"It was the sweetness of your skin
It was the hope of all we might have been
That filled me with the hope to wish...impossible things"
To Wish Impossible Things by The Cure

The thing about decisions, is that we have to live with them, long after the benefits have worn off. The repercussions of our actions remain with us, like little treasures and keepsakes, to remind us of what was originally our choice. You’d think I would’ve learned this lesson from the boy that was sitting in front of me, stuffing his mouth with what was my burger less than five minutes earlier, until he deemed me void of an appetite and took to finishing my food for me. Another side effect of a choice I made long ago, to always love this boy, no matter what.

   I was always the stupid type.

   “So how are things going?” Junho asked when my burger was gone and he wiped the remnants from his lips with a napkin. “With your situation . . .” He looked at me cautiously, his eyes wide and breathing steady enough to inform me that he was really only asking to be polite.

   At least he was trying. “MinJun’s distant lately.” I gave him the truth, not because I knew it will hurt him, but because I knew he still wanted it. If it was my choice, I wouldn’t hurt him. Not again.

   Still, even when he tried to hide his wince, I knew what his looks meant. I knew what it was when he looked at the table, and bit his lip, shaking his head. “You think that it might have something to do with the fact that you’re his husband’s new buddy?” Junho snorted a little too loudly and I look around, feeling the eyes of a few other patrons of the restaurant gazing at us. “I mean , if my husband was ing you on the regular I’d be a little y towards you too.”

   “Damn it, Junho,” I leaned in closer to him. “Would you keep it down?

   He crossed his arms and leaned back against the booth. “You decided to go along with this ery, now you’ve got to deal with the results.”

   Junho always did have a way of pouring salt into my wounds. All I could do was stare while the burning spread through me like a wildfire. “You have no idea.”

   “You’re right.” He huffed, his lips curling up in a displeased snarl. “I have no idea about anything that goes on in your life anymore! Which is really ing funny considering you were the one always preaching about loyalty and friendship and all that bull about how it never dies, yet here I am–alone–just as I always predicted I would end up.”  Apparently, he felt like fighting today.

   I didn’t.

   So the words flew out of my mouth before I could filter them. “Maybe you wouldn’t be alone if you weren’t so loud and cantankerous. It’s not anyone else’s fault that you push people away because of your insecurities, but you have no right to go talking about others and act like you’re being persecuted when you’re alive and healthy and have your entire life ahead of you! You could be dying of cancer like MinJun, but you’re not! Do you even have the ability think about someone else’s feelings long enough to make the sacrifices he makes just for the person he loves? All he wants is for Taec to be happy and he’d do anything to make that happen, even if that means being hurt and dying alone . . . You’ve never loved anything that much.”

   There was that look in his eyes. I’d only ever seen it once before, right after he crushed my heart, and I swore I never wanted to see it again. But there I was, acting as the sole cause of that twinge of pain behind his tear glazed coffee black irises. There he was, standing up from the table. Our eyes locked as he reached out to me, like he was reaching for a lifeline. There I was, jaw tensed as I watched the hand that he slapped me with.

   I fought the embarrassment of the gazing eyes as I tried to swallow the lump in my throat.

   “That was the second time you’ve suggested that I don’t – didn’t – love you . . .” Junho straightened himself up with feigned dignity and strength, and grabbed his coat to leave, stopping to spare half a glance in my direction to speak lowly. “Keep that in mind, because next time I won’t be able to forgive you.”

   As he walked away, I stared at the cell leather gloves lying on the table beside the ring of car keys. It totally would be just like Junho to forget his keys while trying to make a dramatic exit. I rolled my eyes and grabbed them.

   He was standing by his car when I was done paying our tab, his cheeks a deep rose color from the cold air hitting his face harshly while he tucked his bare hands into his jacket pockets to try and stay at least a bit warm. I stood there for a moment, taking in the sight of the boy who had so much fight in him, standing around a snowy parking lot like a scolded puppy. All of the weakness disappeared behind a brick wall of stubbornness when he noticed me standing there. “Get in.” He said when I was close enough for him to snatch the keys.

   I realized then, that I would never understand him. And that, maybe, that was alright.



I breathed in deeply, feeling that hot smoke fill the inside of my chest and holding it there as I took the perfectly rolled joint from my lips and handed it to Junho. I watched his chest rise as he greedily in his own share while he settled back against his bed. Again, he was next to me, making my world flip and my stomach churn in an unsettled protest to his presence and the results of his presence.

   Getting high with Junho. It was something as normal as breathing, so why did this feel like a special occasion? We had done this so many times, this thing right here; the two of us laying down in our bed, passing a joint while we talked about our problems, or anything we felt like. That’s what was different. This wasn’t our bed anymore, it was his. These weren’t our problems, they were mine. There was no we anymore, it was him and it was me.

   Why was I still not used to that?

   “So he’s dying, huh?” Junho asked out of the blue, but I knew immediately what he was talking about. My eyes grew heavy as I nodded.

   “Yeah.” I could feel the tension still in him, the strained frustration he tried so hard to hide, all of the time. Regret. That’s what it was. Bitterness and sadness tinted with wistful envy that wouldn’t wash away no matter how hard he scrubbed it.

   “Well .” He sighed. “Now I feel like a .” We laughed together, the sing song sound lightening my heart little by little.

   “It’s not your fault.” It’s not anyone’s fault, I told myself. I tried to tell myself.

   “Wasn’t suggesting that it was . . . Does he really think that letting his husband sleep around with you is going to solve anything?” I raised an eyebrow at Junho’s bluntness, before remembering that this was in fact Junho that was talking to me and subtlety was just not his forte.

   “We’re not sleeping around, we’re . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

   “Falling in love?” Unfortunately for my conscience, Junho was strong enough to do my dirty work for me. “How is that any better?”

   “I don’t know.” I knew that the reason Junho was so opposed to this was because he didn’t believe in it. He didn’t feel that one could love more than one person, in a romantic way, at the same time. Nor did he believe in soul mates, he didn’t believe in love the same way that I did.

   Our versions of love were on two completely different sides of the universe.

   I felt his eyes boring holes into me, so I looked over at him. He looked as if his tears were being held back by an invisible force, like the smallest disturbance would break the dam and turn his face into a wetland. He looked away before I could say anything; I watched the way he breathed in through his nose, keeping his eyes closed so that I couldn’t see him cry. He thought it was weak to cry, I thought it was humane.

   “What’s wrong?” I asked out of foolishness.

   “Nothing,” He sat up rather abruptly, wiping his eyes in frustration. “I’m just being a jealous .” My expression must have given away my confusion as when he looked at me, he laughed, though it was coated with bitterness. As Junho looked down at his empty hands, I saw bits and pieces of the torment that he kept hidden from the world in his, and from me, leaking through his sad expression. “It’s so ironic, how you end up with two and I end up with . . . no one.”

   I don’t know why I did it, maybe it was instinct, maybe it was some sick kind of secret hope I still had that we would get back together and that he would be mine again. But when I saw him breaking, right before my eyes, I couldn’t help but to reach out to him, to pull him against my chest and hold him in my arms like I had so many times before. “You’ll always have me.” I whispered against the top of his head and for a brief, but achingly beautiful moment, I felt him give in. I felt him melt into me for just one small fraction of a second, right before he burned me with his fire and pushed himself out of my embrace.

   “Don’t bull me anymore, Chansung, it’s not fair!” He was walking away now, and I was left watching like a child who had just done something horribly wrong.

I used to always spend Christmas with Junho’s family. Being raised so incredibly Buddhist, there was nothing much that ever happened at my house, so I would go with Junho and his sister would fly in with her husband and kids, and we’d all fill up the small house the Junho grew up in, sitting around drinking on the living room floor and singing songs and eating Junho’s failed attempts at making Christmas cookies, staying up way too late and opening presents while Mr. Lee and Junho’s brother-in-law bored everyone to damn near death with the same stories year after year.

   As bad as it was, it was amazing.

   This Christmas would be my first with MinJun and Taecyeon. Taec was in the kitchen, as per usual during the holidays, I was learning. While MinJun was off somewhere in the back of the house, I could hear his soft singing from where I sat in the living room, staring at the smallish Christmas tree that was sitting by the television.

   I looked down at the gift in my hands, wrapped in silver paper with atrocious looking candy canes printed on it, doubting my choice of gift the longer I stared at the stupid paper it was bound in.

   “Is that for MinJun?” Taecyeon startled the living out of me as he asked from over my shoulder, wiping his hands off on a dish towel as he eyed the present I held. I nodded, still a bit jolted from him sneaking up on me. I don’t think I could ever get used to how quiet he was, he like a cat, when he wanted to be. “Why don’t you put it under the tree and then go get him while I put dinner on the table?”

   Before I could answer, he pressed his lips to mine in one of his soft, playful kisses.

   Since that day in the laundry room, he was becoming more and more open with me, allowing himself a subtle hand on my thigh when we shared the couch, or letting his arms snake around my waist when he found me standing at the sink. And his kisses, oh the kisses were going to kill me. I knew now why MinJun loved him so much.

   As I made my way down the hallway, MinJun’s singing got louder until I was standing in front of the bedroom, hesitant to just barge right in and interrupt the beautiful ballad he was in the middle of. I knew MinJun could sing, it was what he was paid to do, to write songs and lend his voice for people, but lately he had been singing so much more and I felt his words were meant now more than ever.

   I felt there was something wrong when the singing suddenly stopped.

   Opening the door, my mind was already in a state of panic, but it was completely unprepared for the sight of MinJun lying unconscious in front of his keyboard. I yelled for Taec as I rushed over and pulled the headphones off his ears, lifting MinJun’s head into my lap, just as I was about to call out again, I was being pushed out of the way by a frantic Taecyeon.

   “MinJun.” He repeated over and over, trying to wake up the older man. He checked MinJun’s neck for his heartbeat, before he lifted him almost effortlessly into his arms. “Get my wallet and keys off the table and get to the car, quickly!”

   “Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?”

   Taecyeon shook his head as he carried MinJun’s limp body through the hallway and I rushed ahead to open the front door, snatching the things I was told to grab on my way. “No time for an ambulance, he barely has a pulse.”

   When we finally got MinJun into the back seat, I remembered something, something that might be crucial and jumped out the car. “Wait, I’ll be right back.”

  Ignoring Taecyeon’s relentless horn blasting the entire way to the house again, I ran inside and went to our bedroom, slipping my arm under the bed and feeling around for it. When my hand came across the vaguely familiar box that I had seen him go into on several occasions, I snatched it up and ran back outside. Taec only glared at me as he took off.

   “What the hell is that?!” I had never heard him raise his voice before, so at first I could barely say anything.

   Looking down at the box in my hands, bit my lip. “It’s his medication.”

   Taecyeon didn’t understand, of course he didn’t there was no way for him to know. “What are you talking about, he’s not on medication.” He shook his head and gripped the steering wheel tighter as he swerved around a few cars to get past them. “What is it for?”

   I wondered if MinJun would hate me for outing him. If this would change things. If I decided to do this, there was no taking it back. I closed my eyes and gripped the box closer to my chest.

   “He’s sick, Taec.”