Day 4

Minho woke up the following day happy. He was going to go to the bar in order to meet one of the nurses in the hospital for a couple of drinks. He was cleanly shaven and now he was in the shower cleaning himself before going to work.

“Please tell me what to do because I have no idea what I’m doing right now,” Tiffany suddenly burst through the bathroom door and started pacing back and forth.

“Boss!” Minho screamed and scrambled to try to cover himself. “What are you doing in here?!”

“What’s going on?” Ailee and Amber ran inside. “We heard screaming.”

“Why are there three girls in here while I’m trying to shower?!” Minho screamed. Amber shoved the shower curtains aside and saw a horrified Minho. “WAH! NO! STOP!” He screamed covering his manhood.

“It’s nice.” Amber bluntly commented. “The nurse you’re seeing tonight will be very pleased. Happy?”

Minho relaxed, “Really?”

Tiffany rolled her eyes, “Go back to taking a shower. Just listen to my problem while you shower.”

“Fine,” Minho closed the shower curtains and continued to shower.

Tiffany eyed her roommates. Ailee was wearing booty shorts with a fairly loose tank top. Amber was wearing basketball shorts and an oversized shirt. She looked down at her attire and laughed. She was wearing Jessica’s shorts and t-shirt.

“What’s so funny?” Amber asked. She pulled down her pants and sat on the toilet.

“Are you taking a or peeing?” Ailee asked.

“Peeing.” Amber rolled her eyes. “I take s when I’m alone and the bathroom door is actually locked so no one walks in on me.”

“Where are they anyway?” Tiffany asked.

“Who?” Minho asked.

“Sooyoung and Yuri.” Tiffany answered. “I haven’t seen them in the house since yesterday morning.”

Amber flushed the toilet. Minho screamed from the sudden cold water. “They left the house with a backpack and said that they’d be staying at a friend’s house for a little bit to give you some space. Were they not supposed to?”

Tiffany bit her bottom lip and crossed her arms, “Do you guys know which friend?”

Ailee and Amber exchanged looks. Neither of them had seen who had picked the couple up. For all they knew, it could have been a relative or another close friend that they had they didn’t even know about. 

“AHHHHHHH!” Minho screamed.

“What?!” Tiffany opened the shower curtain and saw Minho jumping up and down in the shower with his phone in his hand.

“I WON!” He screamed.

“Won what?!” Amber and Ailee scrambled to where Tiffany was.

“I BEAT MY HIGH SCORE IN ANGRY BIRDS MOTHER ERS!”

Tiffany reached in the shower and smacked his head, “I hate you.”

“Did I do something wrong?” Minho asked, looking confused.

Tiffany walked out of the bathroom and shot a death glare at Minho before the door was slammed. Amber went back to brushing her teeth. Ailee went back to doing her hair. Minho went back to taking a shower.

There was a long silence between the three friends. No one really knew what to do since neither of the three had ever been in the situation they were in now. They remained loyal to their Boss, who was also their friend, but they were also loyal to Sooyoung and Yuri who made them promise to not say anything to Tiffany for the time being. Ever since the two had left the house yesterday, they had made the three swear to not tell Tiffany anything until they got back. The last thing they needed was to have an angry Tiffany storm inside their temporary place and create a scene. 

Amber had gone downstairs to get something to eat and saw Tiffany pacing back and forth in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in her hand. Her eyebrows were furrowed together, she had her other hand on her hip and was silently talking to herself. The younger had observed her Boss for a little bit. Tiffany would stop walking and talking, look like she was deep in thought and then go back to pacing and talking to herself. 

“That is creepy,” Minho said quietly. “I don’t like the eyebrow thing.”

“No ,” Ailee agreed. “The eyebrow thing is always creepy.”

“I know what to do in these kinds of situations,” Amber pulled out her phone.

— — — — —

“Hello?”

Amber bit her nail, “I think we broke your girlfriend.”

“What do you mean ‘You broke my girlfriend?’” 

“She’s doing the eyebrow thing.”

“Again? What did you guys do?”

“We didn’t do anything,” Amber defended. “She asked us where Sooyoung and Yuri were and we couldn’t exactly tell her. Jessie, please help us. We’re at a loss here.”

“I’m on my way,” Jessica hung up and grabbed her bag.

“Where are you going, Unnie?” A voice behind her asked.

“Tiff is doing that eyebrow thing again.” Jessica replied. 

“The eyebrow thing is kind of creepy,” Her little sister laughed.

Jessica returned the laugh, “Do you need money for dinner, Krys?” 

The younger Jung shook her head, “I still have some from the other day. Go rescue your girlfriend. I’ll probably hang out with Chanyeol.”

Jessica frowned at the name, “I want to meet him.”

Krystal rolled her eyes, “So what if I like him? It’s evident he doesn’t like me, so you don’t have anything to worry about.”

The frown grew deeper, “Then why do you two keep hanging out?”

Krystal sighed, “Because I still like him and even if he doesn’t like me, I have some hope that he’ll like me back someday.”

“Someday?” The older sister raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, so he’s admitted that he liked me once, but he was drunk and it was New Year’s Eve.” Krystal caved. There was no way that she would be able to live with herself if she ever lied to her older sister. She was like the best friend all her friends wished they had. 

Jessica pulled her sister into a hug, “I’m giving him two months to woman up. If he doesn’t, you better give up on him because boys like that aren’t worth your time. Got it?”

Krystal smiled, “Yes, Unnie.”

“And make sure you use protection,” Jessica kissed her baby sister’s forehead.

“Unnie!” She blushed. “I’m only 17. It’s too early to be thinking about that. I don’t even have a boyfriend yet!”

“You don’t have to be dating or have a boyfriend, Krystal. I’m just gonna let you know that now,” Jessica laughed and started to head out the door.

“Drive safe!” Krystal called after her older sister.

“Always!” She gave her one last wave before closing the behind her.

— — — — —

Jessica pulled up to the familiar brown house. No matter how many times she had driven up to the house, butterflies always made it in her stomach. Knowing that Tiffany would be in the house waiting for her made her stomach do backflips. Even now that Tiffany was in some sort of trouble, it still gave her butterflies. Seeing Tiffany in general gave her butterflies. No matter what light Tiffany was under, it still gave the other woman butterflies. That was something she knew would never change. 

Tiffany Hwang will always give her butterflies.

“Oh good, you’re here!” Ailee sighed in relief as she pulled Jessica in a tight hug. “She’s been doing that all morning.”

“I doubt she knows that she’s been doing that all morning,” Minho crossed his arms. “C’mon, maybe you can fix what we broke.”

“What did you guys even do?” Jessica shoved her car keys, wallet and phone in her sweatshirt pocket. “Tiff?” She slowly made her way to her girlfriend. “Are you okay?” She said quietly.

“Where could they be?” Tiffany muttered as she took another sip of her now cold coffee. “Owen’s? Arizona and Callie’s? No.” Tiffany shook her head. “Callie would never let Sooyoung and Yuri in their apartment. Arizona is too much of a neat freak to ever want to clean up after them. Where the hell could they be?” Tiffany kept repeating those words out loud in hopes that an idea would pop in her head.

“Tiffany?” Jessica called out again. 

“Cristina’s?” Tiffany mumbled. “No. Cristina hates love. No way in hell would she put a roof over their heads.”

“Tiffany,” Jessica hugged her girlfriend from the front. Her head rested on her shoulder right shoulder as she locked her arms behind her girlfriend.

“Jessie?” Tiffany finally stopped pacing and realized that the brunette was hugging her. “What are you doing here?”

“They called me,” Jessica looked up and smiled. “You were dong the eyebrow thing again.”

“I was?” Tiffany looked surprised. “I didn’t even realize it.”

Jessica laughed and pulled her girlfriend closer to her body, “What’s going on, Tiff? Did you want to talk about it some more? Is that still bothering you?”

“I don’t know where they are,” Tiffany sighed. “I mean, I told them I needed space, but I didn’t think that they’d actually give all this space. I thought that they’d still be living in the house and stuff like that. I mean, yeah, it’d be awkward, but at least I knew where they were.”

“Have you tried calling them?”

“Why should I?”

“Really?”

“I know, I know,” Tiffany nodded in agreement. “I…” Her voice trailed off.

Jessica wrapped her arms around her neck and pulled her in. “I know.” She said quietly. “I know.”

Amber, Minho and Ailee’s jaws had dropped to the floor. Out of the months that they had been living in the house, none of them had been able to stop Tiffany’s eyebrow thing no matter how hard they tried. Not even Yuri and Sooyoung was able to stop Tiffany from doing it. It was nearly impossible to stop her mumbling and pacing around the kitchen which made it even worse because the kitchen was where all the food was. With Tiffany pacing and mumbling, it made it fairly difficult to enjoy a meal to yourself, let alone enjoying some peace with her there.

Amber had tried to snap Tiffany out of her eyebrow trance once. Once. Ever since then, no one dared trying. It was a lesson that the entire house had learned the hard way. Tiffany was considered their superior in the office, but in the house, she was just one of the roommates. She had never used her seniority to get her way around the house. Tiffany waited in the bathroom line like everyone else. Tiffany would make breakfast and help out on the days that she was assigned breakfast duty, just like everyone else. Tiffany would go on grocery shopping and buy everything on the list, just like everyone else. Tiffany yelled at Minho, just like everyone else. The intern lawyers had only ever seen Tiffany in her trance when she was deep in thought about the Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital case, so everyone knew better than to interrupt her train of thought. But with her trance outside of work, everyone was at a loss. It had been one of those things everyone had left alone and forgotten about until it mattered most.

This was one of those things.

“Did you guys see that?” Minho whispered.

“Yeah, we did,” Amber nodded.

“Should we text them to come back?” Ailee asked. “They did say that would only be gone for the night and it’s almost been two days.”

“If they want to come back, they’ll come back whenever they want. They obviously don’t want to be found or else they would have told one of us where they are,” Ailee said.

The three friends looked back at Jessica and Tiffany. Although they didn’t understand what Tiffany was going through, they understood that she needed someone to be there for her. Since it was neither of the three, Jessica was the one she needed the most, aside from her two best friends coming home. The scene unfolding between the two clarified that Tiffany wasn’t as strong as she let people see her to be. In reality, she really was just like everyone else. After all, she had already lost her mother at a young age, her grandparents a few years ago and her dad not accepting her.

Even though they knew how hard Tiffany must have fought when she was younger, no one had ever asked her about it. All they knew were the bits and pieces Sooyoung and Yuri would talk about, but even then, it was very cryptic. With time, maybe Tiffany would finally open up and talk about it, but now wasn’t the time. Although Tiffany did talk about who her little sister was and how she was coming to Korea to go to college and pursue a higher education, but other than that, the three intern lawyers only knew about her mother’s early death, her grandparents had died around the same time a not too long ago, but they didn’t know how recently the deaths had happened, her dad never once called her and the house they were currently living in was her mother’s childhood house before her grandparents moved to a smaller house. Other than that, there were no details about how her loved ones had passed and why her father never talks to her. With the pictures on the wall, they were able to deduct that Tiffany did have siblings back in the States, but she had never talked about them at all. For all they knew, Tiffany was just their roommate who happen to be their boss. The only person who knew more than them was probably Jessica, but even then, they knew the chances of that were very slim.

“It’s not that though,” Tiffany’s voice shook as she spoke low.

“Then was is it?” Jessica gripped the back of the plaid shirt her girlfriend was wearing with both her hands.

“Today is the one year anniversary of my grandmother’s death which also happens to be their 58th wedding anniversary and my grandfather’s is next weekend.” Tiffany whispered in Jessica’s hair.

“Oh, baby,” Jessica ran her fingers through Tiffany’s soft brown locks. 

Feeling Tiffany’s heavy breathing reminded Jessica of how Krystal used to be after she had gotten out of the hospital. When Krystal was bedridden, all she wanted to do was go see her parents, even if it had killed her to walk on her own two feet. She wanted to know if her parents had made it out alive from the accident. Jessica had stayed silent the entire time with the information that she was holding back from her sister. For the first month that Krystal was in the hospital, all she could do was watch television, play cards with her older sister or sleep. With her injuries, playing cards with Jessica was even a challenge. Every now and then whenever she took a shower, the younger Jung was always reminded of that horrible day. The two scars at the top of her shoulders to the middle of her stomach was from the seatbelt she had been wearing. If it hadn’t for that, she would have lunged forward and broken her skull from the impact. 

Their mother on the hand was not as fortunate. Their parents were talking about things they would be doing with Jessica since she had extended her stay in Korea. Krystal and their mother were laughing, talking about shopping and food they were going to make the eldest Jung. Their mother had taken her seatbelt off because she didn’t like not being able to talk to Krystal and not seeing her daughter’s face, so she had taken the seatbelt off and her back was resting on the dashboard while her legs were crossed in front of her. Their father was focused on driving and was determined to get to the airport before the plane landed so Jessica wouldn’t have to wait for them very long, plus, he had missed her a lot the past few months she was away from home.

Krystal and her mom were chattering away. Krystal and gotten thirsty and was drinking a water bottle and handed it off to her mom. Her mom being the prankster, pretended to throw it at her dad, who glared at her before he went back to singing along to the radio. Their mother continued to play around with their father. Krystal had found it amusing because her mom was always so playful while her dad was always so serious. The water bottle had slipped out of her mother’s hand and hit their father on his temple. He lost control of the car and failed to see that he had swerved on the other side of the road. A truck driving just as fast, failed to hit the breaks quick enough to voice the collusion. A couple of weeks later, Krystal had woken up from her coma and saw her older sister’s face staring at her. That was the last memory she had of her parents.

Jessica held Tiffany as close as she possibly could. Her girlfriend and her little sister had gone through so much in their life and all she could do was stand there and hold them. She felt helpless. The blonde had no idea what to do. She looked over to her side to see that Amber, Minho and Ailee had already left the room to give the two of them the privacy that they needed. She pulled away from Tiffany, who looked traumatized.

“Let’s go to your room before your roommates see you having a breakdown,” Jessica tugged on her hand and led her upstairs.

“Why are you doing this?” Tiffany sat at the end of her bed and looked at Jessica who was sitting on the chair by her desk.

“Doing what?” 

“This,” Tiffany motioned between the two of them.

“I’m still confused.”

“You should have just left me here,” She clarified. “I was just planning on visiting my grandparents today and then sit in my room till we have to go have that meeting with Pegasus in the afternoon. Why are you staying with me through all of crap?”

“Do you not want me here to hold you when you’re having one of your crappy days?” Jessica asked, she crossed her arms and gave the woman sitting across the room a hard look.

“Why do you do it though?”

“Why do you keep questioning my actions whenever I show any amount of affection towards you?” 

“Why are you showing me affection to begin with?” 

“Because I care about your sorry !”

“But why?!”

“Shut up!” Jessica stood up. “It’s like you don’t even trust me!”

“Everyone in my life leaves me!” Tiffany stood up and matched Jessica’s voice, “My mom, my grandparents, my dad and now Sooyoung and Yuri. Don’t even get me started on my dating history! How am I supposed to trust someone who I just met four months ago with my life?”

“Because I ing love you, God dammit!” Jessica screamed. 

“You love me?” Tiffany said in a hushed voice. “I-I—”

Jessica finally caught her breath. She couldn’t believe that those words had just gone out of . Never in her life had the blonde ever told any one of her girlfriends that she loved them. Granted, she had only dated 3 people seriously, but she had never felt anything like this feeling she felt now with anyone else but Tiffany. But seeing Tiffany’s reaction, that may have been a terrible idea to just say it out of the blue. Granted, Jessica herself didn’t even know that she was going to say it. It couldn’t have been the heat of the moment because she had been feeling like that ever since they started dating, but then again, they just started dating. Everything was fresh, new and exciting. On top of that, she knew Tiffany had just gotten out of a long-term, serous relationship with Taeyeon and they started dating a couple of months after. The room was spinning and she had no idea what to do. Well, there was one thing to do, but she didn’t want to do it because she knew Tiffany needed her more than ever. But what choice did she even have now?

“I should go,” Jessica said in a small voice. “You look like you want to be alone right now.”

“No, please, don’t go,” Tiffany rushed to Jessica’s side and gripped her hand.

“No, I should go,” Jessica tried to break away from the iron grip. “I have to get ready for tomorrow’s meeting with Pegasus and go over all the paperwork and things like that. I have a busy night tonight.”

“Let me go with you.” Tiffany tightened her grip.

“I drove here,” Jessica said.

“Okay, well, let me just take a suit with me and we can go to your apartment tonight,” Tiffany walked to her closet with Jessica still in her hand. 

“What are you doing?” Jessica sighed. “Just let me go home. I’m tired.”

“Then, I’ll drive,” Tiffany offered. “Please, please, don’t leave things like how they are now. We have to take about things like this.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not gonna let you go, at least not like this.”

“How do you plan on letting me go?”

“When we’re laying next to each other and you’re tired. That’s when I’m going to let you go to sleep, with you in my arms. When we’re walking in the park and we see an ice cream truck. You’re gonna get all excited and that’s when I’m gonna let you go so you can get ice cream. When you wake up in the middle of the night, I’m gonna let you get out of bed so you can get that cup of water, but even then, I might just get up for you.” Tiffany tightened her grip on Jessica’s hand. “But I don’t want to let you go when we’re on bad terms. If there’s anything that I’ve learned in my past ed up relationships is to never let a beautiful girl like you storm out of the room angry without us trying to work it out first. We are going to be mature adults about this, okay? Because you are someone in my life who I do not want to lose. So can we please work this out?”

“Alright,” Jessica reluctantly agreed. Tiffany smiled and patted the empty seat next to her on the bed. “What now?” She asked as she sat next to Tiffany.

“I don’t know if I love you yet,” Tiffany started.

“Gee, thanks for that,” Jessica sarcastically rolled her eyes. 

“Let me finish, will ya?” 

“Alright.”

“I don’t know if I love you, yet,” Tiffany started again. “But I do know that you are someone I don’t want to be without. We might wake up in a year or two from now and realize that this was all a mistake, but right now, it feels right. You know what I mean?”

“I guess?” Jessica gave her a confused look.

“I’m saying that we should take things slow,” She met her girlfriend’s gaze. “I know you love me and I love you too.”

“You do?” Jessica’s heart fluttered and her stomach started doing backflips.

Tiffany nodded, “I do, but it feels like everything is moving so fast and I don’t know what to do. I’ve never felt like this before and this is all brand new to me. I’ve never had butterflies whenever I see someone and it’s like I’m always seeing you for the first time. Is that weird?”

Jessica shook her head, “No because I feel the exact same way.”

“So this is what love feels like?” Tiffany asked breathlessly.

“I guess so,” Jessica took a deep breath and gave Tiffany a loving smile.

“There’s the smile that I love so much.”

“Shut up,” She blushed.