“Tell me I’m the only one.”

“Irene…”

Irene held up her fingers to Seulgi’s mouth. “I don’t need you to mean it,” she breathed, withdrawing her hand to ghost her own lips along Seulgi’s. “I just want you to say it.”

The charge Seulgi felt just from that faint, brief connection, and the warmth of Irene’s breath mixing with her own made Seulgi dizzy with anticipation. She would have said almost anything to be allowed to close the distance and taste the desire that painted Irene’s voice.

Anything except that.

Irene waited a beat, wanting to hear that lie, wanting it to cut through the blood rushing in her ears as she straddled Seulgi’s lap, but only a breathless silence answered her. With painful reluctance, Irene pushed away, still clutching Seulgi’s phone in her hand as it displayed a message from another girl - a reply to a message Seulgi herself had sent not half an hour ago.

Wannie: [What time?]

“So I’m right?” Irene’s voice lost its heat as she stood up from the bed. She looked around the floor listlessly, bending slowly to retrieve her shirt.

Seulgi barely glanced at her before collapsing back on the bed to stare up at the ceiling. How did she even get into this situation? “I thought it was your idea to not be exclusive.”

Wrong answer. “That’s not what I said,” Irene stated tiredly. “I said I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in a relationship yet.” This was exactly why she had been afraid of making the commitment. “Not exactly a green light to keep screwing your ex.”

“Maybe I missed being loved,” Seulgi muttered back. “Maybe I missed being wanted.”

“You’re so stupid!” Irene bit off as she turned back to Seulgi. The darkness of the room concealed her watery eyes, but not her seething expression. She had to pause to blink back the tears.

Seulgi sat up, scared of where this argument was heading, but also feeling defensive. “Oh, I’m the stupid one? You tell me you don’t want a relationship but get surprised when I miss being in one?”

“Yes, you are!” Why was she shouting? Why did it hurt so much? Seeing the notification pop up on Seulgi’s phone while the younger girl was changing hadn’t been as much of a shock as seeing how vehemently Seulgi was defending it. “I didn’t want a relationship because I was afraid of something like this,” she gestured, a flick of her wrist towards Seulgi’s phone where it lay on the mattress.

“But I was ready, and you kept pushing me away! So I thought… so I thought…” so she thought fine, if Irene was making it so clear, then perhaps Seulgi would guard her own heart, too, and go back to the one person who had always taken such good care of it.

“Is this a mistake?” Irene whispered.

Seulgi relaxed against the headboard, matching Irene’s despondent expression. “Maybe.” A mistake that had been going on for nearly a year. She thought Irene would eventually warm up to her, but… “Maybe we’re just not… maybe the timing’s just bad.” The passion and fire she felt with Irene was burning out. Irene gave her nothing to build on - no reassurance, no promises, she had never said anything that Seulgi could specifically fault her for. Seulgi just had her own needs.

“For what it’s worth, I think I could have loved you,” Irene continued after a long moment.

“Eventually?” Seulgi asked without malice.

“Eventually,” Irene admitted with a sad smile. She had felt that Seulgi was drawing away from her for a few weeks now. The possibility of someone else had crossed her mind whenever she smelled an unfamiliar perfume in Seulgi’s apartment, or noticed an extra used towel hanging on the door of the bathroom, but Irene guessed she had been hoping Seulgi would be the one to bring it up.

She didn’t want to fight with her. She didn’t like seeing Seulgi like this - wearing the same lonely expression she had seen whenever she woke up and rolled over to see Seulgi lying there, watching the ceiling. It wasn’t Seulgi’s fault she came with a lot of baggage, but Seulgi had seemed happy to wait for her in the beginning. Maybe she already did love her. Maybe that’s why it hurt so much. But Irene was already feeling herself close up again, that tight shell that had begun to barely peek open snapping back into place after one simple text message.

“Maybe in the future…”

“No, Seulgi. No more waiting,” Irene interrupted. “You deserve someone who can give you what you want now.”

Seulgi nodded, covering her face with her arm. “And you deserve someone who can be more patient.” She had a surprisingly steady voice for the tears Irene could see trickling out from under her arm.

“I know. Thank you, Seulgi.”

“Goodbye, Irene,” Seulgi murmured, afraid to watch her leave. She should have, just for the closure of it, but she couldn’t. And though it took a suspiciously long time, Seulgi didn’t lower her arm until she heard the click of the bedroom door, and the lock of her front door beyond.

Wannie: [Did you fall asleep?]

Seulgi sighed as the light of her phone drew her attention from the dark outline of her bedroom door. She watched it until the screen went black, feeling a distinct lack of energy in her limbs, but when the notification lit up again she finally roused herself to answer. She unlocked her phone and read over the two brief messages again, then scrolled up with one swipe of her thumb at the conversation they had been having over the course of the last few months. The same set of words, over and over again, unchanging - a strange constant in contrast with the uncertainty of the relationship that had initially taken her away from Wendy.

Seul: [Sorry. Are you free now?]

Wannie: [Yeah]

A fresh wave of tears fell from Seulgi’s eyes as she saw how quickly Wendy’s reply popped up. What had she done? What had she done both to this poor girl, and to herself? Why had she thrown it all away?

+++

Seulgi had dressed and the lights in the living room. She was in the middle of making tea when Wendy knocked on her door. A wave of warmth swept over Seulgi, momentarily dispelling her exhaustion from crying. There was something so different about the way she felt with Wendy - where Irene was passion and fire, Wendy was comfort and security. The rock Seulgi had leapt from into the roiling ocean, only to be dashed upon it once more when the sea had tired of her.

She had been so terrible to Wendy. She didn’t even deserve to look at her.

And even as she opened the door, she had trouble raising her eyes to her guest. She was wearing a skirt. Guilt overwhelmed her. Wendy out in a skirt after midnight, having come to expect what awaited her when she arrived at Seulgi’s apartment.

“You look nice,” Seulgi mumbled as she let Wendy in.

Wendy was confused, but flattered. “It’s so bright in here,” she commented quietly. A whistling drew her attention to the kitchen. “Are you… making tea?” What was going on?

Seulgi hurried into the kitchen to pull the kettle off the stove before it could disturb the neighbors. She heard Irene’s curse echo in her mind, “You’re so stupid!” and she couldn’t help but agree. What did she expect after everything she had done? Did she want Wendy to welcome her back with open arms? Was that right?

The irony of Seulgi making demands of Irene for a relationship while Wendy let her wordlessly do as she wished threatened to suffocate her as she poured the tea.

She nodded to the couch as she came back into the living room with the two cups. “I thought… maybe we could talk,” Seulgi said, a palpable nervousness in her voice.

Wendy blinked at her as she accepted one of the mugs. For the first time since entering the apartment, Seulgi looked at her, and Wendy could see how red her eyes were. There was a vulnerability in her exhausted expression that was searching for something, and Wendy was a little worried about what it could mean.

There was a wordless question in her gaze, and Wendy wasn’t sure she was brave enough to figure it out. ‘I thought maybe we could talk’ sounded suspiciously like ‘Will you listen to what I have to say?’ Seulgi’s nerves were contagious, making Wendy take a rather stiff seat on the couch, her back straight and her shoulders set as she steeled herself against something. But what? The anticipation culminated in a fluttering deep in her chest, an unfortunate feeling that she always tried to suppress whenever she met Seulgi in the middle of the night like this. Though this time, they weren’t crashing into Seulgi’s bedroom in the dark. Seulgi wasn’t climbing on top of her, reducing any potential conversation to a series of moans and breathless gasps.

They were sitting in the relatively harsh overhead light of her living room, on opposite sides of the couch, with steaming mugs of tea in their laps, and Seulgi was looking at her with a sincerity she hadn’t seen in over a year. So she wasn’t so quick to try and loosen the anxious grip her feelings had around her heart this time.

Instead, in a rather belated answer to Seulgi’s question, both spoken and unspoken, Wendy simply said, “I’d love to.”

fin