I froze against the door.  He hadn’t moved.  His eyes closed.  I cleared my throat, but nothing changed.  I took a step deeper into his room, glancing around.  White walls, cluttered desk, TV on a table, DVDs and books scattered, pictures taped to the wall by his bed.  “I’m going to sit down,” I told him.  Nothing.  I slid in my sock covered feet closer to his desk chair.  He had yet to open his eyes, so I changed my mind and then changed my direction, heading toward his little, twin sized bed where he lay flat.  “I’m going to sit on your bed,” I warned him as I waited.  Nothing.  I backed up to his bed.  The backs of my knees touching his mattress.  I peered at his face.  He looked like he was sleeping, but I just knew he wasn’t.  I bent my legs, hovering just above his bed.  “My is going to hit your mattress.”  Nothing.  I let my weight drop onto his mattress a few inches from his toes.  “My is all on your bed,” I muttered.  Not a damn thing.  I took the opportunity to study his face.  His handsome features.  It broke my heart a little to look at him and not touch him.  I could feel a crack form with each terrible thought.

            He was still mad at me.  Crack.  He wasn’t speaking to me.  Crack.  He thought I had feelings for someone else.  Crack.  He doesn’t believe he’s the only one flowing through my veins.  Crack, crack.  This was a bad idea.

            “I’m still here,” I reminded him, narrowing my eyes at his still peaceful form.

            This time, when he didn’t even open his eyes, I got mad.  I hoisted myself up off his bed and stomped over to the head of the bed.  I bent at the waist, slamming my hands onto his mattress.  The force jolted his body a little, but he didn’t move himself.  I dipped my head and glared at him.  “I’m going to tear off my clothes and throw myself on you,” I hissed.

            His eyes snapped open.  With a shocked look at me, he bolted upright.  The speed with which he used to get into a sitting position almost knocked me backwards onto the floor.  He crossed his arms over his chest.

            “Low blow,” he grumbled, eyes falling to his lap.

            I flopped down next to him, mimicking his position.  “If you weren’t being such a baby, I wouldn’t have had to resort to that,” I snapped back.

            He sighed.  Nothing else.

            “We should talk, Kyung,” I began after taking a deep breath and pressing my palms together, sticking them between my knees.  Feeling awkward and uncomfortable, I shifted my weight so that one leg was folded up on the bed.  I faced him, but I could only see his profile because he hadn’t moved.

            He looked up from his lap, at his desk, over to where his TV was sitting on the little table, then straight ahead at the wall behind his desk.  Anywhere but on me.

            “I don’t have anything to say,” he replied.

            “Well I do!”  I could feel the anger bubbling inside and making my voice louder.  “I’m sorry, ok?  I’m so sorry.  More sorry than I’ve ever been about anything in my whole life.  I would never do anything to hurt you on purpose.  I don’t know what happened.  I don’t know what it was about Hyun Joong, but I know now that he means nothing.  I don’t have any feelings for him,” I blurted out in one breath.  He was frozen in place.  Blinking at the wall.  “Damn it, Kyung!  React!”

            He shrugged, his shoulders slumped forward and his eyes back on his lap.  “I know the others and you think I’m overreacting, but I can’t help it.”  He stared back at the wall.  “It’s weird and it kind of hurts.  It never even crossed my mind I’d have to worry about you kissing other guys.  I just assumed you loved me the way I loved you and any other guy who’d cross your path wouldn’t even register on your radar.”

            I sighed.  His voice was flat, monotone.  It just made me angrier.

            “Do you want to break up then?” I asked, failing at not letting my emotions crack my voice.

            He hung his head.  One arm bent, his hand covering his heart.  “I should, right?  I should want to never see you again, but I don’t know how to not care about you.  I don’t know how to not need you.”  He shook his head, his eyes taking on a faraway look.  “It scares me how attached to you I became.”

            That was it.  He kept using the past tense, like he’d already cut me off, but didn’t know how to walk away.

            I clutched at my head and let a feral cry rip from my throat.  I scrambled up, throwing one leg over his lap, I straddled him.  I put my hands on his shoulders and knocked him onto his back.  Catching him completely off guard, I was able to pin him to the mattress.

            “Get mad at me, Kyung!  Yell at me!  Shout!  Do something!  I can’t take you so lifeless anymore!  Tell me what you want me to do to make this right!  I do love you the way you love me!  I need you as much as you need me!  I’m just as attached to you as you are to me!  So, damn it Kyung, react!  Tell me what you want me to do!  I’ll do anything for you!” I shouted, punching him in the shoulder to emphasize every suggestion I was giving him.  When he still said nothing, I dug my nails into the shoulders of his shirt and balled it into my fists.  “Stop being so damn calm and stop speaking in the past tense!”

            I wondered if the others returned to the dorm yet.  Could Tae Il and Jordan hear me in here?  Oh, wait, I didn’t care.  I was a little out of breath as I stared down at him and waited.

            Kyung stared up at me, wide eyed and in complete shock.  I was just about to give up and climb off him when his eyes narrowed to slits and he glared at me.  He pushed my hands off his shoulders and grabbed me by the hips.  In one swift move, he’d flipped me onto my back.  Now he was on top, pinning me on my back, glaring down at me, his hands on my shoulders.

            “How’s this for mad?” he growled.  “Is this what you wanted to see?  How badly this has affected me?  I’m calm because I don’t know what to do with myself!  Do you have any idea how hurt I am?  How much I wish I could hurt you the same way?” he demanded.  I squirmed under him for a second.  He had a pretty good grip on my arms, but as he hovered above me, he had a knee on either side of my legs.  I hooked one of mine around one of his and kicked that knee out, managing to flip our positions again.  I was only able to wrestle him down because I caught him off guard again.  Now I was on top.

            “If it will help get us through this, then yes, I want you to hurt me!  If that’s what you need to do, then do it.  Kiss another girl if it will make us even or if it will make you feel better or whatever you think!”  I lowered my head until I was almost nose to nose with him.  “I wouldn’t know what to say or do to make this better because I don’t know what you’re really feeling since you weren’t speaking to me until today, now would I?” I sneered.

            With a grunt, he pushed himself up so that I was knocked backwards.  He pounced on top of me before I could get away.  Now he was on top.

            “I want to hate you,” he spat, pushing down on my arms. 

            Screeching between gritted teeth, I began to thrash around.  I wiggled one arm out of his grasp, but just as my fingers reached his hair – I was going to yank on it – he caught it again.  He held my hands in his and pressed them into the mattress above my head.  With all of his weight being forced onto my hands through his hands, I was locked under him.  I tried wriggling away, but my hands were nailed down.  My shoulders felt like they’d dislocate from all the jerking I was doing.  The rest of me was free to move around, but he was hovering over me, so I couldn’t do much.  I tried kicking his legs.  He let out a low growl when I nearly jammed my foot between his legs.  Still fighting me, he maneuvered his lower legs over mine.  Pinning my shins down with his.

            Epic fail.  Now, I could barely even wiggle.

            “I want to hate you,” he repeated slightly out of breath.  “I want to break up with you.  I want to never see or think of you again, but I can’t.”  He shook his head.  I remembered what I’d heard him telling Jordan about being mad at himself.  And what he’d just said a few minutes ago.  “It really scares me,” he murmured, hanging his head.  He heaved out a sigh and pushed off me.  Sitting back on his haunches on my shins, he let his arms fall to his sides.  He shook his head.  “You kissed another guy.  Ok, fine.  People make mistakes.  It’s not ok, but it’s not the end of the world.  But I…”  He looked me dead in the eye and I forgot how to breathe.  Thankfully, I was still lying on my back or else I would have passed out.  “I just want to forget the whole thing.  Forget it ever happened.  If you promised me that it wouldn’t happen again and that you still loved only me, I would be ok with forgetting everything.” 

            I flung my upper half upright, ready to say all those things, but he shook his head at me and I closed my mouth. 

            “But when I think about it, you could have slept with that guy and I still would want to forget the whole thing ever happened if you told me you still only loved me,” he confessed.  “Even if you didn’t mean it.”  He scoffed a little.  “That’s the part that scares me the most.  I don’t know what to do about that.”

            Tears burned my eyes.  “Kyung, I would never do that to you,” I choked.  He smiled sadly and nodded before looking right at me.

            “Tell me why you kissed him,” he requested.  “And don’t say you don’t know.”

            “I just never met anyone besides you who made me feel anything different.  I didn’t know what was going on, so I just kept hanging out with him.  I was so stupid,” I admitted.  I ripped my legs out from under him and sat on them, wanting so desperately to touch him, but kept my hands behind my back instead.  “Tae Il said part of me just wanted to know what it was like to be with someone I could be spontaneous with.  A regular person, not an idol that had to watch what he did every second of every day.  I never thought of it like that.”  I shrugged helplessly.  “Maybe it was that, but Kyung, please, please believe me when I tell you that I am so sorry it happened.  I can honestly tell you nothing even remotely like this will ever happen again because it’s only you I see.  I only want you.  No one else could even try to compare to you.”

            I realized then that, during my rant, I’d grabbed onto his knees.  He smiled down at my hands.  He smoothed his hands over mine and I almost lost it completely.

            Until he put my hands together between his and placed them on the mattress between us.  So that no part of either of us was touching.

            “It feels really weird,” he murmured, looking at my hands.  “I want you so bad right now, but all I can think to tell you is to leave.”

            I swallowed hard, sitting on my hands.  I almost wished we were still fighting like earlier so at least he would still be touching me.

            “What are you going to do then?” I asked.

            He finally looked at me after a lifetime.  Or maybe a minute.  “Leave, Maddie.  Please?”  His voice was hurt and almost desperate.

            In an instant, I hopped off his bed and ran from the room.  I couldn’t let him see me cry.  I wouldn’t.

            “Come on, Jordan,” I said as I came flying out of the hallway.  At least, for my pride, it was still only Jordan and Tae Il in the living room.

           Jordan hoped off the sofa and hurried to follow me, but Tae Il booked it to the front door, blocking us.

            “I’m sorry, Maddie,” he apologized, pressing himself against the door.  “I thought it would fix things.”

            I smiled and wiped the tear stains from my cheeks.  Jordan squeezed my shoulder lightly.  “It’s ok.”

            “You probably don’t want to hear this, especially from me, but it’s true.  Everything really will be alright,” he said quietly.  He smiled at me and Jordan and then stepped out of the way.

            Somehow I seriously doubted what he said, but I appreciated the sincerity he put behind it.