Chapter Sixteen: Where I Hit the Breaks

I didn’t receive one text from Jeon Jungkook the entire weekend. It was what I wanted, yet part of me had hoped he would. That he would actually try and not give up like he always did. When Monday came Jungkook was found making out with Yeri in the parking lot against her beat up, nineteen ninety-seven Toyota.

There were rumors circulating the school about Jungkook being seen partying it up with Kim Yeri the whole weekend. It made me realize I would never truly know Jeon Jungkook. He seemed to be made up of such polar opposites. He said he cared about me with truth in his eyes, yet when he spurned me and said he didn’t it looked the same. I couldn’t understand how a person could mean both things. I would never know where I stood with him, what he was really thinking. He refused to tell me.

A calming hand rested against my back, Nana’s worried gaze meeting mine. “You’re alright?” she probed.

Jungkook had grabbed Yeri around the waist, pulling her against him and making her giggle. He touched her with such familiarly, as if there had never been an Us.

I turned back to my poem, pressing the cap against my lip as I worked out how I wanted to write it and getting my feeling out the only way I knew. “No worse than expected.”

“Ara.”

“Yes?”

“Are you going to go back to him?” She stared at me across the table, expression serious. “This is what you two do. You break up. Jungook’s an . He apologizes, and you get back together.”

“She’s not wrong,” Jimin pointed out, down his yogurt.

I turned back to my paper. “I don’t know. Not yet.”

It had sunk in and it hadn’t, the fact that we broke up. I could almost pretend it had never happened if I didn’t look at him.

I felt as if I’d never be full again.

It’s what always had me running back to him. I knew how it would end, the pattern of us, yet I couldn’t break it. I was an addict, unable to break the chain of events that led me to my artificial utopia. I forced myself to look, to truly see Jungkook and what he was doing. It was an emptiness spreading, a hollow that was cracked and unable to be sated.

Jeon Jungkook.

He was one of the worst and best things in my life.

“I hate this,” Nana whispered. “I hate that you do this to yourself. I hate how helpless you’ve become, how helpless I feel watching you.”

She wiped away a silent tear, unable to look at me any longer. I couldn’t blame her.

It wasn’t till Tuesday during