Communications Consultant

            At first, I thought Donghae was kind of an idiot for not mentioning it to me at some point before then.  Years is a long time.  But when I sat down and really thought about it—and I was on the airplane back to South Korea, so there really wasn’t a better time—he probably did try to clue me in before then.  I mean, there was that one time last winter…

            I’d been out late, hanging out with some of the other dancers from SM, and no one apparently knew where the hell I was.  My phone was dead.  That was my fault.  I forgot to charge it and then I used it a lot to watch some videos and that.  Anyway, it was snowing heavy that night, so I decided that I should probably crash at Hae’s apartment, since it was nearly whiteout conditions. 

            When I knocked on his door, he was so mad at me that he hit me in the chest several times. 

            “What the hell is that about?”

            “Do you realize that most of us think you’re lying in a ditch somewhere dying?  I better call Ryeowook up before he starts calling hospitals,” Donghae said, pulling out his phone and calling the kid up. 

            “Are you serious?” I asked, shaking my head as I took off my wet coat.

            “Idiot,” he muttered under his breath.  “You should have told someone you were going out.  Better yet, you shouldn’t even be out when it’s snowing this bad.”

            I rolled my eyes at him, but I didn’t further comment as he started talking to Ryeowook and letting him know that I was safe.  I wanted to be upset that they were all overreacting, but at the same time, it was nice to know that I had so many people that cared about me.  I also felt a little guilty because ever since the accident, the worry that someone else was going to get into a car accident just didn’t seem to go away.  I didn’t really have much in the way of injuries compared to Kyuhyun and Leeteuk, but still I don’t think Donghae released his hold on me for about five hours after the hospital released me.  I didn’t get to leave his side for about three days.  Imagine that.  Not pissing on your own for three days.  , I mean, we used to all share one little dorm together and we pretty much did everything from shower together to crap while someone else was brushing their teeth, but still.  Anyway, I digress, the point is, making someone worry that you were in a car accident was a sore spot in our group.  Bad weather and not calling to say you were okay wasn’t cool and I should have known better.  If our roles had been reversed, I’d been giving Hae just as hard a time about it.  So I kept my mouth shut.

            Once Donghae got off the phone with Wook, he narrowed his eyes at me and walked into the kitchen.  “Are you hungry?  Should I make something?”

            “Starving.”

            I’m always hungry.  I was dancing before I went out to drink, which means I probably burned about 8000 calories at dance practice alone.  My stomach was currently eating itself to compensate. 

            “Should I make us each a pizza?” he asked, opening his freezer.

            “Yes,” I said, back hugging him.

            Donghae grasped one of my hands and dug through the freezer with the other.  “Next time you’re out late, call one of us so we don’t worry,” he said, squeezing my hand.

            “My phone died.”

            “Borrow someone’s,” he said, placing two pizzas on the stovetop and closing the freezer.

            “I’d have to call you then,” I said, thinking it over.  “Yours is the only number I know by heart.”

            For a moment, Donghae just stood there in silence.  Then he turned around suddenly and hugged me tight.  “I love you,” he said.

            “I know,” I responded, hugging him back.

            “No, I mean…I really love you.”

            “So do I,” I said, swaying back and forth.  “That’s why I came to your house instead of going to see my parents and my princess.”

            Donghae sighed and released me.  He nodded and the oven.  “Right.”

            When I think back to that, he might have been trying to tell me something there.  Or maybe not.  I’m not really sure, I guess.  I could recall about a dozen moments like that in the last few years though.  So, maybe there was something to it, after all. 

            Anyway, I called Sungmin before we left to track Donghae down for me.  I certainly couldn’t have one of the other two call him, even if it seemed less suspicious for one of them to talk to him.  But Sungmin always appears to be innocent, so he was my best choice.  No one ever suspects him of any devious intent.  Thankfully, I’ve known him longer than anyone so I know better than that.  Anyway, Donghae was at the gym at the time, but would likely be back at his apartment by the time we got home.  Figures that he wouldn’t be at the dorms.  He was still avoiding me.  Maybe that was a good thing.  We needed time alone to talk and we were least likely to be interrupted at his apartment. 

            I took a taxi from the airport straight to his apartment without bothering to call ahead.  I didn’t want to give him any excuse to leave before I got there.  I rushed up to this floor, taking two steps at a time—the elevator was going to be far too slow—and headed down the hall to his door.  My heart was racing and I took a couple deep breaths before knocking on the door.  I waited, feeling antsy, but there was no answer.  I tried again.  Still nothing.  I’d come all this way only to find out that he wasn’t at his place.  He might have known when I was due to get in and thought to avoid the apartment for a while, just in case, but I thought it more likely that he had a meeting somewhere. 

            Thankfully, I had my own key.  Ah, you didn’t think of that one did you?  Since we weren’t dating, you assumed I’d just have to drag my sorry home, but we’d been best buds for years at that point.  For what?  Eight years or something crazy like that.  Of course he gave me a key to his apartment.  It was like my home away from home.  And of all the places we tended to sleep at together, this was the one where we actually had a queen size bed to stretch out in—he never made me sleep on the couch, of course—but truth be told, I always kind of hated his bed.  I didn’t have any excuse to cuddle up to him on that one.  Now that I was starting to realize I was actually attracted to him, this was all beginning to make much more sense.  Before that, I just assumed that he was the closest thing I had to a brother…and then I realized that most people I knew who had brothers never liked cuddling up to them at night or spending every waking minute with them. Yesung tried to describe it once to me as more of a love/hate relationship.  That certainly wasn’t how I would describe my friendship with Donghae. 

            I drug my bags to the bedroom, changed clothes since I felt grimy after being in the airplane for so long, and then I headed to the kitchen to find something to drink.  I found a half open bottle of wine and decided to pour myself a glass.  Kyuhyun had got me kind of hooked on it while I was in Greece.  And maybe it was a subconscious thing.  I’d been drinking wine when I found out about Donghae’s longstanding love, then later found out it was me.  Perhaps I felt some crazy connection between drinking wine and finding out about Donghae’s secret crush on me.  Don’t spread it around, but I can be a little sentimental at times.

            Yesung was right.  What Donghae and I had wasn’t anything similar to a brotherly bond.  As I walked around his apartment, looking at pictures of us hanging up on the wall, I realized whatever kind of friendship we had all this time, it had always kind of been a friendship border lining on a love affair with serious blurred lines.  The only thing we weren’t doing was the fun . 

            You might think I’m joking, but we text or called each other all damn day if we weren’t around each other and let each other know what we were up to.  We spend the vast majority of our time together when not working on individual projects, which wasn’t too often.  He filmed stuff and we each represented products and had periodic commercials to film or photo shoots, but that was about it.  Otherwise most of our work was done together.  And although we didn’t always sleep at the same place—we each had our own rooms in the dorms and our own apartments—it was kind of scary how often we found excuses to sleep at the same place. 

            When I think back to heading to Paris earlier in the year together before the rest of the group joined us and Leeteuk flipping out on us about going alone, I originally thought he was nuts.  He absolutely insisted that someone head there early with us or it would seriously look like we were going as a couple, so Shindong came with us.  I thought he