Jessica reaches toward the table to put her phone down. It starts to slip through her fingers, and she barely manages to hold onto it before it drops. The last thing she needs is a cracked screen to go with everything else that’s breaking or broken in her life.

She puts her phone down and sinks into her chair, pushing back her hair when it falls over her face. Her fingers come away damp, and only then does she realize that she’s crying. Can this even be called crying? She’s not making a sound, she’s not breathing harshly, she’s just—

Her phone beeps, and her heart gives a single, sharp leap. She clenches and unclenches her fingers, inhales and exhales. It’s not Taeyeon, she tells herself. It can’t be. Tiffany had promised not to tell Taeyeon, and whatever has changed between them, when Jessica told her, “I trust you,” she meant it.

Jessica reaches for her phone. The source of the beep isn’t a text, but a reminder alert she set for her meeting. She stares at it unblinkingly until her eyes start to burn, unsure whether the sensation in her stomach is relief or disappointment. She squeezes her eyes shut, one last tear slipping out, before blindly dismissing the notification and shoving her phone into her pocket. She doesn’t want to look at it anymore.

Her bed feels harder than usual when she flops onto it, limbs askew and eyes on the ceiling, not seeing anything even though she’s staring. Well, she does see something. Someone. She sees her all the time, but she never gets to look at her. Never gets to touch her. Never gets to have her.

Her phone beeps again. It must be the stupid reminder alert. She probably pressed snooze instead of dismiss. It’s a habit she’s picked up from dealing with her alarm. She doesn’t even know why she bothers to set one, she either sleeps through it or ignores it until one of the girls comes in to shut it off and literally drag her out of bed.

The memory – years’ worth of memories – makes something burn behind her eyes, throb against her temples, tighten in her chest. She turns to her side, curling in on herself, as if she can block them out this way. She stays like that, awake but dreaming, until her phone beeps again, and she actually dismisses the alert this time.

If only all reminders were this easy to erase.

Hey, Krystal texts her after the meeting. Wanna go grab burgers at that new place?

Burgers remind her of complaining with Tiffany in English about the lack of decent American food around, of Juhyun telling them “eating those will kill you, unnie!”, of how they watched Yoona and Sooyoung having an eating contest with open mouths and more than a little envy.

Jessica squeezes her eyes shut, but it does nothing to shut out her memories. She would know; she’s tried and tried for the past few months, but the harder she tried to forget, the more clearly she remembered.

‘Forget’ isn’t even the right word. She doesn’t want to forget them, she just… She wishes that remembering wasn’t so painful.

Maybe later, she replies to Krystal.

Jessica thinks about another ‘later’ she promised and how she wants it to be soon.

She dials the number before she loses her nerve. She wonders if Tiffany’s case is still the obnoxiously pink thing she had when—the last time Jessica saw her phone, or if she’s moved on to a less obnoxious pink. (The thought of it not being pink doesn’t occur to her. It’s Tiffany.)

“Hello?” Tiffany’s voice is so loud that Jessica wrenches her phone away from her ear on instinct. Then, on another kind of instinct, she presses it right against her ear, even though she knows she’ll probably lose some hearing.

“I’m amazed that you’re twenty-five and you still haven’t figured out the proper speaking volume on a phone. Or anywhere with people.”

“Jessi.” There’s wonder in Tiffany’s voice. “You’re—you called me.”

Something twists inside Jessica at the nickname and how it’s still Tiffany’s first reaction to call her that. “I said I would, didn’t I?” She fights to keep her voice neutral. “Did you think I was lying?”

“I hoped that you weren’t,” Tiffany says quietly, not just quietly for her but quietly, period. The lack of her usual volume makes Jessica feel…off, makes her listen even harder although all her focus is already on their conversation. “I hoped that you meant it, but—”

“You didn’t think that I did,” Jessica finishes bitterly.

“No, that’s not what I was going to say.”

“It’s okay, Tiffany, you can—”

“I hoped that you meant it, and I think you did at the time, but… Sometimes people make promises they can’t keep.”

Tiffany says it softly, factually, but Jessica feels like it’s an accusation. “You mean, like when we said ‘right now, from now on, forever’?”

“We were never going to be forever. Nothing is forever.” Tiffany hesitates. “But I thought…”

“That we would last longer than this?”

Tiffany’s silence is enough of an answer.

“Well, you guys are still going,” Jessica says. “The eight of you. You’re still singing, still dancing, still Girls’ Generation.”

“Jessica…”

“What, not ‘Jessi’ anymore?” Jessica doesn’t mean to snipe at Tiffany, she really doesn’t, but it’s like her tongue is filing every word that leaves , leaving them with sharp, cutting edges.

“You’re not being Jessi right now,” Tiffany says in a tight voice. “You’re being—”

“—the that Girls’ Generation is better off without?”

Tiffany’s gasp seems to fill the room. “Jessica,” she breathes. “Jessi. You know that’s not how we think of you.”

Jessica bites her lip so hard she almost draws blood. “I don’t know a lot of things.” She hates how small her voice comes out, how she sounds like she’s begging for reassurances.

“You know we love you.” Tiffany’s voice is soft but not quiet. Jessica wants to say something in reply, but her voice is either lost or dead. Maybe that’s a good thing, because she has no idea what she would have said anyway. “You know Taeyeon—”

“Don’t,” Jessica croaks. “Don’t talk about her.”

“Are you going to pretend that she doesn’t exist to you?” Tiffany asks, sounding more sad than angry.

Jessica doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t know how to explain to Tiffany that pretending would be letting herself think that she and Taeyeon could actually be—could actually have a future together, when they barely have a present. That it’s not fair to herself, and it’s not fair to Taeyeon, to pretend like that.

“Of course she exists to me,” Jessica says. “She just doesn’t exist with me.”

“Jessi…” There is so much pity in Tiffany’s voice that it makes Jessica want to wince. “You know that—”

There’s a clattering noise, like Tiffany dropped her phone, and then some muffled sounds Jessica can’t make out. Jessica frowns. What’s happening? Is Tiffany okay? Her coordination isn’t the greatest, but even she couldn’t fall over while talking on the phone. Right?

There’s somewhat heavy breathing on the other side of the line. Tiffany must be back on the phone. Jessica sighs. “Really, Tiff, you have just taken clumsiness to a new level.”

Tiffany makes a strange, strangled sound, almost like a laugh but not quite. Jessica hopes she’s alright and she didn’t, like, choke on her gum or something.

“You’re okay, right? I’m CPR-certified and all, but even I can’t do first aid over the phone.”

“Maybe you can give me mouth-to-mouth.” Okay, Tiffany would not say something like that to her. And that’s not Tiffany’s voice.

Jessica stops breathing.

“Fany’s fine,” Taeyeon says. “I just had to, er, persuade her to give me the phone.”

She should hang up. She should hang up and block Tiffany’s number and—she should probably just get another new phone. Yeah, that’s what she should do.

“Sica?” She can’t remember the last time Taeyeon sounded so sad and lost. Except she can, and it was the last time they spoke. “I didn’t mean to… I just wanted to talk to you.”

Jessica swallows. “At the expense of your best friend’s—what did you do to her?”

“Nothing! I just—grabbed the phone. And maybe pushed her out of the way,” Taeyeon adds sheepishly.

“Geez Taeyeon, I know you’re tiny but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to shove people.”

“Hey, I’m not Sooyoung but I’m not tiny, okay?”

“Fine, you’re ‘vertically challenged,’ happy?”

“You’re not vertically blessed either.”

“I’m blessed in other ways.”

“Yeah.” She could almost see Taeyeon’s suggestive smile. “I have no arguments about that.”

“Ugh, you’re such a ert.”

“You love it.”

“I do,” Jessica says softly, and somehow it sounds like I love you, and her eyes are doing that relentlessly tearing up thing that she hesitates to call crying again, because she’s missed this so much, she’s missed Taeyeon so much, bantering with her and laughing with her and talking with her, without things weighing their words down, without walking on eggshells and ignoring elephants. “I—”

“Jessica?” Taeyeon asks in such a gentle voice that her stream of silent tears turn into sniffles and then gasps and then finally great, wrenching sobs. Taeyeon says something, or at least Jessica thinks she does, but she can’t hear it because she’s crying like she’s trying to expel every vestige of pain she’s ever felt. She wants Taeyeon to hold her, and she thinks that Taeyeon would have, if they weren’t separated by the innumerable things keeping them apart. Distance is only the first.

She feels better after the crying stops. “Sorry,” she says in a small voice, wiping at her eyes.

“Why are you sorry?” Taeyeon sounds appalled.

“Because—because maybe I started to give up on you and I shouldn’t have.”

“I’m not letting you give up on us,” Taeyeon says in a low, fierce voice. Jessica closes her eyes and kind of just absorbs her voice, and the fact that she said ‘us’ and not ‘me,’ and she doesn’t understand how she could have thought about letting this go, because there are battles you can win and there are battles you can’t but you try anyway, and whichever one she and Taeyeon fall into, she’s going to try her damnedest to fight.

Jessica smiles. “Taeyeon.”

“Yeah?”

“No, I wasn’t going to ask you something. That was all I was going to say. Just—yeah. That was a full sentence right there. Taeyeon. Period.”

Taeyeon laughs the warm, throaty laugh that always makes Jessica want to laugh too. “God, you’re cute.”

Jessica doesn’t know how she let herself be without this for five months, not to mention how she was planning to go without this for—well, ever.

“Jessica,” Taeyeon says seriously. “As in, I have something to say. Like. Jessica. Comma.”

She’s smiling already. She knows that she’s so lame sometimes, but she got over being embarrassed about it quickly because Taeyeon is lame too. “Mm hmm.”

“I’m sorry.”

Her smile fades. “For what?”

Taeyeon exhales. “Too many things.”

“It’s okay,” Jessica says softly, even though that’s not something that she can promise.

“I miss you.” It’s said in a barely audible whisper.

“I miss you too.” Jessica’s voice is not any louder. “So much.”

“That’s not – I’m not sorry about that, I just needed to say it.”

Jessica’s smile returns. “Okay, Tae.”

“Sica,” Taeyeon says. “I don’t…have your number.”

“Huh?”

“You block caller ID, and Tiffany won’t tell me, so—I don’t have your number.”

Jessica falls silent. She got a new phone and made her number private just so this wouldn’t happen. She tried so hard to make a clean break, but Taeyeon undid all of her effort, undid all of her, through two conversations.

“Jessica?” Taeyeon’s voice is wary now. Almost cautious. It hurts to hear Taeyeon sound like that around her.

She tells Taeyeon her phone number. Slowly and evenly and clearly. It makes her feel lighter and heavier at the same time.

“Should I—” Taeyeon hesitates. “What if they ask?”

“You can tell them,” Jessica says, “if they ask.”

“I didn’t ask either, you know,” Taeyeon says. “But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to know.”

Jessica’s mouth curves up slightly. “Well, you know now.”

“I do,” Taeyeon says, and it sounds like I love you too.