Two Years Earlier – August

It was official; Aspen Stuart was a high school senior, and she was dating Jaebum Im, a college freshman.

Of course, Aspen was worried, as she usually was. With JB in college, it put him on an entirely different level from her, as if they needed to be any more different, and mismatched. He was now an adult, and she was still a kid, hanging out in grade school and fenced in by classrooms and chaperones five days a week. To add to that, JB, as well as Mark and Jackson, were all going to the prestigious (and expensive) University of Miami, a place Aspen hadn’t even bothered considering for school; she was hoping for a scholarship to Florida Atlantic University further north, or maybe even an Art Institute if she was luckily, but it was likely that she would just go to Miami Dade College for her general classes first, and make life easier for herself later on.

While she was worried, JB was excited. He had been too busy getting moved into his new dorm and settling into classes for the first week of his semester, but he invited her over for a tour as soon as the week ended. Aspen agreed, of course, and even went as far as to tell her mother that she was spending the weekend with Iris to be with him for an extended amount of time. She was excited, too – briefly.

JB had lucked out and gotten one of the singles in his building, and basically had a studio apartment, with his own bathroom and kitchen area. As he stopped there with her first so that she could drop off her bag, Aspen couldn’t help but look at it this way, and it made him even more of an adult than before. His dorm was on the outskirts of the campus with the other apartment styled buildings, which required him to take her into the campus in his car, to give her a proper tour. She almost immediately wished that he hadn’t. Whether he was a senior in high school or a freshman in college, the one thing that would never change about Jaebum Im was the fact that he was gorgeous. This transcended age; as they walked through and around the Student Center Complex, Aspen watched JB do what he did naturally: attract attention from women, clearly older than him, along with others closer to his age, and of all races. The only difference between here and Miami Shores was the fact that none of these women knew – or cared – that JB had a girlfriend, or that said girlfriend was standing right beside him. Aspen remained quiet at his side as slender, model types of women approached JB, blatantly ignoring her presence until he made her presence known. By the end of this tour they were holding hands to ward off any pursuers, but by then the damage had been done.

JB