“All I am saying is,” Lisa said, holding up her index finger and wagging it at the other girls. “If a guy lands in my friend zone, there’s a chance I might randomly develop feelings for him. But Bambam is like family, there is absolutely zero chance that I will ever date him, so just step off!”

“Fine!” Rose said, putting her hands up in surrender. “All I said was that if you changed your mind, I think it’d be cute.”

They were at the Gumiho, a bar a couple streets down from campus to celebrate Jisoo’s last day at Vector Marketing. After meeting Julie Kiyoko and landing the job at Embrace, she’d gone straight home and printed out her letter of resignation (she had already drafted it on her phone on the train.) Her roommates, Lisa, Rose, and Jennie were all in attendance, and the girls were sitting at a table by the wall with a bottle of soju each, except Rose who always opened every night of drinking with a glass of sparkling rosé in honor of her namesake. 

The lighting was dim, as expected in a bar, but the atmosphere was lively. There was a boxing match playing on the TV and half the boys in the establishment were crowding around it. The girls had to yell to hear each other.

“Hey, hey!” Jisoo said. “No fighting! We’re here to celebrate me finally saying goodbye to Vector Marketing for good. I want to see more drinking and more smiling and less arguing!” 

“We’re not arguing,” Rose insisted, finishing off her glass of pink champagne. “How can we argue if we can’t even hear each other?”

Jisoo poured some of her half-gone soju into a shot glass and handed it to Rose since she finished her rosé. Then she tipped the bottle up and drank some herself. On one side of the Gumiho, the boys erupted into cheers after one of the boxers landed a six-punch combo. Lisa cheered, too, since she was half-watching the match from their table. Jisoo took a handful of fries from the plate in the center of the table and stuffed her face.

“You know what I’m not gonna miss the most about Vector Marketing?” Jisoo said, half full of fries potatoes. “My y, stuck-up, power-tripping supervisor, that’s who.”

“You mean the one who gave you the wrong meeting time on purpose so you had to wake up at 4 AM?” Lisa asked. Jisoo nodded.

“Exactly that one.”

“Oh my goodness, okay, look now,” Jennie said. She grabbed Jisoo’s wrist and squeezed it tight as she looked over at the bar. Her new boyfriend, Jackson, was a bartender at the Gumiho, and he was hard at work squeezing the juice out of lemon and into a glass. Jennie squealed.

“Look at his arms!” she said giddily. It was a bit warm in the Gumiho, and Jackson had worn a t-shirt, but rolled the sleeves up. His biceps glowed with light perspiration. Jennie swooned. “Isn’t he so hot? How did I get so lucky?”

“Yes, we know,” Rose said, giggling. “We only heard you the last fourteen times you pointed it out since we got here.”

“Oh my god, do I really talk about it that much?” Jennie said, turning back to the girls. “Sorry! Am I getting annoying?”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Rose said, throwing a shot back into . Once the initial burn passed, she turned back to Jennie. “Ogle your hot boyfriend all you want. But I’d just like to point out that Jisoo’s hot TA is here, too, and look what he’s wearing.”

Jisoo was in the middle of stuffing another handful of fries into when she heard Lisa say that Jaebum was in the room. She turned around to look in the direction she was pointing, and sure enough, there he was. Wearing a black tank top. Perspiration clung to his skin and made it glisten, and her eyes were especially drawn to his muscled arms. She thought she might choke on the fries.

“Ooh. Impressive,” Jennie said, winking at Jisoo. “Now I know why you can’t pay attention in class.”

“I did not know he was hiding those in his suit jacket sleeves,” Jisoo said after successfully swallowing potatoes. “Holy baloney. It’s better than I could have hoped.”

“They’re alright,” Lisa said, shrugging. 

“Excuse me?” Rose said, bumping her with an elbow. Lisa turned defensive again.

“What? I didn’t say he was, like, skinny or anything,” Lisa said. “I’m just not really a biceps person.”

“But you dated that personal trainer!” Jennie said.

“Once!”

“You went out for two months! His biceps were huge!”

“You think he wore that shirt on purpose?” Jisoo said, still staring longingly at Jaebum, who stood behind the crowd watching the match and was talking to a friend. He ran a hand through his hair, and Jisoo fantasized being the one to run her fingers through his silky locks. When she looked around the room, she realized she and her friends weren’t the only girls taking notice of him. She burned with jealousy when Jaebum turned and talked to a girl watching the match.

“They could be staring at my boyfriend, too, you know?” Jennie said. Rose scoffed.

“And you’re happy about that?”

While the girls talked, Jisoo’s gaze roamed from Jaebum’s face down to his shoulders and his arms. Jaebum was lean and athletic-looking. She was almost positive that he was aware that girls liked to take long, appreciative looks at his biceps, because why else would he wear that shirt on a night like this? Jisoo took another sip of her soju, and then the weirdest, most unwelcome thought suddenly occurred to her:

Jinyoung had biceps, too. 

He wasn’t exactly in the habit of wearing short sleeves like Jaebum, even when the sweltering weather practically demanded it, so Jisoo never actually saw his biceps. But… she felt them. The other day, at the interview. While trying to convince Julie Kiyoko that they were a legitimate couple, Jisoo slipped her hand around his arm like a girlfriend would, and… she felt them… through the cloth of his sleeve. His biceps.

That wasn’t weird, right? she asked herself. It wasn’t as if she was purposely trying to feel his arms. She was just acting her part. Feeling his arms, that was just a bonus.

A bonus? Jisoo smacked herself for thinking that. Maybe she was starting to get too tipsy. 

“Jisoo! Quick! We need more fries,” Rose said, grabbing her arm and shaking her out of her stupor.

“What?” she said. She looked down at their plate of fries and there was still plenty to go around. “There’s more here.”

“No, we need more,” Rose said. Then she grabbed the plate and tossed the rest of the fries to the floor, and Jisoo felt almost offended on behalf of the fried potatoes strings. “Get more fries. Go. Hurry!”

Jisoo scoffed and grabbed the now empty plate. She looked up at the bar, where she would need to go to place another order for food, and then she realized why Rose insisted she get more fries. Jaebum was there, and for once, he wasn’t surrounded by girls or occupied with friends. Jaebum was at the bar, alone. Jisoo’s face paled.