PART II

xiii. One Last Time (Part I)

"You and I have stopped before the goodbye

I take in your appearance carefully for the last time

So I can keep it for a long time

Wait, one last time."

2014 - TAEYEON

Jessica shoulders past Taeyeon and without so much as a backward glance, storms into Taeyeon's small apartment, silently brewing with barely contained anger.

 

Taeyeon presses her lips together, pulling into thin line and chooses to wordlessly close the front door behind them.

 

"What was that?!" Jessica demands, spinning around to face Taeyeon, who had followed her into the living area. Her actions are laced with indignation, her arms crossed and shoulders tense, as though her entire being was accusing Taeyeon of wrongdoing.

 

At this, Taeyeon feels her own irritation rising—a need to defend herself in response Jessica's tone.

 

"You said that you could wait."

 

Jessica meets her gaze, her face set into a frown, eyes gleaming with something fierce. Taeyeon watches as Jessica lets the sentence sink in, watches as the words that Jessica had once uttered out of consideration twists between them until they become a poor semblance of an excuse.

 

Jessica knew this.

 

(And Taeyeon did too.)

 

"Are you ashamed of me?—of us?"

 

"No, but-"

 

"But what, Taeyeon?" Jessica presses, cutting Taeyeon off. The edge in her voice too sharp and too cold.

 

"I'm going to be an idol."

 

The words spring out onto the tip of Taeyeon’s tongue, like a loaded trap, and her reply comes out just as automatic and as robotic.

 

"They're our friends." Jessica retorts, exasperation colouring her tone.

 

"Jessica—"

 

"I love you Taeyeon." Jessica says abruptly—and for the first time.

 

Taeyeon stiffens. The words pressing flat against her chest, begging her to fight back, insistent. Guilt comes in slivers filling in the empty spaces in her chest. There was nothing romantic about it. Backed into a corner, it was a confession borne out of desperation, a last-ditch effort to save something that before today, had no indications of failing.

 

But here they were.

 

Do you even love me? goes unspoken, hanging in the air, confronting Taeyeon with its brutal honesty and the room suddenly feels suffocatingly small in its presence.

 

Jessica eyes glisten, but the tears don’t fall.

 

Taeyeon remains quiet, partially still struck dumb by the sudden confession, and partially by the revelation that she had unwillingly but knowingly backed herself into a corner. She could neither admit nor deny the reality for what is was—that Jessica meant something to her. Taeyeon was in love with her, or at least on the way to being so.

 

With mouth dry and tongue glued to the roof, words elude her, refusing to form. Either way she was going to hurt Jessica. It was too late now to turn back, to escape from the blast radius—admitting she loved Jessica changed nothing—rather, it would break both of their hearts.

 

Conflicting thoughts play a tug of war within her mind—pulling her in separate directions, of wanting to take this all back, erase all their moments together that led to them falling for each other and of wanting to keep those precious memories for those exact reasons.

 

Jessica breaks the silence.

 

"Fine, just forget it, you've made yourself clear."

 

The hand Taeyeon had raised halfway, drops lifelessly, mirroring the way the fight in Jessica’s shoulders dissipates.

 

Somewhere in the back of their minds, they both acknowledge that this was it. The beginning of the end.

 

Jessica pushes past her, shoving her out of the way and Taeyeon stumbles backward, off-balance. Maybe they were crumbling, or maybe these cracks had always existed, hidden in plain sight and until now, she had always turned a blind eye to them.

 

Jessica doesn’t slam the door.

 

It closes with an inaudible click.

 

Drenched in silence again, Taeyeon wonders why despite her victory, she felt as though she just lost a part of herself—a hollowness punctuating her every thought and action.

/

 

PRESENT - TAEYEON

Her blood is a mixture of determination, anxiety and fear, pulsing through her veins with each and every audible beat of her heart. Within the taxi, Taeyeon hunches over her phone, the small space simultaneously putting her on edge and calming her. She feels conflicted; claustrophobic in the small space, yet relieved at the strange pocket of privacy the vehicle offers. The contradictory concoction of feelings adds to that which is already brewing within her mind.

 

She thinks of what Jessica had said—of denying them —and a constant stabbing pain manifests just below her ribcage, where her heart was, joining the pounding dull headache that had already developed.

 

I’m not your girlfriend, Taeyeon.

 

The stabbing pain intensifies, and pink crescents appear on her palms as her nails bite into flesh.

 

Involuntarily, Taeyeon thinks of lazy mornings, golden sunlight streaming through windows, spilling over Jessica’s cheekbones and kissing at her cheeks, with an equally lazy smile tugging at pink lips. A testimony of simpler times, tucked neatly into the alcoves of her mind—warm and precious.

 

Years, for years she’d sacrificed Jessica and those times for this—a career in the spotlights, built on pillars of sand, fragile, ready to melt away in the face of the rising tides of time and of fickle opinions.

 

Had she been given the second chance to choose all those years ago, would she have done the same?

 

She’s not sure she’d make the same choice.

 

Taeyeon wonders why it’d seemed so easy to turn her back on it all now—why she was willing to sacrifice one for the other, albeit, this time the other way around.

 

She tosses up the options in her mind and for some reason, it feels like the universe’s twisted sense of humour is coming back to taunt her again by presenting her with options that echo those she’d been forced to choose between all those years ago.

 

A figurative and literal second chance.

 

Jessica Jung is my choice.

 

The phone lying silent her lap suddenly lights up, its vibration startling Taeyeon out of the muted, tense silence of her contemplation and she finds Tiffany’s number flashing across her screen. Her fingers tentatively reach forward to curl around the phone, as though she could already hear the questions she would no doubt have to answer.

 

Taking a deep breath, Taeyeon presses the green button and pulls the device up to her ear.

 

“Where are you Kim Taeyeon?!” Tiffany asks bluntly, not bothering with pleasantries of any sort.

 

“In a cab.”

 

“Where to?”

 

“The company.”

 

She’d been called in by the company for a meeting as she’d been leaving Jessica’s place, but by that point in time, Taeyeon was already intending on going there anyway.

 

Taeyeon hears rustling on the other end of the line and then the cutting off of a muffled protest—most likely Yoona’s—as what sounds like a sliding door opens and then closes with a low rumble.

 

“What are you going to say about it?” Tiffany asks in a clipped manner, her voice heavy, as though carrying the worry of all the rest of the girls and not just her own.

 

At this, Taeyeon falters slightly, but steadies herself again, having already firmly grasped the threads of a decision made.

 

“I want to tell them that we’re da—” Taeyeon catches herself as she glances warily towards the taxi driver. Finding that he didn’t seem to be able to hear her over the sound of the radio, she continues and finishes her sentence lamely. “…you know.”

 

“Are you crazy…?” Tiffany hisses after Taeyeon’s words have fully registered.

 

Taeyeon turns to look out the window, the sky had darkened to a navy blue, and the city around her made iridescent by a coalescence of manmade lights and LED screens; upon many of which, her face had once graced. The appeal was no longer there.

 

She drops her gaze to her lap.

 

“I’m choosing Jessica.”

 

“You’re doing something stupid.”

 

“That’s what Jessica said…She told me to tell them that we’re not a couple.” The words catch in , painfully and she doesn’t want to have to say them anymore than she wants to admit that they are, in fact, the truth.

 

Jessica had made sure of it.

 

“That’s because she’s right! ”

 

A deep breath is inhaled as Tiffany lets the gravity of the situation sink in, making her frustration evident.

 

“Do you realise the consequences? You could be put on indefinite hiatus or worse, kicked out.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Then what are you even trying to achieve here? What’s telling them—insisting for the public to acknowledge your relationship going to achieve, for you or for her? Do you even know what’s on the line here, Tae?”

 

Taeyeon presses her lips together tightly, knowing full well what Tiffany was saying and yet she still felt like she was trapped in the past, the decisions she’d years ago haunting her and maybe that’s why she was so willing to take the risk—because maybe she stupidly believed it would somehow make it all okay again; like she was rectifying her mistakes—trading in one thing for another.

 

At her lack of response, Tiffany continues, voice dropping an octave, until it was a gentle plea, losing the harsh brashness that had lined her previous statements.

 

“You lose more than you gain and it’ll hurt her too…I know love can be selfish, but this?— this is too far, Taeyeon” Tiffany sighs, “What about us…what about the other girls? This isn’t five years ago, Tae…this is now. Things are different —you told me so yourself.”

 

“I—I…”

 

Reality—feeling a lot like a bucket of ice water—washes over her, leaving her freezing cold, and frigid to the core. Taeyeon finds herself lucid and frighteningly aware of the stupidity of her actions; as though she’d been pulled outside her body and was forced to see what the others were seeing—a frazzled individual, clutching at straws in an attempt to absolve her guilty conscience at a detrimental cost.

 

Tiffany was right, this wasn’t just about her anymore, it was about them—all six of them—and the weight of her leadership, her identity never feels heavier than it does now.

 

It wasn’t just about Taeyeon and Jessica anymore, nor was it just about having a choice—she’d forfeited that right already.

 

“I’m sorry.” Taeyeon says, adding another item the ever-growing list of things she had to apologise for and it seemed that these days, she could only watch helplessly as her wrongdoings accumulated one by one.

 

“You don’t need to apologise, Tae…Sometimes—sometimes, we just need a little reminder. Just promise me you won’t do anything stupid anymore?” Tiffany says gently upon hearing the exhaustion in Taeyeon’s tone.

 

“I promise.”

 

“You know what to do then, Tae.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

With a hushed goodbye and a few words of good luck , Taeyeon’s left with the sound of the dial tone in her ear.

 

Her arm drops like deadweight, falling until her knuckles hit the cushioning of the seat beside her thigh, phone still clutched loosely in her hand.

 

Taeyeon knew what she had to do—what she could only do in this situation, but her heart and limbs alike still felt strangely heavy.

/

“Taeyeon-ssi, over here!”

 

“Answer my questions! What do you have to say about the circulating rumours?”

 

“What is your relationship with Jessica Jung?”

 

The flashing lights, urgent yelling voices close in around her and begin to blur into a chaotic unfocused mess, she feels constrict, feeling claustrophobic, as they push in closer, hungry for a morsel of gossip, of news, of anything. She does her best to keep her face neutral lest it betray the panic rising up inside her chest, threatening to swallow her up in its wake; a tsunami of emotion. Taeyeon blindly searches for her manager, hoping he would appear soon and serve as a buffer between her already crumbling façade and the outside world. She shields her face from the flashing lights, squeezing her eyes closed and hunches her shoulders, as though trying to fold in on herself and disappear from plain sight.

 

A solid hand pats her on the back and Taeyeon startles slightly, turning to find herself face to face with the concerned expression etched onto her manager’s face.

 

“Taeyeon-ssi…? You're here for the meeting upstairs?"

 

Taeyeon nods dumbly.

 

"Okay, just letting you know but from what I've heard the plan is to release an official statement before these rumours get blown out of proportion."

 

Her manager rakes a hand through his hair, as though trying to dissipate the apprehensive energy that now clung to his being.

 

“I…I’m sorry, oppa.” Taeyeon says, bowing her