The pair looked like two toddlers who had been caught stealing cookies from the kitchen, avoiding eye contact, hands clasped together on their laps.  Sunny couldn’t help but laugh to herself.  She sat at the dining room table in Taeyeon’s kitchen, opposite a very guilty looking Jessica.  An equally guilty looking Taeyeon was making coffee for the group.  Yuri had taken her seat next to Sunny, and she found the scene likewise amusing.

“Well?” Sunny asked.

Taeyeon focussed on the boiling kettle.  “Well what?” she asked quietly.

“Oh come on, Tae,” Sunny grinned.  “You’re acting like a kid.  So you got caught together.  You got caught by me, though.”

Jessica sighed and stole a sideways glance at Taeyeon.

“So, tell me what happened,” Sunny smiled.

“Why?” Jessica asked, meekly.  “You want to make fun of us?”

“Yes, Jessica,” Sunny answered, her response dripping with sarcasm.  “We want to make fun of you for being gay and sleeping with another woman and we want to tell you that it’s wrong and disgusting and you’re going to Hell for it.”

She lifted her eyes and kept them on Sunny’s for a few moments, silently telling her friend to shut the hell up.  At least she wasn’t mad.  “I mean for keeping it from you,” she clarified.

“Jess,” Yuri smiled, “you’re entitled to your secrets.  We weren’t left with much choice but to tell you girls after what happened with us.”  Sunny nodded her head in agreement.  “But we still made the choice to tell you,” Yuri continued, “and we’ve been so happy that we did.”

Taeyeon sighed.  “We should have said something, I know,” she admitted, “but we didn’t know what to say.”

“Well, you can start with how it happened,” Sunny advised.  “Who said it first?  What did you say?”  She turned her attention to Jessica.  “How long before you starting having shower with your Byun-Taeyeon?”

Jessica cringed in her seat at Sunny’s mention of the nickname she had used.  “It wasn’t like that,” she whispered.

“Then what was it like?” Sunny coaxed sweetly.

There were a few seconds of silence, before Taeyeon answered.  “I came to see Jess a week ago,” she explained, “to see if she wanted to come to the cinema with me.  I … I’ve been pretty pissy with her lately and I wanted to apologise.”  She poured the boiling water into the awaiting mugs.  “We went out, and … we saw Iseul, Jess’s boyfriend.  And he was … out.”

“Ok …” Sunny nodded along, not sure where the tale was heading.

Jessica took a deep breath.  “He was out with his boyfriend,” she admitted.  “He’s gay.”

Her admission stunned Sunny and Yuri.  “He’s what?” Yuri asked, surprised that Jessica would catch him with another guy and not respond in true Jessica-style by threatening to blow up the entire planet and everyone on it.

“It’s not that,” Jessica shook her head as Taeyeon returned to the table with the drinks.  “I’ve known him for years, and I’ve known he was gay since he left high school.  His parents don’t, though, and he doesn’t want them to know.  They’re … they’re pretty strict.”

“How strict?” Sunny asked.

“Think Tiffany’s attitude before you came out, multiplied by about a trillion,” she confessed.

“Seriously?” Yuri asked, not completely sure that someone could be that homophobic.

“His father recently came out of prison for beating up a guy because he had heard rumours this guy was gay,” Taeyeon added.  “He was a real nice guy too, worked at this fashion stall on the markets.  He was straight, married with kids, a proper man’s man too.  And Iseul’s father beats the crap out of him because of rumours.”

“Holy ,” Sunny gasped.

Taeyeon nodded.  “So he needed to keep his parents from finding out the truth,” she continued.  “He told Jess and she agreed to pretend that they were together so his parents would be happy, and he could see his boyfriend without anyone asking any questions.”

“So what were you doing when you said you were on a date with him?” Sunny asked.

“Chaperoning them, driving them to places,” Jessica answered.

“You were the third wheel?” Yuri asked, suddenly feeling sympathy for her friend.

“Not necessarily,” she clarified, “but I guess you could say that.”

“So … what happened then?” Yuri asked.

“We went to see the movie, couldn’t get into it and we came back here,” Taeyeon continued with the story, “and we had a few drinks.  We talked about everything, I told her I had been a and was really sorry, and … we ended up making out on the sofa.”

“How much were you drinking?” Yuri teased.

“More than it takes us to make out, my love,” Sunny patted her lover’s arm facetiously.

“Guys,” Jessica pleaded.  “Look, I’m sorry we didn’t tell you.”

“It’s fine,” Yuri comforted her.  “We understand.”

“Yeah,” Sunny smiled.  “I mean, I wish you would have told us, but it isn’t exactly something you hear every day.  It’s a weird thing to be a part of, you being his ‘beard’ and him being yours.”

Jessica nodded.  “So … what do we do now?” she asked meekly.

Sunny shrugged.  “Well, you know your secret is safe with us,” she assured them.  “And, I’m not happy you’re being caught in this, but if you need a place to hang out whilst you’re waiting for them, you know you can call us.”

Jessica bowed her head in thanks.

“But what happens next is up to you,” Sunny continued.  “We can pretend this conversation never happened, we can try to work out how to tell the rest of the girls, or we can even plan double dates.  You have our blessing for your relationship, and you have our support for this ‘lavender relationship’ thing.”

“What’s one of those?” Yuri asked.

“Jess and Isuel pretending to be a straight couple,” Sunny explained.

“They actually have a name for that?” she asked, surprised.  Sunny nodded.

“I don’t know what I want,” Jessica admitted.  “I don’t even know what’s happening.”

There were a few uncomfortable moments of silence as the group pondered what to say next.  “I guess I should get ready to go,” Jessica broke the silence, turning to Taeyeon.  “I’m due to start my shift soon.”

Taeyeon nodded.  “I’ll see you later tonight?” she asked hopefully.

Jessica nodded.  “I’ll bring take out,” she promised.  As she reached the living area, she turned to Sunny and Yuri.  “Please don’t say anything,” she asked.  “If anything gets said, we should be the ones to do it.”

The pair nodded immediately.  “Of course,” Yuri replied, “that’s how it should be.”

“Thanks guys,” she smiled weakly.  “For … for everything.”  A quick smile in the direction of Taeyeon and she left the apartment.  Sunny looked directly at Taeyeon.

 

“So,” she asked.  “Denial?”

Taeyeon shook her head.  “She knows she’s gay, just … she doesn’t know if … we’re long term relationship material or just … a fling.”

“What is it?” Sunny asked, taking the newly vacated seat next to Taeyeon.

The band’s leader sighed heavily.  She tried to form words, string enough together to build a sentence that could accurately describe how she felt.  How she saw their dalliance panning out.  Whether she could cope being around Jessica for a long period of time.  If she would get bored of her long, flowing blonde hair, her churlish giggle, the smell of nail polish that lingered in the air long after she had finished her mani-pedis.  Even the faint citrusy scent of her perfume that hung in the bathroom each morning.  Could she handle that every day?

“Do you want this to end?” Yuri asked.  Taeyeon quickly shook her head.  “Then what?” she asked.

There was no answer, only a slight, hardly noticeable intake of breath that only one who paid attention would be able to discern as a chuckle.  Or at least someone sitting right next to her could.

Sunny sat up and held her coffee in her hands, moving Jessica’s mug aside.  Hardly a drop taken from it.  “Have you ever noticed how Jess can never finish a cup of coffee?” she asked, seemingly absent minded.  “It’s so annoying.”

Taeyeon nodded.  “No matter how many times we sit and drink together, she can never finish her order.  There’s always something left at the bottom.”  Sunny turned her head to look at her leader, sitting on her seat and smiling to herself.  “And,” she continued, “have you seen her drinking cocoa?”  Taeyeon lifted her head to look at her audience as Sunny shook her head.  “She insists on having tiny little marshmallows in it,” she explained, sipping at her mug.  “It definitely makes it sweeter, and I do enjoy it, but she just won’t drink it without the marshmallows.  And as she’s drinking, she them in whole, she won’t let them melt into her drink.”  A wider smile crawled onto Taeyeon’s face.  “It’s so cute,” she whispered.

“What else is cute about her?” Sunny asked, coaxing more from their enchanted leader.

“So much,” she whispered, blushing slightly.  Mere seconds had the words escaped past her lips before she realised what she had admitted.  She looked sheepishly at Sunny, who sat looking at her, a knowing smile on her face.  ‘Damn her insight and intuition,’ Taeyeon cursed mentally.  Yuri, meanwhile, watched the pair with great interest, resting her chin on her hand.  It was times like this that she quite liked Sunny’s keen insight, occasionally relying on it more than her own common sense.

“Does she know?” Sunny asked, drinking the remnants of her coffee with a quiet sense of satisfaction.

Taeyeon shook her head.  “Like I said, she doesn’t know what this is.”

“Maybe telling her will help,” Yuri offered.

She shrugged.  “Maybe,” she replied, unconvinced.

“It might,” Sunny agreed, putting her arm comfortingly around her.  “She likes you enough to see you , right?”  Taeyeon nodded, blushing and laughing.  “And she hasn’t said she doesn’t feel the same about you, has she?”  She shook her head.

“Maybe a little push in that direction might get to her soft, sweet, gooey centre,” Yuri finished.

“Taeyeon’s already got to her soft, sweet, gooey centre, baby,” Sunny corrected, not once looking at her lover.  Her response caused a sly, byuntae smirk to cross Taeyeon’s face.  A second and a sighing giggle later gave Yuri another to add to her growing list of reasons to love her pint-sized sweetheart.

 

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