TAEYON

I wasn’t even going to mention the fact that I’m sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, a long way away from where I live. So it’s just me, and some joggers(I don’t jog), the rush hour people who still had several days at work before Christmas, the bums who were holding cups of Starbucks in their hands; all sharing the same view of the sun rising behind the Empire State Building.

The reason for this vagrancy was the late-night clubbing that happened the night before that I was sure shouldn’t have happened. The last thing I remembered was asking Donghae(my new best friend, apparently) if he wanted to go the NYU party I was invited to, and then it was a big blur that involved discotheques and techno lights. I was pretty sure there was some flirting, and then a big black hole. Well, partly that, and partly because I’d taken to spending as little time at home as possible. So I’m the immature one this time, but seriously, there are some things that need more than apology and a few regretful looks to compensated for.

All of it just boiled down to the fact that the No Kiss List was mine alone again, and that Kai and Tiffany are both on it(not in that way).

Back to the fact of my being a part-time vagrant mock-sleeping on a bench. Donghae was sitting a few benches away from me. I knew so because I could feel his sneaked looks while I stared at the ground in mock-bliss. He’d ditched me seven hours ago after getting called off to the hospital.

‘Hey!’ he called at me, moving one bench closer. Since that weird night three days ago, he’d taken to acting like a goddamn girl-slash-gay-bestfriend. It was funny the first three hours, then it just became half-weird, half-annoying. The current situation was in the annoying department.

‘I don’t know you,’ I called back, not looking up, hoping he’d either go away or stop it.

However, he didn’t seem to catch on the annoyance and moved one more bench closer –the one directly beside me. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

‘Does that line ever work for anyone?’ Seriously though. If I were him and it was seven in the morning and I’d just gotten off what looked like a seven-hour surgery, I would not be sitting on a park bench, annoying the hell out of a hormonal twenty-one year old(or maybe I would). I would be snoring under the covers. I would at least be curled up next to my bear, ready to fall asleep anytime. Which I plan to be, as soon as I was sure Tiffany was out of the house with Kai(ugh), so I can haul to the Starbucks on Waverly Place and I can get my things and go over to my lofty little loft.

First, I had to find out why Donghe was playing with me. I knew I had to go over to him or at least call him over and break the ice with him finally. Engage.

Screw the No-Kiss List. That was compromised as soon as Tiffany did what she did. It didn’t matter that Donghae was number one, or that he was Chanyeol’s older brother. Screw it.

Donghae was a free agent. I could kiss him if I wanted. Or maybe go even further. Okay, what am I thinking? as far as guys went, they can’t be trusted entirely. Kai did cheat didn’t he? It wasn’t fair to lay the blame on Tiffany alone. The two of them can share my wrath.

Right. Guys can’t be trusted.

I can’t.

But I should.

But I didn’t do anything and just remained alone on my bench, mainly because I had nothing to say(but so much to brood over). I start with the fact that I have eradicated Tiffany as my sister, and that I now had to figure out what I had to do with my own time. The absence of both sister and boyfriend took out everything that comprised my daily schedule. Which . School was always there, but it wasn’t open for two more weeks. I don’t even have a dorm there. I could go back to Connecticut and slam on my high school friends, but I was sure that would bring all three parents back, and that was out of the question. At least not until I can explain myself properly. I couldn’t very well continue on with my pointless club wandering and boy-hitting. It was as dangerous as it was boring. Most of the people I met were half-drunk, maybe perpetually. Maybe I’ll find religion. I’ll probably become a Jew. They have the best food. Not to mention the additional holidays. (Not being racist.)

Donghae must have heard my rumbling stomach from over on his bench. He made the move again, signaling me with a text message on my phone.

Do you want breakfast?

I felt giant pieces of ice, mostly the size of cities, detach from the glaciers(literally breaking the ice). They started to float iceberg majesty(terror if you’re on the Titanic). I was sure I would go down for what I was about to do, but I turn to him and say, ‘Aren’t you supposed to ask me that the night before, and not the morning after?’

He looked at me, smiling a little sheepishly. ‘A gentleman should show more respect to a lady.’

‘I’m not a lady,’ I shot back at him. It was pointless to banter because I had nothing left anyway. And yet the gorgeous oriental man with the leather jacket and gloves didn’t back down.

‘Come on, Taeyon. Eggs. Bacon. Home fries. Starbucks-style coffee. You don’t even have to pay.’

His mention of food made me more hungry than I already was. ‘Tell me more.’

‘Your virtual food is not going to give you any satisfaction. You have to literally chew on them.’

Face palm. The man knew how to talk to me. My body was aching, and the smile that wants to taunt my lips was denied permission. I wasn’t going to be the girl with the heart of stone waiting to be broken down by the quirky-cool guy with the heart of gold. Screw that fantasy formula. I was about to answer when some other man came up to me, cementing on my belief that early mornings and late nights on public parks were hazards to your health. ‘If you don’t want to go with him, you can come with me.’

Luckily for me, Donghae was already on his feet and was snarling at the dude who was probably ogling at me with preying eyes. I have to admit the boy gives a great snarl. He’s not entirely without talent. The dude retreats without hesitation.

Finicky. That’s what my mom would say. I think too much, and so I end up thinking the world was easier than it was, and that everything had a pattern. What am I talking about? This was just one of my friends giving me breakfast because I was both too chicken and too proud to face my sister.

‘New girl?’ Chanyeol was sitting on the bar stool, inhaling what looked like a whole box of Lucky Charms, looking up only when Donghae walked in, with me tagging behind him. I was pretty sure his parents, who’d greeted me good morning when I passed them, thought I was dating their precious doctor. That wasn’t half-bad, was it? ‘When was the last time you brought a girl home, ten years ago?’

‘None of your business,’ Donghae snapped at his brother, waving a spatula at him. ‘Man-.’

Chanyeol stood up in protest. ‘Hey. It’s not my fault everyone wants a piece of this.’ He stood up ad rumpled his hair, then took a pose.

‘Ew,’ was my only comment.

‘You,’ he said, looking straight at me. ‘Aren’t you the girl my brother was baby-sitting before?’ then to Donghae, ‘Are you into young girls now?’

‘He’s not old,’ I muttered in Donghae’s defense, which wasn’t probably the best idea.

‘Mom! Dad! Donghae’s dating again!’ Chanyeol ran out the kitchen towards their parents, still shouting, while Donghae ran after him, still holding a spatula. I was pretty sure he planned to bop his brother on the head with it. I’d just witnessed a concrete proof that boys didn’t really grow up, and that Chanyeol was a world-class douche. I had to wonder how Tiffany put up with him for the past, I don’t know. Twenty years?

Two minutes later, Donghae walked in again, apologizing profusely for his brother, who, I found out, had ran away and hid in some hole.

‘So,’ he asked while things sizzled in his mystery pan. ‘Want to tell me how things are?’

‘You don’t have to do this, Hae,’ I answered.

‘Do what?’

‘Be my friend.’

He snickered. ‘You should have told me that ten years ago when your mother asked me to baby-sit you. And any other time for the past week where I broke about a dozen laws running around town with you.’

‘Fair enough,’ I conceded.

‘So?’ he asked again.

I shrugged. ‘I’m still not talking to either of them.’ I dug into my pocket and pulled out  a piece of tissue. ‘Actually I made up this list so I don’t have to talk to Tiffany unless absolutely necessary. Or maybe not even then.’

He stepped forward and read my list:

‘It’s funny, no?’ I asked, folding it neatly.

He threw me a piece of paper from a stack above the fridge. ‘Rewrite it there, and then tape it to her door later,’ he said.

My mouth dropped open. ‘I wasn’t planning on really giving it to her, you know.’

His face was serious when he answered, ‘You’re already hating on them. Just torture them for a little while longer. Knowing you, it’s just a matter of time before you fold and let them off the hook. You’re a thinker. People who think don’t hold grudges unless it involves murder.’ Then his lips cracked open in a smile.

‘You’re a bad influence,’ I noted.

He shook his head. ‘I’m counsel. It’s up to you to do it.’

And I have no idea why, but I found myself walking across the street to the fancy brownstone I was currently residing in. walked up the porch steps and picked up the key under the mat. I know, totally not safe –I should have kicked the habit when I moved to New York, but I guess you never really turn full-out New Yorker. So there was my key, under the mat for the past five years since I was given one, and nothing bad ever happen. It’s either people have a weird misconception about New York crime rates, or I’m just lucky.

Either way, I unlocked the door and walked to the kitchen, where a really weird surprise was waiting for me, messing with my coffee-maker. Three letters: KAI. He must have seen me because he stopped in his tracks and froze. Biting my lip, I walked on up the stairs and slapped the list on Tiffany’s door. There may be good use for it after all, if the two of them were being all cozy with each other now.

Then I walked down and out. It can’t last longer than a minute. I just had to exit the room and walk out the door. But it was like I’d suddenly overdosed on Saint-John’s-wort, because while it’s not unusual for me to have twenty-seven thoughts at once, it was definitely unusual for me to be hearing every single one of them pass through my mind in the time it took for me to leave the house.

1. Walk. Just keep walking. Don’t look back. Throw your key on the ground and walk out.
2. Fine, if you’re going to be like this, maybe I’ll show you that two can play the game. Maybe I’ll go and hook up with Chanyeol and break your pesky little heart. Everytime you step out on the street, I’m going to make sure he and I are jammed together and mashing lips while you watch gritting your teeth.
3. Maybe I should go back to Connecticut and get with my English teacher and never show my face again. Then you’ll get the blame for my running away.
4. This might be a bit too much. Maybe I’ll pretend I never saw anything.
5. I should have kicked Kai in the groin.
6. It’s the shoes. If I hadn’t chosen these shoes last night, none of this would have happened. The pumps are to blame.
7. I never told Kai I dumped him. People seem to be forgetting that. are we living in a world where official dumping isn’t an actual prerequisite of getting another girlfriend?
8. I will print out every e-mail you ever sent me. And that horrible year when you told me to not come and live with you and your dad because it would mess up your game. And when I came, you made my life miserable and taunted me about it.
9. You ate my ing fries and drank my stinking coffee. I bought them, and they’re mine.
10. I should have listed all the Starbucks to be mine. Then the two of you wouldn’t have anywhere to go to.
11. I hope those fries were spoiled.
12. Who the hell am I kidding?
13. I’m not kidding myself, that’s for sure.
14. My OTHER bestfriend Robin(f) had the right idea. When Robin(m) told her he just wanted to be friends, she threw her drink at him. Just picked up her appletini and splashed it over his just-wanna-be-friends face. Then she stormed out and left him to pay for the drink she’d just emptied on his face. I think I admire that last part the most. Of course, she cried for about six days afterward, which was six more than I could stomach. I told her the only person  guy named Robin should date is a guy named Batman, so they can live in their Brokeback Batcave and 69 all day.
15. I miss Dad. Even if he was weird most of the time and acted like he was twenty(I think he’s gay underneath). He chose the best clothes when we went shopping.
16. When was the last time I had a friendly banter with Tiffany? I remember when we picked places where we should get married and picked the suitable groom for each. We were worse than a Muslim sultan with the number of husbands we were thinking about. They included, but weren’t limited to Zachary Levi(mine) and Justin Long(hers).
17. This is so overrated. I should just go back and tell them to stuff their faces with each other and that I don’t care.
18. Look, there’s Donghae. He’s waiting or me by the porch like it was the most normal thing in the world, and looking very gaze-worthy while doing it.
19. Why do I care anyway? I thought Kai and I had a professional partner relationship. We never really said we were exclusive. Right. Non-exclusive for three years.
20. I should stop thinking.
21. Almost there. Almost there.
22. I’m so glad I didn’t sleep in last night.
23. I’m so tired. And sleepy. I don’t trust myself to get to my loft before I fall asleep completely.
24. Why is Donghae smiling like that? It’s like he knows the List has been completely obliterated.
25. Danger! Danger!
26. Do you really have anything left to lose?
27. Go for it.

TIFFANY

I knew that things had gotten really twisted because I caught myself thinking that it was like she had died. But that was a little out of context, because that would mean, I would have all these good memories and be really sad and everyone would be really understanding and eventually I’d move on, cherishing the memory of my sister. I wouldn’t even have to do anything about it because it was irrevocable. There was something really appealing about that.

But of course, I really didn’t want her dead. It was just the feeling I had suddenly when I walked down to the kitchen and was confronted by blinding silence. I remembered the first day of winter vacation when she hollered at me until I came down the stairs and I’d told her everything about the best-friend break-up. It was like that didn’t happen. It was worse than the Chanyeol thing, because I actually knew where she was, and I knew she was just avoiding me like her life depended on it.

Dumped, didn’t even begin to describe it. If it was a matter of using trash metaphor, incinerated was more like it.

I had no idea if she was thinking the same death thoughts as me, but she made it pretty clear that she currently didn’t want me to exist in her life.

Were you looking for some kind of proof? I was holding it.

She’d taped the rules to my door. I didn’t even notice she’d come home and ran back out. I didn’t tell Kai about them, because I knew they would just make him guilty and sad. He feels both of those enough already.

Does anyone feel like Taeyon and I had suddenly changed roles in this story? I sure do. And I was stuck in incomprehension. I had no idea why she was doing it –like the fact that something so strong like our being sisters(well, not as strong as I’d first imagined) would crumble just because of a boy.

I tried to talk to her. I did. The morning after. That afternoon. Then the days after that. I had it in mind that we may both need to cool down, and then we’d be back to being noveau sisters again. Okay maybe that’s just me being naïve.

As I said though, I was incinerated instead.

On the other hand, it wasn’t like Kai and I were suddenly companions. No. all clothes stayed on. True, he may have stayed some nights on my bed, but we just slept. Nothing to it. and now it’s been a week, and to be honest, if I were to treat this like an anniversary, I’d say it was that Tiffany and Taeyon incineration, and not the Tiffany and Kai relationship. Kai had the right idea when he asked me if I wanted to go out that night. I really needed something like that.

The club we went to was on the Lower East Side, and admitted only people who were sixteen through twenty-five, and everything were almost all . It’s where people go when they’re already drunk and needed somewhere to pass out their drunkenness. It was a weird place when you weren’t near drunk enough, but the VIPs were big-time and awesome.

And there was an actual line. It occurred to me there might be some sort of event there because said line was filled with glittery girls, what looked like go-go boy aspirants, and flavors of the week. Kai was mumbling something about word getting out. It was almost sweet to see him in a crowd that looked nothing like him. True, he was dressed prettily for the occasion, but he looked nowhere near like anyone around.

‘This one time?’ Kai said, and I almost expected him to continue with ‘At band camp?’ Instead, he says the quarantined name –‘Taeyon and I decided to go to JPop night. Just to see all the Caucasian people dress up like all the JPop videos vomited on them. And Taeyon? She thought it would be really funny if she went all Shinjuku anime goddess, and she had on rainbow hair and a pair of prop katanas were strapped to her back. The bouncers almost fainted when they saw her.’ I took the mention of Taeyon as a good sign, because it meant she wasn’t completely a taboo. And he not only said her name, but he’s tied a good memory to it. But I don’t want to jinx the whole thing by pointing it out.

‘What’s the name of this place anyway?’ I asked once we were inside. I was almost blown back by the discotheque vibe and the neon lights.

‘What?!’

I should have known we weren’t going to hear each other talk in this kind of place. I shook my head and pointed at the bar. Anyway, odds are, the name’s just a pretentious singular noun –bouncered hipster establishments are usually named with a pretentious singular noun. Not unlike perfumes. Personally, if I ever open a club, I’m naming it Phantasm or Inquisition or Delirium.

‘Let’s party!’

Some pop-feeling guy was dancing in the middle of the dance floor and making the girls go crazy. Kai and I crossed towards the bar right through the whole mess, and I ended up getting smacked in the as by some random stranger. It put me off a little, because I really thought he or she was copping a feel rather than just accidentally touching. But hey, that was normal in these places wasn’t it?

I was just feeling better about the whole thing when Chanyeol decided to make an entrance. Oh, it’s fine with me actually. The only problem was we were on the same track, our evening converging into one single road. He was up, so was I. the club was packed and the DJ blasted beat-heavy remixes of pop songs. And he was loving it, loving it –I know, because he kept calling out, ‘I’m loving this –loving this!’ he walked up to the bar and ordered an appletini, while I stick close to Kai, pretending I didn’t see him.

It was the first time I saw him in action. Girls were coming over to flirt –some were clearly repeat flirters, and he didn’t seem to remember their names. As he talked to them, he accidentally trudged on my foot, and –

‘OW!’ I hopped back, barreling into Kai, who was talking to the bartender.

Chanyeol turned around and set his eyes on me. He didn’t seem to recognize me, because he bent down and asked me if I was okay.

I felt like I should have just nodded and moved on, but instead I cry-shouted: ‘Oh, no. Please, don’t stop on my account. Go ahead and have a good time.’

He raised an eyebrow and peered at me through the pulsating lights –then he seemed to recognize who I was. ‘Tiffany?’

It was funny because this was usually how I reacted when we still hung out together –I already know what it was like when he his smile. It was more a reaction to the fact that most of the time, I couldn’t hold my own. My version of flirting bore a striking resemblance to mime.

Kai pulled me against away and asked, ‘Who is this guy?’

‘You remember Chanyeol,’ I muttered, cocking my head to the other guy, who was staring at Kai.

‘Wait, aren’t you Taeyon’s boyfriend?’

--

Presenting…KAI

I could understand the confusion.

Two weeks ago, I was hanging out with Taeyon, and now I’m with Tiffany. Even I am a little confused. But the real problem is the fact that we were confronted by(by common knowledge) Tiffany’s life-long love. Ugh –it feels gross even just thinking that.

I watched them talk to each other like nothing ever happened to them, and I wanted to pull Tiffany aside and ask Why are you talking to him instead of me? and If you wanted to talk to him, why are you with me?  Both questions sounded terrifyingly needy. And I was so resentful that there was no WANT version of the word NEEDY. It’s like the world wouldn’t even give me a break by allowing such a grey area. Fine, maybe I do have wantiness issues. I want to go. I want to be alone with her. I want to be the kind of person who has a girlfriend who could spitball her way out of a situation. I wanted to be cool enough. And I wanted to erase these thoughts –all thoughts, period –and have a good time.

Suddenly, I felt like a mutant among mutants. Like I was the boy who showed up at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters and found out that, whoops, he didn’t have superpowers after all.

The messy dance floor ended and the floor show began. The DJ was calling for a dance showdown –apparently the regular showdown fools decided to take a hike and become back-up dancers for Lady Gaga.

Before you can say ‘Dance,’ Chanyeol was onstage.

‘Because I’m awesome and all the girls agree, I’m going to dance,’ he said, laughing as several girls screamed. Tiffany was beside me, watching.

Chanyeol didn’t even wait for the music –instead he rode the cheers of the crowd and danced. It was only when the upbeat music started that he started to look around and laid eyes on the girl beside me. Tiffany was pulled to the floor with a remark: ‘You, dance.’ And since there was nothing else to do, I watched. And I smiled and cheered and shouted along with the crowd.

‘Lambada,’ someone behind me muttered.

I scoffed a little. ‘The forbidden dance.’ And I finally had the guts to make my excuses and shove my way to the exit. I walked out into the cool night air, my face drenched in sweat. All the previous doubts in my wantiness issues were gone. I realized I didn’t want to see Tiffany just yet, in fact, I’m actually going to leave. And I wasn’t even going to tell her I was leaving –just text her once I was home.

I knew it was the worst choice, but I make it anyway.

A/N: See? Having trouble with the chapter lengths. final chapter to be posted o the weekend :D Yeay!