This Feeling of Home

The Chainsmokers x Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes

 

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Act 1:

 

My mother never believed I would ever become a successful musician. All I had was a guitar, and a couple of girlhood dreams. Like so many queer women before me, I just wanted to stand on that stage, proud, open, and free, and just bask in its light—and maybe, as a little added bonus, get a couple of beautiful girls to love me just a little more than the rest.

 

This year, I’ll be 27. About ten years too late to start making it in any significant way. I’d puttered around, singing back up and joining bands and hanging out in seedy bars and—god, it’s been such a blur. It —becoming the person everyone thought I was going to be when I announced I was going to play music for a living. When I finally packed up and went home, it was like a giant “I told you so” written across my forehead. My mother welcomed me back with open arms after almost a decade of ing around in the big city, but I know that behind those twinkling brown eyes, there will always be that disappointment.

 

I guess when you first see a child, you think about all the potential the kid could have, but as she gets older and older, her prospects get dimmer and dimmer. If I’m honest, I find my mother’s world—the real world, as she calls it—too complicated.

 

I’m a simple woman. There are only two things I love in this life: music and women.

 

And this year, for the first time in a long time, I just happened to have neither.

 

I’ve spent a long time navigating my awkwardness throughout high school. You know that feeling you have that you’re different, but you’re in deep denial? Well, I dated guys until I was 19. Not a whole lot, but there was something about girls that seemed entirely too pristine to even think about. I was in love with so many of them, but I hoped and hoped it would pass.

 

It didn’t, of course, and I think it was for the best. As soon as I came to terms with it, I started realizing that dating girls was just so much better. Problem was I never could tell if they liked me as much as I liked them.

 

My friends say I love too easily. And they were right.

 

Last year, I had everything. I was in a mildly successful band, I was singing duets with the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Was in love with the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

 

Then, suddenly…

 

She leaves. She signs on solo—the band falls apart.

 

She s around, trades me in for a younger model—my heart falls apart.

 

So, I went home. Left the big city and went back to live with my mother. I had nothing. What else was I supposed to do?

 

 

Act 2:

 

I’d been in town for about two weeks when I met her.

 

The Fleur de Lis is a vintage shop near my mother’s place. I went in thinking the little money I had to my name would go a little further than my hopes.

 

I thought I was pretty lucky when my childhood friend, Hyejin, reached out to me and asked me to play some live music. I think I just looked so bored and dejected that she wanted something to keep my mind off things. So, on the weekends, I started playing in Hyejin’s bar and managed to rack up a smidge of cash. I figured I could spoil myself with some new clothes for a change.

 

I tried getting students for guitar lessons too, but this crummy old town didn’t care about music.

 

The Fleur de Lis, however, wasn’t exactly the place for unwanted rags. One glance at any tag and I wanted to cry.

 

“Can I help you with anything?” someone said from the cash register.

 

That was the first time I met Kim Yongsun. She was cute, I thought—anyone with eyes could see that, but I didn’t think much more of it then. Her big doey eyes studied me up and down—these small town girls have probably never interacted with someone like me. Someone as open and out as me to be exact. They were all high heels and summer dresses and I was all plaid shirts and skinny jeans. I stayed cool as much as I could. By this time, I had a ton of practice in ignoring pretty girls. Not to be trusted, my head would say, wagging a finger. My heart, of course, is in entirely the opposite and the wrong place.

 

“No,” I replied with a smile. “I thought I could afford at least a T-shirt, but it looks like even used stuff is a faraway dream.”

 

“By the way, I saw you at The Pin-Up last night.” I caught her gaze just as her eyes darted away, disappearing into a curtain of hair.

 

I tilted my head. “You don’t strike me as the kind of girl who hangs out there.”

 

“You mean in gay bars?” Yongsun replied with a crooked smile.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I’m not. My boyfriend is out of town, so a couple of friends dragged me out.”

 

Aha! My head said. I told you so.

 

Well, you, my heart mumbled back.

 

But there was something in her eyes, even then, the curiosity mixed with something as she waited for my reaction. I shrugged it off. Reminded myself that straight women are bad, bad news.

 

“Enjoy yourself?” I said, turning away and to a rack of jackets to my left.

 

“Yes, you’re very good,” she said. I turned to give her a smile, just in time to see her teeth release her lower lip. I quirked a brow.

 

“Thank you,” I mumbled. “Oh, um, if you want guitar lessons or something,” I said, patting down my shirt and pants for my makeshift business cards. “I have a card here somewhere.”

 

At this, her eyes lit up. “Are you teaching guitar?”

 

“Yep,” I said, finally producing a slightly crinkled card with my name and number scrawled on with a marker. “Hoping to make some money and get real business cards printed.” I gave her my card, and my best customer service smile. “Tell your friends.”

 

“Moon Byulyi,” she read, holding the card between her fingers like a delicate biscuit. “Pretty name.”

 

“Thanks,” I said with a wink. “Don’t suppose that gets me a discount for this”—my fingers glanced across the rack of jackets and pulled out a black leather jacket—“beautiful jacket. I can give you thirty bucks for it.”

 

Yongsun crossed her arms and and shook her head. “You’d have to throw in one more zero,” she chuckled.

 

“Not even if I tack on a couple of free guitar lessons instead?” I joked, hanging the jacket back on the rack and ran a hand over the cool material.

 

“That...can be negotiable.”

 

I turned to her then, my fingers still grasping at the hem of the jacket’s sleeve. She had a cute little side smile, like she was harbouring some kind of guilty secret.

 

“Seriously?” I asked, quirking a brow.

 

“I’ve always wanted to learn guitar,” she replied, her fingers following my path along the sleeve of the black leather jacket, stopping right above my hand, our finger touching ever so slightly. “Plus, this jacket really suits you.”

 

My fingers brush past hers to rest on the shoulder. “I don’t think you’ll need that many lessons,” I said, shaking my head with a smile. “How about I give you lessons, you pay me normally and I’ll save up for the jacket myself?”

 

“Yeah,” Yongsun said, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Guess that would be a much better business plan for the both of us.”

 

“Yeah,” I echoed. I shoved my hands into my pockets and tried not to think about how cute she was. Tried not to think about how cute this straight girl with a boyfriend is. So, I slouched back on the wall behind me, trying my best to be casual. I kept my eyes on the jacket, ignoring the prickle of her intense gaze. “When are you free to start?”

 

“I’m free right now,” she said quickly.

 

I laughed. “Don’t you have to run the store?”

 

She blushed. “Right. Maybe not.”

 

It was just too good to be true, I told myself, shaking my head.

 

But then she did that awful thing where she stares right into your soul and messes it all up without even realizing, and it’s so earnest and sweet and shy. “I close up at five. Do you think we can...start today?”

 

And maybe I was just a little too excited at the prospect of gaining my first ever student that I forgot I was pretending to be cool and casual when I bounced off the wall and grabbed her hands. “You’re serious?” I said, beaming. My face must’ve been so damn stupid.

 

She slipped her hands out of mine in a hurry and cleared . “Y-yeah.”

 

Somehow, I didn’t notice the nervous stutter. Instead, I thought it would be better if I pick up one of her hands again without her consent and shake it with a single, firm handshake. “I’ll see you at six then?”

 

She nodded.

 

“My place isn’t convenient,” I told her, thinking about my nosy mother with a shudder, “so how about the park? Meet you at the fountain?”

 

“O-okay. Yes! I mean, y-yes, I’ll see you there!”

 

Ah, my first student. If only I knew then what this moment of success would bring.

 

 

Act 3:

 

It was only noon, so I decided to drive around to the Pin-Up and see my old friends. And maybe distract myself from the pretty girl at Fleur de Lis with a big ol’ American cheeseburger.

 

“Back so soon?” Hyejin called out at me from the bar. “You missed me that much, did you?”

 

I laughed and slid into one of the less-ripped green stools at the bar. “Nah, not you, just your food and your pretty girlfriend,” I said, blowing a kiss at the girl stacking chairs at the far end of the room. She scoffed, but blew a kiss back just the same.

 

“Oi,” Hyejin said, whipping a rag in my direction, “leave Wheein alone.”

 

I rolled my eyes. “How can you still be so protective after ten years? It was exhausting watching you two dance around each other when you were fifteen. Don’t tell me you’re still worried about me?”

 

“To be fair,” Wheein piped in, her voice echoing across the empty bar, “I did kiss you to see how Hyejin felt. And we technically dated.”

 

“We dated for three hours, Wheein,” I said, snickering. “And all that got me was a black eye and a broken friendship.”

 

“I said I was sorry,” Hyejin grumbled, rolling her eyes. She then set a freshly cracked open bottle of beer on a coasted in front of me. “By the way, haven’t gotten a chance to say this, but we’re both happy to have you back. How long are you thinking of sticking around?”

 

I took a swig and shrugged both shoulders. “Honestly? No idea. Hopefully not forever in my mom’s basement.”

 

“That’s a solid goal,” Hyejin said, nodding. “By the way, cheeseburger?”

 

I nodded and thanked her. Wheein disappeared into the back without a word, and for a moment I couldn’t help but admire their synchronicity.

 

“There isn’t really anything for me in the city, you know? But I don’t know what’s here for me either.”

 

Hyejin put down the glass she had been polishing. “You know, I think a bit of small town vibe will be good for you. Everyone’s got those big dreams and big plans and it’s like the only way to be anywhere close to successful is to get out of here, and that’s just not true.”

 

“Well, if you want to be a musician,” I said after another swig of beer.

 

“Who's to say you can’t while you’re here? DId you see how many tips you got last weekend?”

 

“It was more than I expected,” I said, nodding, “but I went to a thrift shop today and couldn’t afford a goddamn thing. I can’t live on tips, Hyejin. Eventually, they’ll get tired of me and my music.”

 

Hyejin scoffed, and poured a glass of whiskey for herself. “As if you’d let them. You want to keep pretending you’re that shy, awkward teenager, but I think you underestimate your own sense of showmanship and—it pains me to say it—your magnetism. Don’t give me that ing grin. I honestly don’t know what girls see in you, but you seem to be able to bring them in like flies to honey. To be fair, gay musicians aren’t exactly in huge supply over here.”

 

“We’ll see,” I chuckled. Though I didn’t want to show it, I felt lighter. Light enough to share the other issue on my mind. “By the way, I got my first guitar student.”

 

Hyejin raised a brow. “Yeah? Who is it?”

 

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”

 

“Gotta see who it is first,” Hyejin replied with a smirk. “Could be sending you my condolences instead.”

 

“It’s the girl at the thrift shop. She was sweet. Her name is Yongsun.”

 

Hyejin lowered her glass from her lips. “Thrift shop? You mean Fleur de Lis? That’s a vintage shop, you idiot. No wonder you couldn’t afford anything! And I’m impressed you managed to scam Kim Yongsun into being your student.”

 

“Excuse me, she said she was a fan of my music, so she wanted to learn.”

 

Just then, Wheein came out with a beautiful plate of food, but, hearing our exchange, decided to withhold it from me and stand there with a hand on her hips instead like the mean waitress I know she can be. “You better not have any funny ideas about her,” she said, waving her finger. “That girl’s as straight as an arrow.”

 

“Yeah,” Hyejin said, nodding, “her boyfriend is really nice and really rich.”

 

I stood up and snatched the plate from Wheein’s hands, then brought it back to my original seat. Popping a french fry in my mouth, I said, “Oh-kay...I don’t know why you two sound so worried. I know she has a boyfriend? It’ll be a strict teacher-student relationship—no more, no less.”

 

Hyejin sighed. “Again, you underestimate your own magnetism.”

 

“Yeah, just don’t get too carried away with that feeling in your chest,” Wheein added. She came around the bar and threw an arm around Hyejin’s shoulder. “If things go sideways, don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

 

Hyejin laid her head against Wheein’s. “Yeah, wouldn’t want to see you with a black eye all over again.” Though it was a joke, her expression was genuinely grim.

 

I laughed it off. “It’ll be fine, you two. I’m a big girl now. Hey, cheer up. Let’s talk about something else. I’ve been getting some hot gossip from my mom’s ladies’ group.”

 

Wheein and Hyejin exchanged one last look, and, to my inexplicable relief, dropped the topic altogether.

 

 

Act 4:

 

I was about half an hour early and not completely sober enough to worry about the empty streets. I sat down at the silent fountain and perched my guitar on my knee. The melody emptied itself out of my head, and very quickly the words followed without thought. Hazy with the alcohol in my system, lit up by the music in my soul, I sang the first words to come to mind.

 

“I’ll tell you a story,” I murmur, strumming callously, “before it tells itself. I’ll lay out all my reasons, you’ll say that I need help.”

 

The empty park echoed every strum, resonating with the empty feeling suddenly filling me up as I tried to expel the song from my head. “We all got expectations, and sometimes they go wrong. But no one listens to me, so I put it in this song.”

 

I thought of the industry, hell-bent on pushing me into the back.

 

I thought of the who broke my heart. The hole in my heart I thought I’d filled.

 

“They tell me: think with my head, not that thing in my chest. They got their hands around my neck this time.” I strum a little louder, standing now on the edge of the fountain. “But you’re the one that I want, if that’s really so wrong, then they don’t know what this feeling is like.”

 

I thought of the music, and a glimpse of soulful brown eyes.

 

I thought of leaping, jumping, flying, soaring, dreaming. So I did—off the fountain and onto the gravel with a crunch.

 

“Think with my head,” I murmur, the crescendo of my strings building higher than the words could catch up to my memory. “Not with that thing in my chest.”

 

“You’re the one that I want” — my eyes flew open at the sound of the new voice — “if that’s really so wrong, then they don’t know what this feeling is like.”

 

In front of me stood Kim Yongsun, hitting every note somehow striking more than just perfect pitch. With her hands clasped in front of her and the faint glow of the fountain casting some sort of otherworldly whiteness to her skin, she looked like an absolute angel.

 

“They don’t know,” I crooned alongside her, matching her soft alto with my harmony. “Hey, ey, yeah...They don’t know.”

 

When the song came to an end, she clapped and did this cute little hop-dance thing, and I couldn’t help but smile.

 

“That was amazing!” Yongsun cried, beaming. “You were playing so many folk songs that night—I never would’ve guessed you’d be a Chainsmokers type of girl too.”

 

“Is that what that is?” I said with a smirk. “It was stuck in my head.”

 

“You didn’t know?”

 

I shook my head. “I just kind of remember songs better than anything else, so most of the time I don’t even know where I heard it from,” I said truthfully. “DId I get it right?”

 

“I don’t think so,” Yongsun laughed. “But I like your version more. It’s easier to sing without all the thump-thump-thump in the background.

 

“That’s called bass,” I teased. “Looks like we have way more work ahead of us than I thought!”

 

“Hey!” Yongsun cried, puffing out her cheeks. I poked her cheek—I couldn’t help it; I didn’t even think about the gesture until she looked up at me from under her lashes, faintly pink in the disappearing daylight.

 

Clearing my throat, I let out a nervous chuckle in attempt to laugh it off. “That’s what you get,” I said shakily. “You shouldn’t be rude to your teacher!”

 

“I hope you don’t treat all your students this way,” Yongsun replied, tucking her hair behind her ear.

 

“Hm, well,” I said in my best philosophizing voice, my chin with my thumb and forefinger, “if you’re my only student, does that mean I treat all my students this way?”

 

Her eye widened. “I’m your only student?”

 

“Yep. You’re pretty special,” I said with a grin.

 

“Wow.”

 

Suddenly she studied me with such an intense expression that I didn’t really know what else to do with myself. I wish I knew what she was thinking then, but all I could do was remind myself over and over that she had a boyfriend.

 

“S-so, um, ready to get started?” I asked, rubbing my clammy hands together.

 

“Yeah,” she said, smiling, “let’s do it.”

 

I gestured toward the fountain and handed her the guitar. She took a breath, cradling the guitar like something far more precious than it really was. “Don’t worry,” I said softly, sitting down beside her so our knees were almost touching, “guitars can be surprisingly sturdy. Just don’t smash it over my head, and you’ll be fine.”

 

“No promises,” she said with a grin as she gave the guitar a tentative strum.

 

God, she was so cute during that first lesson.

 

It took everything to not look at her lips while she hummed over the strained chords. The slight furrow in her brow, and the pink tip of her tongue as she tried to stay calm despite all the mistakes and the frustrations—everything about her was so distracting.

 

And the way she looked at me, to me, and through me—everything about her was ing me up.

 

Little did I know what an understatement that was about to become.

 

Even in that first lesson I knew that she was dangerous; she made it too, too easy to forget everything else. The the crushed dreams, the broken heart, and, most of all, the giant, giant red flag.

 

 

Act 5:

 

The lessons went on week after week, just like the performances both in and out of the bar. Hyejin and Wheein has been watching me closely ever since they saw the Yongsun and I together after a performance two weeks ago. They tell me at this point it’s too late to play the denial card, but hey, it’s not like I didn’t try. Over time, I even met a couple other girls. We had our fun, but my heart just won’t let it go.

 

I still haven’t seen the boyfriend. Apparently he went to school with one of Hyejin’s sisters, and yeah, it seems like everyone from Hyejin’s sister to my mother is waiting for him to propose. I’ve often wondered whether Yongsun was waiting for it too, but it didn’t seem like it. I don’t really know what she’s waiting for.

 

It seems he’s been home for a while, because Yongsun has cancelled on me three times now. Each time, it never fails to bring me back down to earth, and yet whenever I see her face, it’s like I’ve learned nothing from all of my failures.

 

Today is the day of our debut as a duo at The Pin-Up. She was reluctant, as most new musicians are, but I’m convinced it’s just what I needed to find closure. Besides, she was, at that point, already way past good enough for the stage.

 

“Think of this as the final exam,” I told her. “Once this is over, I will officially have nothing else to teach you.”

 

Her face had fallen. “I think there’s always something else you can teach me...unless you don’t want to teach me anymore?”

 

I shook my head with a smile. “Hey, don’t look at me like we can’t be friends after this. You have to do this. You have to show me all of these lessons haven’t been a waste.”

 

She didn’t say anything, but the slight, silent nod seemed to speak volumes in a language I didn’t understand.

 

But I didn’t care. I needed an out. We were too far into our friendship to simply run away. Somehow, she had become my best friend and confidante, which made everything so much scarier. It was a precarious relationship built on feelings that shouldn’t exist. At any moment, I thought everything would fall apart. I needed the distance more than anything. I needed closure to shut my heart up.

 

As I’m standing at my mirror in my shirt and underwear, I feel entirely unprepared to face her tonight. It’s not the first time that I’m so caught caught up in my own head that I don’t know what to expect, but just picturing her face now makes me a little weak.

 

Oh, did I mention her boyfriend is coming tonight? If we look at each other on that stage the way we look at each other during practice, any red-blooded man would definitely break every bone in my body.

 

I stare back at my own face, wondering how I ended up in this situation, and how pathetic it is that I’m always so short-sighted. I’ve never been good at seeing past my feelings. If I did I probably would’ve listened to my mother and became an accountant. By now I would have a steady, well-paying job and maybe even someone who loves me. All I’ve got now is a tip jar and a crush.

 

I guess it could be worse, I sigh, reaching for my pants. I pull them on and brush my hair back and hoped to god our relationship wasn’t built on sand, because I’m pretty sure my feelings are about four-five seconds away from crashing down like a tsunami.

 

—

 

It’s friday night and the bar is packed. Women from three towns over drove all this way to be here, yet all I can see as I’m scanning the bar is the only man in the room, sitting alone all dressed in white underneath the neon sign. Of course he’s nice and rich and good looking, I think, narrowing my eyes in his direction. He’s studying the room pensively, the king of the hill suddenly a fish out of water. Suddenly he spots me, and his face lights up with a boyish grin that I want to punch off his face. I duck eyes down at my beer like it can somehow make me invisible.

 

But far too soon, he’s right there. “Hi!” He says, “are you Miss Moon? The guitar teacher?”

 

“Yeah,” I said, plastering on my best business smile. “Can I help you?”

 

He introduces himself, but I don’t catch his name—seeing his face up close has a way of sparking my imagination. I conjured about fifteen ways he could die right in this moment, including a scenario involving a freak thunderstorm knocking the roof off the building, causing the whole ceiling to collapse just on him.

 

“I just wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for Yongsun.” Oh, he’s still talking. “She’s been...different since you brought music into her life. Happier, somehow, and...yeah, I’m happy to see that she will be in good hands.” He looks up at me, but his eyes are far away, as if searching for something I cannot see. But as quickly as it came, the moment is gone, and he is smiling again, his perfect white teeth absolutely blinding against his white suit. “Yongsun will be here soon,” he says, turning to return to his table. “I’m only here to see her performance, but I’m glad to meet you before I go. I hope you take...take care.”

 

I raise a brow at the strange interaction, but Yongsun comes rushing in through the front door in that moment and I don’t dwell on it. All I can see is her beautiful red dress and elegant waves. We exchange a smile from across the room—I raise my glass to her—and the boyfriend fades to dark. She strides toward me, ignoring the whispered voices all around, and I can’t keep my eyes off her.

 

If she so much as breathes, I’m bound to her for the rest of my life. God, what am I supposed to do when this night ends?

 

“Are you ready for the big show?” I say, leaning back against the bar so I don’t betray the weight on my chest.

 

She shakes her head vigorously. “No!” she grumbles, gripping onto her almost brand-new guitar—it’s vintage, she said.

 

“It’ll be just like we practiced,” I chuckle. I held up my bottle of beer, she took it without looking, happily gulping down the rest of its contents in a hurry. “Nothing a bit of liquid courage can’t fix, huh?” I tease.

 

She sticks out a tongue and it’s just too cute, so I start waving Hyejin down. I already know what’s next before she can say “Buy me a drink!” Hyejin looks between us with a quirked brow.

 

“Peach drink again, I’m assuming?” She says with a smirk.

 

“Don’t judge!”

 

“Fine. But only because you’re so pretty,” Hyejin adds with a wink.

 

It takes an enormous amount of sheer willpower to stay silent. Two pairs of eyes seem to watch me expectantly, but I simply shift my eyes to gaze longingly at my now-empty bottle of beer.

 

“It’s almost showtime,” I suddenly say, checking my invisible watch. “You better not get too drunk to play.” As she receives the can from Hyejin, I give her a playful knock on the knees with my own.

 

She pouts. “I need this, Byul.”

 

“Yeah, relax,” Hyejin adds with a grin. “You’ve still got fifteen minutes, and your groupies just arrived.”

 

“Groupies?” Yongsun says, brows raised.

 

I almost forgot that she hasn’t been coming to the Pin-Up since the boyfriend came home. I see her almost every day for our lessons, and it always feels like a private performance, so I didn’t think much of it until now.

 

Besides, I wouldn’t call them groupies, I want to say. They were just a couple of over-excited young girls.

 

But Yongsun is looking off into the crowd, where the girls are jumping up and down and trying to swim through the wall of people to get to me. “Here they come,” she says with a snicker.

 

“Oh no.”

 

As they approach, my ear is shot off by a high-pitched squeal. I smile uneasily back at them, casting a look at Yongsun, who sips quietly at her peach drink as she watches us with interest.

 

We exchange a couple of vapid lines, and it’s an exhausting ten minutes before they leave us alone. Funnily, they didn’t seem to know what to say to me, and I definitely didn’t know what to say to them. I tried, at some point, to compliment a wrist tattoo one of them has—I lifted up her hand to admire it, which, in hindsight,was probably not a good idea—and it shocks them into silence somehow. I looked over at Yongsun again, who was moments away from bursting into laughter. But the awkward conversation quickly resumed when wrist tattoo girl suddenly, sparing a quick glance at Yongsun, declared her love. It wasn’t the first time. I gave her the same response I gave everyone else: “I’m sorry, but I need to focus on music right now.” The same lie. Still, they came away with all smiles and autographed arms and everyone was happy.

 

“Sorry,” I don’t know why I say to Yongsun.

 

“You need to focus on music, huh?” She says, a finger to her chin. “Are you really not looking for a girlfriend then?”

 

“We really need to go,” I say hurriedly. I slide off my seat, but don’t get very far when she grabs my upper arm.

 

“Byul.” Her gaze is intense, and I can’t hold it no matter how much I want to. “You’re a rockstar now. You can afford to be a minute late and answer my question.”

 

“I don’t want to get into a relationship with a fan,” I sigh.

 

“I’m a fan.”

 

“You’re different,” I say. You’re my best friend, I want to add. But she’s studying me closely, and there’s something about her that makes it hard to say those innocuous words, as if they would be the words to break us apart.

 

So, I shake my head, grab her hand instead, and head toward the stage.

 

On that little platform in the pitch black, a single bulb above us, we play our song. The world seems to fall away as we strike the strings and stamp our feet, grinning wide at each other like we were the only two people in the room, like we do when we are at the park or in her living room. And the way our voices melded together—it’s like we were never meant to be apart.

 

At the end of our original set, I whistle the bars of a familiar song. My fingers, as if by magic, follow along before I can even process what I started. Yongsun watches me with a tilted head.

 

“Alabama, Arkansas, I do love my ma and pa, but not the way that I love you,” I sing with a grin. I pause, holding the note until She catches my eye and mirrors my grin. We’ve practiced this song a million times in our quiet times.

 

Tapping the side of her guitar to match the beat, she doesn’t disappoint. “Holy moly me oh my, you’re the apple of my eye...girl, I never loved one like you.”

 

My heart warms at her expression, somehow so familiar but so different in this light. But I go on, the lyrics revealing themselves like my deepest secrets. “Man, oh man, you’re my best friend, I scream it to the nothingness—there ain’t nothing that I need.”

 

“Well,” Yongsun laughs, “hot and heavy pumpkin pie, chocolate candy, Jesus Christ—ain’t nothing please me more than...you.”

 

The chorus hits us like a rush of cool water on a hot summer’s day: “Home, let me come home! Home is whenever I’m with you! Home, let me come home”—I slow down the rhythm, her voice falls away, and I say, “Home is whenever I’m with you.”

 

She smiles, wider than I’ve ever seen her smile, and we finish the song to resounding applause, but all I can see is her and her eyes. I don’t remember bowing, don’t remember leaving—all I remember are voices all around us then: silence.

 

The two of us alone at the bottom of an abandoned set of stairs. Her, whispering the last line as she smiles up at me with crescent eyes: “Home is when I’m alone with you.”

 

In that moment, my thoughts empty and my heartbeat resounds—the music from the bar a distant thrum as I hold her eyes. Our chests rise and fall to the rhythm of our souls and I want so badly to—so badly to—

 

She grabs me by the face and kisses me first, the force of it sending me stumbling backwards against the wall, and all at once the unresolved feeling, months and months of pushing and pulling and wanting and—it all falls into place.

 

I kiss her back like I was born for this moment—I push back, press her against the wall, and little moan that escapes triggers one of my own. She arches her back, our hearts beating against each other in a race to infinity as my hand finds the soft skin of her hips.

 

Heavy breaths and unravelling feelings—everything escalated so fast, and at the very end, with her forehead against mine and her cheeks glowing pink as she tries to catch her breath, I apologize.

 

“Don’t,” she says, her hand reaching up to cradle my cheek. “You’re...everything I’ve ever wanted.”

 

It’s too soon—it’s too soon, but the words slip out before I can reel them back: “I love you.”

 

Her eyes open slowly, and her lips curl into a smile. “I love you too,” she says.

 

I thought my heart would soar, would beat a little faster. I thought I’d be surprised, but the words sound like a familiar song, like I’ve heard it a million times, like I’ve known the words all along. I wrap my arms around her and kiss her again, softly this time, for a question still remained.

 

“What are we going to do?” I murmur against her lips.

 

“What do you mean?” she says, eyes boring into my own.

“You...you’ve got a great life here,” I say, pulling back to hold her chin. “I don’t want you to lose it all because of me.”

 

“Will you leave?” The question catches me off-guard. “Go back to the city?” she elaborates. I haven’t thought about the city in quite some time, and I tell her as much.

 

She lays her head on my shoulder. “He proposed to me,” she says. My heart sinks into a black hole, and I swallow, unsure what else to say. “Again. He told me he could give me everything.” She pulls back then, and holds my hand with a small smile. “I told him he couldn’t give me you.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“He knew, you know.”

 

“He did?”

 

“The way I talked about you,” she says, pulling me into an embrace. “I talked about him the same way when we were 19 and in love.”

 

“You’ve been together...for ten years?”

 

She nodded against the fabric of my shirt. “But I never wanted to marry him—we’ve talked about it so many times, but I...I just didn’t want it. I never understood why until I met you.”

 

“I’m...I’m so sorry.”

 

She shakes her head. “It’s...a long time coming. Everyone suspected something was wrong when we didn’t get married right out of high school. I guess the two of us have just been in denial for so long, we’ve forgotten what a relationship is supposed to be like.”

 

“But...ten years.”

 

“We’ll be okay, Byul,” she smiles, “we’ve got decades ahead of us to make up for lost time. Since he’s been back, we’ve been trying to figure it out, and, well, I still love him in a different way. I think...it was mutual.”

 

I replay my short interaction with him from what felt like hours ago, and suddenly it make so much more sense. I replay every interaction I had with Yongsun from the beginning, and it all makes sense.

 

“I...can’t give you all the things that he’s given you,” I say slowly. “But I can promise you that I will always try.”

 

“I don’t care,” she says wrapping her arms around my neck. “As long as I’m with you, as long as you’ll have me, we’ll figure it all out together.”

 

“As long as I’m with you,” I reply with a grin, “I’m home.”

 

---

Notes: Hi all! If you follow me on my other Twiiter account, @roastyreads, you will know that I watched the movie Becks and HAD A LOT OF STRONG FEELINGS ABOUT IT (to put it mildly). The movie really devastated me in ways I could not explain, and I could not sleep, so I ended up starting this little fic. Interestingly, the songs sort of came up naturally on their own. I never intended to have this story inspired by music, but it just kind of happened? I was reluctant at first too because it's SO cheesy to have characters sing in fic. And these are kind of weird songs for them to be singing too, BUT I think Mamamoo would do really well with acoustic covers of those songs. 

Also, if you follow me on Twitter at all, you may know that I'm taking suggestions! I'm planning to put together a list of prompts to write in December. If you have any ideas, please drop by @fireroastedmoo! I have a curiouscat now too, so you can even submit your ideas anonymously. 

As always, thank you for your support. Comments really give me life, and subs/votes make me really happy.