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Jaehyun has a horrible habit of calling Gyuri whenever he’s drunk. Gyuri has an even worse habit of picking up every single time he does.
This was how it worked each time: she picked up his drunk ass at whatever bar or pojangmacha he was at, dealt with his love confessions throughout the taxi to his place, threw him onto his bed, and left an aspirin with a glass of water besides his bed. The last thing she did before leaving was deleting his call record so he doesn’t wake up the next morning ready to scream in his pillow. She makes a stupid routine out of this, and whenever her friends ask her why she still takes care of him, she gives them a lousy excuse she knows is not realistic.
“Because if I don’t then somebody else will have to anyway. Might as well.” The stares she receives from Saerom and Hayoung tell her that they don’t believe her either.
The first incident occurs two weeks after their breakup, and the voice on the other side of the line isn’t even his.
“Gyuri-yah, we’re sorry to bother you at such a late time, but Jaehyun keeps yelling your name and claims he won’t leave until he sees you. You mind coming?” It’s Yugyeom, if she’s remembering correctly, one of his loud-ass friends, and she can hear about four more voices in the background. Her mouth immediately forms ‘no’, but then she thinks of how much they probably hesitated a million times before finally calling her, and so she asks him to text her the address, saying she’ll try to get there as soon as she can.
When she arrives, he’s already three bottles of soju drunk — from her memory, the most he could ever handle was one and a half — and sprawled across the table. Eunwoo shakes him awake, and at the mention of her name, he perks up from his down position to give her a smile. His signature, dimple-infused smile that made her fall in love with him in the first place.
Gyuri tries her best to ignore how her heart begins pounding in her chest and gives an apologetic smile towards everybody that’s had to deal with his drunk antics. Walking over, she urges him to stand up and swings his arm over her shoulder, bowing once more to the group of boys. From the way Yugyeom called, everybody seemed to be aware that they weren’t together anymore. Gyuri comes to the conclusion that Jung Jaehyun was being such a pain in the ass that they had no choice but to call her.
Trying her best to shove his much bigger body into the cab, she silently curses under her breath. This is a side of him that she’s never seen — or he’s just never shown — before, and once she finally gets him into the taxi, she can’t help but glare at him for a moment. The man sitting next to her seems like a completely different person, and she can’t help but wonder if she’s the reason why.
It happens again about a week later, and this time, it’s actually Jaehyun’s voice across the line. Upon seeing his name flash across her phone, she is ready to press reject. Then she remembers how much of a nuisance he could be to another person, and so she hesitantly presses the green button and answers.
He’s whispering her name, and she can hear the light giggles that leave his lips at the same time. Frustrated and annoyed, she runs a hand through her hair before letting out the one question she knows she’ll be regretting later.
“Where are you?”
Twenty minutes later, and she’s standing in front of said-bar that he said he was in, contemplating on whether to actually walk in or not. When she called Saerom, asking her if she knew how to get there, her friend had advised her to just leave him hanging. However, even as she was listening to the advice that she asked for, her hands were grabbing for a coat and a hat.
Internally, her mind is telling her that she’s a fool, but her legs are walking into the bar. Inside, it’s not difficult to find Jaehyun, his head sprawled across the counter just like the last time.
She slides into the seat beside him, gently shaking him away. “Get up, you need to go home,” she says, her shaking becoming rougher with each passing second. When he finally gets up, his eyes open slowly as a smile makes its way across his lips. He’s throwing himself onto her, embracing her into a tight hug, and the bartender gives them a knowing look. All she can do in response is offer him a weak smile before pulling Jaehyun off of her and out of the bar.
Once inside a taxi, all she wants is for Jaehyun to fall asleep. Instead, he’s wrapping his arms around her torso and snuggling as close as he can. She can smell the soju on his lips when he gets dangerously close to her neck. Gyuri leans against the window of the taxi, trying her best to ignore the I love you’s and the I miss you’s that he keeps whispering into her neck. She doesn’t bother pushing him away because he won’t be able to remember the next morning anyway.
Third time’s the charm, they say, but for Gyuri, the third time is a real nuisance.
She’s in the middle of a group project at a cafe when her phone rings. At first she ignores it because she really needs to get this fucking project out of the way, but then it continues to ring to the point where her group mates get annoyed and tell her to just pick it up.
With a look of embarrassment apparent on her face, she walks out of the cafe and picks up the phone. There’s a bunch of rowdy noises in the background that she can barely even hear his voice. The bad music that’s playing tells her that he’s at that one run down club on the other side of town — the same one where he pinned Gyuri up against the wall, making her fall apart with his name breathlessly leaving her lips. Shaking the thought out of her head, she tries her best to hear what he has to say.
Before he even starts talking, she’s already calculating how long it would take to get there, and how much the taxi fare will be, and she hates herself so much for being this weak.
“Gyuri-yah,” he practically sings her name out, and she’s not surprised to hear that his tongue is nonexistent because of how drunk he is. “I’m at that one club we went to together. Remember? You wore that really hot red skirt with the black crop top I always nagged you about. God, I always complained about that top because it was too revealing, but that night it made me want to rip it right off of you—”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” Gyuri cuts him off because she can feel her face heating up at the memory. She knows it’s going to take her a lot more than twenty minutes to even get there, but she just needed to shut him up some way. Rushing back into the cafe, she apologizes to everybody, telling them that a family emergency came up. They all seem to believe her because she’s literally shoving everything into her purse so quickly.
While catching the taxi to the club, she can’t help but wonder if she still owns that black crop top.
By the next time Jaehyun’s name flashes across her screen, Gyuri isn’t even shocked anymore, not hesitating to answer. He’s speaking non-coherent words as she starts grabbing her coat, ready to walk out the door when she hears his location. She freezes, not sure if he really wants her coming to his apartment.
“Jaehyun, you’re already home,” she starts explaining, but then he’s whining about how much he wants to see her, and so she decides that she doesn’t really have a choice.
Saerom disagrees, like always, and is yelling at her over the phone. First for waking her up at an such an ungodly hour and second, for being stupid enough to go over to his place.
“How are you even going to get in? If he’s that drunk, he’s not going to be able to open the door for you.”
“I know the passcode.”
“You knew the passcode. For all you know, he could have changed it.”
“Guess I’ll have to see and find out.”
“Whatever. Just don’t be calling me later, whining about how you’re standing outside his door, freezing your ass off.”
Thankfully, his passcode hasn’t changed, and so Gyuri doesn’t have to face the wrath of Saerom being correct. Taking careful steps inside, she’s greeted by a single light from the kitchen, Jaehyun lying face down on the table. Through these couple of months, she’s come to learn that it’s what happens when he drinks too much.
Crouching down so that she’s eye-level with Jaehyun on the table, she gently shakes him awake. “Jaehyun-ah, go sleep in your bed,” she says. Slowly, his eyes open up to meet her’s, and the same old dimple-filled smile creeps onto his face. He reaches out to caress her face with one of his hands, allowing his thumb to smooth over her cheek.
“I must be dreaming.”
She gently grabs the hand that’s wrapped around her face and brings it down, using it as leverage to get him to stand up. It takes a lot of power and a lot of hushed whispers that she’s not going anywhere, but she finally manages to get him onto his bed.
For a moment, she wonders if she should stay, but then she remembers that she has no reason to. As always, she leaves him a glass of water and an aspirin by his bed, picks up his phone to delete her number, and then leaves his apartment, telling herself not to look back.
For a couple of weeks, there are no calls, and Saerom tells her that he must have finally gotten his shit together. Gyuri tells herself that this means she can finally go to sleep on Friday nights without having to wonder whether she’s going to have to pick up a drunk Jaehyun, but a part of her is also worried that maybe something has happened.
Hayoung tells her in a much nicer manner than Saerom that she has nothing to do with him anymore, and that she needs to start thinking for herself. She agrees but finds herself staring at her phone screen on Friday.
Her thoughts are interrupted by a knock on her door, and she freezes. She picks up her phone, 112 already dialed in, before approaching the door ever so slowly. Taking a deep breath, she’s about to scream when the person on the other side speaks.
“Gyuri-yah,” he murmurs at a volume close to a whisper. Her eyes are closed tight because she can’t believe this is the way he decides to show up after all these weeks. She hesitates before opening the door, and he must hear her thinking.
“I’m not drunk, please, I just want to talk.”
The last sentence has her on edge, and she pulls on the door with rage. “Now you want to talk? God damnit, Jaehyun, where were you when I wanted to talk months ago?”
For the first time in a while, she finally gets a look at his full face. Not much has changed except the fact that he seemed to have lost a few pounds, and that the bags under his eyes are much deeper than she remembers. There’s a pang of guilt in the back of her heart, but she remains firm with her posture, telling herself to pull it together.
“Can I come in?”
She considers saying no, but there is a part of her that wants to settle things once and for all, and so she opens the door just wide enough for him to step in. Immediately she turns her back to him to walk towards the living room, expecting him to follow her in.
Turning back around to face him, Gyuri is ready to start yelling out all the pent up frustrations and feelings that have been eating her alive, but the moment she sees his sulking face, a sigh leaves her lips instead.
“What do you want from me, Jung Jaehyun?”
“I-I don’t know. Initially I came here because I wanted to apologize for troubling you these past few months and before you ask, yes, I remember everything,” he explains, and Gyuri can’t help but notice the way his ears start flushing red. She can only hope that her own face isn’t doing the same.
“Then I realized that maybe it doesn’t even matter anymore, and that I should leave you alone.”
“Then why are you even here?”
“Because I realized that only just now.”
All this time, Jaehyun had been staring at the ground, possibly too afraid to meet her eyes, but now he’s looking straight at her, and she freezes. She hates that he still leaves her breathless, and she hates that she can see the hurt in his eyes that make her want to walk on over and grab him, pulling herself into his embrace.
“You can’t keep doing this to me, Jaehyun.”
It comes out like a breathy whisper, and she takes a seat on her couch because she’s come to realize that there isn’t much strength left in her legs.
“Why did you do it?”
Not understanding the pretense of the question, she looks up, her brows furrowed together in confusion.
“Why did you pick up every single time I called? Why did you come get me? Why didn’t you just ignore my existence? Gyuri, why?”
She opens her mouth to answer, but she can’t find the right words to say. The truth is she doesn’t know either. All this time she’s convinced herself that it was because she didn’t want him bothering anybody else, but she was aware that it was a bullshit answer. She knew that deep down there were still lingering feelings.
“I don’t know.”
It’s not a lie, but it’s not the complete truth either.
Gyuri closes her eyes to take a deep breath, not sure what to do with all the feelings rustling inside of her. When she opens them up again, Jaehyun is bent down on one knee in front of her, his arms on either side of her body.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
It takes a moment for her to register what he’s saying, but then she gasps, completely speechless at the sudden apology.
“I’m sorry for calling you drunk out of my mind. I’m sorry I made you come pick me up even though I could get home all by myself. I’m sorry I pretended like I couldn’t remember any of it because it was so fucking embarrassing. I’m sorry I ignored your feelings and how you wanted to talk things out. I’m sorry I gave up on us when you never did. I’m really sorry.”
She can feel her own chest rising and falling at a rapid speed, breaths becoming harder and harder to take in, and her vision has blurred to the point where her surroundings look like a mosaic painting.
These are the exact words she wanted to hear a few months ago when she had yelled that they should just break up if he wasn’t going to bother listening to what she had to say. She didn’t think it would grasp onto it so quickly, and she was left standing in the park all alone, having to replay the moment a couple of times before she realized what had just happened.
Now, here they were, in her living room with Gyuri crying her eyes out. Her cries have become louder, and she can barely contain the tears that are falling down her cheeks. A warm hand comes to embrace her cheek, wiping away the tears, and she grabs onto his wrist before pulling him towards her and into a hug.
It’s an awkward position, really. He’s stuck somewhere between bending down and standing up because of Gyuri’s seated position. Jaehyun is hesitant, but he wraps his arms around her, using his right hand to smooth out her hair.
He stays. He stays and continues to run his fingers through her hair, his lips pressed against her forehead. It takes a while, but Gyuri manages to calm down and loosen her grip on Jaehyun; a grip she hadn’t realized had gotten so tight.
Jaehyun tries to pull himself off, but she doesn’t let him go. She doesn’t think she can face seeing his face at the moment and instead chooses to speak into his neck, her eyes shut close as the feelings she’s repressed start to come loose.
“You’re not fully forgiven. Not after making me cry for the past few months.”
She can hear him chuckling underneath his breath, and so she gives him a light slap on his arm. He winces, not from pain but from surprise, before letting a breathy laugh leave his lips once more.
“I missed you, Jang Gyuri,” he whispers into her ear then plants a warm, lingering kiss onto her cheek.
“I missed you too.”