I was so completely, utterly, thoroughly shocked that I reacted on base instinct; I jerked away.

He pulled back when he felt me do it, looking at me with wide-eyed worry. I'm sure my face looked pretty much the same. The main differences were that my mouth was also hanging open while my eyebrows had shot up so high they probably weren't even on my face anymore. His were scrunched together from concern.  

"Sorry," he said, the word practically shooting out of his mouth. "I didn't mean- I don't-"

He fumbled around his words, and honestly some small part of my mind that had managed to start working again actually registered how cute and childlike he looked right now. At the same time, that part of my mind wanted to stop him and say it was all okay, placate him.

But I didn't do that. I couldn't because the rest of my mind that was beginning to work again remembered exactly what he had done to cause this to happen. My brain was trying to work through the action, what he could have meant by it, what my feelings about it were. Well, the latter part didn't take too much time to figure out. I had liked it.

While I was doing this, Xiumin was bumbling and mumbling his way to an explanation for what he had done, his grip on the shirt tightening so much his hands had balled into fists.

By the time most of my brain had finally thawed, I had come to the decision that I was going to tell him that he didn't need to be sorry, that I liked it. I took too long in coming to this decision and acting, however, as Xiumin seemed to fully comprehend the position I was in. His eyes widened even more as his cheeks tinged pink.

"I-I'm sorry," he said again  "But could you...?"

He had released his grip on the shirt and pulled his arms back, hands hovering on either side of his head, as if to signify that he wasn't going to touch me. Blushing myself as it all sunk in for me as well, that I was still straddeling his lap, one hand gripping onto his shirt at his shoulder, the other cupping his neck, again.

Xiumin's eyes had fallen to the space between us again, and he couldn't seem to be able to lift them back up to look at me until after I had settled myself in the spot next to him. This time I was facing forward, legs crossed. I wasn't sure what was going through his mind, but he seemed to be regretting the kiss, or at least the implications of it. Maybe he hadn't meant anything by it and is just shocked by my strong reaction? But that wouldn't make any sense. He kissed my neck, my neck. I couldn't really believe that something like that had been done with entirely innocent intentions, but due to Xiumin's expression and actions, I definitely gave it some consideration.

"I shouldn't have done that."

My head whipped up to look at him, but he was staring very intently at something on the ground. Why shouldn’t he have done that? I liked that he had done it. I guess my reaction made it seem like I hadn't, but I had. I was about to tell him just that, but he kept talking.

“I just haven't had anyone… be there for me when I… cried before. Or, not for years, anyway. And no one’s ever… held me… like that,” he paused again, really struggling to get all these words out. “I just got… carried away.”

It was like all the color was draining out of my face and going into his.

"Carried away?"

He nodded.

I tore my eyes from him and tried to let that sink in for a minute. I pulled my legs up close and wrapped my arms around them, resting my chin on my knees 

Carried away.

He just got carried away.

"Are you feeling better?" I asked around the lump in my throat. 

"Yeah," he said. "Thank you." He pulled his legs up, too, holding onto his like I was mine.

A silence fell between us that was heavier and thicker and much more awkward than we have had since before we ran into each other again. 

"What time is it?" I asked as I sat up to grab my phone out of my pocket. I pretended to check the time before I said, "I should probably be heading home. Dinner should be ready soon.” 

He nodded and stood up with me, following me to the front door.

"I'll give you your shirt back tomorrow," I said as I slid on my shoes.

"Thanks, but you don't have to rush. The shirt doesn't even fit me anymore."

"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were gloating."

He stared back at me blankly for a moment before returning my smile. 

"With these guns, who wouldn't?"

A laugh bubbled out as he flexed his arms.

"Thanks again for letting me borrow it," I said as I reached out and grabbed the handle to the front door.

Before I could open it, though, I felt a pull on my shirt again. When I turned around I saw it was, of course, Xiumin who had reached out and grabbed the hem of my shirt again.

"Thank you," he said. He was looking past me, blushing and vulnerable looking again. "For what you did for me." 

I made the decision almost instantly, picking selfishness over reasonableness. I tried rationalizing a bit, thinking it could be good for him, nice, but truthfully I did it because I wanted to, without any consideration for him. I felt really bad for that, but there are worse things I could do in a moment like that then hug my friend who also just happens to be my crush.

I turned and took the step towards him, wrapping my arms around his waist, laying my head on his shoulder. I was only going to give myself a few seconds and then pull away, but then his arms came up and encircled me, keeping me close as he buried his face in my hair.

I waited until he pulled back. He seemed like he still needed a hug, and I didn't want to end it too soon for him. I didn't want to pull two selfish acts at once.

After a few seconds, he finally did, and he was smiling down at me.

"See you tomorrow." 

I smiled back at him as I finally walked out the door.

"See ya." 

~

Neither of us brought up what happened again. I was a little worried there might be some awkwardness because of what had happened after he cried, but it was the opposite. Xiumin seemed so much more comfortable around me. It was suddenly like he was attached to my hip, literally and figuratively. I mean, we had already spent a lot of time together, but now he was always right next to me, usually touching me. Like when we walked together he would be so close our hands or shoulders would brush, or when we were sitting down his leg or thigh would be pressed against mine, depending on how close he was sitting.

If felt a lot like we were dating, but at the same time there was this very solid distance between us making it very plain we weren't.

Sun Young had noticed something was going on between us and had tried asking me about it, but I didn't feel right explaining everything since it had a lot to do with Xiumin’s personal life. I tried answering her as best as I could, though, by telling her that I did like him again and we were getting closer.

Her response was to start planning our wedding and throw baby names at me.

Currently she’s calling them Min Seok Jr. or Jin Ri Jr. depending on if she's wanting me to have a boy or a girl at the moment. Until she decides on a name, anyway.

Seung Im, on the other hand, hadn't caught on to anything yet. It was the main reason I was so at ease when her, Xiumin, and I all went out to lunch together a few days later. Well, until we actually got there, that is.

When we first sat down everything was going fine. Seung Im was sitting opposite of me while Xiumin was, of course, right next to me. I had half expected him to rest his legs against mine, or something like that, because he had started doing that kind of thing recently. I was not, however, in any way prepared for him to rest his hand on my knee.

I guess it could have been more awkward, especially considering I was wearing a skirt, but I was wearing stockings underneath so it wasn’t like a skin-on-skin kind of thing. But still, something about it felt intimate, at least in a casual.

I liked it, don’t get me wrong, it’s why I left his hand where it was at first. But as the meal went on, I realized that this kind of action probably held a different meaning for me than it did for him. Like the kiss on my neck did. As soon as I came to this realization, my heart dropped and I didn’t want his hand there anymore. Well, part of me did, but the smarter part that understood I liked it a lot more than I really should wanted the hand gone.

The only problem was that I didn’t want to just shove it off. He’d notice and be wondering why I had suddenly changed my mind, I’m sure. I could probably shift my sitting position, but I wasn’t positive that he would move his hand. Well, that he would move it without having realized what I was doing first, anyways. The only option I could think of was to get up and go to the bathroom and hope that he wouldn’t put his hand back there when I sat down again.

I excused myself from the table and headed towards the restrooms, thinking to myself that if I crossed my legs and angled them away when I sat down, that might eliminate the problem all together. I didn’t realize that Xiumin had excused himself as well and was following me until he grabbed my hand before I reached the bathroom door.

“Hey,” he said, turning me around to face him. “I’m sorry.”

There was a small room off the main floor of the restaurant that had the doors to both the men’s’ and women’s’ bathrooms. We were currently alone in it, but people could pass through at any time.

“Sorry for what?”

“For having my hand… where I did.”

He was blushing, and a part of me really wanted to tell him that it was okay, that there was absolutely nothing wrong with what he did. To pretend that it had no undesirable affect on me. The more responsible part of me wanted to just nod my head, accept the apology while simultaneously acknowledging that he had been in the wrong, that it had bothered me.

The first part of me won out easier than it probably should have.

“It’s fine. Why should you be sorry?”

“Because you seemed so tense.” He shrugged, trying to be nonchalant, but his eyes were too focused on me, watching my reaction, for him to actually pull it off. “I just assumed it was because of that.”

I shook my head, and he gave me a funny look. Then he stepped towards me.

“You don’t mind me touching you like that?”

I blushed at his word choice, but shook my head. It was just a hand on my knee which, granted, is a bit more intimate than your typical friendly contact would be, but it wasn’t like his hand was on my thigh or… I don’t know. Something else like that.

He just stared at me for a moment, like he was studying me. I didn’t understand why this was so important to him, and I wished I could explain exactly what it was that he was trying to figure out, but he seemed to be beating around the bush instead of getting straight to the source and I was too lost to even begin to understand what he was getting at.

“Do you… like it?”

My face flushed. I had never had someone say things like that to me so plainly. Sure, he didn’t mean them in any way that should make me blush, at least, I don’t think he did, but that didn’t stop my mind from taking his words in ways that I shouldn’t have. What made it worse was that I was so embarrassed by how much I was blushing that I ended up blushing even harder, and I was standing right in front of him, my reaction right in front of his face.

His eyes seemed to narrow in on me, almost growing darker. I wasn’t sure if that was because his face was shadowed a bit from facing away from the lights or something else. Either way, my heart picked up it’s pace.

“Jin Ri,” he said, reaching out to me like he wanted to grab my shirt like he had the other day, but there wasn’t enough loose material for him to do that. So instead, he grabbed my waist, taking another step closer.

My brain stopped functioning properly at this point. I could only focus on the heat from his hand and the fact that he was now standing so close to me that we could easily kiss. I couldn’t even think about why he was doing this or what I thought about it.

And then he was leaning in, like he was actually going to kiss me, and there was nothing else.

I leaned forward, anticipating it so much I could barely stand it.

Xiumin is going to kiss me. Xiumin is going to kiss me. Xiumin is going to kiss me.

My thoughts kept playing out this mantra to the rhythm of my heartbeats, filling me up so it was the only thing in my brain.

Xiumin is going to kiss me.

The door to the main restaurant floor opened before he got too close and we both jumped apart.

Xiumin was going to kiss me.

“What’s taking you guys so long?” Seung Im asked, looking between us with confused annoyance.

“Sorry, we just bumped into each other when we were heading out and started talking and…” Xiumin trailed off, shrugging.

I glanced up at his face when he began talking, and saw it wasn’t as red as I knew mine was. In fact, it looked like he was barely blushing. As I looked closer at it, though, I wasn’t sure if he was actually blushing at all.

Was Xiumin going to kiss me?

My heart started thumping in my chest as the question flittered through my mind: was Xiumin going to kiss me if Seung Im hadn’t just walked in? Or had I misread his actions somehow. I was pretty sure that was where it had been going, but maybe I was wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time I had misinterpreted his actions.

“Jin Ri,” I heard Seung Im say, giving me a slightly concerned look when I glanced up at her. “Let’s go back to the table, your foods geting cold.”

“No,” I said, trying to split my focus between that question and this conversation. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Didn’t you just go?”

“I need some fresh air.”

She arched an eyebrow at me.

“So you’re going to the bathroom?”

“There’s no fresher air than bathroom air.”

She looked at me like I was crazy before shooting a questioning look at Xiumin, who seemed just as concerned as she did.

“You guys go ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.”

With that, I maneuvered around Xiumin and dashed into the bathroom. I kind of just stood there for a second, in front of the doorway, trying to piece together what had just happened. I was brought back into myself when I heard my phone ring, signaling I had a text. When I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked it, I saw it was a text from Seung Im asking me if I was okay and what had happened between Xiumin and me.

That was a good question.

I was pretty sure he was about to kiss me, but I was also pretty sure he only thought of me as a friend. Maybe a good friend, but just a friend. And Xiumin didn’t strike me as the kind of guy to kiss people who he considered to be “just a friend”. I could possibly be wrong about this, but that was extremely unlikely.

And since he wasn’t like that, there was only one logical reason that I could think of for him to try to kiss me, and that had to be that he liked me, or was at least attracted to me.

But then again, maybe he wasn’t.

True, if you think about it, he had been acting like he likes me recently, but that didn’t all start up until after the night he had that breakdown over his mom. The night he had kissed my neck because I had comforted him and he had gotten “carried away”. Was that still happening? Was he only interested in me because he’s still “carried away”? If he does like me, is it just for what I did, not because he actually likes me? I wasn’t so sure about that.

I realized that I had been in the bathroom for a while now and that I really needed to get back out there before Seung Im and Xiumin started getting more worried than they already were. I just needed to get through this lunch, I can mull over everything else after.

I texted Seung Im that I would explain everything later before making my way back to the table. We continued on with lunch with everyone pretending that nothing was up, but we didn’t do a very good job of it. It was a huge relief when we all finished eating and were able to leave. Xiumin tried to walk me to my bus stop, though, and it was all I could do to convince him not to. I think I hurt his feelings, but I just couldn’t be alone with him until I calmed down and was able to think rationally about all this again. I didn’t trust myself otherwise.