guiltycouch

You’ve been shelving books for about seven thousand years.

Or at least that’s how it feels, wedged between the holiday table and the front window while people keep coming in with snow on their shoulders like they’re bringing the storm in as a guest. The bell above the door jingles every time, high and bright and weirdly smug about it.

The bookshop is warm, heavy with smells that are all slightly too much at once: cinnamon oil from the diffuser near the door, paper that’s been turned and thumbed and loved, the wet-wool edge of everyone’s coats slowly trying to defrost. There are paper snowflakes taped to the glass. A tiny artificial tree leans a bit to the left in the display, ornaments shaped like miniature book covers weighing down one side.

You’re halfway through putting a stack of romances back in alphabetical order when the bell rings again and a gust of cold sneaks in under the door, curling around your ankles.

“Shoes,” Chaewon says from the front without looking up.

You glance at her over the edge of the display. “What?”

She’s behind the register in her navy apron, the knot at her back perfectly centered like she tied it in front of a mirror. Her hair is clipped back, black and shiny, not a strand out of place. There’s a clipboard beside the register with the sign-in sheet on it. A pen is attached with a piece of string, because of course it is.

Chaewon flicks her eyes to the entry mat, then back to your face. “You’re tracking slush. Wipe.”

You look down. There’s a faint gray trail from the door to where you’re standing. Your boots are damp around the edges. You drag them across the mat a couple of times, more out of stubbornness than effort. The fox printed on the mat looks disappointed in you.

“There,” you say.

Chaewon’s expression doesn’t change. “You forgot to clock in.”

You force your shoulders to stay loose as you head up to the counter. The clipboard is waiting. You grab the pen and the string tugs, like it’s on a leash.

“Does Ms. Lim think I’m going to steal a pen?” you ask.

Chaewon’s gaze dips briefly to the front pocket of your hoodie, then back up. “You would,” she says.

You don’t even have anything in that pocket except an old dining hall receipt and some mystery lint. Still, your face warms.

“I wouldn’t,” you say. “Some of us have morals.”

“You were twenty minutes late,” she answers, not bothering to look impressed. “Sign.”

You sign. Your hand is cold, and your name ends up crooked, like it’s trying to slide off the page. Chaewon watches the paper, not you. Her nails are short and neat. You hate that you notice.

She slides a folded apron toward you without looking. “Here.”

“Wow,” you say. “There’s the reason I don’t clock in.”

“Customers don’t need to see your hoodie,” she replies. “It has holes in it.”

You look down. It does have holes. Two near the cuff from a nervous habit, one at the hem that’s older than college.

“It’s called vintage,” you say.

“It’s called tragic,” she says.

You pull the apron over your head anyway and tie it behind your back. You don’t aim. The knot lands too far to the side.

Chaewon’s eyes flick down and stay there for a moment too long. Her jaw tightens almost imperceptibly.

“Fix that,” she says.

“It’s tied,” you say. “It’s doing its job.”

“It’s crooked,” she says. “And you’re in front of customers.”

“I didn’t realize my back was part of the customer service,” you mutter.

“It is when I have to look at it,” she says.

You feel your spine stiffen. “Newsflash, Chaewon: you don’t have to look at me at all.”

Her eyes rise to meet yours. They’re sharp, dark, annoyingly steady. “Trust me,” she says. “I know.”

Before you can say something mean enough to feel satisfied now and regret later, Ms. Lim pops up from the far end of the counter, Santa hat sliding sideways like it’s trying to escape.

“There you are,” she says, cheerful. “Good, both of you. It’s starting to come down out there. We’re going to get slammed for another hour and then I’m kicking everyone out.”

She pats Chaewon’s arm as if she expects her to hold the line against an invading army. “Chaewon, gift wrap the books. You—” She points at you. “Holiday table, then float. Smile like finals aren’t happening.”

“I don’t smile on principle,” you say.

“You smile at me,” Ms. Lim says with the sharp part of her tongue.

“That’s because you pay me,” you say under the breath.

She laughs and waves you toward the middle of the store. “Shoo. Make the shelves look pretty. If anything falls on a customer, I’m blaming you and I’ll cry.”

“That’s new…” Chaewon mutters.

“What was that?” Ms. Lim asks merrily.

Chaewon’s eyes flicker. “Nothing,” she says.

You head back to the big holiday table. From the front, the building looks like a normal small bookstore—cozy, slightly chaotic, full of too many things in not enough space. When you walk it with your brain turned on, you can see the structure underneath.

Children’s corner in back with a circular rug that never lies flat, always has one piece sticking up waiting to trip someone. The reading nook opposite it, with the sagging gray couch and the lamp that only works if you tap it twice.

Classics line the left wall with the locked glass cabinet embedded in the middle. The rare books are inside, spines aged and serious. The brass key that opens it hangs on a chain around Ms. Lim’s neck. Chaewon looks at that cabinet like it owes her money.

You look at it like a bunch of books you’ll never be able to afford.

The holiday table is a disaster in three dimensions. Someone has stacked thrillers on top of romances. A cookbook about pies sits on a pile of poetry. A display mug is one elbow away from suicide.

You start sorting just to make the chaos stop. Paperbacks in one stack, hardbacks in another. Romances to the right, everything else center and left. You pull a snowy-cover romcom out from under something with a skeleton on it and feel vaguely offended on the romcom’s behalf.

“Excuse me,” a woman says to your shoulder. “Hi. Sorry. Do you have something… romantic?” She winces on the last word like it tastes weird.

You straighten. “Romantic we can do,” you say. “Any no-go zones? Like, no heartbreak, no cheating, no—”

“Oh, no, she loves heartbreak,” the woman says quickly. “It’s for my niece, she’s in high school. But my sister will kill me if there’s anything… explicit.” She mimes a vague gesture that could mean sex or could mean drugs; you decide to assume sex. “So, like… kissing, feelings, snow. But not too much… you know.”

You do know.

You look at the table. “Okay,” you say. You pick up a soft YA-ish paperback with a cartoon couple in puffy coats. “This one’s more cute-angsty than spicy. Lots of longing, barely any trauma.”

The woman’s face brightens. “Longing is good.”

You grab another—“CUM2A” by Okay—read the back quickly. Too steamy. You put it down.

“Definitely this one,” you say, handing her the first book. “Safe for nieces, but she won’t be bored.”

She clutches the book in both hands like you’ve given her something fragile. “Thank you. You just saved Christmas.”

“Wow,” you say. “All in a day’s work.”

She laughs and heads toward the register.

You glance up and catch Chaewon watching.

She’s not looking at you head-on. She’s pretending to organize the impulse-buy bookmarks near the register, but her eyes track the woman, then the book in her hands, then you.

When she feels you looking back, her gaze slides away like it never stopped.

You go back to stacking.

The hour until closing moves in knots. You wrap a stack of books in gold paper that tears every time you try to fold a corner. You show three people where the essay collections are. You straighten the children’s rug and watch it go crooked again in under five minutes because a toddler decides to run in a circle on it.

At one point you pass by the register to grab more tape and Chaewon says, without looking up, “You put the wrong edition of Little Women on the display.”

You stop. “What?”

She slides a bag across the counter to a customer, murmurs “Happy holidays,” and only when they leave does she flick her eyes to yours.

“There are three editions in stock,” she says. “Ms. Lim wants the clothbound one with the red cover on the table. You put the cheap movie tie-in one. With the faces.” Her nose wrinkles like the idea offends her.

“People like covers with faces,” you say.

“People don’t know what they want,” she shoots back.

“I thought the point was to sell books,” you say. “Movie tie-in is familiar. Familiar equals safe. Safe equals—”

“Cowardly,” she interrupts.

You blink. “That’s not where I was going.”

“It’s the only place you’re going,” she says.

You stare at her. “You think I’m a coward.”

“You won’t put your own work up for open mic,” she says. “You keep reading half-finished first drafts in workshop and then saying ‘it’s nothing’ if anyone likes it. So, yes.”

You feel something hot crawl up the back of your neck. “At least I don’t slaughter people’s stories in the Q&A portion,” you say.

Chaewon’s jaw tightens. “I give useful notes. I’m not a sycophant.”

“You could try not making people feel like idiots,” you say.

“You could try not writing like you have a brick up your ass,” she answers.

A customer steps up to the register with a stack of true crime and coughs politely.

Chaewon turns away from you so cleanly it’s like someone flipped a switch. “Hi,” she says, voice smooth. “Did you find everything okay?”

Conversation over.

Your chest still feels like she knocked something out of place, though.

You escape back into the middle of the store, where it’s just you and paper.

Outside, the wind has been doing its own thing. You’ve noticed it in the corner of your eye, the way the snowflakes stopped looking delicate and started flying sideways. Now, when you glance at the front window, you see white smeared against the glass, streetlights smudged into halos.

Someone near the holiday cards lets out a nervous gasp when a gust thumps against the door.

Ms. Lim looks up from the bookmarks display, pulls her phone from her apron, and sucks in a breath.

“Okay, update,” she says loudly, tapping the screen. “Blizzard warning just got bumped. They’re closing the main road in twenty minutes.”

The air in the store shifts. People stand up straighter. A guy in a puffer coat looks at his watch as if trying to slow down time.

“We’re closing,” Ms. Lim says, already moving toward the door. “Everybody check out now.”

You and Chaewon move automatically. She speeds up her scanning; you take armfuls of books and carry them for the people who can’t hold everything. The bell rings too much. Coats brush against you. Papercuts sting at the base of your fingers.

Your phone vibrates in your pocket with the campus alert:

SEVERE WEATHER WARNING. AVOID TRAVEL. SEEK SHELTER.

You glance at it. You glance at the window. Snow claws at the glass now, white and dense, no longer pretty.

The last customer finally staggers out with two bags and a stray ribbon stuck to their sleeve.

The bell jingles, and then there’s silence.

Ms. Lim turns the lock, flips the sign to CLOSED, and exhales like she’s been holding her breath for an hour.

“Okay,” she says. “We survived the rush.”

“I mean, the roof is about to blow away,” you say.

Ms. Lim points a gloved finger at you. “Do not jinx my roof.”

Chaewon is already scanning the store, gaze moving over displays, windows, the rare books cabinet, like she’s taking note of liabilities.

“The front romance table’s a mess,” she says.

“It’s fine,” you say. “No one’s coming in now.”

“It’s crooked,” she says.

“It’s romance,” you say. “And what’s more romantic than a crooked table?”

Chaewon aims a look at you that could cut paper.

Ms. Lim shrugs. “I’m pulling the shutter down,” she says. “You two start closing the store. Candles are near the register. If the power goes out, don’t panic, we’re not haunted. The pipes just make… noises.”

“It’s okay, Ms. Lim. I’m not scared of the dark,” you say.

“I know,” Ms. Lim says. “You’re scared of commitment and job interviews. But I didn’t ask.”

She opens the door and the wind punches in, cold and wet and loud. Her Santa hat almost flies off; she catches it with one hand and laughs.

“Back in five if the alley door isn’t frozen shut,” she calls, and then she’s outside, pulling the heavy metal shutter down over the front windows.

Chaewon stands by the glass, watching. You end up next to her without deciding to, shoulder almost brushing hers, eyes tracking the same movement.

The shutter rattles as Ms. Lim hauls it down. Snow swirls in around her feet. Her coat whips.

The lights flicker once.

You glance up at the ceiling.

They flicker again.

“Don’t,” you say under your breath, as if the building can hear you.

The lights go out.

Everything snaps to black so fast your stomach drops. The humming of the heaters stops. The buzzing from the old fluorescent tube in the back disappears. Even the little mechanical whir of the receipt printer dies.

For half a heartbeat, it’s just the storm and breathing.

The emergency lights blink on. They’re low and yellow, barely illuminating the aisles. The store looks different in them, older somehow, shadows stretched long between shelves.

Outside, something slams into the shutter with a metallic boom.

You and Chaewon both flinch.

“Ms. Lim?” Chaewon calls, too loud in the sudden quiet.

The boom comes again. The shutter rattles. Then Ms. Lim’s voice filters in from behind the metal, muffled and thin.

“I’m okay!” she shouts. “The lock’s jammed from the outside! I’m going around to try the alley door—don’t open anything unless you’re sure it’s me! And don’t—”

A gust of wind shrieks around the corner, steals the end of her sentence.

“—freeze!” barely makes it through.

The sound of her boots fades.

Chaewon’s phone vibrates. She takes it out of her pocket, reads something, frowns, and clenches her jaw. As your eyes meet hers, she returns to that impassive, serious expression she always wears.

She puts the phone back in her pocket, but whatever she saw, it had already done its damage—her shoulders now square and the skin around her mouth tight.

“Candles,” she says, already walking for the counter.

You follow. Your legs feel a little floaty, like they forgot how to walk.

Behind the register, Chaewon yanks open the bottom drawer. There’s a jumble of things inside: rolls of receipt paper, three stubby white candles, a pack of matches, a black flashlight wrapped in silver duct tape.

She grabs the matches.

Her hand shakes.

Not a lot. Just a tremor that shivers down to the knuckles.

She sucks in a breath and tightens her grip. An attempt to bully her body into cooperating.

Before you think about it too hard, you reach out and cover her fingers with yours.

“I got it,” you say.

Her head snaps up.

Her eyes flash, startled and defensive. Your hand is warm over hers. You can feel the fine bones there, the way her tendons pull taut.

“I don’t need—” she starts.

You gently slide the box of matches out of her grip. “You have all your fingers,” you say. “Let’s keep it that way.”

You strike a match. The flare of orange is small but shocking. You light the first candle, then a second. The wax catches, flames steadying into two thin petals of light.

You set them on the counter. The glow spreads, softening the hard edges of everything.

Chaewon stares at the candles for a second in disbelief. Then she snatches the matchbox back and lights the third candle herself.

The flame… wobbles.

Something slams into the shutter again. The sound ripples through the metal, through the glass, through your chest.

You and Chaewon both look toward the front.

“She’ll be fine,” you say.

You’re not sure if you’re trying to convince her or yourself.

“Don’t say that,” Chaewon answers. “You can’t know for sure.”

You study her profile in the candlelight. She looks composed from far away. Up close, you can see the giveaway details—how her throat moves when she swallows, how her shoulders are a little too square.

The storm howls. The pipes in the back gurgle once, loudly.

Chaewon closes the drawer with more force than necessary. “Back door,” she says. “If she can’t get in from outside, we should at least know if it opens from in here.”

She scoops up one candle, grabs the duct-tape flashlight, and heads for the back hallway.

“Have you never watched a horror movie? Why would you try to open the back door?” you ask.

She doesn’t look back. “Someone has to.”

You follow, because apparently that someone is not going to be her by herself.

The hallway to the stockroom is narrower in the emergency light, walls yellowed, floor scuffed. The candle flame throws shadows up and down like moving fingers. The metal door to the alley sits at the end, painted the same beige as the walls, long handle vertical, bolt at the top.

Chaewon sets the candle on a nearby crate, puts both hands on the bar, and pulls.

Nothing.

She puts her weight into it. The handle doesn’t move, the bolt doesn’t budge. The door rattles, frame vibrating.

“Come on,” she says through her teeth. “Move.”

She braces one foot against the bottom edge and hauls backward. The muscles in her arms tense under her sweater. Her hair shifts against the clip.

The handle gives a millimeter with a metallic creak and then catches.

“That’s not good,” you say.

“I know,” she says. Her voice has a frayed edge now.

“Chaewon—”

“I said I know,” she snaps.

She tries again. The door stays stubborn.

You reach past her and jiggle the handle, just to feel it yourself. You feel ice in the mechanism, solid and unbothered by her pulls.

“Pretty sure it’s frozen,” you say.

“I can see that,” she says.

“You’re going to dislocate your shoulder,” you say.

“I’m fine.”

She sucks in a breath and goes for it again. The bar barely twitches. The sound it makes is worse than the earlier rattle, like a warning.

“Okay,” you say, and catch her wrist.

Your hand closes around her. Her pulse is fast under your fingers. Her skin is cold enough that you feel the contrast.

She goes still.

“Let go,” she says quietly.

“If I let go, you’re just going to pull at the door again,” you say. “And then we’ll have a stuck door and a dislocated shoulder.”

“That’s my decision to make,” she says.

“Ms. Lim will murder me if I let you hurt yourself in her store,” you say. “On the list of ways to lose a job, that’s probably top three.”

Chaewon stares at you, eyes dark and furious and bright all at once.

“Let go,” she says again.

You do.

Not because she tells you to, but because you feel the way your grip tightens without meaning to, and suddenly you’re very aware of where your hand is and how small her wrist feels in it.

She pulls away like your touch burned. Her shoulders go back up, armor snapping into place.

“Fine,” she says. “Then we wait.”

You both stand there listening to the storm slam itself against the alley side of the building. Somewhere above you a piece of metal groans. The heaters are still dead. You can feel the air cooling with every minute.

“Great,” you say. “Perfect night.”

“We have an emergency kit,” she says briskly, turning toward the stockroom. “Ms. Lim is paranoid.”

You follow her through the door.

Chaewon walks straight to a cabinet and opens the bottom doors like she’s done this before. Inside: a red first-aid kit, a camping stove, a small kettle, two instant ramen cups, a big bag of pretzels, three chocolate bars, and a box of tea bags.

You blink. “We keep a whole apocalypse kit back here?”

“Emergency box,” she says. “And clearly a useful one.” She pulls the stove out, then hands you one of the ramen cups without looking. “Did you eat already?”

“Totally,” you say automatically.

Your stomach chooses that second to make a noise that sounds like a dying animal.

Chaewon’s head turns slowly.

“Oh my god,” she says. “A granola bar is not dinner.”

You make a face. “You don’t know my life.”

Her eyebrows go up. “You literally told everyone last week that your oven is ‘for storage.’”

“That was a joke,” you say.

“It sure doesn’t look like it,” she says.

“It was… half a joke,” you admit.

Chaewon just stares at you for a second, candlelight catching in her eyes. Something in her expression shifts, like something clicks into place that she doesn’t like.

She fills the kettle from a big water jug, sets it on the camping stove, and lights the burner with the matches. The little blue flame catches with a soft whoosh.

You watch her hands. They’re steadier with a task. Her shoulders drop a fraction.

“You’re really prepared for armageddon,” you say.

“We have the kit thanks to Ms. Lim. But yes, I’m always prepared,” she answers.

You sit down on an unopened box and peel back the lid on the ramen cup. Your fingers feel clumsy.

“You’re always like this,” you say.

She doesn’t look up. “Like what?”

“Like… I don’t know,” you say. “Always with a plan. Always on high alert.” You wave vaguely at the organized chaos.

“That’s called being responsible,” she says.

“That’s called being uptight,” you say.

The corner of her mouth twitches, just a little.

Steam starts to gather at the spout of the kettle. The stockroom grows warmer by a few degrees. The shelves throw softer shadows now, the candlelight and blue flame working together.

Chaewon pours the water into your ramen, then into her own cup. She chooses tea instead of a second ramen.

You eat sitting on the box, blowing on noodles that are too hot, salty broth soaking the cardboard smell. It tastes better you thought it would.

Chaewon leans against a stack of shipping boxes, ankles crossed, hands around her mug. Her cheeks are pinker now, probably from the heat.

You take a breath, steadying yourself before you speak.

“Why do you hate me?” you ask.

Chaewon chokes on her tea.

“I don’t,” she says quickly.

You raise your eyebrows.

She glares at you. “I don’t hate you,” she says. “I hate the way you… are.”

“Gee thanks,” you say. “That’s a lot better.”

“You’re just so…” She waves her hand in a circle, searching for the right word. “Careless.”

“I’ll have you know, I shelve the books diligently,” you say.

“Only when someone’s watching,” she shoots back.

“You’re watching all the time,” you say.

Chaewon’s lips press into a line. She looks down into her mug. “Not… all the time.”

“Enough to hear about my oven,” you say.

“You weren’t exactly quiet,” she mutters.

You slurp ramen to buy yourself a second.

When you talk again, your voice comes out quieter. “You killed me in the workshop last month.”

She blinks. “What?”

You poke at the noodles. “The story I turned in. About the kid working at the movie theater. You tore it apart.”

“It needed work,” she says, but her tone is less sharp, like she’s not as sure as she wants to sound.

“You said the third person felt like a dodge,” you remind her. “That it sounded like I couldn’t say ‘I’ and mean it.”

“That was… accurate,” she says. Then she inhales, like she’s about to launch into the full critique. “You write like you’re apologizing for taking up space. It’s frustrating.”

“It’s my story,” you say.

“And that makes it even more depressing,” she says.

You look up at her. “You could have just said ‘I didn’t like it,’ you know.”

“I did like it,” she says quietly.

You stare.

She swallows. “That’s the problem,” she says. “I liked it, and you were still… holding back. And it made me irritated. With you. Not the story.”

You sit there with the cheap ramen smell and the cheap emergency candle and the expensive feeling of having your insides laid out in the stockroom.

“So you shredded me,” you say.

“That’s how I show respect,” she says.

“That’s insane,” you say.

Her mouth twitches. “Do you want me to lie?”

“Then why do you always look like you’d rather eat a hardback than talk to me?” you ask.

Chaewon watches the candle flame for a full three seconds before answering.

“You’re not easy to talk to. You’re… popular,” she says.

You actually laugh at that, a rough sound that surprises both of you. “No, I’m not.”

“You are,” she insists. “In class. People talk to you.”

“They talk to me because they want my help with their work,” you say.

“They laugh at your jokes,” she says.

“I wonder why,” you say, snorting.

Her fingers tighten around the mug. “Because they’re funny,” she says. “Because you’re funny. They like you, even when you don’t try.”

You stare at her.

“You think I don’t try,” you say.

“I think,” she says carefully, “you’re at least pretending not to.”

You set the ramen cup down on the floor before your hands can crush it.

“You have no idea how much I’m trying,” you say.

She looks up. Candlelight catches the worry in her eyes before she can smooth it out.

“Then say it,” she says. “Instead of joking.”

You inhale too fast. The air down here feels heavier.

“My dad called yesterday,” you say. “During your shift. I was in the back.”

Her posture changes, just a little. “Okay,” she says. It’s almost gentle.

“He wanted to know if I could send home money this month,” you say. “From my ‘little campus job.’” You add air quotes with one hand. “Financial aid covers tuition, not… family problems. So I said I’d try. Which means I need all my shifts and maybe more, and I need Ms. Lim not to think I’m useless, and I need you not to think I’m useless either, because you’re…” You trail off, realizing how much you’ve said.

“I don’t think you’re useless,” she says.

You give a short, disbelieving laugh. “You call me lazy twice a week.”

“Lazy doesn’t mean useless,” she says, frowning. “Lazy means… misdirected potential.”

You blink. “That is the worst compliment I’ve ever received.”

“It’s still a compliment,” she counters.

Silence hangs between you for a moment. The kettle has stopped hissing. The storm hums outside like white noise with teeth.

You watch her fingers around the mug. They’re slender, knuckles showing faintly. There’s a nick on her thumb, a thin line of healed skin.

“Then…” you started. “Do you hate yourself?”

Chaewon stiffens. “What?”

You hear the word come out of your mouth again in your head and wince. “I mean,” you say, scrambling, “you talk about people holding back and being pathetic and all that. I was just wondering if you’re…” You circle your hand in the air. “Equally mean to yourself.”

“That’s not what you asked,” she says.

“I panicked,” you say. “Consider it a rough draft.”

She exhales through her nose, a tiny, annoyed sound. “I don’t hate myself,” she says finally.

You arch an eyebrow.

“I don’t.” Her fingers tighten around the mug. “I hate that I have to… stay ahead of everything all the time. I hate that if I stop, everything feels like it’ll collapse.”

“You mean the bookstore?” you ask.

“The bookstore, my GPA, my mother’s blood pressure… take your pick,” she says.

You watch the way her mouth twists on “mother.” It’s quick, but it’s there.

“Was that who that notification was?” you ask.

Chaewon blinks. “What notification?”

“Earlier,” you say. “You checked your phone. You went all—” You imitate her tight shoulders. “—like you’d been plunged into a cold shower.”

She hesitates, then pulls her phone out of her apron pocket. The screen lights her face from below, makes the dark circles under her eyes look darker.

She holds it where you can’t see the screen. Her thumb moves. Her jaw clenches once.

“‘Don’t be stupid about the storm. This job is not worth getting hurt. You have more important things to think about than this part-time nonsense.’” She says it flat, but you can hear the invisible italics.

You feel your own jaw tighten in sympathy. “Wow,” you say. “Merry Christmas to you.”

“She worries,” Chaewon says quickly, like she has to defend it. “She just… thinks this is temporary.”

“This,” you repeat. “You mean the job?”

“She doesn’t just mean the job,” she says dryly. “She means everything. Workshops, open mics, having fun.” Her eyes flick to your apron, then her own. “This is… beneath what she thinks I can do.”

“What do you think?” you ask.

She stares at the steam curling out of her mug. “Some days I agree with her,” she says. “But some days this is the only place that makes sense.”

The kettle ticks as it cools. The storm drums on the far wall, insistent.

You look down at your empty cup. “We’re a mess,” you say.

“We’re college students trapped in a blizzard,” she says. “Mess is implied.”

You watch her for a moment. The tiny emergency candle has burned down a little, wax spilling over the side. The air smells like cheap vanilla and ramen.

Your phone buzzes on the crate next to you, vibrating against the wood.

You both jolt.

You snatch it up. There’s a new text in the group chat Ms. Lim insists on having. The message explains how the roads are closed and how she will come back tomorrow.

You show the screen to Chaewon.

She reads, exhales slowly, and leans her head back against the boxes. For a second, a real, honest second, she lets everything drop. Her shoulders, her jaw, her face.

“We’re stuck here all night,” she says.

“Sleepover,” you say weakly.

She gives you a look. “We are not eight.”

“Speak for yourself,” you say. “I fully plan on building a pillow fort.”

“The pillows are decorative,” she says.

“So we’ll die pretty,” you say.

She almost smiles, then catches herself. “We should get the heater,” she says instead. “And the blankets.”

You stand, joints popping after sitting on the box for too long. “Yes, captain.”

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t deny it.

You help her carry the space heater from Ms. Lim’s office—a squat, beige thing that looks like it’s seen at least three decades of undergrad winters. Chaewon plugs it into the outlet behind the counter and flips the switch. It hums hopefully, then warms with a faint metallic smell. Somehow there was still some electricity.

You dig out the blankets from under the counter. One is a navy fleece branded with the bookstore logo. The other is a red-and-green plaid that looks like it’s been through a few family living rooms.

You shake them out. Dust floats in the candlelight.

“You take the fleece,” you say. “I’ll take the… holiday picnic.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she says. “We’ll share both.”

“You hate sharing,” you remind her.

“I do,” she says. “But this is an emergency.”

You snort and let her take over blanket logistics. She does it like she does everything else—efficient, precise. The navy fleece goes over the couch in the reading nook. The plaid gets folded on the arm of the armchair nearby. She takes one of the candles and the flashlight over, setting the candle on the low table, the flashlight beside it.

The store looks smaller in the half-light. The kids’ corner rug, the crooked tree, the tables—everything’s part of the same dim room now, not separate sections.

Your breath fogs faintly in front of your lips if you exhale hard enough.

You wrap your scarf tighter around your neck. It’s a dark knit you snagged on clearance last year. You forget you’re still wearing it until the wool scratches your chin.

Chaewon glances over, eyes catching on the scarf. You can see her calculating.

Without warning, she steps up close—closer than she’s been all evening outside the narrow back hallway. Close enough that you can see the tiny mole near her left ear.

“What are you—” you start, but she’s already reaching.

She loops her fingers under the scarf and tugs.

“Hey—”

“Relax,” she says. “You’re terrible at knots.”

You stand there stupidly while she unwraps it, the sudden rush of cold at your throat making you swallow. She smells like cheap tea, candle smoke, and whatever perfume she always wears that you’ve never been able to name.

She shakes the scarf out once and then, instead of putting it on you, throws it back around both your necks, looping it so one end falls on your chest, the other on hers.

You blink down at the wool where it stretches between you.

“This seems counterproductive,” you say. “Now we’re both half cold.”

“We’re sharing body heat,” she says, like it’s obvious. “Basic physics.”

Her face is inches from yours now, the scarf setting a fixed distance that suddenly feels very small. You can’t back up without dragging her with you. You’re not sure you’d want to.

You’re both quiet for a beat.

“You’re weird,” you say.

“You’re wearing a hoodie with holes in it,” she counters.

You want to say something sharp back, but your brain has decided to focus all its energy into not looking at her mouth.

She clears her throat. “We should stay in here,” she says, nodding at the reading nook. “Closer to the heater.”

“And the books,” you say.

“And the books,” she concedes.

You sink onto the couch. The cushion dips under your weight, springs protesting softly. Chaewon hesitates for half a second, then sits too, the scarf pulling her down next to you.

You could have sat with space between you. The couch is big enough for that. She doesn’t. She sits close enough that your thighs brush, just barely, denim on denim.

The fleece blanket is right there, so you grab one end and toss it over both your laps. It settles warm and heavy. Your legs stop shivering.

You can feel her through three layers of fabric and it still feels like too much.

For a while, you just sit there.

The heater hums. The storm beats its fists against the walls. The emergency lights cast their sickly yellow, but the little candle on the table adds soft orange where it can. The store smells like wax and dust and paper and the kind of quiet you only get when the whole world is stuck.

“You know,” you say eventually, staring at the opposite shelf, “this is the part in a romcom where they’d find the old record player and dance in the dark.”

“We don’t own a record player,” Chaewon says.

“Metaphorically,” you say.

“We don’t own a metaphorical record player either,” she says. “We own a Bluetooth speaker that dies every two hours.”

“Wow,” you say. “Ruining all my quips.”

“You’re welcome,” she says.

You shift under the blanket, trying to discreetly move your leg so your knee doesn’t bump hers every time you breathe. You fail.

Her phone buzzes again. She glances down.

Your eyes catch the screen before she can tilt it away.

MOM: Send me your CV again. I want to show it to a friend. You can’t waste your time there forever. The storm is not an excuse. Think about me.

Chaewon flips the phone face-down so fast she almost hits her own mug.

You pretend you didn’t see, but your hands clench under the blanket.

“I hate her,” you say before you can stop yourself.

Chaewon looks over sharply.

“She doesn’t even ask if you’re okay,” you say. “What kind of mother is that?”

“She’s like that with everything,” Chaewon says stiffly. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” you say.

Her mouth sets. “If I wanted therapy, I’d pay someone.”

“Yeah, except we’re two overcaffeinated lit majors in a blackout,” you say. “This is the free trial.”

She snorts despite herself. “You think you’re funny.”

“I know I’m funny,” you say. “Less sure about functional.”

She hums at that, low in her throat.

The scarf scratches your jaw every time you talk. Every time she shifts, it tugs at you.

“Why do you keep doing that?” you ask.

“Doing what?”

“Looking at me like I’m committing a crime every time I breathe,” you say.

Her lips straighten. “I told you,” she says. “You’re… frustrating.”

“Because I won’t read at open mic,” you say.

“Because you won’t do anything at open mic,” she says. “You hide behind… half-finished drafts and self-effacing jokes.”

“You hide behind being mean,” you counter.

“I’m not mean,” she says, offended.

“You told Jenny her protagonist had ‘the emotional range of a potato,’” you add.

“She thanked me for that comment,” Chaewon says. “She even added a scene because of it.”

You throw your head back against the couch, staring up at the dim ceiling. “You know there are ways to help others that don’t involve psychological warfare, right?”

“Not in my family,” she mutters.

You let the words hang for a beat.

“Okay,” you say quietly. “Then consider this… outside your family.”

She glances over.

“I don’t think you’re… temporary,” you say, stumbling a little over the word. “Not here. Not at the bookstore. Not… for me.” You swallow. “I work harder when you’re around. Like, at everything. Because you’ll notice if I half-ass it. And I don’t want you to think I’m—”

“A coward?” she supplies.

“Yeah,” you say. “That.”

She stares at you for a moment, really looks, like she’s trying to see through whatever you’re hiding behind.

Her eyes soften at the edges. “I don’t actually think you’re a coward. And I… I don’t want to be mean. I just didn’t know how to… stop,” she says. “So I just kept doing it. It’s easier than…” Her gaze drops to your mouth for a fraction of a second, then darts away. “Other things.”

Your skin goes hot under your hoodie. “Like… what?” you ask, your voice a little rough.

She takes a slow breath. Sets her mug down carefully on the table. Her hand stays there, fingers splayed near the candle, like she needs something to anchor her.

“Like admitting I like you,” she says.

The words felt like stepping into the ocean. Cold at first, then all warmth.

You blink. Your heart does a weird, useless leap. Your brain offers nothing.

“That’s not… funny,” you say, because nothing else came to mind.

“I’m not joking,” she says, and she’s looking you straight in the eyes now. No flinch. No smirk. Just the raw, awful honesty she usually reserves for other people’s work.

You swallow. “You have a terrible way of showing it.”

“I know,” she says. “Believe me, I know.”

You stare at her for a moment, feeling like the floor’s moved an inch to the left and you’re trying to adjust.

“Today. You yelled at me about the book covers,” you say.

She huffs a small almost-laugh. “That was foreplay,” she says.

Your brain short-circuits. “Okay, wow,” you say. “We’re just—leaping there.”

Her cheeks flare red. “I didn’t mean— I just—” She groans, burying her face briefly in her hands. “I knew this would sound better in my head.”

“It actually sounded perfect,” you say, before you can stop yourself.

She peeks at you through her fingers. “You’re making fun of me.”

“I’m really not,” you say.

You shift, and the scarf pulls at both your necks, drawing you closer. You can feel the heat of her breath now.

“Say you don’t like me back,” she says quietly. “And we can forget this. Blame it on the cold.”

You let out a shaky breath that fogs in the thin cold between you.

“I would,” you say. “But I’m not that good a liar.”

Something like relief and terror flashes across her face at once.

“You’re not going to make me say it again,” she mutters.

“I think you’ve said plenty,” you say. “It’s my turn.”

Her eyes snap back to yours.

“I like you,” you say. The words feel weird and big in your mouth, like you’re twelve again and confessing in some hallway. “Obviously. I wouldn’t spend this much time arguing about shelving with you if I didn’t.”

Her lips tremble at the corner, like she’s fighting a smile and a panic attack at the same time.

“Just… so we’re clear,” she says, because of course she wants clarity even now. “You don’t mean ‘like’ as in ‘we’re friends.’”

“Do friends argue about book covers?” you ask.

“I think so,” she says, puzzled.

You huff out a breath that’s closer to a laugh. “Then no,” you say. “Not like that.”

Silence stretches out between you, but it’s different now. Thicker. Charged.

You can hear your own heartbeat in your ears. The storm outside, the heater, the little candle—all of it fades to a dull hum.

“Okay,” she says faintly.

“Okay,” you echo.

The scarf between you feels suddenly less like an accident and more like a decision.

“Chaewon,” you say, and her name feels different now too.

“Yeah,” she says. Her voice is a little breathless.

“Can I…?” You lift your hand halfway, toward her cheek, then stop yourself. Old habits, always leaving the out.

She watches your hand, then your face.

“Don’t be a coward,” she says.

You let yourself touch her, then. Your fingers skim along her jaw, cool skin under your thumb. She sucks in a breath, eyes fluttering for a second.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” you say, because you need to.

She huffs out a shaky laugh. “You’re seriously giving yourself an out?” she asks.

“Wouldn’t you?” you ask.

She leans in that last inch, closing the space, the wool of the scarf scratching your chin as it tightens.

“Not when I’m sure,” she says.

Her mouth finds yours.

It’s soft at first, almost clumsy. Her lips are colder than you expected, warmed quickly by the press of yours. For a second, you forget how to breathe entirely.

Then your body catches up.

You kiss her back.

Her hand comes up to your chest, fingers curling in the fabric of your hoodie like she needs something to hold onto. You can feel her heart racing under the layers between you. Yours is doing something equally stupid, hammering against your ribs like it wants to make sure she hears it.

When she pulls back after a few seconds, her eyes are wide, pupils blown, breath coming a little too fast.

“Okay,” she says again, dazed now.

“That was—” you start.

“Don’t make a joke,” she warns, still breathless.

“—very efficient use of shared body heat,” you finish, because you can’t help yourself.

She smacks your chest lightly with the back of her hand. “Dumbass.”

“You like me,” you remind her.

“Unfortunately,” she mutters.

Her hand is still on your chest. You can feel the press of her palm through fabric.

You look at her, really look. At the slightly crooked clip in her hair. At the flush on her cheeks that has nothing to do with the heater. At the way her eyes keep darting back to your mouth, like she’s memorizing it.

“Is this okay?” you ask, nodding to where your fingers are still against her jaw.

She nods once, small and sharp.

You let your thumb move, stroking down along the line of her cheek to the corner of her mouth. Her lips part on a small inhale.

“Good,” you murmur, and lean in again.

This time, the kiss clicks.

It’s deeper, surer, all the sharp edges between you melting into something hot and final. She tilts her head, mouth opening under yours, and you follow her lead like it’s the easiest thing you’ve done. Your hand slides from her jaw to the back of her neck, fingers dipping into the hair at her nape. She shivers.

Her fingers bunch harder in your hoodie, pulling you closer. The scarf tightens, dragging you together until your noses bump. You both laugh into each other’s mouths, brief and breathless, and then she’s kissing you again, like she’s making up for all the time she spent pretending she couldn’t stand you.

The blanket slips, sliding off one of your knees. The cold air nips at your shin. You don’t care.

Her hand leaves your chest, hesitates in the space between you for a second, then lands at your hip, fingers curling into the denim. Your pulse jumps so hard you can feel it in your ears.

You break the kiss long enough to press your forehead to hers. Your breaths mix in the narrow gap.

“We should—” you start.

“Not stop,” she says quickly, and then flushes. “Unless you want to. Do you—?” The confidence she had a second ago frays at the edges.

This time it’s her giving herself the out. You could tease her. You don’t.

“No,” you say, chest tight. “I don’t want to stop.”

Something in her shoulders unclenches so visibly you almost see it.

“Okay,” she whispers.

Chaewon smiles, eyes scanning yours, just to see if anything changes. It does. Her fingers move—slow, deliberate—into your pants, over your pelvis, toward your cock. She stops at the base of your shaft, giving it a couple tight squeezes like the way you harden at her touch turns her on.

Your pulse snaps awake like it had somewhere to be.

She tilts her head, smiles, and gives you the hungriest look a woman can give. She licks her lips. Hungry. Anticipatory.

It’s obvious she is having fun playing this game, a game that feels like hell for you. Your cock grows harder and harder, straining against the tight fabric of your pants, begging to be let out. Your hips jerk forward as your mouth strains.

She notices you wincing and leans in, lowering her face until it hovers an inch above your jeans. Her breath fogs into the denim.

“I’ll take them off.”

Not a question.

With slow, deliberate tugs, she slides your pants down until you’re exposed. Her head is dangerously close to your cock. As you spring free from under the pants, your cock slaps Chaewon over the nose.

“Ow…” she grunts, but wraps her small hands around your hard cock, smiling.

Fuck. Cold.

“Chae—”

“Shh,” she whispers, fingers tightening on your cock. “I’ll warm you up.”

And then she kisses you. Not gently. Not hesitantly. Like she is hungry and you are the only thing on the menu.

Her mouth claims yours, fierce and all-consuming, her fingers tangling into your head before you can think straight. You kiss her back, your hands grip her hips, drawing her into your lap, trying not to sink into the water too fast. But you are already drowning.

She pulls back just enough to break the kiss, lips brushing yours as she gasps. “God… that should’ve happened ages ago, don’t you think?”

But you can barely think, let alone speak.

“Your mouth tastes pretty good,” she whispers, rolling her hips over yours. An electric jolt surges through both your heads. “I don’t think I’ll be able to go a day without it now.”

“You won’t have to.”

She bites her lip, only just. Almost like she doesn’t want you to see it. “Well, well. Aren’t I a lucky girl?”

Then her mouth finds your neck—soft at first, then teeth. A promise. She giggles and hums into your skin as her hand trails back to your cock, stroking from base to tip with deliberate care. She knows exactly how much pressure to apply to make your toes curl.

You pull her tighter, lips at her jaw, tasting that smile she wears ever since the confession. Her nails dig deep into your shoulder. Her hips roll again, a sound you don’t recognize escaping your mouth.

Her teeth bare deeper into your neck, sucking and licking along the hollow just below your ear.

“Hey,” she whispers into your ear, hand pumping your cock like she has all the time in the world, “Want me to suck your dick?”

As soon as the word leave her mouth, a flush creeps up her neck and settles into her cheeks.

But she doesn’t backpedal. She just holds your gaze, lips parted slightly, hand still wrapped around your cock like it’s hers to offer something to.

Your body answers before your mouth does. Cock twitching in her grip, hips tilting upward like they’re desperate for her to mean it. Her fingers squeeze reflexively, and she feels it. Sees it. That twitch. That involuntary need.

That’s all the confirmation she needs.

She lets out a soft breath—half nerves, half relief—and then starts to move. Not fast. Not showy. Just a quiet, careful shift down between your legs. She kneels like she’s sliding into something sacred, her hands never leaving your skin.

Her eyes stay on you, watching every micro-expression flicker across your face as she leans in closer, lowering her head until you feel her breath again; warm, shallow, hovering just above the head of your cock.

You’re shaking.

Not visibly, probably, but underneath. In your breath. In the way your stomach tightens, in the way your hand curls into the cushion beside you like it’s the only thing keeping you grounded.

She watches that too.

Then—still watching—she presses her lips to you. Just the tip.

Soft. Warm. Closed-mouth. A kiss.

You groan, quiet, like the sound snuck out before you could decide if it was safe to let it out.

Her lashes flutter.

Another kiss, lower this time. Then she parts her lips, and her tongue flicks out—one slow, purposeful lick along the underside of your shaft. Her fingers tighten at the base, holding you still like she’s tasting you on her terms.

You choke on a breath. Your hips jump just a little, and she hums in response, the sound vibrating into your skin like a promise.

She’s enjoying this.

Not just the effect she has on you, but this. The feel of you. The taste. The power of it.

Her lips part wider, and then her mouth starts to take you in—inch by inch, slow and wet and unbearably controlled. Her tongue cradles you underneath while her lips slide down, fitting tight and perfect around your cock like she wants to feel every reaction drag out of you one movement at a time.

You drop your head back against the couch, jaw clenching, trying not to move too much, trying not to fuck up the rhythm she’s building—because it’s insane, how good she is at this. Not porn-star flashy. Not trying to impress. Just methodical. Measured. Maddening.

Her hand strokes the rest of your shaft in sync with her mouth, slow and twisting, and the whole thing is so hot and so focused that it makes your vision go blurry at the edges.

When she pulls back, it’s not to stop.

It’s just to breathe. To look up at you, spit-slick and flushed.

Her voice is husky. “You okay?”

You let out a breath that might be a laugh or a cry. “No,” you say. “Keep going.”

She leans in again, and this time she takes more. Her jaw loosens. Her throat opens. Your cock slides deeper into her mouth and your whole body tenses like she’s touching a live wire. Her nails dig lightly into your thigh as she finds a rhythm—slow, tight, relentless—and holy fuck, she doesn’t even blink when your hand tangles in her hair, not pulling, just holding on.

She likes it.

You can tell by the little moan she lets slip when you groan her name.

“Chaewon…”

Her pace stays controlled, but you can feel it building now. The tension. The heat. The sheer weight of the moment pressing down on both of you like you’re past the point of pretending this is anything casual. This is happening, and she’s savoring it.

She pulls off with a slick gasp, stroking you lazily while she catches her breath. Her lips are swollen, flushed, parted like she wants to say something but isn’t sure if she should.

You look down at her—ruined—and she smiles like she’s not even close to finished.

“I want you inside me,” she says quietly, thumb dragging up the length of your cock in one slow glide.

Then she leans in again, tongue flicking over the head like punctuation.

“But not until I’ve had my fill.”

She takes you back into her mouth.

Not rushing. Not trying to finish you off. Just settling into it. Lips warm and firm, tongue slow and intentional, like she’s learning the exact shape of you and committing it to memory. Her hand keeps a steady rhythm at your base, grip confident, thumb brushing the sensitive skin there every time she comes back up.

You’re already on edge. Every nerve feels tuned too high.

She hums softly again, pleased with the way your thighs tense, the way your breath breaks. The sound vibrates through you and you swear you feel it in your chest. Your fingers tighten in her hair—not pulling, never pulling—but she still tilts her head slightly, accommodating you, letting you sink a little deeper into the heat of her mouth.

“Fuck,” you whisper, helpless. “Chae…”

She pulls back just enough to breathe, lips dragging slowly along your length as she does. A thin string of saliva stretches, then breaks. Her eyes meet yours immediately.

“You’re shaking,” she murmurs, almost fond. “You want me to slow down… or make it worse?”

Your answer is a wrecked sound that barely qualifies as a word.

She smiles and does both.

Her pace slows, but the pressure increases. Mouth tighter, tongue more deliberate, her hand twisting just enough to make you gasp. She takes her time, edging you without mercy, letting you hover there until there is no more air in your lungs.

You feel it building. Too fast.

“Chaewon,” you warn, breath hitching. “I’m—”

She pulls off immediately, palm firm at your base, stopping you right there. You whine—actually whine—and she looks a little stunned by it, like she didn’t expect that sound to come out of you.

Her cheeks color again, deeper this time.

“Not yet,” she says softly. “I told you. I want you inside me.”

She rises smoothly to her feet, hands still on you, still stroking just enough to keep you aching. She kisses you again—slow, open-mouthed, tasting herself on your lips like she’s claiming something. You groan into her mouth, hands sliding up her back, pulling her closer, desperate for friction.

She shifts, straddling you again, and you feel it immediately; the heat between her thighs, the way she rolls her hips once, experimentally, grinding down against you. You both inhale sharply.

“Oh,” she breathes, forehead dropping to yours. “This could be… dangerous.”

You laugh weakly. “You’re the one doing it.”

“I know. And I’m not going to stop,” she says, and kisses you again, harder this time.

Her hands move with purpose now, tugging at your hoodie, then her own sweater. Fabric piles up around your wrists, your shoulders, the couch. Skin meets skin. She’s warm everywhere. Perfect. She gasps when your hands slide under her shirt, when your thumbs brush under her bra, when you finally cup her breasts like you’ve been imagining all night.

“Is this okay?” you ask again, because you always will.

“Yes,” she breathes immediately. “God, yes.”

She kisses you like she’s done waiting. Like all that tension—the arguing, the watching, the almosts—has finally snapped. Her hips rock again, more insistent, and you can feel how wet she is through the layers between you.

You groan into her neck. “If you keep doing that, I’m not going to last.”

“Fuck—” she says, breathless. “Then we’ll fix that.”

She reaches between you, fumbling just a little this time—nerves finally catching up. She lines you up, pauses for half a second with her eyes squeezed shut like she’s bracing herself.

You grip her hips. “Chaewon—”

She exhales and sinks down onto you.

Slow. Careful. Full.

Both of you freeze the second you’re fully together, the sensation stealing the air from your lungs. She gasps, hands clutching your shoulders, nails biting in as she adjusts, as the stretch gives way to something hot and overwhelming.

“Oh,” she breathes again, wrecked now. “Oh my god.”

You swallow hard, trying not to move until she nods, until she’s ready. Her forehead rests against yours, breaths shallow, eyes fluttering closed.

Then she rolls her hips.

You groan—low, helpless—as she starts to move, slow and deep, like she’s savoring every inch of you. Her rhythm is unhurried, controlled, and it’s somehow even more devastating than before. You hold her like you’re afraid she’ll disappear, thumbs digging into her waist as she rides you, breath hitching with every movement.

Chaewon starts slow, but it doesn’t last.

Not because she loses control. She never does. But because once she adjusts to the feel of you, once the sharp edge of stretch softens into something deeper, something hotter, she moves with intention.

Not rhythm for rhythm’s sake. Not showy. Strategic.

She rides you like she’s trying to memorize how you fit together, like she’s spent months imagining this and now she’s reaping her reward—grinding her hips down in slow, devastating rolls that make your vision white out at the edges. Her palms press into your shoulders for leverage, her thighs tense around yours. Her breath stutters every time your cock hits deep, and still—still—she doesn’t break rhythm.

You’re the one unraveling.

“Jesus,” you gasp, hands digging into her waist. “You’re…”

“Say it,” she pants, lips hovering a breath above yours. Her voice is wrecked, low, demanding.

You try to form a thought. Can’t.

“Fucking perfect,” you groan.

Her laugh is broken and delighted, swallowed by a kiss; sloppy now, open-mouthed and teeth-clicking. Your tongues tangle. She swallows the sound you make when she sinks down hard enough to make your cock throb against her walls.

The wet slick of her, the tight grip, the warmth—you’re dying. You’ve never wanted anything this badly. Never felt someone want you back with this much heat.

She buries her face in your neck, teeth grazing the skin beneath your ear again. “You feel so fucking good,” she whispers. “So big. So perfect. Like you were made to be inside me.”

You groan. Loud, desperate, hips jerking up into her before you can stop yourself.

Chaewon moans.

You feel it in your chest. In your cock. In your spine.

She clenches around you, just once, involuntary. Her rhythm breaks for a second.

You realize—she’s close too.

You grip her tighter, planting your feet, thrusting up to meet her with sharp, hungry precision now. She gasps, rocks back, eyes wide and stunned. The change hits her hard.

“Yes—” she chokes out. “Right there, fuck, there—”

You give her everything. Harder. Deeper. Your cock driving up into her just the way she wants it, your fingers gripping her hips to control the rhythm as her legs begin to tremble around you.

“Chae,” you gasp, breath ragged. “You’re gonna—”

“I know,” she moans, hands sliding to your chest, bracing herself. Her pace turns erratic. She’s chasing it now, so close she can taste it. “Don’t stop—don’t you fucking stop—”

“I’m not,” you grit out, thrusting up again, hitting the spot that makes her collapse forward into your shoulder with a strangled, broken cry.

That’s the moment she falls apart.

Her body tenses—tight, tighter—then shudders in your arms as her orgasm rips through her. She’s gasping, hips jerking, moaning something you don’t understand against your skin like a confession she can’t hold back anymore.

She clenches around you, pulsing wet heat dragging you to the edge right with her.

You hold her through it, hips still rolling, cock still buried deep until you can’t take it anymore.

“Chaewon—” you warn.

She pulls back, meets your eyes, and nods. Wild-eyed, sweaty, flushed, and beautiful.

“Come,” she says. “I want to feel you.”

That’s it.

You snap.

Your whole body locks up—hands gripping her waist, cock pulsing deep inside her as you bury yourself one last time and come hard. The heat of it floods both of you. You groan through gritted teeth, breath gone, every nerve lit up, every thought reduced to her and the way she feels and the way she takes it, riding you through it until you’re gasping and empty and wrecked.

You don’t even realize how hard you’re holding her until she falls on your chest.

Breathing hard. Shaking a little. Still twitching every time your hips shift.

You both stay there, tangled in each other, wrapped in shared heat and sweat and whatever the hell just passed between you.

You kiss her shoulder. She hums. Her fingers curl around your arms like she’s afraid you’ll float away if she lets go.

“You okay?” you whisper, throat rough.

She lifts her head slowly. Hair a mess. Eyes glassy. She nods.

“Yeah,” she breathes. “Just… can’t feel my legs.”

You snort. “I’ll take that as a good sign.”

Her lips twitch. She smacks your chest lightly, but doesn’t move away. “You’re lucky I like you.”

“Didn’t sound like luck a minute ago,” you murmur.

She groans into your neck, then laughs.

You let the silence settle. Outside, the storm howls, distant again. Somewhere behind the counter, the emergency candle’s burned low.

You’re warm now.

Warm, full, utterly spent, and holding Chaewon in your lap like you never want to be anywhere else.

“I still hate how you shelve books,” she says sleepily.

“Yeah?” you murmur. “I hate how you compliment others like you’re insulting them.”

She lifts her head, smirks.

You kiss her again. Just once. Gentle.

She leans into it.

You’ve been staring at the soundboard for so long, the blinking green lights are starting to look an awful lot like red.

The campus radio booth smells of dust and burnt coffee and unwashed clothes that accumulates anywhere students live for too long. There’s a tangle of cables in the corner that might actually be sentient. The ceiling tiles are stained in patches, as if the building tried to cry once and then gave up halfway through.

On the wall, someone taped a crooked paper heart over the station logo. The marker bled through, leaving a fuzzy red halo around the letters.

It is unfortunately, Valentine’s Day.

You’re supposed to be testing the mics. Instead, you’re spinning a slider up and down with one finger, watching the levels bounce on the monitor like tiny, annoying heartbeats.

“You’re glaring at the sliders again,” Yunjin says from behind you. “Don’t tell me they rejected you on this very special day.”

You don’t jump. You just adjust your shoulders like you weren’t startled out of your skin.

“I’m practicing my stage presence,” you say, then spread your arms like wings. “This is my stage presence.”

“Right…” she says.

She squeezes into the space next to your chair without bothering with things like personal space or physics. Her citrus shampoo and cheap fabric softener brush against your nostrils; the cold from outside still clings to her coat.

Her hair’s braided back today, little flyaways escaping around her face, headphones pushed up like a lopsided crown. Her lipstick is slightly smeared at one corner where she probably wiped it with the back of her hand. There’s glitter on her cheekbone. You don’t want to know where that came from.

She leans over the console, close enough that her braid brushes your arm. “Levels look fine,” she says. “Unless you’re trying to blow out the speakers and take the entire building with us. Which, honestly, respect.”

“I would never do that,” you say. “The building’s innocent. It’s all the Valentine’s Day propaganda inside it that needs to go.”

“You’re so dramatic,” she says.

“You invited me to host a twenty-four-hour Valentine’s Day marathon. What did you expect?”

Her mouth twists like she wants to smile but is trying not to. “I expected a bit more enthusiasm,” she says. “You get to spend time with the prettiest girl on campus.”

“I’m quitting,” you say.

“You can’t,” she says. “You signed the volunteer form.”

You glare at the clipboard. The clipboard glares back. Twenty-four hours of themed programming. Love songs, dedication readings, call-in lines open all night.

You’d agreed because you needed credits, because you like the station, because Yunjin had looked at you with big eyes and said please.

Then you’d walked in and seen the paper hearts and remembered what day it is, and your stomach had folded in on itself.

“You still haven’t answered my question, by the way,” she says, twirling a pen between her fingers.

“What question?” you ask.

“Who hurt you,” she says, “and why do you hate Cupid?”

You spin in the chair just enough to face her. The headphones squeak against your shoulders.

“Okay. First of all, his whole vibe is suspicious. Creepy winged toddler with weapons? Red flag. Second of all, love is a capitalist scam. Third—”

She groans. “God, we’re really doing this. Right before we go live.”

“You asked.”

“I forgot you treat everything like philosophical debates,” she says. “Normal people just eat chocolate and watch a movie.”

“I can do that without the holiday,” you say.

She sighs, dramatic, and taps the clipboard against your arm. “Fine,” she says. “Lay it on me. Explain why love is fake, and I’ll explain why you’re wrong.”

You glance at the big window that looks into the hallway. The On Air sign above it is dark for now. In an hour, it’ll be red.

“In brief,” you say, “love is a series of chemical reactions designed to trick you into pairing up long enough to theoretically raise offspring. It’s inherently unstable and eventually breaks down into either resentment, indifference, or mutual tolerance. At best, you get long-term companionship with occasional affection, which you could also get from a very loyal dog.”

She opens her mouth. Closes it. “You sound like a professor who got divorced twice,” she says.

You shrug. “I read.”

“You got dumped once and turned it into a thesis,” she says.

“You’re telling me you buy this?” you ask her. “The hearts, the roses, the couple’s posts, the speeches. You think that’s… real?”

She looks at you as if you’ve suggested the sky is green. “Of course I do,” she says. “Love is amazing and beautiful and, most of all, real.”

“You’re so gullible,” you say.

“And you’re a baby,” she says, so casually you almost miss it.

You blink. “Excuse me?”

She turns a page on the clipboard like she didn’t just lob that at your head. “You’re scared,” she says. “Therefore, you’ve decided love isn’t real so you don’t have to want it.”

You laugh, sharp. “Wow. You diagnose me, you insult me, and you do it for free. I think you picked the wrong major, Yunjin.”

She spins the pen once, twice, and then points it at you, eyes suddenly very, very focused.

“Let’s make a bet,” she says.

“Absolutely not.”

“You don’t know the terms yet.”

“You said the word ‘bet,’” you say. “And you have that look in your eyes. That’s enough.”

She ignores you. “You don’t believe in love,” she says. “I do. We’re about to be trapped in a small, sticky, questionably ventilated booth together for twenty-four hours of Valentine’s programming.”

“Your sales pitch needs work.”

She leans in. Her eyes are brown and firm and irritatingly sincere.

“I bet you,” she says, “that by the time this marathon is over, you’ll be in love with me.”

You stare at her.

The clock ticks. The soundboard hums. Somewhere down the hall, a door slams.

You wait for her to back off, point a finger, reveal she’s joking. Her mouth quirks up at one corner, but her eyes stay steady on yours.

“Stop with the jokes,” you say, but hate how small your voice sounds.

Her fingers drum against the clipboard once, twice. “It’s not a joke.”

“You’re out of your mind,” you say.

“Possibly,” she says. “But come on. You said love is chemicals, right? Chemical reactions are predictable. So if you already know the answer, there’s nothing to fear.”

“You think you can hijack my entire emotional system in a day,” you say.

She smiles, teeth flashing. “I think I already have a pretty good hold on it. I just want to see you admit it.”

You’re very aware of your own heartbeat. It feels like the levels on the monitor, bumping too high whenever you look at her and too low when you look away.

“And if you lose?” you ask.

She shrugs. “If you don’t love me by the end of the marathon, I’ll…” She thinks for a second. “I’ll stop forcing you to do my show segments with me. No more on-air bits. You can go back to your quiet Wednesday night slot where you play moody indie music and pretend no one’s listening. I’ll even lie so you can still get the credits.”

You perk up. “Seriously?”

“Dead serious,” she says. “You can be the mysterious voice in the dark again, free of my corrupting influence.”

That’s actually tempting. Your solo slot was nice. It was just you and the board and a playlist no one could judge in real time.

“And if I lose?” you ask.

“Then you admit love is real. And you take me on a date. A real one. No ‘it’s ironic,’ no ‘it’s for science.’ Just you and me and you trying very hard not to combust.”

You look at her and think about every stupid, small thing you’ve already memorized without meaning to. The way she always eats the green M&Ms first. The way she hums under her breath when she’s concentrating. The way she always saves the last slice of pizza and then pretends she doesn’t want it so someone will offer it to her.

You shove those thoughts into a mental closet and lean back in your chair.

“You’re awfully confident,” you say.

“Obviously.”

“Why you? If you actually believed in love, wouldn’t you say, like, ‘You’ll fall in love with someone, someday’? Why specifically you?”

She blinks. Her cheeks pinken, just slightly. “Just because,” she says, and doesn’t elaborate.

You know suddenly that if you say no, something fragile might crack between you. Still—if you say yes, something else might.

The clock ticks on the wall.

“You’re scared,” she says again, softly this time.

It bothers you she is right.

“Fine,” you say. “You want your stupid experiment? You got it.”

Her whole face lights up. “Really?”

You roll your eyes. “Let’s see you prove your little theory. Twenty-four hours. Knock yourself out.”

Her grin turns almost feral. “Oh, you’re going to regret that so much. Or maybe you’re not.”

You already do.

She hops off the stool and slaps the On Air button with more flourish than necessary. The red sign over the window springs to life.

“But if you do, it’s too late,” she says. “Welcome to the show, lover boy.”

You groan.

She laughs.

The mics go live.

─

Ten minutes into the first hour, you remember the other reason you agreed to this gig.

On air, Yunjin is a hurricane in human form. She leans into the mic, voice warm and bright as she welcomes listeners to the overnight Valentine’s special. She makes dumb jokes about Cupid’s underwear and about love as a duck.

You mostly push buttons and monitor levels, chiming in occasionally with deadpan commentary. It’s your role. You’ve leaned into it before: the grumpy foil to her chaos.

But tonight, every time she calls you “my very single co-host” or “dear love skeptic,” the words land a little differently.

She’s good at this. Too good. The call line blinks before the hour’s half over.

The first caller is a girl from third-year engineering who wants to dedicate a song to her boyfriend. She stumbles through the message, giggling, and Yunjin guides her gently, like she’s coaxing a nervous animal out of hiding.

When they hang up, Yunjin mutes the channel and swivels toward you.

“See?” she says. “Evidence.”

“Just hormones,” you say.

“Everything is hormones,” she says. “That’s not the slam dunk you think it is.”

The second caller is a guy who rambles about his girlfriend for a full two minutes without letting either of you get a word in. He’s so earnest you can practically hear the hearts floating around his head. You find yourself smiling in spite of yourself.

Yunjin catches it and raises her eyebrows.

“It’s cute,” you say defensively.

“I didn’t say anything,” she says, but a smirk pulls at the corner of her lips.

By hour three, she takes control of the playlist. Every song is obnoxiously on theme. Every time you reach for the mouse to queue something with fewer hearts in the lyrics, she smacks your hand away.

“Part of the bet,” she says. “Full immersion. You can’t fall in love if you’re listening to breakup songs.”

“I thought you liked breakup songs,” you say. “You call them cathartic.”

“That’s for me. You need to marinate.”

“In your playlist?”

“In your feelings.”

You groan into your hands.

Off air, in the three-minute pockets between songs and ads, the booth shrinks down to the two of you and the hum of machines.

At some point around eleven, she kicks off her shoes and tucks her feet up on the stool, socks mismatched. One has tiny acorns. The other says SLOW DOWN in all caps.

“You wore a message on your sock just for me,” you say.

She glances at her ankle. “You wish,” she says.

“Very subtle,” you say. “Real subliminal messaging.”

“You need all the help you can get,” she says.

It’s easy, this back-and-forth. It always has been. The difference now is the way your body keeps overreacting to tiny things. The way her laugh lands low in your stomach. The way you keep noticing the smudge of glitter on her cheek and wanting to wipe it away.

You tell yourself it’s just the sleep deprivation.

The hours blur.

You read dedications and answer dumb quiz questions and accidentally get into a ten-minute argument about whether pineapple belongs on pizza with a caller from the dorms. You scroll through memes on the station computer during ad breaks, showing her the worst ones just to hear her wheeze-laugh. She stretches whenever there’s a long song, arms over her head, T-shirt riding up, a slip of bare skin flashing above her waistband.

You pretend very hard not to look.

Sometime around midnight, the building empties. The glass in the window goes dark. The station becomes its own little floating world.

Yunjin flips her headphones up so they rest on her head like a halo. She leans back, chair tipping dangerously, and sighs.

“What?” you ask.

She stares at the ceiling. “I just thought… if I was going to make you fall in love with me, being trapped in here is the best possible environment.”

You give her a look. “You know how that sounds, right?”

She grins sideways. “Yeah,” she says. “Hot.”

You drag a hand down your face. “I liked you better when you were just manipulative on air.”

“You like me,” she repeats.

“That’s not what I said,” you say.

“It’s what I heard,” she says.

You mute her mic before she can say anything else dangerous and throw to a song.

─

At two in the morning, the calls slow down.

The people still awake are either high, heartbroken, or both. The confessions get sadder, messier. Someone cries on air. Someone else laughs too loudly for too long.

When there’s nothing in the queue, you and Yunjin are left with the dead air countdown ticking in the corner of the screen and the kind of silence that makes you aware of your own breathing.

“Tell me about her,” she says suddenly.

You look up. “Who?”

“Your ex,” she says, like it’s obvious.

You stare at the monitor. The ON AIR timer crawls down from thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.

“We’re not doing this,” you say.

“You keep talking about love like it’s a disease,” she says. “I’d like to hear about the cause.”

Three. Two. One.

You take a breath and flick the mic sliders up. The red light on the console snaps on.

“Welcome back to the overnight Valentine’s special,” Yunjin says, as if she wasn’t just elbow-deep in your personal life. “We’ve heard from a lot of people already tonight about the love they’re in. Or out of.”

“And some who probably shouldn’t have given us their real names,” you add.

Yunjin leans toward her mic, eyes on you, and says, “But I think it’s time we hear from our very own love-hater.”

You shoot her a warning look. She barrels on.

“So,” she says, “tell me, dear co-host, where did love go wrong?”

You should cut her off. You should cut your mic, throw another song on, pretend the question never reached you. But two words hang at the back of your throat, clawing and raking and begging to come out.

Your hand does not move toward the mouse.

“High school,” you say. “Obviously.”

She smiles, slow. “Obviously,” she repeats. “Walk us through it.”

You stare at the screen above her head. The station logo glows back, smug.

“She was… fine,” you say. “We met in debate club. Which should have been a warning sign.”

“There’s your first mistake.”

You tell the story in broad strokes. The matching schedules, the way it had felt easy at first, the late nights studying, the first time you kissed in the back stairwell. How every time your lips touched, a swarm of butterflies fluttered in your stomach.

You keep your voice light. You know how to perform into a mic. You sand the edges off.

You don’t say the part where she told you she loved you in your mom’s car with her hand on your knee and then cheated on you three weeks later because “it didn’t feel real enough.”

You don’t say the part where your parents used the breakup as proof that teenage love is meaningless, a rehearsal for the pain you’re supposed to get used to.

You say, “It ended.”

Yunjin doesn’t push. She doesn’t fill the air. She lets the silence sit for a beat, just long enough for you to feel it, before she says, “I’m sorry, but she sounds like a bitch.”

You huff a laugh. “That’s the word,” you say.

“If the shoe fits,” she says.

“You have a whole closet of shoes that don’t fit. You wear them anyway.”

“You’re romanticizing my poor choices again.”

You glance at the time counter. The segment’s almost over. You clear your throat.

“What about you?” you ask. “Since we’re sharing.”

She lifts her shoulders. “I’ve been in love a lot.”

“Shocking.”

“But not like that,” she says. “I’ve had crushes. Infatuations. Situationships. People I liked because they liked me. People I liked because they were broken and I wanted to fix them.”

The corners of your mouth twitch.

“And…?” you prompt.

She looks at you, then down at the console. Her fingers trace the edge of a fader.

“There’s only one person I’ve stayed in love with,” she says. “So far.”

You know you shouldn’t ask. You know you definitely shouldn’t do it on air.

“Do I know them?” you ask.

She smiles without teeth. “You’re an idiot,” she says, and cuts to a song.

The track starts. The mics go dead. The silence on your headphones is sudden, like popping out of a pool.

─

Time does something weird around four in the morning.

You slide past tired into something loopy and raw. Your body feels hollowed out and vibrating. The booth becomes your whole universe. The only light is from the monitors and the tiny lamp someone stuck in the corner with a red scarf thrown over it, turning everything a dim maroon.

You’re on a break between segments, a slow jazz cover swaying through your headphones, when Yunjin kicks your ankle.

“Hey,” she says. “Wake up.”

“I am up,” you say. You are very much not. You are slumped in the chair like someone took out your bones and declined to put them back.

“Up,” she repeats, standing. “Dance break.”

You look at her. “No.”

“Yes.”

“I refuse.”

She reaches for your wrists. You yank them back, but she’s faster when you’re tired. Her fingers wrap around yours, warm and sure.

“Come on,” she says. “We have three minutes before the song ends. Science says movement keeps us awake.”

“No science says I have to dance with you,” you say, but your body is already tipping forward.

She pulls you to your feet and into the sliver of space between the chairs and the wall. The cable to your headphones tugs as you stand. You push them down around your neck.

The music is slow and lazy, horns curling through the air like cigarette smoke. The bass thumps faintly under your feet.

She sways. You don’t. Not at first.

“Just follow my lead,” she says.

“I don’t dance,” you say.

“You do now.”

She puts your hands on her waist. Her palms land on your shoulders. Her fingers curl into the worn cotton of your hoodie.

Your heart rockets into your throat.

She moves side to side, a gentle shift of weight. You’re too close to see all of her at once. Just a mouth. A cheek. Eyes that keep flicking to your lips and away again.

You move with her because you don’t know what else to do.

“This is dumb,” you say. “We’re not even on video.”

“So?” she says. “You can do things without an audience, you know.”

“You constantly ask the audience to rate us.”

“Yeah. But this one’s just for you.”

You swallow. Your hands are still on her waist. You can feel heat through the fabric. The curve of her hip under your thumbs is a map you’ve never let yourself read.

“Why me?” you ask.

She frowns. “What?”

“You said… there’s only one person you stayed in love with,” you say. “If it’s me… why?”

She exhales. You feel it against your neck.

“You’re really fishing for compliments at four in the morning,” she says.

“I’m serious.”

She pulls back just enough to look at you. Her eyes are dark and clear.

“Well… if, and I only mean if, that person were you, it’s because…” she paused for a moment. “You try really hard not to care. But you do anyway.”

You open your mouth. Nothing comes out.

“You pretend the world is something you can outsmart,” she continues. “Like if you just know enough, if you rationalize enough, nothing can surprise you. Nothing can hurt you. But then you… stay late to fix the board for the morning shift. And you remember everyone’s favorite segments. And you get stupidly angry when people treat their partners badly on air, even though you say love is stupid.”

“I listen to the show,” you say. Your throat feels tight. “It’s my job.”

“You listen period,” she says. “Not just on the show.”

Her fingers slide up from your shoulders, skim the back of your neck, tangle in your hair.

“You’re gentle when it matters,” she says. “And mean in the ways that count less. And sometimes, when you think no one’s listening, you talk about things like they can still be beautiful. Even after everything.”

You close your eyes. You can’t hold that look and keep your balance at the same time.

“That,” she says quietly, “is why.”

The song ends.

Dead air looms. You jolt back to the console like a puppet whose strings got yanked, hands flying to the mouse, to the sliders. You slam the next track on, throw your mic live, and say something about keeping the love songs coming in a voice that doesn’t sound like yours.

Yunjin sits, breathless and flushed, and laughs silently into her fist.

─

By dawn, the windows are pale rectangles. Snow flurries against the glass, soft and relentless. The campus outside looks like a stage set someone forgot to strike.

You’ve been awake for… a long time. Your sense of linear time is gone. All you have is the green LED clock on the wall and the schedule on the clipboard, marching toward the end of the marathon.

You have also been in love with Yunjin for approximately… longer than you’re willing to admit.

The realization comes not as a single lightning strike but as a series of insults you can’t ignore anymore.

The way your chest hurt when she talked about being in love with someone and didn’t name them.

The way you watched every hand that touched her at parties and wanted to break their fingers.

But she asked for honesty on a time limit, and there’s still one segment left.

The last hour is “Love Letters.” Prewritten, anonymous, some sent in weeks ago, some from tonight. A neat bow to tie the marathon.

You queue up a song. Three minutes. It feels like both a lot and not enough.

Yunjin is watching you. She’s been doing that more as the night has gone on, like she’s waiting for something.

You spin in your chair to face her fully.

“Hey,” you say.

“Hey,” she echoes. Her voice is hoarse from talking all night. She sounds like her shell started to crack.

“Off the record,” you say.

She raises an eyebrow. “Uh-oh.”

“Why did you start the bet? Really.”

“I told you. I wanted to prove to you love exists. Then you might finally find a girlfriend”

“Bullshit,” you say, too tired to soften it.

She blinks.

“The bet is just too weird,” you say. “You could've picked a random girl at a bar. A stranger. Not you. Not a date with me as the reward. Not twenty-four hours of live radio where people can hear you bomb.”

“You think I’m afraid of bombing?” she asks.

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point, then?”

“The point,” you say, and your voice shakes, “is that this is—” You gesture at the cramped booth, the mics, her. “—a really big risk for you if I don’t… if I can’t…”

You trail off. The song counter is at forty-five seconds.

“If you lose the bet and I quit the radio… you—” Your palm claps your chest, clamps down on it, and seizes your thumping heart between shaky fingers. “—we would not…”

She looks down at her hands.

“I needed a deadline,” she says. “I kept… waiting. For you to get there on your own. To notice. To do something. To stop making those jokes about love being fake.”

Your stomach lurches.

“I thought if I gave us a clock,” she continues, “maybe you’d decide faster. Maybe I’d know if I should hold on or let go. I can’t keep doing the… loves me, loves me not.”

Her voice thins on the last word.

You want to reach for her but you don’t. Your hand hovers in the space between.

“What if I end up hating you for it?” you ask. “For pushing.”

She smiles. “I figured if you hated me, that was an answer too,” she says.

The song ends. The final chord hangs in your headphones.

You hit the stinger, toss to the last segment, and talk on autopilot, the words of the script spilling out of your mouth without going through your brain.

Welcome back. Last hour. Love letters. All that.

You queue the first email and read it, your eyes tracking the words while your mind is three feet to the left, hovering over the spot where her knee bumps yours under the console.

The letters are earnest and messy and stupid. Someone writes to a barista they’ve never spoken to. Someone confesses to a crush on their TA. Someone thanks their best friend for staying when everyone else left.

Then you reach the last letter in the folder. It has no subject line.

You click it open.

Your own name stares back from the greeting.

You go very, very still.

“Everything okay?” Yunjin asks softly, off mic.

You don’t answer. You read.

“Hey you,” the email says.

You swallow.

You don’t mean to read it out loud. You don’t even realize your mic is still live until you hear your own voice in your headphones, smaller and rougher than it sounds in your head.

“…you’re probably frowning at this,” you read. “You frown at everything. The soundboard, your laptop, the concept of joy—”

You stop. Your eyes widen. You glance at Yunjin.

Her mouth is parted. Her fingers are tight around her pen.

You flip the mic off with a shaking hand. The ON AIR light dies.

“Did you write this?” you ask.

She doesn’t answer. Her cheeks are bright pink. Her eyes are wide open.

“Yunjin,” you say.

“It’s called commitment to the bit,” she says weakly.

You look back at the screen.

“…but sometimes you laugh so hard you fall off the chair,” the email says. “And sometimes you look at me like you’re seeing something you don’t think you deserve, and I wish I could make you feel what I feel for just one second so you’d understand how wrong you are.”

You exhale, shaky.

“I wanted to,” she says, then shuts her mouth like she’s said too much.

You scroll.

“I don’t know when it started,” the letter says. “Maybe it was when I called you to pick me up from the bar and you actually came. Maybe it was the time you stayed with me at the station until four a.m. because I messed up the prerecording and didn’t want to go home. Maybe it was always, a little bit.”

Your chest is not a chest. It’s a fist closing around itself.

“I do know this,” the letter says. “I believe in love because of you, not in spite of you. I’ve seen every worst part of you and my heart still does the stupid thing when you walk in the door.”

You laugh, helpless and breathless.

“You told me once love is a scam,” the email goes on. “If that’s true, I’ve already been duped. I can just hope for compensation.”

The cursor blinks at the end of the paragraph.

It’s not signed. It doesn’t have to be.

“You’re such a dumbass,” you say, voice breaking on the last word.

Yunjin flinches. “You can delete it,” she says quietly. “We don’t have to read it. It’s… fine. I’ll pretend I never sent it.”

You look at her. Really look.

She looks small, suddenly. Not physically—she still takes up more space than anyone in a room—but her shoulders are hunched, her hands tucked into the sleeves of her hoodie, her eyes shiny.

You realize you’re not scared anymore. Even though your heart is beating a hundred million times a second, its not because you’re scared. She was right. Is right.

“That’s not what I meant,” you say. You take a breath that hurts going in. “Put your headphones on.”

Her brows knit. “Why?”

“Please,” you say.

She slides them on, hesitant.

You flick your mic back on, your voice going out into the quiet morning city, to whoever’s still awake and listening.

“Okay,” you say. “We’ve heard a lot of letters tonight from people trying to be brave.”

Your heart drums against your ribs. Yunjin’s gaze is locked on you.

“I thought I should… return the favor,” you say.

She presses a hand over her mouth.

“This one’s not anonymous,” you say. “But I guess that’s the point.”

You talk.

You don’t read anything. You don’t have a script. You just… talk.

You say you thought love was dangerous because you watched it used as a weapon. You say you built a whole personality out of not needing it. You say you thought you were safe that way.

You say you were wrong.

How the first time she dragged you on air, you wanted to murder her and thank her in the same breath. How she makes the station feel like more than a hobby. How she makes every room louder and softer at the same time.

You finally say IT.

“I’m in love with you,” you say, into the mic, into the booth, into her headphones. “Yunjin.”

The confession sits in the air, warm and irreversible.

You mute your mic.

The world shrinks to the space between your chairs.

Her eyes are wet. There’s a tear track on one cheek, shiny in the dim light.

“You…” she starts, then stops. Her voice cracks. She pulls her headphones off like they’re heavy.

“You said it on air,” she says, half laugh, half sob.

“You wrote me a love letter on air.”

“I thought you’d pretend you never read it. Or roast me for it. Or… something.”

“I thought about it. For, like, two seconds.”

She exhales, a shaky thing that almost turns into a laugh.

“Do you mean it?” she asks. “Or is this you being… swept up in the bit?”

You hate that she even has to ask.

You push your chair back. The wheels squeak. You stand, knees popping, and step into her space.

She tips her head back to look at you. You can see every mole, every fleck of glitter, every place the night has worn at her.

“You win,” you say. “Okay? You were right. Love is real. I’m in love. With you.”

Her lips part. “Say it again,” she whispers.

“I love you,” you say.

Her hands reach for you at the same time yours reach for her. There’s an awkward bump of elbows and a tangle of headphone cables, but then your fingers find her jaw and her palms land on your shoulders and you’re both laughing, breathless, right before your mouth hits hers.

The kiss lands slightly off-center. It doesn’t matter.

Her lips are dry and then not. She makes a small, startled noise that you feel more than hear. Her fingers curl into the fabric at the back of your neck.

Your brain, which has been screaming for hours, goes very, very quiet.

You pull back just enough to breathe.

“Off air,” she gasps. “Off—”

You throw a hand blindly toward the console and slam every fader down. The lights on the board dip. The mic signs go dark.

The station goes silent.

You kiss her again.

This time, you aim better.

She tastes like the energy drinks you both chugged at three and the mint gum she chewed to cover it. Her nose bumps yours. Her hands are everywhere, in your hair, on your back, tugging you closer.

You brace one hand on the console to keep from knocking both of you over. The plastic digs into your palm. You’d bruise your entire body and the soundboard if it meant she kept kissing you like that.

She laughs against your mouth. “Hi,” she whispers.

“Hi,” you whisper back.

“We’re still technically on shift,” she says.

“I’m on a break.”

Her smile curves against your lower lip. “You’re such a bad employee.”

You kiss until your knees feel like they’re going to give out, until your fingers go numb from gripping the edge of the console, until the clock over the window ticks all the way to the end of the marathon.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to fall into.

She gasps into your mouth.

God, that sound.

Her fingers tug at the hem of your hoodie, grabbing your shirt along with it. You help her peel them off, and her hands are everywhere—chest, shoulders, back; tracing every line as if making sure you are real.

“Yunjin,” you grit out, and you’re holding her, hands on those perfect cheeks, caressing them like she may slip through your fingers if you don’t. “I want—no, I need you. Now.”

She blinks, surprised.

You wait.

Then she smirks. “So fucking take me.”

Her words are a burning match, and you’re the damn firewood.

You push her back against the wall. Her head almost bumping into it were it not for your hand in the back of her hair. You look her over as if she is a gourmet meal, leaning across to get a taste.

Your mouth is on her throat, slow and greedy. Her hands thread into your hair, fingers curling tight when you find the soft spot under her jaw.

“Jesus,” she breathes.

As you pull her shirt up and toss it somewhere behind, you move lower. Kiss the top of her chest. Trace the edge of her bra with your teeth.

She arches. “You gonna tease me all night?”

“Thinking about it,” you say, dragging a hand down her side.

She huffs a laugh. “Then I’ll start without you,” she says. Her fingers move to her waistband.

You stop her. “Let me.”

Yunjin goes still. Watching. Waiting. Then her hands drop to her sides.

You hook your fingers under the band of her jeans and pull. Slow. So fucking slow.

She lifts her hips to help you, and when the jeans clear her thighs, you just stare. No rush. No comment. Just her bare legs, panties black and damp and perfectly in place.

You dip, then kiss the inside of her thigh.

She twitches.

You kiss higher.

She makes a sound, high and rough, like her body won’t hold on much longer if you continue.

Your hands slide up her legs. Her stomach. Her ribs. You get back up and catch her mouth while your fingers finally slide between her legs, slow and gentle, through the heat and the wetness that has been building ever since the bet started.

Her breath hitches. Her hips roll.

“You like that?”

“I will if you keep going.”

You do. One finger, then two. Deep, slow. Your thumb brushes her just right. She falls apart in front of you, little gasps punched out of her with every stroke. Her hands fist at her sides, thighs clenched and eyes rolled back just a little.

“What the—fuck—” she wails between gasps, her tongue dangling beyond her full red lips.

When she comes, it’s a quiet explosion. Her dirty nectar floods your hand as her breathless cries rub into your skin. Her proud face is now wrecked and vulgar.

You pull your hand away and kiss her again, mouth messy with want.

Deep, slow, lingering want. Every pass of her mouth feels like she’s tasting a secret she’s wanted for too long. Her tongue slides against yours, confident without being cocky, and when she makes that low, surprised sound into your mouth, it hits straight through your spine.

She breaks away only because she has to breathe. You feel her chest press into you as she exhales against your jaw, then she presses her lips there, then lower, like she can’t stand not having you in her mouth.

Her knees hit the floor, eyes tilted up, hair messier than it’s ever been, breathing you in like you’re something addictive she’s finally allowed to use.

Her fingers tug your waistband open, careful and steady. She frees you, and her breath stutters—just slightly—but she doesn’t make a joke, doesn’t throw out a line.

She just whispers, “Yeah.”

And then her mouth is on you.

Not tentative this time. Decisive. She takes you in slow, lips sealing tight, heat wrapping around you so suddenly that your hand shoots into her hair on instinct.

She moans.

God, she moans around you like you just answered something inside her. The vibration punches sounds out of your throat. Your hips jerk, barely, and she keeps you still with her hand on your hip like she knew it would happen.

She sets a perfect rhythm, unhurried but merciless. Her tongue drags along the underside, slow and claiming. She sinks deeper, takes more of you, then sucks on the way back like she means to ruin you.

You are gone.

“Yunjin—fuck—” Your voice cracks and she actually smiles with you in her mouth, like that’s exactly what she wanted to hear.

Her hand strokes the rest of you she can’t take, matching the pace of her mouth. Every breath you drag in feels too thin. Every sound she makes wrecks you worse. She looks up at you through her lashes—eyes heavy and bright and unbelievably present—and it feels obscene how good she looks like this.

You feel it building, sudden and sharp and impossible to stop—

And then she pulls back. Just enough to edge you off the cliff without letting you fall.

Her mouth eases off with a slick, obscene drag, leaving the head flushed and throbbing, her hand still wrapped firm around the base. You groan, broken, chasing her mouth on instinct, but she tightens her grip. Halts you. Holds you in place like she knows exactly what you’re about to do.

“Not so fast,” she murmurs, voice rough from where her throat took you. Her lips are swollen, slick with spit, a smear of her lipstick half-faded but still sinful on the edge of her mouth. “I’m not done yet.”

You try to speak, to respond, but all that escapes you is a ragged noise.

She kisses your hipbone like an apology. Or maybe a promise. Her mouth drags lower, tongue teasing along the base, slow and intentional, lips skimming your skin like she’s studying it. Every movement is calculated—controlled. She knows exactly what she’s doing. How close you are. How easy it would be to tip you over.

But she doesn’t. Not yet.

Instead, she wraps her lips back around you—just the tip this time—and hums. The sound shoots straight through your stomach. Her tongue swirls once, then again, every motion steady and eager, like she's tasting ice cream on a stick.

She sinks down, slowly. Her hand strokes what her mouth can’t take, syncing together in a rhythm that's made to torture. Heat coils low in your spine.

You glance down, and the sight nearly finishes you anyway.

Her.

On her knees.

Mouth full of you. Cheeks hollowing. Hair wild around her face, braid half undone. That look in her eyes: focused, intense, locked on yours. Like she’s doing this not for effect, not to be good, but because you make her want to. Because the taste of you is something she wants.

Every time you twitch, her mouth flexes, adjusting. Every sound you make, she follows, like it’s feedback she craves.

“Yunjin—if you keep—”

She moans. Vibrating around you like an answer.

Your fingers fist tight in her hair. Your thighs shake. You're right there.

She feels it. You know she does.

And again—again—she pulls back. Just enough to leave you aching. Her tongue slides off the head in a slow, wet drag, and she kisses the tip so softly you nearly curse.

You can’t breathe.

“Not yet,” she whispers, thumb stroking the base, gaze never leaving yours. “You don’t get to finish before I get to wreck you.”

You don’t know how long you can take this.

She’s still kneeling, still got your cock wrapped in her hand like it’s hers to keep, and at this point, maybe it is. Your head thumps back against the wall, jaw clenched tight, trying not to embarrass yourself, but she sees it—sees all of it.

And she smiles.

Not smug. Not mean.

Just pleased. Like she’s watching the result of a long experiment finally bear fruit.

She strokes you slow, firm, her grip slick from her mouth. Just enough to keep you from slipping back too far. Her other hand skims up your thigh, fingers brushing so lightly they’re practically a threat.

"You're shaking," she says, not quite teasing, but close.

You are.

“Do you want to come?” she asks, voice soft, lips parted just enough that you can still see the sheen of spit on them. “Like this? In my mouth?”

You choke on a breath. Nod.

“Too bad.”

Then she leans in again.

This time she kisses everywhere but where you need her. Along your hip. Your stomach. She licks a slow stripe just below the base, then mouths at the skin beside you, leaving a faint mark—territorial.

You mutter a curse. She grins into your skin.

“Relax,” she murmurs. “I’ll let you come eventually.”

Her mouth returns to the head, tongue flicking, lips parting. She sucks, gentle and shallow, working only the tip with devastating rigor. Each pass is maddening. She’s not trying to take you deep right now. She’s teasing every nerve you have raw.

You try to thrust, just once—instinctive, helpless—but she flattens her hand against your stomach.

“No,” she says, firm.

That voice. That fucking voice.

Her mouth slips lower again, this time a little deeper, and your whole body tenses. She moans, and it makes you twitch so hard she actually laughs around you.

You’re panting now. Gone. Mindless. All you can do is feel; her mouth, her tongue, her pace.

You feel it surge again, hotter, faster, sharper.

You manage to gasp out, “I’m—Yunjin, I’m—”

And she pulls off just in time.

You nearly collapse.

She leans back on her heels, hands on your thighs, and watches you burn. Your cock throbs in the cool air, spit-slick and flushed, twitching uselessly against your stomach. Her mouth is red, wet, wrecked. Her eyes are so fucking dark.

“You look so good like this,” she says softly.

You swallow hard. Your knees are barely holding.

“Then finish it,” you say, voice like gravel.

She rises slowly, body brushing yours as she stands. Her hands slide up your chest, slow and greedy.

“Oh, I will,” she whispers against your lips. “But not with just my mouth.”

She kisses you again: wet, deep, messy. And then she’s walking you backward. To the couch. To the end of your control.

The backs of your knees hit the couch, and she pushes, lightly, but you go down hard like your legs never belonged to you in the first place. You land half-sitting, breath ragged, hands braced behind you.

Yunjin stands over you for a second, watching. Savoring.

Then she straddles your lap.

Her thighs slide against yours, skin hot and bare. Her panties are still on, black and soaked through, clinging to her like a secret she’s not ready to give up just yet. But she grinds down anyway, slow and deliberate, right against you. The slick heat of her makes your head fall back instantly.

She leans in, mouth brushing your ear.

“Feel what you did to me?” she whispers. “You think I got like this by accident?”

Your hands go to her hips without thinking, thumbs dragging along the curve of her waist like you need something to hold on to.

Her lips find your neck, open and wet, tongue tracing every inch of skin she couldn’t reach when you were standing. She bites, soft and then not. You flinch, gasp, grip her tighter.

“You’re so close,” she says, teeth grazing your throat. “I can feel it. I can feel you holding on.”

Her hips roll once. Then again.

You nearly buck beneath her. She’s not moving fast. The thin fabric between you is soaked, sliding against your cock every time she grinds down, and it’s torture. Heat builds again, sharper, tighter. You're already soaked from her mouth, already shaking from the way she won’t let you go over.

“You want to fuck me,” she says, straight into your ear. Not a question.

You nod. Desperate. “Yes. Fuck—”

She kisses you again. Hot and open and unforgiving. Her hand finds you between your bodies, wraps around you again, drags the tip through her slick heat, through the soaked fabric of her underwear.

You make a sound you’ve never made before.

She presses her forehead to yours, breathing hard.

“You’re not going to come,” she whispers. “Not until I’m on top of you. Not until you’re so deep inside me you forget your own name.”

You shudder, nearly break.

And still, she doesn’t move.

She stays there. Grinding slow. Touching you just enough to light the fuse again, just enough to bring you back to the edge. Her breath on your mouth. Her nails in your shoulders. Her body against yours like the forbidden apple you so desperately want to take a bite of.

Then—finally—she sits back, grabs the waistband of her soaked panties, and peels them down.

They stick to her for a second before sliding free. She tosses them somewhere behind her without looking. Then she grips your cock again, guides it to where she’s dripping.

You lock eyes.

You can barely breathe.

“Now,” she says. “You can come inside me.”

Then she sinks down with a sound that shatters whatever was left of your self-control.

It’s not loud, it’s deep, from somewhere in her chest. A gasp, broken in half by a moan, her body folding forward as you stretch her open inch by inch. You grip her hips, trying not to thrust up into her, trying to hold still while she takes you.

She feels like fire and silk and home all at once.

Your head drops back with a curse. "Holy—"

"I know," she whispers, almost stunned.

She settles fully with a tremble, thighs shaking around yours. For a moment, she just stays there, seated flush against your hips, her breath ghosting over your cheek, her hands on your shoulders like she’s grounding herself.

Then her fingers find yours.

She laces them together.

Your eyes snap open.

She’s watching you—face flushed, lips parted, hair wild, but her gaze is steady. Intimate. Like this is the part that matters.

You squeeze her hand without thinking. She squeezes back.

Then she moves.

It starts slow, grinding down, rocking her hips in careful, devastating rhythm. She’s so fucking wet, every movement a slick slide of heat around you. Every roll of her hips draws another breathless groan from your throat, another wrecked sound from hers.

She leans in closer. Chest to chest. Your hands still locked together. You swear you can feel her heartbeat through her palm.

“God,” she pants, forehead pressing to yours, “you feel—so fucking—good—”

You groan, fingers tightening around hers. “Yunjin—please—”

“Please what?” she whispers, dragging her hips back, then snapping them forward again just right. You cry out. She smiles. “You want to come?”

You nod.

She lifts up slightly, angle shifting—and drops back down, hard.

Your vision blacks out for a second.

Then she starts to ride you in earnest.

No games now. No teasing. Just rhythm and heat and need. She uses your hands as leverage, fingers still interlocked, slamming her hips down harder, deeper, again and again, until every part of you is hers.

She’s close. You can feel it in the way her thighs start to tremble again, the way her rhythm gets messy, desperate.

“Come with me,” she gasps, mouth brushing yours. “Please—please—I want you to—”

You barely hold on one more second.

Then you’re gone; hips thrusting up into her one last time as you bury yourself deep and give in. She follows a heartbeat later, pulsing around you with a gasp so raw it almost sounds like a scream.

She collapses against your chest, still shaking, still holding your hand.

Your other arm wraps around her. You bury your face in her hair, breath catching, body wrecked in the best possible way.

Her fingers tighten in yours again.

“Fuck,” you whisper into her skin.

She laughs. Weak, hoarse, beautiful.

“You owe me a date,” she murmurs.

You groan. “Still on about that stupid bet?”

“That ‘stupid’ bet is the reason we’re here.”

You don’t even try to argue.

People rarely say what they mean; they have desires, they have fears, often in conflict with one another. Maybe you like that girl, but you are friends, so confessing—and getting rejected—ruins that? Maybe you have to earn a lot of money for your family, but you have to do it by pushing and bending and twisting your moral compass? Try and not make relevant characters one-dimensional.

Be careful though, one mistake you can make is coming up with over-complex characters and spelling everything out for the reader. DON’T DO THAT. USE SUBTEXT AND LET SOME THINGS UNKNOWN TO THE READER. You don’t know everything about the people you meet in real life—not even the ones you’re close to—so don’t force your reader to.

By using subtext I mean the following: (yes, I’m using my own fic as an example)

“Fix that,” she says.

“It’s tied,” you say. “It’s doing its job.”

“It’s crooked,” she says. “And you’re in front of customers.”

“I didn’t realize my back was part of the customer service.”

“It is when I have to look at it.”

You feel your spine stiffen. “Newsflash, Chaewon: you don’t have to look at me at all.”

In my opinion, that exchange offers the reader a decent glimpse into the relationship dynamics without spelling it out. Imagine instead of that, there was this:

“Fix your apron,” Chaewon says, her tone sharper than necessary.

“It’s tied,” you say, shrugging. “What’s the big deal?”

“It’s crooked,” she says, frowning. “And we’re supposed to look professional.”

You glance back at her. “Didn’t know you cared so much about my apron.”

She looks away quickly. “I just don’t want to get in trouble. Ms. Lim notices stuff like that.”

You pause, wondering if there’s more to it. She’s being weirdly intense about this for some reason.

This sounds like I’m SCREAMING at the reader. Look! Look! She is strict, but cares for you. It’s cheap and unsatisfactory, essentially calling the reader a dum-dum who can’t read social cues and has to have everything explained.

I can’t write a whole essay about how I write characters, so just remember: think of them as real people. Let them act and think and talk on the page as they would in real life. Don’t force the poor characters to do your bidding for the sake of the planned ending you have in mind.

Let’s move on to the plot, which is the next most important thing. I’ll use the steak analogy again. If your story is a steak: the characters are the meat, the plot is the way you cook the meat, and the setting is the condiments.

Plot boils down to one word. Conflict. The characters want something, but an obstacle in the story doesn’t let them have it.

They want to live a peaceful life, but a crazy clown tries to eat them. They want to date a hot girl, but she’s out of their league. It can even be something as simple as they are hungry, but the fridge is empty. Though you’d need some premium meat and condiments for that last idea. (also, there are usually multiple plots in one story)

The plot should serve the characters; alter their relationships, reveal desires and fears, or force them to change themselves and their world view. Change is crucial for the story. If nothing changes, then the reader grows bored and begins to wonder what even is the point of the story.

Change doesn't have to be change in the world of the character. The reader finding something new about a character is change.

Now onto the setting. The condiments. This is the world where your story unfolds, which aids in fleshing out and developing your characters.

Once more, I will use my Chaewon fic as an example (I know, this guiltycouch guy is shameless):

The setting is a college bookstore during a blizzard. Why did I choose the setting? Both main characters are shy, hiding their feelings behind meanness. They won’t confess, much less hook up in normal circumstances.

So I put them in a crisis.

A crisis where they have to work together. A bookstore where they can’t hide much from each other. A SETTING where they have to be honest. Now, did the setting have to be a bookstore during a blizzard for the story to work? Of course not. That’s one of the reasons setting is the least important of the three.

It could have been any setting as long as it helped the characters and plot. In this case, helping meant a close space and a crisis.

You can make a good story with most settings, but molding the setting for the characters makes writing a lot easier.

Do I think everything through like this every time I write? Hell no, my head would explode. But whenever I edit or re-write or feel there’s something wrong with the story, I think which of the three I screw up on.

Now this is cool and all, but don’t forget, READING and WRITING are still 90% of the work. If you don’t do it consistently and want to get better, it’s the same as wanting to get muscle without eating protein and working out. Not gonna happen.

Right now, I aim for anywhere between 1000 words on a bad day to 2000 on a good one. I did start with 500 for a good while to build consistency. It doesn’t matter if my writing is absolute garbage, I can always fix it later. Just. Get. The. Words. Down. (I realize these might seem like a lot. I enjoy writing as a hobby—it’s something I do for fun—so don’t force yourself.)

Also, writing when you have distractions around makes everything 10x harder. For that I use an app called Freedom, which blocks everything except Scrivener (where I write) and the thesaurus site I use to find synonyms for however long you choose. Freedom also has a phone version so you don’t give yourself that out.

One last thing and I’m done.

It’s hard to go into detail since it’s one of those things you learn by doing, but try to vary both sentence and paragraph length depending on what is going on.

Example, look how short the sentences and paragraphs are when the lights go out:

The lights go out.

Everything snaps to black so fast your stomach drops. The humming of the heaters stops. The buzzing from the old fluorescent tube in the back disappears. Even the little mechanical whir of the receipt printer dies.

For half a heartbeat, it’s just the storm and breathing.

The emergency lights blink on. They’re low and yellow, barely illuminating the aisles. The store looks different in them, older somehow, shadows stretched long between shelves.

Outside, something slams into the shutter with a metallic boom.

You and Chaewon both flinch.

“Ms. Lim?” Chaewon calls, too loud in the sudden quiet.

The boom comes again.

In intense situations, it’s a lot harder to form proper thoughts, so I tried reflecting that in the writing. Everything is fast. Reactive.

You stayed there longer than made sense. The metal under your back had gone cold. Your shirt was twisted somewhere halfway to your shoulder blades. Your legs were tangled with hers, your arm dead under the weight of her torso, but you didn’t move.

Karina’s breathing slowly evened out. Every few seconds, her fingers flexed in your hair like she needed to check you were still there.

Eventually your radio crackled to life near your foot. Static, then Rafi’s voice, bored and tinny.

“Wheel check, you alive up there or am I calling your next of kin?”

Karina huffed a quiet laugh into your chest. “That’s your cue, safety boy.”

You groaned. “I hate him.”

“No you don’t,” she said. “You love him almost as much as you love your precious bolts.”

You reached out, groped for the radio, thumbed the button. “Yeah, I’m good,” you said, amazed you sounded almost normal. “Just finishing the checklist.”

“Checklist,” Karina mouthed, amused.

“Copy that,” Rafi said. “We’re closing in twenty. Start wrapping it up.”

The line went dead.

Karina shifted, wincing as the metal dug into her hip. “We should probably attempt to look like we didn’t just desecrate your workplace,” she said.

“Probably,” you agreed. You’d been ignoring the fact that you were technically on the clock. Right now you were fairly sure there was a regulation somewhere about “no intercourse on or near operational machinery.”

She peeled herself off you, shivering as night air hit bare skin. You sat up, hunting blindly for your boxers and jeans. Your hand brushed her thigh and she jumped.

“Cold,” she muttered.

“Sorry.” You found your clothes, pulled them on in clumsy, fumbling movements. Your fingers weren’t working like they belonged to you yet.

Karina found her underwear, then her shorts, then her tank, wiggling into them with a kind of lazy efficiency. Her hair was a mess. There was a smear of your stubble red on her neck where you’d sucked too hard.

You couldn’t stop staring.

She caught you looking and smirked. “Eyes up, Jason.”

You cleared your throat and tried to smooth your hair down.

“Your hair is a lost cause,” she said. “Just own it. It’s very… ‘I’ve been railed behind the Ferris wheel.’”

“Karina.”

“What?” she said innocently.

You glanced down at your shirt. Wrinkled. A button half wrong. Your neck felt strange. You reached up and hissed when your fingers brushed a tender spot.

Karina grinned, too pleased. “That one may or may not be my fault.”

“You gave me a hickey at work,” you said. “Actually multiple crimes have been committed.”

She shrugged, unbothered. “Consider it… branding.”

You wanted to kiss her again so badly it almost hurt, but the adrenaline had started to fade and reality was settling in.

“Okay,” she said, standing, bracing a hand on your shoulder. “Game face time. You go down first. I’ll wait a minute.”

“Why do I go first?” you asked.

“Because you have to actually, you know, do things,” she said. “Close stuff. Pretend to be responsible. If we come down together, Rafi’s head will explode.”

“That might be entertaining,” you said.

“Not as entertaining as him giving you the disappointed dad speech,” she said. “Trust me. Go.”

She leaned in and stole one last, quick kiss, just a press of lips, nothing like what you’d just done and somehow just as dizzying.

“Go,” she repeated against your mouth.

You went.

Your legs felt weird on the ladder, like they were remembering something entirely different from climbing. At the bottom, the boards under your boots seemed too solid. The pier sounded different too—dimmer, muffled, like someone had put a blanket over the world.

Rafi sat on a crate near the control box, scrolling his phone. He looked up and grinned.

“There he is,” he said. “Thought maybe you and the wheel ran off together.”

“Ha,” you said.

He narrowed his eyes, taking in your hair, your half-tucked shirt. His gaze lingered on your neck. One eyebrow climbed, slow and delighted.

“Well, well,” he said. “Somebody had fun at work.”

You resisted the urge to clamp a hand over the mark. “Bolt inspection is thrilling,” you deadpanned.

“Is that what the kids are calling it now?” he said. “Listen, I don’t need the details. Actually, that’s a lie, I do, but I’m not your therapist.”

Karina came down a minute later, careful and steady like she hadn’t just changed your entire life.

She hopped off the last rung and landed lightly. She didn’t look at you. Not directly. Just stood next to you, folding her arms, eyes on the wheel like any other night.

Rafi’s gaze bounced between the two of you like you were a tennis match.

“Subtle,” he said. “Truly. If you ever want to go pro at espionage, don’t.”

“Shut up, Raf,” Karina said, but she was smiling.

He held up both hands. “I’m saying nothing. Absolutely nothing. I am a vault. However…” He pointed a finger at you. “Maybe don’t give Cole and his nerds a free reason to call us unprofessional, yeah?”

You felt your stomach drop. “Right,” you said.

Rafi’s tone softened a hair. “I’m not judging,” he said. “I’m just saying—this place already has one foot on the ‘they don’t take us seriously’ list. Don’t help them.”

“Got it,” you said.

Karina scuffed the toe of her boot on the boards. “You’re such a killjoy,” she said.

“A live killjoy,” Rafi said. “Which is kind of the goal.”

You finished your last checks on autopilot, the pen in your hand moving while your brain replayed Karina’s mouth, her voice, that “beginning of everything else” thought you’d had up there like it was someone else’s.

When everything was finally locked, logged, and powered down, you clocked out and stepped off the pier. Karina was waiting by the ramp, arms wrapped around herself against the wind.

Rafi called after you, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” and you flipped him off over your shoulder without turning around.

Karina fell into step beside you, bare feet in the sand now, shoes dangling from her fingers.

For a while, you didn’t say anything. The only sounds were the waves and your own uneven breathing.

Karina broke the silence first. Of course she did.

“So,” she said. “That happened.”

You huffed a laugh. “Yeah. Kind of did.”

“On a scale of one to ten,” she said, “how freaked out are you?”

You thought about it. “Uh… seven? Seven and a half?”

“Cute,” she said. “I’m like… an eight. Maybe a nine. I don’t know how to count anymore.”

You bumped her shoulder lightly. “You could have lied, you know. Said you were chill. Cool. Unbothered.”

“And deprive you of this bonding moment? Never.” She kicked at a piece of driftwood. “You regret it?”

The question came out too casual.

You stopped walking. She did too, half a step ahead. The wind tugged her hair into her face. You reached out without thinking and pushed it back behind her ear.

“No,” you said. “I don’t.”

Her face did a weird thing—relief, surprise, something you couldn’t name.

“Good,” she said. “Me neither.”

You started walking again.

There was another question hanging there, big and obvious. You didn’t want to ask it. You had to.

“What are we?” you said.

She made a face. “Oh god, you went there.”

“You said this wasn’t just sex,” you reminded her. “So… what is it? Are we—” Your tongue tripped on the word. “Dating?”

She was quiet for a second. You braced for her to crack a joke, dodge, say something like labels are for jars.

Instead she said, “I don’t know yet.”

You glanced at her.

She was looking straight ahead, jaw clenched. “I want it to be… something,” she said. “I’m just… trying not to screw it.”

“You’re allowed to not know,” you said.

She let out a breath. “Okay but you need to know something,” she said, looking at you now. “I suck at this. Like, world-class. Gold medal. I panic and push people away and do stupid shit and then blame myself forever.”

“I know,” you said gently.

“No, you don’t.” She shook her head. “You think you do because you’ve seen me drunk and crying a few times, but you don’t know the half of it.”

“Then tell me,” you said.

She stuffed her hands into her pockets, shoulders hunching against the breeze. “Not on the beach,” she said. “Feels too… movie-like. I’d have to start monologuing.”

“You do that anyway,” you said.

She snorted. “Shut up.”

You walked the rest of the way to the house in silence that didn’t feel heavy. Just… full.

At the bottom of the porch steps, she stopped again.

“Okay,” she said. “Ground rules.”

“Ground rules?” you repeated.

“We’re not telling Mom,” she said. “Not yet.”

You nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“And we’re not telling Minjeong,” she added. “Definitely not yet.”

Your stomach did a small uncomfortable twist. “She’s going to figure it out.”

“She’s going to figure out something,” Karina said. “We just… we need to pick our moment. I don’t want her finding out because she walked in on us making out over the jam jars.”

You winced. Fair.

“And you,” she said, poking you in the chest, “are going to tell me if you start feeling weird. Or guilty. Or like this is a mistake. You don’t get to just shut down and go all noble martyr on me.”

“I don’t do that,” you said.

She gave you a look. “Jason, you do nothing but that.”

You opened your mouth to argue. Closed it. “Okay, fine,” you said. “No noble martyrdom. Got it.”

She seemed satisfied with that. She stepped up onto the first stair, bringing her face almost level with yours.

“Goodnight,” she said.

“Night,” you said.

She leaned in and kissed you. Not a repeat of the platform, not a new firestorm. Just a slow, soft press that lasted a few seconds and lit you up anyway.

Then she pulled back, eyes searching your face for something, whatever it was, she found it, because she smiled and turned away.

“You’ve got neck,” she whispered as she slipped past you toward the door.

You slapped a hand over your skin. She laughed, low and delighted, and disappeared inside.

You stood there for a second longer, hand over your throat, grinning like an idiot into the dark.

Then you went in too.

*

You slept like you’d been dropped from the air.

When you woke up, sunlight was already cutting through the curtains in fat stripes. You rolled over, grabbed your phone, squinted at the time.

Almost eleven.

You dragged a hand over your face and sat up. Your body ached in a way that was half work, half something else. Good ache.

On your way to the bathroom, you caught sight of yourself in the hall mirror and winced.

The hickey Karina had left bloomed on the left side of your neck. Not huge, but not subtle. Purple fading to red, shaped like a thumbprint from God.

You leaned closer, poked it. “Awesome,” you muttered.

By the time you made it downstairs, the house was in full motion.

Mrs. Yoo stood at the counter chopping green onions. Minjeong was at the table, laptop open, phone pressed between her shoulder and ear. A spreadsheet of names and numbers filled the screen.

“No, we’re not selling booth space to Cole,” she said into the phone. “Yes, I know he offered. The whole point is local. Yeah. Okay. I’ll put it on the agenda.”

Her eyes flicked up as you came in. They lingered on your neck for a beat. A frown tugged at her brows. Then she looked back at her screen.

“Morning,” you offered.

“Afternoon,” Mrs. Yoo corrected without turning. “You sleep okay?”

“Yeah,” you said, reaching for a mug. “What’s going on?”

“Fair stuff,” Minjeong said, hanging up. “Always fair stuff.”

“Developer stuff,” Mrs. Yoo added. “Always developer stuff.”

“Fun stuff,” Minjeong said, with a kind of exhausted sarcasm.

You poured coffee, trying to angle your body so your neck wasn’t front and center. You could feel Minjeong’s gaze tick over you again like she wanted to ask and decided not to.

“So we’ve got the community action event tomorrow,” she said instead. “Which I know sounds like the most boring thing ever, but we need people. A lot of people. You’re still coming, right?”

“Yeah,” you said. “Just tell me where and when.”

“Green, noon,” she said. “We’re doing signs in the morning at the center if you want to help.”

“I’ll be there,” you said.

Mrs. Yoo slid a plate of eggs and scallion pancakes in front of you. “Eat,” she said. “You look like you lost a fight with a night demon.”

“A flattering way to say ‘you look tired,’” you said.

“Honesty builds character,” she replied.

The back door banged open. Karina wandered in, hair wet, tank top clinging to damp skin. She smelled faintly of ocean and shampoo.

“Guess who went for a refreshing morning swim,” she announced.

“We heard you laughing,” Minjeong said without looking up. “The whole bay heard you laughing.”

Karina poured herself coffee, then slid into the seat next to yours. Her bare knee brushed your thigh under the table. You nearly spilled your drink.

Her eyes flicked to your neck and she covered a smile with her mug.

Minjeong’s gaze ping-ponged between you, catching the micro-second of eye contact, the weird tension, the way you scooted your chair a whole inch away. Her eyes narrowed just a bit.

“Jason,” she said. “Did you cut yourself shaving or…?”

“What?” you said, too fast. You grabbed at your neck like you could hide it with your hand.

Karina coughed, badly disguising a laugh.

Mrs. Yoo glanced over. “Oh,” she said, too casually. “Looks like someone got bit by a mosquito.”

“It’s… yeah,” you said. “Big mosquito.”

“Looks like a hickey,” Minjeong said, in the exact tone someone might say looks like you have a knife in your leg.

Your face went hot. “It’s not—”

Karina cut in. “Maybe he fell on something,” she said. “You know, clumsy Jason. Always falling into… objects.”

You stared at your plate. You could feel Minjeong’s eyes burning holes in the side of your head.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Very plausible.”

“Minjeong,” Mrs. Yoo said. “Don’t interrogate the boy over breakfast.”

“I’m not interrogating,” she said. “I’m just observing.”

“Well, observe quietly,” Mrs. Yoo said. “Jason, more eggs?”

“Please,” you said, grateful for the distraction.

As soon as you finished eating, Minjeong closed her laptop with a soft snap.

“Jason, can you come with me to the center?” she asked. “I need help carrying boxes.”

You glanced at Karina.

She widened her eyes at you in an exaggerated go motion, like she was pushing you onto a stage.

“Uh, yeah,” you said. “Sure.”

“Good,” Minjeong said. “We leave in ten.”

She disappeared upstairs, probably to grab files and a sweater. Karina leaned over, bumping your shoulder with hers.

“Relax,” she murmured. “She doesn’t know.”

“She knows something,” you hissed.

Karina grinned. “She thinks you made out with some random girl behind the cotton candy stand. Honestly, that might be better. Less drama.”

“That’s somehow worse,” you said.

She shrugged, unapologetic. “You’ll be fine. Go be a civic-minded citizen. Help my sister save the world. I’ll be here, doing important things like… taking a nap.”

You gave her a look.

“What?” she said. “I did a swim. I’m exhausted.”

You got the feeling she wanted to say more, but footsteps sounded on the stairs and Minjeong appeared, tote bag over her shoulder, keys in hand.

“Let’s go,” she said. “We’re already late.”

Karina winked at you once, quick and conspiratorial, then hopped up to grab more coffee.

You followed Minjeong out.

**

The community center was a ten-minute walk from the house if you cut through backyards and hopped the fence behind the post office. You’d done that route so many summers you barely had to think about it.

Now, walking a step behind Minjeong, you were very aware of everything.

The way her ponytail swung against her neck. The soft slap of her sandals. The determined pace that said she was already thinking three tasks ahead.

She didn’t talk at first. You matched her silence. You could practically feel the questions vibrating off her.

She made it to the end of the first block before she cracked.

“So,” she said. “Who was she?”

You stared at a telephone pole.

“I’m not stupid, Jason,” she said. “That isn’t a mosquito. And you’re walking like your spine is having a seizure.”

You laughed, startled. “What does that even mean?”

“It means you’re being weird,” she said. “And you’re weird when you’re hiding something. So. Who was she?”

You swallowed. Your brain flashed to Karina on the platform. Her hands, her mouth, the sound she’d made when—

You shut the door on that thought fast.

“It’s not… it’s nobody,” you said. “It was just… it happened.”

“So there was a someone,” she said. “Interesting.”

You glared at her. “Can we not do this?”

“Why?” she asked. “Is she embarrassing?”

“No,” you said. “She’s… not.”

“So you like her,” she said. “Cool.”

You exhaled through your nose. “Why does it matter?”

She stopped walking and turned to face you in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Because,” she said slowly, “you’re my friend. And you are weirdly important to this family. And the last time Karina—”

She cut herself off.

You blinked. “The last time Karina… what?”

Minjeong shook her head like she could rattle whatever she’d almost said out of her ears. “Nothing,” she said too quickly. “Forget it.”

“Kind of hard to forget when you say it like that,” you said.

She sighed, looked up at the sky like it might hand her a script. “It’s not my story to tell,” she said finally. “And if I start, I’ll either say too much or not enough, and both options suck.”

You studied her. The edge in her voice wasn’t gossipy. It was protective. Of Karina, of herself, of the flimsy peace in the house.

“Okay,” you said, because pushing right now would make you exactly the kind of guy you didn’t want to be. “I’ll ask her. When she wants to talk.”

She huffed out a breath. “Good luck with that,” she muttered, but some of the tension left her shoulders. “Come on. Posters aren’t going to draw themselves.”

She turned and started walking again. You followed.

***

The community center looked smaller in daylight, like a kid playing dress-up in government clothes. Red brick, chipped in places. Handmade signs taped in the windows: COMMUNITY ART NIGHT, PLEASE STOP STEALING THE GOOD MARKERS.

Inside, it was chaos. Good chaos.

Tables shoved together, covered in butcher paper. Boxes of paint. Jars of brushes sticking out like bouquets. Kids everywhere—Scout and his friends, a couple of middle-school girls with glitter already on their faces, an older woman you recognized from somewhere carefully drawing block letters with a ruler.

Minjeong stepped into the room and it was like she became a magnet. People turned toward her automatically.

“Min, where do you want the donation jar?” someone called.

“We’re out of red,” a girl complained.

“Do these slogans sound cheesy?” the woman with the ruler asked, holding up a paper that read KEEP OUR PIER OURS and COLE CAN’T STEAL OUR WAVES.

Minjeong dropped her tote on a chair, pushed her hair off her forehead, and answered three questions at once.

“Donation jar by the door, but not where kids can knock it,” she said. “Use pink and a little brown to fake red until we get more. And no on the waves one, it sounds like a bumper sticker from 2009, I’m sorry, Nana Lou.”

Nana Lou cackled. “That’s why I asked you, honey,” she said. “You have that radar.”

Scout spotted you and made a beeline, board tucked under his arm. “Dude,” he said. “You’re here. Grab a brush before Min starts assigning chores.”

“Too late,” Minjeong said, turning to you with a grin. “You’re on backgrounds. Big blocks of color. Nice and neat. Think you can handle it?”

“I have a degree,” you said.

“In what?” she asked. “Straight lines?”

“Maybe,” you said.

She tossed you an oversized T-shirt from a pile. “Put that on,” she said. “We’re not sacrificing your only work shirt to the gods of acrylic.”

You pulled it over your head. It smelled like old detergent and stage fright. Minjeong handed you a roller and pointed to a stack of blank posters against the wall.

You fell into the rhythm quick enough. Dip, roll, drag. Blue, teal, sandy yellow. Scout painted waves that somehow all looked like cartoon hair. A little girl wrote SAVE OUR SUMMER in shaky letters, tongue sticking out.

Every few minutes Minjeong would swoop past, correcting a crooked B, adding a shadow to a letter, answering a question, laughing at a bad pun. Her energy filled the room without feeling like too much.

She stopped by your table at one point, wiping her hands on a rag.

“Those look good,” she said, inspecting your work. “You have a future in protest art.”

“Backup plan if the pier falls into the ocean,” you said.

“That’s what we’re preventing, remember?” she said.

Her eyes flicked to your neck briefly, the hickey peeking over the too-wide collar of the paint shirt. Her mouth twitched, but she didn’t comment this time.

Instead she nudged your elbow. “Hey,” she said quietly, so the kids couldn’t hear. “About earlier—me almost opening my big mouth about Karina and… stuff.”

“Yeah?”

She exhaled. You could see her debate.

“When I said ‘the last time,’” she said, “I meant… I messed up. Not just her.”

You stayed quiet. Paint dripped off your roller in a slow line.

“I thought telling you might make me feel better,” she went on. “But then I realized I was just… trying to stack you on my side. Which is gross. So I stopped.”

“I’m not a block,” you said before you could think better of it.

She looked at you for a beat.

“I know,” she said. “You’re… like something else entirely. The hinge.”

“Human hinge,” you said. “Hot.”

She laughed, the tension breaking. “Shut up and paint,” she said, shoving your roller back into your hand.

You stayed at the center longer than you’d planned. Time there worked differently; it broke into tasks instead of hours.

After posters came tape. Tape came after you discovered there were only three working staplers in the entire building and two of them jammed if you looked at them wrong. You and Minjeong tag-teamed the bulletin boards, her standing on a chair and you handing her signs.

“I feel like a very short dictator,” she said, pressing KEEP THE PIER LOCAL above a faded flyer for yoga.

“You’re terrifying,” you said. “All five foot… what, three?”

“Four,” she said. “Coward.”

When the kids took a snack break, you helped Nana Lou wash brushes in the tiny sink at the back.

“Minjeong’s got us whipped into shape, huh?” Nana Lou said, rinsing a bristle under running water.

“She’s good at this,” you said.

“She always was,” Nana Lou said. “Even when she and Karina were knee-high terrors, Min was the one making lists of what kind of mischief they could get away with.”

You smiled. You could see it. Tiny Minjeong with a clipboard, tiny Karina ignoring it entirely.

“She’s been working herself raw since… well.” Nana Lou shook water off her hands. “Since everything went sideways. Girl thinks she can hold this whole town together if she just stays up late enough.”

“Everything?” you asked carefully. “What do you mean?”

The older woman gave you a sideways look, clearly weighing how much to say.

“That’s not my story either, sugar,” she said finally. “But I’ll tell you this much: Min made a call. Thought she was doing right. Sometimes doing right doesn’t feel like it.”

Your chest went cold for a second. You thought of Minjeong on the sidewalk, cutting herself off. The way her voice had trembled the tiniest bit.

“A call?” you asked.

Nana Lou shrugged. “Ask her,” she said. “But be gentle. It still sits heavy.”

You dried the last brush in silence.

****

When you and Minjeong finally left, the sun had shifted to late afternoon. Your hands were stained blue around the nails. Her ponytail had paint streaks in it. You both smelled like sweat, tempera, and cheap cookies.

“You hungry?” she asked as you stepped onto the sidewalk.

“Starving,” you said.

“There’s leftover japchae if Karina didn’t annihilate it,” she said. “We can hide some before Scout comes over and inhales the rest.”

You grinned. “Is that morally wrong?”

“Probably,” she said. “Eat fast.”

On the way back, you passed the green where the action event would be. Minjeong slowed, scanning the space like she was already placing bodies there.

“We’ll put the main banner on that side,” she murmured, mostly to herself. “Speakers near the big oak so they can plug into the rec center’s outlet. Kids’ table by the fountain. Less running-off potential.”

“You’ve thought about this,” you said.

She snorted. “I’ve had three weeks and a lot of insomnia,” she said. “It’s either this or start a true-crime podcast.”

You watched her face as she looked over the lawn. Focused, a little grim. But there was hope there too. Stubborn hope.

“You’re good at this,” you said again.

“You keep saying that,” she said.

“Because it’s true,” you said.

She looked at you, really looked, as if checking you for sarcasm. Finding none.

“Thanks,” she said quietly.

At the house, you did end up stealing japchae before Scout could. You and Minjeong ate leaning against the counter while Mrs. Yoo ran through a list of ingredients she still needed for tomorrow—ice, more paper cups, a spare extension cord.

Karina wandered in halfway through your second plate, hair dry now, eyeliner on, phone in hand.

“Wow, look at you two,” she said. “Activism chic.”

“You’re just jealous you missed out on the paint fumes,” you said.

She scrunched her nose. “I was doing my own community outreach,” she said. “Posting to get people there tomorrow.”

Minjeong scoffed. “You put up a thirst trap with a vague caption about ‘big things coming.’”

“And it got eighty-seven likes in an hour,” Karina said. “You’re welcome.”

Mrs. Yoo cut in before they could escalate. “I don’t care how you get them there,” she said. “Just get them there.”

Karina’s eyes flicked between you and Minjeong, lingering a fraction too long on the paint on your arms, the way your shoulders almost touched.

“So,” she said, too light. “You two have fun at the center?”

You felt the question in the back of your neck. You met her gaze for a second, tried to read what was under the joke.

“It was work,” you said. “Min bossed me around. It was terrifying.”

Minjeong rolled her eyes. “He exaggerates.”

Karina smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Well, I’m proud of you,” she said, and you weren’t sure which of you she meant.

Later, in the small chaos of setting the table and chasing Scout out of the kitchen, you caught Karina alone in the hallway, leaning against the wall, scrolling her phone.

“You okay?” you asked.

She glanced up. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Your jaw does this thing when you’re mad,” you said, tapping your own face.

Her hand flew to her chin. “Does not.”

“Does,” you said. “Right now.”

She scowled. Then, reluctantly, smiled. “I’m not mad,” she said. “Just… weird.”

“Weird how?” you pressed, keeping your voice low.

She shrugged one shoulder. “Seeing you and Min in work mode is… new,” she said. “It’s like walking into a group project you weren’t invited to.”

“You’re invited,” you said. “You literally said you were doing outreach.”

She snorted. “Posting a picture of my legs is not the same as making spreadsheets, Jason.”

“Different strengths,” you said. “Both important.”

She watched you for a beat. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” you said.

Something in her face softened. “Okay,” she said, bumping her shoulder off the wall. “I’ll try not to be jealous of your poster-painting date.”

“It was not a date,” you said.

“Sure,” she said, already sliding past you toward the dining room.

You stood there a second longer, feeling like the floor under your feet had developed a new, small tilt.

The house was loud that night. People came by with last-minute donations, with questions, with casseroles “for tomorrow” that somehow got eaten immediately. You and Karina and Minjeong orbited each other—passing plates, trading eye rolls, dodging overly familiar cheek pinches from touchy aunties.

At one point, you found yourself on the porch, alone for the first time in hours. The sky was in that last strip of dark blue before real night. The sea was a soft roar.

The screen door creaked. Minjeong stepped out, cradling a mug of tea.

“Escaping?” you asked.

“Strategic retreat,” she said. “If I hear the word ‘permit’ one more time, I’m going to start committing crimes.”

She sat on the top step, leaving you the swing.

You rocked gently. The chain creaked. You watched her blow on her tea.

“You did good today,” you said.

She snorted. “Tell that to the six people who tried to explain basic zoning laws to me like I’m five.”

“Maybe you should ask them who the pier belonged to before zoning was even a thing,” you said. “See how far back they really remember.”

She smiled to herself. “That’s a good line,” she said. “I’m stealing it for tomorrow.”

“Take the credit,” you said. “I’ll sue later.”

She went quiet, looking out at the dark.

“Hey, Jason?” she said after a minute.

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you something and you promise not to make it weird?” she asked.

“That depends,” you said. “On how weird the question is.”

She gave you a look over her shoulder. “Serious,” she said.

You sobered. “Okay,” you said. “I promise to try.”

She wrapped both hands around her mug like she needed the heat. “Do you think I’m… overbearing?” she asked. “Like. Too much.”

It threw you a little. Coming from her, the question felt like calling the ocean wet.

“You mean in general?” you stalled.

“In general, sure,” she said. “But also—specifically. With Karina. with Mom. With… this.” She waved her mug toward town. “The pier. The fair. All of it.”

You thought of her at the center, the way people had flocked to her for answers. You thought of the kids’ faces when she’d remembered their names. Of Mrs. Yoo’s shoulders, a little less tight with Minjeong handling emails and signatures and small fires.

“No,” you said. “I think you hold a lot. But you’re not… bossing people for fun.”

She huffed. “You’ve clearly never heard me talk to the bank manager.”

“All I’m saying is, nobody’s chaining you to this,” you said. “You could pass the torch tomorrow and go… I don’t know, teach pottery on a cruise ship.”

She laughed, startled. “God,” she said. “Can you imagine?”

“Yeah,” you said. “You’d have the best attendance and the most organized glaze station in international waters.”

She shook her head, smiling. The smile faded a little.

“I just…” She stared into her mug. “After what happened with Karina, I told myself I wasn’t going to sit on my hands anymore. That if something needed doing, I’d do it. Even if people got mad. Even if I messed up. It felt better than doing nothing and watching everything go sideways.”

Your ears perked. “What happened?” you asked, careful, gentle. No pressure in your voice.

She pressed her lips together. You could see the war in her eyes. To tell. Not tell. Protect. Confess.

“I called,” she said finally. “Once.”

“Called who?” you asked.

“The cops,” she said, in a rush, like it hurt. “At a party. Up near the cliffs. Two summers ago.”

The words sat heavily in the night air.

You shifted on the swing, the chain squeaking. “Why?”

She laughed once, humorless. “Because she texted me,” Minjeong said. “She was drunk and mad at Mom and talking about jumping.” Her voice tightened on the last word. “She didn’t mean it. You know Karina. But I panicked.”

You swallowed. The thought of Karina drunk near those cliffs made your skin crawl.

“I called Mom first,” Minjeong went on. “She was already on her way, but she was twenty minutes out. I kept texting, but Karina stopped answering. So I… called 911. Gave them the location. Told them everything... The whole script.”

She took a shaky breath.

“They got there before Mom did,” she said. “Party got busted. Kids got tickets. One girl had weed on her and her dad lost it. It was a whole thing. And Karina…”

You could see it. Karina bright with booze and adrenaline, cops’ flashlights cutting across the rocks.

“She was furious,” Minjeong said. “She said I humiliated her, that I ruined everything, that I made her look crazy. She swore she’d never tell me anything again if I was just going to… call reinforcements.”

“And you?” you asked quietly.

“I told myself I could live with her hating me as long as she was alive to hate me,” she said. “Which sounds noble and mature, right?”

There was so much acid in her voice the words almost hissed.

“But,” she went on, “I know there’s this part of me that liked being the one who made the call. That felt… powerful. Like I’d done what Mom would do. Like I was finally the responsible one instead of the kid tagging along behind Karina’s chaos.”

She set the mug down on the step with a soft clink. Her hands were trembling.

“It worked,” she said. “In a way. I became the one everyone trusted not to screw up. Karina leaned harder into not caring.”

You let that sit. The wind nudged the swing gently, creaking.

“Do you regret it?” you asked. “Calling?”

She stared out into the dark. “Sometimes,” she said. “And also… no. Because the alternative…”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to.

You got up from the swing and sat down on the step next to her, your shoulder just barely brushing hers.

“Hey,” you said.

She sniffed, not quite crying yet, eyes glossy. “Don’t,” she warned. “If you’re about to say something nice, I will jump into the ocean to avoid feelings.”

“I’m not,” you said. “I was just going to say… I get it.”

She gave you a watery side-eye. “You do?”

“You made a call,” you said. “It had consequences. Good and bad. You’re allowed to be proud of saving her and also sad you broke something between you. Both can be true.”

She swallowed hard. “You’re annoyingly reasonable, you know that?” she said.

“Occupational hazard,” you said. “I work with bolts and teenagers.”

She laughed, a sound that came out half-choked. Then, before you could overthink it, you lifted your arm and rested it along the back of the step so your hand lay near her far shoulder.

You didn’t pull her in. You just… made the space.

After a heartbeat, she leaned. Just a little. Enough that her shoulder pressed into your side, her head close enough that you could smell mint and paint in her hair.

“Don’t tell Karina I told you,” she said, voice muffled. “She still thinks I see her as this… lost cause I have to manage.”

“Do you?” you asked.

She shook her head into your shoulder. “She terrifies me,” she said. “But she also… amazes me. She’s brave in ways I’m not. I just… wish she’d be brave without standing on the edge of something every time.”

You nodded. “She told me she sucks at this,” you said softly.

“At what?” Minjeong asked.

“Being… close,” you said. “Letting people in without blowing it up.”

Minjeong let out a breath. “At least she knows,” she said.

You sat like that for a while, her weight warm against you, the porch a little bubble of quiet while the house bustled inside.

When the door opened and Karina stepped out, you felt Minjeong straighten so fast your arm almost slipped.

Karina took in the scene—two silhouettes on the steps, one mug, your arm stretched casually behind Minjeong.

Her expression didn’t change much. Just that jaw twitch.

“Mom needs you,” she told Minjeong. “The Baineses are arguing about where their tent goes again and she’s about to murder them with a salt shaker.”

“On it,” Minjeong said, already half-standing, wiping at her eyes quickly with the heel of her hand.

She shot you a quick, almost apologetic look and disappeared inside.

Karina stayed where she was, hands shoved into the pocket of her hoodie.

“That looked cozy,” she said after a beat.

You ran a hand through your hair. “She was upset,” you said. “We were talking about… the cliffs.”

Karina’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “She told you,” she said. Not a question.

“Some of it,” you admitted. “Her version. That she panicked. Called. That she regrets… and also doesn’t.”

Karina stepped farther out onto the porch, the boards creaking under her bare feet.

“She probably made herself sound very noble,” she said, voice flat.

“She made herself sound human,” you said. “Terrified. Like she was trying to keep you safe.”

Karina’s laugh was sharp. “That’s the thing,” she said. “Everyone keeps saying that. ‘We were just trying to keep you safe, Karina. We were just worried.’ Like I should be grateful they tore my image apart in public instead of in private.”

You winced. “She thought you might jump.”

Karina’s eyes flashed. “I was drunk and mad and texting metaphors,” she snapped. “She knows that. She knows me. Or she did. Calling Mom? Fine. Mom’s allowed to come drag my ass home. Calling the cops? That’s insane. She knew what that would look like. She did it anyway.”

You forced yourself not to flinch. “Would you have listened if she’d called you?” you asked quietly.

Karina opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked away.

“That’s not the point,” she muttered.

“Maybe it is,” you said.

She glared at you. “Don’t take her side,” she said.

“I’m not on a side,” you said. “I’m on… ‘hey, maybe that night screwed you both up in different ways and you’re still suffering from it years later.’”

“Congratulations,” she said coolly. “You’ve diagnosed us. Can I go back to being pissed now?”

You scrubbed a hand over your face. “You’re allowed to be pissed,” you said. “I just… I don’t want you to think she hates you.”

“I know she doesn’t hate me,” Karina said. “She still thinks I’m fixable. Like if she just fills out enough forms and plans enough events and micromanages my life hard enough, I’ll turn into a somewhat drunk version of her.”

“You’re not… that,” you said.

Her laugh this time sounded tired. “Tell that to the town,” she said. “I’m the cautionary tale. ‘Don’t end up like Karina, kids, or your sister will call the cops on your ass.’”

She sank down onto the swing, leaving a gap between you. The chain squeaked.

“I’m not defending what she did,” you said, turning to face her. “I’m just saying… she carries it. And it’s turned her into someone who thinks she has to hold everything up all the time. Including you.”

Karina picked at a splinter on the armrest. “Yeah, well,” she said. “I didn’t ask her to.”

“No,” you said. “You didn’t. That’s kind of the tragedy.”

She paused at that, eyes flicking up to yours. Something in your words seemed to land.

“I don’t want you in the middle,” she said after a moment, voice quieter. “Between me and her. Between us and Mom. You’re going to get crushed.”

“I’m sturdier than I look,” you said.

She snorted. “You look like a guy who apologizes when someone bumps into him.”

“Sometimes it’s my fault,” you said.

“There you go,” she said, exasperated and fond at once.

She tilted her head back, looking up at the slice of sky.

“You’re staying, right?” she asked suddenly.

The question startled you. “At the house?”

“This summer,” she said. “The pier. All of it. You’re not going to do that thing where you freak out, declare this was a mistake, and apply for an internship in Iowa, right?”

“Iowa?” you repeated. “Why Iowa?”

“It feels far and landlocked,” she said. “Like the opposite of here.”

You thought of the platform. Of her fingers in your hair. Of Minjeong’s head on your shoulder. Of the pier’s boards under your boots, the wheel’s click, the kids’ faces looking up at the rides.

“I’m not going anywhere,” you said.

“Promise?” she asked, and this time her joking tone dropped, leaving something raw.

“Promise,” you said.

She nodded slowly, like she needed to test the word against her ribs.

“Okay,” she said. “Because if you bail now, I’m going to have to become responsible and that sounds exhausting.”

You laughed. “You? Responsible?”

“Don’t make me,” she said. “I’ll cry.”

You bumped the swing lightly with your foot, setting it in motion. She let herself sway with it, hair swishing against her shoulders.

After a while, she nudged your knee with hers. “You working tomorrow night?” she asked.

“Later shift,” you said. “Starts at seven, after the action thing.”

She considered that. “Cool,” she said. “There’s a bonfire on the beach after. I’ll drag you if you’re not dead.”

“Another party?” you said. “Maybe the cops will join us for old times’ sake.”

She made a face. “Too soon,” she said, but there was less bite in it.

“Sorry,” you said.

“Don’t be,” she said. “If they show up, at least this time you’ll be there. You can flash your clipboard at them.”

“That’s not how clipboards work,” you said.

“It is in my fantasy,” she said.

She pushed herself up from the swing and stretched, arms over her head, T-shirt riding up just enough that your brain misfired for a second.

“Get some sleep,” she said. “You have to yell slogans tomorrow and not pass out.”

“You too,” you said.

She hesitated like she might lean in, might kiss you again on the porch, under the porch light, in full view of the world. Then she glanced at the front windows, where shadows moved behind the curtains, and thought better of it.

Instead, she reached out, hooked a finger in the collar of your T-shirt, and pulled you in just long enough to press her mouth to your cheek.

It was quick. It still made your stomach do a weird little flip.

“Goodnight, Jason,” she murmured.

“Night, Rina,” you said before you could stop yourself.

She made a face. “I said don’t call me that,” she grumbled, but she was smiling as she went inside.

You stayed on the porch a while longer, head full, chest fuller. Somewhere upstairs, two sisters moved through the same old rooms, each convinced she’d ruined the other and had to make up for it.

And you, the human hinge, had just promised both of them, in different ways, that you’d be there for them.

*****

The green looked different with bodies on it.

Banners flapped in the breeze, strung between trees. KEEP OUR PIER OURS. NO COLE TAKEOVER. HANDS OFF OUR SUMMER. Kids ran under them, faces painted, holding paper pinwheels someone had inexplicably decided were on-theme.

The portable speaker crackled as Scout fumbled with the playlist.

“Not the EDM one,” Minjeong called from the makeshift stage. “We’re not at a rave.”

“Then what do you want?” Scout yelled back. “Sad acoustic?”

“Something people over thirty won’t hate,” she said. “Taylor or whatever.”

He put on a middle-of-the-road pop song that made nobody happy and everybody able to ignore it. The perfect choice.

You walked through the crowd with a stack of flyers, trying not to think about how you’d somehow become the guy saying things like “Make sure you sign the petition before you leave.”

“You sound like me,” Minjeong said when you came back to the stage to refill.

“Don’t worry, I’ll never have your spreadsheet skills,” you said.

“Thank God,” she said. “One of me is plenty.”

She wore a simple sundress and sneakers, hair down for once. She’d shoved a pen behind one ear and a highlighter behind the other like some kind of admin warrior.

Karina arrived late, of course.

You spotted her cutting across the grass with a small entourage—Scout, a couple of kids from the pier, and two girls. She wore shorts and a big white button-up knotted at the waist, sunglasses perched on her head, camera around her neck. It should’ve looked try-hard. It didn’t. She looked like she belonged on a poster herself.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said as she reached the stage. “My cabriolet broke down.”

“You don’t have a cabriolet,” Minjeong said.

“It broke down,” Karina repeated. She dropped her bag behind the stage. “Where do you want me?”

“Photos,” Minjeong said. “We need coverage. The town website, socials, everything.”

Karina saluted with two fingers. “On it, boss,” she said.

She moved through the crowd like water, catching angles you would have missed: a kid with his face painted like a shark biting into a hot dog, two older guys arguing amicably near the lemonade stand, Mrs. Yoo handing a cup of tea to Nana Lou.

Every so often, she’d point the lens at you. You’d roll your eyes. She’d snap anyway.

The official part started an hour in.

Minjeong stepped up onto the pallet someone had draped in a sheet to make a “stage.” She adjusted the mic—the rec center’s ancient one, which squealed once in protest—took a breath, and started talking.

She didn’t have notes. You knew because you’d seen her leave them on the kitchen table, then decide she’d rather speak like a person than a press release.

“We’re not here because we hate change,” she said, voice strong. “We’re here because we love this place.”

You watched people listen. Really listen. You’d seen Minjeong in planning mode. You’d seen her making lists, cleaning up glitter, scolding Scout. You’d never seen her like this—her voice carrying across the lawn, her hand slicing the air, her fear tucked under determination.

“This pier isn’t perfect,” she went on. “It needs repairs. It needs money. But it’s ours. We grew up on those boards. We got splinters and first kisses and summer jobs there. We learned how to be people there. You don’t sell that for a prettier sign.”

You felt something tighten in your throat. You weren’t the only one. Mrs. Yoo wiped her eye. Even Scout stopped messing with his phone.

Karina stood near the front, camera forgotten at her side. Her eyes never left her sister’s face.

“We’re not saying no to help,” Minjeong said. “We’re saying we want a say in what help looks like. We want to fix what’s broken without breaking what works. We want to build something that still feels like home.”

She finished to real applause. Not polite, not perfunctory. Real applause.

You clapped until your hands hurt.

Of course, that was when Cole’s people showed up.

Avery arrived in a crisp shirt, sunglasses, and the kind of smile that said he’d smelled a PR opportunity a mile away. He had two associates with him, including a tall woman with the clipboard you’d seen at the pier.

“Afternoon,” he said, walking up to the stage like he’d been invited. “Hope we’re not interrupting.”

“Yes,” Minjeong said before anyone else could respond. “You are.”

Some people laughed. Some gasped. Mrs. Yoo muttered, “Oh boy,” under her breath.

“We’re just here to listen,” Avery said smoothly. “And maybe answer questions, if folks have them.”

“That’s what Thursday’s meeting is for,” Minjeong said. “This is our turn to talk.”

“Of course,” he said. “And I’d hate to disrupt. But I do think it’s important everyone has all the facts.”

He gestured and clipboard woman stepped forward, already pulling something out of her bag.

Karina moved toward the stage without seeming to. You followed, your muscles in that half-tense state they went into before a ride misbehaved.

“We know the pier holds a special place in your hearts,” Avery said, addressing the crowd now. “We want to honor that while bringing it up to modern safety standards. Some of those rides are… well. Let’s just say they’ve seen better days.”

He smiled like that was a joke. A few people smiled back. More didn’t.

“We have investors ready to put real money into this town,” he went on. “Jobs. Infrastructure. Advertising that could make this a destination, not just a dot on the map.”

“The pier is already a destination,” Minjeong said. “For us.”

“And we love that,” he said. “But don’t you think it could be more?”

A woman from the bakery raised her hand. “What happens to my stall if you buy?” she asked. “My lease?”

Avery smiled at her like a teacher with a stubborn student. “We can’t make guarantees until contracts are finalized,” he said. “But our goal is to keep as many beloved local businesses as possible.”

“And the ones you don’t keep?” someone else called.

“We’re still in the early stages,” he said. “Nothing is set in stone.”

“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” Minjeong said.

You could feel the mood shift. The crowd was a flock of birds; one wrong noise and they’d scatter. Or attack.

Karina stepped forward then, climbing up onto the edge of the pallet beside her sister. “Can I say something?” she asked Minjeong quietly into the mic.

Minjeong hesitated, then handed it over.

Karina turned to face the crowd. The camera hung forgotten around her neck. Her eyes glittered with something that wasn’t entirely composure.

“You guys know me,” she said, conversational. “I’m Karina. I grew up on that pier. Half of you have pulled me out of trouble on it at some point.”

A few people chuckled. It cut the tension just enough.

“I’m not going to stand here and pretend I care about zoning codes,” she said. “Or revenue projections. That’s Minjeong’s thing.”

She jerked her chin toward her sister, who rolled her eyes; the crowd laughed again.

“What I care about,” Karina said, “is the fact that when I was twelve, I came here after my first real fight with my mom and sat under the wheel for an hour until I didn’t feel like running away anymore. And when I was fifteen and thought everything was falling apart, I walked down those boards at three in the morning and I didn’t fall. The pier held.”

Her voice wobbled on that last word. Just a little. Enough for you to hear it.

“I know I’m not the poster child you want for this,” she went on, pushing through. “I’ve… not exactly been the most responsible Yoo daughter.”

Some laughter. Some sympathetic noises.

“But I know this,” she said. “Once you sell something, you don’t get to decide what it becomes. You can write whatever you want into a contract, but at the end of the day, the person with the deed makes the rules. And I don’t trust some guy who just learned how to say ‘Cove Pier’ yesterday to love it more than the people who built it.”

She handed the mic back to Minjeong and stepped down without looking at Avery.

The applause that followed was louder than before. Avery’s smile slipped two notches. Just two. But you saw it.

He murmured something to clipboard woman. They stayed for a little while longer, talking to a few stall owners on the fringes, then retreated, their polished shoes leaving a footpath through the grass.

When they were gone, the crowd seemed to exhale. Someone turned the music up. Kids dragged their parents to the face paint table. Life resumed.

On stage, Minjeong pulled Karina into a hug that knocked the camera sideways. Karina clung for a second, then pulled back, making a joke you couldn’t hear. You watched both of their faces. Pride. Fear. A mirrored worry they’d both said the wrong thing.

Later, as you were helping take down banners, you felt a tap on your shoulder.

“Hey,” Karina said. “You heard my speech, right?”

“Hard to miss,” you said. “You did great.”

She tilted her head, eyes searching your face. “You mean that?”

“Yeah,” you said. “You sounded… like you.”

“So, unhinged,” she said.

“Honest,” you corrected.

Her mouth curled. “I saw you clapping extra hard,” she said. “Very supportive of you.”

“I clap for good speeches,” you said.

She laughed and nudged you with her hip. “Come find me tonight,” she said, lowering her voice. “Bonfire. South end of the beach. After your shift.”

Your heart did that stupid thing again. “Yeah,” you said. “Okay.”

She winked and went to go untangle a piece of string from around Scout’s ankle.

You felt someone else come up behind you. Minjeong, arms full of folded chairs.

“She was right,” she said. “He hated that.”

“Avery?” you asked.

She nodded, satisfaction sharp in her eyes. “We hit a nerve,” she said. “That’s good. Maybe he’ll stop pretending to be our friend and start being honest about wanting to buy the whole damn shoreline.”

“You both did good,” you said. “Like, scary good.”

She shrugged, but you could tell the compliment landed. “Thanks,” she said. “You were a solid flyer-distributor.”

“I try,” you said.

She hesitated. “Hey, Jason?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for… listening last night,” she said. “About the cliffs. And for not… I don’t know. Looking at me like I’m a monster. Or a saint.”

“You’re neither,” you said. “You’re just… you.”

Her smile was small. “Don’t say that too loudly,” she said. “Karina will steal you for her fan club.”

You thought, briefly, about admitting you were already in it. That you were also, apparently, in hers.

Instead, you said, “There’s enough of me to go around.”

She snorted. “We’ll see,” she said, and walked off with the chairs.

You watched her go, that stupid spark in your chest flaring again.

You told it to calm down.

It did not.

******

Your shift that night felt longer than usual.

The pier buzzed with post-action energy. People argued about the protest in line for the Ferris wheel. Some called it brave. Some called it childish. A guy in a Cole Properties polo glared at your KEEP OUR PIER OURS button until you stared back and he looked away.

Rafi sidled up to you around ten, chewing on a churro.

“You were famous today,” he said.

“I was holding tape,” you said.

“Yeah, and you were standing next to the famous Yoo Sisters when they roasted Cole on a spit,” he said. “Guilt by association.”

“You were here?” you asked.

“Livestream,” he said. “I watched from the maintenance shack with popcorn. Good speeches. Very moving. I cried a little when Min mentioned splinters.”

“Shut up,” you said, but you were smiling.

He sobered. “Seriously, though,” he said. “You know what you’re doing, getting between those two and this pier nonsense?”

“Not even slightly,” you said.

He nodded like that was the answer he expected. “Good,” he said. “It’s more fun that way.”

By the time you clocked out, the sky had turned that deep, star-punched black that only happened after midnight. The ferris wheel lights were off. The pier looked naked without them.

You followed the curve of the beach south, away from the main drag. Light from the bonfire leaped up ahead, orange against the dark. You could hear them before you saw them. Laughter. Someone playing guitar badly. The low thump of somebody’s speaker, bass turned up too heavy for the tiny Bluetooth.

The fire was big enough to be illegal and small enough that nobody would call it in unless they were bored. A half-circle of people clustered around it on driftwood logs and old blankets. A cooler sat in the sand. The air smelled like smoke, salt, spilled beer.

Karina stood on a log, arms out, talking to a small group like she was telling a ghost story. Her face glowed in the firelight, shadows carving her cheekbones sharp. She saw you and broke into a grin mid-sentence.

“—and then I said, ‘you can’t ground me if I’m already outside,’ which didn’t actually work, but hey, points for effort—hi,” she said, jumping down.

You stepped over a couple making out on a blanket and nearly tripped on a half-buried frisbee.

Karina steadied you with a hand on your chest. Her fingers curled in your T-shirt for a second, like she’d wanted to do that all day.

“You came,” she said. “Ten points.”

“Am I being scored?” you asked.

She shrugged. “You’re always being scored,” she said. “You just don’t always see the scoreboard.”

She handed you a drink. You sniffed it suspiciously.

“It’s just soda,” she said. “Calm down. I need you conscious.”

“For what?”

She smiled slow. “Later,” she said.

You sat together on a washed-up log, a little apart from the main loud cluster. The fire warmed your knees, but the breeze off the water cooled the back of your neck. People’s faces were flickers—here, then gone, replaced by shadows.

Karina tucked her bare feet under her, leaning into your side. You stretched your arm out along the back of the log so it brushed her shoulders. She sighed, like she’d finally found the spot she'd been looking for all day.

For a while, you just talked. Stupid stuff. Pier gossip. The time Scout had tried to ollie off the railing and almost lost a tooth. Rafi’s secret stash of decent coffee hidden behind the generator. The way you used to sneak into the shuttered arcade at thirteen and dare each other to go into the dark back room.

At some point, someone passed around a bag of marshmallows. Karina stuck three on a stick and held them over the flames until they caught fire.

“You’re burning them,” you said.

“That’s the point,” she said. “Charred outside, gooey inside. Like me.”

“You’re not gooey,” you said.

She bumped your ribs with her elbow. “You have no idea,” she said.

You watched her face in profile, eyes reflecting the fire, cheeks flushed. She looked happy. Or something like it.

Then a guy you vaguely recognized from the pier—tall, surfer hair, easy grin—wandered over and plopped down on her other side.

“Rina!” he said. “Speech was sick today.” He held his fist out.

She bumped it. “Thanks, Jun,” she said.

Jun nodded toward the fire. “You’re coming to the after-after, right?” he asked Karina. “We’re thinking cliff jump if the tide’s high enough.”

Karina’s jaw tightened. It was tiny. “I’m good down here,” she said lightly. “I like my bones unbroken.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “We used to—”

“I said I’m good,” she repeated, sharper.

He held up his hands. “Okay, okay,” he said, backing off. “No cliffs. Respect.”

He turned to you, apparently deciding to spread the invitation.

“You in?” he asked. “We could use a new victim.”

“I’m on duty tomorrow,” you said. “If I show up with a cast, Rafi will murder me.”

Jun laughed, clapped your shoulder, and wandered off.

Karina watched him go, shoulders still tight.

“You okay?” you asked.

She snorted. “Fine,” she said. “Just not in the mood to reenact my worst night.”

“Then don’t,” you said.

She looked at you. “You really think it’s that simple?” she asked.

“No,” you said honestly. “But I think you’re allowed to say no to things that hurt. Even if people think you’re being lame.”

She studied your face for a long second. Whatever she saw there made something in her unclench.

“Come with me,” she said suddenly, pushing off the log.

“Where?” you asked, standing.

She grabbed your hand without answering and tugged you away from the fire, toward the darker stretch of beach where the light faded and the noise softened.

You followed, heart slamming in your chest not from the walk but from the way her fingers wrapped around yours, like a decision. She led you to the base of the old lifeguard tower, long since decommissioned, now just a weathered structure kids sat under when it rained.

She ducked underneath, pulling you with her.

The noise from the party was still there, but muted. The tower planks overhead blocked most of the firelight, leaving you in shadows washed by moon.

Karina dropped your hand only to brace hers on your chest, backing you up gently until your shoulder blades bumped the support beam.

“Before,” she said.

“Before,” you agreed, throat dry.

“You told me you don’t regret it,” she said.

“I don’t,” you said.

Her eyes searched yours. “You still mean that now that you’ve heard the tragic Yoo backstory?” she asked. “Cliffs and cops and everything?”

“Yeah,” you said. “Maybe… more.”

Her breath hitched. “Yeah?” she said.

“Yeah,” you said again, because your vocabulary had apparently shrunk to a single syllable.

She made a small, disbelieving sound, like a laugh and a whimper had collided.

“Good,” she said, and rose onto her toes.

When her mouth found yours this time, it felt different than on the platform. Less frantic, more deliberate. Less adrenaline, more intent.

Her hands slid up into your hair. You cupped her face, thumbs brushing the soft skin in front of her ears. She leaned into your touch like she’d been waiting for it all day.

You thought about the kitchen, about Minjeong’s head on your shoulder, about the porch, about promises you’d made before you understood how complicated they’d be. You thought about the platform, about the way Karina had looked at you afterward, like you weren’t just another person who might drop her when it got hard. You thought about the fact that nothing you did tonight was going to make this less messy. Or less real.

But you didn’t tell her to stop.

You kissed her instead, answer clear in the way your hands tightened at her waist, in the way you let yourself pull her closer, closer, until there was no space between you at all.

The rest—how her laugh turned breathless, how the sand felt under your knees, how the tower beam dug into your back while your name fell from her lips—those details were yours.

“You’re in deep now, you know that?”

“Yeah,” you said. “I know.”

She leaned in, her lips wrapping around yours once more, coating them in her warmth.

What you didn’t say—couldn’t yet—was that “deep” didn’t just apply to her. That another anchor was quietly setting in your chest, in the shape of her sister’s tired smile and stubborn hope.

But now wasn’t the time to think about that.

You tightened your arm behind Karina’s head and let the waves drown out the part of your brain that liked to list consequences.

Karina broke the kiss. A shining silver thread hung between your lips, breaking and falling onto the sand as she smiled. Her hand reached for your fly, then gave your shaft a tight squeeze.

“Making sure we are on the same page,” she said, curling her fingers at the hem of your pants and dragging them down along with the drawers as her eyes met yours. “Are we? On the same page?”

You nodded automatically, hypnotized by Karina’s hungry gaze. “We are,” you muttered.

She stepped in even closer—close enough for you to feel every little ragged breath she took. Her cold, delicate fingers flexed along your dick. They moved back and forth in slow, practiced motions. “You gonna keep staring,” she whispered, her smile turning toothy, “or are you gonna help me get naked?”

That was your cue.

The white button-up was your first victim, ripped apart and dropped onto Karina’s feet. Then you peeled off her black sports bra and her tight shorts. No panties. She kicked her clothes to the side. Whatever happened after tonight was not for her to worry about.

You didn’t have it in you to worry either.

You reached toward her chest, pressed your thumb against her nipple, and felt it harden under your touch. You pinched and twisted them gently, taking in each shaky moan escaping her rosy lips.

“Wait,” she mumbled.

You lifted your head just enough to see if she meant it. She did. Your brow raised. “What, did I do something wrong?”

“Nothing wrong,” she cooed. Her palm traced along your jaw, index finger pausing, soft and deliberate, atop your mouth. “It’s just… I want to take care of you tonight.”

Karina rolled her hips against yours—skin on skin—and you felt her slick heat coating your hard, flushed cock in sweet honey. Each time she rocked against you, your dick got harder and harder.

You were panting. Trying to focus. Trying to breathe.

“Jesus—mmmm—” you groaned, but your words got lost as her finger pushed past your lips and into your mouth. You froze. A dirty whimper turned into vibrations and rubbed against her knuckles. Your tongue swirled against the base of her fingers. Fast and frantic. Fuck. Her fingers tasted so good, so sweet, so delicious.

But just as sudden as she pressed in, she pulled away with a loud pop, carefully rubbing the wetness over the bridge of your nose. “Relax,” she whispered. “I promise I’ll make you feel so, so good. Tonight will be the best night of your life.”

You couldn’t even reply. Not with her looking at you like that. Not with her whispering filthy, sugary promises with that voice—the voice you’ve spent every summer dreaming about—and her rubbing her finger all over your face. Your mouth hung open, each and every word you once knew vanishing from your vocabulary without a trace.

Her lips curled into a dangerous smile. “It’s okay,” she said. “No need to say anything.”

Karina took her damp hand and reached for the hem of your shirt, pulling it up and over your head. You were both naked now. Both brushed by the cold breeze. Yet neither was cold.

Her nails grazed your skin, trailing a long crooked line from one shoulder to the other. You flinched. Every time she touched you, a small crack formed, feelings bottled up for years begging to come out.

“You idiot,” she said. “I swear to god, if you try to leave after this summer, I’ll kill you.”

And so her mouth started moving. One kiss to the side of your neck. Another kiss to your collarbone. Again and again, lower and lower. Your chest, your stomach, your hips, all showered in electric tinges as her hands clung to your waist, steadying herself.

She stopped once she reached your cock, her knees folding beneath her. Your cock twitched: red, stiff, way past ready. Karina made a low sound in her throat, a mixture of a laugh and a moan. And fuck. That sound turned you on more than anything she could’ve said.

A wave of electricity surged past the small of your back and into your nape. Gooseflesh prickled along your arms.

Karina blew a slow breath against your glans. “Someone’s excited, huh?” she purred. “And a lot harder than yesterday.”

“Holy fuck,” you said. “Can you—please—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll put all of this to good use. After all, you’re mine,” she whispered into your skin, kissing your thigh. Her lips were soft. Her lips were warm. Her lips were hungry.

Torture, that’s what this was. She plastered kisses along your thighs, so fucking close to where you wanted her, to where you needed her. But life was torment, and Karina was the tormentor.

Her hand slid back and forth along your shaft, slow and deliberate and cruel. She made sure you were stuck right on the edge. The climax always just a hair’s breadth away, just one step out of your reach. That was where Karina wanted you. And that was where you stood.

A strained noise—more animal than human—slipped from your throat.

Her teeth scraped under your balls. Over and over again until you started leaking and twitching and whimpering. Your whole body tightened, a dam ready to burst. But she stopped. Of course she did.

“Karina—” you groaned.

Karina angled her head upward. “Patience,” she said, commencing her torment once more. “All good things take time. And isn’t this a good thing?”

She traced crooked spirals around your groin, her teeth gently grazing all of it; your waist, your abs, your belly-button, all fell victims to the girl of your dreams. The girl whose fearless, magnetic figure used to haunt you every summer.

Your voice cracked. “Yes—fuck—Karina—it’s the best thing—”

A crooked, cocky smile flickered on her lips. She closed in. Her face an inch away from the tip of your cock.

“So what do you need to be?”

“Please.”

“Say it.”

“Patient.”

Before you knew it—

Her lips wrapped along your length.

It was hot and wet and sloppy. Karina locked eyes with you, taking in every quiver pulling at your face: the way your jaw tensed, your lips pressed, your eyes fluttered. She looked… proud. Like she knew the only one holding that much power over you was her.

Tight. So damn tight. She was sucking the very life out of your tip, her cheeks hallowing as her perfect little mouth coiled around your cock. Your knuckles turned white at your sides, a near-heroic effort to stop yourself from grabbing the back of her head and thrust until either your dick or her throat gave out.

Her eyes flickered for a moment. She paused, then let out a chuckle, firing a ripple of vibrations toward every nerve in your shaft. A breath caught at the back of your throat.

She winked, as if acknowledging your prayer.

Then she dived back in. Her lips pressed against the base of your cock. Her nose pressed against your pelvis. Her throat pressed against your tip. She held you there, spitting and gargling, struggling to swallow your entire length. Her devotion to take care of you seeped through every wrinkle in her throat. For some reason, it all felt different than the last time.

Your body knotted, your whole being focused on one thought. Don’t cum. Hold it in. Whatever you do, don’t cum.

Karina showed some lenience: she pulled back — slow enough a long trail of spit and pre-cum emerged between you two. “God, you taste so fucking good,” she said. “But you’re the star tonight. We wouldn’t want you to cum already, would we?”

The mix of fluids around her mouth told an obscene story.

Sweat started to bead along your forehead. You swallowed the breath caught at the back of your throat. “No—” you said. “We wouldn’t want the ‘star’ out the game yet.”

She rolled her eyes. A sardonic breath pushed past her lips. “Okay,” she laughed. “Don’t get all cocky bastard on me now, I’ve already said I’ll take care of you.”

Her hands grabbed the back of your thighs, nails digging into skin. She leaned back slightly. With a cheeky look in her eyes, she slammed her head over your cock, pushing your back against the support beam, shaking the tower planks overhead.

But the tower could collapse for all you cared.

Your dick was buried so deep inside you could feel her fucking heartbeat through her throat. She held you there, her gaze exploring the way your expression changed; from smug, to surprise, then to awe. Her tongue swirled around your shaft. One, two, three.

Again.

Again.

Again.

“Where did that cocky attitude run off to?” she muttered, muffled by your length at the back of her throat.

You growled. No clever jokes or quips came to mind. In fact, your mind seemed stripped bare—emptied of any and all unnecessary thoughts. The shape and the texture and the warmth of Karina was all that remained.

“God, your throat is so fucking perfect,” you mumbled, voice strained and ragged from her tight mouth. “You—you’re so fucking perfect, Karina.”

That broke her rhythm, just a little, just enough for you to notice a faint smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Something in her snapped. The deep, aching desire burning behind her eyes flared with newfound fuel.

Drool streamed down her chin. “Smart mouth,” she muttered through the spit, unable to resist showing off.

But spitters weren’t quitters. And if they were, Karina wasn’t one of them. Her mouth went to work again, faster and faster. She made your cock appear and disappear into her mouth like a fucking magician, her hand sliding up your tights and cupping your sensitive balls. Once. Twice. Again. The waves of the ocean and the distant laughs tried to swallow the sound of her face slapping against your skin.

They failed.

“Karina,” you said. “Jesus—fuck—your mouth is fucking heaven”

She didn’t hear you. Like a hungry snake, her mouth opened wide, gorging down on one of your balls, drowning you in wet messy slurps.

She sucked. Let go. Then flicked her tongue under your balls before restarting the sequence. You bit down and screeched your teeth, trying—without success—to keep some level of sanity. But she was so fucking good. So fucking mean.

“Wait,” you groaned, feeling yourself closer and closer to that edge. “Shit—I’m gonna cum—”

Karina let out a hum—half-moan, half-chuckle as her lips pressed onto your shaft, an attempt at a smirk. You were right where she wanted you. As always. She jerked her head off your cock with a loud pop, strings of spit and pre-cum toppling over her plump, rosy lips.

You panted, air trembling in your chest.

Her eyes locked onto yours, burning with a pull you couldn’t escape. She swirled her tongue around her lips. Soon enough, her mouth filled with dirty juices—spit and pre-cum as she rolled the liquids around in her mouth, savoring and relishing in the way you stood there frozen, eyes utterly transfixed on her every movement.

She was tasting your very desire for her. Right there. On her fucking tongue.

When she sensed you were fully under her spell, she swallowed, her mouth wide open as she stuck her tongue out. She wanted you to praise her. To adore her.

So you did.

“God, Karina, you felt so fucking good,” you said shakily. “Wanna fuck your mouth until neither of us can move.”

Karina snickered. “Glad you enjoyed yourself.” She drifted closer, knees tracing through the sand. Her hands grabbed hold of her tits, rolling them against each other. “But wouldn’t it be a pity for this to end with only a mouth fuck?”

You swallowed hard, your gaze glued to her divine set of tits—curving and folding and warping—no more than an inch away from your cock.

“It would,” you mumbled, nodding without thinking. “Such a pity.”

“Such a pity,” she echoed. “Don’t you wanna feel?”

“Feel?”

“Yes, feel. Feel how my perfect fucking tits wrap around your shaft. Feel how they bounce up and down. Feel how they strangle your poor, flushed cock until you beg for more.”

Fuck. You wanted it. You wanted it as much as you wanted to breathe.

“Well?” she asked, still playing with her tits. “We don’t have all night. Do you wanna feel?”

Your mouth opened, but no words came out.

“Yes?” she whispered into your cock. “Or maybe no? Maybe you’ve had enough of little old me for tonight. Maybe my bouncy, perky tits don’t have any effect on your hard fat cock.”

“…yes,” you finally managed to get the word out.

“Yes? Yes what?” she asked, feigning confusion.

She was so mean tonight. So intent on torturing you. But she was too dirty, too hot, too perfect for you to resist.

Her moist eyes. Her swollen lips. Her tits. Jesus. Her soft, round, perfect tits; rolling and coiling and waiting to swallow your length.

“I want to feel—God—” you moaned, “—to feel your fucking tits wrapped around my cock.”

As soon as the words left your lips, Karina decided to show mercy. She spat on her tits thrice—rubbed it across—then shoved them forward, pulling your cock in a tight, wet embrace. She ground them together. Up and down. Up and down. Her breasts were bliss.

“Shit—fuck—yes—” you gasped, fingernails dragging down your palm. “Holy—Karina—don’t—please—”

Karina sped up her strokes, spitting on your engorged cock. Your dick slid faster between her tits, foreskin pulling in every direction but the one you expected, each movement a jolting surprise.

Your toes curled. The night breeze grazed against your moist, sensitive tip, hitting nerves you didn’t know you had.

A groan pushed past your lips, core clenched, hips stuttering. “Karina—slow—fuck—down—” you begged.

Her tits paused at your tip, tightening their grip around your cock. She lowered her lips, gently puckering a kiss to whatever part of the head was not covered by her tits.

Then a pause. A pause that felt like an eternity, yet was no longer than a few seconds.

Finally she continued, blowing a hushed breath over your swollen cock. The breath was hot. The breath was cold. The breath was starved.

“Still there?” she whispered.

Your eyes squeezed shut. “Barely,” you huffed.

“That’s all I need.”

She swayed from her core, left and right, shoulders following the rhythm. Her tits wrapped tighter around your cock. A soft, cruel, intoxicating dance.

The veins along your length wound tighter with each shake of her breasts. And as if to tell you she wasn’t done yet, her lips sealed around your shaft, her head bobbing—fast and wet— desperately brushing her teeth with your cock.

Beads of sweat spilled between your brows. “God—Karina—fuckfuckfuck—your tits—”

Her eyes flicked up, glinting, mischievous, wild. You knew she felt every twitch, every quake rolling through your body. Her mouth, her tits, her hands—each part of her moved with obscene harmony, like she’d choreographed your ruin in advance.

You couldn’t even hold your breath anymore. Every inhale came broken, stuttering past parted lips. The slick glide of her breasts along your shaft, the rhythmic suction of her mouth. Every stroke drove you closer to the cliff’s edge, holding you suspended by the thinnest thread.

Karina could feel it too.

She slowed. Just slightly. Enough to prolong the burn.

“Look at you,” she rasped, pulling back. “So close. So fucking needy. You going to fall apart for me?”

You nodded, frantic.

Karina smirked, her hands pressing her tits tighter. “Then give it to me.”

She dove back down. Fast, unrelenting. Her lips locked around your crown while her tits crushed together, sliding fast and hot and tight. That was it. That was all it took.

Your release hit like a fist to the gut.

Your entire body snapped tight, hips jerking, hands flying to her shoulders as your cock throbbed violently between her tits and inside her mouth. The first pulse shot deep inside her, the rest spilling in thick, hot bursts across her face, her lips, her tits.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t stop.

Karina swallowed—greedy and graceful—licking you clean, gathering every drop with her mouth and smearing the rest over her chest with a wicked little hum.

When she finally pulled away, your knees nearly gave out. Your cock twitched one last time in the cool air, hypersensitive and spent. Karina leaned back on her heels, glistening and flushed, her chest sticky with spit and cum, her lips swollen, her eyes dark with satisfaction.

“That,” she murmured, dragging a finger through the mess on her tits, then slipping it into her mouth, “is how you take care of someone.”

You stared, utterly wrecked.

Karina stood, stretching like a cat, every movement smug and slow. She pressed her lips to your cheek. Tender, filthy, perfect.

Then she grinned. “Now lie down. I’m not nearly done with you yet.”

You didn’t move at first.

Couldn’t. Not with your legs jelly, your chest heaving, your cock twitching in the aftermath of her brutal worship. Karina just stood there, smug and dripping, her breasts slick and sticky, her thighs glossy with anticipation.

You stayed frozen, stunned by the high of her, until her fingers wrapped gently around your wrist.

“Down,” she whispered, tugging you down toward the sand. “Be good. Let me take care of you.”

You let her guide you. Your knees hit the cool surface beneath the tower’s shadow. The moonlight kissed her skin in streaks. She crawled over you like she owned every inch, like your body had always been hers, just misplaced temporarily.

Karina straddled your thighs. Slick and warm. Wet enough you could feel her heat even before she sank down. Her hips rolled slowly, not taking you in just yet, just grazing, teasing—her folds sliding lazily against your oversensitive cock.

“Still hard,” she whispered, dragging her lips across your collarbone. “I love that.”

She kissed your chest. Like you were something precious. Like she didn’t just ruin you five minutes ago.

“I’ll ride you,” she murmured, tongue flicking your nipple. “Slow. Deep. I want to feel every inch. I want you to feel me squeeze you from the inside until you forget your name.”

Your jaw clenched. You weren’t sure how much longer you could let her keep the reins.

But you tried.

Tried to let her press her hands into your chest, tried to let her rub your cock-head up and down her slick entrance, tried to let her settle in when she began to lower herself.

She was so warm. So wet. So fucking tight.

You sucked in a breath so sharp your ribs ached. “Karina—” you warned, voice already trembling.

Her eyes flicked up. Knowing.

“Shhh,” she hushed, bottoming out with a wet, sinful grind. “Let me.”

Let her.

She started to move, slow circles, her walls fluttering around you with every rise and fall. She gasped softly each time you hit the deeper spot. Her hands pinned your shoulders, her chest heaving.

You groaned, low and broken. You weren’t just hard—you were wired, wound so tight your skin felt like it might crack open. You needed to move. To do something. But she kept you down, riding you like she had all the time in the world.

“I said,” she murmured, biting your lower lip, “let me.”

And for a second, you did.

Until she clenched down, pulled halfway off, and dropped back slowly.

That was it. The dam snapped.

“No,” you growled.

Karina’s eyes widened a second too late.

You sat up fast, your hands gripping her waist, flipping her beneath you so fast the sand kicked up behind your knees. She yelped—surprised, maybe—but not afraid. She grinned.

“You sure?” she asked, breath catching as you shoved your cock back into her in one hard, punishing thrust.

You didn’t answer.

Didn’t have to.

You were fucking feral now, all restraint gone, her little game flipped on its head. Your hands slid under her thighs, pushed her legs back and open. You drove in again, rough and deep, making her arch and cry out, no more teasing. No more slow. No more control.

“Fuck—Jason—” she gasped.

You weren’t listening.

You were gone—buried in her, chasing something deeper, something she stole from you the second she dropped to her knees. The girl who teased. Who tortured. Who smiled while you begged.

Now she was squirming under you.

You grabbed her wrists, pinned them over her head. Your hips pounded into hers, your cock dragging along every spot that made her twitch and moan. Her tits bounced with every thrust, still streaked in spit and cum, and you watched them hungrily as you took what you needed.

“Not so smug now,” you panted against her throat.

She whimpered.

That made your hips jerk harder.

You let go of her wrists, only to grab her throat. Just enough pressure. Just enough to make her eyes roll back and her pussy clench around you like a vice.

“God—yes—just like that—fuck me,” she cried, nails raking down your back, desperate to hold on.

So you slammed into her.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Her moan broke into a high, guttural gasp, legs trembling around your waist.

You pulled her legs up, over your shoulders, folding her nearly in half. Her body shook beneath you as you thrust deeper than before, angling to hit her g-spot over and over until she screamed.

Her whole body arched, her walls fluttered violently around your cock.

“Jason—fuck—I’m gonna—”

“Come on,” you snarled, slamming into her harder, chasing your own release. “Come for me. Now.”

Karina shattered.

Her back arched so high she nearly bucked you off. Her pussy clamped around your cock like a fist, convulsing and squeezing you tighter than she ever had before. She gasped your name again and again, voice wrecked, face flushed.

You didn’t last another second.

You buried yourself one final time, cock throbbing, pumping thick streams of cum deep inside her.

You collapsed over her, panting, dizzy, your heart a war drum against her ribs.

Karina wrapped her arms around your neck, still twitching, still moaning, still deliciously full.

“You—” she breathed, “—asshole.”

You laughed weakly against her shoulder. “Still wanna take care of me?”

Her lips curled into a smile against your ear. “Oh, I will,” she whispered. “Next time… I’m tying you up.”

You stayed like that. Let her breathing slow. Let her fingertips trail patterns along your ribs.

And still — uninvited — your mind shifted.

Minjeong. Leaning against your shoulder tonight, confiding herself to you. Her voice soft, frail. The way her moist eyes looked up at you. The quick flicker in her eyes she tried to hide.

You squeezed your eyes shut. Swallowed.

Don’t. Not now.

This wasn’t a mistake. You didn’t regret Karina. That wasn’t it. But something in your chest tugged. Not bitterness, just… something unresolved.

Karina curled closer. “Your heart’s still racing.”

You forced a smile. “It’ll stop.”

She laughed into your skin. “That’s comforting.”

You didn’t answer. You buried your hand in her hair instead, let the strands slip through your fingers one by one.

She drifted, eventually. Her weight softened, breath even.

You stared past her shoulder, eyes locked on the beams above the tower.

Fuck.

You took the last turn like you always did, sharp and a little too wide, just so you could see the whole stretch of the road at once.

The cove opened up in front of you. Same uneven gravel, same line of crooked mailboxes, same sliver of sea flashing between houses like it was winking. You rolled the window down with your wrist and let the air in. Salt, hot tar, somebody’s laundry detergent. It smelled like every summer you’d had before you learned words like “internship” and “career path.”

The Yoo house sat where it always sat, a little back from the road, paint faded to a soft blue-gray. Porch wrapped around the front like an arm. Three steps, a railing that dipped slightly on the left from years of leaning. There was still a stain on the front step where Minjeong had spilled blue paint when you were fourteen. You noticed it first, before the new potted plants or the repaired screen door.

Mrs. Yoo stood on the porch in a faded yellow cardigan and jean shorts. She had a mug in both hands and her hair pulled back with a scarf. She waved as you pulled up, a small lift of the wrist instead of a big arm swing.

“Jason,” she called over the engine, like she wasn’t completely sure you were real until she said your name.

You killed the engine and everything went quiet except for the waves and some kids yelling farther down the beach. You climbed out, stretched your back, and your knees popped louder than you wanted them to.

“Hey, Mrs. Yoo.” You tried for casual, but your throat felt thick. You were more tired than you’d admitted on the phone.

She came down the three steps and hugged you quick, one arm around your shoulders, one hand still holding the mug.

“You got taller,” she said automatically.

“I stopped in eleventh grade,” you said. “You just got shorter.”

She snorted. “Mm. Mouth still works.” She leaned back and looked you over properly. “You look good, Jay. Tired, but good.”

You shrugged one shoulder. “They still make coffee here?”

“Stronger than that swill in the city,” she said. “Come in. We’ll feed you.”

You popped the trunk and grabbed your duffel. The fabric scraped your palm the same way it had last summer, and the summer before that. The weight felt about right for a summer’s worth of clothes and unresolved decisions.

On your way up the path, you glanced past the house toward the dock.

Karina was there.

Barefoot, like always, toes gripping the warped planks. She had on an oversized black T-shirt with a band logo half rubbed off and a pair of cutoffs. Her hair was up in a messy knot, strands sticking out in every direction like she’d done it in a hurry or hadn’t bothered. There was a cigarette behind her ear and a plastic lighter in her hand that she flicked without actually lighting anything.

She saw you. Her mouth pulled into a crooked, knowing smile.

“Took you long enough,” she called, loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to be a show.

“Traffic,” you called back.

She snorted so hard you heard it. “Yeah? Did the cows form a union?”

You smiled despite yourself. The cows on the side road always wandered close to the fence; she’d gotten you to moo at them once when you were twelve. You kept walking, but your chest felt looser.

The screen door creaked when you pushed it open. Inside, the house smelled exactly like it should: lemon oil on old wood, dish soap, something baking. Your fingers found the little notch on the banister where the wood had split and been sanded smooth, a notch you’d rubbed every summer without thinking.

Minjeong stepped out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a dish towel. Her hair was down, straight and shiny, tucked behind one ear. She wore a tank top and soft-looking sweat shorts, and there was flour dusted across her left hip.

“You’re late,” she said, but her mouth slid into a smile halfway through.

“I’m right on time,” you said. “You moved the clocks, remember?”

She rolled her eyes. “We did that once.”

“Twice,” you said. “The summer we hid all the spoons.”

Her mouth twitched. “Okay, twice.”

She closed the distance between you in three quick steps and hugged you. Minjeong hugged differently than her mother—longer, both arms, chin against your shoulder for a second before she let go.

“You look… older,” she said, leaning back to squint at you. “In a good way. Less baby face. More… tired uncle.”

“Wow,” you said. “So flattering.”

She laughed properly at that, and the sound settled something in you.

“Take your stuff up,” she said, turning back toward the kitchen. “Then come eat. I made bread. Mom made too much jam.”

“There’s no such thing,” you said.

“Tell that to our pantry,” she tossed over her shoulder.

You lugged the duffel up the stairs. They creaked in the same spots. Second step, fifth step. You could’ve done it blindfolded. Your room was at the end of the hall, still with the same scratched doorknob and the same slightly crooked frame.

Inside, almost nothing had changed. The twin bed with the faded blue quilt. The small dresser with the top drawer that stuck halfway. The narrow bookshelf with three paperbacks you’d left last summer still stacked sideways. The old fan on the ceiling ticked when you flipped the switch on.

You dropped the duffel at the foot of the bed and sat down. The mattress dipped under your weight like it remembered you. You took the air in through your nose—salt, dust, laundry detergent—and let it out slow.

You were here. Whatever you were supposed to figure out this summer—job, future, feelings you weren’t ready to name—could wait. For the first time in months, you had nowhere else to rush to.

“Jay!” Minjeong’s voice floated up the stairs. “Food!”

You washed your hands in the tiny bathroom, watching the familiar rusty ring of the sink. The mirror still had that patch of silver missing in the corner. You’d once stuck a sticker there; the mark was still faint.

Back in the kitchen, the table was set with mismatched plates. A loaf of bread sat on a cutting board, still steaming at the ends. Three jars of jam in different shades of red and purple lined up like soldiers. Mrs. Yoo poured tea into mugs from a pot cozy that looked older than all of you.

Karina had wandered in. She leaned against the counter, hip cocked, cigarette now gone. Up close, she looked both exactly the same and not at all. Her eyeliner was smudged, like she’d put it on hours ago and hadn’t cared what happened after. There was a small hoop in her left ear you didn’t remember. Her eyes—dark, sharp—tracked you as you pulled out a chair.

She made a face. “Ugh, he’s really here.”

“Hi, Rina,” you said.

“Don’t call me that,” she shot back automatically.

“You called me Jay,” you said.

“Yeah, but it’s cute on you,” she said. “On me it sounds like a midlife crisis.”

Mrs. Yoo tsked. “Eat,” she said. “You two can insult each other after you’ve chewed.”

You reached for the bread. Minjeong slapped your hand lightly with the knife.

“Plate first,” she said. “You’re not a raccoon.”

“Debatable,” Karina muttered.

You caught her eye and she almost smiled again.

“So,” Mrs. Yoo said, sitting down with a small sigh. “Tell me about this job.”

You spread jam on a slice of bread just to have something to do with your hands. “Night ops at the pier,” you said. “Check rides, watch the lines, make sure nobody falls off anything or gets stuck on anything.”

“‘Night ops,’” Karina repeated. “That sounds very… Mission: Impossible of you.”

“Jason accepted a responsibility,” Minjeong said around a sip of tea. “You should try it sometime.”

Karina flicked a crumb at her. “I have responsibilities,” she said. “Lots. I’m very important.”

“Name one,” Minjeong said.

“Looking hot is work,” Karina said, lifting her chin. “And I keep morale up.”

Mrs. Yoo gave her a look over the top of her mug. “You keep the liquor stores in business.”

“That too,” Karina said cheerfully.

You watched the exchange, the familiar rhythm of their bickering. Except it was off by a beat now. Minjeong sounded older. Karina sounded like she was pushing the jokes harder.

“So what exactly do you do?” Mrs. Yoo asked you again, one eyebrow raised. She was good at knowing when you were skimming.

You scraped the jam into the corner of your bread. “Walk the pier,” you said. “Check bolts. Listen for weird noises. Radio if anything’s wrong. Tell drunk guys to get down. And, uh, hang around the control booth for the big rides, just in case.”

“They pay you to tell drunk guys no?” Karina said. “Dream job.”

“You should try holding a clipboard,” you said. “It’s intoxicating.”

She laughed, short and sharp. “You with a clipboard. Oh my god. I’m going to die.”

“Please don’t,” Mrs. Yoo said. “I’ve just had the porch repainted.”

Minjeong reached for another slice of bread, spreading jam with practiced strokes. “You can walk him down there later, Karina,” she said. “Show him where everything is. He’ll get lost.”

“I’ve been here every summer,” you said. “I know where the pier is.”

“Not the pier,” Minjeong said. “The new stuff. New owners on some of the stalls. New shortcuts. New places people like to sneak cigarettes.”

Karina pointed to herself with a thumb. “Tour guide,” she said. “For a fee.”

“You can’t charge Jason,” Mrs. Yoo said. “You’ll take him. And you’ll behave. Right?”

Karina made a face but nodded. “Yes, omma.”

After lunch—more bread, too much jam, three cups of tea—you followed Karina down the path to the beach.

The sand felt the same under your shoes, soft-packed at the top, finer near the water. The air was warmer here, less breeze. Kids screamed as they chased each other with plastic shovels. Someone’s dog dug a hole with manic determination.

Karina walked a little ahead, her hands stuffed into her back pockets. She didn’t look back to see if you were following; she knew you were. You watched the set of her shoulders. There was tension there, but it was buried under the easy slouch.

“You really took it, huh?” she said after a minute, kicking a shell out of her way.

“The job?” you asked.

“Yeah.”

“Needed money,” you said. “Needed a reason to be here that wasn’t just ‘eat Mrs. Yoo’s bread.’”

“That is a good reason,” she said. “Top five, for sure.”

You smiled. “She kind of guilt-tripped me.”

Karina snorted. “You mean she said, ‘I’d feel better if you were around,’ and you folded.”

“That’s not folding,” you said. “That’s…”

“Being a sucker,” she said.

You bent down and picked up a piece of driftwood, rolling it between your fingers. “She did ask me to keep an eye on you,” you said lightly.

Karina stopped walking. You felt it more than saw it. She planted her feet in the sand and turned to stare at you.

“She what?”

You shrugged. “Just… you know. Moms. She worries.”

Karina’s jaw clenched for a second and then relaxed. Her eyes went sharp. “Let me guess. ‘Jason, be a good boy and watch my wild child.’”

“She didn’t say that,” you said. “Exactly.”

“What did she say exactly?” she demanded.

You thought back to the phone call. To Mrs. Yoo’s voice, tired and hopeful. You could hear it clearly. It would make me feel better if you came. The girls… Karina’s been… You’d filled in the rest.

“She said she’d feel better if I was around,” you said simply. “That’s it.”

Karina made a face like she’d bitten into something sour. “Of course she did,” she said. “She thinks you’re a saint.”

You laughed. “She thinks I can carry ladders without dropping them. That’s not the same thing.”

She huffed and kept walking. The pier came into view properly as you rounded the rocks.

It always looked bigger from this angle. The main walkway stretched out over the water, supporting the bulk of the rides. The Ferris wheel, off to the right, turned slowly, the cars empty in the middle of the day. Neon signs were dark, waiting for evening. Stalls lined the entrance: cotton candy, fried everything, games with stuffed animals hanging from the top. Farther down, the arcade’s glass front reflected the sky.

“Wow,” you said. “They cleaned it.”

Karina followed your gaze. “Yeah,” she said. “Committee went crazy last year. Safety codes, new paint, all that. Don’t worry, it still falls apart if you kick it hard enough.”

You laughed.

She led you up the ramp and onto the main boards. Your boots thudded on the wood. There were fewer people now, just workers and a few early tourists. A guy in a booth was trying to get a fan to work, hitting it on the side. A woman was wiping down a row of stuffed sharks.

“That’s Rafi,” Karina said, nodding toward a tall guy in a faded staff T-shirt adjusting the height bar on a ride. “You’ll be glued to him your first week. He’ll show you where they hide the good coffee.”

Rafi glanced over as you approached and broke into a wide grin.

“Yo,” he said. “You must be the new night guy. Jason?”

“Yeah,” you said, holding out a hand.

He shook it with a grip just shy of crushing. “Rafi,” he said. “Welcome to chaos. You working tonight?”

“Tomorrow,” you said. “Figured I’d check it out first.”

“Smart,” he said. “Lemme know if you want the grand tour. I’ll show you which rides are drama queens.”

“I was gonna show him,” Karina said.

Rafi rolled his eyes. “Yeah, he needs to survive the tour, not die of secondhand embarrassment.”

Karina flipped him off lazily. “He likes me better.”

“That true, newbie?” Rafi asked you.

You raised your hands. “I plead the fifth.”

Rafi laughed, shook his head, and went back to adjusting the bar. Karina tugged your sleeve.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you your kingdom.”

She led you along the pier, pointing out things as you went. The tiny office where they kept radios and batteries. The locked cage under the main walkway where spare parts lived. The maintenance shack near the Ferris wheel, a squat building with peeling paint that smelled faintly of oil and old coffee.

“This is where you brood,” she said, pushing open the door.

Inside, it was dim and cluttered. Shelves lined the walls, crowded with labeled bins: BOLTS, FUSES, MISC. A workbench covered in tools and a stained rag. Two mismatched chairs. A small fridge with magnets holding up a faded “Safety First” poster.

You walked around, fingers trailing along the edge of the bench. There was a worn patch where someone always set their hand.

“You ever thought about doing something else?” you asked, glancing at her. “You know—job-wise?”

She hopped up on the bench and swung her legs. “Sure,” she said. “All the time. Professional napper. Professional beach-lay-er. Taste-tester for ice cream companies.”

You raised an eyebrow.

She sighed. “I don’t know,” she said, and the word came out more honest than the joke had been. “Everything I think of either wants me to sit at a desk forever or go back to school. I barely made it through the first time.”

“You could do something here,” you said. “Events, maybe. Or social media. There’s a lot of people.”

She made a face. “What, take pictures of toddlers and funnel cakes for a living?”

“You already take pictures of your drinks,” you said. “You’re halfway there.”

She smirked and nudged your knee with her toe. “You always like telling people what they could be,” she said.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s… you,” she said, like that explained everything.

You left it there. Some conversations didn’t need nails hammered into them yet.

On your way back from the pier, Scout appeared like he’d been summoned. Fourteen now, taller, hair longer. He rode his board along the walkway, shoes half untied, T-shirt with a cartoon shark on it.

“Jason!” he shouted, jumping off the board and grabbing it in one smooth motion. “No way. You’re back?”

You grinned. “Hey, menace.”

He plowed into you with a hug anyway. “Oh my god, you look so old,” he said, stepping back to squint at you. “Like, in a cool way. Like you know taxes.”

“Don’t say things like that,” you said. “I’m fragile.”

Karina snorted. “He knows nothing about taxes. He barely knows how to pay rent.”

“I know how to pay rent,” you said. “I just hate it.”

Scout looked between you, eyes bright. “You working here?” he asked.

“Night ops,” you said.

Scout’s jaw dropped. “You get to go up there? At night?” He pointed at the Ferris wheel like it was a spaceship.

“Sometimes,” you said.

“Bro,” he said reverently. “That’s so cool.”

“Don’t encourage him,” Karina said. “He’s already insufferable.”

You spent the rest of the afternoon half-listening to Scout’s stories—about the time he wiped out near the rocks, the new kid at school who thought he was better at skating than he was, the rumor about Avery Cole buying up property near the boardwalk.

When you asked casually, “Who’s Avery?” Scout rolled his eyes like you’d missed a major plot point.

“The developer dude,” he said. “The one with the weird car and the stupid hair.”

“Scout,” Karina warned.

“What?” he said. “His hair is stupid.”

“You’re not wrong,” she muttered.

“Anyway,” Scout went on, “he’s trying to, like, buy the pier or something. People are mad. Minjeong’s in justice mode. It’s kind of sick.”

“You’ll see,” Karina said. “Whole town’s about to flip out in a polite way.”

You filed that away. Developer. Justice mode. Polite flip-out. It sounded like trouble, but the kind that wouldn’t be solved in a day. The kind that would spread into all the corners of the summer.

Your first shift started the next night.

You got there early, because being early felt like the least you could do when you were about to be responsible for metal and gravity. The sky was still light, sun hanging low over the water. The rides hadn’t fully lit up yet, but you could see the bulbs waiting.

Rafi met you by the maintenance shack, a clipboard under one arm and a thermos in his hand.

“Look at you,” he said, eyeing your staff T-shirt. “You clean up almost decent.”

“I aim for mediocre,” you said.

He held out the thermos. “Here. Pier coffee. It’s terrible but it keeps you awake.”

You took a sip. It tasted like burned battery acid. “Wow,” you coughed. “You undersold it.”

“Grows on you,” he said. “Like mold.”

He handed you the clipboard. On it, a printed checklist with neat boxes next to items.

“This is your bible,” he said. “You touch the rides, you tick the boxes. You hear something weird, you write it down. You smell something weird, you find where it’s coming from. Got it?”

“Got it,” you said.

He ran you through the routine. Start at the small rides: kiddie train, carousel. Check the bolts on the track, the bars on the seats. Listen. Feel. Work your way up to the big wheel. The click of the ratchet. The hum of the motor. The way the cars swung.

You followed him, watching how his hands moved. There was an economy there, but no laziness. Every touch was deliberate.

“Why the second bolt?” you asked at one point, when he tapped it and tightened.

“Always the second,” he said. “Takes more vibration. First one holds steady. Second one sulks.”

You nodded. You liked knowing things like that. Rules that weren’t in manuals.

By the time the sun dropped, the pier had changed. Lights blinked on, chasing each other down the rails and around the signs. Music bled out of speakers, different songs overlapping until they found some sort of rhythm. People flowed in from the parking lot, carrying bags, holding hands, laughing.

Your job changed too. Clipboard tucked against your chest, radio clipped to your belt, flashlight banging lightly against your thigh. You walked, eyes scanning. You listened. You said “hey, stairs only” when a kid tried to climb a railing. You smiled at parents. You scanned bolts again, just to be sure.

Karina appeared around nine with a group of friends, all loud and gleaming with sweat and highlighter. She had changed into a cropped top and a denim jacket, her hair half-down, lipstick a dark berry.

“Oh my god,” she said, making a face at your shirt. “Staff. You’re official.”

“Bow to me,” you said solemnly. “I wield great power.”

“Do you now?” she said, stepping closer. “What powers exactly?”

“I can get you kicked out,” you said. “For one thing.”

She laughed. “As if,” she said. “You love me.”

Her friends oohed in unison. You felt your ears heat, but you rolled your eyes. “Go win a goldfish,” you said. “Stay off the bathroom roof.”

She smirked. “No promises.”

They disappeared into the crowd. You let your eyes follow her for a second longer than necessary, then brought them back to the checklist.

The night slipped by in small pieces. A kid dropped his ice cream and cried until his dad bought him another. A couple made out behind the prize booth until Rafi cleared his throat loudly nearby. Someone thought it was funny to rock the Ferris car, and you fixed them with a look until they stopped.

You liked the work more than you’d expected. You liked how tangible it was. Bolt loose? Tighten it. Light out? Replace it. Problem? Radio it in. People appreciated you in immediate ways: a nod, a quick “thanks,” a parent’s grateful look when you stopped their kid from squeezing through the railing.

Around two, the crowd thinned. The music shifted to older songs, the kind the staff liked. Rafi took a break, leaving you near the Ferris wheel controls.

You were jotting down a note about a squeaky joint when you felt someone bump your hip lightly.

Karina.

Up here, away from most of the lights, you could see the tiredness under her eyeliner. Her jacket hung open, T-shirt damp at the neckline.

“You look very professional,” she said, nodding at the clipboard.

“You’re drunk,” you said.

She tilted her head. “Tipsy,” she corrected. “Buzzed.”

“You smell like you lost an argument with a bar,” you said.

She grinned. “You should see the other guy.”

You suppressed a smile. “You okay?”

“Peachy,” she said. “Why? Worried about me?” She leaned against the rail, close enough that her shoulder brushed yours.

“That’s literally the job,” you said. “I worry about everyone not falling off the pier.”

She watched your profile for a second. You could feel it, like a warmth on your cheek.

“Do you ever get bored?” she asked suddenly.

“Of what?” you said.

“This,” she said, gesturing with her hand. “Walking. Checking. Telling people to stop doing dumb things.”

You thought about it. “No,” you said. “Not really. Feels good to do something useful.”

She made a face. “Useful,” she repeated. “Such a dad word.”

“Okay, then it feels… solid,” you tried.

“That’s no better,” she said, but she was smiling. “You really like it?”

“Yeah,” you said. “I like knowing that if I don’t check something, somebody could get hurt. Makes it matter.”

She hummed. “You always were a Boy Scout,” she said. “Even when we were kids.”

“You set a trash can on fire when we were kids,” you said. “Someone had to be.”

“That was one time,” she said. “And it was very small.”

“It melted,” you said.

She laughed, a real laugh this time. “You’re never going to let that go.”

“Never,” you said.

She nudged your arm with hers. “Good,” she said, and for a second, there was no joke in it. Just something softer, almost grateful.

You didn’t push. The night was calm; the wheel turned slow. You showed her some of the controls just to give your hands something to do. The emergency stop. The intercom. The way you could pause the ride to let someone nervous off.

“Can you sneak me a free ride?” she asked.

“Absolutely not,” you said.

“Wow,” she said. “Zero corruption. I’m disappointed.”

“You want corruption, go talk to Rafi,” you said.

“He already owes me two cotton candies,” she said. “I’m working on him.”

She stayed there longer than she needed to, leaning on the rail, making small comments about people walking past. You listened, chimed in, felt the night coil around the two of you. The kiss didn’t happen then. It hovered, unspoken, somewhere between her jokes and the way she’d glance up at your face.

When your shift finally ended, the sky at the horizon had paled from navy to dark gray. You walked back to the house with your shoes hanging from two fingers and your socks damp from the sand.

The house was dark except for the light over the sink. A note sat on the table in Minjeong’s handwriting.

Left you some stew. Don’t eat it cold. — M.

You heated it up, ate standing at the counter, watching your reflection in the black kitchen window. Your face looked older in this light. You weren’t sure how you felt about that.

Upstairs, your room smelled like salt and laundry powder. You crashed onto the bed fully clothed and let sleep take you.

The next week blurred into routine.

Wake up late, dragged out of bed by the smell of coffee and Mrs. Yoo’s call up the stairs. Help Minjeong with whatever the house needed—fixing a loose hinge, hauling bags of potting soil to the back, carrying chairs out for someone’s visit. Listen to her talk about the arts fair she was planning, the grant application she was working on for the community center.

“You’re doing a grant?” you asked one morning as she sat at the table with her laptop open, brows knitted.

“Trying,” she said. “They make you answer the same question three times with different words. It’s annoying.”

“What’s it for?”

“Supplies,” she said. “Rent. Keeping the lights on at the center. The kids’ art program is working, but the budget is…” She made a flatline gesture.

“You want me to read it?” you offered.

She hesitated, then slid the laptop over. “Tell me if I sound like a robot.”

You read it. She sounded like herself, just… polite. You pointed at a sentence. “This part,” you said. “You can be more specific. Say what you’ve actually done, not just ‘impact.’”

She snorted. “You and your English degree,” she said, but she changed the line.

Karina drifted in and out of those mornings. Some days she’d be up early, hair wet from a swim, yawning into her coffee. Other days she’d roll out closer to noon, sunglasses on, muttering something about “never mixing vodka and anything ever again.”

She and Minjeong still bickered, but differently now. Minjeong’s scolding had more weight behind it. Karina’s defiance felt less playful and more defensive.

“You’re going out again?” Minjeong asked one night, leaning against the doorway as Karina rummaged through the hall closet for a jacket.

Karina pulled out a leather jacket and shrugged into it. “Yep.”

“You went out last night,” Minjeong said.

“And?” Karina said. “Is there a quota?”

Minjeong crossed her arms. “Mom’s worried.”

“Mom worries about everything,” Karina said. “That’s her thing.”

“Rina,” Minjeong said quietly.

Karina sighed, head tipping back. “I’ll text you when I’m home,” she said. “Happy?”

“No,” Minjeong said. “But it’s something.”

You watched all this from the stairs, halfway between floors, feeling like a voyeur in a life you’d been part of and then not part of. You wanted to say something. You didn’t know what.

Down at the pier, you kept walking, listening, tightening. The more shifts you did, the more you understood how the place breathed. The Ferris wheel groaned in a friendly way when it started. The Tilt-a-Whirl squealed like it liked to complain. The board under the popcorn stand had a crack that would need replacing before the end of the season.

People started to recognize you. Parents nodded. Teenagers rolled their eyes but listened when you said, “Not that way.” A little kid with a crooked bowl cut saluted you every time he walked past, like you were part of the entertainment.

The developer talk heated up gradually. Flyers appeared around town with the name Cole Properties at the bottom. Public meeting dates. Phrases like “revitalization” and “increased tourism” and “job opportunities.” Somebody had drawn a frown face next to one of the posters.

At home, you heard Mrs. Yoo and Minjeong talking in the kitchen late one night. You hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but the window was open and the voices carried.

“…don’t like it,” Mrs. Yoo was saying. “Once they buy, they own. It stops being ours.”

“They’re saying they’ll keep the character,” Minjeong said. “Whatever that means.”

“You can’t keep character in a spreadsheet,” Mrs. Yoo said. “You girls grew up on that pier. That house paid for half your braces.”

“It also needs repairs,” Minjeong said. “Real ones. The town doesn’t have that kind of money.”

Silence. A spoon clinked against a mug.

“Karina?” Mrs. Yoo asked after a moment.

“She wants to throw a party for them,” Minjeong said, exasperation in every word. “Of course.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Yoo echoed.

You lay back on your bed and stared at the ceiling. The fan ticked. The summer felt suddenly less like a long stretch of free time and more like a fuse.

And through all of this, Karina kept orbiting you.

On good days, she made you laugh until your stomach hurt. She’d drag you into dumb games—spot the tourist, guess the flavor of a mystery snow cone—and then bail halfway through to chase some new distraction. On bad days, she’d go quiet and sharp, her jokes turning meaner, aimed mostly at herself. She’d drink too fast, talk too loud, then disappear before the end of your shift.

You kept half an eye on her even when you were focused on bolts. Mrs. Yoo hadn’t had to ask. You would have anyway.

You weren’t sure when exactly the air between you changed.

Maybe it was the night she showed up at the maintenance shack with a bandage on her elbow, pretending nothing was wrong.

“Trip,” she said when you glanced at it. “Totally fine.”

You raised an eyebrow.

“I swear,” she said. “Wasn’t even that good a story. I slipped on some stairs. Boring.”

“You should clean it,” you said. “Come here.”

“There he goes,” she said under her breath. “Captain First Aid.”

You ignored the jab, found the little first-aid kit under the workbench, and sat her down on the stool. You peeled the bandage back carefully. The skin underneath was scraped, not deep, but raw-looking.

“Does this hurt?” you asked, pressing lightly around it.

“No,” she said, then winced. “Okay, yes, a little. Don’t be such a nurse.”

You cleaned the scrape with an antiseptic wipe. She hissed.

“Ow, ow,” she said. “Be nice to me.”

“You set trash cans on fire,” you said. “You can handle this.”

“You’re never letting that go, are you?”

“Never,” you said again.

You blew on the wound to dry it. Her skin shivered under your breath. You felt her watching your face.

“You’re good at this,” she said quietly.

“It’s literally just a band-aid,” you said.

“Yeah, but,” she said, shrugging. “You know. You care.”

You slapped a new bandage on and taped it down. “There,” you said. “Don’t do parkour on wet stairs.”

“Can’t promise,” she said, but she smiled. It looked… tired. Real.

Then there was the night Rafi caught you staring at her across the crowd.

“You like her,” he said, not a question.

You almost choked on your coffee. “What?”

“Come on,” he said. “You’re not subtle. She’s not either.”

“She’s Karina,” you said, as if that explained everything.

“Yeah,” he said. “Exactly.”

You didn’t answer. Your heart thudded a little too noticeable under your shirt.

That’s how it built. Small things, not big ones. A shared cigarette stubbed out on the same post. A joke only she would get. The way her hand would sometimes brush yours when she took something from you, fingers lingering half a second longer than they needed to.

So when that night came—the night of the bigger party, the platform, the kiss—you were not, if you were honest with yourself, surprised.

You just weren’t ready for how much you would want it.

It started like a lot of nights.

Music, lights, people. The developer’s “pre-launch event” had brought in more bodies than usual. There were banners with the Cole Properties logo, free drink vouchers floating around, a DJ who played songs with more bass than melody. Avery himself walked the pier in a crisp shirt and boat shoes, shaking hands like he deserved something for it.

Minjeong spent most of the night at the edge of things, talking to neighbors, watching, collecting little bits of information like a magpie. You caught her eye once and she shook her head minutely at something Avery just said, then rolled her eyes when he turned away.

Karina flitted in and out of the developer’s orbit. She laughed at his jokes, took pictures, stirred the crowd around the sponsored drinks table. You hated how good she was at it. You hated how he looked at her like she was part of the show.

You, meanwhile, walked, checked, listened. You told three different groups not to lean on a railing. You stopped a drunk guy from climbing onto the ride platform for a selfie. You fixed a loose screw on a game booth and wrote down a note about a flickering sign.

By the time the official part of the event wound down, it was after midnight. Avery and his team retreated, promising follow-up meetings and “next steps.” The crowd thinned, but didn’t disappear. Locals stayed. Staff relaxed a little.

You stood on the maintenance platform behind the Ferris wheel, watching the last few cars go around, when you heard the familiar scuff of sneakers on metal.

Karina climbed up, one hand on the rail, the other holding two plastic cups.

“Peace offering,” she said, holding one out.

You hesitated, then took it. It was soda, not beer. You relaxed a hair.

“Didn’t expect you to be drinking on the job,” she said. “Very scandalous.”

“It’s Sprite,” you said. “Calm down.”

She laughed and took a sip of her own. “So,” she said after a moment, staring out at the water. “How’s it feel? Being safety police for the enemy’s party?”

“They’re not the enemy,” you said automatically, then grimaced. “I mean, I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

She snorted. “Everything’s complicated. You don’t have to defend them.”

“I’m not,” you said. “I’m defending my paycheck.”

She glanced at you. “You could do something else, you know,” she said, echoing your own question from the other day. “You’re good with people. And bolts. It’s weird, but it’s a thing.”

“Yeah, well,” you said. “Right now this is the thing.”

She watched you for a moment, her face serious in a way it rarely was when she wasn’t hungover. The lights from the pier threw patterns across her cheekbones.

“But you like it,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah,” you said. “I do.”

She took that in, then nodded like she was filing it away under Jason facts.

The wheel turned. The sea breathed. The pier hummed.

Karina set her empty cup down on the platform. She shifted her weight closer, her shoulder brushing your arm. You smelled smoke on her hair, sugar on her breath, that same faint perfume she’d worn the other night.

“You know,” she said slowly, voice softer, “you’re kind of an idiot.”

“Thanks,” you said. “Good talk.”

She rolled her eyes. “I mean it like… you’re here. You’re… you.” She waved a hand at you vaguely. “And you have no idea.”

“No idea about what?” you asked, genuinely confused.

She looked up at you. Really looked. For once there was no joke in her eyes, no dare, no heat hiding behind something else. Just… nerves, if you were reading it right.

“About what you do to people,” she said.

Your brain short-circuited for a second. “What I… what?”

She huffed, annoyed. “Exactly that,” she said. “Look at yourself. You show up, fix things, make breakfast with my sister, keep the pier from collapsing, and act like you’re just… passing through.”

“I mean, I am passing through,” you said weakly. “It’s just the summer.”

“Yeah,” she said. “And then what? You go back to your real life and pretend this is a postcard?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” you said, because admitting it to her felt like admitting it to yourself. “About going back. About anything.”

She went very quiet. You could hear the clack of the Ferris wheel teeth. The distant squeal of one last ride. The sea slapping quietly at the posts.

“You ever think,” she said eventually, “about staying?”

You glanced at her. “Here?”

“Here,” she confirmed. “Not forever. Just… longer. Long enough that it stops feeling like a vacation and starts feeling like…” She groped for the word. “A thing. Your thing.”

“Like yours?” you asked.

She laughed once, no humor in it. “Like mine if mine wasn’t such a mess.”

You didn’t like how that sounded. “You’re not a mess,” you said.

She gave you a look.

“Okay, you make messy choices,” you amended. “But you’re not a mess.”

She scoffed. “You sound like Minjeong.”

“Maybe she has a point,” you said.

“Maybe you should shut up sometimes,” she said, but there was no sting in it.

Silence fell again, comfortably this time. You drank the last of your soda and set the cup down. The wind tugged at Karina’s hair, pulling a strand loose. She pushed it back behind her ear and your eyes followed the movement without your permission.

“Jason,” she said quietly.

“Yeah?”

She turned fully to you, one hand half lifting like she wanted to touch your chest and then thought better of it. Her eyes flicked down to your mouth, then up to your eyes, then down again.

“I’m going to do something,” she said. “And you can stop me if you want.”

Your heart stuttered. “Okay,” you heard yourself say.

She stepped in, closing the space between you in one simple motion. Her fingers found the back of your neck, cool against your skin. You felt a tremor run through you.

She hesitated for half a second, giving you room. You didn’t move away.

Then she kissed you.

It was not a drunk, sloppy kiss. It was not a dare-flung-from-a-distance. It was slow, deliberate, her mouth pressing against yours with a question in it: this? you? now?

Your hands tightened on the railing without you telling them to. The world narrowed to the warmth of her lips, the taste of soda and smoke, the faint salt of her skin. The noises of the pier blurred.

You forgot, for a long second, that you were standing on a platform that technically counted as part of your job. You forgot about checklists and bolts and developers and meetings. All you could think was Karina, here, finally, and how the shape of her fit so perfectly against the shape of your memory of her and the new person she’d become.

She pulled back just enough to look at you. Her eyes were darker now, pupils blown wide.

“You still awake?” she asked, breathless.

“Yeah,” you said, equally breathless. “I think so.”

“Good,” she said, and then she leaned in again.

Her second kiss was rougher, more sure. Her fingers curled into the collar of your T-shirt. Your hand left the railing to find her waist, the fabric of her jacket under your palm. She made a small sound in the back of her throat that went straight through you.

The clipboard shifted under your foot. You half-laughed into her mouth, half-stumbled, and she grabbed your arm to steady you.

“Don’t kill us,” she said, eyes bright. “You’re the safety guy, remember?”

“Right,” you said, dizzy. “No falling.”

You shuffled back until your shoulders hit the control box. She followed, closing the gap, her body fitting against yours like it had been waiting for that particular angle. The wheel turned overhead with a soft, steady click, like it was counting off seconds for you.

Karina’s hands came up to your chest, sliding over your shirt, fingers flexing. The heat under your skin spiked.

“Jason,” she murmured.

“Yeah?”

“Do you want—”

Her mouth found yours again before she finished the sentence, and the question hung there, clear enough even unspoken.

You knew the answer. You’d known it for weeks, maybe years.

You let your free hand slide, carefully, up her back, feeling the line of her spine through fabric, the tension there, the way she relaxed a fraction under your touch.

The platform, the night, the two of you pressed between metal and air—that was where you were when everything tipped.

And that was exactly where you were when you stopped yourself long enough to remember that whatever happened next, you wanted to be awake for it. Really awake. Not just driven by adrenaline and flickering lights.

Karina’s lips brushed your jaw. Her breath was hot against your neck.

“Tell me no if you want,” she whispered.

You didn’t say no.

You also didn’t say yes, not with words.

You shifted, cupped her face gently in both hands, and kissed her back like you meant it, slow and deliberate, giving her all the answer she needed.

Karina leaned into you on the maintenance platform, the buzz of the Ferris wheel a slow, steady heartbeat behind her, the night lit with leftover music and the dull glow of pier lights. She looked like summer sin — berry-stained lips, messy hair, shirt clinging in the humidity, eyes dark with something she wasn’t joking about anymore.

Your pulse hammered under your skin, heavy in your throat, your chest. You could feel the heat of her body through denim and cotton, the hard line of her thigh hooked around your hip, and she was looking at you like she was already halfway gone — and daring you to follow.

You stepped in again and kissed her slower this time. Lips dragging. Tongue deliberate. Not a question anymore, not a tease — just heat, and familiarity, and the feeling of oh, finally.

Karina moaned into your mouth. Not loud. Not performative. Just a low, guttural sound that went straight to your spine. Her hands slipped under your shirt, palms hot on your stomach, trailing up your ribs until you shuddered.

“You want me to stop,” she murmured, “you better say it now. Otherwise…”

Otherwise.

You didn’t answer.

You just slid your hand up the back of her thigh and under her shorts, fingers grazing bare skin until you found the curve of her ass and pulled her into you, grinding your bodies together, slow and rough.

Karina gasped, her nails digging into your back.

“Jesus,” she breathed, and you felt her hips roll, chasing the pressure. “You’re hard.”

“You’re not exactly subtle either,” you said, pressing against the damp heat you could already feel soaking through her underwear.

“Yeah?” she said, cocky smile flickering on her lips. “Then stop pretending we have time.”

She pushed your shirt up, fast now, and you yanked it over your head and tossed it behind you, no idea where it landed. Her hands were on you instantly — chest, shoulders, stomach — fingers mapping you like she needed to memorize every line.

“You filled out,” she said, voice low, almost admiring. “I remember you skinny. Now look at you.”

You caught her mouth in another kiss before she could say something that’d make you laugh. This was already balancing on a knife’s edge between hot and hysterical. You didn’t want to lose it.

She let you kiss her hard. Open. Deep. Her body twisted under you, arching against the control panel. You tugged her shorts down, inch by inch, over her thighs, then her knees. You hit the deck with a dull thump, and she kicked one leg free while the other stayed hooked around your waist.

Her underwear was black and lacy and soaked.

You didn’t even think. You dropped to your knees on the platform — didn’t care how it felt on bare skin — and pressed your mouth to the inside of her thigh, kissing slow up to the edge of the fabric.

Karina’s breath hitched.

“Holy shit,” she said, voice tight. “You’re—oh my god, you’re not playing, huh?”

You didn’t answer. You just dragged her panties to the side, watched her slick folds glisten in the ambient glow, and buried your face between her legs.

She cursed like you’d punched the air out of her lungs.

One long lick from base to clit. Then another, slow and precise, flattening your tongue against her until her hips jerked and she slapped a hand against the control panel behind her for balance.

“Fuck—wait—”

But she didn’t stop you. She just panted and squirmed as you sucked her clit into your mouth and swirled your tongue, rhythm building, fingers digging into her thighs to hold her still.

You loved this. Loved the way her legs started to tremble. Loved the breathless sounds she made when you dipped lower, fucked her gently with your tongue, then came back up and sucked her again.

“You’re gonna make me come,” she gasped, high and shocked, like she hadn’t expected it that fast. “Fuck—fuck—don’t stop—”

You didn’t. You wanted her to fall apart on your mouth.

When she did — her whole body tensing, thighs shaking, mouth open in a silent cry before the sound finally tore free — you held her through it, tongue still working her, until she tugged hard on your hair.

“Okay,” she gasped. “Okay—fuck—you’re gonna kill me.”

You pulled back, licking your lips, looking up at her with a smug tilt of your mouth.

“Been thinking about doing that since junior year,” you said.

Karina blinked down at you, dazed and flushed, and then burst out laughing. “You are such a bastard,” she said, breath still short.

She grabbed your hair again and pulled you up, fast. Her mouth was on yours before you could speak — desperate, sloppy, tasting herself on your tongue.

When she broke the kiss, her eyes were dark fire.

“Pants,” she said. “Now.”

You fumbled with your fly, hands shaking. Your cock was throbbing, rock hard, leaking already, and it practically sprang free when you shoved your boxers down. Karina stared at it for one long beat, then looked up at you like she’d just won a bet.

“Oh,” she said. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

You hissed when her hand wrapped around you, her grip firm and slow, thumb teasing the head as she stroked you once, twice. Your hips jerked forward, chasing her.

“Condom?” she asked, eyes meeting his.

“Back pocket,” you said, breathless.

She reached around, fished it out, ripped it open with her teeth. Rolled it on with that same maddening, practiced ease.

And then she leaned back, legs spread, panties still pushed aside, her body open and ready for you.

“You gonna fuck me now, safety guy,” she said, voice dark with heat, “or do I have to beg?”

You groaned.

Then you pushed into her — slow, deep, deliberate — and felt her gasp against your mouth like you’d knocked the air out of her again.

She was hot, wet, and tight around you — so tight you nearly lost your damn mind the second you sank all the way in.

Karina’s head tipped back against the control panel, lips parted, eyes fluttering. Her breath caught on a sharp inhale when your hips met hers, deep and full, her thighs spread wide over the steel platform and wrapped around your waist like she wanted to keep you there forever.

“Fuck,” she whispered. “Fuck, Jason.”

You didn’t answer. Couldn’t. You just held still, buried to the hilt, forehead resting against hers while your body screamed to move.

Every part of her felt like home and danger at the same time. Familiar but charged, like you could’ve mapped her out years ago but this version of her — this sharp-tongued, loud-laughed, still-sore-from-his-mouth version — was something entirely new.

You kissed her once. Slow. A thank-you. A warning. A don’t move yet or I’ll embarrass myself.

Karina cupped the back of your neck, nails dragging lightly, and then rolled her hips just enough to make you groan deep in your throat.

“Fuck,” she said, that voice, that voice — “fuck me. Don’t be sweet. Just do it.”

Something in you snapped.

You pulled out halfway and slammed back in, hard enough that her breath stuttered and her fingers clenched around your shoulders. Again. Again. A rhythm building fast, full of teeth and want, the sound of your bodies smacking together swallowed by the hum of the pier and the distant music still thudding through the air.

Karina moaned. Loud now. Real. No more jokes. Just the sound of her taking it, her head thrown back, sweat starting to bead along her collarbone as she rode every thrust with an eager tilt of her hips.

“God, you feel so fucking good,” you muttered, voice low and ragged against her ear. “Been thinking about this—you—so long.”

She pulled you in by the shirt, lips brushing your jaw. “Yeah?” she panted. “When?”

You bit her shoulder, not hard — enough. “You wore that red bikini the summer you turned eighteen. That day on the float? You climbed out of the water, and I had to jump in to hide my hard-on.”

Karina laughed, breathless, body clenching around him. “You’re such a loser,” she gasped. “God. Did you jerk off to me back then?”

You growled and slammed into her harder, and she cried out, not caring if anyone could hear you anymore.

“That’s a yes,” she said, grinning, then lost the smile again as you shifted the angle, drove in deeper, your hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise.

Her body rocked with the force of it now, the platform’s edge giving you leverage. You slid one hand between you and found her clit with your thumb, circling tight and fast, watching her fall apart under it.

Karina’s voice cracked. “Fuck—Jay—don’t stop—don’t—”

You didn’t.

She came like a wave breaking — hips jerking, eyes squeezed shut, thighs tightening around your waist so hard it pushed you in deeper. Her orgasm hit sharp and fast, pulling a desperate sound from her throat as she shook around you.

You barely held on.

“Jesus Christ,” she breathed, wrecked. “You’re gonna fucking ruin me.”

You kissed her hard and lifted her off the panel in one motion — just scooped her up, still buried inside her, her legs locked tight around your waist as you staggered back against the rail.

Her hands flew to your shoulders. “What the hell are you—”

“Want you like this,” you said, voice rough, face buried against her neck. “Wanna fuck you standing. Wanna see your tits bounce while I do it.”

Her moan was the only answer you needed.

She gripped the rail behind her, steadying herself, and you slammed into her again, her whole body jolting against yours. Her head fell back with a choked-off cry, her hair wild, sweat-slicked skin glowing under the flicker of the lights behind you.

This angle—god, this angle.

You could feel everything. The way she clenched around you when you hit just right. The drag of her thighs against your hips. Her breath in your ear.

Karina had never been quiet, and she wasn’t now. She moaned with every thrust, broken little gasps that turned filthy when she caught her breath.

“Harder,” she whispered. “Come on, I can take it.”

You gave it to her. Brutal. Fast. Deep.

“Shit—fuck—yes—” she gasped, her fingernails raking down your back. “Right there—don’t—Jason—”

You felt her tighten again, her walls fluttering, her body pulling you deeper with every pulse. You weren’t going to last. Not with the way she was moving. Not with the way she sounded. Not with the way her mouth found yours again, messy and hot and all tongue.

“Come for me,” she said into your mouth. “Do it. Fucking fill me up.”

You groaned, teeth clenched, hips stuttering. Her words—fuck.

You buried your face in her neck and drove in hard, one, two, three more thrusts — and then you were gone.

Your orgasm ripped through you, so hard it left you shaking. You groaned into her skin, fingers locked in your hair, her thighs still squeezing around your hips as you spilled inside the condom, every muscle drawn tight, your whole body thrumming with it.

You stayed like that, tangled and panting, pressed against the rail like the whole world had narrowed to this one edge of the pier.

Karina kissed your temple, gentle now. “Still alive?” she whispered.

You huffed a laugh into her neck. “Barely.”

She pulled back enough to look at you, hair wild, mascara smudged, lips swollen. She looked like she’d just lived through a storm.

And she looked perfect.

“Good,” she said. “’Cause I’m not done with you yet.”

Karina didn’t let you pull away.

Her arms were still locked around your neck, skin flushed, lips red, pupils blown wide in that post-orgasm daze. But she wasn’t done. Not even close.

You were still inside her, cock softening slowly, still twitching with the last echoes of release. Her legs eased their grip around your waist, but only barely. She kissed you again — soft, sweet — and then bit your bottom lip, tugging gently before pulling back.

“I meant it,” she whispered, breath hot against your cheek. “I’m not done with you.”

You exhaled a laugh, still catching your breath. “You’re insatiable.”

Karina dragged her nails along the back of your neck. “You’ve known that since I was eighteen,” she murmured, licking the edge of your jaw. “Now you just get to feel it.”

You growled low in your throat. You wanted to be smug, to make some smartass remark, but your brain was still short-circuiting from how tight she’d been. How perfect.

Still — you kissed her once more, then stepped back slowly, letting your softening cock slip from her with a wet sound that made you both shiver.

The condom was warm and full. You tied it off, slipped it into a napkin someone had left near the control box — barely registered it — and turned back to her. She was still leaning on the railing, panties askew, shirt clinging to her like a second skin, a glint in her eyes that said we’re not close to finished.

Karina reached down between her legs and touched herself, slow and filthy, spreading her own slick across her folds like she was testing how sensitive she was.

Your mouth went dry.

“You’re killing me,” you muttered.

She just smiled. “So do something about it.”

And you did.

You dropped to your knees again — knees scraped now, but you didn’t give a shit — and pressed your mouth to her cunt, tongue flat and slow. She cried out, louder this time, no pretense left. Just hunger.

You licked her like she was the only thing keeping you alive. Long, greedy strokes. You moaned into her, sucking her clit between your lips, then sliding two fingers into her, curling them just right, the way she’d clenched around you before. Her whole body arched.

“Fuck—Jay—fuckfuckfuck—don’t stop—”

She gripped the railing hard, knuckles white, and rolled her hips against your face, riding you through a second orgasm that was messier, louder, her legs nearly giving out as she shook and came with a gasping shout of your name.

You held her through it, didn’t stop until she begged, her voice hoarse.

“Jesus Christ,” she panted, sinking to her knees on the deck, breath ragged. “You’re… dangerous.”

You smirked. “You started it.”

She shoved your chest, then grabbed your face and kissed you again, open-mouthed, dirty, tasting herself on your tongue without hesitation. Her hands moved fast — too fast — fumbling with your cock, already half-hard again, coaxing you back to life.

“You’re still hard,” she whispered, grinning. “God, that’s hot.”

You didn’t even bother replying. You shoved her shirt up and off, peeled her bra down, mouth finding her nipple as her back hit the metal floor of the platform.

She gasped. “Shit—cold—”

“Too late,” you said.

Her laugh turned into a moan as your mouth closed over her, tongue circling, sucking. Her nipples peaked instantly under your tongue, her body arching into you, back bowing.

And then you were inside her again.

No foreplay. No hesitation. No question. Just a second condom, rolled on with frantic hands, and you driving back in, her legs wrapped tight around your waist once more, both of you chasing it now like they were starving.

Karina dug her nails into your back. “Harder,” she panted. “Come on. Don’t hold back.”

You didn’t.

You fucked her like she was yours — rough, deep, desperate. The metal under her clanged in time with your rhythm, the whole pier echoing with the wet slap of skin on skin, her gasps, your groans, the sound of your bodies crashing together again and again.

It was sweat and heat and history. It was a decade of sideways glances, of teasing insults, of almosts and never-quites. It was her, finally open to you, underneath you, around you, with you — and it was perfect.

“Karina—” you said, voice rough.

“Come in me,” she gasped, gripping your arms, legs locking tighter. “I want it—Jason, come in me.”

You swore, deep in your chest, and slammed into her harder, faster, chasing the edge.

She came again, and this time she screamed — no restraint, no filter, just pure release, her entire body locking up as her orgasm hit like lightning. Her pussy fluttered around you, milking you, dragging you down with her.

You exploded.

You grunted, hips jerking hard as you came deep inside her, cock pulsing, body shaking from the intensity of it. Her name tore from your throat as you thrust once, twice more, riding it out until you collapsed over her, both of you soaked in sweat, breathless and wrecked.

For a long minute, you just lay there — tangled and half-naked on a maintenance platform behind the Ferris wheel — the world spinning quietly above you.

Karina reached up and dragged her fingers through your hair. “Well,” she said, still breathless. “That was a long time coming.”

You let out a rough laugh against her collarbone. “You think?”

“You gonna make me breakfast after this?” she asked, voice teasing.

You lifted your head just enough to kiss her again. “I’ll make you whatever the hell you want.”

Karina smiled — real, slow, a little sleepy. “You know this wasn’t just sex, right?”

You looked at her. Really looked. The girl you grew up with. The woman you just made come three times on a steel platform under blinking lights. The chaos and the calm, both.

“Yeah,” you said. “I know.”

She nodded. “Good. Because I’m not going anywhere.”

“Neither am I,” you said.

And you meant it.

Because in that moment — sweat-drenched, heart still pounding, lying with her in the aftermath of something that had felt bigger than either of you — you finally realized:

This wasn’t just summer.

It was the beginning of everything else.