Finally, I let my inner, locked thoughts loose, increasing his confusion and frustration tenfold. “What act?”

“This best friend thing! You keep reminding me that we’re just best friends. It’s almost like a slap in the face. I tried to ignore my feelings, or at least hide them, so that-that you wouldn’t know – so that I wouldn’t destroy our friendship. I tried dating Taehyun, and even when you started dating Jenny, I was genuinely happy for you guys, because I knew my feelings weren’t something to be proud of. I knew we wouldn’t become more than friends. But…but when you came to my dorm that night, giving me thirteen roses, the last sane shard within me just shattered.”

Minho’s eyes were blank, as if he was staring into the distance of my soul, trying to decipher the truth to my words. His hand that was on my arm hung loosely by his own body now, and he barely breathed out my name in disbelief.”

“Yeah, I like you,” I finally admitted my feelings – even to myself – for the first time. “Hell, I love you more than best friends should ever love each other.” I let a lifeless, bitter chuckle leave my throat as I croaked the rest of my monologue while choking on hidden tears. “I know this will probably end whatever connection we had and destroy our friendship, which is why I always dismissed the idea of ever telling you about this. I always placed our friendship over my own petty feelings, but I just can’t do it anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself if I don’t do this now. I’ve tried to be selfless all these years and think about the big picture – what’s important. But I just want to be selfish – just this one time. Can I be selfish and end this so that I can keep my sanity?”

I finally scourged enough courage to meet his eyes; there was an unexplainable, dark look within them that made me cower away in shame. He parted his lips to say something, but I cut him off. “I’m sorry. Please don’t try to keep this friendship anymore.” I left the items in my arms on the floor outside his room, letting their acquired warmth slowly dissipate into the biting winter air. I felt a flash of warmth on my arm when I turned to leave, but that was probably just the relief of being free of webs and tangles of lies.

“Aren’t you going to take the roses?”

I furrowed my brows, trying to decipher his intention. I shook my head unconsciously, most likely as a defense mechanism. “I can’t accept your roses, Minho.”

“I missed you.”

No, please don’t do this to me.

“Minho, please–”

“Why didn’t you let me talk that night?” he asked emotionlessly as he invited himself into my unwelcoming apartment. It’s been years and I still haven’t treated this place as home. I would never find home again.

“What are you saying?” I questioned cautiously as I closed the door and followed in his invisible footsteps out of habit. Old habits die hard.

“When you left the roses at my door and confessed. Why didn’t you let me talk?”

“It wasn’t a confession. And I didn’t want to hear what I already expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“I didn’t want to hear a rejection when I didn’t even want a relationship, okay?” I didn’t realize I had screamed until I heard my quivering voice echo off the walls in my apartment.

“I never was going to reject you though…”

“What…what the hell?”

“Don’t you ing understand? All those times, all those clues that you basically brushed off?”

“But why are you here? It’s been years. We haven’t talked at all since that night–”

“But whose fault is it that we haven’t talked at all? You avoided me all the way until graduation, even going as far as making Patricia keep every detail about you from me. , you even studied abroad for the last semester, not even graduating with us. You cut me off ever since, and I couldn’t find you until now. What the did you actually expect me to do? You gave me the impossible, and I still tried.”

I remained silent until he began walking towards me like a predator cornering his prey. And he cornered me before bending his knees to meet my cowering eye level. “Thirteen roses, do you know why it had to be thirteen? When I always gave you one as a joke?”

“Because we’re ing best–”

“No-well, yes. Because we’re friends, but thirteen also has a hidden meaning of secret admiration.”

“What the , Minho! When would you stop messing with my emotions?” I screamed as furious tears trickled down my flushed cheeks. I shoved him harshly until I was free to escape his confinement find my own disturbing safe haven on the black leather couch.

I heard a low scoff, one that he probably did not intend for me to hear. “Me? I’m the one messing with your emotions when you’ve been the one lying to yourself all those years?”

“What else could I have done? Confess? No, thank you! I knew you didn’t like me, so why–”

“Really. You knew?”

“It was obvious.”

He scoffed incredulously and glared at me with such intense anger that I swore made me shiver. “You know what is actually ing obvious? All the hints that I dropped about liking you, but you dismissed them like they meant nothing. You know why I started dating Jenny? I brought her up to see if you actually gave two s about me, but you didn’t. I started dating her to convince myself that I was over you – like a ing I did the same thing you did to Taehyun. Just because you’re a ing coward.”

“ you, Minho. I’m a coward? You act like you weren’t.”

“Then why can’t we just be honest with each other for once?”

“It was the past, Minho. Leave it.”

The sofa dipped beside me and suddenly Minho’s arms were on my shoulders, pushing me onto my back and into the leather-covered cushion. “Why are you still hiding so much from me? Aren’t all those years enough?”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Jen…” His actions were so ruthless and harsh; he changed so much over the years. But what did I expect, when I had changed so drastically myself? But the moment he whispered my name and gazed into my eyes, I realized that the softness in them never changed a single bit.

“Why can’t you understand that I still have feelings for you – that I’ve always had feelings for you?”

I was stunned speechless, as I mindlessly blinked away tears. “No, no, no. This is not right. This is so ing wrong.”

“Why?”

“We changed so much. I can’t do this. We can’t do this.”

“I don’t get it.”

I scoffed in incredulity. “Fine, if you actually liked me, why did you let me walk off that easily that night?”

“What could I have even done? When you were so resolute about your own decision?” As I absentmindedly stared into his eyes, I began to understand him. I began to understand completely what my words meant back then. When I decided to walk out his life, I left him with sparse options, but I think deep down, I expected a much different response from him – maybe an explosion of emotions, or a fight of some sort, not just to let me walk out that door with his hand hanging in mid-air and his ego too much of a coward to fight.

If we could go back in time, if I could change the way I “confessed” to him, or if he could have reacted some other way, perhaps we would be in some other predicament right now. If we were both honest from the beginning, then maybe we would have signed “The End” of our fairy tale long before.

But time machines were just wishful thinking for those who still believed in fairytale endings. All this just proved that we would never have been a compatible couple anyway.

We could no longer change our status and our written history. The future remained unwritten, but whatever records Minho and I were about to form did not include our crossed paths. Maybe we still had feelings for each other; even our friendship alone allowed us to harbor such strong love for each other that it was simply not easily erasable. And maybe we still unconsciously wished for, hoped for a happy ending. But was it really possible at this point in time?

“Just go.”

Unsaid words, unshed tears hung in the crisp winter air between us. I questioned myself and my own motives as salty moisture hung in the crevices of my eyes, and I refused to lift my head to look at his retreating figure as I felt the area next to me rise back to its original state. However, the trace that he was there before still remained – it will probably never fade away.

When I saw the familiar pair of black converses – probably a new pair, since they weren’t like the ones faded by time that he wore around every day in college, a drop of that salty solution finally allowed gravity to lead its journey down the two feet of air and land on the white lace of his sneakers. “Jen,” Minho breathlessly whispered as he lifted my face by my chin to meet his line of gaze. A light sheen of pink moisture was beginning to coat his eyes, as he kneeled to level with my current height. “Can we go back to that time when we were blatantly honest with each other about our feelings and thoughts?”

I wanted to tell him “no” and push him away. I wanted to tell him that it was not possible for us to return to the past. But when his lips touched mine for the first time and when I felt sparks tingling at my lower back and gut, I could no longer bring myself to deny that this had remained what I wanted.

Even when I allowed him to lead me into my bed room, onto my bed, I ignored my logical side shunning me for doing this. As we peeled away layers of each other’s clothing, found settlements on each other’s swollen lips and heated skin, we forgot about our past, disregarded our prospective future, and simply learned to love in the present. With every embrace and every kiss, every gaze and every touch, every sigh and every moan, we knew we loved each other – back in college and at this moment.

But I knew I never saw him in my future. I didn’t see him in that picture I envisioned and painted for myself back when I was still a young adult without a definite path in life. And I still did not see him in my life now. And we both knew clear and well that there were no strings to this, and that it was only a one-time encounter.

***

As I study my own reflection in the body-length mirror with the fierce dress hugging my every curve, framing my defined collarbones, and falling all the way to my pumps with a slit down my right leg, a chime from my phone distracts me from my long trance. I smile amusedly at my best friend’s preppy hour-reminder before the start of the party; I feel somewhat betrayed that she thinks I would seriously ignore her efforts and ditch the celebration she has so thoughtfully planned for me, but I can’t deny that I thought about it.

Before I completely turn away from the mirror, I do not fail to notice the faint, six inch-long scar on my upper thigh that showed slightly through the slit of the dress. It’s insignificant to the eye, yet it symbolizes the end to a possible start for me.