“I’ll be right back.” Jiyong said, getting up from his spot on his couch next to me. We were acting like any normal couple, cuddling while watching Running Man. “You want anything while I’m up babe?” He smiled.

“No, thank you, Ji.” I said as I watched him wander off. His villa was lovely, very neat and organized with a distinct smell of Jiyong. It was bigger then I would expect for a bachelor, but then again it was Jiyong’s house. He had money and he liked extravagant things. I got up and looked around the living room, looking at all his pictures of his family. Smiling each time I would see his parents or his sister. There were pictures of him and Youngbae, pre-debut when they were just cute little kids starting out, to pictures of them more recently. And there was a picture, of me. This surprised me some. It was a picture of us from the night Seunghyun and I had got engaged. I looked so happy. I was so unaware of what my life would end up being. I could see the redness in my eyes from crying and I could see… the completely fake smile that Jiyong was giving as we hugged each other.

As I walked away from the row of pictures on his fireplace mantel I noticed Jiyong had left his phone on the arm of the couch. I knew it wouldn’t be right to look at it, but it had been buzzing on and off all night, each time, Jiyong would ignore it, but I couldn’t. I had to know who was blowing up his phone, so being stupid and not completely thinking through my decision I picked up his phone and began to search through the text messages. Twenty missed texts, are you ing kidding me?  I began to scroll down through the messages…each one from Dara, each one getting more and more on my nerves.

“I miss you, are you still with her?”

“You need me more than her.”

“Jiyongie, come on, just let her go and be with me, we’re great together.”

“I want you so bad right now Jiyongie…want to know what I am currently doing ;)”

That was it; I couldn’t read anymore of her . I had no desire to know what she was doing. I sat there, tears streaming down my face. I had to believe and wanted to believe Jiyong really wanted to chose me, but I had no desire to compete with that like I had before, with Seunghyun.

“What the hell?” Jiyong asked as he entered back in to the living room, a beer in each hand. “MiRae, oh god, MiRae you didn’t?” He said, setting the beers down and coming to sit beside me.

“I am not competing with her again for a man. I refuse to.” I said, angrily handing him his phone.

“You don’t have to.” He said. “Why would you do this? Huh? Why would you get on to my ing phone and read my text messages?”

“Because, Jiyong, all night that damn phone of yours has been buzzing. Because I had a bad feeling it was her and because I’m stupid.” I said beginning to cry harder.

“Listen, you know how she is, when she wants something she’s going to do all she can to get it. But, baby, she isn’t getting me. I want you; I’ve always wanted you.

"Then why even go to her in the first place Jiyong?" I yelled.

"Excuse me?" He replied.

"You and Dara. If you never wanted her and always wanted me, then why in the hell did you turn to her, go to her? Huh? Knowing what he has done to me in the past and knowing what she is capable of. Explain it to me." I yelled, sitting up to face him.

"Babe, it isn’t worth discussing. It was what it was and whatever it was it over, so it doesn't matter." 

"No, Jiyong, it does matter. It matters to me and if you love me like you claim then you will talk to me about this. You owe it to me, as your girlfriend, as your best friend, as the woman you love. You owe this to me. I can't go on with you without discussing this. I want some ing answers...so...please explain."

"You want me to explain everything? All of what I have been through the past six months? You want me to be honest?"

"Yes, I want you to explain it all."

"I don't think you can handle it. Did Youngbae tell you nothing?"

"He told me bits and pieces, but nothing personal. I was clueless to you and Dara. He also told me it was better if I talked to you where you personal life was concerned. So will you please just tell me, please explain."

"Fine, I will explain. You are right, you’re my girlfriend, my best friend and I owe you an explanation, and I owe you honesty.” He said, his face somber as he grabbed my hands in his. “Aigoo, how do I start, where do I start.” He seemed as if he was searching his mind.

 “The beginning is always a good place.” I said in a very smartass tone.

“Fine. The beginning. How about the night I came into your room to make sure you were ok after Top hyung’s funeral and you weren’t there? How about I tell you how I felt as I read your letter and realized you’d run away and left? How about I tell you the agony I went through because you chickened out.”

“I didn’t chicken out. I needed to get away and clear my head. I explained that to you. What did you expect from me?”

“I expected you to stay and let me be your backbone and your strength. You were always my friend first; I respected the relationship between you and hyung. I’d seen you through so much so when I realized that you just up and left without actually talking to me, it pissed me off. I didn’t understand why you couldn’t stay.”

“I couldn’t, Jiyong, I couldn’t because I was…I was far too afraid of my feelings for you. I was confused and the only thing that felt right was getting away.”

“Do you understand how that killed me inside? That you couldn’t allow me to be your friend, that you freaked out because you loved me and left. Do you understand how that ripped my heart apart, Deni?”

“It’s not Deni anymore.” I yelled annoyed. “And I don’t know how to tell you I am sorry. Words are never going to adequately express how sorry I am for that, but I am also not going to admit it was wrong. I needed the space to find myself.” I said, pulling my hands out of his.

“MiRae, I have loved you for a long time. I watched you love my friend and watched you get engaged to him. I smiled through it all, allowed you to live your life because he was all you could have ever wanted. Then one day, I realized, he wasn’t all you wanted.”

“What are you talking about, you aren’t making sense?”

Jiyong looked down and brought his hands up to his face, rubbing it in frustration as if trying to find the right words. “Remember that fight we had, after you guys got back from Jeju, after all the with Seungri?”

“Of course, how could I forget?”

“When you stood up to me, when you went toe to toe with me and told me off, cussing me out and lashing out at me…I knew two things from that. First, I knew that you were it for me. I knew you were THE ONE. And I also knew then you loved me back.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Jiyong, I was pissed off at you for how you treated Seungri.”

“Maybe so, but I’ve never in my life had a woman stand up to me the way you did. The look in your eyes every time we’d pass by each other after that when we weren’t talking, That look, I knew that look, because I had the same look, too. That look of wanting more than anything to be with someone but both of us being too damn stubborn to say anything. That light in your eyes, even through your anger…you loved me.”

“Jiyong, why are you bringing up old skeletons? Why aren’t you explaining to me about Dara, that’s what I want to know about, that’s what I want to understand.”

“Because MiRae…I wanted you to understand how long I’ve known you loved me and how long I’ve loved you. I wanted you to understand that so you could understand why I chose the path I did the past six months.”

“What path? Stop talking in damn riddles and just explain it to me. Just tell me right now. I want you to talk to me. If we are going to try this whole relationship thing, you have to talk to me, so please for gods sake just tell me what the hell happened.”

“I ed my life up. I almost lost it all because of you.” He said bluntly, looking me directly in my eyes.

“Wh-what?”

“I tried to work on my album, but every song that came out was about you, missing you, loving you, losing you. The album would have been .”

“Since when are your feelings you put into a song ? Jiyong, you’ve always done your best writing when you pull from raw emotions.”

“Not when it was literally about you. I wrote one, “Lost Soul”…I might as well have been sitting there just giving a damn speech about my girl being lost and leaving. I didn’t want every damn song to be sad and depressing. So I stopped working on my album because I couldn’t function. Then I…I… I began to drink more, party more, I lost so many hours of sleep and found myself into drugs again and…” he stopped abruptly, attempting to almost hide.

“And what?” I said, afraid of the answer.

“And hiring escorts and then Dara came and saved me.”

“Are you ing serious? Escorts? Oh my…Jiyong…” I said standing up and walking away from him, my heart was crushed. It was hard enough knowing he’d been with Dara, but to know he’d paid women money to sleep with him, that was a new kind of hurt. I’d never cared about who he’d done in the past, I knew he was a man and had been with many women, I knew he had a large ual appetite, but this, this was almost unbearable.

“Told you. I knew you couldn’t handle it.” He said standing up and walking towards me, passing by me and heading out of the room and towards the stairs.

“No.” I said running after him, reaching out to him to grab his arm. “No, we aren’t going to stop there. I want you to tell me the rest. I am strong enough, please, don’t shut me out of the rest of your six months.”

“Fine,” he said grabbing my hand and pulling me back to the couch. He had me sit down and continued to hold my hand. I wanted to pull it away, but the way he softly held it putting up to his face to almost cuddle it, stopped me. “Dara saw me at my lowest and I, like a stupid fool, allowed her in. I don’t love her, not like that, but I just, I just got so lost that it felt good to have someone there for me. I know you hate her, but she saved me.”

“But, but you said you used her.” I said, finally attempted pulling my hand away, only to have Jiyong grasp it harder and kiss it.

“I did…I used her to get healthy again, to straighten up again. President Yang threatened to put me into a place to get treatment. You don’t even understand, MiRae, I was either in a constant high state or drunken state, but often times both. Dara came in and somehow pulled me out of that. It was never supposed physical between us, because even if I was that low, there was only one person I wanted to be with…you.”

“But obviously it got physical.” I said, sinking back into the couch.

“Yes, babe, it got physical. Because once I got clean, that was the only thing that took my mind of the pain.”

“Right.” I said as the tears formed. My heart hurt for all he’d been through, but mostly my heart hurt because I felt sick at the idea of him being with my arch nemesis, the fake that once was my friend, but hurt me. I pulled my hand back and hugged my knees to my chest, crying.

“It never meant anything to me, babe. Her and me together like that, met nothing to me. You consumed my thoughts. I always thought about you, doesn’t that mean something, doesn’t that make it better?”

I turned to Jiyong with tears in my eyes. “You are ing insane. How in the hell is that supposed to just make it all ok. Do you hear yourself? You just admitted to ing someone I hate, while thinking about me. More or less, you compared me to her and imagined that SHE was ME. I am not her, not like her, I could never be like her. So I don’t know in what screwed up universe you’d think I’d just be all hunky dory with this all.” I got up and ran upstairs to my room and fell on my bed crying.

“MiRae, please…aigoo…this is why I didn’t want to talk to you about this right now. I knew you’d freak out.” He yelled as he followed me up the stairs and into my room.

“You are seriously digging yourself a hole here Jiyong.” I said lying in bed, folded up like a baby, hugging a pillow, while crying.

“MiRae, I need you to hear me out here, please. I’m sorry for saying you’d freak out and you couldn’t handle it, but please, I’m begging you baby, please listen to the rest?” He said sitting beside me on the bed.

“I’m listening.” I said my back towards him.

“I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but the worse mistake I have EVER made was allowing myself to run to someone other than you when I was hurting. I will probably never forgive myself completely for that. I should have never hired escorts and I should have never slept with Dara. The worst feeling in the world is seeing you like this right now, pissed off, crying and wanting so much to hold you, but feeling as if you hate me.” I sniffled and wiped my tears away sitting up and turning to face him.

“I don’t hate you.” I said wanting him to just hold me but being too proud to say anything. “Kwon Jiyong, I don’t hate you. I’ve known you for a long time so I know your tendencies. I know you like and I know you’ve often used it to escape. The fact that you were with escorts and Dara doesn’t surprise me and I’m not angry about it. I’m just…I’m very disappointed that you didn’t reach out to me.”

“You told me to leave you alone MiRae. I was trying to respect that and give you the time and space you’d asked for.”

“That may be true, but do you really think if you had reached out and told me everything you were going through I would have been cold and would have made you deal with it on your own? If you think that, then you don’t know me very well. You’ve always been my friend first and I would have done everything in my power to help you, but instead you chose…”

Jiyong took my face in his hands and lifted it up. “I chose to be an complete and make ty decisions and everything up.” He said, looking me square in the eyes, tears streaming down his face. I raised my hands and helped remove his from my face, then taking mine to wipe his tears away.

“You didn’t anything up.” I said. “Thank you for opening up and being honest with me, finally. I understand now.” I said still holding his face in my hands.

“Now what?” He said.

“I don’t know. “ I said, removing my hands and sitting back, beginning to cry again. “Hold me.” I finally whispered out.

“No.” He said, making me look at him angrily. “Not till I do this.” He grabbed my face and pulled it towards him, kissing my cheeks as if kissing my tears away. “I…love…you…MiRae.” He said, between each kiss of my cheek. “I…need…you.” He continued. “I…want…only…you.” And after he said his final word, his lips found mine. He lightly kissed my lips at first, as if making sure it was ok, then finally as if realizing I wasn’t fighting it, he began to kiss harder and deeper. Our tongues began to wrestle for dominance and our breathing got heavier and heavier. I found my hands wrapping around his back and exploring it as he helped to lay me down. We continued kissing as he laid himself gently on top of me, his hands traveling from my face, down my side to my hips.

“Jiyong…” I managed to get out during a brief break in the kissing.

“Hmmmm.” He muttered as he kissed me more, his hands still wandering my body.

“I forgive you.” I said pulling back from his lips as I looked in his eyes. “I understand and I forgive you. I love you so much, I hope you know that.” Jiyong didn’t say anything, he just smiled as he took my hands from off his back and interlocked his fingers with mine, pushing my hands up and above my head, slightly pinning me down.

“I never doubted that beautiful.” He said kissing my forehead, then my nose, then stopping before getting back to my lips. “I love you more than you could ever know, Choi MiRae.” He smiled, and then found my lips with his again.