Love.

It’s stupid.

What does it even mean?

Love.

Everyone’s so obsessed with the word so obviously it’s a pretty powerful thing.

Not like I would know though. I’ve never been in love.

Taehyung, my best friend that lives a few houses down, likes to tell me that he thinks I’m in love with his older sister, but I don’t think so.

I just think she’s really pretty. And witty. And funny. And a little mysterious.  

But that doesn’t mean I love her. I just think she’s a cool person is all. I mean when you grow up looking up to someone for so long what else do you expect?

“You were not just looking up to her all those years, dude,” Taehyung interjects and stops scrubbing the floor for a second.

Allow me to take some step backs and explain why this topic even came up in the first place.

Taehyung’s sister went out of state for college for a couple years, but she decided she didn’t like it and is coming back and transferring to a local university. She’s only been back twice during the two years for Christmas. And both times she didn’t stay long. She was on a plane a few days after so she could celebrate New Years with her “cool”, new friends—who obviously can’t be that cool if she’s decided to bail on them two years in…  

Anyways, Taehyung, our other friend, Jimin—who was too “busy” to help us clean, and I have been using her room as a dance studio while she’s been gone. We pushed everything against one wall and moved her bed to the garage to make room and used her giant mirrored closet doors to practice.

But now that she’s coming back we have to put everything back where it belonged and clean up the water bottles and wrappers we’d always leave sitting around after every practice. The worst part was trying to scrub off the many scuff marks we left all over the floor, but we kind of cheated because we just put her bed over the majority of them and it only left us with a few to get off the floor.

“Well, no, because I grew taller than her in the 8^th grade,” I reply even though I know that wasn’t what he was insinuating.

He rolls his eyes, as well as his sleeves, as he starts vigorously scrubbing the floor again. “You pretty much fell in love with her the second she became old enough to babysit us.”

“Four year olds don’t even know what love is,” I defend, leaning against the wall. I already finished cleaning the floor on my side of the room and I was just waiting for Taehyung to finish up so we could grab something to eat.

“Sure they do,” he says, picking up the rag to glance at the spot he was cleaning. The scuff was still there. He sighs before spraying more floor cleaner on it and then starts scrubbing again. “Four is about the time you actually learn why you always have to tell your parents you love them.”

“That’s familial love, not romantic love,” I state, wanting to just drop the subject. And also, I was getting hungrier by the second.

“Whatever man, all I’m saying is that she’s been gone for two years and you’ve been totally waiting up for her,” he replies, finally relaxing his arm when the mark on the floor finally disappears.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask getting annoyed that he’s pushing this so far.

“Girls have been throwing themselves at you ever since my sister graduated from high school thinking that you’d finally get over it and move on, but you haven’t even given them the time of day,” he says getting up from the floor and throwing his rag into the bucket of cleaning supplies.
 

“You know I don’t like desperate girls,” I say, following him out of the room.

“Okay, yeah, maybe some of them were desperate, but you even turned down Suzy—who is totally your type by the way.”

Suzy’s a nice girl. But she’s ‘totally not my type by the way’.

Taehyung throws the cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink and then washes his hands after. “Should we just eat here so you can be here when my sister comes home?”  he mocks and I grab the hand towel sitting on the counter and throw it at his face.

“God I’m kidding,” he says, using the towel to dry his hands. “I’m craving a burger anyway so you don’t have a choice.”
 

* * *

By the time we come back, sure enough his mom’s car is back in the driveway and his sister is back. Yeah, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little excited to see her. I mean, I didn’t even get a chance to see her last winter since she left the day after Christmas, so it’s been a while.

When we walk in the door, I see her leaning on the kitchen island talking to her parents. She’s wearing short shorts and a cropped college sweater and has a flannel tied around her waist; a completely effortless outfit that has me wanting to just grab her by the waist and… do things…

Yeah, I know I said I didn’t love the girl earlier, but I just like her is all. Nothing’s wrong with liking someone else.

When she hears the sound of the door close her head snaps to our direction and I almost feel time freeze when she makes eye contact with me—although I think she was just looking in our general direction, but I’d like to think she was looking directly at me. She stands up and meets us halfway, engulfing Taehyung in a big hug saying how much she missed him and asking how he managed to dye his hair without her, something Taehyung thoroughly enjoyed doing, he just could never do it himself—which by the way, his new hair color was courtesy of me.

When she pulls away from him, she looks at me and smiles and wraps her arms around my torso and I hug her back tightly, but not so tight that I seem so desperate to touch her—just tight enough to show that I missed her… But I almost lose it when the smell of her hair fills my nose. Before I can indulge in the smell of her hair, she pulls away, but leaves her hands lingering on my waist. It was a habit she always liked doing and I don’t know if it’s because she’s just a touchy person or because she likes toying with me. Probably a little of both.

“You keep getting so tall, Jungkook,” she says looking up at me with her eyes round in admiration. I only chuckle in response because honestly I don’t think I can talk. I notice Taehyung behind her crossing his arms and mouthing ‘You love her,’ but I don’t even bother sending him a glare because I’m still in awe of all that is his sister.

Everything from the way she dresses, to the way she does her makeup, to the way she stands on her toes when she tries to reach my eyes level just sends me to a place I never want to leave.

But I’m put back in place when she pulls away and says, “You’re just as cute as you were before I left.”

Cute.

She loved using that word with me. It was always ‘so cute’ or ‘so adorable’. I’ve always been a kid in her eyes no matter how tall or how deep my voice has gotten. I just want to finally be seen as a man through her eyes, but I don’t even know what it’ll take anymore.

“So where’d you guys go?” she asks as we all gather in the kitchen.

“That burger joint that opened up last summer by the mall,” Taehyung casually replies.

“By the mall?” she repeats, looking a little surprised. “You guys walked all the way over there?”

Taehyung shakes his head. “Nope, Jungkook drove us there. He got his license over the summer,” he says patting my back and I don’t know whether to be mad at him because I know he’s purposely upping me in front of his sister, but at the same time it probably helps me seem like less of kid to her.

“Awe, that’s so cool,” she replies.

Awe.

Still just a kid I guess. 

whoops I take forever I know I'm sorry... but I already have chapter 2 written out so there's that c: it'll probably go up tomorrow if I have time to fix it up ^o^ alsooooo chapters titled "his" will be in Jungkook's pov and chapters titled "her" will be in Taehyung's sister's pov ok? ok. but her chapters won't be up for a little bit because jungkook's got a little ways to go before she gives him a chance lmao