"You know you do this thing," Wonpil says when Jinyoung finally comes back with their two iced Americanos sweating all over his hands. He'd stopped to talk with Jackson when he ran into him near the pick-up counter and his fingers went numb as he laughed along to jokes that were mediocre at best. "Where you try to act cooler around other people?"

"Oh." Wonpil pops the lid off his drink. He started refusing plastic straws a year ago. For the sea turtles, he'd said, like it was something exceptionally noble. Suzy laughed when Jinyoung joked about it later. "I didn't realize."

Wonpil stares at him like he doesn't get it. "You ignore me every time it happens," he spells out after an excruciating moment.

"Oh." Jackson waves at him on his way out, and Jinyoung waves back. "Sorry," or he really tries to be, at least.

Nayeon frowns at her phone screen. "Why does mine look nothing like yours?" she huffs, flopping back onto their beach towel.

Suzy laughs, brushing her stupidly perfect hair behind her stupidly perfect ear with a delicate earring dangling off it. Nayeon spent hours scouring the internet for a similar design on the library computer after school the day Suzy first wore them. "What d'you mean?" she peeks over Nayeon's shoulder, "it's a good picture."

"I look like a gremlin," Nayeon grumbles. Suzy had hundreds of followers on Instagram and Nayeon was – "I need braces."

"No, you don't," insists Suzy. Nayeon pretends to not see the guy with a surfboard two umbrellas over checking her out as she pulls her hair into a bun. "Now are you gonna swim with me or do I have to go out there alone?"

Nayeon shakes her head. She doesn't want to take off her sundress anymore, even though she spent the last three months on this weird keto diet. "You go ahead."

Suzy raises one of her pretty brows at her. "Alright," she sighs, walking backwards slowly like Nayeon might change her mind, "suit yourself, Nayeonnie."

"Mmhmm." The guy with surfboard goes up to talk to her once she's in the water. She watches Suzy flash a blinding grin at him. Even from twenty feet away, Nayeon knows he's in love.

Do you want to delete this picture? Her selfie smiles back up at her, painstakingly angled.

She hits yes.

Summer used to be this big thing for them. "Remember?" says Suzy as she's drying her hair in the passenger seat of Jinyoung's car, the smell of the ocean and sun making his nose sting. "You, me, Jaebum, Wonpil, and Nayeonnie. We used to go to the beach all the time, didn't we?"

That was before we got together, Jinyoung could say because it was true. He doesn't, though. "Now only you and Nayeon want to hang out with me." She tosses her wet towel into the backseat. Jinyoung never knew how to tell her, but it drove him crazy. "I don't even know when the last time I talked to Wonpil was."

"You should text him." Suzy hums, noncommittally at that. Jinyoung can see her used towel in his rear view mirror.

"Remember," she continues, sounding oddly nostalgic. "When you got that awful haircut in middle school? And you hated it so we tried not to laugh, but then Jaebum came back from summer camp with one just as bad?"

Nayeon had gotten a mosquito bite on her forehead, and Wonpil had spent July in summer school, trying to skip a level ahead in math. It all seemed so easy and inconsequential now.

"Yeah," Jinyoung tells her, gripping the steering wheel tighter. "I do."

Brian Kang is one of Nayeon's brother's friends. He frequents the 7-Eleven she part times at, and he's been dating the choir lead, Ayeon Baek since sophomore year.

"They're not gonna get married," Nayeon interjected when Jeongyeon was gossiping with Sana in study hall. They were making a list of high school couples they thought would last through college, and Brian and Ayeon had been at the top of it. "No one knows who they're gonna get married to at seventeen, okay."

Jeongyeon stuck her tongue out at her. "Just because you're going to end up a cat lady doesn't mean you have to curse happy couples."

Nayeon groaned. "I'm not the here."

"Hot Cheetos and Sprite again?" Nayeon smiles winningly when he puts them on the counter. Some days, he comes in with Ayeon, and she doesn't get the chance to talk to him. She also doesn't get the chance to bat her fake eyelashes, or reach for his items before he's let go of them hoping for the off-chance that their fingers will brush. He'd fall for her then, because that's how it went in all the best love stories. "Don't you think about –" she has to manually enter in her employee discount and loses her train of thought, "– your heart health?"

To his credit, Brian laughs. He used to do that a lot when he played basketball with Jaebum on the weekends, and Nayeon would pretend she wasn't watching from the nearby bench. She'd run after the ball if she saw Brian was the one chasing it, and he'd smile as she handed it back before patting her on the head. "I guess I should start, huh?" he plays along. "Fifty's just around the corner."

"Yeah," Nayeon panics, realizing she has nothing else cleverly flirty enough to say. "Totally."

Brian takes his purchases off the counter after she finishes ringing him up. "Thanks, Nayeon," he says with the receipt between his teeth. He pushes the door open with his shoulder. "Say hi to Jaebum for me!"

"Sure," she calls after him. She watches him walk down the street, away from her. She wishes she was the one he liked instead.

Jinyoung became friends with Jaebum, weirdly enough, because they both became obsessed with One Piece in sixth grade. They'd also been in the same class that year, and they spent their recesses talking about the best parts of the newest chapter or planning whose house they'd go to after school to watch the show.

"Oh," Jaebum told him the next year, when Jinyoung brought it up. "I'm not really into it anymore."

That was how it was. Jinyoung tried to like what Jaebum liked, and Jaebum never stuck with anything. That was how it ended up like –

"Hey," Jaebum told him last year. He'd been smoking a cigarette. Jinyoung had always hated the smell of tobacco too much to try it. "I think I like Suzy."

Jinyoung cleared his throat. He could taste Jaebum’s ashes like they were in his own mouth. "Really?" Jaebum nodded. ", dude. Wow."

"I know," Jaebum laughed. "Do you think she'll go to prom with me if I ask?"

She didn't. Because Jinyoung asked her with a huge banner and a bouquet of daisies the week after and she told him yes.

Jaebum hasn't looked at him since.

Nayeon runs into Jaebum in the middle of the night when she's exiting the bathroom. He's dressed to go out with his ugly- old pair of Converse in his left hand.

She squints. "Are you sneaking out again?"

Jaebum opens the hallway window. "Don't tell mom and dad," he tells her as he starts climbing out.

"One day, you're gonna set off the burglar alarm and I'll just laugh at you," says Nayeon. For some reason, her heart hurts.

"Well." Jaebum smiles stiffly. "Until then. See ya."

Nayeon stares at the dense ultramarine of midnight after him for a moment, wondering if she'll cry. And then she reaches up and closes the window.

Wonpil's wearing this garishly yellow sweater when they go out for lunch and a movie on Saturday. He smiles when he spots Jinyoung in the crowd and waves excitedly.

"What's wrong?" Wonpil sighs halfway through hot dogs. Jinyoung looks desperately at his phone for escape but all that greets him is a missed call notification from Suzy.

"Nothing," he lies. Wonpil rolls his eyes. "Is it that obvious?" he amends.

"I've known you since pre-school, Jinyoung," says Wonpil with the patience of a kindergarten teacher. "Of course it's obvious."

That was how it was. Wonpil ran after him across