Chapter 4. When Firsts Were Beautiful

The cheating and the lying started just a few weeks after we started dating. Yoona and the others dragged me to the mall. It was too late for me to realize why. I wouldn’t have gone.

He was with a woman, a few years older than me or maybe it was just the way that she was dressed. I couldn’t recognize the feeling recoiling inside me. My chest seemed to contract leaving my heart to clench so hard especially seeing that he was holding her hand as they walked. I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t even hear what my friends were telling me— my focus was only at the scene in front of us until he turned.

Like he knew that I was there.

Like he could hear the first real pain he caused me.

Our eyes met but only for a moment because I turned away and ran, ran as fast as I could with my tears stinging in my eyes.

He followed me in the dorm and I was stupid enough that I didn’t lock the door. He pulled me in his arms. I pushed him and asked who that woman was and he said she was just a friend. It was stupid but I bought it.

The apologies didn’t stop even after I told myself to forget about it. That it was a fluke. That he got caught once but we were still together so there was no way he was going to do it again.

I was wrong.

When it came to him, I was always wrong.

~~~

After that first time, he became sweeter it was actually annoying at first until I realized I was just mad at him so I thought he was being annoying. I liked that sweet side of him— the charming, the silly.

I loved the way he would look at me.

Most of the time when we hang out, he would just stare at me. It weirded me out but he told me to just ignore him. And I did— pretended to ignore him. He looked at me not because he was trying to get attention. He looked at me not to show me he adored me.

He would just look at me,

One day at the café, he was doing that again.

And again, I pretended not to notice until he slipped his hand on mine, rested his head on the crook of my neck and I felt his warm breath there.

“I don’t know…” he whispered, “I can’t figure it out.”

“Figure out what?” I rubbed his arm when in truth I wanted to rub mine just to ease the goosebumps that were forming.

“Why am I so in love?”

I laughed, tilted my head to meet his gaze with a frown.

But his expression didn’t falter. He didn’t smile, he didn’t laugh with me.

“I love you…”

That was the very first time he said those words. That day was engraved inside me. It was not the sweet talker in him that said those words to me.

It was just… him.

I didn’t say ‘I love you’ back. I was probably too surprised to be on the receiving end of that famous phrase.

Or I was just scared that he would break my heart in the end. It was like being afraid to gamble because I didn’t want to lose what I have— or who I was.

I didn’t say those words until that day our dorm caught on fire in the middle of the night.

Lucky for me and Yoona, we weren’t there that night since we went to a concert. I didn’t want to go but she literally dragged me. We got a call from the resident assistant and we drove back to the dorm as fast as we could. Some of the girls were hurt badly and if we were there we would have been one of them since our room was so close to where the fire started.

It was chaos when we got in the area. Although the fire was out, the sirens were still blaring and ambulances came and went. The girls were huddled in every safe distance crying, most of them were on the phone. The police line was just set and the school authorities who arrived started checking on all of us. I hugged Yoona because she was crying, it was too much for me as well but I couldn’t seem to find the tears. I was shell-shocked of the thought that we could have been hurt or worse—

The tears only came once my eyes landed on him.

He was at a distance looking as awful as everybody around who were searching for their loved ones. He didn’t see me yet but I could tell that he was looking for me. The desperation was clear by the way he would stop by every police, every person he would see and asked. My heart clenched by the way he would ran his hands through his hair, dropped them on his waist and looked around searching for someone. Then he took his phone and stared at it, sighed and dialed. After all the commotion, I just realized that my phone was in my bag so I didn’t notice if anybody called. At last, I told Yoona where I was going and as I sprinted towards him.

“Oppa!” I shouted as I got closer and the moment he saw me, he ran like lightning and lifted me off my feet.

“Oh, god,” he repeated over and over again as he hugged me and kissed me on my hair, my cheek, my neck— everywhere his lips could reach.

That was when tears came streaming down my face. I cried even harder with relief, with gratitude that we were safe, with agony for the other girls who were hurt.

I cried some more because I knew, right that moment I knew, that this man loved me fiercely.

“Baby, I thought—“

He couldn’t even form the words as he cupped my cheeks in both hands and kissed my forehead. I smiled and shook my head, “We weren’t here but we came as soon as we heard.”

“Thank god… you have no idea how scared I was when I heard but I couldn’t reach you,” he took a deep sigh and pulled me in his arms again, “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too…” I whispered on his chest, “I love you.”

I felt his lips on my hair then he looked at me and smiled, “You never said that before.”

“It’s about time,” I smiled back.

“What would have been the scariest day of my life suddenly shifted,” he slowly brushed his lips on mine.

Our first real kiss. My first real kiss.

~~~

Every time I would find out that he cheated. I would always thought that it was the last. I couldn’t really understand how I could be that irrational especially when it came to him. Maybe it was the thought of losing him. Maybe I got too used to having him around.

Maybe I was just too in love with him.

We broke up a lot. I lost count, really. My friends thought I was just another broken record when it came to him. Some of those times I didn’t even tell them that we broke up again. We never had that cool off thing they would call, I just broke up with him but he come running back, chasing me, wooing me, telling me it was the last.

That he loved me and the others didn’t mean anything to him.

The crazy thing was that I believed him— every damn time.

The even craziest thing was, I loved him more than I loved me.

There was this big recurring debate between my two closest friends, Yo