad. But something good came out of it too. You were happier. I know you hate hearing that, but you were. You weren’t always watching me like something bad was about to happen. You went out and laughed and you had someone.”

You look down at the untouched mozzarella stick in front of you. “Right,” you say quietly. “So much for a hundred bucks.”

Riki’s face falls. “No,” he says, then stops himself because even he knows he cannot deny the beginning. “I know I can’t decide which parts hurt for you, but I thought I was helping both of us. That doesn’t make me right, I know that. But please don’t think that I wasn’t considering you along the way — because I did, I really did.”

The answer is too ready, too practiced, and for a moment you think that maybe he’s being foolish again. But now that you’re looking at him, you realize that he’s old enough to make cruel decisions, young enough to look shattered when he finally understands.

“I know you wanted me to stop controlling you,” you say. “I know I was too much.”

He exhales, miserable. “Okay. Sometimes. But not because you were bad. You raised me,” he says, quieter now. “And I hated it because I wanted you to just be my sister, but I also knew you were the only one checking. That’s why it felt so messed up all the time.” He wipes his palms on his hoodie. “I’m sorry I made you feel like something I had to escape.”

The waitress passes by with a coffee pot, and both of you sit there pretending you can steal breathe without feeling hot wax at the back of your throat. You reach for a mozzarella stick because your hands need something to do, and Riki pushes the marinara closer without thinking.

You dip the mozzarella stick and take a bite. “I’m still mad,” you say. “But I’d like to meet your girlfriend.”

For a second, he just stares at you, like he is not sure he heard you correctly. Then his face shifts, slowly, carefully, into the smallest smile. “Okay.”

For the first time all week, your mouth almost curves. The rest of dinner is still quiet, but not as sharp. He tells you her name eventually, softly, and you do not ask for details yet, only nodding. Outside, the air is colder than when you arrived. You make it three steps toward the car before Riki stops behind you.

“I really am sorry,” he says.

When you turn around, his eyes are red, standing there with his shoulders tight and his face crumpling despite how hard he is trying to hold it together. The sight pulls at something old and exhausted inside you, the same place that has always answered him before pride can interrupt.

“Riki,” you say, but it comes out cracking.

He shakes his head, wiping his face too fast. “I’m sorry. I know I ruined it. I know. I’m sorry.”

You cross the space before either of you can think too hard about it and pull him into a hug.

For a second, he is taller than you and somehow still the little boy from your doorway, the one who had no one else, the one you loved badly because nobody taught you how to do it gently. His arms come around you tight, and the first sob he lets out breaks something open in your chest.

“I hate you,” you whisper.

“Fuck you too,” he says, crying harder.

“You’re so stupid.”

“A dumbass, I know.”

You hold him tighter anyway. Eventually, he pulls back first, wiping his face with his sleeve. His nose is running slightly, and he looks so devastated that you almost call him gross just to make the moment easier.

“I don’t get to tell you what to do,” he says.

You look at him, already tired. “Great start.”

He lets out a shaky breath. “Especially not about Jake.”

Your face changes before you can stop it. He sees it and immediately raises both hands a little, like he is approaching an animal with a history of biting. “I’m not defending what happened. I’m not. But,” he continues carefully, “he did give the money back.”

Your eyes narrow at him.

“I know that doesn’t fix it,” he says quickly. “I know it doesn’t make the beginning less awful. I just… I was there, and I saw when it changed.”

The words sit there, too quiet and too heavy for the sidewalk outside a diner. You do not answer, only staring past him toward the parking lot, where your car waits under the lamppost.

He swallows. “At first, he was doing it because I asked him to. Then he started asking me things about you. What books you liked, where you went after school, if you were always that tired.” His voice gets smaller. “And then he stopped asking me altogether.”

Your throat tightens, which is infuriating.

“He didn’t need me anymore,” he says. “Not for you.”

“Riki.”

“I know. I’ll stop.” He wipes his face again, then nods like he is trying to obey before you even say anything mean. “I just wanted you to know that part.”

You stare at him for a long second.

“And what am I supposed to do with that?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Get mad — at me, at him, at dad too. Do nothing. Eat more ice cream. I just don’t want you to think every good part was fake. Because I know I messed it up, and he messed it up, but you were happy. And I don’t think that was fake.”

You hate him a little for saying it.

You hate him more because it makes you think.

The worst part has never been that Jake lied and everything after became nothing. The worst part is that it still feels real and they happened, regardless the truths and the lies, the half-truths and wrong intentions. All of it still sits somewhere inside you, refusing to rot properly no matter how badly the beginning wronged it. 

You wipe under your eye with your knuckle. “You’re very annoying.”

“I know.”

You sniff, looking away before your face can crumple again. “I’m not forgiving him just because you feel guilty.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“I’m not forgiving you either. Not yet.”

“I know.”

You look at him.

He looks back, eyes still wet, but this time he does not look like he expects you to fix it for him. He only stands there, accepting it, which feels new enough to hurt.

Then he says, quietly, “But can I still ride home with you?”

Your mouth almost curves.

“Unfortunately,” you say, walking toward the car.

That night, you cannot sleep.

It is annoying, because you are exhausted enough to sleep. Your body is tired, your eyes hurt, and your head has been heavy since you drove home from the diner. Still, you lie there staring at the ceiling, turning one thought over and over until it stops feeling like a thought and starts feeling like a pulse breathing beneath your weight — your brother’s words alive there.

You hate that Riki said it and that he might be right. You hate that all week, even through the anger, you still kept thinking about Jake when you made coffee, when you passed the hallway where he used to wait.

You are still in your sleep shorts, an old shirt, and house slippers when you grab your car keys. You do not bother changing, which should have been your first sign that you are not making a dignified decision at all. You only go downstairs without turning on too many lights, and leave before you can talk yourself into being a sensible woman.

The drive to Jake’s house feels longer than it should.

When you pull up near the curb, you keep your hands on the wheel for a second, staring at the front of his house like it might tell you what the hell you are doing here. Yet it only sits there, quiet and expensive and familiar.

The front door opens when you’re about to reverse. Jake steps out with his keys in one hand, dressed in sweats and a hoodie, his hair messy and soft around the mouth in the way you used to love. Still the boy who made you feel, for the first time in years. He locks the door behind him and turns toward his car, already halfway down the path when he sees you.

For a second, neither of you moves.

Then, because apparently you have already abandoned all pride tonight, you get out of your car. The cold hits your legs immediately, so you hug your arms around yourself and stand there on the sidewalk in slippers, trying to look like a person who’ll stand on this and not someone whose feelings drove her here.

“Where are you going?” you ask.

His hand tightens slightly around his keys. “Store.”

You nod once. “Right.”

“I was just going to buy something,” he adds, quieter, like even he knows that does not matter.

You nod again, because now that you are here, you have no idea what comes after arriving — which is excessively dumb. The whole thing suddenly feels ridiculous; you in your sleep clothes and him standing by his car. 

“Okay,” you say, then you turn back toward your car.

You barely make it one step before he says your name, not loud nor desperate, just in that Jake way that makes your knees buck and feet stop.

He takes one careful step forward. “What are you doing here?”

You keep your eyes on your car door. “I don’t know.” The answer is embarrassing because it is true, and you’re glad you can’t see his reaction.

“Okay.”

You almost laugh, but it gets stuck somewhere in your throat. You look back at him with enough courage. “Riki talked to me.”

He goes still.

“I’m not here because of that,” you say quickly.

“Okay.”

“I’m still mad.”

“I know.”

“And you still hurt me.”

His jaw tightens, but he nods. “I know.”

You look away, because his face is making this harder. “I don’t even know why I drove here.”

He’s quiet for a long second, still careful as to not step on a mine. Then he says, “I was hoping you would.” He looks almost embarrassed by the honesty, but he does not take it back, not even when you look back at him. “I just kept thinking maybe one day you’d show up, or text, or yell at me, or anything.” His mouth pulls faintly, but it is not really a smile. 

“That’s pathetic,” you say, but your voice has no bite.

He lets out a breath. “Yeah. I know.”

You hate how gentle the night feels around the two of you, how gentle he still is, how easier it is to stand here than it was to stay in your room while your throbbing heart gnaws on your ribcage. You hate that even now, after everything, being near him makes some part of you calm.

Your fingers curl against your own arms, holding yourself tighter, because if you don’t, you might do something worse. Like forgive too fast or maybe even slap him or admit the thing sitting in your chest that looks a lot like a picture of you two.

Jake moves slowly, just before he stops in front of you, close enough that you can see the tiredness beneath his eyes, the way his mouth parts slightly like he wants to say something and knows better than to crowd you with it.

“I tried,” you say, barely above a whisper. You blink hard, still looking down. “Not thinking about you.”

He does not answer.

“I tried being angry enough that it would cancel everything else out,” you continue, and the words start coming before you can stop them. “I tried making all of it ugly. I tried telling myself that every good thing only happened because of a bad reason.”

Your voice shakes, and you hate it, but you keep going. “But it didn’t work.” You finally look up at him, and his eyes are already on you, wide and quiet and so full of hope because that’s just who he is. Your own mouth trembles once before you still it.

“I can’t not be in love with you, Jake.”

For one terrifying second, he says nothing, and your face burns so badly that you almost step back. But then his expression breaks, not with panic this time, not like the party after you find out — just something like relief and careful in one.

He says your name so quietly it barely reaches you. He lifts his hand slightly, then stops.

“Can I?” he asks.

You know what he means and you should say no — but instead, you nod once. His hand closes around your elbow softly, barely a grip at first, before he pulls you toward him.

You step forward before you can decide not to, and then you are close enough to feel the warmth of him through the cold night air. His hand slides from your elbow to your arm, then pauses there, carefully first. His eyes search your face, and you hate that he still looks at you like that, like all that matters to him is not to hurt you.

“You can still be mad,” he says quietly. He swallows, his thumb moving once against your sleeve. “I don’t want you to think I’m asking you to stop being hurt just because you still love me.”

You look down, because that is the exact kind of thing that makes your chest go weak in a way you cannot afford. “Then what are you asking?”

He is quiet for a second, and when he answers, his voice is lower, rougher. “For whatever part of you drove here.”

Your eyes lift to his, just to see he’s nervous after saying it, knowing it’s too honest and too close to wanting too much. But he does not take it back, his hand still on your arm, gentle enough that you could pull away, firm enough that you know he does not want you to.

“I hate you,” you whisper.

His mouth barely moves, not quite a smile. “Good.”

“You’re unfair because you hurt me, and then you still know how to hold me like this.” Your voice turns softer, more frustrated than sharp. 

His face changes. “I don’t know how to hold you any other way.”

For a second, you just stare at him, feeling your anger and your want and your stupid, impossible love all sitting inside your chest together, refusing to separate into anything clean and correct. You reach for him first, your fingers curling into the front of his hoodie, but he goes still and his breath hitches.

Your fingers tighten. “I hate the way I don’t hate you.”

He lets out a quiet breath, almost a laugh, but it sounds too shaky to be amused. “Yeah,” he says, voice low. “I’ll take that.”

You blink. “What?”

He looks down at your hand, then back at you, and his mouth does this stupid little almost-smile that makes your chest hurt. “I mean, it’s not ideal,” he says carefully. “But it’s better than you hating me normally.”

You glare at him, but it barely has any strength. “You’re not funny.”

“I know.” His eyes stay on you. “I’m nervous.”

He swallows, his hand hovering near your arm like he wants to touch you and is trying very hard to behave. The silence after that is small, not empty. You can hear the faint sound of a car passing somewhere down the street, the soft buzz of the porch light, the uneven way he breathes when you still do not let go of his hoodie.

Then Jake says, quieter, “I kept thinking about what I’d say if you ever looked at me again.”

The smallest, most traitorous shift at the corner of your mouth. His eyes drop to your mouth, lasting half a second before he looks back up, but it is enough to make your face warm. You swallow, “And what did you come up with?”

He stares at you like the answer should be easy, but now that you are standing in front of him, hand still curled in his hoodie, it looks like every version he practiced has abandoned him. His mouth parts once, then he lets out a quiet breath. He tilts his head down, close enough that his nose brushes yours first, and your breath catches anyway.

“I want you,” he says.

He swallows, eyes still on yours, voice lower now. “No deal, no money, no Riki asking me to.” His mouth moves like he wants to smile, but he looks too nervous to fully let it happen.

For a second, you forget how to be angry properly.

Even after everything, he says things too simply, too honestly, like he does not know that a few words can walk straight past every wall you spent weeks rebuilding. You stare at him, close enough to see the way his lashes lower when his eyes flick to your mouth againe

“You’re very annoying,” you whisper, because anything softer would ruin you completely.

His mouth twitches, but his eyes do not leave yours. “Then be annoyed at me,” he says quietly.

His hand finally settles against your arm. “Be mad at me. Yell at me if you want. Look at me like you hate me.” His voice drops a little, and something in it turns almost helpless. His face is close enough now that you can see how badly he is trying not to look at your mouth again. “To my face,” he adds, voice barely above a whisper. “So at least I know you’re still there.”

You forget your slippers, your car parked badly by the curb, the fact that you drove here with no plan and no dignity. All you can focus on is the boy in front of you, looking at you as he says your anger is better than your absence, and even the worst version of you would be easier to survive than no version at all.

For a second, you only stare at him, and then, because your body has apparently lost all sense of loyalty to your anger, you laugh. Just something that slips out because Jake Sim is standing in front of you looking genuinely wrecked over the possibility of you never glaring at him again, and somehow that is the stupidest, most unfairly sweet thing he could have said.

His eyes flicker, like the sound surprises him. “What?”

“You’re very stupid,” you whisper.

His mouth softens. “Yeah.”

You shake your head, but your fingers are still curled in his hoodie. You hate that your whole body seems to understand him before your brain can decide what to do, because all week you have been telling yourself to stay angry, stay away, stay untouched, and then he says one stupid honest thing and you are standing here in slippers, holding onto him like you were always going to come back.

His hand shifts at your arm, careful still. “I won’t ask for more than you want to give me.”

You tug him down and then your mouth is on his.

The kiss is soft at first because he makes it soft, because even now, even with your fingers pulling at his hoodie and your face tilted up to his, he still kisses you like he is waiting for you to change your mind. Then his hand slips from your arm to your waist, warm and steady, and he kisses you back like he has been trying not to think about doing this for weeks and failing every single day. He does not rush, does not take too much, but the relief in him is obvious in the way his breath leaves against your mouth, in the way his fingers tighten just slightly at your side like he cannot believe you are letting him hold you again.

Then he takes one step forward without thinking, and you take one back because he is close and warm and kissing him is already making your brain fuzzy. Your slipper catches the edge of the curb before either of you notices and you stumble. A small gasp slips into the kiss, immediately followed by a laugh you try and fail to swallow. His arm tightens around your waist at once, pulling you back against him before you can lose your balance properly, and he breaks the kiss only enough to look down between you.

“Careful,” he breathes, like he has any right to sound concerned when he is the entire reason you forgot how sidewalks work.

He kisses you again before you can complain further, and this time it is less careful, tugging at his hoodie until he has to bend closer. The cold air slips around your legs, and your car is still parked badly by the curb.

When you pull away, barely, Jake follows for half a second before stopping himself. His eyes open slowly, and the look on his face is so dazed and soft that your own face heats.

“Do you want to go somewhere?”

You blink. “Right now?”

“Yeah.” His thumb moves once at your waist. “I mean, not as a date if you don’t want it to be a date. Or it can be. Or it can be something else. I don’t know.” He winces slightly. “I’m doing badly again.”

You bite the inside of your cheek, trying not to smile. “Very badly.”

For a second, he only looks at you, still smiling a little, then he tilts his head like he has decided to be brave in the worst possible way. “I’m buying. I have cash.” he says. “Got it from some dumb seventeen-year-old who asked me to take his sister out.”

Your jaw drops. He starts laughing before you can even form a sentence, and that makes it worse. “Oh my God.” You immediately turn away from him, deeply offended, and manage half a step before his hand catches your wrist, enough to stop you before you can escape with what little dignity you have left.

“Okay, sorry,” he says, but he is still laughing.

Your back meets his chest, his arm slips around your waist again, and his laugh drops into something softer near your ear.

“I’m sorry,” he says, quieter now. “Bad joke.”

His hand slides down from your wrist to your fingers, and before you can say anything else, he lifts your hand. His lips press softly against your knuckles, and every insult waiting on your tongue disappears like it never had a chance.

You hate him. You hate him a lot.

You sigh, like this is a great sacrifice and not exactly what you want. “Fine.” His smile grows. “But if you mention the money again, I’m breaking up with you. Again.”

He nods seriously. “Okay. No more money jokes. I can’t afford to lose my girlfriend twice.”

“Jake.”

“Sorry. Done. No more.”