DEPARTURE

So far as you can tell, Yeji never loved you. A wish beyond your reach.

-

April, and you were barely seventeen. It was spring, but the weather hadn’t gotten wind of that just yet. So—cool, rainy, just like every April before it.

Yeji’s voice stuck a perfect landing in your ears. “ You know what’s crazy?”

“No?” you responded cautiously.

“Apparently this stuff starts out as a wheat, or a rye. You believe that?”

You paused. “What the hell is rye?”

“It’s… well, it’s like a wheat.”

The wood crackled again, embers sent flying into the chill night air. Now that the fire had already begun burning out in front of you, you pulled your jacket tight around your shoulders.

“Okay. Ready? On three.”

“Wait a second.” You raised a finger in the air. “One, two, three?—or, one, two, three go?”

“Who on earth does one, two, three, go?”

“I dunno.”

Yeji twisted an eyebrow without saying anything and leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees. The coals and dying gasps of the bonfire between you illuminated the sharp, perfected features of her face, casting a set of even sharper shadows.

“I mean some people do,” you added.

“Do I look like some people?”

That mischievous smirk again pulled at the corner of her lip. It was dark and hard to see, but you could feel it.

“ You look like you’re trying to get me sick,” you said.

“Don’t be such a baby about it. Just do it with me.”

“On go?”

“On three.” She curled her lip, dissatisfied with you yet again. “One. Two. Three.”

Eyes closed, you tilted the cup back against your lips. A dark, dreadful liquor pooled in your cheeks. And against your better judgment, it finally seared its way down your throat. For a moment, it sat woefully in your stomach, like a question mark. Your eyes watered, your chest heaved, coughing and choking.

It took a beat, but eventually you would make peace with it, the beverage equivalent of a kick to the head. You were just thankful it had not elected to leave the same way it came.

“ Ugh,” you sputtered, wiping your mouth with your sleeve. “I swear it’s like someone wondered what would happen if you tried to drink dirt.” Your eyes drew over the bonfire—or at least what was left of it—to find a face beaming with the smuggest grin you’d ever seen, the drink in her hands entirely untouched.

“ Gotcha,” she lilted.

“Oh of course, you ass.”

Yeji’s hand covered a laugh, the corners of her mouth sneaking out from behind it. The sound of it alone made nearly puking worth it. She stood. And in one uninterested motion, tossed the contents of her cup—a kind of alcohol you’d only learn later in life could probably be used to start a car—right out into the grass. Twisting the insides of her jacket pockets, she sauntered around the pit, briefly lit in the spits and licks of the dying fire.

“Think there’s any room on that tree stump for one more?”

Her eyes, sharp and magnetic, always pulled you deeply into her. She held you in them for a moment, a long couple of moments, and the flickers of the fire painted bright streaks of gold in those whirlpools of deep, earthen brown. When she smiled, the corners of her eyes creased, snapping at your attention.

“You deaf?”

“Dunno. Depends,” you said, still clutching your chest and clearing your throat. “Who’s asking?”

Hwang Yeji. Your first kiss. Your first a lot of things actually. However for the sake of this story, your first kiss. It was somewhat crude how she’d stolen it off you too. Though still that was your fault mostly. It’s only fair that you got what was coming to you for the way you had dragged your feet.

A playful slap landed on your shoulder. “ Scoot over.”

You think about it less and less now, and as a result, the actual details of it have begun to elude you. Obviously you remember kissing her—or rather her kissing you—but that’s just about all you remember. There’s the way it started; her fingers under your chin, dragging your eyes away from the pile of embers that glowed in the fire pit. And of course how it ended; a wide smile dimpling her cheeks as her lips pulled away from yours. But everything in between? Years after the fact? God, your guess is as good as anyone’s.

Still, in spite of their incompleteness, Yeji shows up in a lot of your memories, the good ones anyway. You tease them through your head time and time again just to make sure they’re still there, intact.

She’d been around for a lot of the growing up you had to do in school, persistently dissatisfied you wouldn’t do it any faster. Never before had you gotten that close to anyone, let alone someone as vibrantly charismatic and beautiful as her. Allowing yourself to think back on it, there was a lot of downtime, time where nothing in particular was happening at all—the walks home after classes and clubs, Saturday afternoons just spent hanging out on your parent’s couch, not to mention all those late night runs on the local Pelicana for more chicken wings than anyone should ever eat—it all seemed like such a big deal at the time (though arguably, Pelicana is still a big deal).

To be clear, no, the two of you never dated. It was far too difficult to describe it like that. When one of you would turn eyes to the other for comfort, for compassion, for a sincerity absent in those everyday flirtations, you’d always find her—or she’d find you—with eyes pointed away, thoughts elsewhere. Though that didn’t mean you wouldn’t get teased about it, relentlessly you might add. Your friends would see the Friday evenings and Sunday mornings you’d spend together on what must’ve looked like nothing other than what they were: dates.

But the truth was more complicated than you ever cared to explain. So—you let them think what they wanted. You’d always return back to them and field twenty questions about what the two of you got up to, if she was good at kissing, what position she liked, how she was down there, whatever the color was of the underwear she wore that day. You’d make up your own answers, the ones they wanted to hear. It always did shut them up.

So, officially, you were friends. And you were the first person she came to when she got the news.

“In Seoul, huh?” You shoved your hands in your pockets.

“Yep.”

“For how long?”

“No one knows.” She twisted at the collar of her shirt, pulling and turning it into a tight knot. “For some people it’s a year and then they know it’s not really gonna work out. For others it’s a whole lot longer.”

“Well, it’ll get pretty quiet around here then won’t it.”

Yeji smiled. “You’ll survive. I know you will.”

A brief silence hung between you, different from any of the other lulls in conversation or times just spent quietly in your thoughts. Dry leaves crunched and mashed as you walked, and you could hear the wind shake old tree branches of whatever was still left on them.

“I bet you’d be good at it.”

“What’s with that?” A muted laugh and Yeji’s eyes were again pointed up to the sky, as if she were counting stars. Always she was looking at the sky like that. You knew it. Maybe she knew it too. She didn’t belong here.

You let out a short sigh and shrugged your shoulders. “Just a hunch.”

-

Five years had passed now, and you still remember vividly the conversation that had become your last. A fresh blanket of snow over the street hadn’t yet been disturbed by the morning traffic. Yeji’s hands were balled into two tiny fists, hidden in the long sleeves of the overcoat of her school uniform, a hand-me-down from her older sister ostensibly. Her hair was tied back into a loose ponytail, a pair of white earmuffs sitting atop it, and for the first time you’d ever known, she searched and searched for that bright smile—only she came up empty.

She told you she was leaving. She told you she wasn’t coming back. And then without skipping a beat, tears welling in her eyes, she told you not to wait for her.

See, our memories are a rather peculiar thing. In the backyard of that party neither of you belonged at, when the two of you were kissing beside those dying embers, you thought it’d be the memory you always play back in your head, clutching it tightly to your breast like your life depended on it. But truth be told, you can’t even tell at this point what’s fact and what you’ve since fabricated to fill the gaps.

As fate would have it, it’s that scene—in the middle of your driveway at four-fifteen in the morning—you remember it perfectly. While it played out, you made no special notice of it. You’d never stopped to think what a lasting impression it would make on you, how five years after the fact you’d manage to recall it in excruciating detail.

You had paid no attention to all that scenery around you either, the stars disappearing to make way for the sun, the sound of snow crunching beneath your feet, the gentle hum of the electric generator heating your home, or the white puffs of air that leaked off your chest. No, you were paying attention to yourself, the things you felt. You were paying attention to that unfairly beautiful girl standing arm’s length in front of you. Your thoughts wandered about the two of you together, and then again, retired solemnly back to yourself.

To make matters worse, you were in love. A troublesome, frustrating, complicated love.

With very little to say, you said very little. She said she’d call. She didn’t. You understood. Time passed. And then some. Later, you’d hammer out a drunken text message on New Year’s Eve the next year. A final albeit clumsy effort to hold your world together. Sent, but never opened.

And that was it. There was little else to do about it. You figured it was time to move on. Not that you had even an inkling of an idea how. Playing it back again in your head only ever filled your teary eyes with an almost unbearable sorrow. Realizing you’d never know if Yeji loved you.

-

It’s October and you’ll soon be twenty-four. The seat belt sign above you lights up. The cabin shakes and struggles. And your ears ring as the aircraft begins its descent onto a runway at Heathrow Airport. You typically enjoyed the window seat to get a good picture of where it was you were arriving—even if it wasn’t new—the layouts of highways, parks, train stations, large construction projects, all the things that made a city unique. But by the time the aircraft breaks through dark cloud cover, the only thing you can see beyond the ground crew in rain jackets and the chain linked fences around the tarmac, beyond the cold autumn rain beating down upon it, is that unyielding, gloomy sky. Again—London.

Buckles unlatch and passengers stand, gathering their belongings from the overhead bins. You remain stuck in your seat, chin resting on your hand, gazing at the backpack of the woman across the aisle—the contents that peek out of it blindsiding you: a copy of Vogue magazine with five unbelievably gorgeous faces on it, Yeji’s most noticeably staring back at you.

You’d groan out loud if you weren’t surrounded by people. It was becoming untenable.

Most of the reason you’d taken your job abroad was to keep from seeing her at every turn. There were the advertisements, the billboards, the promotional material you’d find on buses, subways, anywhere with decent foot traffic really, and that’s just what you could see. Her voice was always in your ear, and her name on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

And now it seems that even all the way out here, on a short flight from Zurich to London, that plan to escape her is already now showing delicate cracks in its optimistic veneer.

Perhaps it was the way your lips twist, or how your eyebrows furrow—you’ll never know—but a stewardess feels it within reason to check up on you, to see how you’re doing. She asks first in German, and then in French, and then finally in English that you can understand.

“I’m okay—just a little lightheaded.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” you say, pulling your gatherings together from beneath your seat.

-

You’re not crazy, no more than anyone else. So it logically follows that you don’t believe in ghosts. At least certainly not in the colloquial sense. And the queue for immigration and customs at London Heathrow Airport has to be about the last place on earth anyone would choose to loiter about for eternity. But those ones you create for yourself? The ones that haunt you?

“I told you! I packed them in a little gray bag! The one you threw across the room at me!”

Those are real.

“Why the hell would you pack them away—when it’s the first thing you’re going to need to get off the plane?”

“Maybe I packed them away safely because we’d need them first thing.”

Yeji waves her hand flippantly at the girl beside whose hair was dyed a garish blonde. She rolls her eyes with enough disdain that it drags her face over her shoulder. You watch her do a double, a triple take and your eyes lock with hers. Be it accident, be it fate, it doesn’t matter—it makes it hard to breathe. You shake your head, blink your eyes, but the two of you are stuck in each other’s gaze like it were a finger trap, unable to look away.

Nevertheless there’s some part of you still that refuses to believe in what is now a few feet in front of you. The same scene, playing out back home—assuredly there would be no end to the camera flashes and people chasing and begging for autographs. If anything, the only interest it gathers here, halfway around the world, is impatience from the scowls of grumpy travelers who’d rather be anywhere else.

“ Yeji?” The girl beside her, whom you now absolutely recognize—god, you wish it was a mystery to you, what all Yeji had been up to since she walked right out of your life—she asks again, frustrated, “are you even listening to me?”

“Hang on. Give me a second.”

She walks with purpose, an insatiable curiosity gnawing at her thoughts. Those heeled boots that tucked in the bottom of her jeans tap loudly against the concrete beneath your feet. And her hair bounces in place against the shoulder of a beige knit sweater on each step. The baggy garment’s sleeves are long, just as she always liked them, hiding her hands in their cuffs as she marches toward you.

Each step leads into the next with such grace and poise it leaves you frozen. Yeji had always been easy on the eyes. And of course you’d seen her everywhere, seen the beautiful woman she’d grown into, taking mental note of it more times than you could count. But even your most particular memories—no matter how bold you chose to remember her—they never could’ve imagined this confidence, the way she carried herself with such raw assurance and certainty.

She sweeps the hair out of her face, looking up at you, confirming exactly what it was she thought she saw. Glistening, her eyes widen, and she holds you in them for the first time in years. You can feel your chest tighten and your stomach twist—she’s so unbelievably pretty it hurts. It’s something like the way you experience a master painting, a Rembrandt or a Hals, by not only letting it steal your breath from far away, but also up close, where you might appreciate the brush strokes.

Shaking her head, laughing quietly to herself in disbelief, she leaps headlong into the silence. “ What are you doing here?”

See, this had been a scenario you’d puzzled over a million times in your head already. She’d find you, or perhaps you’d find her, and the two of you would smile, before saying something cute, something that would instantly return you to where you left things five years ago. But even in the pages of your most speculative efforts, it would never quite look like this. You struggle to remember any of those quippy one-offs you thought you’d say. In fact, the breath you draw in, swirling knots of air in your chest, it simply finds no words to speak at all. Upon realizing its uselessness, it falls off your tongue, silent.

After all, you hadn’t talked to her in years. What reason do you have that makes you think you’d start now?

“Yeji, I—” Even her name is a cursed utterance at this point, the way it makes you strain and choke. It takes you a moment, but a dry laugh leads your response upon realizing the absurdity of the question. “Yeji, I live here.”

“You live here?” Her eyes open further in shock. “What? Why?”

“Work.” It wasn’t a lie, but the simplest answer conveniently hid the fact you’d picked up your entire life and settled thousands of kilometers to get away from her.

She furrows her brow and tilts her head inquisitively. “You’re pulling my leg.”

“Well, I’m certainly not on vacation.”

She crosses her arms, thinking for a moment before blurting out the first thing that came to her head as she was so often wont to do. Raking her fingers through her hair, gathering stares of everyone around you, she finally responds, “I’m just—I’m having a hard time—I really had no idea.”

Accusative, “I mean… Yeji. Does that surprise you?”

Her lips narrow and tuck against her teeth. She twists the collar of her sweater between two perfectly manicured fingernails, painted dark with meticulous white detailing. Further and further, she knots it beneath the pale skin of her neck. It’s the same anxious tic she’d always indulge.

Her voice, tender and choked up, reaches out to you “ I’m sorry.”

You hadn’t much to respond to it. Your thoughts were tied and shackled to the fact that you were now suddenly eighteen again, staring down the barrel of the girl who broke your heart. Again, tongue-twisted, you search the look on Yeji’s face—eyebrows knit together, and the corner of her lip pulled back into an unsure smile. It defies logic—and reasonably so—it’s beyond the grave, the relationship you thought you’d buried years ago.

-

“And so when we got off the plane, we were still missing the better half of our passports.” Yeji pulls her shoulders up into a hopeless shrug, her hands still in her pockets. “I guess they’re just going to sit and wait in customs until someone can do something about it.”

“Bleak.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You’re just gonna leave them there?”

Yeji laughs to herself. “Trust me, I need a break from those girls. And now you’re here? Talk about a silver lining.”

The two of you had made a loop around the terminal concourse god knows how many times now. You could feel the strain of walking the circuit start to make your knees ache and your muscles sting, but you weren’t about to complain.

Things felt different, but also not so far off from the way they always were. Both of you were older, more mature, found more interesting things to talk about. Your words carried a certain edge to them, a cleverness that might not have been so present back then, but still—Yeji talked, and you listened. That’s how it always was. And Yeji could talk for hours.

She stops short, finding a railing to lean herself against. And she asks, “What are you doing out here anyway?”

“Well believe it or not, I passed the national service exam—” You pause with your mouth agape, remembering just how badly you wished you could’ve told her while holding a shredded letter in one hand and the results in the other. “And now I’m here.”

“Like in an embassy or something?”

“Yep.”

Her eyes light up. “Really?”

“It’s half as cool as it sounds,” you say, running your fingers through your hair, “I stamp visas for a living.”

“ Ugh.” Yeji punches playfully at your shoulder. “I could’ve used you about two hours ago.”

That’s not how any of it worked of course, but you weren’t about to correct her.

She quickly shoves in front of you a more interesting question, “so you’ve gotta live pretty close to here I imagine.”

“I dunno. How close is forty minutes?”

“Close enough.” Nearly jumping, she stands herself up onto her feet. “C’mon. I’m not going to forgive you if you don’t show me your place.”

You study her face for a clue, a hint, a tell— surely she was joking. Though you realize it soon enough: those arching brows above her eyes remain resolute, cheeks refuse to dimple, and her long, dark eyelashes don’t even dare to flutter. Nothing moves an inch.

You swallow hard. “You don’t have anywhere to be?”

“Manager told me to go straight to the room and read a book or something.”

“Then shouldn’t you go to your room and read a book or—”

“ Uhh-uh. No way.” A smirk and her eyes sharpen. “I’ve got the rest of my life to follow the rules.”

-

So, now—there you are, your jacket drawn over both your heads, a poor excuse of an umbrella. Holding open the door to the backseat of a cab for the most spectacularly gorgeous woman you’d ever known, the girl who shattered your heart into a million pieces and then some. In your pocket, a text message on your phone, curious about your flight home—the girl you’d been casually seeing for the past couple weeks—waits for a response.

Though truthfully, you haven’t a clue what you’re doing.

The ride to your apartment is mostly quiet, listening close to the sounds of rain against the windows and the occasional turn signal from the driver’s seat. And for the first time you’ve ever recognized, the silence between you makes you feel uneasy. You had a thousand questions burning a hole in the pocket of your heart and you didn’t even know where to begin. Those questions, they weren’t interested in her schedules, the places she’d been, the things she’d seen, her life in the limelight, how she’d eventually introduce herself to all the heroes and idols you’d known as a kid. In fact, it’s the same way a map that has too much information is effectively useless at helping you navigate. You needed to ask her where you were. Where you stood. Where you were going.

It’s been ages since you’d both had a girl in your apartment and the two of you weren’t immediately en route to your bedroom. You struggle to call back to how your parents might host a guest in your home.

“Yeji,” you yell from in front of your refrigerator, “can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”

“It’s a little late for caffeine don’t you think?” The cushions of your couch groan as Yeji collapses into them. “A beer would hit the spot if you have one though. Especially after today.”

You scan the contents of a mostly empty fridge and find it, raising your eyebrows at the six pack on the shelf in front of you, one beer already missing from its cardboard holder. It was mostly the thing you were hoping to avoid.

“It’s nice,” she says, grabbing the beer out of your hand and taking in the view of your apartment. “Cleaner than I expected too.”

“That’s not really a compliment now is it?”

Her shoulders shrug as she pops the tab of the drink and lifts it to her lips. A refreshed ‘ ah’ precedes her. “It does feel a little like I’m sitting in an IKEA showroom though.”

“Yeah. Well, guilty as charged I guess.”

She laughs, head on a swivel, taking note of—silently judging—your furnishings. “I mean you are probably the only person I know—” She stands, wandering through your apartment to the wall between your living room and your kitchen. “With a calendar that has no pictures, words, or anything.” She rifles its pages with her thumb. “It’s just a damn calendar. You don’t even mark it or anything.”

“It’s functional.”

“It’s weird.”

Rain continues to pelt down on your windows, permeating the brief silences between your conversations, but soon you can barely notice it. It becomes so natural the way you wrap yourself up in her stories, and hers in yours. And if the hour hand moving quickly about the face on your clock above the mantle was at all an indicator, neither of you had any deficiency of things to share.

Though still, there remained something noticeably off. You’d spent a lifetime listening to Yeji, and it was always so effortless the way she commanded your attention. But the nature of her speaking, it was although she were a machine struggling with a loose bolt or a stripped screw. See, it was the space between the stories that had your curiosity piqued. She’d start to tell you about subject A and move quickly into subject B and then before you knew it you were in subject C with no real rhyme or reason. You recognized the incongruity immediately, but it took a few beers and hours of listening to pinpoint the cause.

She’d start. Her voice soothing and relaxing. You’d both reminisce. And the moment the story began to find itself concerned with you, with the two of you, she’d swerve around it. Like a car trying to avoid a squirrel that foolishly darts across the highway.

It’s what makes it all the more surprising when she asks a simple question, “So—are you seeing anyone right now?”

You have to clear your throat before you can answer. “Kinda. On and off. You?”

“Yeah; kinda. On and off.” She sinks her gaze into her lap. “She nice?”

“She’s fine.”

“Good.” Her eyes, glistening up at you from under her lashes, find you again. “You deserve a nice girl.”

It had been one of those questions aching to leap off your heart and onto your tongue. And now that it had been asked—and so succinctly answered—you felt robbed of everything it was supposed to give you. A deafening silence fills the room. The clock ticks mercilessly and you listen again to the rain coming down on your windows.

You can feel it. You’d be shocked if she couldn’t feel it. That unceasing tension. Yeji stands, pulling the hem of her sweater around her thighs, selfishly hiding the curves of her hips along with it. “It’s late. I should probably get going.”

And then with hardly any flash or fanfare, she hugs you. Her arms refuse to linger and the purposeful gap between your chests remains obstinate and unmovable. You show her the door and she takes a long step through it. She smiles, her eyes creasing, but her mouth barely moves.

“Till next time,” you say, wondering when that might ever be.

“Till next time— good night.”

You wave. She waves back. And the door closes—the evening along with it.

That was it. Again. Sifting like sand through your fingers. So consistently she could just walk away from you and be done with it. Every time you’d imagined this miracle meeting in your head, it would start like it did. But then ultimately the two of you would always tear each other’s clothes off in frustration. So that two broken souls might ever become whole again.

But you know it now. Yeji was never broken. For as long as you’d ever known her, she was like a rocket, launching onto a journey to the furthest stars in the night sky. Face pointed away. Thoughts elsewhere. She never really looked at you. And because of that you often wept.

So far as you can tell, Yeji never loved you. A wish beyond your reach.

Your head hangs against the wall beside the door and you gaze at your feet, maybe hoping to find some comfort hidden away in the striped pattern on your socks. You consider for a moment simply just standing outside on the balcony, letting the rain soak you completely in your clothes.

A knock at your door holds you accountable for at least a moment longer.

You sigh. It’s unfair really. Cruel even. She stands in front of you again. Only this time her hair slightly damp, raindrop stains on the shoulders of her sweater. You feel the stitch on your heart—a delicate, haphazard patchwork of time—its last suture coming undone. And boy, does that hurt.

“Hey, sorry. I realized I have no idea how to call a taxi. Can you lend me a—”

It can’t be instantaneous. But you don’t quite know how it happens either. Something pushed you to drag her through that opening and your hands held Yeji’s face, backing her against the door, now shut. Her eyes become stuck on you and her lips part. If she says anything, it’s far too hard to hear beyond that dull drum of blood, beating loudly between your ears. A shared breath, slow and purposeful, fills your lungs and hers.

Boldly, without reservation, you leap. Thousands of kilometers apart, reduced to a distance known now only by breaths hot across your cheeks, you find her again.

It’s soft the way you kiss her, as though you hadn’t done it hundreds of times, more of a question than it could ever be an answer. Her lips are soft, cool and wet, unbelievably perfect. A breeze through your hair on a hot summer day. In fact, they’re everything you remember, even competing midst those memories you’d embellished. Your fingers run through the smooth locks of Yeji’s hair that bundle in your hands, cold to the touch. It quickly becomes a handle, a grip, tilting her head up toward you as you pull her tight into your chest.

Her lower lip quivers gently against yours, and in a single shuddering breath, gathers itself enough to kiss you back. Hands grabbing tight around your shoulders, she lets a soft cry sink into your mouth.

You could listen to her talk for hours. And you did. But you needed to hear her say it—the way her lips capture yours, the way she tells you she missed you. It’s not some grand romantic gesture. There is no sunset, or gentle call of the ocean waves, no extraordinary vista, no candlelit room to bathe you in its soft glow. There is only Yeji, and that alone makes it perfect.

Her voice falters against you; the sound it makes whenever she’d need to hold back a tear or two. “ Thank god the dumb taxis are so confusing…”

You kiss her again. That’s all you know. The only way to possibly make right of this strange world.

It’s wild. Pressed firmly against your face is hers—the one you couldn’t stop seeing; the one that demanded so selfishly the attention of cameras and eyes around the world; only it had managed to seize your heart so very long ago. The roundness in her cheeks spreads around you and her nose struggles against yours. You hold her lips tight, the ever persistent worry they might disappear from you again forever biting at your thoughts.

Even though it’s not within your means to fall for her any harder than you have, you do. You always do.

“Mnph…” A quiet smack arrives on your lips. Another one. She starts to find an old rhythm, the way she used to kiss you when she was angry, when she was overwhelmed, or whenever she was just plain wound up. You grab a fistful of a sweater and turn her away from the door, stepping slowly into the foyer of your apartment.

The only thing more desperate than the lips pressed against yours becomes Yeji’s fingers, clutching tightly against the fabric of your shirt. Hums and moans pour from her throat to meet yours. She sways and sinks, leaning against the closet door you’d left open in the middle of the hallway. Her mouth tightens and you recognize the shy smile that fills across it.

Her cheeks, rosy now, burn bright against you and her voice rasps. “ Don’t you dare go anywhere.”

You had nowhere to be. Hell, you were already home. It’s confusing when you think about it. So you choose not to as best you can. Instead, you tease gently at the backs of her thighs, the roughness of denim meeting your fingertips. It’s Pavlovian perhaps, the way she jumps into your arms at your touch—never forgetting those secret traditions shared between you.

Her arms around your neck and her thighs over your elbows, you grip as timidly as might ever be possible onto the two handfuls of Yeji’s ass filling out between your fingers. Though you realize quick that whatever worries you harbor still are unnecessary, that strange boundary between clearly crossed. A soft moan, and her tongue begins to invade your mouth, marking and claiming the space she determined might just as well belong to her.

There’s this instant familiarity your hands find on Yeji’s body. Her svelte frame beneath that baggy sweater is the same perfect shape you’d held onto god knows how many times. The way she kisses you, pulling and massaging at the swell of your lip, it’s as though you’d never missed a beat, as though it had been Yeji’s kisses alone you found comfort in for the last five years. Though now, the flavor of her lipstick is noticeably different. It’s far more muted than the cheap fruity stuff she used to buy, but you recognize that taste of need and want off her lips still all the same.

Your fingers squeeze at the soft, pliable flesh that stretches all along Yeji’s thighs and rear, still protected by that sturdy pair of jeans—an obstacle now to be overcome. Feet and legs swing behind you as you step your haphazard union down the hallway. With any luck, she won’t knock any of the pictures or posters off your walls.

A light bite at your lip sends a surge of fiery pain down your neck. At that, you push Yeji’s back to the wall, another door behind her rattling in its frame and a soft moan escaping her chest.

She whispers against your cheek, “This your bedroom?”

“No. Not quite. Laundry.”

“ Ah. Well, as nice as that sounds; I’ve already got a washer at home—isn’t there some place that’s better for—ya know—the two of us?”

Thoughts stuck on the idea of Yeji sitting atop yours, hers, any washing machine and getting herself off makes your pants tighten. You groan softly, repositioning her weight in your hands and pulling her away from the door. “Bed or sofa?’

"You tell me.”

You consider it for just a moment, unable to remember the state you’d left your room in before your trip. Is your bed made? Are your clothes put away? No idea. So you don’t tell her. You showher. Holding her tight, you navigate a brief waddle into your living room and your hands release her from their grips, sending her into the cushions of the couch beneath you.

“Really? On the leather—”

“Don’t care,” you stop the complaint before it has time to marinate in your head. You knew she was right.

Her voice rattles at a faux concern, “ what would IKEA think?”

“They’d be wondering who the two good-looking people on their couch are. Or how they got a free promotion out of you—who knows.”

She stifles a laugh and motions her hands to your shoulders. “Come here, you.”

She fits underneath your weight—your arms around her shoulders, and her legs entwined amidst yours—with such incredible ease. You sink into a kiss against the pale, tender skin that you find beneath her jaw. It’s delicate, easy to bruise, and it begs for a roughness only your lips could ever hope to provide. The more-than-welcome touch coaxes a moan, breathy and sudden, from her chest—a sound you’d only heard in your thoughts for so long.

Her fingers tease at the hem of your shirt, pulling it up along your chest and off over your head. “I missed you.”

“You have no idea.”

“Well—maybe some idea,” she says, a hand quietly brushing against the hardness she finds at the front of your pants.

You trail up along her neck, the ridge of her jaw, until again you find your way back to the swell of Yeji’s soft, plump, ever-so-kissable lips. Your knee between her thighs, pushing her legs around you, legs that wrap and hook onto the backs of yours, knocks on the rise of her jeans. She lets out a quiet whimper, the sound reverberating through your chest.

There’s this thing about the way Yeji kisses you. Her hands run along your scalp, burying themselves in your hair. And she steals kisses off your lips with such an immediate urgency, with a hunger of someone who’d been starved for so long. You’d have chalked it up to the lapse of time you spent apart, years spent finding, failing love in different places, but she has always been like this—needy.

“ Ugh,” she sighs, amusing her hands on the shape of your chest, your back, your neck. She’s careful not to let the pointed tips of her fingernails scratch deeply at your skin, lightly caressing her way down to where your pants sit on your waist. Though you admire the thought, you had no intention of letting this woman undress you first.

Defiant, you lift your lips off hers. And a suspicious expression fills in the sharp features of her face. You can feel the skepticism building in those eyes that look you over.

“What’s the matter?” she asks, quietly trying to pull your shoulders back down to where she wanted you.

“I, uh—” You give your throat a good, solid clearing. “I’m going to take your clothes off. Right now.”

Yeji raises an eyebrow, scooting up and resting on an elbow. “Talk about forward.”

“No real use pussyfooting around it now.”

Yeji twists her lip between her teeth and then slowly, she draws a line with her finger from your belly button, along your stomach and up your sternum until it holds your chin, making you look down your nose at her. “Someone teach you how to finally be direct with your words while I was gone?”

Maybe. Maybe not. You’d spent a good deal of time now practically inoculated to the fear of rejection from other girls—considering you’d already seen the worst of it. “Something like that.”

“Then tell me Mr. Straight-shooter. What do you want to take off first?”

“First?” you say, letting a smirk drag at your mouth. “Well—no shoes on the sofa. House rule.”

One thud, and then another as Yeji kicks off her boots onto the floor behind her. She keeps the intensity in her eyes locked on you— smoldering. “What else?”

“The sweater has gotta go.”

“Only if you promise to keep me warm—”

“Easy—deal.”

Yeji squirms out from underneath you while the sound of rain continues beating the side of your apartment. Your hands offer what is probably unnecessary help, grabbing onto the hem of her sweatshirt, scrunching it up along the toned muscles of her stomach. And after a short struggle, off over the top of her head, you reveal her slender, gorgeous figure.

She refuses to lose you in her cat-like eyes still for even a second. Even while she airs the garment out between her hands, neatly folds it, and gently sets it down onto your coffee table.

It ought to be criminal to be as charming and beautiful as Yeji is. She’s got these delicate collarbones, shoulders that round off the tops of her arms and run the distance to the skin on her neck you yourself couldn’t get enough of—there’s a tiny freckle here and there, none of them as prominent as the one that proudly sits on the bridge of her nose—though there’s nothing she has that no one else doesn’t, it’s the way everything manages to come together, like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle, lightly fitting itself in place—it’s simply perfect.

“ You’re staring.”

You blink yourself out of that momentary trance before letting yourself laugh about it. Clearing your throat, you smile and return the jeer, “ Yeji —absolutely I am.”

Standing herself from the couch, she smiles at you with her eyes. Her fingers tease under the waistband of her jeans—the biggest challenge of what all was left—and she asks, “I’m guessing you want these too?”

“I mean look—you know how it is. House rules and all.”

“Those pesky rules again, huh.” She laughs quietly to herself. “Whoever it is that came up with them—I’d like to give them a piece of my mind.”

You simply shrug. That nothing I can do about it message clear enough as she begins to unbutton the top of her pants.

The fact that she has to wiggle her hips to peel the tight denim from her waist and down her thighs is a show in of itself. Inch by inch, slowly, meticulously, she reveals her legs to you—long and unending, toned and sculpted now in that manner that only the physical regimen of someone like her might yield. A pair of high cut athletic underwear—gray and pilling at its edges—hardly matches the navy nylon bra cupping Yeji’s soft breasts against her chest. But it’s not like you were going to complain about it. After all, she’d been traveling. Not to mind the fact you’d have to be insane to find anything worth complaining over in the visage standing in front of you.

She saunters over to where you now sit on the sofa, each step every bit as deliberate as the last. You can’t help but bring your face against her stomach as Yeji arrives in front of you. With your lips you can feel the goosebumps that rise atop the smooth skin across her abs, your kisses running the edge of her bottom-most ribs.

Her fingers stroke through your hair, and she lets her voice reach down to your ears. “Hey, I’m cold.”

Those soft, ephemeral hairs that stand on end along her stomach, her back and the skin along her thighs corroborated the statement. However between her legs, where the darkened gray fabric hugged tightly against her entrance, where you could make out the shape of her lips imprinted into it, she was anything butcold.

Kissing her stomach again with lips that drag against the taut, velvety skin they find all over it, you place your fingers against that warmth. It’s instant—the quick spasm her diaphragm makes, knocking on your forehead, and Yeji gasps for air.

You follow the long, endless curves of her leg until it arrives on a perfect handful of ass that spills through the gaps in your fingers—fingers that tuck and dive into the back of her underwear, the thin fabric easy to twist and manipulate. Delighted, you listen close to how Yeji pulls fast breaths through her chest as you start to tease her body.

Your voice nearly chokes as you tell her what both of you already so clearly understood.

“Do you have any idea how bad I want you?”

Yeji’s eyes lock with yours, her chin tucked against her chest. “Show me.”

Now, it’s important to mention again that this girl had left you absolutely devastated. In the years since she’d left, you wouldn’t have described yourself as particularly loose or rakish, but you weren’t ever one to turn down an opportunity at finding a momentary comfort in the embrace of another either. And the first chances came fast. Home for winter break along with everyone else, suffocating in nostalgia—a handful of girls you’d gone to school with would only see Yeji’s sudden disappearance as something to celebrate, a long awaited opportunity. It was shocking how fast they pounced on you.

It always felt good—for a second. And it’d wear off fast as they spent more time than you ever cared for snuggling up to you as if the sex was anything to write home about. The worst was when all you wanted to do was turn over in the cheap hotel sheets and they’d start to ask you a million questions: How was university going? Are your grades good? Do you have a girlfriend? What’s your blood type? Do you have a career in mind? How much money do you think you’ll make? Do you think my boobs are too small? Should we get breakfast in the morning? When will I see you again?—it was endless.

You put up with it for the most part. It helped you forget if at least for a moment what a shitty hand of cards you’d been dealt. There was a predictable formula too—you’d meet up for drinks, and before the waiter could take orders for seconds, you and her were making out on the curb, waiting for a cab. The hotel room lights would flip on (or stay off, depending on how horny and desperate you were). And you’d begin that necessary formality of going down on her—so that she might let you use her as you pleased. Always mechanical, robotic, transactional.

But Yeji’s legs resting on your shoulders, your face inches away from the damp fabric covering her hole, you wanted nothing other than to take your time.

It’s not too unlike the way you’d pluck at keys on the piano. Some touches quiet and pleasing to the ear, some loud and heavy and boisterous—you tease your fingers around the ‘V’ of cloth between her thighs, some notes playing soft subtle whimpers and others a lilting moan.

“ Mmmph… ” Yeji raises her hips gently, the backs of her knees rubbing at your shoulders. Impatient—rightfully so—she lifts the edge of her underwear, pulling it aside and offering you her glistening entrance. She’s wet, sopping and needy, and she’s begging for you.

Your kisses continue along the inside of a thigh, lingering longer and longer against the creamy skin that leads you to her heat. That addictive smell of sweat, lust and excitement fills your nose alongside the long breath you draw through your chest.

The way your palm brushes against her swollen clit makes Yeji shudder and jolt her hips—your finger diving down between the cleft of her bare lips to where she was really just utterly soaked. You trade your mouth across the gap to the other thigh you’d neglected, but Yeji can only reward you with her frustration—" please.“

Maybe it’s because she’s always had this intense look about her—like she could take on the world with one hand behind her back and win —and it’s not like you haven’t noticed the way her company plays it up either. The girl you knew who was always fierce, plucky—lionhearted—the face looking at you now, eyes down her nose over the top of two navy clad breasts, it’s so soft. Even those sharp eyes, so often beguiling, had become tender—filling fast with lust and want and need and desire—like she’s pleading for you to save her, to rescue her, in the ways only your mouth and fingers might ever know how.

"Please— I need it,” she rasps.

“ Yeji,” you weave into the sounds of her whines. “Trust—I’m gonna take good care of you.”

Your mouth hovers against her. And just above where your fingers play and tease at her folds, your lips part. It’s not on purpose, and it’d be a little cruel if it were, but a hot, wet breath spills lax from lungs, off your tongue and out of your mouth. It crashes and collides, rolling and tumbling about the aching skin around her hole. It’s not possible to touch someone less if you tried—and it brings Yeji to wit’s end.

She sucks a sudden, whistling bout of air past her teeth. Her fingers thread themselves through your hair and pull you into her. Your nose meets her hip, tickled by the soft patch of neatly trimmed hair she saves for you, and you watch her head roll back on her shoulders. A reveal of the raw, tender skin you’d all but bruised along her neck and her whole body sighs, her body saying, without speaking, finally.

Yeji hums in delight as you take care of her. There’s your tongue, brushing up and down the hoods and folds of delicious skin that struggle to contain the scorching heat that burns fast between them—your hands, one teasing the narrow depths at the tightness just beyond her entrance, the other holding her hip, firm, to keep it from evading you—your unapologetic lips, grasping and sucking around her clit—your tongue again tapping and caressing it.

“ Fuck,” she hisses.

A word that is so usually rough and abhorrent and grizzled, and it’s never sounded so elegant. You can only imagine how bottled a profanity like it must be—there’s such oppressive decorum to follow when you’re on television, soundbites repeating like a million broken records across the internet, a voice that speaks for all to hear. And that goes doubly so for someone like her.

You dive into her, hard, and she rewards you with the airy, sing-song moans that fill your apartment, meshing themselves against the unyielding pitter-patter of rain.

“Oh my god—you’ve got some real talent.” A thick, strained laughter leaves her throat and Yeji collapses back into the cushions of the sofa, brown leather now dark and staining with her wetness, a problem for tomorrow. Perhaps unfixable; worst case scenario, you could always get a new couch.

Rain hits hard against your home. It mixes a delightful track to your onslaught and a finger brings Yeji to her knees.

“Please, please, please—keep doing that.”

It doesn’t have to search far, the soft pad of your fingertip finding that familiar stretch of dangerously sensitive skin. You curl at the knuckle—and Yeji becomes an extension of your will—her hips quake, relaxing only when you do. Your finger flexes. You tap, rub and tease. Each time a reaction, more wild and unrestrained than the last.

“F-Fuck. Just right— there,” she squeals.

Her thighs wrap tight against your ears, all those sounds of your apartment quickly mute and muffled. The fruits of your labor pool, run wet, beading into droplets at the bottom of your chin.

“ Please do—not—stop,” she begs, breathing fast and heavy. Her eyes find you again, lip twisted mercilessly between those perfect teeth. And at a quiver that shakes and pulls her muscles taut—she closes her eyes and she growls through gritted teeth, “ you’re gonna make me fucking cum.”

There were a lot of memories you struggle now to piece together. Like having dropped a stack of papers or a pile of laundry, each time you bend down to pick something up, you’ve lost another in its stead. It’s become its own awful tragedy in a sense. But if there’s anything imprinted so permanently into the deep inner workings of your thoughts—you remember when Yeji cums, she cums hard.

Entirely overwhelmed, Yeji pushes your tongue away from her overstimulated bud. Her fingers grip tight at your hair, and she locks and clenches her body around your fingers. That twisted, unrestrained expression, eyes clenching and lips curling into a beautiful ‘O,’ she finds the release she so desperately needs.

All kinds of sounds, full of watery, anguished breaths, and whimpered moans leak through the seal her thighs make around your ears. You recognize a few words, a lot of them curses and profane mewling—nonsense mostly—but just as readily, your name gets thrown haphazardly into that lustful mix. Perhaps for good measure.

It’s only once she’s let those waves of pleasure dissipate through her entire body, squeezing and gripping you in the vice her legs make around you, that she lets herself relax and releases you to speak.

“Well that was something,” you tease, wiping your mouth and chin with the back of a wrist, “been a while?”

“Oh—come—on,” she says, heavy breaths still laboring to catch up to her, “don’t be cute. It’s not my fault if you’ve been practicing.”

You smirk, lifting yourself up and finally freeing your legs of those stiff pants that were struggling impossibly to keep your cock calm and demure. “So? What now?”

Yeji returns herself to a halfway decent posture, the sweat on her back sticking to the leather as she does so. “What do you think?”

“ Hmm.” Shuffling your pants free from your thighs you tap at your chin, playful. “How many guesses are you giving me?”

“Zero. Get those things off. I’m gonna ride the fuck out of you.”

“Yeah?” A bout of laughter forces your smile. “I can’t help but wonder what people might think if they heard ITZY’s fearless leader talking like that.”

Standing, she slides that pair of soaked underwear down off her legs, and in a quick practiced motion, hooks an ankle behind yours. A push and you’re sent tumbling into the couch.

“What? You don’t think they’d be cranking one out to it?”

“The girls or the boys?”

She smirks. “ Both. Though I imagine it would be all together kinda frustrating, huh?” She puzzles, straddling your legs. “Never being able to actually fuck me.”

It’s unclear to you if she always preferred being on top because she forced it out of you, or if it’s because you let her—but that’s how it goes. Your cock is already at full attention, standing proud like it wanted Yeji to know it needed her. It twitches noticeably as she rubs her pussy against it.

“What’s the matter? Been a while?”

“Yeah, because it’s so easy to get off on a business trip.”

“ Mnh-nh. I don’t want to hear excuses.” She teases the head of your cock between the soaking lips of her pussy, kissing your tip with her heat.

Her lips purse, her eyes shut and she blows a purposeful breath of cool air out of her chest, out the narrow hole her mouth makes—an enticing shape you’ll have trouble getting out of your head—as she begins to take you into her, adjusting to the shape of your cock.

You both groan, two wildly different noises, but the same heavenly feeling communicated. She holds the base of your shaft steady with her fingers as you’re pushed past the muscles clamping around you. It’s warm and it’s wet and it’s fucking unbelievably tight. It’s enough to make you feel dizzy, stars appearing in your eyelids.

“ Phew.” Yeji drags her knees toward, sitting back on your cock. “That always feels so fucking good. Don’t worry I’ll go slow.”

“Yeah, sure—but it has been a while, right?”

Leaning forward, she smiles against your cheek. “If that’s what you want me to say, then yeah—sure, it’s been a long while.”

“I’m ignoring that.” You reach your hands up onto her waist, the soft curve of her hips making for two perfect handles. “I’m ignoring you.”

She laughs, the melodic sound again filling your head. “That’s fine—but I’m not going to let you ignore this.”

There’s this moment, her ass suspended high above your hips, the tip of your cock barely held in place by her pussy’s grip. You’ve felt it before on roller coasters mostly, at the peak of the tallest drop—the car hanging in suspense, the strangest knot twisting in your stomach. Of course, the moment doesn’t last long. No, not when Yeji slides herself down along your length in the quickest of motions, the base of your cock kissing those wet lips again.

A sound, not particularly describable or even repeatable punches through your throat, and your eyes widen.

And then she does it again.

Quick, your voices melt into one another, the pleasure that rips through your thoughts—from the entire length of your cock buried deeper into her cunt than either of you can pretend to not notice. It’s immaculate.

But it’s fucking dangerous.

You’d noticed them before—those legs that she’d worked on for years, built and perfected by hours in the gym. See, she lifts herself up on your length again, some crude combination of cum, spit and sweat leaving a sticky trail between your thighs. A soft moan announces the end of the motion and then without remorse or hesitation, she finds herself flush against your hips again. It’s tiring no doubt, but you find Yeji relentless.

She brushes her hair out of her face. And those eyes–smoldering with lust–study the indecent expressions you make as she impales herself repeatedly on your cock. Her hands find a home on the muscles above your breast. And the reasonably flat support gives her everything she needs to lift and roll her hips against you with little resistance.

It’s not the angle, the depth, the tightness, or the technique— and god, does she know exactly what she’s doing—it’s the damn speed. Even when you were both eighteen, cutting classes at the end of your schedules, a pair of horny teenagers aptly described as rabbits, she had never fucked you like this.

“Fucking christ, Yeji.” You grit your teeth and squeeze hard on her hips, bracing for impact on each downward thrust. “So much for slow— you trying to kill me?”

“Well I was thinking about it. And I changed my mind.” Bouncing away still, eagerly taking your length in and out of her tight hole, she sits herself up and reaches her hands behind her back, unclasping the navy bra across her chest. “It might be better if you just cum now, since you’re so pent up—you might actually be able to enjoy yourself on the next one.”

The straps come down over her shoulders and the bra lands somewhere in your room. It sounded like the floor. You don’t really care though, not while Yeji is lifting your hands from her hips and placing them on those two beautifully soft mounds that hang shyly off chest.

Frustrated perhaps with the shyness in your touch, she palms her hands over yours, squeezing and massaging at her own breasts until you find the touch she craves all on your own.

You groan again, loudly enough to make a smug smile stretch across Yeji’s cheeks. “Then tell me—is it a bad time of the month? Where do you want me to cum?”

She leans forward, breath hot against your ear. “ Anywhere you want.”

At that, you reach a hand around her, palming the back of her neck and holding her tight against you. The suddenness of it makes her yelp and squirm, but you hold her firm, and she realizes exactly what it is you need as you slide yourself lower on the sofa, a new angle with an entirely unrealized potential waiting for you there.

“That’s it—” she gasps, struggling in the strength of your grip, “make this pussy yours —use me.”

Her body flush against yours, you hear every little gasp, every sultry moan that leaks off her lips. It drives you faster, more wild and feckless on each thrust, burying yourself hard into the heat of her cunt. Your throbbing shaft inside of her—it feels as though she was made with your cock in mind, made for you, designed —a perfect fit, the way she wraps and grasps around you. Without hesitation, you settle your hips into a rhythm that you know beyond a shadow of doubt will send you hurdling into those irreversible triggers of your orgasm.

“ Mph… ”“ Your thighs slap against hers, that sound of wet skin on wet skin filling your apartment and drowning out the rain. Your cock disappears so neatly between her legs, and your hips move immediately to bury it there again, desperate for her warmth, her tightness. Beads of sweat pool at your back, and every time you should shift your weight, you become stuck to the leather sofa beneath you.

Yeji’s words continue to pour into your ear, though they too seem to be growing disjointed and bewildered at the motion between your hips. Her shoulders collapse against you and her face buries into the cushion aside yours.

"Yeji—I cant,” you sigh, and your chest shudders in anticipation. “I’m going to fucking—cum in this—”

“No!” her voice cries, muffled into the leather of the couch beside you, “It feels—so deep— I’m close!”

“Yeji,” you groan, “ please.”

Don’t you fucking dare,“ she husks, a voice desperate for you, "don’t— You can’t cum, you can’t— fuck!” Writhing again, she lifts herself on her elbows, observing how your face twists and contorts beneath her as if her own wasn’t every bit as wrought and agitated. “ Babe! Your cock feels too—fucking amazing!”

She grabs your cheeks with her hand, pulling your attention away from her breasts shaking wildly, jostled about by your thrusts. Those eyes—they hold you deeply, begging you to hold on.

“You’re asking for a fucking lot here, Yeji I swear—”

“ No—fuck,” she gasps. Eyebrows twist. Her eyes shut tight. And her lips mouth the words that might release you, I’m cumming again.

It’s always like this.

She leads, you follow.

And it’s far and away too much for you to handle—the gorgeous woman on top of you, straining an expression only meant for you to see—it’s just too much. Plundering the depths of her pussy for pleasure you didn’t even know could wrack you like it does, you follow her into that unthinkable bliss. Her mouth hangs open, her muscles lock again and she quivers and quakes around you.

Your hands slap down hard onto her ass cheeks, searching desperately for a brief reprieve of something other than the warm, tight cunt that’s been rocking your thoughts senseless. You press your fingers into her creamy skin, hard enough that it’s sure to leave a mark, and in a thundering moment of pure, unbridled lust, you let it all out. Honestly, your thoughts are all so crudely whiplashed by everything that you make little notice of how much hot cum your thrusts pump up into the deepest reaches of Yeji’s pussy. It’s already something spectacular as it arrives, erupting unabashedly from your throbbing cock, but then it just keeps going. It fills around you, an unthinkable lubricant against the way her walls clamp and squeeze around you. And then you feel it, dripping and leaking out of her hole and onto your thighs.

A gasp bellows from your chest and your voice, raw and hoarse, punctuates the heavy panting between your crumpled, tired bodies. “ Fuck. Me. Yeji.”

-

Prudence would’ve been closing the curtains, turning into your pillow and catching whatever was left of the night to rest before you’d wake for work tomorrow. So, a simple fade to black. But you’d spent years searching and seeking for what is now between your hands—if there was any mistake you’d made, it was that you hadn’t kissed her sooner.

You remember it now, the way your family would host guests: there of course was that initial cup of tea, or whatever could be cooked up quickly in the kettle, but a tour of the house had always followed close in its wake.

And so a tour you two ventured. The rest of living room (though you worry about how thin the walls are you share with your neighbor), the kitchen, the bathroom, the laundry room. Any place with a surface you could either bend her over or sit her on really—until finally you two might enter your bedroom and fuck like a pair of functioning adults.

You lean back, grasping the bed sheets between your fingers. A heavy sigh pulls at your shoulders while Yeji runs her tongue up along the side of your cock. She’s got this wicked touch, her fingers wrapping ever so perfectly around your shaft, knowing just what firmness will send you reeling.

“ Shit,” you hiss, watching Yeji’s tongue swirl the head of your cock before her lips swallow it whole.

She’s methodical. Her tongue slips and darts beneath the sensitive skin under your shaft as she takes you in her mouth further and further. And in excruciating increments she nuzzles her nose against your waist, eyes just beginning to water. She’ll hold it—hold you, cock filling the lovely sleeve that is her throat—and then release. Just like that.

“Yeah—I don’t care what you say.” You run your hand along the side of her head, her makeshift ponytail of smooth, silky hair now a perfect grip for your fingers. “You didn’t learn how to do that from those women’s magazines.”

She pulls herself off your shaft, cock popping out of her mouth. Hands stacked, one on top of the other, she abuses you with that slobbery layer of saliva in between her fingers. Her eyes poke out, smiling over the top of it all. “I’m new to this— I promise.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So.” Belly against the mattress, she pulls her knees forward, swaying her ass behind her head where you could see it. It’s a whole spectacle with this girl. She taps and teases at the tip of your cock, amused at the precum that sticks to the pad of her thumb, before again finding you with her eyes.

“ So,” you repeat back.

“How do you want to cum?”

You lean your head back on your shoulders, eyes up at the ceiling—a break. “If you’re not careful, it’s going to be down your throat.”

“Well that’d be a waste.”

“Oh yeah? How you figure?”

“When you could do it inside my cunt?” She narrows her eyes and raises an eyebrow, hands gingerly pumping at your shaft. “Yeah. A waste.”

Yeji’s tongue and fingers work and tease in perfect union along your length. And you blow a steady breath through your lungs to rally your thoughts. “Let me think.”

“You’re good, take a breather. I’ve got a nice, beautiful cock here to keep me entertained.” And like that, she simply swallows you again.

Her drool continues to spill unapologetic down your shaft, catching itself between Yeji’s fingers and spreading out everywhere along your sensitive skin. A hand twisting, pumping—she has you so effortlessly figured out.

You help her head along as you puzzle about the many possibilities in front of you. Holding her hair, guiding her slack jaw and perfect lips up and down your throbbing cock feels—and you’re a little ashamed to say it—feels like using a toy. A toy that’s hot and hums and vibrates as you fuck it. And that’s exactly what you want to do.

“Yeah, I think—I want this mouth Yeji.”

Before she can protest, you guide her again down your shaft, the perfect seal of her lips parting around your tip and swallowing your length. She glides and slips up and down you, the tiniest sounds of her throat struggling to accommodate you reaching your ears.

With her hand pulling yours away, Yeji pushes herself off you, your cock again leaving her lips with a pop.

“Well aren’t you selfish.” She pushes gently at your chest with her fingers, “Let me at least take care of you.”

You’d been catching yourself staring at her lips all evening, the way they curve and pull themselves up into that irresistible bowing figure—you’d had them running through your thoughts long before today—and now they’re all over your cock. She kisses you, caresses you, exploring every inch of vulnerable skin she can find all along your shaft.

The brief moment exists each time she swallows you, just the second before her lips part and seal around you. A hot, wet breath, spiraling and barely in control, wraps itself around you as her mouth hovers just over the tip of your aching cock—a blanket of warmth surrounding it. She takes you, all of you—again.

If it’s not the tightness of her throat or the doubled effort of ten slender fingers all fighting over one another to try and to send you to the edge, it’s that wet, smooth tongue. With it, Yeji brings your hips forward, bucking into the air above your sheets. A simple lick and you groan. Flattening it and adding it to the friction you find at the back of her throat? You’ve become putty in her hands.

“Fuck… Yeji, that feels incredible.”

She hums a self-satisfied note, buzzing it all down your shaft, before pulling herself off your cock and finding you with her eyes once more.

“Tell me what you want,” she says, holding your skin taut with her fingers and pumping a tight, squelching fist at the top of your cock.

You laugh, shaking your head. “Yeji—”

“No— tell me.”

It’s the heart beating in your throat, it’s the sloppy noise her fingers make as she tries to pull every last ounce of cum out of your cock, it’s the sound of the god damn fucking rain hitting your windows—you whisper beneath it all, “I want to fucking cum in your mouth Yeji.”

She lifts an eyebrow, cruelly pulling her hands away from your cock. “And then?”

“And then you’re gonna swallow it.”

It all happens so fast. She takes you again into her mouth, fucking you with her throat and tongue—your hands are in her hair, finding the exact contact and warmth you need—and you struggle to do anything beyond holding your breath and closing your eyes tight.

“ Mnph.”

Your voice spits, “ Fuck—”

“ Mnmnph.”

While you cum inside Yeji’s mouth, into the wonderful shape of her throat, she coughs and sputters, struggling to hold you in her grip, fingers splayed wide against your hips. You can see a good amount of your orgasm almost immediately leak from her lips, spilling down her chin and staining the sheets of your bed—again, tomorrow’s problem.

You grab her Kleenex, water, and anything she might really now need (a good hug more than anything).

Nighttime routines, finding her a pair of pajamas—ones that fit loosely on your body already mind you—a trip to the bathroom, and you’re both brushing your teeth, staring at each other’s naked reflection when it really hits you—and together, you just start laughing. Those contagious giggles and bouts of laughter that make you remember just how much you missed the girl who’d forever been your best friend, the girl you loved.

The two of you are quick to find the blankets on your bed, the comfort beneath them. Arms untangle from each other, a quick kiss and a reach for the night stand, Yeji allows a complete darkness into your room.

“ Till next time,” she whispers into your ear.

-

The rain had finally stopped, but that doesn’t mean the sun harbored any intention of coming out. It was always kind of stubborn like that.

Rolling out of bed, you’re exhausted, mentally and physically. But you’re not sixteen anymore; you couldn’t fake a cough and tell your mom you were running a fever, take an indulgent day off. So—work it was.

Slacks come on, a dress shirt stuffed hastily into them, and you look over your shoulder to see Yeji’s more or less unidentifiable shape bundled beneath the blankets she’d spent all night stealing from your side of the bed.

“Yeji,” you call out.

A soft groan marks the extent of her response as you watch her hand stretch into the air before falling defeated back against your mattress.

“I don’t know where, but—I’m sure you have somewhere to be.” You draw the curtains open wide to your room, particularly dissatisfied by just how little light it earns you.

You fish from your suitcase a tie and the top half of your suit before finding your way to the bathroom. When you’re brushing your teeth, you again watch Yeji’s reflection stumble across the mirror, rubbing at her eyes. It took her little time to cop one of your sweatshirts. And you begin to wonder how many of yours you’ve seen taken up like this—now only to be never seen again.

“Good morning,” she says, blinking at you.

Even in her least put together state, hair tousled and eyes sleepy, she possesses a certain charm that you struggle to put into any words beyond the obvious ones— she’s cute.

“Man.” She looks at your reflection in the mirror–the marks along your neck. “I really roughed you up good, huh.”

Usually the tie around your neck was enough to cover up those lip-shaped bruises on your Adam’s apple. You pull at the knot, the silky fabric sliding through your fingers. It’s probably optimistic to think another attempt at tying it might yield better results, but you haven’t all that much choice.

“Nope.” Yeji hides her grin with a closed fist, her other hand hanging off your shoulder. “You can still definitely see them.”

“Well, shit.” A heavy sigh leaves your chest as your hands find your hips. “How bad is it?”

You turn from the mirror, searching for any reassurance in those soft, dark eyes. But the muted laugh, that painfully smug smile, those mischievous hands sneaking around your waist— it’s bad.

“Yeji. I can’t—” You grab onto her hips, trying to stem the flow of laughter that pours from her chest. “ Yeji.”

Grinning, “ gotcha.”

You roll your eyes back to your reflection. “I can’t go to work like this.”

Yeji takes a second to think through her response, which makes the solution that ends up coming off her tongue even less impressive. “Then don’t.”

“ Hah. I bet you think you’re clever.”

“I do.” She runs her fingers through her hair, head tilting and eyes looking up at you. You wish she was just a little less dangerous. “What all is a day off going to do to you? You stamp visas for a living. Remember?”

And so for about a week, the two of you would run through a variation of this same conversation every morning. If it were a test in temperance, you failed it every time. It was sex, it was sleeping, it was cheap take out, it was more sex, but it was also just a lot of time to sit and talk. Like you used to.

Yeji wipes the sweat off her brow and lifts herself off your hips, her nude body cuddling up alongside you, her head resting on your chest. That soft voice of hers again lands perfectly in your ears, “You know what’s crazy?”

“That whiskey is made from wheat or rye?”

“Well, no—” Her chin turns on your chest to look you in the eyes. “ What?”

You chuckle. “It’s nothing.”

She takes a beat to regather her thoughts. “I was going to say I felt awful for years about it.” A soft sigh moves her whole body, the cool breath landing on your chin. “But I never doubted for a second—I knew I’d find you.”

You puzzle it through your thoughts. “How’d you figure?”

“Well—because I love you.”

Easy, effortless, straightforward—the words spill from her mouth. You wonder for a second if perhaps you were mid-sip a cup of nostalgia instead, burying yourself in memories that never existed. But the soft touch of her hair against your chest, the way her face rises and falls as your chest draws breath, the sweat still lingering and stuck between your bodies—it’s all too real.

Your voice, watery and choked, manages to push a breath through your throat, “I know I can be a cynic—but that’s not really a whole lot to put faith in.”

“Maybe. But you said it too.”

Your eyes widen and your brow furrows. “When?”

“Couple years ago now. By text—because you’re an asshole.”

The memory of it, sorrowful for as long you can remember, comes crashing back to you. “You—you never even opened it.”

“I didn’t need to—not a whole lot else getting said in a text message at three in the morning. On New Year’s no less.”

You sit in a brief silence, confounded by the old wound. The feeling of her fingertips caressing the skin atop your chest provokes a question, “But then why not respond?”

“You think reading it would’ve made it any easier on me?” She reaches again for the night stand, flipping out the lights from your room with the switch. “What was I supposed to tell you? Suffer in silence and wait for me?”

“Yeji. I’d have done it.”

There’s a brief quiet as she moves back into the bed, only the sounds of her shuffling about reaching your ears. You feel her face press against yours in the dark, hot tears streaming down her cheek. “ But would you do it still?”

3 years ago on October 23, 2022 at 3:58 am

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