I sat at the farthest seat from the door this time. It’s the last party for our class together and everyone had gathered in the schools gym in their new ties and dresses. The girls were all bunched together; some were crying, some were laughing and a big chunk of them were just taking pictures together. The guys were all sitting down at the round tables provided doing whatever boys do at social gatherings.

And there I was, alone, in the corner of the room, staring at everyone.

4 years with these people and I’m pretty sure that only a handful of them knew who I was, or even cared to know anyways. I spend 4 years with these people and yet I didn’t feel too sad to be leaving.

Then my eyes rolled over a familiar figure in the midst of all the happy chaos. I only saw his back but I knew who it was since we went out to find a nice lavender dress shirt together. I joked about the color he should really wear but he bought it anyways. Now, that dress shirt let me pick him out easily from the crowd.

I took a sip of my water and allowed myself to watch him.

Taehyung stood with everyone else, unlike me. He is the definition of a social butterfly, he should be the icon for all butterflies. Everyone knew him. Everyone wanted to be his friend. And no, he’s not the type where people like to their face and talk mad crap about behind their backs; everyone seemed to genuinely like him.

How could they not? He could relate to everyone and anything. He’s kind and he has such an easygoing personality.

I couldn’t help but flinch when I saw one of the cheerleaders’ placing her hand on his upper arm.

That’s supposed to be my arm.

She continued to physically touch him even though she’s fully capable of laughing without falling over or something. Taehyung didn’t even seem to notice. He just continued to joke around with the bunch. This went on for an hour.

Then our eyes met.

I was alone and happy people surrounded him. And to be honest, it made me kind of sad. But how could I just change personalities and try to be everyone’s friend? It’s way too late for that.

I was sad but then he did that thing again.

He smiled at me.

~

“How do you feel sweetie?” My door opened and in came my overly excited mother. She had a cup of orange juice in one hand and a banana in the other.

“Fine?”

Then another figure continued to follow her through the door. I could only spew out a loud grunt and rush to pull the covers over my head.

“What is he doing here?” I muffled through my sheets.

“He’s here to take you out!” Taehyung answered me. I use to blush over this stuff before, but now I’ve built up strength to fight through the squealing every time he said something cute.

“I’d rather you not, thank you. Leave,” I said loudly.

“Come on, honey, it’s summer. Go and do something fun please,” I could feel my mom patting my head over the blankets.

“Yeah, honey, come spend the day with me, I’m lonely,” Taehyung voiced in his annoyingly deep voice.

I cringed.

But I knew I wanted to go.

“I’ll be out in 5,” I pushed my mom off my bed with my foot and stuck a hand out of my blanket to wave the other one away.

“Yay!”

After a few long minutes of trying to look decent, I made my way down.

“He’s outside!” my mom shouted from the kitchen once she heard me reach the end of the stairs.

“I’ll see you later mom!”

I hid my smile then went outside.

BEEP BEEP

“What in the world are you doing?” I bluntly asked the driver of the large truck the pulled towards me.

“Picking my girl up!” Taehyung shouted at me with a huge smile across his face.

“When did you get a car? How is this possible?!” I crossed my arms feeling iffy.

“I got it for graduating first in my class! It’s a gift from my parents,” he proudly patted the passenger seat.

“I’m not getting in that,” the truck was huge; huge, huge king of huge.

“Hale, please,” he lightly said to me, “we can go on one of those adventures we were talking about before.

Again with the niceness and smiling stuff. My heart cannot deal.

“I can’t trust you. I didn’t even know you had your license,” I spat.

I think I saw him roll his eyes a bit but his lips remained in its smiley form. He got out of his car and rushed over to grab my arm.

He slowly slid his hand down to interlace his fingers with mine.

“Hailey, just trust me,” he said.

Oi, I can’t reject him.

After shoving me in the truck and slowly pulling away from my neighborhood, I started to get more comfortable with his driving.

Of course he can drive, he’s good at everything he does.

“Where are we going?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he squeezed my hand. I pulled it away and tucked it into the pockets of my hoodie.

“HALE, MY HANDS JUST NEED SOME WARMING UP CAN YOU JUST BE NICE?” Taehyung immediately started to whine.

Feeling mean, “Shush,” I laughed.

“Do not shush me. You owe me,” he poked my side.

“Hands on the wheel,” I said as I threw his hand back over to his side of the car.

“Hold one,” he held his right hand out for me.

“Get a girlfriend for that,” I repeated one of my signature lines.

We continued to joke like that.

He had picked me up around noon and now it was about 4 PM, 4 hours on the road and I was still clueless.

“Where did you say we were going again?”

“I didn’t,” he laughed.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Tell you what?” he joked.

“Tell me!”

“Tell you what? Tell you that I love you?”

I shoved him really hard; the car shook a little since he was surprised.

“Tell me, REALLY tell me,” I said.

He ignored me and turned the car and parked it.

We were at a condo-building complex, parked next to a playground they had set up on the grounds.

“Did you drive me this far away so we could slide down slides? I thought we were getting food or something, I’m starving,” I rolled my eyes and got ready to get out the car.

He still didn’t say anything but he made an effort to rush out to open my car door.

He still didn’t say anything though I was getting a bit naggy.

He led me to the front desk and to the elevator and then down a hall towards a room.

“Seriously, what is going on?” I stopped and faced him.

He opened the door that was in front of us, “This is our new place.”

“Our…place?”