smoke slow

Four days before your wedding, your ex is watching you smoke a cigarette in the parking lot. 

It’s not like it’s a purposeful thing. You’ve been sitting in your car with the windows down and the sunroof open wide for the past hour, give or take. Lately you’ve taken up the habit of going through your own Instagram in an attempt to see what your life looks like from the outside. The verdict is: gorgeous, enviable, perfect. Your smiling face and your fiancé’s smiling face. You at your bachelorette party; you and that huge fucking ring on your finger. You’ve made it all the way to the engagement photos when you look up and see Kim Gaeul standing in front of your car.

“Hey,” she says. 

You don’t scream but it’s close. You flinch so badly your wrist jostles into the horn. 

“Whoa,” Gaeul says. It’s past midnight. Under the light pouring out from the front of the hotel her hair looks darker than you remember. Longer, too. But it’s been three years; that’s a given. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to - sorry.” 

She’s smiling like something’s funny. Even in the dark you can see the sharklike flash of teeth. You wait until she steps up to your window before you say: “I didn’t think you were coming.” 

“You knew I was coming,” Gaeul says. “I RSVPed. There’s literally no way you didn’t know.”

You have nothing to say to that. You must be making some sort of bitchy face because now Gaeul is looking at you with the same grin she wore back in college when she used to ruffle your hair and call you difficult, call you baby. 

“Same hotel, though?” she continues. She might be staring at your mouth or maybe just the cigarette. “Kind of a wild coincidence.” 

She doesn’t believe in coincidences; she’s waiting for you to tell her this. Most likely so she can say something flirtatious and smarmy about it. Like: Oh, honey. Look at you. You can’t forget a single thing about me. 

“It’s the closest to the venue,” you say instead. “The entire wedding party is at this hotel. So.” 

“Right, right,” says Gaeul. Then she nods to your cigarette. “Can I have one?”

You reach for your pack. “I’m supposed to be quitting,” you say as you hand one to her. But she leans down for a light and you give it to her; you’re nothing if not a girl with some manners. 

She laughs. The flame catches. “You’re never quitting.” Then she adds, like it’s an afterthought and not the whole reason you’re both here: “Congrats on getting married, by the way.” 

Your fiancé is upstairs, already asleep, tolerant of your vice but unwilling to stomach the smell. You’re already in your pajamas but when you go back upstairs you’ll have to hop in the shower again just to scrub the smoke from your hair. Somehow Gaeul’s tone suggests she knows all this. Or maybe she just remembers what you look like when you’re doing something you shouldn’t. 

In your lap, your phone is still open to your own Instagram pictures of your engagement. You’re on a beach in a white dress. Very unsubtle bride-to-be. You’re clasping your hands to your mouth like you’re surprised but your manicure is fresh and your hair is blown-out. Your fiancé’s down on one knee, not even hunched over unattractively or anything. His posture is so perfect it makes you think of Prince Charming on horseback. Your caption even says something about this day being a fairytale, totally unreal. 

Probably Gaeul has never seen these photos. You blocked her on all your social media years ago. Then again, there are ways around that - friends’ accounts, incognito tabs. If she wanted to see your face she would. She’s certainly seeing it now. 

“Well, in four days,” you say. “I’m not married yet.” 

Around her cigarette, Gaeul smiles.

-

You’re using the term ex loosely. More accurately, to you, Kim Gaeul is this: 

Freshman year of college and you’re at some party that your new roommate dragged you to. You say roommate and not friend because it is quickly becoming clear you two have nothing in common. Case in point: she’s drinking and you’re not and you began developing a tension headache the instant you stepped into this intolerably hot frat house and you’re still stuck here an hour later because she is, apparently, having the best time. 

“Really? I’m glad,” you say, for the tenth time tonight. You think your pasted-on smile might be starting to look a little scary. “I’m so glad you’re having the best time.” 

Fortunately she’s too drunk to detect sarcasm. She’s also too drunk to notice that you’re not really looking at her. 

Instead, you’re staring at Kim Gaeul across the room. 

You have never met Kim Gaeul. You share no classes and no mutual friends; you’re pretty sure she’s older than you, surely not a freshman. You only know Kim Gaeul’s name because twenty minutes ago you accidentally caught her gaze and for some reason found yourself unable to get untangled from it. After about a minute of almost competitively intense eye contact you said to your roommate: Who’s that? 

Kim Gaeul, your roommate said. And then: Oh, I didn’t know you were gay.

You are not gay. You told your roommate this very firmly. The fact that you’re still staring at Gaeul twenty minutes later means nothing. You’re just trying to figure out whether she’s tiny or all her friends are abnormally tall. Also she’s wearing something kind of atrocious, this overly loud patterned button-up with the sleeves pushed to her elbows. You haven’t decided whether this outfit is a cry for help or not. 

It’s nothing. Natural curiosity. Her hair’s up and she’s pressing a beer bottle to the side of her neck to cool off. You stare for too long, or you must, because when you look up at Gaeul’s face she’s looking back at you. 

“She’s pretty infamous,” says your roommate. She sounds proud of herself for already knowing this essential detail about your university’s social ecosystem less than a month into the semester. “Among the gay crowd.” 

Gaeul’s on the move, coming closer now. Definitely not towards you; definitely just walking towards the door. Her hair must be cut short because half of it has already fallen out of her bun to frame her face. When she tucks it back you’re suddenly somewhat distracted by her fingers, blunt unpainted nails, the delicate shell of her ear. 

“I’m literally not gay,” you say, just as Kim Gaeul comes to a deliberate stop right in front of you. 

“I’m sorry?” Gaeul says, after a moment. The side of her neck is still slick with condensation. 

Her voice is softer than you thought it’d be. “Nothing,” you say. “I didn’t say anything. Hi.” 

“Hi,” Gaeul says. She’s got these real big eyes and a look on her face like you two are already friends. “Do you smoke?”

“What?” you say, a bit offended. You’re touching the cross around your neck and you have a bow in your hair, shiny Mary Janes and socks with a frill. “No.” 

She grins a little. Her lips are chapped and her eyeliner’s melting at the edges, clumsily applied. Pretty is the wrong word for her but it’s the only thing coming to mind. “You wanna try?” 

Jesus, this girl. Sorry, Jesus. “Um, no thank you.” 

Gaeul shrugs. She wiggles her hand in a little wave. “If you change your mind,” she says, while you’re still staring at all the rings on her fingers. Then she turns and walks out the door. 

Once she’s gone it’s like the sound kicks back in all at once. The whooping frat guys and some awful pop song, your heartbeat loud as a gunshot in your ears. The dry click of your throat as you swallow, then swallow again. Your roommate leaning close, saying for some inane reason: “She likes you.” 

“I’m just really likable,” you say, which is something you’ve learned through several years of enthusiastic feedback of your job performance as a counselor at church camp. “That doesn’t mean anything.” 

“Nah,” your roommate says sagely. “It definitely means something.” 

It doesn’t, though, is the thing. You’re certain it never will. 

-

Roughly ten minutes later you’re in the front yard of this shitty frat house, melting in your sweet sundress in the late-August heat, watching Kim Gaeul smoke a cigarette. When you first came out here you were seriously considering walking right past her, pretending you’d never spoken. But she turns and pins you with heavy dark eyes before you can. The whole thing sort of feels like a foregone conclusion. The corner of her mouth curls like a beckoning finger. 

You drift closer. “I didn’t mean to be rude, earlier,” you say. “I’ve just never, uh.” 

You gesture dumbly at the cigarette in her mouth. Gaeul’s eyes crinkle. “I figured,” she says. “Look at you. You’re a very good girl.” 

Your mouth falls open. 

The phrase itself is generally inoffensive. Actually several people in your life have said this to you. Teachers, tennis coaches, your youth pastor when you were fifteen. Sometimes you even preened at this: yes, of course, you’re the best, a straight-A student, a perfect backhand, an invaluable voice in church choir. But Gaeul says the words good girl and then she smiles like there’s a joke you’re not in on and not unlike the cigarette between her teeth your whole body flares red-hot. 

From anger, probably. Because this is ludicrous. So you say: “Not that good.” 

One brow hooks upwards. “No?” 

“No,” you say. “Give me one.” 

Of course the cigarette is horrible and you cough like you’re hacking up a lung and Gaeul makes fun of you a lot. But there’s a thrill to it, too, knowing you’ve just gotten away with something forbidden. You still wrinkle up your nose. Gaeul grins at you like she’s charmed. There’s a sweet little dimple in her cheek.

You think: Oh, right. This is how people get addicted to this shit. Then you take another drag. 

Afterwards she offers so you let her walk you back to your dorm. You talk. You give her your class schedule and your Spotify account. You find out she is a little older, a sophomore; she shit-talks one of your professors at length until you laugh so hard tears spring to your eyes. You give her the rest of your cigarette and she puts her mouth right where your shiny ring of lip gloss is. You keep fretting with your hair, holding it to your nose; you’re becoming a bit paranoid that you’ll never get the smell of smoke out. She asks you what you’re doing and you tell her as much. 

At first she snorts at your prissiness. Then she leans in close to check. “Oh, you’re fine.” 

“Fine?” Your voice comes out all garbled. It’s really very embarrassing; she’s not even touching you. 

Gaeul looks up at you through her lashes. You were right; she’s small, or at least small compared to you. “Good,” she says, smiling. There it is again. “You’re good.” 

Then she pulls back like it’s nothing, and also like she knows you’ll be thinking about this for hours, the word good in her soft little voice, while showering and brushing your teeth and doing your skincare and between your sheets, biting down on the edge of the cross on your necklace. And in the morning too, when you wake up in a guilty sweat, still halfway in a dream of someone’s fingers and a lit match and a house fire, everything you’ve ever known going up in flames. You don’t put that one in the dream journal. You know exactly what it means. 

A few days later you run into Kim Gaeul in the dining hall. She’s with one of her freakishly tall friends and has somehow figured out your name. She says it when she sees you, says hi. 

“Hi,” you say, primly. You’re touching your cross again. 

“We should hang out,” she says, smiling. House fire. Blaring sirens. You think you can maybe smell smoke. 

But you are a good girl with good-girl manners, and nothing if not obedient. Also you have not stopped thinking about her in the last thirty-six hours and you’re wondering if one cigarette is enough to trigger withdrawal symptoms. So you say, breathlessly: “Okay.” 

“Okay,” says Gaeul, and smiles wider, until that dimple appears.

So:

No, Kim Gaeul isn’t exactly your ex. But she is the first time you’ve ever looked at a girl’s mouth and thought: Well, fuck. 

-

Speaking of firsts:

For almost two months you both do a very decent job at pretending like you aren’t going to end up in her bed. She isn’t forward with you. She actually seems to make a concerted effort not to touch you at all. No flirting, no nothing. Totally platonic and PG. It’s possible she took what you said about not being gay to heart. 

But you start to hang out all the time. You two live too close together. You find it too easy to send a text at any hour of the day and she always texts back, indulges you, says i’m bored, says let’s go out, let’s stay in, let’s skip class, let’s go to that place downtown, let’s get takeout and get drunk, come on, come over here, let’s get together. She lives with a few of her freakishly tall friends and then she kicks them all out so you can come over and watch some Disney Channel Original Movie made for preteens on her couch. She wears ratty jeans that are too big for her and sings along to all the songs. She makes microwave popcorn and your hands never brush in the bowl, not even when you reach in at the same time. Obviously this is purposeful, her not ever making physical contact. You could get really insecure about this if you thought about it too hard. You watch her slender little wrist and think: God, maybe I’m repulsive. But you wear all your prettiest dresses and curl your hair every time you go over and your roommate’s brows fly up whenever she sees the way you look before you leave. So probably you’re just not even Gaeul’s type. 

“You so aren’t,” Gaeul says, when you bring this up. She doesn’t even pause the movie. “No offense. You couldn’t be further from my type.” 

“Yeah, but, like.” You’re trying to stop yourself from pouting about it. “What does that mean?” 

Gaeul wrinkles up her nose, thinking. On-screen someone’s on the verge of breaking into song; the music’s kicking in. “You,” she says finally. “You’re an angel. I think I like my girls a little bit less…” She glances your way. Her big eyes track a path down your throat to your cross. “Wholesome.”

You cross your arms and look away. Ridiculous. You’re a good girl, but you’re not perfect. Sometimes you swear and all the time you believe in dinosaurs and evolution and honestly you get a kick out of really gory R-rated horror movies. Sure, you’re good where it counts: church, prayer, volunteer work. You’re nice to basically everyone and only occasionally patronizing about it. You don’t even really take the Lord’s name in vain. But that doesn’t mean you’re an angel. 

“I get it,” you say, primly. Gaeul opens her mouth. “No, no, I understand. You think I’m boring.” 

“You’re being so…” You can physically see Gaeul stop herself before she can say the word bratty. You hang out too much these days and you’re getting a little too good at reading her mind. Gaeul squints at you and says: “Why do you even care?” 

But she says it smiling, like she already knows the answer. “It’s the principle of the thing.” 

“Sure, but,” says Gaeul. She cocks a brow at you. “You’re not even gay.” 

Right. What you actually are: the girl who last weekend opened the door to your shitty dorm room and let Kim Gaeul show you half a season of Glee on her laptop on her ex’s Disney Plus account. You also let her sing over ninety percent of all the songs until you turned to her with a glare that’d make all the kids in youth group tremble. Shut up, you said. I can’t hear them. Sorry, she said. Am I that bad? Shoulder-to-shoulder, you still weren’t touching, but when you turned to look at her your faces were so close they could collide. She was smiling; she knew she was great, that bright clear voice of hers. She’d done high school choir, she told you once. Always in the front row, too small to be anywhere else. You stared hard at Gaeul’s mouth, all those pretty white teeth. You smelled smoke. You said: Worse.

Certainly none of this is gay at all. “Uh, obviously,” you say. 

“I’m just saying. That was literally the first thing you ever said to me.” 

“I didn’t say it to you.” Ugh: you hate that she remembers that. Double ugh: you also like that she’s kind of always making fun of you.

“No, you definitely did,” Gaeul says. Her legs are tucked underneath her and you want to press your thumb into the dime-sized bruise above her knee. “You said, I’m not gay, and I’ll never smoke a cigarette in my life because Jesus said it’s bad, and I’ll pray for you, you heathen.” 

She loves doing bits like these, putting words in your mouth, saying Jesus in a high voice when she does her impression of you. It’s like you’re the first religious person she’s ever met. “Okay, well, clearly not all of those things are true.”

Gaeul’s mouth tilts at the corners.

“The cigarettes, idiot,” you say. You are loath to admit that college has brought about more than a few bad habits for you. Your sleep schedule’s fucked and you’ve stopped counting calories and every time Gaeul steps outside to smoke she offers you one and every time you decide it’d be very impolite to turn down such generosity. The rush hasn’t worn off yet. You’re afraid you maybe don’t actually hate the smell. But you’re gonna blame that one on Gaeul. 

“Right.”

“I am praying for you, though. You need it.”

In the movie, some big grand gesture’s happening. Someone’s getting asked to the school dance with flowers and confetti, all those sugary song lyrics. Gaeul watches the way you go for the cross around your neck and says: “And the other thing?”

The popcorn bowl’s abandoned on the coffee table. She’s still not touching you and maybe she never will. “What other thing?” 

“Jesus Christ, woman,” says Gaeul. She’s turned to you now, not even looking at the movie. She even sounds a little admiring. “You just love being difficult, huh?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Yeah,” she says, “you do.” Then she’s getting closer and everything becomes abruptly really focused and clear: her pupils fat with want, the curl of each individual eyelash. The way she’s looking at you makes you suddenly realize that the only thing she ever wanted to do was touch you, this whole time.

And, well. Unfortunately she’s right about you. You like to think of difficult things like being a new and necessary test from God. It’s one of those things they taught in Sunday school and you internalized when you were still prepubescent. You’re supposed to go through hard times so you can come out better on the other side, cleaner, smarter, more devout. This is what you told yourself when your parents fought and your dog died and your high school best friend went to college across the country from you and you found out it’s maybe more complicated than you thought to schedule FaceTime calls around the time difference. You forget that some things are allowed to be easy. 

“Okay, fine,” you say, heart high and unsteady in your throat. “Maybe I do.” 

But you remember now. So you do the easiest thing: you let Gaeul thread a hand through your hair and kiss you. 

-

Technically, you still don’t end up in her bed. She fucks you right there on her couch. She fists her hands in your pretty dress and puts that mouth beneath the neckline, lower and then higher again, teeth against the skin-warmed gold of your necklace. She’s real gentle, dark-eyed and cheeks flushed, chest rising and falling like a wave. She’s got two fingers inside of you when you say: “I haven’t actually done this before.” 

Say is generous. Actually she’s got most of the fingers on her other hand in your mouth so you kind of slur it all out in a disgusting droolly rush. Gaeul only blinks at you, and then the trail of spit running down her wrist. Then she says: “Um, I kind of figured.” 

“You’re not, like-” 

You make a rather unflattering squeaking noise when she slips her soaked fingers out of your cunt and keeps the ones in your mouth exactly where they are. “I don’t mind teaching you,” Gaeul says. Even now her voice is all soft, smirk paradoxically vicious. “Girl like you - I bet you’re a fast learner.” 

You’re too appalled and also too wet to fight her on this. “You’re kind of an asshole, you know that?”

It’s less effective when it comes out this distorted, your tongue and teeth and her sharp bony knuckles. “That mouth,” says Gaeul, delighted. She pulls away but then puts her little spit-wet thumb into the swell of your bottom lip. “What would God say?” 

“God loves me, actually.” you say, winded. Gaeul presses down, to feel the easy give of your mouth. “He’d blame you.” 

“For what?”

She’s unreal; she really is so gorgeous. Her dark hair’s falling in her eyes. It’s only the kind thing to do, to tuck it behind her ears for her, and touch the cool metal of her piercings on the way there. “For ruining me.” 

Gaeul seems to consider this. Your white dress with the full skirt, hemline once to your knees and now rucked up around your waist. Your cross necklace and your hair rumpled, and your underwear with the little bow at the front, now discarded somewhere on the floor. So maybe it’s true that wholesome isn’t her type. She seems to like you best all fucked out and sloppy. She’s making this face that’s mostly spellbound and a little smug, too, pleased with the mess she’s made. 

“Fine,” she says, shrugging, and gets her fingers inside of you again just to hear you gasp. “I think I can be okay with that.”

Despite what Gaeul says, it’s sort of a mutually educational thing. You teach her plenty of things too, such as: what you like, where to touch, what to say, exactly how rough to pull your hair. The sound you make when she sinks teeth into your inner thigh and the exact color of the blush in your cheeks when she calls you anything crass. She leans into it hard, gets a little brutal with it, says you’re dirty, filthy, nasty. You hiccup and scrabble at her wrist and whine like a hit animal and say: But I’m not, I swear, I’m really not.

“You so are.” Gaeul props her slick chin on your thigh and blinks her huge round eyes at you. “I thought you were supposed to be a good girl.” 

“I am.” There are tears building on your lashes. “I am.” 

Gaeul pets her thumb over the line of your hip bone and spreads your thighs wide. Honestly it’s overwhelming to be held open and touched like this, so intimate and exposed. Two months, Lord. It’s too soon. You don’t really know Gaeul, not in the same way you know the girls from your hometown, years of schoolyard injuries and cafeteria gossip, everybody in everyone else’s business, everybody packed into the same megachurch. Gaeul doesn’t know you like that. But she does know your mouth around a cigarette, your favorite R-rated movie and your least favorite thing about Sunday service, your voice saying Jesus Christ, more, harder. Your laugh when you’re drunk and she’s just said something totally awful. Your bare skin beneath your clothes. No one else knows these things about you. She’s the first and only. Framed like this it’s possible she knows you better than anyone ever has. 

“Huh,” Gaeul says. She’s smiling. Dimple, all teeth. Oh, no. You really do like her so much. “Needy little cunt like this? I don’t think so.” 

You’re so embarrassed you cover your face with your hands. Because - like, ew. She’s just so vulgar about it. But then again, so are you, you fucking hypocrite: swearing your sweet God-fearing head off the moment she lowers her mouth to your cunt. 

-

Afterwards, Gaeul gathers you into her lap and studies your face for a long time. Then she says: “Any particular thoughts you wanna share?” 

You’re still caught somewhere between your last two orgasms. Your brain is gooey mush and probably leaking out of your ears all over Gaeul’s already desecrated couch. “Sorry?” 

“Like, um.” Oh, wow: she’s bad at this. Gaeul scrunches up her nose and touches the delicate chain of your necklace with genuine concern. “Do you need to have a crisis about this?” 

A crisis. Like fucking her is going to trigger a legitimate medical emergency. You weren’t that good, you want to say, but that would be an egregious lie even for you. “Excuse me?” 

She seems to catch on that you’re kind of laughing at her. “Okay, look - I’m just trying to make sure you don’t run screaming out of here.” As she talks Gaeul pulls her hands through your hair even though you’d made valiant attempts to smooth it flat earlier; apparently it’s difficult to temper the instinct to fuck you up. Still, her voice is gentle when she says: “You were pretty adamant about not being. You know. Gay.”

“I’m not,” you say automatically. Then you bury your face in her neck and say: “I’m not thinking about it right now.” 

Most likely it’s not that big of a deal. You’re not your mother or all your high school friends; you’ve always believed being gay is probably fine and not a one-way ticket to hell. When Gaeul made you watch all those episodes of Glee you were like, yeah, whatever, Santana’s pretty cool. But you’re not thinking about it. Save it for the journal. Save it for late-night talks to Jesus and summer break when you’re back in your hometown church and its pews where you always sit and feel vivisected, like God himself can see every disgusting evil thing inside of you. 

The crisis will just have to wait until then. For now: “Okay,” Gaeul says, smiling slowly. “No thoughts.” She presses her mouth to the crown of your head. “Feelings, then?” 

“Uh.” You put your mouth into the divot above her collarbone. “I feel like maybe you were supposed to be nicer to me.” 

Gaeul bursts out laughing. Actually you’re just giving her shit: you’re really thinking that you shouldn’t have been into getting called gross as much as you were. It’s possible everything boys at your high school said about sexually repressed chicks was totally true.

“Oh, sure,” Gaeul says. She takes you by the hair and drags you out of the hiding place you’ve made of her skin. When she looks you in the face her mouth is a stern line, but her eyes are mischievous and bright, maybe even a little bit tender. “How many times did I make you cum again?” 

You fold your lips together, chastened. Truth is: whatever, you lost count. 

“I’m literally the nicest girl in the world,” decides Gaeul. Then she kisses you, all cute and quick, right on the very tip of your nose.

-

“You know you have to marry me now, right?” you tell her. “That’s what the Bible says.”

“Does it?” You’re laying on her chest. Her voice and her eyes are both tired. She smells like you, your sweat and perfume. You wonder if her friends will notice, if maybe she’s a little altered now too. “I wouldn’t know.” 

“Gaeul,” you say. You’re whining, your fingers beneath the hem of her top. Your hairspray hadn’t held up against the strenuous activity and all the neat curls have fallen out of your hair. But your cross stays exactly where it is, until Gaeul takes it between her fingers and touches one sharp corner in the same soft careful way she first touched you. 

“Okay,” says Gaeul, laughing like it’s just the funniest thing. “Okay, Jesus, crazy girl. I’m marrying you.” 

-

For the journal:

but is that literally not What College is For????????? it is so MOM to be so logical, so stuck up, so feelings secondary about everything. why is it bad to explore????

it is so insidious to overspiritualize. i am figuring Myself out by putting me out there - see Going to The Party (!!!) - and this is the result of that. it’s fine. it’s literally so fine.

Six is the number of times Gaeul makes you cum that night on her couch, you don’t quantify how queer you think you are, and the moment after you ink it into your journal you try and pray and try and pray and try and pray and try and pray until you give out on your bed.

-

So, in the end, you make the executive decision to not become your mother. You decide to do this by spending the rest of freshman year of college in Kim Gaeul’s bed. 

Hyperbole, obviously. You almost never skip class. But it’s true that you spend more time in her apartment than your own dorm room. A not insignificant number of floral sundresses have migrated into her closet, and at least two pairs of your sandals with the delicate gold buckles. 

“You’re U-Hauling,” your roommate says about it. “That’s a lesbian classic.”

“I am not a lesbian,” you say, with a bruise from Gaeul’s teeth smarting on your inner thigh. “When did you say your next class was again?”

You say this with your phone pressed to your ear. Gaeul’s on the other line and also loitering outside, waiting for your roommate to leave so she can come in and fuck you half to death. Your roommate rolls her eyes and grabs her bag and says: “Now.” 

This is your life now. Breakfast together in the dining hall, parties and binge-watching Netflix on weekends. Mediocre sushi at that place downtown; you duck out into alleyways to smoke together so people don’t glare at you. More than once you fall asleep on the phone with each other. Eighteen and you feel really adult, super grown up, except sometimes she does go out of her way to walk you to class. Which is just so high school, you tell her; what are you gonna do, ask me to the dance? She smiles at you with those carnivorous shark teeth. She says: You wish, prom queen. Then she kisses you right there in public so long that people have to move around you on the sidewalk. You’re that couple; it’s sickening. 

Not that you’re actually a couple - whatever. It’s complicated. It’s college. It’s fine.

It’s probably casual, except for the parts where you see her every day and your lives become irreversibly intertwined. You show up at parties together, stupid school events, club rush. Gaeul even introduces you to all her cool sophomore friends. The only hiccup with this arrangement is that you literally hate her friends. 

It’s not really a big thing. It’s just that they all reference TV shows you’ve never watched and they make a big show of covering their mouths and glancing at you apologetically every time they swear. Also they like to burst into inexplicable laughter and never explain any of their jokes. Also every story is infuriatingly vague and includes at least ten you-just-had-to-be-theres and whenever you ask for clarification they awww at you like you’re someone’s wide-eyed little pet. The worst offender: Gaeul’s roommate, Yujin, who is also her best friend and her ex-girlfriend. Though you’re pretty sure the second you learned that last part the whole thing was a lost cause, anyway. 

Oh my God, we dated a million years ago, Gaeul says about it, and not much else. Also sometimes: She was literally the worst girlfriend ever. Or: We’re so much better as friends. Or: Okay, I get it. You’re precious when you’re jealous. C’mon, get over here. It’s, like, a crime that I’m not fucking you right now.

“Tell me you like me better,” you demand, with your hands in her hair and her shirt somewhere on your dorm room floor. “Don’t you like me better?” 

“You’re insane,” says Gaeul, laughing, and, “I’m obsessed with you,” and then she fucks you until you cry, which is basically a good enough answer, anyway. 

Other than that it’s perfect. She smokes too much but so do you; her friends make you feel lame and insecure but she doesn’t even force you to hang out with them that often. She shows you all her favorite movies and watches yours, too, and even writes long and thoughtful Letterboxd reviews for each one. One weekend you get a phone call from your mom that makes you weird and weepy all day, and Gaeul doesn’t complain, just holds you while you talk in circles about home. She’s got this band tee from a band you don’t listen to that she lets you cut the neckline out of, lets you wear it to class slipping off one shoulder. She kisses you on that shoulder, and on your neck and collarbone. Sometimes she even bites you hard enough to bruise. You wear that out, too. You sort of like the looks you get, sort of like almost belonging to someone. 

You’re having fun. You don’t think too hard. You don’t talk to her or anyone about God. Your body is so well-fucked that it can no longer tell the difference between shame and guilt and want and need. It’s all fuel to the same forest fire, anyway, and by now you’ve gotten used to the smoke. 

-

There’s this one weekend. You’ve just gotten back from some excruciating outing with her and her friends. You’re complaining about them and the way they talk to you; you’re a little touchy and sensitive tonight. She’s trying to make you feel better in her own way: by getting dramatic, romantic, not very serious. That’s how she’s learned to get a smile from you. So she’s talking to you at length about zodiac signs. Apparently it’s ridiculous that you know nothing about those. Like, what kind of lesbian are you? Gaeul says, to which you tell her that you are not a lesbian. Also your mother staunchly believes that astrology is tantamount to witchcraft. She’d banned discussion of star signs and Harry Potter from your household with equal urgency. 

“All I’m saying is that we’re so compatible,” says Gaeul, scrolling through a summary on her phone from some totally legit astrology-related website, or maybe Reddit. “We probably knew each other in every single life before this and we’ll know each other in every one after. Like, forever and ever, amen.” 

She’s laying completely on top of you. She does this often and every time makes a lot of jokes about being your weighted blanket. Your cure-all for anxiety, she says, which always makes you die laughing. 

“Oh,” you say, perturbed. “I don’t believe in that.” 

Gaeul’s head lolls to the side. Bangs in her eyes, hair blow-dried to a shine; you’d used your Dyson Airwrap on her after the shower sex. Sometimes she gets a kick out of letting you fuss over her, do her makeup, pick out jeans. Secretly you think she likes being your little dress-up doll. “In soulmates?” 

“In other lives. I think this is all we get. And then we go to… you know.” 

“Heaven or hell,” Gaeul supplies, smiling. She wriggles to the side and runs a finger over the sweet lace trim on your dress. “Where do you think you’re going?” 

You have briefly lost track of the conversation; your brain got stuck somewhere around her hand slipping up your inner thigh. Momentarily you can’t comprehend the question. Like: Where am I going? Your arms, your bed. Crawling right into your ribcage so we’re never apart. But then she laughs at you and you’re right back in it. 

“Heaven, obviously,” you say. “I’m an angel, remember?”

“You think?” She props her chin in her hand. Her elbow’s digging into your ribs hard; you like her enough to let it happen. “I wouldn’t be so sure.” 

You’re not sure either, these days. But that’s alright. When Gaeul bites at the cross sitting at your sternum you think that God will see the fucking demon you’ve been up against out here and take pity on you. Look at her. He’d understand. 

“What about you?” you ask with one hand on the back of her head, to keep her right where she is. “Where are you going?” 

Finally Gaeul moves your cross aside and puts her mouth there instead. “Wherever you are.” 

-

In October, you start having these recurring dreams. You’re stuck inside a burning building where all the walls are painted blue like your childhood bedroom. You’re trying to scream but you keep choking on smoke instead. You wake up with Gaeul’s hair in your mouth and your throat inexplicably sore. You try to put down the dreams in your journal but you just end up doodling instead. Random things. Your favorite stuffed animal when you were five and your old ballet shoes. Concert ticket, family computer, Barbie doll, matchbook, fire truck, open flame, ash. 

Your mom calls you one night and interrogates you about what you’ve been up to at college. Are you watering your plants? Feeding yourself? Passing your classes? Making friends? Settling in okay?

Yeah, sure, for the most part. But:

This morning you’d let yourself into Gaeul’s place - she and her stupid roommates are always leaving the door unlocked, like they want to get robbed blind so bad. You were about to walk in and lecture her about it but then you heard voices in the kitchen. Gaeul and best-friend-ex-girlfriend Yujin. They were talking about you, some ribbon you’d left on the kitchen counter, and the cross around your neck, and something you’d said the other day, gosh or goodness instead of God. You heard Yujin laugh and say: I don’t understand how you’re dating that girl. 

Gaeul laughed too. Well, she said. We’re not dating. 

“I’m just checking,” your mom says on the phone. “I worry about you, you know. You’ve never been this far from home.” 

You don’t understand this, the not-dating thing. You’re pretty sure you kind of are dating. You do all the dating stuff. Gaeul keeps making you watch movies so old they still have, like, Audrey Hepburn in them. She’s a cinephile, she tells you. Last week she sat you down and made you watch The Wizard Of Oz. It was a big deal that you’d never seen it before. But you knew enough to catch Gaeul’s references: every time you wear your hair in two braids she pulls on one and calls you Dorothy. You thought this was cute before you actually saw the movie. Now when she says it you can’t think of anything else but being swept up in a storm, and stranded miles and miles from anywhere recognizable, your church and your old school, your dentist and your local cemetery and your favorite dog park, anyone who’s ever loved you and meant it.

You still use Google Maps so you don’t get lost on campus and your dorm room gets so cold at night. You think momentarily of telling your mom that there really is no place like home. 

“It’s amazing here,” you say brightly instead. “I’m having so much fun, I’m great. I’m really not homesick at all.” 

“Okay,” says your mom, after a moment. And then: “Well, we miss you.” 

“Miss you too,” you say. You’re smiling on purpose. She’d be able to tell if you weren’t. “But you should know I’m doing alright.” 

There’s been something in your mom’s voice this whole call. You wonder if she’s thinking of you standing in your dorm the day she dropped you off, the way you screwed up your mouth when she tried to rearrange your room, hang and mark your calendar, color-code your clothes in your dresser. I’m not a kid, you said snappishly. I know what I’m doing. You didn’t really mean it at the time; you were just tired of her hands all over everything. You’re not sure if you ever really know what you’re doing. But you said it and now you have to stand by it. 

“I’m glad you’re doing well, honey,” your mom tells you, before she hangs up. “Be good.” 

It’s so funny; it’s hysterical. “Always am.”

-

It doesn’t matter that Gaeul’s basically become your whole life; you don’t bring up her name in any capacity on any call, ever. It’s entirely paranoia on your part. It’s not like your mom would know anything just from hearing her name. But every time you think about it - of saying something simple and innocuous, my friend Gaeul and I hung out today - you get the sense that your mom would intuit the truth somehow. Like you’d say Gaeul’s name and from miles away your mom would hear your tone and sit up very straight and say: What in God’s name has that girl done to you? 

So. Better to not bring her up at all. It’s not really a lie, and even if it is God will forgive you. He’s supposed to be benevolent like that.

-

For a while, you succeed at not thinking about any of this or what it means or if it matters or if you need to consult the Lord about it in salacious detail. And then there’s the Halloween party. 

First, about An Yujin:

You’re not jealous of her at all. You think it’s totally fine that Gaeul still kept all those pictures of her up on her Instagram. It’s really very cute that Gaeul has a post up for Yujin’s nineteenth birthday where in the caption she calls her, quote-unquote, her twin flame. There’s nothing wrong with them being friends: it’s just, like, how gay people do it. They’re cool and community-oriented like that.

Gaeul’s been trying to organize something between just the three of you for a while now. She says it’s because you and Yujin are her two favorite people in the world and she’d probably kill herself if you didn’t get along. She first told you this with Yujin in the room, sitting on their kitchen counter and smiling beatifically at you. Yujin said: Girl, I’ve been dying to hang out with you. There was a look on her face like there was a joke you weren’t in on. You stared at Yujin’s low-rise jeans and messy hair and messier eyeliner, one lacy bra strap slipping out from beneath her top and down her shoulder. You thought of Gaeul’s mouth saying she likes her girls a little less wholesome and then you thought of her mouth on Yujin’s shoulder instead of yours. You were, technically, not even dating Kim Gaeul, and still aren’t. So you don’t get a say.

But you do what you can to avoid disaster. You are excellent at avoiding any further direct contact with An Yujin by making excuses and filling your schedule with imaginary meetings with your professors whenever Gaeul tries to make group plans. But then Halloween comes around and you make the mistake of mentioning that you want to be an angel. More angel than you usually are, anyway: you’ve got this frilly white skirt, fuzzy halo headband, Party City wings. You’re thinking something of the Victoria’s Secret variety, squeezing into a corset top. 

“That’s perfect,” says Gaeul, when you tell her this. She actually claps a hand to her chest in delight. “We are so going out.” 

There is an unnerving emphasis on the first part of that sentence. You’re starting to think you should’ve kept your mouth shut. “We?” 

So, apparently for Halloween Yujin’s been planning to dress up as a slutty devil - actually Gaeul just says devil, but this is An Yujin we’re talking about; the slutty is implied. Gaeul thinks this is a hilarious coincidence and takes the opportunity to make it a group costume among the three of you. She’s so excited about it, too; you kind of can’t bear to say no to those eyes. So you zip it and just nod along to everything she says and pray every night that Yujin comes down with mono in the interim. 

Unfortunately God doesn’t love you that much. On Halloween night Gaeul opens the door wearing her regular clothes - flannel, baseball cap, baggy jeans. “Um,” you say. 

“See?” Gaeul says, and pops a hand on her hip like she’s wearing something extra sexy and not the same shit she wears to her 9 AM lecture. “I told you. It’s the perfect costume. I’m the normal girl. And you two are the angel and devil on my shoulders.”

Yujin appears behind her, tiny pointed horns and red lipstick, tight latex and a grin. You prissily adjust the halo over your head and say: “Awesome.”

Genuinely it is maybe the shittiest night of your entire life. Gaeul and Yujin both get trashed and seem to mostly forget you exist. You can’t stand the way they talk to each other, so in tune they’re practically finishing each other’s sentences, laughing at things that aren’t funny and then telling you you wouldn’t understand. You especially cannot stand Yujin’s little latex skirt riding higher up her thighs with each passing minute and the way she puts her hand on the crook on Gaeul’s elbow and flashes those deep double dimples at her. She still calls Gaeul babe. It’s nauseating. So you spend the whole night resentfully chain-smoking cigarettes on the back porch, freezing in your tulle skirt and fishnets, wondering why they ever broke up if they’re clearly so fucking perfect together. Also wondering why you’re even here at all. Also you’re wearing these white platform boots borrowed from your roommate and they’re pinching your toes severely and Halloween sucks and everything sucks and you really just want to go home. 

Gaeul finds you after an hour or two. “Hey,” she says, so drunk. She’s not wearing her hat and you are terrified that you will look inside that frat house and find it sitting on An Yujin’s stupid shiny head of hair, right along with the devil horns. “The costume doesn’t make as much sense without you.” 

She’s literally not even wearing a costume, though. No effort at all. You say nothing. 

Gaeul sits beside you on the porch, and scoots until your elbows knock together. “Baby,” she says. Slurs, actually, more than says. Drawing it out in a sweet little singsong like you won’t be mad if she’s just cute enough about it. “You know nothing makes sense without you.” 

“You’re drunk,” you say flatly. 

“Nuh-uh.” Her nose crinkles, reconsidering. “Well, yeah. But it’s like that thing people say. Drunken words, sober thoughts.” She bumps your shoulder with her own. “And all my thoughts are about you.” 

You really look at Gaeul, then, the flush in her cheeks and her red, wet mouth, the small silver hoops in her ears. You are so confused all the time, about everything. You feel like you’re thirteen, wanting to ask like a child: Do you like me? No, really. Do you like-like me? 

“You and me,” you say, which is marginally more mature. “Are we…?”

But Gaeul doesn’t even let you finish the question. She trots out the same routine she performs any time you bring up anything serious regarding the two of you. Smiles wide, shows the dimples, kisses you somewhere on your face, says nothing real or of substantial value, says nothing about you ever being her girlfriend. “We’re, like, soul-tied,” she tells you instead, and touches her lips to the corner of your overglossed mouth. “We’re tethered.” When she pulls back, she looks very proud of herself for being so charming.

You are so tired. You’re three months in. You’re the angel on her shoulder; you are wearing feathery wings on your back. She is so pretty and so drunk and ninety percent of the time so nice to you. You can’t grab her by the throat and demand a real fucking answer. You can’t be sure she’d give you one even if you did. 

“Okay,” you say, defeated, and let her kiss you again, and tell yourself it’s enough. 

You go home with Gaeul. You spend the night at her place and even while drunk she does your skincare routine for you and lets you wear that band tee you love so much. In the morning, she makes up for everything: she’s real sweet and apologetic enough and eats you out even though she’s practically disintegrating from her hangover. Chivalry isn’t dead, she says, with her mouth on your cunt, and then makes you cum like a million times. You can’t argue with her when the sex is this good. So then and there you make the executive and highly mature decision to kind of just forgive and forget. Gaeul seems rather committed to fucking every bad thought right out of your head, anyways. 

You make sure to tell her how much you appreciate the gesture, in your own way. If you’re louder than usual in the hopes that Yujin’s listening through the wall, you’re never going to admit that to anyone, not even God.

-

“Maybe it’s just the culture,” your roommate says later, when you ask her for advice about the whole no-labels moderate-commitment situationship thing. Okay, so maybe you lied about forgetting. “I’ve heard gay people, like, hate monogamy.” 

“That feels like an unfair stereotype,” you say, frowning. But Gaeul does know like three separate people at your school who are in honest-to-God polycules, so. 

You make a valiant attempt at asking her before winter break. You’re talking about Christmas presents, wondering pointedly about the protocol. How much is too much? How much are you allowed to spend before it gets awkward? You’re trying to wrangle this into some sort of clumsy segue - you’d be able to go all out if you were together, if she was your girlfriend, isn’t that funny, isn’t that some food for thought. But: 

“Well, of course I’m getting you a present,” Gaeul says casually, legs tangled with yours on the couch. “You’re my best friend.” 

“Uh,” you say, your neck so mauled from her teeth one girl in your class actually gasped when she saw you today. Gaeul leans in for a kiss; you lose the words and your nerve; the moment for confrontation passes. You’ll wait for a better time. 

But she really does get you a great present - a new journal, and a very nice pen to go along with it. She brings them to you at the start of spring semester in a red-and-white striped gift bag, glittery tissue paper. It’s a lovely thing to do. You thank her profusely. You’re thinking this is an opportunity for a fresh start, to draft shiny new resolutions. You’re going to be less of a coward this year, get some real answers, be all grown-up about it. You’re totally quitting smoking, too.

“I’m kicking all my bad habits,” you say to Gaeul with a flourish, printing your name inside the journal’s front cover, proof that at least one thing here belongs to you. “New year, new me.” 

“Of course, baby,” Gaeul replies seriously, then cracks up like she knows you’re full of shit.

-

The next time you ask Gaeul about it, she’s nonchalant. Frustratingly noncommittal, noninterestingly - read: stylistically, literally non-interested in you - so:

“I’m marrying you! What else could we be?”

-

The next, next time: the spring before review week and quiet focus and finals:

“What do you want?” and “Can I have a cigarette?”

Except you don’t really get to ask then.

-

So your freshman year comes and it goes. Before you know it you’re packing up all your clothes to go back home from the summer. Your grades so far have been serviceable; you’ll see what finals do for you. Your roommate’s already gone. Gaeul’s on the phone as you fold your dresses into neat little squares, pair up and put away all your frilly socks. Packing up the entire last year of your life into suitcases as she talks about the horror movie you made her watch last night, how she couldn’t sleep at all and never will again. You’ve been waiting for a better time but maybe this is all the time you get. 

“Gaeul,” you say. Last ditch-efforts. 

“Yeah?” 

“How serious is this?” 

Silence. For a moment you think she’ll pretend she doesn’t know what you’re talking about, like she doesn’t know you well enough to read your mind. But then she does the next worst thing. 

“How serious? Come on. We’re, like, so serious,” Gaeul says, not serious at all. “I literally took your virginity and everything.” 

She’s being funny about it, even sort of laughing. But it makes you stop cold.

Virginity. Huh. That was a big deal to you, once. Your virginity was always meant to be given away - maybe not on your wedding night; you’re not, like, fucking Mormon - after an appropriate amount of time spent with a long-term boyfriend who you were definitely going to marry someday, and had probably given you a promise ring. Certainly to someone who was genuinely devoted to you, and even said it out loud. 

“I guess I…” The dress you wore the night you met Gaeul is crumpled at the foot of your bed. “Hm.” 

“It still counts if it’s with a girl, you know.” 

“No, I know that. I just…” 

You don’t know how to say what you’re really thinking, which is: It’s summer. I am currently running through my entire ten-year plan in my head. I am thinking about going home and going through my old diaries and telling that little girl: You will not become who you thought you’d be.

You’re not really sure why this is all hitting you like this now. Maybe because your first year of college is finally over and done and you’re going to see your family again tomorrow for the first time in months and you still wear the same sundresses you wore when you were sixteen and Gaeul had the nerve to use the word virginity. It feels staggering, that you are not the same person you were in August. Now you’re thinking of every single milestone you pictured for yourself when you were a kid. You’ve had a wedding Pinterest board since you were, like, twelve. You showed your mom once and she oohed and aahed over it, gave her opinions on dresses and decor. She said something about you marrying a man who could afford to make all your fairytale dreams come true. She would never forgive you if she knew what you’d done with your body this year. 

“You just what?” Gaeul’s walking fast. You can hear it in how she’s slightly out of breath, the smack of her heavy boots on pavement. You imagine her cheeks going pink from the effort. Cute. So cute. The image is so sweet it briefly blots out everything else. For a few moments everything is fine. 

“Nothing,” you say. 

It is fine, really. It’s all fine. You just always hoped your parents would come to your Pinterest board wedding and they’d even be proud of you and the choices you’d made. Although that’s a privilege, not a given; Gaeul’s told you about her friends who’ve been thrown out of their houses. It wouldn’t be like that with your family, most likely. But they’d never look at you the same again.

“You sure?” 

“Yeah.” You’re not home yet; you’re not in pieces in a church pew. You are not going to think about it. 

“Hey-” 

“Tell me something,” you say. “Do you actually ever want to get married?” 

“What, to you?” She’s like ten seconds from making the same joke she always does. Yes, baby, of course; yes, ma’am, I’ve got the ring, I’m right outside, let’s get hitched. 

“No. No. Just in general.” 

You’ve heard Gaeul’s friends talk about it. Yujin especially, rolling her eyes and flicking her dark hair back: God, girl, I’m never getting married. Something something patriarchal institution, et cetera. You suddenly wonder if this was something her and Gaeul talked about. Nope, no; you’re not going to think about that either.

“Yeah, someday,” says Gaeul. She even sounds a little wistful. “Definitely.” 

“Tell me about it. Dream wedding. Go.” 

She wants a lot of things. She wants small and intimate. No kids. No roses, ew. Too cliché. She’s mildly familiar with flower language and wants it to be intentional. Lilies for life, peonies for luck. She wants it somewhere beachy, close to the sea. She loves the ocean; she’s got a lot of water signs in her birth chart. She wants to wear white, and a dress, something loose and simple. She doesn’t care that it’s traditional. She says: Babe, I’m not that butch. It’s actually not that far off from your Pinterest board except for the most important part. But now you’re starting to think that the most important part is the only part that matters. She talks about all of this the entire way to your door and only hangs up the phone when she’s looking you right in the face.

“So,” you say, and put your phone down too. “Summer.” 

“Baby,” says Gaeul, cheek dimpling with her smile, “I’ll call you every single day.” 

You waver in the middle of folding a too-revealing top you thrifted out here that you will not be caught dead wearing in your hometown. But there’s a lot of things you have out here that you won’t be taking home. “And we’ll still…” 

Gaeul tilts her head at you from the doorway, unlit cigarette between her teeth. Those cigarettes - another vice that isn’t coming back with you. Nine months in and the same old story. She says: “We’ll still be us.” 

Of course. Us, she says, which is not an actual label, or anything stable to hold onto. Us, which could mean: lovers, best friends, fuckbuddies, soulmates, strangers, meant to be, nothing at all. 

-

Nobody knows jack shit about quitting.

It’s supposedly a substitute; supposedly going to wean you off your cravings one hit at a time - your first hit from an electric cigarette fires Cool Cucumber into the back of your throat harder than anything you’ve ever hit with tobacco.

And it’s poetic, really -

Summertime is a reset, a temporal hall pass, a beat in between seasons where the orchids vermillion and indigo in show-off full-bloom; summertime is when you fall to your knees in church, tears hot like nettles stinging at your eyes.

You blame it on the semblance.

Your first Sunday back from college, you’re folded seamlessly back into routine. It’s easier on the entire family if you make the drive into the city a whole day ordeal, so much faster than you’d like you find yourself in denim on denim, hands awkwardly outstretched from the front left pew of the local megachurch. It’s half-worship: too much thinking. Are your eyes supposed to be closed? How would you read the lyrics? Where do you raise your hands until? Slow songs always scared you a little: there was so much lingering in them, space borne in melody that your head wanted to resolve.

The entirety of the past year feels like it bubbles up and coagulates in your chest. Sticky, confusing, ill-defined and all-consuming; the congregation gets past the pre-chorus and you want to throw up. It’s so much tension. It’s soul-wrecking, spellbinding, super embarrassing. It’s the bass leveled just right, drumming out the beat that the skeletons in your closet walk out to - how they stream through confessional in your head, in-then-out of a mahogany door that rightsizes their vertebrae, cleanses them of sin. It’s the air conditioning notched at sixty eight - how the gold cross at your neck tempers, nestled at the bottom of your throat, cold cutting, skin singeing. It’s the floodlights angled onto the audience - how you feel when raycast, under the yellow just oh-so golden that it makes you feel haloed, beholden to something greater. It’s Gaeul - everything she means to you; Pavlovian - how wet your eyes get in singalong surrender.

(Semblance is the only way you could describe it -) You breathe a sigh only a smoker could, and drop your head into the cushion of your car headrest.

(Walking through the debris of a house fire, wading through charred insides -) You were more of a bitch than necessary when your parents dropped you off at college. Way too upfront about independence, wanton for a foot outside your town, white-knuckle that only unshackled could you make a difference.

(Looking for what you recognize, signs of survival, toeing cigarette butts like they were stones unturned -) Highlighted by Monday daybreak, the first bits of light at six-ten in the morning throw spotlight on cardstock jutting out of your sunshade.

Christmas twenty-eighteen was a cute one: above a font hellishly festive, your family in the background behind Ricky as Rudolph, red ball on his snout.

Cool Cucumber in your lungs, tears tracing your cheeks hot in the fresh warmth of dawn breaking through your windshield, suffocating in the cabin of your mom’s old Chrysler - you are grounded. 

In the homely sense: this was where you spent at least one senior year evening every other week, fresh after a debate you had with your mom about Christianity - she would never look for you out here, and picked up eventually that you always came back. 

In the rooted sense: you always came back. 

That’s Buddha, no? you remember quipping, life is suffering, the cherry on top that beckons a lecture on polytheism. Life is suffering is perseverance, she quotes, hiking up an eyebrow at your vague pithy high school drama. Preaching: A house burned up rewards her builder even only as one escaping the flame. Sensitive, teary, and blinded by ego: you never felt like she understood you. After midnight, confronted by cut fruit and whatever signed permission slip needed signing on the kitchen island, selectively removed from your journal and secret to only whenever you read the pages back: you never felt like she never did.

Home will be here forever, the card reads.

Tethered to a force magnetic, staked well below ground level: ash from open flame, fire truck, matchbook; Barbie doll, family computer, concert ticket, ballet shoes, your favorite stuffed animal when you were five - so will you.

-

Worth noting: you cry a lot over summer.

There are bad cries.

The one you choke out through hiccups and snot nose behind a fast food joint, breaths slow and measured as you glare down your last ever pack of cigarettes that you threw against the wall - tobacco honeyed, freeze dried, and currently frayed all around asphalt. Two sticks roll away on their own, one pursuing the other down the sidewalk, the first rolling away significantly faster.

The one after Gaeul finally texts you, hearts all of your iMessages her way. Something about not thinking she’d be this busy over summer. Another thing about Lollapalooza and hard drugs and An Yujin. You don’t read the rest of it.

The one that leaves tearstains in your dream journal when you read through every nightmare you woke up to in the semester. This one feels like it rends your soul: hits you like a gutpunch, bruises like a motherfucker - you are wailing and incoherent and ripped apart by your heartstrings, tendril after needling tendril. You are sympathetic, and cannot stop feeling sorry for yourself, cannot stop saying sorry out loud - looking for forgiveness, bearing your heart for godly grace. You are gutturally broken, in your mom’s lap at nineteen - she doesn’t say much at all, just brushes your hair, catching stray tears with a watchful thumb.

There are good cries.

The one right after service one Sunday, after the worship leader jogs over to you and your family, letting you and the public forum know that you went to the same family of colleges, that you both attended that spring weekend seminar on psychology and pedagogy in early childhood education, the one right after you end up spending the whole day together, after he joins your family for lunch and then you until three-thirty in the morning, cleaning house at the Sunday then Monday sections of the New York Times’ online Games.

The one you share with him flipping through pages of your ninth grade journal, in response to him telling you that you probably needed childhood pedagogy.

The one on your fifth date, with the windows down in your mom’s Chrysler, weaving itself out of your belly in between whiny complaints about plot points, tighter writing, and your spiel that you’ve saved up forever about how much of a gimmick Chekhov’s gun as a rhetorical device has become. He races you out of the door after service every Sunday; you purposely book the middle seats of the twelve-fifteen showings because it means your hearts are beating as you make it in just before the last trailer, adrenaline racing and ripe to digest the latest B-movie you both upload a review for on your shared Letterboxd account.

It’s prescient, really: a summer that shapes you, one that lends itself well to autobiography - a chapter titled What is Love? How much weight do you give love that is subtle - demarcated by plates of cut fruit and bearing feelings on your sleeve, pillared by inside jokes, puppy love, and parking lot conversations that intertwine you forever? How does that compare to love that is cantankerous - fast, fiery, fullmetal, white-hot and welcoming of the subsequent burnout: love that will burn you alive in hopes that you are flameproof - love that starts house fires?

-

From a reflection in your journal about survival:

who the hell likes living just to die?

-

Summer comes and goes and before the end of it, you strike out the rest of that page in your journal. 

Then you do the same with the rest of them.

-

Sophomore year. You’re two weeks in before you make an attempt to break the news to Gaeul. Naturally it goes poorly. Actually it was probably destined to go poorly from the beginning because every conversation you’ve had since you got back to school has been tense and passive-aggressive ever since you saw she’d dyed her hair blonde. It’s not the color itself that’s the problem; of course it’s flattering and gorgeous and she knows it, too, tilts her head just right as you stare gape-mouthed on your first day back on campus, face haloed gold in the late-fall light. It’s that you asked her how many hours in the salon chair it took to get her hair so light and she said: Yujin did it for me, actually. 

You said nothing. Probably you were making a supremely unkind face. Gaeul said: Oh, come on. 

You said: I didn’t say anything. 

Gaeul rolled her eyes. She said: It was, like, so casual. 

That sounds like you, you said, and neither of you spoke after that, and it was clear the conversation was over. 

So you spend another week dodging Gaeul’s calls. Then you run into her in the dining hall and she gives you those big eyes with genuine bruised-purple bags underneath like you’re the sole reason she’s been losing sleep. You can’t help it; it’s like turning away a kicked puppy. You cave. A day later you’re meeting at your old favorite café downtown. You spend about twenty minutes each recapping your summers: you do your very best not to grimace at any mention of spiritually transformative music festivals or who she might have spent all her time with at them. And then you tell her about your boyfriend. 

Like a spit-take in a bad movie, Gaeul actually chokes on her latte. “Your what?”

You watch as she wipes the trickle of coffee off her chin with the back of her hand. Her watch is new, cute. Expensive. Way too stylish for her to pick out for herself and almost certainly a gift from someone. “My boyfriend.” 

“Your what?” 

“He sings at my church,” you say inanely, like it matters. “He’s a really great guy.” 

“I’m sorry, I think I’m hallucinating,” says Gaeul. She’s blinking very fast. She leans forward and takes your hand with urgency. “Baby. What? You’re gay.” 

You delicately remove your hand from hers. “I’ve told you plenty of times that I’m not.” 

Gaeul’s staring at you like she doesn’t even recognize you. Just as well; you’re wearing your hair up, the way your boyfriend likes. You’re in a little wrap skirt he bought for you. She’s not the only one who gets to have a transformative summer. “Then what the fuck do you think you and I have been doing all this time?” 

“I don’t know, Gaeul.” Your tone is pleasant and only a little poisonous. “What have we been doing all this time?” 

Her mouth opens. Hangs there, jaw unhinged, all her vicious teeth. She turns away and you see the fine hairs at the nape of her neck, dark roots creeping into the pale blonde dye job. She can’t give you an answer. What, you think of telling her, did you think I’d wait for you forever? But you know she did. She looks at you and still thinks of you as the good girl at the frat party with the ribbon in her hair. That first conversation and first cigarette, her with all the experience, you blissfully ignorant of all the consequences. 

But everything is different now; you won’t let it be the same. “Congrats,” Gaeul says finally, voice tight. “On the boyfriend.”

Your face is hot with anger and victory. You look at the rings on her fingers, the white knuckles of her fists. You think: I fucking hate you. You think: I will never let you touch me again. 

“Thanks so much,” you say, and stand up, and walk out. You feel her eyes watching you the whole way out the door. It’s the same rush as it always is, having her attention, the same addictive feverish heat. But you’ve had a lot of practice beating cravings this summer and now you’re somewhat confident that you’re mostly finally clean. 

So sophomore year you make a promise to yourself and God about this one. You tell yourself you’ll never make that same mistake again. 

-

This lasts a few more weeks - three, tops. And then you and Gaeul end up in the same party in the same room on a Saturday night. And then she looks at you like she wants to make amends and takes you outside and suffocates you with her secondhand smoke until everything gets a little hazy around the edges, like a dream, something with zero real repercussions. And then she apologizes like she means it; for everything, she says, emphatically. And then she tilts her head and runs a hand through her chemically fried hair and smiles real sweet and honest with that dimple and everything and says softly: I really missed you, you know. And it’s - well. Behind your eyelids your entire childhood bedroom is burning again. And you realize that you maybe will never feel this way about anyone else, ever. Sometimes it only takes a moment. 

I know, you say, body on fire, consumed. And then you make that same mistake again.

-

And then, maybe, you make it a habit. Shhh. Don’t tell your boyfriend. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, and you’re pretty sure the Bible says only God can judge you, anyway. 

-

“Ugh,” Gaeul grunts as the banjos kick in. “I love this version.”

There’s a second wind in her lips on yours to the picking of steel string, a humming on your mouth to the melody line. Under your shirt, she runs her thumbs along your collarbones like they control the volume, demanding more from the music, more from you - cupping your push up bra, clawing your chest.

Kissing Gaeul never felt far from nicotine - the bitter bits of a cigarette fresh on her breath, the tang of the cucumber lip gloss she left in your dorm room reapplied on her lips; the last bits of summer dwindling out of your window, the push-and-pull by the loops of low-rise jeans - all of it sates your withdrawals.

“Tell me, lover,” she whispers in the space between your breaths. The strings slow to a picking; the vocals center stage. “Now that you made your change -

Was your soul rediscovered?

Was your heart rearranged?”

The new thing she makes you do is take your necklace off when you make out - says it gets in the way. And when she’s pressing her thumb right into the space at your sternum when her mouth’s over yours, making you draw from her lifeblood, suffocating you from yours, the cool mint of her lips and the salty brush of her tongue all you can grasp on - you say so too.

“That wasn’t so difficult, was it?” she goads, snaking a hand in your hair, tipping you to look up at her.

Difficult is a good start.

Wanton is much warmer. Gaeul kisses you like you were always promised - forever. She caresses her thumb around your ear, and a jolt runs down your spine. It makes you red-hot: how embarrassing it is how pliant you are for her; it makes you red-hot: how everywhere she brushes her slender fingers on your skin, traces a short nude nail around the back of your neck, splays a hand across your belly, rips you from where you sit onto her lap: how it brings blood to the surface. Kim Gaeul knows all your soft spots like the back of her hand - she’s invaded all your secret places with the fronts of them.

Sacrilegious is a next step. Gaeul is your will-o’-the-wisp, forever taunting, forever coaxing you deeper into the abyss. Her whisper is hot on your earlobe, whimpering sirenic to your nervous system. She taints you: draws her thumb across the spit between your lips, then under the button of your jeans. You lose to yourself every night: tell yourself nothing’s going to happen while you shave your body touchable, double down on the notion as you ditch wearing underwear. Gaeul is your will-o’-the-wisp - you dive headfirst into the water and chase yellow oh-so golden into the mouth of the anglerfish.

Sacrificial is what it really is. There’s a verse in Romans that haunts you like a perpetual nightmare, hangs in the imbalance. You pretend like you don’t remember it and flinch in response all the same: The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God, it says. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. Gaeul slides the palms of her hands down your jeans, forever wanting, forever dictating. You cannot please God.

-

“Lover,” you’re sounding around your toothbrush, “is a jump, by the way.”

And as much as you think the always-too-bright bathroom lights, a mouth-mid-mouthwash, and wearing your pajama pants might be a handicap, Gaeul’s eye roll hits home all the same.

“Don’t get too wet,” she’s saying, patting the side of your waist, “it was in the lyrics.”

“Yeah?” you pull the thread. “You’d convince me.”

Truth be told, you don’t know what you’re looking for. It’s grasping at the loosest of ends, it’s opening the doors just to see what’s behind them - it’s the most recent conversation you’ve had about the two of you with Gaeul sober.

Standing in the doorway of your bathroom, drowning in your faded high school t-shirt - it’s the kind of picturesque that sitcom would kill for. It’s the always-too-bright bathroom lights shining a megawatt spotlight on the details of her face: the dark circles under her eyes a shade too tough for concealer, the eyebrows she had to fill in tomorrow morning, the laugh lines you hoped were from you. It’s all the words unsaid, all the fill-in-the-blanks, and in the silence, all the insinuation, all the blanks filled.

“What do you want?” Gaeul starts, cocking her head to one side. It’s cute, genuinely; it’s a routine you know well. There’s the blonde, the shark teeth, the forward tilt of her chin - as if to poke into your space, make an opening, slip the light of the anglerfish in unnoticed.

“Affection? Someone to come home to? Something every college freshman yearns for?” you suffix again, again, then again. You’re in soprano by the last one, somewhere between pretend pearl-clutching and actually acidic. You’re more practiced these days: mockingly bit-ty, malleable to play-along, maybe too honest.

Gaeul shifts her weight. She doesn’t say anything, just tilts her head to the other side, looks like she suppresses the smile playing at her lips.

“You just love being difficult, huh?” 

Definitely too honest.

She physically stuns, like there’s a cosmic whiplash, like she takes psychic damage. Kim Gaeul blinks twenty blinks in the silence, one after the other.

Then, once she rightsizes: “What do you want?” Meek, no venom, no veneer.

You take a couple of blinks yourself. In the decrescendo, just as you thought you were settling from the soprano, the sound in your head is replaced by a bassline more prominent: one that gives the stanza sound, feelings full body; one that was always there, building, building, building. Ears hot, snake-tongued and tasting fire, fully lucid: your hands are balled up into fists at your sides, there are tears welling hot in your eyes, and you’re burning at the tips - fiery and cigarette-orange everywhere Gaeul was: her fingers, her lips, her tongue.

There was no way out of this besides definitely honest. Heart in your throat, honest without a hitch: “What are we, Gaeul?”

The light hits just right, the dialogue is perfectly paced; the plot is infallible, the writing the tightest it’s ever been, Chekhov fires his gun - the full-pan shot of the both of you in your tiny apartment bathroom receives a standing ovation in the writer’s room because like it’s inherent, in-character, fully rehearsed, and method acted to the nines: Kim Gaeul blows you off.

In one motion, shorter shot-for-shot than your entire exchange: Gaeul gets a text from Yujin, offers you one-tenth of a smile, and leaves your room, only lingering to fix her hair in the mirror and make sure she never looks you in the eyes.

In the background, Noah Kahan picks up on the second verse. Live from Fenway Park, accompanied by harmony:

You don’t hate the summers

You’re just afraid of the space

…

Tell me, lover

Once you’ve had a change of heart

…

We’re no more than the fossils

At Crescent Beach State Park

…

The hometown baseball cap you bring for Gaeul sits in your closet, packaged in glittery tissue paper now unwrapped, peppered with perfume now unsmelled, and placed under a one year anniversary card now pretty un-fucking-meaningless.

You won’t let it be the same, so it’s not. It’s so much worse. 

-

For the first time in a long time: you wake up in your own bed.

Not the first time: you wake up to paragraphs of texts from Gaeul - precisely: seven hundred words, sectioned out in the grey bubbles with the spaces in between them, thirteen missed calls, two voicemails, and nothing less.

i’m sorry, she starts, and that’s a stray thought that you shouldn’t give any water: you wonder the number of times Gaeul wasn’t apologizing for something. You’re afraid of the implication: white lies were no fun if they weren’t at least believable.

i know I touched a nerve, and wanted to give you the space. honestly i’m still a little shocked about the boyfriend thing - because of course - you should’ve texted me!!!!

Of many things you know about Kim Gaeul: it’s never her fault. In your most cynical, hidden in between the paragraphs of your journal, you can’t imagine it’s not exhausting: warping reality, distortion in the first degree, making a story bend over so far backwards that it calls the convict blameless. In the pages, struck through with ballpoint pen: you can’t blame a girl like her for trying - Artemis incarnate, a vixen in a past life; a she-wolf full-circle, a dark haired deity now transformed, moon-kissed; Medusa touched by Midas, golden hair serpentine - poison to a bloodstream, petrifying to a demigod, pretty and she knew it.

She tilts her head and gets what she wants.

Gaeul’s texts are beyond incoherent - slurring and sliding across ideas so much you smell the sleazy slap-bag wine on them. It does take you breakfast and a real, genuine effort, but across alcoholic messages, you’re able to lift halloween kickback, some of my girlfriends, and tomorrow night. 

we’ll hash it out tomorrow night. promise!!

It’s gross.

The premise, the phrasing - all of it.

But God as your witness: you are nothing if not a sinner.

Call it mythological - you are struck by the arrow of Artemis, line of sight with the gorgon, personally stitched into the Theogeny - whatever: 

Call it honest. You are whipped beyond humanlikeness for Kim Gaeul, a martyr, forgiving and forgetting - the line between faith and delusion is millimeters wide, and you are magnetically bipolar:

Call it what it is. You are nothing if not a good girl, so you halloween kickback.

-

There’s a lot of drama regarding what you’re going to wear. You threaten to kill yourself and let your body rot in her apartment if she makes you do a trio Halloween costume with An Yujin again. What the fuck, Gaeul says, appalled, I thought suicide was a sin. You jab your French-manicured fingernail towards the hickey on your neck and say: Gaeul, lots of things are sins. 

“Like going as yourself on Halloween,” you elaborate, thinking of last year and her stupid baseball cap. “It’s super lame. Someone should smite you.”

Gaeul smiles wide. Inexplicably this seems to have charmed her. She says, “Fine. I’ll go as you and be a sweet little princess all night, how’s that sound?” 

“Perfect,” you say. “I’ll go as you and be a huge dick.” 

“That’s the spirit,” Gaeul tells you, and kisses you hard. 

It’s all one huge bit up until the moment you’re taking off your cross necklace and dropping it into her palm and she’s rifling through the clothes you keep in her dresser to find something that fits her okay. You put an egregious amount of product in your hair - to get that patented Kim Gaeul just rolled out of bed after fucking your girlfriend look - and a tank top, button-up, no bra, a pair of her jeans. Silver hoops in your ears, all her rings. Gaeul’s hogging the bathroom so you do your makeup in your selfie camera, which is not very intense - Chapstick and the world’s sloppiest eyeliner. You make a face at yourself, displeased. You are not exactly you without your lip gloss. 

Your phone dings while you’re in the middle of deciding between sneakers or beat-up combat boots. Gaeul. Several photos of Gaeul, actually halfway into her best impression of you. Little pressed polo shirt, lace at the collar, skirt with ruffles. Her hair’s falling in glossy prom-queen waves; she probably used your Dyson and all your nice hair oil to do it. She’s wearing a pair of your earrings, dainty pearls from your mother. She’s fastened your golden cross around her neck. 

It’s funny because she’s actually pulling it off. The blonde hair, pixie face, fluttering lashes. Like this, she’s playing a better good girl than you ever could. Like this, you could take her home, take her to meet your family, say this is my best friend, Gaeul and be reasonably confident your mom wouldn’t have a conniption. Obviously you couldn’t say, like, we fuck on the weekends, too. But your mom would definitely approve of the company you’re keeping if the company looked like that. Like this, She might even insist on taking Gaeul to church. 

Gaeul in church. Now that’s a riot. You can picture her there, rolling her eyes at the pastor, raising her brows at the rapt people in the pews. The way they stand for the music, clasp hands to their chest. One of your neighbors always sits in the front row and gets really into it, tears up and everything. You can imagine Gaeul seeing this and snickering, leaning in to whisper to you. These people are fucking nuts, she’d say. She’d meet your boyfriend and she’d make fun of him too. And then she’d call Yujin afterwards and laugh for hours and go: If that’s what it takes to get to heaven, I’m hell all the way, honey. 

No. No. You take her to church and she’d leave halfway through the service to chain-smoke in the parking lot and probably somehow end up burning the whole place down. You can picture seeing her through the window from the lobby, her blonde hair catching the light like a flame, the smoke spiraling into the sky.

You’d never take her to church. 

The thought is suddenly revolting. You stare at your cross around Gaeul’s neck and feel your heart creep into your throat. Briefly you are so nauseous it almost bowls you over. But then Gaeul steps out of the bathroom and you swallow it all down. 

“Hey, sexy,” she says. She’s making her voice all high in a truly poor attempt at being you; her voice is usually softer than yours, most days. “Bathroom’s all yours.” She puts her thumb against your cheek and presses down. You realize she’s touching your dimple the way you touch hers. “I can wait, like, forever.” 

Your necklace flickers at her neck, gold like her hair, gold like the halo you wore last Halloween that you lost somewhere on the walk home and have never been able to find again. You should touch the cross like Gaeul does when you’re wearing it but you don’t think you could bear it. 

“I’m good,” you say, and make your voice inaccurately deep, just to counter her. “I think I matched the effort you put into your look on a daily basis.” 

“Ouch,” sighs Gaeul, twirling her hair, which is something you never do, or at least not even that often. “But also, true.” She tilts her head to one side, then the other. Her eyes look even more ginormous with your usual makeup, the false lashes and the shimmer. She’s like a Disney cartoon animal; it’s almost freaking you out. “Trust me. You look hot.” 

“I believe you, baby,” you tell her. But you still chance a glance at yourself in the bathroom mirror on your way out the door. 

-

The thing is you don’t actually see yourself in the mirror - simple present.

It freaks you out when you linger, look at the details. Frankly: you don’t recognize yourself at all. A hickey here, a blue-green bruise there - points of poison, signs of shark bites.

One of your newest vices is looking through your Instagram in an attempt to find the turning point, triangulate the exact coordinates where you were rearranged, changed for good. It’s a worthless exercise, part because you cannot complete it without crying halfway through, another because you know transfiguration takes time.

It’s reptilian how you shapeshift on a dime, chameleon to what you’re called for: you’re coiled around your boyfriend’s arm, making small talk that goes nowhere above an espresso martini, hair in a high pony, streaks of a yellow ribbon in your hair that goes divine with a tiny cotton Hermes in spring-season citrine, turning heads at the country club then immediately shedding that skin, wearing all but nothing so that Gaeul debases you, sharing smoke, creating cusswords, licking at the air - turning into twists of fire interwoven. Make no mistake: you were her twin flame - one of many snakes in the gorgon’s wolf-cut, but the one she knew by name.

You look at yourself in the selfie camera and are displeased. You are not exactly you without your lip gloss; you are not exactly you at all. You give your cross away, you sell yourself for parts, you are lukewarm. You shapeshift to please the flesh, and it is forever hungry - you yearn and yearn and yearn, and lose all that is worth having.

Your reflection smirks at you through the glass - like she knows something you don’t, like she’s going to make you the body double.

You look at yourself in the bathroom mirror and see through yourself - and that’s the scariest reflection of all.

-

The Halloween party is both worse and better than the first. You don’t see An Yujin all night - that’s a plus. But Gaeul gets too drunk and she’s wearing your clothes and your cross and you practically have to carry her home, one arm around her waist, her head lolling across your shoulder. She’s a big flirt to anyone she comes across, bats her lashes and clings to your necklace. She’s not you; maybe she’s not even trying to be. 

But you ask anyway. “Is this what I am to you?”

You’re halfway through the walk home; she’s freezing in your little getup, goosebumps all over her arms. Gaeul peers up at you through the false lashes. “What?” 

This, meaning: needy. Pathetic. Helpless. Some sad little girl, always out of her depth, always having to be led around like a lamb to the slaughter. Ripe for sacrifice. 

But you don’t even get the chance to elaborate. Gaeul seems to comprehend the question, belatedly; she scrunches up her nose, then smiles all pretty at you. 

“Oh, yeah, exactly.” She’s making her voice all false and high again. It’s repulsive. When she sobers up you’re going to let her fuck you like this: even more repulsive. “I just know you too well. I’ve got your number, angel.” 

“You’re full of shit,” you tell her. Now you really sound like her. “You don’t have anything.” 

Gaeul tilts her head, cranes her cross-adorned neck, pouts her lips for a kiss. Dark eyes, silk hair, pink flush in her cheeks. She’s got it all wrong, you both have; she’s been the angel the whole time. “I have you.”

-

A couple of texts for your hometown boyfriend, and the iterations they go through before you hit send:

gaeul the girl i’m cheating on you with literally pisses me off. her nails in my scalp where she kisses my thighs the cute tiny panties i buy for her to stuff in my mouth. i hate that our love is all but nonexistent she’s all i think about she’s why my gpa is fucked she’s the reason i smoke she’s fucked me over and over and over and i cannot stop coming back for more.

gaeul the girl i’m cheating on you with literally pisses me off. her nails in my scalp where she kisses my thighs the cute tiny panties i buy for her to stuff in my mouth. i hate that our love is all but nonexistent she’s all i think about she’s why my gpa is fucked she’s the reason i smoke she’s fucked me over and over and over and i cannot stop coming back for more.

yujin is no different. i hate her guts her entire being her chocolate hair her golden skin. i hate that i compare myself to her how much she’s embraced her sexuality how much she fills out the size zero miniskirts how good she looks in lulu how there is nothing that could bother her and even then if it did how it would look sexier on her than me. i hate that i know gaeul would keel over for her if she said she was remotely jealous.

but otherwise good!!! i’ve been going to the gym a lot more lately! yujin is no different. i hate her guts her entire being her chocolate hair her golden skin. i hate that i compare myself to her how much she’s embraced her sexuality how much she fills out the size zero miniskirts how good she looks in lulu how there is nothing that could bother her and even then if it did how it would look sexier on her than me. i hate that i know gaeul would keel over for her if she said she was remotely jealous.

i think i’m mostly gay and i am scared that i am leading you on. i hate the part of me that tells me that i am doing to you exactly what gaeul is to me and my nightmares have changed and i am so haunted i take the strongest melatonin and have earphones in at full blast sixteen hours of the day i am -

love ya :-)

-

You make it to confessional, by the way.

It’s genuinely a cute setup: Master’s students regardless of denominational alignment on weekend notice, part college peers, part spiritual siblings.

Except you fill out the intake form and get an email that tells you to come in instead - they want your experience to be guided by a senior licensed professional. You imagine they touch base with an exorcist.

You Google Maps your way to a room in a building in a part of campus that you’ve never been to, painted eggshell white and adorned with so many orchids that it actually makes you feel like Dorothy. It’s fitting: you practically skip up the yellow brick pavement in your sweetest gingham dress over a cream long sleeve - covering up the eyesores, laying the goodest girl on thick.

It’s what makes your experience so stark, really.

Halfway through your conversation, the senior licensed professional is fetching for a box of tissues, the student-in-training slack-jawed, stuck with a hand over her mouth. It’s so you to look for immediate sympathy, to rip your heart out and serve it up on a silver platter for social surgery - or maybe you’re just being honest.

But the unexpected happens.

You get ready to be ushered out of the building, to sign a ticket outside for your reprehensible trauma dumping, but find yourself eventually holding up the box of tissues, indulging this woman twice your age on her very vivid recounting of losing her family home in a recent, scathing series of house fires.

She opens up about the immense loss, rewarding vulnerability with vulnerability - bearing it all at your altar, and tells you at the end that it was worth it. Dabbing at her tears: (1) that there are feelings of spent - indulging the truly real - that are truly worth it with the right crowd, and (2) that the builder on the foundation of gold is rewarded - If his work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, even only as him through fire.

“1 Corinthians 3,” you complete, nice and neat and prim.

And it’s a privilege of a subtlety that floors you like you’re back in her big-ass Chrysler: your mom always replaced the his in verses with an intentional her.

It makes you give her a call. The first one is awkward, most of it is silence, and in the middle of it she legitimately asks verbatim why you are calling her, but it does get better. Eventually you tell her about your boyfriend.

You even crack open a new journal, write in it with the same very nice pen that Kim Gaeul got you as a set in Christmas of freshman year - worth a shot: maybe you use her for once.

-

Okay, so it’s corny - grow up.

For the uninspired: clichés exist for a reason. Life is more shared than you think, and you promise in prayer that you don’t try to be special anymore.

The fact of the matter is you are in your early twenties - you are antithesis personified. You are incredibly doted on and yet feel so alone, you think you know it all and get proven wrong about this every other day, you have an incredible boyfriend that you’re going to never tell that you’re kinda maybe sorta pretty much gay.

Or maybe you might. Something to pray about. In the interim, that stays between you and God - He’s benevolent like that. 

Speaking of God: one Sunday while you’re uncoiling a vacuum you hit play on all your songs and physically freeze up when a worship song comes on in rotation. Your mouth goes dry, it feels like your heart becomes heavier than the rest of your chest, and you are genuinely, spiritually, physically, fully literally grounded. The song continues through to its chorus, guided by piano, and you are brought to your knees. Rooted in place, heartbeat thumping in your eardrums, in what feels like something between a panic attack and alien abduction, you rip your head upwards beholden to the bay windows you scamper across everyday, in the apartment you’ve had for almost a year, and notice that the grille is shaped like a giant cross. You cry and reach your hands out and try and pray and for the first time in a long time feel like your soul sings.

Sometime towards the end of the semester, because (1) who would’ve thought: you’re able to focus in class once you block Gaeul’s number and (2) hey, your GPA actually really fucking depends on it, your neurology professor launches into a monologue before class starts. Beyond the usual pep talk, he is more-than vulnerable about how his life has changed because of his two-month old newborn. It’s pithy, high-level, and falls on the deafer ears of students taking the class not for the major, too adult for NEURO 141, but to you: man, I have to be dating myself here, but it’s like that saying goes, right … how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time?

You hang one right next to your golden cross: glittery pink and animated, frozen mid-bite, in-metaphor ready to conquer the world. You like when the two pieces clink together, think it means something deep.

You try to chase the spiritual rending you encounter that ordinary Sunday and never get there. You feel your heart take on ten pounds whenever you close your eyes, steeling yourself for the g-force that you feel like is always going to come, but it never does.

The fact of the matter is you have a couple more blocked accounts on Instagram, a relationship with your mom that you’re figuring out, a new roommate that you’re trying to this time not sexile, a GPA that you are actively nursing, and that’s enough for you to think about for now - you will take one bite at a time.

That’s just the way life is sometimes, beckoning for you to surrender and see. By the end of sophomore year, you are still scared of being alone in your head, but have healthier mediums - no more sixteen hours of Spotify, and a little more cold turkey - you’ve weaned yourself down to 0.5mg pulls of nicotine from your vape.

The high is half-real when it’s not a cigarette, but you’ve realized that some things are more important.

Fire is necessary sometimes - to burn fat, render a cut down to its leanest form, reduce something otherwise watery and formless to its full potential, concentrate dilution to its most flavorful parts -

 - you’ve also developed an unhealthy obsession with The Bear.

Life is suffering is perseverance, and for the still uninspired: actually, whatever - you’ll save the vulnerability for the right crowd.

Lots of people wouldn’t know capital ‘c’ Craft it it hit them like a train, anyway - they probably write awful Letterboxd reviews: #awful #media #consumers.

For the real readers: yes chef, the end.

-

The end as you know it: 

Senior year. Gaeul has already graduated; you haven’t seen very much of her this year, or anything at all, except for the things she posts on her Instagram story. You don’t text her anymore and she never calls. And then without any regard for her horrible timing it’s the beginning of finals week and she shows up at your door. 

You’ve just come back from spring break at your parents’ house. You had a long talk with your boyfriend about commitment and the future and what you want out of life and what you want to call home. You are wearing a ring on your finger. 

“You’re twenty-one years old.” Gaeul can’t stop staring at it. She sounds hollow, all empty inside. “You can’t get married.” 

Your parents got married that young, and plenty of people from your high school. But you don’t tell her that, that in your world, where you come from, it’s just the thing to do. She would never understand. “Well, not now, obviously. We’ll be engaged for a while. But he says he doesn’t want to live without me.” 

Gaeul is staring at you, very pale. She looks like she’s going to vomit. She doesn’t say anything for a long time and when she does it’s barely more than a whisper. “Don’t do this,” she says. Meaning: don’t do this to me, or don’t do this to yourself. “You don’t want this.” 

You are holding the cross at your neck like a lifeline. You are staring right into the sun. You didn’t want me, you want to say. Maybe I would’ve given up everything for you, if you’d loved me, if you’d just said it out loud. I loved you so much it made me ill. I would’ve burned my whole life down. But it’s been four years and you never did a fucking thing. So now this is how it has to be. I’m going to have the life I was always meant to have, you know. I’m going to get exactly what I deserve. 

Instead you say: “I don’t want you.”

Gaeul doesn’t say baby, then; she says your name. Once, then twice, shakier each time. She presses a hand over her mouth. She’s shaking a little, swaying on her feet; you realize she really is going to be sick. So you gently close the door and when you turn around you don’t look back. 

That’s the last time you’ve spoken, until now. 

-

For years you’ve wondered how Gaeul tells this story, if she even tells it at all. 

You have your theories. Maybe she goes out and gets drunk and talks to strangers about you and gets on an incognito browser and goes to your Instagram account and makes fun of every outfit you wear, every photo of you flashing your ring. She could say: I used to fuck that girl stupid; she loved me to death; seriously, dude, she doesn’t even like men. She could pull up all the pictures she probably still has on her phone, of you in her clothes and out of them, you in her bed, you kissing her cheek. She could match up those selfies of her in your cross and point to the one you’re wearing in your engagement photos and say: Look, see? A part of her belonged to me, at least for a little while. She could brag about it. She could lie about it, but you’re not sure there’s anything she could say that was more outrageous or devastating than the truth. She’d have her hair up, maybe dark, maybe still blonde, most likely still a disaster. She’d still be wearing all her silver rings. She’d be exactly as you remember her, that dimple and those teeth. She wouldn’t have changed at all. When she’s wasted she always loves an audience, talking shit about her exes, telling her little mean and snarky stories. Yours, you’ve always imagined, would be the meanest of them all. 

“After all this time,” Gaeul says now, in the passenger seat of your car, four days before your wedding. “It’s still you, huh?” 

Her voice is a croak. She looks beautiful and terrible, and like she hasn’t really slept in days, or in the last three years. This close to her you can now see the cracks forming in the act. She is, you realize, a little bit drunk. She smiles tremulously around her cigarette.

It’s funny, how she says this. Like, despite everything, you’re exactly as she remembers you, too. Like: Oh, honey. Look at me. I can’t forget a single thing about you.

Maybe when she tells this story it isn’t anything like you imagined. Maybe she’d look up with tears in her eyes and say to anyone who would listen: I loved her. 

You’re thinking this because that’s exactly how she’s looking at you now. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” you say, quietly. 

“You invited me,” Gaeul says. “You wanted me here.”

She leans closer. You realize she thinks she’s going to kiss you. But you must have some look in your eyes, something severe and serious. Maybe a little disgusted, or pitying. Gaeul blinks rapidly but it doesn’t clear the tears from her eyes. She doesn’t come any closer. 

Gaeul says: “I thought-” 

“I know what you thought.” 

She thought she would come here and you would be trapped, desperate for her to come and save you. She thought you’d be grateful. She thought you’d be the girl from the movies who never gets over her first love. Princess in a tower, knight in shining armor. All these years and you’d still be hers. She thought you’d wait for her forever. 

“I didn’t want you here,” you say. “I didn’t think you’d actually have the nerve to show up.” Your voice is cordial and even. It’s almost like she’s a stranger. “It was a courtesy invite, obviously. It would’ve been weird if I left you out. I asked all my college friends.”

“Friends?” says Gaeul. Her brows are raised incredulously. 

“Yeah,” you say, and search for the same old anger at her gall - she’s the one who drew those lines. But none of it arises. You’re all burnt out. “Exactly. Friends. You and I never dated, remember? You and I were nothing.” 

Gaeul’s bottom lip wobbles. She looks, in that second, almost like a child. “How can you - how can you say that?” 

“I didn’t say that,” you say. You are thinking of all those nights in college. You are thinking that maybe she doesn’t even remember this story at all, or at least tells herself a much different version of it. Such is life. “You said that. So now it’s true.” 

“I didn’t mean,” Gaeul says, but the sentence never comes to fruition. She tries again, several times. “I just wanted - I was stupid - I didn’t know - I made a mistake-”

“Yeah, well,” you say. You can feel the ghost of every bruise she’s ever left on your body, the imprint of her teeth. So distant now as to almost be meaningless. “I made a lot of mistakes back then, too.” 

“Don’t say that,” says Gaeul. She’s crying openly now, sniffling and snotty. 

“It’s true.” 

“Baby.” Her face is pinched with desperation. “I love you.” 

She says it like these are the magic words. Open sesame. You’ll let her into heaven; you’ll let her back into your arms. You stare at Gaeul. You waited so long to hear her say this and it seems like she knows it. She says it again, more brokenly: “I love you.” 

She says a lot more after this, too. She’s always loved you, she tells you. Don’t do this. Don’t do this. She says: Remember all the years we spent together? Remember the parties and you as me and me as you and your cross around my neck? Remember how I was the first person to ever really know you? I think about it all the time. I think of how I fucked up and I should’ve done this and that and been better and nicer and less of a dick and not made you cry so much. But I’m here now. Doesn’t that count for something? I’m here and I’m telling you not to do this and I want to be with you. I’m being honest for the first time in a long time. I wonder if you still remember what that’s like, being honest. She says: You’ll never love him. You’ll never be happy. You’ll have to fake it for the rest of your life and it’ll kill you, one day, I know it will. I know you. All this time and I still know you. Oh, God. I’ll never get over you. 

You say nothing, for a long time. You squeeze Gaeul’s hand, once. 

The thing is:

You could make this happen, if you wanted. You could run away with her. Sneak up to your hotel room with your sleeping husband-to-be and pack a bag and disappear. Run down and out of the lobby and right into Gaeul’s passenger side, and her waiting arms. Or you could do it four days from now, for maximum drama - she could come to the wedding and get to her feet and shock all your family and scream that you’re the fucking love of her life. You could book it out of the venue in your white dress and put your bouquet and your cross necklace and your beating, bleeding heart in the sweet little palm of her hand. You could kiss her perfect mouth. You could toss your cigarette and burn your whole life down like you’d once dreamt of doing as a teenager. She’s so gorgeous. She’s still capable of tilting her head and getting everything she wants. There was a time you thought you’d love her forever. Sometimes it only takes a moment. 

But she’s drunk. And you’re sick and tired of this same old story. And it only takes a moment, but now the moment is gone. 

The end as you know it, for real this time, and forever. Gaeul says, gasps, choking on how hard she’s crying: “I could give you something real. Real love.” 

The last six years play on repeat in your head. At eighteen this would have shattered you. But you’re twenty-four now and you know better. 

“Baby?” 

It’s true, she’s right. You might never love your husband. But he can give you everything you’ve ever wanted. The choice isn’t really a choice at all. 

You touch your cross and you look Gaeul in those big wet eyes, a plea for forgiveness, amnesty, absolution, another chance, a new life. So much hope in there, too. You feel bad for her. You think: I’m sorry. It’s true, I loved you. I would’ve given up heaven for you. But it’s just too late now. 

You say, finally: “Some things are more important than love.” 

And then you let go of her hand.

-

For the record, your wedding is gorgeous. No lilies, no peonies, no beach wedding, no too-slow songs with too much silence, no girl in the room in a white dress but you. Your husband is perfect. Your Pinterest board would be jealous. Your mother cries and you cry too, in front of God and everybody, and they’re happy tears, it’s so happy, it’s the happiest day of your life. 

Gaeul doesn’t attend. It’s for the best, really. You know from experience that there’s only so much heartbreak a person can take.