I froze for a second and then pushed up onto my elbows and frowned at her, my lower lip pushed out.

            “Mom, could you nicely tell him I’m not feeling well, please?” I asked, dropping back down and returning to my sprawled out position, face first, on the floor.  “The only boy I want to see now is named Kyung,” I added in a muffled grumble.

            “Oh, I’m sorry,” I heard her say.  “Hyun Joong?  I meant Kyung.”

            My head snapped up, eyes straight to the doorway, in time to see my mom reach into the hallway and pull a boy into the doorway.  I scrambled up into a sitting position.  She lay her arm across his shoulders and frowned at him.  “You said your name was Kyung, right?  I’m sorry.  I get so confused sometimes.”  She then turned to me with that smug expression back on her face.

            Kyung was smiling, while my mom shook him a little by his shoulders, as though he was taking defeat well.

            “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be going back downstairs.  There’s another Christmas movie starting on TV.”  She repositioned Kyung so he was standing in front of her inside my room.  “Your father asked me to leave the door open, so I’m leaving it open!” she said, her voice much louder as she faced out of my room.  With a smile, she elbowed Kyung lightly and smirked at him when he faced her.  “Oh and, um, I told you so.  Just saying.”

            And she stepped out of doorway, back into the hallway.  She winked at me and silently closed the door behind her.

            “Hey,” he said, hands in his pockets.  He shuffled in, sliding his socks across my floor.  “Merry Christmas.”

            “Kyung,” I sighed.  He smiled down at me as he stopped right in front of where I was now kneeling.  He dropped down to sit Indian style.  I sat back on my haunches.  “Yeah, merry Christmas.”

            He looked sheepish all of a sudden.  “You know,” he began with a shrug.  He stared down at the floor and leaned back on his hands.  “A couple days ago, that day Min Hyuck left your dorm early, he bust into the dorm and ripped me a new one.”  He laughed at the memory and looked around my room a little.  “He was pissed.  He said he understood why I was mad, but that it wasn’t going to get better if I didn’t stop being a…wait, let me get this straight, say it just how he said it…”  He paused and shifted all of his weight onto one arm to scratch his head.  “I needed to stop being a ‘whiny, punk freak who is letting a great girl slip away just because she suffered a moment of stupidity.’  Yeah, that’s what he said, two days after Jae Hyo yelled at me.  Tae Il, Zico, actually I think Min Hyuck was the last of the members to tell me I was being an idiot.”

            I giggled lightly.  “That wasn’t very nice.”

            He bit down on his lower lip.  Releasing some of the hormones I’d been doing so good at keeping in line.  “But he was right.  I’m sorry, but you know, we talked about-”

            “It’s ok, it’s ok,” I assured him.  “Your concerns were legit.  I understand.”  Then I frowned when I thought of earlier.  “And my mom?  She said something to you, didn’t she?”

            He sat up and crossed his arms.  “When I came to the door, she said she wanted to talk to me.  She said she knew about what happened.  I told her I was here to apologize to you, but before she let me come upstairs, she said I still looked torn about something.  She told me even though you did something stupid, that other boy really couldn’t hold a candle to me.  I couldn’t even say a thing before she dragged me upstairs and then did that whole, ‘oh Hyun Joong is here, no just kidding, here is Kyung.’”  He paused to laugh a little.  “Ha, ha, Kyung I told you so.”  His smile grew serious.  “She was right though.  You didn’t want Hyun Joong.  You wanted it to be me.”

            I nodded.  “I always want you.  I always have.”

            “I’m sorry, baby.  I really am.”

            “Stop apologizing!” I ordered, leaning forward and shoving him by his shoulder.  “You were mad at me for a good reason, but now you’re here.  It means you forgive me, right?  And you believe me?  I would never hurt you.  I would never cheat on you!  That kiss, I-I don’t know, but nothing like that will ever-”

            “I forgive you and I believe you.  I’m just sorry that it took me so long to get my act together.  Can you forgive me, too?”

            “You have nothing to be sorry for.  Let’s just forget the whole thing.  Except the part about me never hurting you, loving only you, and all that other good stuff.”

            He laughed lightly and nodded.

            “So are we cool?” I asked, getting into a crouched position with my fingertips on the floor for balance as I bounced slightly on my toes.

            Kyung arched an eyebrow at me.  “Yes, we’re cool.  What are you doing?”

            Instead of answering, I pushed off the balls of my feet, launching myself at him.  I knocked him to the floor, attacking his face and neck with the kisses I’ve been dying to give him for too long.  Shoving my arms up the front of his shirt, I raked my nails down his chest.  And then I did it again and again.

            He laughed heartily as he hooked his fingers around my upper arms and pulled me forward, my face closer to his.  My arms were so tangled in his shirt, I ended up pushing it all the way up to his neck.  He chuckled again.  “I missed you,” he confessed.

            I sighed and noticed a couple of things.  One, my heart was fluttering in my chest and two, he was staring at my lips.  I fell forward, kissing him like I hadn’t seen him in years.

            Yeah, I thought as my heart picked up speed and my stomach flip flopped over itself, this is exactly what a kiss should feel like.

            When we pulled away, I slide my legs down the length of his and lay right on his body with my head on his bare chest.

            “I missed you, too,” I said.  He scoffed, sliding his fingers through my hair.

            “I could tell,” he teased.

            I shot up, pushing myself back on my knees, sitting on his waist.  I pulled a hair tie off my wrist and tied my hair back before leaning forward and holding his shoulders down to the floor.  “Did you just scoff at me?” I asked, peering down at him.

            He jutted his chin at me, but didn’t fight.  “If I did?  What are you going to do about it?” he snickered.  It was me who scoffed that time.  But then I squeaked when he sat up and knocked me over.

            “Oh?  You want to wrestle, do you?” I asked as he sat on my waist, pinning my arms down.  “Last time was a stale mate, you want a redo?”

            He smirked and pushed his hips down harder onto mine making me blush.  “A redo, yeah.  This time I want it to end differently and I don’t want to be fighting with you while we wrestle,” he whispered close to my ear.  He released one of my arms only to slip his fingers under the hem of my shirt.  They crept up to the bottom of my ribs.  When he stopped and pulled his hand away from my shirt.  I closed my eyes to regulate my breathing.  “But not here at your parents’ house,” he added, pushing off me and sitting next to where I lay.  I fanned myself with my hand, feeling flushed.

            “Ha, ha,” I choked out.  He smiled and I couldn’t resist hugging him.  “I have a present for you,” I told him once my body temperature lowered.

            “I have something for you, too.  I almost forgot,” he said as I pulled away and sat in front of him.

            “You got me something?”

            “Of course,” he stated, his eyes lowered to his lap.  I grinned and rushed up to get his present out of its hiding place, stashed away in the drawer of my night table.

            “Me first, ok?” I said making myself comfortable sitting back in front of him.  He nodded.  I handed him the small white box.  I apologized for not wrapping it, but he shrugged it off as he opened the box.  His eyes widened as he pulled out the two silver chains.

            “Couple necklaces?” he asked.  I nodded enthusiastically and leaned forward to point to the thin silver heart charm hanging off one of them.

            “This one is mine.  Look at this side.”

            He gently took the heart and turned it over with two fingers.  He smiled and his eyes widened as he looked at the front of the charm.  “It says my name on it.  In Chinese and Korean characters and in English.”

            I nodded, eyes big and filled with excitement.  “So everyone knows!”

            Chuckling, he leaned closer and pecked me on the lips, but when he pulled away, he was frowning a little as he inspected his necklace.

            I gasped.  “You hate it?” I asked, my voice an octave higher than normal.

            “No, no!” he replied immediately.  “I love it, thank you, but mine doesn’t have a charm with your name on it.”

            “Do you want a charm with my name on it?” I questioned.

            “Yes, of course.  So everyone will know you’re mine, too.”

            A smile broke out at his words.  “We can go back to the place I got these from and have one made for your necklace.”

            “Great,” he said, putting on his necklace and sliding behind me to put mine on.  He was beaming when he returned to his first place.  “Now yours.”  He sat up and pulled something out of his back jeans pocket.  It was a CD and a box.  “I wrote five songs for you.  Three of them are raps, but two I sang for them, so don’t laugh too hard when you listen to those, please?” he laughed, bashfully.

            I held the CD case close to my chest.  “You wrote songs for me?”

            He shrugged.  “I started a couple days after we first fought.  I was messing around with a couple of songs, but I fixed them so they would relate to you.  They’re all for you.  About you.  How I feel about you.  It’s lame, right?  That’s why I bought you something, too.  I know it’s not-”

            I lunged forward and kissed him on the mouth.

            “It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever gotten as a present in my whole life,” I told him truthfully.  His cheeks still pink, he handed me the box.  I yanked the top off and tossed it behind me.  I felt all the color drain out of my face.  “Kyung, just because we had a fight doesn’t mean, to make up, you have to-”

            His eyes bugged out and he took the box back.  “No!  Wait, it’s a promise ring!”  He laughed embarrassedly and rubbed the back of his neck before he pulled the ring out of the box and took my hand in his.  “You wear it on this finger…”  He slipped the ring onto the first finger of my right hand.  “Alright, it fits.”  His eyes lit up as he held my hand out to look at it.  “The lady at the store said the purple is some kind of really hard, glass with some fancy sounding name.  It’s pretty though, isn’t it?  It’s purple, you love purple, don’t you like it?”  I blinked away the tears. 

            “It’s beautiful,” I replied, unable to take my eyes off the ring on my finger.  The metal bands were silver on either side of the purple glass in the middle.  I’d never seen a ring like this before.  “I love it.  Thank you, Kyung.”

           “It’s a promise ring,” he repeated.  “I promise I’ll always make time for you, no matter how busy I get.  I’ll always be there when you need me, no matter what I’m doing.  I’ll try to be the best boyfriend for you.”

            “You don’t have to try.  You already are,” I informed him.  He shrugged.

            “Well, then I promise to be the best boyfriend for you until we’re older, after college and after I’m established in the music industry, and then I’ll be the best husband for you.”

            My throat closed and I laughed when a tear slipped down my cheek.  What a girl.

            “Deal,” I said with a giggle as I sniffled.

            “Oh!  And I almost forgot, too!” he exclaimed, reaching back into his hoodie pocket, he pulled out two boxes of Pepero sticks.  I laughed out loud. 

            “I love Pepero.”

            He nodded.  “I know!  One box is for you and the other is for the game.  I want to play the Pepero game with you,” he said, lifting his eyebrows suggestively.

            “Ok,” I agreed still chuckling.  He tore open the box and pulled out a stick placing one end in his mouth.  He looked at me, nodding seductively and making me giggle all over again.  I leaned forward, ready to take the other end of the stick when he pulled back out of my reach.  He took the Pepero out of his mouth and dropped it next to him.  With a smirk, he lunged forward, once again knocking me onto my back on the floor.  He hovered above me, a knee on either side of my waist.

            Cupping my face in his hands, he leaned forward and brushed the tip of his tongue against my bottom lip.  “I actually don't really want to play, so let's just get to the good part, ok?” he said.