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You’re eighteen, and it’s easy to ignore cliches.
You’ve heard them all, you think. You feel things more when you’re young; you’ll change your mind when you’re older.
But all that falls to the wayside when you’re with Seokmin. Pure, wide-eyed Seokmin, who looks at you like you hung the moon and talks to you in hushed tones and sings to you in his full chest voice.
When you’re eighteen, every experience is new. Everything is a first. First innocent hand holds become first shy kisses, which eventually give way to less shy ones.
When you’re with Seokmin, even the mundane feels like it has meaning. A simple walk suddenly becomes an opportunity for adventure. You smell the flowers you pass by. You catch bugs and listen to bird calls and fall to the grass-clad ground laughing at one of Seokmin’s many jokes. And of course you both still have school, and you’re desperately trying to graduate, and maybe you’ve always been a little bit too hard on yourself, but with Seokmin, you feel like it’s easier to let the little things slide off your back. It’s easier to forgive yourself. It’s easier to see a life outside of this bubble that is your little school in your little hometown.
You’re both eighteen, and his hands are on your chest, each pad forming a crater in your skin, little indents for you to press into tomorrow and remember how he looked with his head between your legs, and how pretty he sounded with his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth open from pleasure. You remember his touches, the soft, gentle ones, and the rougher ones, too, that you begged him for, and that he worried he’d hurt you if he gave into, like you’re something fragile, something that needs protection.
You’re eighteen. You’re strong as a diamond, and more breakable than glass.
You love Seokmin, but like many things at this age, feelings change. Circumstances do, too. You’re finishing school, and you’re leaving, and he’s staying, and suddenly there’s a rift between you. A chasmic, dark thing, uncrossable and unsustainable. It’s hard when Seokmin is everything to you. Hard when all your firsts are tied to him, tangled and messy, a ball of knotted yarn that feels like it could take years to unravel. Hard when he’s your best friend, first and foremost. Someone sweet and pure and so, so loveable.
But there are things that you need, too. Things that Seokmin cannot provide. You’re leaving once the summer is through, and what you need now is space, and time, to breathe. These things, Seokmin will grow into, in his own way. But you’re eighteen, and right now you’ve outgrown him, and it hurts like hell to realize.
You love Seokmin, which is how you know that in time, someone else will come and love him like you could not. You’re eighteen, and there are some truths you must cling to.
Seokmin cries when you tell him. He tries to laugh it off, which only accentuates the hurt in his eyes and only makes things worse. Seokmin cries, but you hope he understands why you’re doing this. You know, or at least you hope, that he won’t hold it against you.
It feels like a movie, leaving his house right after. You get in your car, and there are tears in your eyes and your favorite sad song is playing through the speakers, and you’re singing along as loud as you can, like the sheer volume might drown out your thoughts. You look back in the rearview, and there’s not another car on the road. It’s cinematic, just you and the highway and the memory of a boy who you loved once, and who you might still love now, and the weight of your decision to leave him.
You pull into your driveway, the one at your parents’ home that you will be leaving for good soon enough. You wipe away your tears, and you check your face in the mirror. You’re not quite ready for the questions, or the scrutiny. You’re not quite ready to relive today, to parents who you won’t open up to like that until many years from now.
In the end, you’re still eighteen, and you’ve never been one for cliches.