Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts, of course, with Instagram.

All things now start with Instagram, a fact that you know exceedingly well. You long for the simpler days, when your local artisan painter would come to your colonial mansion to craft a baroque portrait over two days instead of fussing over iPhone camera shots and lighting. When your mail man would deliver a hand-rolled love scroll of ink covered parchment to your door instead of receiving lewd DM after lewd DM in your inbox.

When you could have a reason to ignore the way Mark’s eyes widen after he’s been scrolling away on his phone for fifteen minutes.

“Oh shit.”

“What?” You don’t even bother to look up from your computer again, especially when Ten gasps as well. The pair of them love the drama of it all, and this is surely no different.

“Never mind,” Mark shakes his head quickly, moving his phone screen so you have no direct path to take it from his hands. “You definitely don’t want to know.”

Now you’re just annoyed they’ve dangled this in your face and aren’t giving up the information.

“Unless this is something devastating, like the news of Chris Pine finally getting married to someone who isn’t me, I think I can handle it.”

“No,” Mark holds his ground, trying to hide his phone away into a crevice of the couch you can’t reach.

But you’re too fast, grasping for his right earlobe to tickle him there, sending him writhing in laughter and avoidance. The commotion knocks Ten out of the way, too, inching you a step closer to your goal.

“Give it!”

His body shifts just enough for you to pluck his phone from between the couch cushions, screen still open to whatever post he’d been so scandalized by. It’s from E!News, no surprise, considering how religiously he and Ten watch the Kardashians with Ten’s girlfriend.

The picture’s a little shadowy, but the captions make it perfectly clear.

@enews: EXCLUSIVE: The missing yellow ribbon found? Hollywood’s newest it girl Wendy Shon was spotted cozying up to America’s sweetheart Jeffrey Jung at Nobu tonight. Everything we know about their romantic late-night rendezvous at the link in our bio

Okay, now you get just why Mark and Ten had tried to hide this from you, bless their little hearts.

It’s unmistakably Wendy in the paparazzi shot, her long blonde hair glistening even in the grainy glow of the streetlight. Your friends clearly think she’s still a sore spot for you, which, she sort of is. But you’ve also seen her plastered on billboards across LA for the past six months, and so, it irks at you a little bit less each time you see a new picture.

You idly swipe through the other slides in the post, each doing their best to zoom into Wendy’s smiling face, and shrug. “You really think I care about whatever wannabe Shawn Mendes my cousin’s been spotted out with? She was apparently seeing actual Shawn Mendes last month and clearly, that hasn’t worked out.”

It’s best for you to keep this subject at a taciturn arm’s length, so you focus your attention on your cousin’s unrecognizable companion. His back is turned in most of the shots, his profile in the third image giving you a sliver of a glimpse at his face. Of course he’d be vaguely hot even in these crappy pap shots, but you really just don’t have any idea who he is.

You voice it as much, “Who the hell is Jeffrey Jung anyways? America’s sweetheart?”

Ten and Mark share this look that you recognize, this we can’t believe you look.

“You really don’t know?” Ten asks, the disbelief on his face also evident in his voice.

“No,” you really have never heard of Jeffrey Jung. Ever. “Should I?“

“Honestly, y/n, for the so-called queen of the athlete social media world you don’t know shit. sunshine in the moonlight has been everywhere for the past few months,” Ten says exasperatedly, like this Jeffrey Jung is the Da Vinci of pop music and you should somehow recognize his Mona Lisa.

You feel like you’re missing something, but then you think of Ten’s Carly Rae Jepsen centered playlists and how they’re very much not like your Lil Baby ones. And then you get it.

“First off, you know that I absolutely don’t listen to the same kind of music you do. And second, sunshine in the moonlight? What the fuck kind of pretentious bullshit is that?”

Though you’d always prefer listening to rap music, you really don’t hate pop music. You appreciate it, even. What you’re tired of is every handsome man with a guitar in LA stringing together some flowery words and creaming the panties off every girl in the country. Every song is a complete copy paste of all the others, I love you and you love me and let’s be together forever with our babies.

You recognize that you’re probably in the wrong place to avoid such dulcet sweet nothings, but come on! Where is the honesty? The poignancy? The devotion? You’d respect an LA pretty boy with a guitar the day one of their songs made you cry. And you seriously, seriously doubt that will ever happen.

You glance over at Mark, SoundCloud prowler Mark, flows of fury Mark, who was the one who actually got you into Lil Baby in the first place. You think he’s going to be your ally in this, that he’ll tell Ten that he has no idea what he’s talking about, but the fool is struggling to hold back this wistful little smile.

“Oh no,” you groan loudly. “Oh no, no, no. Mark, come on.”

“It’s a very sweet song. That’s all I’m going to say,” Mark offers, clearly embarrassed at being caught by you.

Ten scoffs, like that is the biggest load of shit, “You said yesterday, and I quote, it is, like, the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, am I wrong?” Mark crosses his arms, incensed at the full exposure Ten’s putting him through. “You said yesterday you wanted to use that song when you propose to Lisa in the future!”

It’s Ten’s turn to sputter in indignation, but the way the tip of his nose turns crimson tells you that he indeed has been contemplating using this mysterious tune as the score for his inevitable engagement to his long term girlfriend.

“Shut up! Okay? No, no. You’re not wrong.”

They start to bicker back and forth about the varying hypothetical degrees they love this song, and you have to shout over them when it’s gone on for too long,

“Now that you’ve both thoroughly sucked this song off, are you going to show me it or not?”

The argument is forgotten in an instant. Mark launches himself over you to grab at your laptop,  “Yeah, let me borrow your computer because this needs to be shown on full screen. He’s only released a lyric video so far, but it should be enough.”

Ten crushes himself onto the couch in anticipation as Mark sets up the video, and you can’t believe these two late twenties guys are salivating in delight as the dreamy guitar starts to emanate from the speakers.

You’ve seen enough low quality pap shots to feel confident in your earlier observation that Jeffrey Jung was vaguely hot, but the moment he steps onto the minimalist set, you realize vaguely was not the right word to use. Hot probably wasn’t right, either.

He is stunningly beautiful in this specific way that you’ve never quite seen from anyone in the music scene of LA. Or really just from anyone. He’s got the quintessential traits of a celebrity — broad, sloping shoulders that settle comfortably within his white suit, conveniently unbuttoned with a missing undershirt; an easy mouth, conveniently blessed with a twin set of charming dimples; a lethal combination of elegant cheekbones and cutting jaw line, conveniently elevating him into the stratosphere of looks.

But it goes beyond just those things, beyond his striking lilac hair and flashing gold necklace complete with a delicate leaf pendant, beyond the way he confidently settles himself into the carved wood chair, beyond the way his voice is actually warm and mellow and sort of wonderful.

It’s more about the way his lips curve into this smile, like he knows how to pluck at the strings of you here from his place there. And how his eyes gleam in such an inviting way, so earnest and thoughtful, all wrapped up with a slight teaspoon of mystery and a dash of familiarity.

The lyrics flash across the bottom of the screen as he sings, written in this rugged yet looping script that you know has to be his handwriting.

I still remember it, the girl with the yellow ribbon in her hair,

the merry laughter of the stars, formed in a spotlight for her there.

I was the secret, a hidden shadow tucked into the night,

but she was all of the sunshine in the moonlight

There’s this tiniest, smallest, most minuscule little molecule of deja vu that pings into you as a result of his singing. Before you can stop it, your thumb hits the space bar, pausing the video.

“Why’d you stop it that quick!” Ten whines, but you don’t move your hand from the keyboard so he can restart it.

“This is….,” your tongue is heavy in your mouth as your words fade out.

You’ve never seen this man before in your life, have never heard his voice or known his name or anything about him. There’s nothing that should be giving you deja vu. The more pressing question is why your body is covered in this pricking sensation of an itch you can’t scratch, this sort of tense flush that makes you wildly uncomfortable. It’s so unlike the buttoned up manner you usually conduct yourself in that you don’t know how to act.

“Beautiful?”

“Heartwrenching?”

“The best thing you’ve ever heard?”

You shake yourself out of your confused daze of false remembrance for any sort of response that won’t give your apprehension away. You settle on,

“Kind of cliché.”

“What are we talking about?” A deep voice rings into the apartment, door slamming shut right after.

“Yo, Hong, you’re back!”

Whew.

Joshua’s arrival is just the shot in the arm you need, the one anchor to drag you back down to earth. Now you know the flutter of your heart is true, not a false one brought forth by some idiot crooner who’s definitely nothing special. This is something real you can hone in on, his gear bag on the ground and his sweaty bangs sticking to his forehead. The way he ignores Ten’s hello to wink at you.

You start mouthing off immediately, “These idiots have been getting me to stan Jeffrey Jung for the past ten minutes.”

“Hey to you too,” Josh pokes at you easily, your banter slipping back into place even after his month away. He leans over the couch to look at what you’re watching, recognition written all over his face when he says, “You mean sunshine in the moonlight? I don’t know, the guys kinda got me into it when we were on the road.”

You can’t imagine Dustin Brown and Anze Kopitar in the Kings locker room, listening to the same song you’ve just sampled a snippet of. Or any of the other big hockey goons that Josh calls his teammates doing the same, really. But as you glance up, he’s mouthing the words along to the video that Mark has taken the liberty to resume.

You push at his shoulder, scoffing, “Are you kidding me?”

Joshua ruffles your hair, eliciting a yelp from you as he pushes back, “I don’t know, princess, did you listen to the lyrics? It’s about long-lost first love, which is one of the purest, most beautiful things.”

Josh is a softie at heart, always quick to add a heart emoji or kiss face into his messages, an easy crier at rom coms and dramas alike, and a big fan of playing guitar himself. You imagine he’d be good at picking flowers and gifts for his girlfriend, and that won’t have to be your imagination soon, either. So, it sort of makes sense that he likes it.

“I don’t even remember my first love,” you scoff, eliciting eye rolls from all three of your male companions. “Don’t look at me like that! You don’t think it’s cliché? This could be a legitimate bootleg of John Mayer’s early work.”

You don’t know why the harsh words come from you so easily, why you feel so compelled to deny the quality of the music, but you do.

“I don’t think John Mayer’s ever made me feel like this, to be honest,” Ten sighs.

Mark smacks him on the arm, “Fantasize about him later. Click the next vid.”

He does, and you’re greeted by the sunny blonde news anchor of Good Morning LA and the man of the hour, dressed in this paisley yellow jacket that you hate-love.

“We’re here today with national sensation Jeffrey Jung, whose viral hit sunshine in the moonlight soared to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 only a week after its release. Jeffrey, welcome.”

His speaking voice is melodic as you anticipate, words dredging up that same molecule from before, even with his generic opening of,

“Hi, thank you so much for having me on.”

The interviewer keeps her eyes on the cards she’s reading from, but the blush on her cheeks is a clear sign that she is not immune to his presence, “Your previous single, rose cascade, saw moderate success here in the US, but your explosion with sunshine has been unreal. Do you have anything you want to say about that?”

“Yeah, I want to thank my family and my team, without them I would’ve never been able to do this. And to my fans, my Double Js, thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

He is so easy-going and polite it’s your turn to roll your eyes. In your five years in this industry, you’ve learned more than enough times that this sort of over-the-top refinement is always an act. No person can actually be like this in real life. You’ve tried it once before, and had to settle with said no-nonsense version of yourself that rarely slipped out of place.

“Is there any reason why you think this song seems to resonate more with global listeners?”

“I mean, this song is. I don’t know. This song is about a time that really played a strong hand in sculpting who I am as a person. It feels more like me than anything I’ve ever written,” Jeffrey muses softly, more to himself than the anchor or the camera, and the incessant itchiness is back.

He unnerves you in such a specific way that you’re unconsciously grappling between wanting to never see his face again and absorbing every little bit of him when he continues, a bit louder this time,  “It’s just this tiny little canyon of my heart, not something I really ever brought up to anyone. But one day when I sat down to record, it just exploded out of me like I couldn’t bear to keep it in any further. People love love stories, they love romance, and this is mine.”

“But you’re single, right?”

His smile floods with coyness, a ping of depth to him that you’ve haven’t been able to detect yet, “I am, but that doesn’t mean I don’t also have a story to tell.”

“I have to ask since everyone’s dying to know,” she puts her cards aside and you already know the question she’s about to present him with. “Can you tell us who this song is about?”

“I can’t, unfortunately.” Of course, he’s never going to give up the secret so easily, least of all to some random interview from a local news channel.

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“Can’t because she didn’t even tell me her name when I met her.” Oh? That’s the first time you’ll allow yourself to acknowledge that you’re intrigued. “But I still think of her, and hope she’s doing well, wherever she is.”

Not knowing the name of the girl he wrote a song about practically spells out a drunken night’s encounter, but you are almost certain that that’s not it. The nostalgia is too palpable in the way his voice trails off at the end of his sentence.

The reporter is clearly pleased by this revelation, clapping her hands together happily.

“Hopefully she’s single wherever she is!”

“Haha,” Jeffrey shakes his head, fidgeting a bit with a scrap of something around his wrist. “I hope she’s happily in love with a boyfriend or something. It’d make me happy to know she was happy.”

“Ladies, if you think this is you, you know who to call.”

Ten pauses the video right then and turns to you, “Wait, wait, do you think that Wendy might be the girl in the song?”

Joshua looks at you in confusion and you groan, pulling up the Instagram for him to see, “Ugh, this video must be old because she and that Jeffrey dude were spotted out on a date yesterday, according to E!news’s account…”

His pretty eyes scan the post and then he shrugs, “Huh, sounds like it could be. You don’t know?”

You know for certain that three of your paths had not crossed in the time you’ve known Wendy. You, uh, you’re pretty sure you wouldn’t have been able to forget someone like Jeffrey Jung.

“I have no idea,” you admit, standing up under pretenses of retrieving a glass of water, but really to hide the nerves that are starting to creep up on you. “I only went to live with my aunt and uncle when we were ten. I have no idea if she knew him before.”

“Has to be a high school or college first love, though, right? No way this is about some kid or childhood first love?” Ten wonders out loud, clearly having thought about this.

“Absolutely not,” Mark agrees. “Childhood loves are not that deep.”

“The song wasn’t deep,” you scoff, trying to get everyone off this subject as soon as possible. “And his answer screamed old one night stand.”

Both Mark and Ten stick their tongues out at you as you feel Josh’s hand dance secretively across the back waistline of your jeans. He copies their gesture, teasing you with,

“You’re just a negative Nancy.”

As Josh’s hand presses into the skin of your hip then, Mark pushes Ten back to the computer with an urgent, “Come on, ignore her and click to the next interview, I need to see what he’s wearing. Instagram recreation incoming.”

Sharing a knowing look, the two of you take a quiet step backwards as Ten starts the queued video, confessing to Mark, “He’s totally my dude crush.”

They’re so totally engrossed with the video that you feel confident enough to grab Joshua’s hand, even more so to kiss him first on the cheek, his eyes closing lazily as he grabs your hips fully. You move to kiss his mouth, finally happy to have him back after his month away, but he stops you, whispering,

“Wait, not here.”

You don’t have enough time to frown in disappointment before he’s pulling you into his room, the two of you collapsing into his bed in an arc of expounded feeling. It’s so nice to have him back, to have him press his lips against yours in a worked up frenzy this quickly. It’s all evidence that he’s missed you.

Your life is so empty when he’s on a road trip, he doesn’t call nearly enough and the time differences are always a lot. That’s why you’re so grateful he lives with Ten, who doesn’t care if you come over to fold Josh’s laundry during the dog days of his time away. It’s kind of funny, the fact that you and Ten are both technically Josh’s employees — his social media manager and agent, respectively — but just la di da around his apartment without a care on most days.

Once you’ve been thoroughly kissed, hair a mess, happy smile across your face as you sit in his lap, you ask coquettishly, “Did you miss me?”

“Hmm, what?” He’s distracted by the incessant pinging of his phone, just another byproduct of the celebrity life he lives as an athlete.

“Never mind,” you press another kiss to his cheek. “How was the road trip?”

He leans back against his bed’s headboard, clearly fully satisfied with his life at the moment, “Good. Scored three goals and had two assists this past week. Also got some good Miami content I need you to check out before I post.”

You actually frown this time. You’d been looking forward to spending some alone time with him ever since you saw this trip penciled into his calendar.

“Do you want to do that later? I came over to do work specifically because I knew your flight was landing today.”

Joshua is reaching for his phone now, already blazing out messages and tapping through his apps as he responds, “The PR team needs me to put up a picture because I haven’t been keeping up with my scheduled posts.”

You purposefully get off of him at that in annoyance. Before he left, he’d very carefully followed the routine you and Ten had set up to maximize his social media following. You had even emailed him detailed instructions for what to do while he was on the east coast. How hard was it to snap a picture and post?

“Ugh, Josh, we talked about this.”

He does look guilty about that, and he cups your face as he acknowledges it, “I know, I know, but it’s so much easier if I leave it all to you, right babe? That is why I hired you, isn’t it?”

Of course. You’re his employee first and whatever you were to him actually second. Just because that’s the lay of the land here in LA, the ultimate world of blurred lines, doesn’t mean you have to like it. His pink lips pout as he tries to kiss you and you duck away, more than mildly put off by his words, only biting out a sharp,

“Right.”

He doesn’t pick up on it, because his phone rings at that precise moment, with a call from one of his teammates.

“Hello? Zhong, my man, what’s up?!”

You sit on the bed dumbly for a few more seconds until it’s clear that the conversation isn’t wrapping up soon. Josh and Chenle had just been on a plane home together, how much more time did they need to talk? But ever the dutiful you, you get up and leave the room, closing the door behind you so he can finish the call in peace.

Ten is locked in his room, clearly on a video chat with Lisa if the effervescent Thai bubbling through the door is any clue. Mark is lying on the couch now, but your laptop is still blasting Jeffrey Jung interviews. Not this, again.

“Move, move,” you shoo him away so you have a place to sit. “I need my laptop back so I can work.”

Mark groans, long and drawn out and exaggerated, “You mean photoshop Hong’s pictures so his extra-perfect abs can get a thousand extra likes.”

While you and Ten are connected to Joshua directly through your careers, Mark had been your housemate at UCLA and therefore had no exceeding loyalty to the hockey player. Thus, he never makes it a secret how he truly feels.

You snatch the laptop out of his hands, nose upturned at his… sadly spot on prediction of what you’d spend the next few hours doing, “Josh plays for the Kings, Mark, he already gets likes. This is my job, nothing more, nothing less.”

It’s true, this is what you’re paid for. Sure, his hockey talents had earned him a spot on the roster, but you’ve made him into LA’s darling boy, adored by women and men and everyone in between. Handsome, an athlete, with a side hobby of playing guitar made it easy for you to do so, but he’s an unrivaled, unattainable goal now. All because of you.

“Y/n…”

“Don’t give me that look,” you lower your screen because you know Mark won’t let this go until you assuage him in some way.

He lowers his voice, but his frustration clearly rings into your ears, “He said he’d stop the PR thing with Lia and go public with you during the All-Star break, but that was six weeks ago!”

You’re actually kind of proud of yourself, how the mention of the beautiful Lia Choi doesn’t bother you anymore. Of course, when Rogers & Cowan reached out to Ten and the agency to float the idea of a relationship between Josh and Lia, you’d been secretly distraught, as besotted with Josh as you were.

But he’d made it abundantly clear that his very public relationship with Lia was just a performance, just another rung in the business ladder he intended to climb outside of hockey. Once he’d reaped the benefits of dating an actress like her, a move that you have to admit was a smart one to make, it’d be only you. You didn’t have anything to worry about.

“He was on a road trip the past month,” you wave your well-meaning friend away, this being the one thing you’ll choose to be willingly naive about forever. “It’ll happen when it happens.”

Mark looks skeptical, but he chooses not to press any further, “Okay. If you say so.”

You open your laptop back up, and a smiling Jeffrey Jung on your screen gives you pause. You wonder what he would think of you. You wonder why you care.

@hong94: ay, míamí! great road trip with my boys! happy to be back in LA

—

You’re on your way out of the office, with half a mind to pick up Chipotle and crash at home for the night, when your phone goes off. Joshua had changed the ringtone for himself in your phone within the first week of you meeting, and even now, you still wait until the last possible moment to pick up so you can sing along.

My loneliness is killing me, I must confess I still believe, When I'm not with you I lose my mind, Give me a sign, hit me, baby, one more time

Ugh, no one does it like Britney.

“Hey, what are you doing tonight?” Josh asks as soon as you’ve stopped your little moment and answered.

“Nothing planned, why?” You purposefully miss the turn for your usual Chipotle, continuing on on the highway until you know what he wants.

Is this it? Is he actually asking you on a real date? The two of you had spent so much time cooped up in his room eating take out since he got home that you want to enjoy a promenade out in the public. An athlete having dinner with a member of his team won’t be suspicious. You'll be the only one pretending otherwise.

Oh, you only have your business blouse on, damn you for not having anything flirtier in your car, no matter how much Mark’s old Tupac tee is calling at you.

“Can you come down to the rink?” Never mind. “I need some post-game shots as per Ten’s request.”

You’re so glad he chose to actually call instead of FaceTiming you, because there’s no obvious way to hide the way your face slides into disappointment. The fatal appeal of efficiently successful business y/n has struck again.

“The team has photographers,” you grumble, not wanting to be summoned for fifty thousand iPhone pics of which there’ll only be two pictures that you and Ten will both be satisfied with. “Can’t you get Zhong or Petersen or anyone else to do that for you?

“I’ll leave you a ticket, though,” Josh starts to lay it on thick, knowing just how much you truly love hockey as a sport. Then, flirtier, “And you’ll get to see me.”

You hate yourself, for letting him affect you in this way, and even more so for indulging in the fantasy of you walking out of the rink hand in hand, him showing you off, all shiny and proud.

“Fine.”

He whoops loudly, the noise rattling through your receiver in his victory, “See you later, babe. Player’s entrance.”

Luckily, missing the turn for Chipotle had been the right decision, because the highway takes you right down to the Staples Center in some remarkable lack of traffic. And that means when you get to the entrance, there’s no line in front of Tae Lee, your favorite ticket vendor.

“Hey, T,” you bump fists with him when you get to the window. “What’s good?”

He adjusts his new glasses, turquoise frames so stylish on his handsome face. “Hey, y/n, long time no see!”

“It was a long road trip,” you lament as you hand over your ID and card. “And Mark didn’t want to come see the Lakers.”

He types through the requisite screens on his computer, the easternmost corner of his mouth dipping slightly into a frown you don’t catch.

“Just you today?” Tae clarifies, and that question you very clearly catch.

“What?” You ask in confusion, because he usually just gives you the ticket so you can go right in. “Just me. It’s always just a regular ticket and a media pass.”

You have to check your calendar, maybe today is one of the games Lia is supposed to show up to and you just missed it. But Tae waves it away before you can unlock your phone.

“Never mind, where do you want them today?”

You grin in excitement, “Lower bowl, if you can. I want it to be rowdy.”

You’ve sat all over at the Staples Center, from the media box, to the VIP booth, all the way up to the bloodiest of nosebleeds. You love it all, but nothing compares to sitting right by the action, in the eye of the hailstorm that is drunk hockey fans. The chill in the air, the yelling, the beer showers, nothing compares.

Once you’re officially dating Josh, you’re sure there’s all sorts of informal rules and decorum about being seen as a WAG at games, so you’re going to revel in this for a little longer.

“Have fun!” Tae chirps cheerily after he’s given you the tickets, waving at you from his booth as you go. But you’re too far away to hear his quiet warning of, “Be careful!”

You tuck the media pass away into your bag, so you won’t lose it when you need it later, and you make your way through the family entrance into the bowels of the stadium. You’re cutting it real close, there’s only about five minutes before the national anthem is scheduled to start. You begin to hurry your way through the crowds that are all heading to their seats.

You take a left at the artisan pizza kiosk, briskly stroll past one, two, three hot dog vendors, and…. barrel your way right into someone. The pace you’d been utilizing apparently was even more brutal than you realized, because the person goes flying against the nearest wall.

“Oh, I am so, so sorry,” you apologize swiftly, when the impact of their body hitting the concrete sends a wince right through you.

“It’s no problem. Don’t worry.” Easy-going and soft. Huh.

You look up, and laugh in spite of yourself, “Hold up. Jeffrey Jung?”

It’s definitely the singer, and like, it’s unfair that he can rock a denim jacket over jeans like he’s doing right now. Unfair that after getting clotheslined into concrete, his messy yet sophisticated hair is still perfectly in place. Unfair that it’s already obvious to you he is that polite and morally upright in person.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” Despite the fact that you were the one who rocked him, Jeffrey looks at you with concern, then his eyes crinkle in happy recognition. “Wait, are you a Double J?”

Your jaw goes slack. You… a what?

One of the suit-clad men, so surreptitiously positioned you didn’t even register him there, bends forward to whisper in his ear, “Mr. Jung, it’s time.”

You expect him to follow his bodyguard, but Jeffrey Jung is talking to you again and it takes you a second to focus in on that fact, what exactly he’s saying.

“Can you do me a favor and stay here? I’ll take a picture and sign as soon as I’m done, I promise.”

You nod, transfixed as he shoots you that uber-familiar smile. What, simply what, is going on here? Why have you just run into apparent mega-celebrity Jeffrey Jung at this run of the mill regular season Kings game, and why is he asking you a favor? Moreover, why are you now glued to this spot, like he’s cast some spell over you with his words?

Your section is literally up the stairs to your left, through the same entryway he just walked through, you literally could hand your ticket over to the usher from where you’re standing right now, but you can’t.

The announcer’s booming voice rings through the speakers above your head,

“Ladies and gentlemen, please stand and remove your hats to honor our country. Performing tonight’s national anthem, please welcome the current number one artist on Billboard, Jeffrey Jung!”

You’ve heard the Staples Center explode in cheers for Drake and Migos, for LeBron’s first game, even for when the Kings won their last Stanley Cup in 2014. That had all been the ruckus of a frenzied brouhaha, all enrapturing in their own exhausting ways. This is different. The roar of the crowd is deafening, large contingent of feminine trills audible from where you are, but it is all dosed with this effervescent glow of adoration.

They, well. They love him.

And he hasn’t even sung yet. What sort of voodoo has his song done on America?

The national anthem hasn’t changed, but you’re glued to the little TV monitor that’s on the wall above you. He sings it honestly, matter of factly, crisply enunciating each of the words without excessive embellishment. But it’s the way his eyes drip with affection as he gazes into his seats, in the utmost expression of gratitude. He easily could’ve been singing the most lovelorn song made in recorded history instead of the patriarchal tune.

He’s Medusa and the sirens melded together into one. You want your eyesight to wither away and your ears to plug forever, you want both of those senses to just go before you’re affected any further.

He comes strolling down the stairs only seconds later, like he’d just taken a lap around the rink and not performed the national anthem in front of twenty thousand belligerent fans. You don’t know why you’d picture a puffed out chest, some kind of swagger, and not the little wave he sends your way when he spots you still standing there.

And you wave back like an idiot, because what the fuck else are you supposed to do?

“You’re still here, great,” he gestures a tall brunette over, clearly pleased that you’ve stuck around like he requested. “John, come over here and take a picture of us.”

Before you register what’s going on, Jeffrey’s gently taking your phone out of your hand and passing it over to this John, who lines it up to take a photo. Normally, it’s the celebrity that’s awkward in these photo ops, but no, you’re definitely taking that role in this. Between the way your arms hang lamely at your sides and your totally shell-shocked expression, it makes for a comical photo.

Jeffrey, of course, salvages the image, with the warm way he throws his arm around your shoulders without a care, folding you neatly into the curve of his side, his bright smile flooding the zone with luminosity.

“Do you have anything for me to sign?” Your hands again move without you telling them to, handing over your printed ticket, which is conveniently the only paper good you have on your person. “Who should I make this out to?”

“Y/n.”

“So, y/n,” and really, you should not be watching his mouth form the syllables of your name. “How long have you been a Double J?”

You cough, startled by the sudden line of questioning, just lie y/n, just lie, do it!

“I, um, I am not… a Double J?”

“What?” Jeffrey’s head darts up in surprise at your confession, teeth biting at the crest of his lip in muted disappointment. “Oh, I thought you were a fan. I feel so dumb.”

He is truly too brilliantly him to ever look sad like this, you’re sure of it, so you literally stumble over yourself multiple times to give him the truth,

“No, I’m, I’m so, so sorry for making you feel dumb. My best friend showed me your video a few days ago and I recognized you from it. I do social media PR for Joshua Hong, he’s a forward on the Kings, actually he’s playing right now.Your national anthem was very nice, probably one of the best I’ve heard for a while. Oh fuck, I’m rambling now.”

You’re a train wreck, words spiraling out into this tornado of mishmash that is truly another level of embarrassing. You never get this visibly flustered, not even at the peak of your crush on Josh. Honestly, what the fuck.

He chuckles, a little sixteenth note of joy, “It’s okay, don’t worry.”

“I’m sorry,” your nails bite into the skin at the crease of your thumb, nervous habit manifesting itself. You admit it softly and reluctantly, “I think this is the first time I’ve ever been star struck.”

The chuckle turns into full-bellied laughter from the man across from you, complete with a nose crinkle and some very unflattering snorts, “Star struck? By me? I don’t believe that.”

This is decidedly not a lie and you don’t know why it’s something you’d admit. You’ve been around Josh’s teammates for two years now, have run into everyone from Rachael Ray to Leonardo fucking DiCaprio at some work event or another. You’d never, not ever, not once, not in the least, not in any way, not on your life, acted in this way.

“I mean, it’s weird, I’ve been in LA for so long I guess I got used to it.”

“You need to teach me your ways, because I almost fainted when I saw Keanu Reeves on Rodeo the other day,” Jeffrey tells you, instantly making him feel relatable to an incredible level. “Where did you say you worked again?”

You look down grimly at your work attire, feeling your severe bun pull at your scalp as you hold out your pinned ID, “USCA Sports. I work on Joshua Hong’s team.”

“USCA, huh?” He hums to himself as he contemplates your employee photo, giving you the strange urge to tell him you didn’t have time to fix your flyaways that day. “I guess I have a meeting with you tomorrow.”

He what?

Granted, because of this whole game detour and running into Jeffrey Jung thing, you haven’t exactly had the time to read Ten’s ten emails all with IMPORTANT PLEASE READ!!! glaring from the subject line. Mark must be involved in this somehow. You don’t know how, but you know he is.

“Oh, okay,” you brush it off nonchalantly. “I knew we were meeting people from R&C tomorrow, but didn’t realize it was you. That’s weird, but like, ultimately cool.”

“I don’t know much about it either, I mainly just go where my agent Johnny tells me to,” he gestures over to the same man who’d taken your picture earlier.

An enraged outcry from the crowd interrupts your conversation, the two of you take a pause to watch the replay of the disallowed goal on the TV. Once play resumes, you want the conversation to do so too,

“So, Jeffrey…”

“Jaehyun.”

“What?”

His red ears clash with the purple of his hair as his hands disappear into the sleeves of his jacket when he fidgets,

“Ah, Jeffrey is my middle name. An adopted stage name, if you will. The people who know me well usually call me Jaehyun.”

You’re suddenly a person who knows Jaehyun Jung. How?

“Jaehyun,” you address him properly, not wanting to disrespect this privilege he’s given you. “Korean, yeah?”

The smile he rewards you with, the ostentatiously glittering arc of his lips, is far too expensive of a prize. “Yeah, you’re like, one of the only people here who hasn’t had a problem with my name.”

You think of Mark, and his friendly immigrant parents, and the way he’d only gone by Mark after the first week of freshman year. Of course you wouldn’t have a problem with it.

“My friend who showed me your video is Korean. I hear him speaking it with his family all the time. Jeffrey because it’s easier to say, no doubt? Sometimes the industry is stupid like that.”

His mouth flattens into a line in displeasure, “Yeah, it seems like it.”

“You’ve been here for how long now?” You ask instead, not wanting his displeasure to linger any longer than it has to.

“I lived here until I was like a pre-teen? I forget exactly,” he continues to chat with you easily, like you’re catching up on lost time. “But it’ll be a year back at the end of April. Feels simultaneously like a lifetime and a nanosecond. You?”

You can give him the short of it all, just say the number of years and go, but you’re now a person who knows him. That means he has to know you, too.

“I’ve been working out here since I was twenty-two, but I moved out to LA as a kid to live with my aunt and uncle. Long story.”

It is too long of a story to tell Jaehyun though, one that takes up far too much of his already precious and limited time. When you don’t elaborate any further, he must pick up on your apprehension because he offers,

“Sure, I mean, I respect that, that’s probably an important part of who you are.”

You’re so struck by that sympathetic comment, by someone keeping their distance and not trying to pry like so many people do — like someone else did when Mark had accidentally brought it up once — that you want to thank him in some way. You don’t want to just say the words, and offering money is tacky, so you blurt the first thing you think of,

“Do you like hockey, Jaehyun?”

“What? Oh, yeah, I love it. Spent my formative years in Long Island as a huge Islanders fan. I’ve always wanted to sing the national anthem at a hockey game.”

He looks so happy then, cheeks tinged with pink as he revels in his accomplishment, that you really get it, exactly why everyone had cheered so loudly for him at the beginning of the night.

You flip the ticket he’d signed for you back over so he can see the seat designation on the front, “So, I know you probably are leaving or have fancy VIP tickets. But a perk of working for a player is that I can pick any seats I want. Want to get in the thick of it and be complete hooligans?”

Jaehyun doesn’t even get a chance to answer before Johnny is shoving a phone in his face, muttering lowly so you can’t overhear. You can’t see his face, to read if he’s annoyed or disappointed, but you do hear his apology,

“Ugh, I’m sorry. I’d really love to, but you’re right. I have to leave.”

You know intimately what a celebrity schedule is like. How could you have even thought to have asked the most popular singer around to sit and shoot the shit at a hockey game like you were old pals? Simply foolish.

“Oh, okay.”

Then his warm hand is on your shoulder, burning down into you through the starched blazer you have on, and he should not be as close as he is now, close enough that you can smell whatever Chanel influenced flavor of cologne he has on.

“Hey listen, I will see you tomorrow, first off. And second, you can put me down for a rain check on the hooliganery. Cross my heart.”

Jaehyun uses his thumb to cross an X over his sternum, then flicks it out in a thumbs up towards you. In a flash, his security surrounds him in a flurry to safely escort him out of the Staples Center.

Just because he’s gone doesn’t mean the spell he cast over you earlier has dissipated with him.

Because you’re hearing your ten year old self warbling a made up nursery rhyme, two sets of little fingers crossing at your chest in exactly the same way, twin voices high and giggly with optimism still somehow present, yellow and tart, a slice of lemon pie, cross my heart and hope to die!

Even though cross my heart is such a pervasive and widely-used phrase, you can’t let go of it, it lends itself to that same incessant itch you’d felt before. Even though you stay in the receiving area for an extra half an hour taking photos of Josh and Mikey Anderson laughing together, you can’t keep your unoccupied hand from lingering by the same spot on your chest. And even though Josh invites you to sleep over afterwards, you can’t defend yourself against that molecule of deja vu any longer.

You’re a person who knows Jaehyun Jung, but you’re not entirely sure that only started today.

—

You’re the first person to arrive to the agency dinner the next night, but you’re actually not, because there’s a little slip of paper waiting for you by your name card.

“What is this?” You mutter out loud, because there’s no one around.

“A rain check.”

You nearly leap out of your heels at the surprise sound, turning to see Jaehyun appearing out of nowhere beside you. Even though you know he has a stylist, it’s hard not to feel jealous at how effortlessly put together he looks right now, sport coat over a plain white v neck over acid wash jeans, the twinkle of a gold earring in his ear you hadn’t noticed before.

“Oh! Oh my god, I didn’t see you there,” you’re unable to keep the affected giggles out of your voice, both at being caught off guard and being caught off guard by him. “It’s a what? Let me read.”

You hold up the tiny slip of paper to your eyes, squinting to read in the dark light of the restaurant’s back room. It’s definitely his handwriting, refined and easily recognizable from the video you’d watched:

I, Jaehyun Jung, promise to become a full hooligan with y/n, on the date and game of her choice. The definition of full hooligan encompasses donning an obnoxious jersey, copious beer consumption, and any and all trash talking that is allowed within my public image.

A very loud cackle escapes your lips at the mental picture of pretty boy Jaehyun three sheets to the wind, trying to chirp at the players with the hardened hockey fans surrounding him. You can’t imagine phrases like hey fuckface, my left nut dangles better than you coming out of him at all.

“How do we have the same definition of full hooligan, Jaehyun?”

His eyes twinkle merrily as you continue to laugh, so entertained by him. He glances down at the place card right in front of him, and then the one immediately to his left. The maître d' had shown you right to your seat and Jaehyun had showed up right after, so you haven’t had a chance to see exactly who else is joining you at the meeting. He pauses, just a fraction of a second, then switches the settings so he can sit right across from you.

He lazily lowers himself onto his chair, shaking his hair back in a mock preen that only makes you laugh harder, “I told you. Hockey fan. How was the rest of your night?”

Jaehyun definitely needs to know zero percent of what exactly you and Josh got up to last night. You’re grateful for the dark lighting, because you don’t need him to see the flush of your neck, either. It helps that the other team members have begun to file in, nodding mutely at either you or your companion. And lucky for you, he’s not asking for details.

“Decent. You?”

There’s an expectation of an echoed but vague formality, a nice, or good, but Jaehyun blows a breath out of his mouth, then admits, “Pretty mediocre, not going to lie. We’ve been trying to come up with ideas for a music video, but nothing’s really working for me yet.”

“Music video?”

“Yeah, for sunshine. The management team wants more than just a lyric video, but like I said, nothing the company is floating really resonates with me.”

It’s refreshingly honest from someone like him, he’s obviously not inclined to keep up whatever shiny, tinny sheen of gold plating that keeps his celebrity aura in place. It jabs at you, this little droplet of sadness for him, that he’s frustrated in this way.

“And what do you want?” You ask, because it’s obvious this song means something to him, he must have some kind of idea of what he’s picturing.

The glass of water he’s holding stops halfway to his lips, teeth pulling at the skin of his lips in the same nervous habit you saw at the arena. “Oh. No one’s asked me that before.”

Classic, classic LA. You feel bad for him, really, you do.

You purse your lips, hoping no one at this dinner today will make you madder on his behalf, “You’re lucky I’m looking out for you, then.”

Jaehyun coughs a little on the sip of water he’s just taken, wiping at his face with a napkin as he idles away in thought, “I think… Okay, I do want a music video, I just want one that fits the song, but everything they’ve been floating has just felt so wrong.”

“How so?” If you want to get him talking about this in the right way, you have to ask him the right questions

“Okay, so, most videos are incredibly extravagant these days. They have these ludicrous outfits and stacks of money everywhere and just ooze sex out of every inch of film.” He lists these things with a thinly veiled air of disgust but it makes sense, with who he is. “And there’s nothing wrong with any of those things. But this song is… not that. I mean, this is about someone I knew as a long time ag—,”

“Jeff, you’re here already babe!”

“Y/n.”

Fuck this interruption, and fuck Ten for not including any of this in his TEN emails.

Because behind the returning maître d' is not just Josh and Ten, with Johnny and some of Jaehyun’s team like you expected. It’s Josh and Lia, followed closely by Wendy.

“Oh my fuck,” you involuntarily curse under your breath. “Fuck outta here.”

Jaehyun clearly catches your spew of profanity, because he turns to look at you, but that gesture dooms you because it casts all the nonexistent spotlights of the room upon you. That makes it impossible for your cousin to miss you, and you know she’s fighting herself when she greets you coolly,

“Y/n.”

This is a practiced routine, formal smile, slight incline of the head, ninety-five percent less vitriol in your tone.

“Wendy.”

She’s as beautiful as ever, sunny blonde hair cascading to her waist in a tumble of curls,  voice high and clear, black blazer dress matching Jaehyun’s. You try to think of how long it’s been since you’ve spoken to her in person, and you can only come up with last year’s Oscar after-party, when you’d literally sprinted out of the women’s bathroom to avoid a conversation with her.

Jaehyun glances at the actress next to him, back to you, back to her in this comical back and forth that you would’ve laughed at, at any other time, “Do you two… know each other?”

The reply spits out of you in an instant, “Yup.”

You had to make sure you answered first, because you know what would’ve happened otherwise. The first time you dipped your toe into the world of Hollywood after your graduation, when you’d worked for a soccer player that was consulting on one of Wendy’s TV shows, the same exchange had happened. Only then, Wendy had lied and told Tiffany that she had no idea who you were.

And, of course, naive and tender-hearted, you let her get away with it. Now, you’re too hardened to let her try.

Wendy cowers a bit when your eyebrow shoots up, a defiant try it if you dare gesture, and she grasps his bicep as she reveals in a saccharinely nice tone,

“Yeah, Jeff, she’s my cousin!”

Jaehyun’s mouth opens in shock, then he laughs in with a splitting grin, “Oh what? Wow! That’s crazy!”

“Yeah, crazy,” you parrot back dully, stepping over to do the perfunctory ‘air kiss that no one wants’ with your cousin. “I had no idea that you two were dating.”

Josh overhears what you say and gives you this look like, what are you talking about, but you can’t focus on him when Jaehyun’s looking so thrilled with everything that’s going on. If only he knew.

“This is like, a new thing, I guess,” he’s talking so fast at you. “We’re not exclusive but it’s cool. I’m happy.”

“Hello, everyone!”

The details of Jaehyun’s relationship with your cousin are cut short by the flourishing entrance of Max Shim, all dolled up in his finest Versace.

You gulp nervously. The fact that Max is here is not a good sign. Yes, he is in charge of the division that represents both Lia and Wendy, so it does make sense he’s here. Even though you’ve only met Lia’s agent’s boss’s boss once before — at that first meeting where it was decided that Lia and Josh’s mutualistic fake relationship would be put into place — you know what he’s a harbinger of.

He’s going to blow everything up tonight, you know he is. After all, when Josh had broached him with the idea of ending things with Lia, apparently the screaming match went on for hours before Max finally relented.

Ten stabs a harsh elbow into your side from his place to your right, hissing, “Did you know? Why didn’t you tell me so I could look good to meet Jeffrey Jung?!”

“I didn’t know!” You whisper back, mentally scanning back through your various correspondences and coming up with nothing. “It wasn’t in any of your emails, so I can see you didn’t, either!”

“Oh my god,” he moans. “We’re done for.”

“Thank you all for being here,” Max greets the entire group once you’ve all settled in. “We’ll cut to the chase so we can enjoy our dinners after in peace. With the impending release of Wake Me Before You’re Gone in three weeks, we have a unique opportunity to boost the advancement of all our clients.”

Johnny arranges some notecards in front of him, then clears his throat, “Being in a fully public relationship with Ms. Shon will allow Mr. Jung to increase the length of exposure sunshine in the moonlight has in the forefront of people’s minds. And of course, it is expected that Double Js will flock to the movie theater in droves to spot his cameo.”

Wendy and Jaehyun smile at each other, and it all comes together for you when you spot Lia’s agent, Yeji, at the other end of the table. Of course this is what this is.

She is in tune with both Johnny and Max as she reads off of something on her phone,

“Mr. Hong brings the crossover appeal, a different demographic of fans who might’ve not otherwise checked out the movie. Having Ms. Choi around simply boosts his public recognition, as it has been doing for the past six months.”

You’re annoyed that you and Ten have been left out of negotiations like this but there’s nothing you can do now.  You’re just vehicles to aid this parasitism, this grotesque back and forth between the big power players of two different industries.

“Right,” Max appears immensely pleased with himself, smug smirk pasted on as he takes a sip of his wine. “America loves fresh, young couples more than anything right now, they’ll eat the four of you right up.”

“The four of us?” Lia pipes up, and you’re glad she did because you were caught off guard by that phrase, too.

“Yes, of course,” Yeji nods in affirmation. “You and Ms. Shon are the billed co-stars of Wake Me Up. What better way to promote the film than having the four of you out in LA, all cozied up? Dinners, hockey games, the premiere in two weeks, all perfect opportunities to show yourselves off.”

“We’ll hash out the details for you with your individual teams, but you’re all young and in love, so I can’t imagine it’ll be too hard for you, right?”

Leave it to Max Shim to purposefully leave out the details of a self-orchestrated fake relationship. But you suppose Josh and Lia’s status is on a need to know basis.

But it’s more than that. Yes, you told Mark in your own blasé way that you and Josh will happen when it happens, but you hadn’t been anticipating this. Another three weeks, basically another month at least? And then all the international press tours and premieres? You’re patient, but the stitches are starting to rip for you.

Especially with the way Lia clearly is so thrilled by the idea of spending time with both her ‘boyfriend’ and her best friend. With the way Josh isn’t even trying to glance over, to offer some sort of reassurance. With the way Jaehyun raises his eyebrows at you in a would you look at this? kind of way. With the way Wendy is as displeased as you are, teeth silently gritting together.

“They floated the idea by me a couple times but I guess Josh decided to do this on his own,” Ten mutters lowly as soon as people start to eat, put off by all of this as much as you are.

That is news to you, not once had Joshua even mentioned this sort of thing, not even in passing.  You thought he’d trust you enough to at least discuss the pros and cons first.

“He… what?”

“Yeah, I am just as in the dark about this as you are,” Ten stabs a piece of chicken on his fork, then sighs as his tone inches back from how dark it was. “But in the scheme of things, this isn’t so bad.”

“Mmm no,” you admit, because orchestrating fake dates for Instagram is one of the things you’re best at. “But you know the saying.”

Ten laughs as he clinks his wine glass with yours but you’re decidedly not laughing when he declares,

“There’s always the calm before explosive diarrhea.”

—

“You’re in a mood,” Joshua points out as soon as the two of you are out of the car, the oppressive heat of Runyon Canyon already beating down on you.

He’s already forgone a shirt, a choice that really shouldn’t affect you anymore. You put your sunglasses on so it’s not as easy for him to read your eyes.

“What? No, I’m not.”

“You didn’t say a word in the car and you were glaring daggers,” he leans in over you, propping himself up on one elbow so he can mock-shiver. “I could practically feel them.”

“Is there a problem?”

The two of you hadn’t even discussed this newly-formed love square since Max Shim had announced it at dinner the other night. He’d only gone in guns-blazing as you and Ten planned coffee dates and hiking excursions.

“I should be asking you that,” he retorts. “Are you really that upset about a few more weeks with Lia?”

And it’s exactly that sort of question that makes you go, “I, ugh, it’s not the weeks, per se. I mean, how would you feel if I had another boyfriend!”

In the two years that you’ve worked for him, more specifically, the two years that you’ve liked Joshua, you’ve never dated anyone else, for obvious reasons. You’ve never actually spent much time contemplating what sort of reaction you could garner out of Josh if he were to compete with someone else for your affections. Maybe it’d finally force him to do something, for him to break out his guitar and send you your favorite sunflowers and actually let you bloom in the sun.

“Well first off, I’m not your boyfriend. But you’d never do that to me.”

He bends over to kiss you for just a second once he sees that everyone else is still out of sight in the car, and does an absolutely piss-poor job noticing how tense you get. I’m not your boyfriend.

Thank you. For the reminder.

“Anyways, another month really is nothing. We’ll do these dates, which you’re so good at, and the premiere will be a smash,” Joshua says as he alluringly runs his fingers through his hair before fitting his baseball cap back on, but his compliment can’t improve your officially soured mood. “I’ll finally be seen as too lowly for Lia, and we’ll go our mutual ways so she can date an A-lister. I’m just some guy on the Kings and I’m confident enough to admit that I’m not at that level.”

“Wowwww, huge admission from LA’s darling,” you deadpan sarcastically, nose wrinkling at the dregs of cockiness he usually keeps hidden so well.

Joshua can sense you’re getting irritated, so he lays the sweet talk on thick, “You know she doesn’t compare to you in any way.”

You smile under false pretenses, but that’s probably the worst thing he could say. Lia, you have to admit, is funny and charming and beautiful and if you ran in the same circles, you would’ve wanted to hang out with her in some capacity. You know his feelings are only for you, but she deserves more than that.

“Ms. Choi!” You call, and Josh’s eyes nearly bug out of his head. You wait a second, another, enough time to get him starting to sweat, and then you continue, “Come here so I can get a picture of you two.”

“You’ll pay for that later,” he growls under his breath, clearly intending to be seductive in some way. You just brush him away from you so you can capture a candid shot of Lia handing him a water bottle.

“How long have you two been together?”

You legitimately choke on your own breath when you see Jaehyun there, half because of the wording of his question and half because he has also forgotten his shirt in the car. His low-slung gym shorts, Dodgers cap, and scrap of yellow something around his wrist does not qualify as an outfit. What is with these men?!

“Excuse me, what?”

Jaehyun hands you a water bottle, but seems to think your return query is because you hadn’t heard him, not because you think he’s somehow picked up on any other vibes Josh had given off,

“Like, how long have you been Josh’s social media person? You seem close.”

“This is my second season with the team.” You can still remember your first day with Josh, how his pretty smile had healed your affected heart up so nicely in an instant.

“But you’ve been here for longer than that, right?” He thinks for a bit, “You said five years, right?”

“Yeah, you remembered?” You can’t but smile, in the kind of way that your cheeks hurt a little bit, and it’s not because of the sunburn. He is brighter than the sun, anyways. “I did an internship with the Dodgers in college, and my first job was with Tiffany Hwang of the Strikers. I worked with Kyle Kuzma for a year, which was really fun, then a very short stint with CY Park before he was traded.”

You mention that last bit as quickly as you can but Jaehyun picks up on it, and it is only then that you remember he’s a hockey fan who would know about him.

“Wait, CY Park as in Chanyeol Park? He’s on the Islanders now, I remember being stoked when he was traded from the Kings.”

“Yup.”

That is all you say, because you can’t exactly say what you want to.

Something like, Yes, CY Park as in Chanyeol Park, as in your girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend, as in the same guy I liked that my cousin dated, even though she knew I liked him. But you probably don’t know that, especially not that last bit, because you’re still good and trusting and she would never tell you something like that.

“That’s so cool,” he sighs dreamily. You have to remind yourself that he self-admittedly still gets starstruck, and then you have to remind yourself that you can’t find it cute.

“I guess,” you shrug, thankful that your bad memories of the fiasco with CY don’t really affect you anymore. “Anyways, I knew Ten through connections, so it was easy enough to get the job with Josh once he was called up to the main team.”

And by that you mean, it was easy enough to fall for Josh after CY and Wendy ripped my heart out like that. He was there and so handsome and so nice that you really felt like it was fate that you had met him.

“I’m glad you knew Ten through connections too, because otherwise I wouldn’t have met you,” Jaehyun muses lightly, teasingly, in a way that scatters the blush in an arc across your cheekbones. The gratitude is simmering in your heart as well, for him, for what exactly, you don’t know.

You wave him off as you reach for your AirPods, wanting to get this hike on the road so you can get home to a bath faster.

“Wait,” he notices what you’re doing and asks, “aren’t you coming on the hike with us?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I’m coming on the hike,” you answer, glancing past him at Josh and Lia holding hands as they make their way up the path, at Wendy and her manager Joy looking at something on her phone. “ But I don’t have anyone to be in a loving relationship with, so I get the honor of listening to music while you guys talk.”

You don’t even get Ten or Mark to walk with. It’s just you, like it’s always been.

He chortles at your sudden, bleak comment, not understanding the context. Then he cranes his neck to see your phone, “What are you listening to then?”

“Rap. You know, Lil Baby, Future, things of that nature,” you say the last part in this mock British accent, thinking that Jaehyun’s head is firmly ensconced in the pop world. “I doubt you know or even care to know.”

“Jeff!” Wendy’s voice rings out from up the trail.

“Coming!” He calls back, stumbling a bit as he tries to run up the canyon backwards to prolong his conversation with you. “Look up Shut Up by DaBaby if you’re looking for something new. But I also know a different song you could listen to!”

You can’t help the laughter that bubbles out of you, clear and genuine, because of course Jaehyun secretly likes the same music you do. You lift your phone up to snap an image of him, and he sticks his tongue out at precisely the moment you capture the picture.

“Stop self promoting!” You shout at him, shaking your head in disbelief at how cheeky he is.

“Stop acting like you don’t want to listen to my music! You can’t fight the Jaehyun!”

The desert dust clogs itself into your throat as he turns around to sprint up to his date.

It’s not the blustery wind or the scorching sun that pricks tears into the corners of your eye. It’s a nanodrop of nostalgia, of a hurried escape, of a park swing in the dark of night. Of a little laugh and skinned knees and a funny friend with a polaroid camera. Of a shared cupcake, one that was more than fifty percent yours, of your protests otherwise, of a certain strong declaration.

You can’t fight me!

Later, Mark sends you the E!news post, then a post from Wendy. The first reads,

@enews: EXCLUSIVE: A foursome we’re envious of everyone in. Wendy Shon and Jeffrey Jung were seen hiking Runyon Canyon with the ever lovable Joshua Hong and Lia Choi. Hey! Notice us! We just want to be best friends, too. Click the link in our bio to find out just how much fun these two couples had.

The comments are overflowing with dual heads of delight and expected jealousy, and this is the first time you don’t feel flattered by the reception of your work. This is the first time you feel like you’re digging your claws into something that shouldn’t be touched, like you shouldn’t be playing a role in Jaehyun’s relationship like you are.

He’s clearly happy with your cousin, no matter what you think of her, and it’s not your place to have any sort of opinion about it. Especially when you see what she’s put up on her profile.

@monday_tuesday_wendy: had an unbeleafable time w this one today @jeffjung

When you look at the picture of Jaehyun — the same one you’d taken yourself and sent over to her — in front of the trees in his shirtless glory, dimples flashing, pink tongue out, you can’t help but think of a certain person.

You’ve only felt this kind of earnest energy, these pure intentions, from one boy, one that you knew a long time ago.

—

You’d given Mark your plus one to the Wake Me Before You’re Gone premiere, but you’d told him it was under the condition that he be on his best behavior.

Despite that, you’re not surprised when Mark hits his head on the car door once he sees who’s waiting inside with you, “Oh, oh my god.”

“Mark,” you don’t have look up to know his open mouth must be a mile deep. “Please control yourself!”

He grabs the collar of your practical navy sheath dress and practically drags you out of the window so he can whisper in your ear, “Y/n, my best friend, can you give me a minute to freak out. A minute! Thirty seconds, anything.”

“Don’t ask me, ask him,” you mutter darkly so your companion doesn’t overhear.

There’s a carefree, “Ask me what?” and Mark physically pushes you to the side so he can peer inside the car.

If you had access to a choir and a fog machine, you could’ve put together a rendition of Heaven’s angels that would’ve won you an Oscar. But, really, it’s Jaehyun doing all the work in his pastel pink suit jacket, lilac tresses neatly slicked back, small golden leaf pinned in his earlobe. Simply observing him lounging there in the backseat of your car, inviting smile on his face, you almost dissolve into the seat in some sort of impaired attraction, the same way you had when your company car had rolled to a stop in front of his fancy downtown townhouse.

Why had Johnny decided to take a route to the premiere that took him directly through traffic, you don’t know, but you suppose you owe him a debt of gratitude for allowing you this vision.

“Jeffrey, this is Mark. The Mark….” you tilt your head pointedly to your friend, trying to subtly recall the dozens of stories Jaehyun had managed to pry out of you on your way to and from dates. The recollection of your time at UCLA had been edited, of course, all mentions of Wendy removed for your sanity’s sake, but Jaehyun is well aware of who Mark is.

His face splits into this ear-to-ear grin, and he holds out his hand to smack Mark’s, “What’s up man, call me Jaehyun.”

You bend towards him, a foolish move that douses you with his exhilarating presence, all frosted over with his familiar Chanel, and whisper, “He wants to know if he can have a minute to fanboy over you.”

Jaehyun’s lips form a round o, and then his eyes disappear in mirth as he laughs,  “You can fanboy over me for the rest of your life if you want, I don’t care.”

Mark heaves himself into the car, throwing himself in the middle of the backseat between you and Jaehyun, and though you roll your eyes, his excitement is endearing to you. Even more so is the way Jaehyun’s going along with it.

As the car starts up again, you take out your phone, making a big deal out of the action, “I’ll set a timer. Go.”

And Mark takes off, flows of fury activated,

“Okay, holy shit I can’t believe I’m in the car with the Jeff-no, Jaehyun Jung. I can’t believe it, me, Mark Lee, here in the car with you. You’re pulling off that pink so well I can’t even oh my gOD my Soundcloud friends are never going to let me live this down but I don’t care it’s fucking Jaehyun Jung. I have seriously listened to your song like. I don’t know. Ten thousand times. No, a hundred thousand times! Okay, I’m done haha.”

Mark’s chest is heaving with effort by the time his impassioned monologue has come to a close, and the brightness in Jaehyun’s face then could’ve honestly provided power to a thousand environmentally-unconscious LA homes.

“You’ve got twelve seconds left,” you deadpan, just to nag at him a little for making you sit through this, but Mark is fully satisfied.

“I’m good.”

“Wait, you’re supposedly her best friend but have you gotten her to listen to sunshine with you one of those hundred thousand times?” Jaehyun gasps dramatically, like Mark has committed a personal misdeed against him, and he smirks at you over Mark’s head.

“Don’t be mad at me, it’s not for lack of trying!” Mark whines to the other man, before shaking you back and forth by your shoulders like a rag doll. “Listen to it, y/n, I can’t let you ruin this for me!”

“I’m kidding, she should listen to it only when she wants to,” Jaehyun muses softly, picking up the way you and Mark easily play with each other. “Now I see why you two are friends.”

You throw your arm around Mark, ruffling his hair until he starts to squeal in protest, “Friends til the sparkly end, right Mark?”

Jaehyun stares at you then, the car falling into a pointed second of silence, his eyes mapping out a constellation of something you can’t quite make out on your face as he asks,

“Wait, what did you say?”

“Friends to the sparkly end,” Mark chimes in. “It means like, we’ll be friends until we die and become stars. Then we’ll be all sparkly together up in heaven.”

You’d taught him that phrase over beers during orientation week freshman year, just a silly thing you’d once come up with in the throes of your childhood loneliness at home. But he’d loved it and used it throughout the years of your friendship and now is apparently teaching it to Jaehyun.

“I wish I had someone like that,” Jaehyun admits, more to the window than to either you or Mark.

“Hmm?”

“I mean I’m friends with Johnny, and with the people on my team, but I haven’t spoken to anyone from my hometown in a long time,” there they go again, his teeth gnawing on his lip in anxiety as he loses himself in the memories. “My college girlfriend broke up with me when I moved to LA. I don’t think I speak to any other friends from college except this kid Lucas, who only is in the States every once in a while.”

On this, you can relate, really, you can. You’re lucky to have Mark now, to have Ten and Josh and Tae, but until you got to UCLA, you were decidedly friendless. Walking to high school and back alone, no date to the prom, no one to hang out with on the weekends. You suppose that is why it’s hard for you to let people in now, why you revert back to business you as often as you do. Because you can’t deal with that crushing disappointment any more.

“Wait, what the fuck?” Mark is stunned, his outgoing mind not truly wrapping around what Jaehyun’s saying. “That’s so sad.”

“Yeah, I know,” the despondency radiating from Jaehyun is just bringing it all back, the loneliness, the deep desire for one hand of friendship to extend out to you. “The price of fame, I guess. I guess I expected the opposite, for them to be clamoring for perks or side effects of whatever celebrity, if I can use that word, that I have. But no, they, they kind of just faded away.”

This is what’s truly unfair.

You can sort of understand why no one ever flocked to you in your youth, you were too shy and too closed off, not willing to give up anything about yourself to anyone else. But it’s so obvious that Jaehyun is the kind of person who’d be so open, who’d be friendly and earnest and the perfect addition to any friend group. They should’ve wanted him around forever.

They’re all jealous, you decide, they have to be. You don’t know who they exactly are, but they’re in the wrong.

“He’s in the bro squad, y/n,” Mark declares without hesitation. “I’m amending the Constitution right now. He has to be!”

“The… bro squad?” Jaehyun looks to you for clarification, and you don’t know why you so deeply blush when you meet his eyes.

“Erm, it’s me and Mark’s chat name. Not! My idea, I’d like to make that clear,” you stutter. “But, yes, go ahead.”

Mark is overjoyed with happiness at you giving him permission to add Jaehyun into a group chat, and even though he’s doing his best to hide it, Jaehyun can’t stop glancing at you out of the corner of his eye.

You want to know if he’d laugh at the funny memes Mark sends you, or if he’d be down to discuss the latest episodes of whatever dating show is recently out on Hulu. Mark had been firmly against doing any of this with Josh after you’d suggested it once — only sparingly using the chat group comprised of him, you, Ten, and Josh — and this is such a difference.

“This is my number,” Mark types out his digits into Jaehyun’s phone book, then snaps a picture of himself to add in too. “Call me whenever you’re feeling lonely and we’ll watch hockey or something.”

“You like hockey, too?”

“Like hockey?,” Mark scoffs, before pretending to stickhandle with an invisible hockey stick. “I’m from Canada! It’s in my blood.”

“Yes, my brother!” Jaehyun practically bellows, the two of them leaping at each other in the bro-iest of manly bro hugs, even in the tiny backseat of the car.

“I’ll give you two some privacy,” you tease, getting out of the car when you notice it’s rolled into the reserved drop-off lot for celebrity attendees.

You can’t put a finger on it, why it makes you so happy to see Jaehyun and Mark getting along, but the breathtaking smile he gives you once he’s sidled up to where you’re loitering must be at least half of it.

“What a funny kid,” he murmurs, eyes following Mark as he skips along to the entrance of the red carpet. “I like him.”

“Liked him enough to let him call you Jaehyun, huh?” You point out softly, nudging your elbow into his, the silk of his jacket dancing across your skin in a cool foxtrot.

It was obvious enough for you to spot just how easily Jaehyun had allowed Mark to call him by his given name, compounded even further by the fact that your cousin still calls him Jeffrey. After what he’d revealed about his past in the car, how he’d been a member of the lonely hearts club in more ways than one, you want this to work out for him.

Jaehyun bends at the waist, moving his face forward so it’s practically level with yours, allowing him unadulterated access to gaze at you in that particular way that he does. Then, he says,

“I felt like I knew him, all because of you. So, thank you.”

You’re welcome, you’re welcome, he is so, so welcome. You’d introduce each and every one of the people you hold dear to him if only to make him happy like this once again.

“Y/n!” Joshua is gesturing you over from behind this flamboyant set of artificial plants, white bow tie slightly askew, and you wave at him to let him know you’re coming.

“Sorry!” You tap Jaehyun on the arm in goodbye, capturing one last snapshot of him like this. “See you inside!”

You wait for him to turn on his heel and catch up to Mark, before you allow yourself to creep over to where Joshua had been before. You can’t see him from where you are, the foliage is really massive to an unnecessary degree, but then an arm snatches you out of nowhere.

Before you know it, Joshua has you pressed up against the wall of the theatre and is kissing you, mouth hot and open. It takes you a second to register what’s actually going on, and you melt into his arms out of habit. You allow him to kiss you a few more times, his hands everywhere from your hair to your waist with no lull in the action, but when he makes his way down to kiss your neck, you push at his chest, holding him out away from your body.

“What are you doing?” You question him sternly, taking a moment to glance down either side of you, relieved to find no one else around. You like kissing him, you do, and kissing him in public is nice for once, but this doesn’t feel right.

“I missed you,” he attempts another kiss, but you hold your arm out steady, earning you a frustrated pout. “Didn’t you miss me?”

“Yeah, but Josh, we’ll get caught, don’t you think?!” You partially whisper, partially yell, so he knows just how serious you are. You cannot get caught fooling around at an event like this. You would’ve preferred showing up on his arm, but standing at a professional distance away would be better than this.

“Doesn’t matter,” he dismisses you as he bends down, much in the same manner as Jaehyun had just done. But you are not a fraction of a percent as enchanted now as you were then, because instead of intoxicating Chanel, you pick out the eau of Jack Daniel’s.

“Joshua Hong,” you scold, using his full name. “Are you drunk already?”

“Maybe,” he tries to sidestep your inquiry, but your fiery glare sends him unraveling in a second. “Okay fine, we only had practice this morning so Petey and Zhong came over to pregame with me.”

Ugh, you can’t count the number of times Ten has warned Josh not to go overboard with the off-day drinking, especially after he had shown up late to a practice last year and nearly got into a screaming match with Coach McLellan because of it. Never mind the fact that Chenle is only a rookie and should not be indulging in these habits because of Josh.

“For the love of god,” you smack him in the chest once, and then another time to get it through him. “Pull yourself together man! At least try to look sober so I can have something good to post tonight!”

“Wait, are you mad?” Joshua asks you dumbly, like you’d just lightly smacked him and raised your voice in some attempt at fun.

“No,” you grit out from between your clenched jaw, knowing that you can’t provoke a fight by admitting your true feelings. “But don’t start. I’ll see you on the carpet.”

You leave him there to take your place among the cameras, where you belong.

You get the shots you need while he walks the red carpet, because apparently Josh is as professional at acting as he is at hockey. But you don’t let him walk next to you into the theater, and you certainly don’t sit next to him. He doesn’t get a reward after whatever the fuck that was outside by the plants.

The movie is a cute little chick flick, something that the greater Netflix community will eat up when it’s officially released. You’ll probably watch it again with Mark after a bottle of wine or two, and idly wonder if Jaehyun would be interested in joining in on something like that. He’s probably the kind of loyal boyfriend that would want to watch his girlfriend’s movie as many times as he can in support. Must be nice.

You spend an embarrassing amount of time at the after party trying to find Jaehyun. It’s not until when Lana Condor, in a loofah of a pink dress, moves to her left that you spot him, alone at a table by the bar.

You saunter over, tequila sunrise in hand, and plop right down on the chair next to him.

You can see Wendy gallivanting across the way with Lia, the two of them in twin yellow tulle gowns, a color that sparks some recollection in your mind. You truly wonder if this all-encompassing song was written about your cousin, and you finally feel comfortable enough with the singer to ask him about it straight up.

“Soooooo,” you drag out the o in so, getting him to lean forward in anticipation. Then you drop the bomb, “is your girlfriend the mysterious girl with the yellow ribbon?”

The corner of Jaehyun’s mouth quirks, like he hadn’t been expecting that, and he takes a long drink of whiskey. “She’s not my girlfriend, I told you that we were just dating. But you know about that?”

About that means you know about the mysterious girl from his past, which you do.

“I know enough, but I must confess, Mark was right. I still haven’t listened to the whole thing.”

“Oof,” he lets out a deep breath as he mimics a knife going in his chest. And then he hams up the worst cockney accent you’ve ever heard. “Riiight, Lil Baby, Future, things of that nature.”

“Hey!” You chide him as he makes fun of you openly, recalling exactly what you said to him that day at Runyon. “That’s not funny.”

“Yes, it totally is,” he manages to get out between full peals of his enchanting laughter. He sobers up at a pace so fast it gives you comprehension whiplash. “I guess there’s always a chance it could be her, there’s this one picture of her that makes me think it is, but I… I’m not sure.”

You’ve been jealous of your cousin for many different things over the years, but his gaze on her right now, equal parts convinced and unsure, is perhaps the one thing of hers you’ve coveted the most.

“What is the picture?”

“Ah, I don’t have it on this phone, it’s on my computer at home. She’s in this yellow dress, some kind of pattern on it.” He closes his eyes, like he can picture it, and there’s something you can picture too.

You and Wendy, mouths set together in identical frowns, on the step of your aunt and uncle’s house. Wendy in this pink dress, covered in roses, and you in the same dress, only it’s in yellow. And covered in dandelions.

“She probably stole it from me,” you rumble to yourself in misplaced frustration. That had been your favorite dress!

Jaehyun’s eyes go from hazy to searing in a flash, yanking your heart from your chest straight into the trench of your throat at the intensity of his stare as he chokes out,

“What?”

“Ah, nothing,” you quickly move past your old family gripes, trying to flush his reaction out of your mind as fast as you can. “Are you having fun tonight?”

His fingers clench around his glass once more, then he relaxes, easy-going Jaehyun again, “A little out of my depth. That was my first red carpet, you know.”

“Oh, what! Jaehyun, congratulations.”

“It’s no big deal,” he shrugs, but the color is already dotting his cheeks, cherry tomatoes sprouting on his fair skin. “By the way, are you coming to this dinner thing that I have scheduled this weekend?”

“Ah, I’m away for the weekend,” you grimace, thinking of the scheduled event in your phone you’d been trying to avoid thinking of. “Family thing.”

Truthfully, you have no idea what he has planned because you know his girlfriend, er—date will also be out of town. No time to go on a planned date when there’s scheduled torture to be had, eh?

“Hey perfect timing,” Ten collapses into the last empty seat at the table, wiping some errant sweat away from his forehead. “Is Josh going home with you for that?”

And truthfully, again, you’re not even sure if Josh knows you’re going away this weekend.

“No, why?”

Ten is scrolling through both his phones at the same time, and this man clearly needs a drink. “Oh, just a transaction on his account I can’t figure out, but he’s been helping Zhong with some of his flights so it’s probably that. No worries.”

You shrug, because that’s not something unusual for Joshua to be doing, but Ten really looks stressed out of his mind. Jaehyun must pick up on the same vibes that Ten’s giving off, because you both look at each other, then glance at the bar. Only to be met with the visual of Joshua, tie tied around his head, double fisting two bottles of champagne as he dances with some guys you don’t recognize. Great.

“Should he be doing that?” Jaehyun muses, entertained.

“Oh god, no,” Ten groans, reaching over to finish the last dregs of tequila in your cup before he yanks you up from the table. “Let’s go, y/n.”

“I’m sorry, Jaehyun,” it’s really unfair that this is the second time you have to apologize to him tonight, but this is just another duty of yours. “Have fun this weekend, I’ll see you soon!”

You reach your inebriated crush first, and manage to get one of his arms around you before he completely collapses against the bar.

“Come on, big boy,” you wheeze as you heft his large frame around yours. “Let’s get you home.”

“You always got me,” Joshua slurs, head lolling against your shoulder. “And I love you for that.”

You freeze.

This is the first time Joshua has said those words to you, a scenario you’ve imagined a thousand times every which way possible. This is the one incident you haven’t imagined a response for. You can’t deny the way the affection instantly brews in your chest, as crisp and as strong as it was the first day you ever found yourself caring for him. A dash of longing follows, then one thimbleful of the true love you know you hold for him. But you also can’t deny the way the panic swirls in immediately after, frothing and too hot and way too much for you.

In the latte of you, you feel as if you’re burning up from the inside, completely and with no chance of salvaging it at all.

So, you stay silent.

—

You call upon whatever higher powers are out there to lend you some kind of strength as you approach the house. It never gets easier, coming here.

You don’t have to ring the doorbell, because the front door is wide open, and you’re completely uncovered with nowhere to hide when you walk up the steps.

A familiar face pushes open the glass storm door and greets you, “Y/n! Hi!”

She’s happy enough to see you, hug quite warm as you congratulate her. “Happy anniversary, Aunt Clara.”

You pass off a bouquet of lilies that you’d picked up on your way out of the city, and she’s pleased as pie with them. “Oh, you remembered! These are so lovely, thank you, y/n.”

“I’m so glad you were able to make it, y/n,” your uncle’s voice is gruffer than you recall, his hair grayer than before as well, but his hug is what you’ve missed the most, strong and comforting.

“Thanks Uncle Charlie, it’s good to see you. I brought you your favorite carrot cake from Magnolia.”

You pass off the white box into his arms, and you already feel forced to awkwardly apologize to your relatives,

“Sorry I wasn’t able to to cook anything, Aunt Clara, I was intending to. But there was a disaster in the office today, so I had to go in, and was late getting on the road. Then I hit all of the rush hour traffic possible. But I’m here.”

Their anniversary party was intended to be a potluck, but one of Ten’s other accounts had exploded with some kind of nude picture scandal and you’d had to go in to help him clean up the mess. You were not trying to cook chili after hours of scrolling through unwanted dick pics, even if you did have the time.

“You brought cake and flowers, that’s more than enough for us, honey. We really just wanted you here. We haven’t seen you in a while,” Uncle Charlie tries to hide the concern in his eyes, but you can read it all in his face.

They’ve never really deserved the way you’ve acted towards them, not really. The guilt starts to seep in, way too early for you to make it through the night unscathed.

“I know, I’m sorry about that. Been very busy with work, as you can probably tell.”

“Come in, come in. It’s getting cold outside,” Aunt Clara brings you into the house, and you leave your stilettos by the door. Amongst all of the sneakers and other comfortable shoes, they make a funny impression.

“You’re still in your work clothes, y/n, you must be so uncomfortable,” and she’s right, you can barely bend over with how tight your pants are. “Why don’t you go to your old room and change? I think we still have some of your clothes here.”

You hadn’t really gone back home during any of the breaks at UCLA besides a few evening dinners here and there. So whatever you left in your room that August you assumed had been thrown away. But your aunt and uncle had kept these little bits of you for safekeeping, they still call your room your room. God, it’s only now that you can see how you’ve fucked this up.

“Sure,” you mumble, voice watery. “I’ll show my face at the party first so no one thinks I’m dead.”

The sounds of the party echo from inside and you know you have to prepare yourself for the influx of personal questions you’ll undoubtedly receive from your relatives’ friends. It’d probably be worse for you not to show your face first, you don’t want the rumor mill to pop up here in suburbia.

“Listen, before you go in—,” Aunt Clara starts, but it’s too late.

“Y/n.”

“Mother. Hello.”

There’s no way for you to hide the grimace. You’d assumed she wouldn't even attempt to show her face here. 

As a child, you used to look at old pictures of your mother and try to pick out every similar detail between you and her, but now you can’t even be bothered to try. You’d rather look like roadkill than look like her.

The impasse has begun, the rocky standoff between the past queen of the household and her daughter, who’s grown a steely spine ten times over in the years since her reign. You stare at your mother icily, daring her to say something or do something that will set off a fight. You hope she doesn’t, because it will surely surpass the firepower of the great high school graduation blowout.

“Auntie, you’re here! I’m so glad you and Uncle weren’t stranded in Switzerland,” Wendy flounces into the foyer and hugs your mother tightly, like you two were offspring switched at birth. This only serves to incite your ire at her, though it’d be inappropriate for you to unleash it at her in her own home. She hands your mother a slip of paper, and once she notices you standing there, greets you in a blasé manner,  “Oh, hi, y/n. Here you go.”

But you don’t give a shit about whatever she’s passing out because you finally pick up on her comment.

“Switzerland, huh?”

“Baby, who are you talking to?” You recognize that voice, and here your father comes. “Oh, y/n.”

“Hello, father,” you dismiss him without a care, a puny little character in your life who never did anything in your defense or best interest. You focus back in on your mother,  “You know, it would’ve been nice for you to let me know that you had left Thailand, so I didn’t try calling your villa a thousand times a day and get no response.”

This is how it’s always been, they’re in one place and expect you to call, and you do because even though you hate them you’re still their daughter. Then the phone calls stop connecting, and you continue to call until you’re sick with worry, until you find out through the grapevine they’re halfway across the world. It’s a sick song and dance that you’d been okay with, never once truly called them out on, but to find out that Wendy, Wendy! knew where they were before you, is not okay.

Your mother is caught off guard, fumbling to come up with a functional excuse in the meager time you provide her, “Service was spotty and…”

“You decided on a whim and were in transit for a lot of the time, I get it,” you parrot back one of their previous excuses to you word for word, but you’re not just going to take it lying down. “But wifi and international data are things that exist now. I’m not ten anymore, you can respond to my messages for free.”

“Y/n, honey…” your father wheedles, but you blow right past him.

“I’m fine, I am finishing up my second season working with Joshua Hong. I’m even working on projects with my cousin now, imagine that,” you inform them of everything they’ve missed in your recent life in a cheerily false voice, the one good thing LA’s lent itself to. “I moved into a new place a few months ago so Mark could get his own apartment. I’m thinking about adopting a fish, since I, you know, live alone. I’m existing. I’m fine. And I’m here for Aunt Clara and Uncle Charlie, so I’d like to hear about Switzerland some other time.”

With practiced poise, you glide past the nucleus of family you don’t particularly wish to claim, and continue on into the house, bypassing the bustling living room entirely. You haven’t been back in this house for almost ten years, but you still know where to go, through the back hallway and two doors down to your right.

You let out a shuddering breath once the door is safely closed behind you, turning to your left so you don’t have to watch the tears well up in your eyes in the mirror across the way.

It’s not fair that they can still hurt you this way, it’s been well over a decade since they had simultaneous mid life crises and decided to travel the world, since they unceremoniously decided to dump you on your aunt and uncle’s doorstep so they could do so uninhibited. Clara and Charlie tried their best, and you’re grateful to them for that, but Wendy was always around, and so were your crippling feelings of guilt and… ugh.

You push your abandoned clothes around on their hangers with way more force than is necessary. You’re allowing yourself this emotional reaction while you’re hidden away, so that you can walk back out there and have a perfectly pleasant evening to the best of your capabilities. One drop of calming aura in the chaos of it all is finding your old favorite sweatshirt, just this navy cotton thing with a single sunflower embroidered on the breast pocket.

You instantly shed your blazer and blouse, eager to get into your familiarly comforting clothes. When you have the sweatshirt halfway over your head, your foot comes into contact with something that’s decidedly not floor, and you stumble a bit as you try to figure out what it is. You push the garment over your shoulders, then bend down to look.

“What the fuck is this?” You mutter, realizing it’s whatever Wendy handed to you when you first walked in, tossed aside during your costume change. But once you see it, take the image on the piece of paper in fully, that little molecule of deja vu explodes into a deluge.

The itchiness is back, bringing with it this paralyzing, frantic hitch of your breath as you fumble for your phone. This is a terrifying onslaught of emotion, between your parents, and now this, you won’t be surprised if you pass out here in the middle of the floor. You can’t hit the right letters on your screen, having to type and re-type and re-type your search query into YouTube until you get something that’s remotely close to what you want.

The video blasts out into the room, but you don’t even bother to adjust the volume.

“We have the album cover here,” Jimmy Fallon is holding up a larger version of the piece of paper in your hand, rotating it back and forth so his audience can see it. “You were nice enough to let us debut it here on my show.”

“Yes, haha,” Jaehyun laughs easily, putting an arm up on blue chair beside him. “This is the album cover.”

“Everyone’s been dying to know who this girl is that you’ve been singing about. Is this her? With you?” Jimmy points to a young girl’s turned back, then to a boy’s, right next to hers.

“That’s us,” Jaehyun sighs dreamily, enraptured by his own album cover. “I took this picture with a Polaroid camera at the time, and we digitally scanned it to make the cover. I’m pretty sure she has the front facing version of it.”

“So, this is like a Craigslist missed connection,” Jimmy offers, earning a short laugh from the audience with the weak joke.

“I mean, you don’t have to put it that way,” if Jaehyun is irked, he doesn’t show it in the video, only continuing to grin in his usual pleasant way.

“What’d you call it then?”

“Modern day Cinderella?”

You switch the video off before it can go any further.

Your fist is trembling at a million miles per hour, an earthquake of remembrance and feeling, and you slowly unfurl your fingers to re-reveal the piece of paper you’d gotten from Wendy.

It’s a tad fuzzy, because she’s printed it off of Google, but the image is unmistakeable. It’s of the backs of two kids, one boy and one girl, just as you spotted in Jimmy’s video. The boy has his arm around the girl’s shoulders, a scrap of yellow ribbon tied around his wrist there. The girl has this bright yellow bow tied into her ponytail, hair spilling down her small neck, and she’s wearing this dress spun out of pure sunshine, visible even in the dark lighting. A dress covered in a pattern of dandelions.

Then you’re tearing back to your closet, falling to your knees so you can rummage through the shoeboxes hidden away in the back corner. You comb through a box of saved seashells, then a box of your elementary school artwork, all the way down until you find a parchment paper covered box, with three little withered dandelions taped to the front of the lid.

“Y/n? Are you in here?” Someone’s calling you, but you can’t tear your eyes away from the lid coming upwards, from what you find on the inside of this box.

Sitting pristinely amongst a pillow of tissue paper and one rainbow of yellow silk is a glossy photo.

There you are, of course it’s you, with a cheery bow in your hair, and wearing your most cherished dress. You’re beaming, you’re not sure you’ve ever seen yourself look this happy, face rounded with baby fat and innocence and unravaged by the cruel passing of time.

“Y/n?” There’s a familiar hand on your shoulder, a ray of yellow encircling the wrist, and how is the feeling of the boy’s tiny hand on your thin shoulder so vivid, even after all this time?

Your eyes flick upwards and it’s Jaehyun, he’s here in your room at your aunt and uncle’s house.

You’re looking down again, and there’s the boy, the matching lemon ribbon looped around his wrist since he doesn’t have enough hair to tie it in. If you’re beaming, he’s incandescent, the crescent of his smile outshining the crescent of the moon in the deep background. His cheeks are fuller than yours with the heft of youth, unmistakeable dimples cratering into both sides of his mouth in a delightful manner.

You once thought to yourself that you wouldn’t have been able to forget someone like Jeffrey Jung. But he wasn’t Jeffrey Jung then, not Jaehyun Jung, not even Jaehyun, not really.

Jaehyun is there in your room, you’re the girl in the picture, and he’s the boy, and the only thing you manage to get out is hoarse and strangled with recognition.

“JJ?”

tbc.