At GUCCI: LIMITED EDITION, Blackpink says their new song, Ddu du ddu du, as models walking out with GUCCI's new clothing and accessory line. V and I have discussed what style they're coming out online, but it's strange to think about those conversations now. I definitely wish I could be seeing it under happier circumstances. 

It was a Sunday night, I was strangely calm. Maybe it's because this has been a long time coming, me meeting V. or maybe it's because I don't feel the same way about him as I once did, now that Taehyung's in my life. I think back to the beginning of the summer, when I was so worried and nervous about everything V could or could not be - tall or short, bald or hairy, shy or chatty - and none of those things matter anymore.

He is who is.

I am who I am.

Exactly who those people are couldn't really be identified in an online profile or captured correctly in all our written communication, no matter how honest we tried to be. We were only showing one side of ourselves, a side that was carefully trimmed and curated. He didn't see all my hang-ups and problems, or how long it takes me to pluck my eyebrows every night. He doesn't know I tried to pick up a gay tour host because I thought it might be him. Or that I can't tell the difference between a male and female cat . . . Or about all the dirty GIFs I've laughed at with Anna, or the number of churros I can put away in one sitting before it starts to get embarrassing for the churro chart vendor, because he knows I'm really not buying them for "a friend." (Five.)

God only knows what I haven't seen of him.

So, you know, whatever. If he's nice, great. If not, no big deal. In my head, I'm holding my head high and wearing a navy blue dress with a denim jacket.

At the beach a little more than half an hour before the runway starts. They're showing it, ironically enough, near one of the first places I remember when when I came into town: the surfers' crosswalk. Only, the whole area is transformed tonight, with one of those huge rotating double spotlights that's pointed toward the sky, announcing to the world, Hey, festival's over here! They've also lit up the palm trees along Big Hit Avenue and hung festival banners in the parking lot across the street, which is jammed with cars. I manage to squeeze Eggie into a space alongside another scooter before following a line of people who are swinging picnic baskets and coolers, heading toward the giant runway set up in the sand.

V was right all those months ago when he first told me about this: It looks really fun. The sun's setting over the water. Families and couples are chilling on blankets, and closer to the road, a row of tents and food trucks are selling food and merchandise. I head for those, looking for flagpoles. All the palms are lit up, so I figure a flagpole must be spotlighted too, right? But when I've walked the entire row of vendors, I can't find it. No flag near the runway either. It's a pretty big runway, so I check around back, just to make sure. Nope. Nothing.

This is weird. I mean, V lives here, so he knows the place. He wouldn't just tell me to meet him somewhere so specific if it wasn't there. I check my film messages to make sure there isn't anything new from him, and when I don't see anything I head back the way I came from, all the way down to the end of the concession row to the back of the seating area. That's when I spot it.

The flagpole is all the way up a set of steps, on a wide natural stone platform - a lookout over the ocean, where the surfer's crosswalk ends.

Right in front of the memorial statue of Jonghyun Kim.

I sigh, and then snort at myself, because really, no matter what I do, I can't escape him. And if V is the nice guy I'm hoping he is, we can both have a laugh about it later.

Weaving around blankets, I make my way to the lookout and climb the stone steps. I'm getting a little nervous now. Not much, but this is surreal. The lookout is fairly spacious. It's banded in a wood railing with some built-in benches around the ocean side, where one older couple is looking out at the sunset. Not him, for sure. I look up at the Jonghyun statue. I've seen the photo of this online, of course, and driven past it, but it's weird to see it up close in person. Someone's put a Hawaiian lei around his neck; I wonder if it was Mrs. Kim.

Someone's sitting on a bench behind the statue. I blow a long breath, straighten my shoulders, and lumber around ol' Jonghyun. Time to face V.

"Hello, Giant Maknae."

My brain sees who's in front of me, hears the words, but doesn't believe. It recalculates and recalculates, over and over, but I'm still stuck. And then it all comes rolling back to me, out of order.

The video store.

Rush Hour.

Him caring about the Blasian flacon being stolen.

Hwarang.

White cat at the surf shop.

Churro chart.

Is it wrong to hate someone who used to be your best friend?

Cheating girlfriend.

Watching movies at work.

Tiny moments of fashion styles.

My coworker, the human blunt.

Me Before You.

Mr. Kim.

Jonghyun 'Victorious' Kim.

Victorious.

V.

My knees buckle. I'm falling. Taehyung jumps up from the bench and grabs me around the waist before I hit the ground. I kick at the stone below my feet, like I'm swimming in place, trying to get traction. Trying to get control of my legs. I finally manage it. When I do, I go a little crazy. It's that stupid lavender scent of his. I push him away from me, beat him - hard - landing blows on his arms until he lets me go in order to shield his face. And then I just fall to pieces.

I sob.

And sob.

I curl into a ball on the bench and sob some more.

I don't even know why I'm crying so hard. I just feel so stupid. And shocked. And overwhelmed. Sort of betrayed, too, but that's crazy, because how could that be? Then I stop crying and gasp a little, because I realize that's exactly how Taehyung must have felt when he found out.

He sits down on the bench and lifts my head onto his lap, sighing heavily. "Where are you at in the screw-up-ness of it all? Because there are all kind of layers."

"We basically cheated on each other with each other," I say.

"Yeah," he says. "That's pretty messed up. When I told eomma, she said we pulled a reverse 'Pina Colada,' which was about this couple who write personal ads looking for hookups, and end up meeting each other."

"Omo," I groan. "You told your mom?"

"hey, this is some crazy . I had to tell someone," he argues. "But look at it this way. We ended up liking the real us better than the online us. That's something, right?"

"I guess."

I think about it some more. Ugh. Appa knew. He was trying to tell me with all that talk about blinders and horses. Another wave of YOU ARE THE WORLD'S BIGGEST IDIOT hits me, and this time, I let the wave wash over me, not fighting it. The older couple that was hanging around on the lookout has left - guess a bawling teenager girl was ruining their peaceful sunset view - so we have the area to ourselves for the moment, and for that, I'm grateful. Below the lookout, hundreds of people throng the beach, but it's far away that I don't mind.

"You didn't know until game night at my house, right?" I ask.

"No."

That makes me feel somewhat better, I suppose. At least we were both stupid about this until he heard my nickname. Omo. He watched Me Before You with me on purpose. He knew then, and he didn't tell me. My humiliation cannot be measured. "Why?" I ask in a small voice. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I was shocked. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't believe you'd been living out here the entire time. Couldn't believe you . . . were her - Giant Maknae. At first, I thought you'd been screwing with me, but the more I thought about it, I knew that didn't fit. I just freaked for a while. And then . . . I guess I wanted to hold on to it. And I wanted you to discover it on your own. I thought you would. If I dropped enough hints, I thought you would, Suzy - I swear. But then I started thinking about why you didn't tell me - V - you moved out here, and how it felt as though you'd been lying to me . . . and I wanted you to come clean."

"I can't believe it." I close my eyes, fully aware of the irony now.

"I didn't mean for things to go wrong," he insists. "When you got fired . . . Anna told me what happened in the Hotbox. For the record, she also made some threats to my manhood that gave me a few nightmares."

I groan. "I don't blame you for what I did in the Hotbox. I was upset at the time, but I've moved past it."

"I just want you to know that what Sam and Ken were saying that day . . . I didn't think it was funny. I'm not even sure why I laughed. I think it was just a nervous reaction. I felt awful afterward. I tried to text you and tell you, but you weren't speaking to me. And then RM happened . . ."

I sigh shakily, completely overwhelmed. "God, what a mess."

After a second, he says, "You know, what I haven't been able to figure out is why you lied about where you lived before you moved out here."

"I didn't. Eomma and her husband moved from Gwangju to Seoul a few months before. I just never told V. You. V. You. Ugh. That's not a random screenname, is it?"

"V is my nickname."

"Victorious. Like your grandfather?"

"Yeah." He pushes my hair behind my ear. "You do realize this whole mess would have been avoided if Giant Makae You would have just told me from the beginning that you were moving out here . . . right?"

I use his hand to cover my face. And then I uncover it and sit up, facing him, wiping away tears. "You know what? Maybe not. Let's say I'd arranged to meet up with V, you at IHOP when I first moved here, and that I hadn't gotten that job at the Vogue. Would we have hit it off? I don't know. You don't know that either. Maybe it was just the situation we were in at the Vogue."

taehyung shakes his head and winds his fingers through mine. "Nope. I don't believe that, and I don't think you do either. Two people who lived in two different places and found each other, not once but twice? You could stick one of us in Haiti and the other in a rocket headed to the moon and we'd still eventually be doing this right now."

I sniffle. "You think so?"

"You know how I said you were tricky like the fog, and that I was afraid of you running back to your eomma at the end of summer? I'm not afraid anymore."

"You're not?"

He looks toward the ocean, dark purple with the last rays of light. "Eomma says we're all connected - people and plants and animals. We all know one another on the inside. It's what's on the outside that distracts. Our clothes, our words, our actions. Shark attacks. Gunshots. We spend out lives trying to find other people. Sometimes we get confused and turned around by the distractions." He smiles at me. "But we didn't."

I smile back, eyes shining with happy tears. "No, we didn't."

"I love you, Suzy 'Giant Maknae' Bae."

I choke out a single sobbed laugh. "I love you too, Taehyung 'V' Kim."

We reach for each other and meet in the middle, half kissing, half murmuring how much we've missed each other. It's sloppy and wonderful, and I've never been hugged so tightly. I kiss him all over his neck beneath his hair, and he cups my head in both hands and kisses me all over my face, and then wipes away my cried-out makeup drips with the edge of his T-shirt.

Applause and cheers both startle us. I'd nearly forgotten all about the show. Taehyung pulls me up with him, and we lean over the railing together to look into the dark. Flickering light fills the beach, and the runway show begins. Chills zip up and down my back.

And then I realize: I get to share all of this with Taehyung. All of me. All of us.

I look up at him, and he's emotional too.

"Hi," he says, forehead pressed to mine.

"Hi."

"Should we head to the beach?" he asks, slinging an arm over my shoulder.

"I seem to remember hating the beach at some point or another."

"That's because you'd never been to a real one. Korean beaches are trash beaches."

I laugh, my heart singing with joy. "Oh yeah, that's right. Show me the real beach, why don't you, surfer boy. Let's go watch the show."

One more chapter you guys! I am literally bawling!

One of my favorite stories I have written, the next two story that I'm currently working on are Jinzy and Kookzy. I don't when they'll be published, so keep a lookout!

Jin and Suzy - I Remember You

Jungkook and Suzy - Starry Night