Saturday April 2nd 2022

Taeyeon stood stockstill outside on the winter-frigid streets of New York, looking from afar into the brightly lit storefront on 132 Prince St.

Numb fingertips and bloodless knuckles clutching at the collar of her black peacoat. Not to ward off the cold, but to hide her face.

She could see the younger woman laughing melodically at the man’s joke while leaning into his muscular arms wrapped around her slender frame. Her head tilted back gracefully, long exquisite sculpted neck extended in mirth.

Taeyeon stared. Onyx eyes dispassionate, boring emotionless holes into time and space.

She thought she would feel something. Thought she would be hurt. Be angry. Be…something. Anything. But all she felt was numb.

The winds blew harder, whipping the tail of her flimsy insubstantial coat wildly around her. But she felt nothing. She didn’t even shiver. She was innately cold and deadened at the core. Nothing.

The younger woman intimately caressed the man’s angular jaw, delicate pads of fingers drawing down the curve, teasing.

Taeyeon’s jaw clenched.

This was a mistake.

Everything was a mistake.

She turned her eyes upwards to the light-polluted skies of New York and took one shuddering breath. Her head swiveled to look the other way.

Away.

From everything.

When she walked away from Jessica that night, she swore it would be the last time.

~~~~~

Jessica stared down at the designs sketched on her notepad, her glasses sliding a little down the bridge of her nose. She absentmindedly pushed it back up with the back of her pencil, exhaling softly as she did so.

She looked up from her desk, staring out her window into the blustery nightscape of New York, hearing the wind whip like a blood-crazed demon through the narrow streets and channels of the city.

Gnashing.

Howling.

Lonely.

Her mind drifted. Back. As it so often did these days.

Back.

To everything.

~~~~~

“What do you mean by that?”

“Exactly what I said Jeshika.”

“Oh so now it’s Jessica is it?”

“What do you want me to say Sooyeon?”

“That you’re a ing coward Tae!”

“Don’t you even ing start with me! I’m not the one who’s checked out!”

“I’m not checked out! I’m still here! I just also want other things in my life Taeyeon! I’m ing twenty-five! We’ve been doing this for half our lives! I want more than this! More with you! And just because this is what you want for the foreseeable future doesn’t mean it also has to be mine! It doesn’t make me checked out! It makes me an adult! For god’s sake Taeyeon w