JIYONG

"Dara...girl...what are you doing?" Dara muttered below her breath as she let herself in through the dock's security gate.

It was the question of the century, and one Dara had been posing to herself more and more often over the course of the last several months. 'Going with the flow' of things was proving to be easier said than done. She had always imagined the 'flow' as being something relaxing, something that would move along at a leisurely pace and work itself out in the end regardless of any force of will she tried to exercise over it. What she hadn't imagined was for her 'flow' to take the form of an unstoppable tidal wave that she couldn't prevent from crashing down around her, again and again and again. She felt like a perpetual Coney Island tourist at the beach with only a pool floaty to protect her.

She laid a hand on her stomach, as she often did now, and felt a sudden rush of comfort. She walked down along the dock, and she barely noticed the way it occasionally pitched gently beneath her feet. Jiyong's boat rose up out of the fading light, proud and safe and familiar. She was here at his invitation.

She was here because she wanted a future together with him.

It was something Dara had found difficult to accept at first...even more difficult than the reality of her pregnancy, and of a potential marriage to the man who was her best friend. She had loved him for longer than she could possibly know. It was such a frightening revelation that all she had wanted to do at first was run from Jiyong, and from the tangled web he had managed to weave around them in the name of doing the right thing.

No, it wasn't the perfect fantasy. But maybe it was better than that. They were a family. A dysfunctional, expectant family, but a family nonetheless, and their potential was limitless. When she thought about their relationship in those terms, the web suddenly disappeared, and was replaced by strings of attachment that could never be severed.

She loved Jiyong. He, and the baby, and her happiness, trumped everything else. She was ready to take this plunge into the unknown with him. Nothing needed to be perfectly mapped out ahead of time... but that also didn't mean she needed to sit back and let fate take the wheel. She would be actively participating in this, because something told her it would be the most worthwhile thing she would ever do. And she wasn't willing to leave that to chance; to flow. Anything she cared about this much required her complete involvement, from beginning to end. She saw that clearly now.

She arrived at the boat; when she noticed the shadow of movement onboard, she glanced up from trying to navigate the step stool. Jiyong was there, waiting for her. He cleared his throat, before bending to hold out a hand to her. Dara accepted without thinking and boarded.

"Evening, Dara," he said. "I'm glad you got my text."

"Evening, Jiyong," she said. "I'm glad you decided to text me."

He was dressed up in his most formal yachting attire, looking as effortless as he did immaculate. His auburn hair was brushed back, though not slicked down; he was clean-shaven, but still wore the faint shadow of stubble that she had grown to love. It starkly differentiated the man from the boy she had once known. Dara's heart did a somersault now to see him standing in the faint light of the cabin, and kept up its sudden circus audition when she n