“Alright, so you don’t care whether you live or die or not - fine! But do you not care about me either? Do you???”

His accent always comes through when he’s upset.

“That’s not fair, Kat…”

“No no, it’s not fair! I’m not fair! But If you’re not going to make sense, if you’re going to be crazy, then I have to play dirty, eh? You don’t care what happens to me, right? You didn’t care what I was supposed to do if I came over even three days later to find my best friend dead on the floor?”

…

The same thing I did when I found my mom.

“Aishhhh. Diablo! Just leave me alone! You have no idea what it’s like or you wouldn’t talk to me like this. You don’t even care…”

“Si. Si - I’m a monster. I’m an absolute jerk. You love me and I don’t love you. So scream at me, fuss at me, call me an idiot - bully - a silver-spoon mamma’s boy who doesn’t understand a thing about what it’s like to actually have to suffer in life. Fine. But if you love me so much more than I could possibly ever love you, do me one favor...”

…

It’s later than I expected it to be when I “finally” step over my threshold and kick my shoes murderously into a corner.

Throwing myself onto the rainbow couch, I watch my thoughts paint themselves across the ceiling like the glowing sticky stars my high school friends used to attach to every square inch of their bedrooms.

I don’t wanna move…

Off this couch or out of this place.

And maybe it’s just the exhaustion speaking - the depression speaking and using fatigue as her translator.

Is it too crazy an idea?

Maybe. But I’m inexplicably attached to this ugly mess. To the stains in the carpet and the dents in the wall-

I should also probably pay for them if I’m not sticking around…

But if I did buy the whole place, and go with my idea - if anything this nebulous could be called an idea- I still have no idea what I’d be doing with it anyway.

Maybe something like the seasons?

But that would be too cliche, and stupid since I’d only be able to do three of them anyway if I’m still living in this apartment.

I could decorate this one too, but it’s in no state to be rented to anyone. The dead leaves in my orange-tinted bedroom make the place look like autumn ‘at home.’

Since the weather's warming up, maybe I could plant some new flowers.

Spring is the season of rebirth, right?

And of love?

My prince’s birthday is approaching rapidly too, and I’m even more stumped about that than I am about the apartment situation.

Memories aren’t something you can acquire simply by shelling out cash - neither is amazement - especially when you grew up as rich as Kat did.

Better to try for something sweet rather than over the top.

A fancy dinner or something like that might be too awkward anyway when we’re not really going out at the moment-

If ever…

I’m not sure where the line falls between “cutely romantic” and “way too fast and borderline crazy” - so better to give it a wide berth.

I’m so worn out…

But I should shower, and I don’t have the energy to do that yet.

I’m making a special point not to go to bed dirty these days, so Kat will stop having a sound argument to use against me.

Maybe sometime soon I’ll stop leaving my shoes everywhere too, and then he’ll have to wonder if I’ve been body-swapped with a shape-shifting alien.

Wouldn’t that be something? I’d make them do my shoveling, though there won’t be much of that for the rest of the year now…

It’ll most likely still be too chilly to do a picnic by Kattar’s birthday though, though to be honest you never can tell with Maryland weather.

Even if it was warm there wouldn’t be anything blooming yet anyway, except maybe at the U.S. Botanic Garden - but we’ve been there ten thousand times if we have once.

I used to have a picture of the conservatory as my screensaver a while back and at least as recently as the wrap dress incident at Kattar’s apartment, he’s had a picture of their little rose garden as his laptop lock-screen - the hot pink blooms unfolded, looking like candy-

-With me in that off-white sundress I got ages ago kissing one of the blushing buds.

He’s got a lot of nerve, for someone who couldn’t be convinced to confess.

But to be fair, I’m not a whole lot better.

With a sigh, I wake up my phone screen and stare down that “ugly” picture of Kat like I'm facing off with a mortal enemy.

There are so many questions I want to ask…

But what does it matter when he won’t answer any of them?

I stare at my sleepy self, 6 months back, and try to recall the frustration I felt that night when he woke me up.

It never occurred to me to be confused back then - about that odd expression I’d never seen - on his face anyway - just angry, fussing at him like it would push back the throbbing headache that ensued the second he shook me out of dreamland saying I needed to go home.

Why then of all times?

This must be what a migraine feels like. Like a hangover to the tenth power-

Just the thought of it makes my head pound with hammered memory - dully painful and sharp.

When he found me, after the breakup, he insisted that I come stay at his place - for one week at least, so he could be sure I was actually getting some food in my stomach - drinking some water - because heaven only knows when the last time I'd intaken sustenance was.

He wanted me to go back to my aunt’s house, but I absolutely refused, knowing she would panic-

…That I was going downhill the way my mother had.

I didn’t want to scare her - make her worry that I would go off the deep end - if I hadn’t already-

And Mrs. Moon was still in San Diego - had been for more than a year, so there weren’t any other options that would quiet Kattar’s wary conscience.

I can still see the hesitant way he let the words fall from his lips as he voiced his conditions - like dropping a bombshell at the end of our childish war - which was admittedly mostly just me fussing for him to get lost - to leave me alone-

Fine.

“But if you love me so much more than I could possibly ever love you, do me one favor...”

He could barely make himself look me in the face…

“Come…come stay with me.”

I can’t leave you in this place to let yourself waste away.

And If I wasn’t already soooo fed up, I might have been disconcerted.

But we’d been ‘just friends’ for too long at that point for me to believe in anything but his bossy overbearing ‘tender love and care.’

I would have agreed to almost anything just to get him to shut up - because heaven knows he would have just sat there in the living room as stubborn as me until I finally agreed to do something other than lay ‘wilting’ on the dirty floor.

I shouldn’t have given him a key.

But it’s been a very long time since I’ve had anything Kat didn’t have access to if he wanted it.

That’s probably why it was so easy for him to steal my heart.

And it sounds just as stupid as it feels, but I know if I’d trusted him a little less - been a little warier - things would be so very different from the way they are now.

I can’t convince my brain to be reasonable because nothing could possibly make as much sense AS falling in love with him - after the number of secrets and hard times and roller coaster emotions we’ve been through together.

But it’s always been a little more “prince charming to the rescue” than a give and take…and maybe that’s why…

-So if I hadn’t just been SO ridiculously angry with him I might have fallen in love with him right then.

Or realized…I was in love with him anyway.

Watching him make his way through all my mess not just to sit with me in it but to pull me out and into the light-

But he WOULD do it in the most aggravating way under the sun - pestering me until I broke out of my silence - berating me to stay with someone until I finally gave in - bugging me until I got to my feet and marched out to the car -

Maybe he didn’t want me to fall in love with him.

But that makes even less sense.

If he’s really liked me since our Junior High days…then why would he…?

Whatever. 

I give up.

At this point I’ve accepted that the workings of his brain are mysteries I’ll never be able to comprehend if he doesn’t explain them, so frying my own circuits over the whole mess is a waste of time I could better use…

Going to sleep.

But instead, I glance at the phone again and decide to go to Kattar’s IG to screenshot, aka steal, a new picture for my screensaver.

To my surprise I receive a notification that Kattar is ‘live’ the instant I turn on my wifi.

At this hour?

Clicking on the notif, my screen is washed out by murky-dark footage of Kat laying on his back drowsily with one hand over his face answering the barrage of comments coming in hot and heavy from a little more than seventeen hundred fans.

“Siiii, lo siento. I know. I promised to do the live stream today, but I ended up getting home a lot later than I thought I would.” pause “No no, I didn’t forget. I’m here aren’t I?” pause “I’m sorry. But thank you for waiting for me.”

He blows a kiss to the phone and I feel myself redden involuntarily.

So that’s why people enjoy watching these. 

But it’s not good for a fangirl heart…

He laughs now, but I can’t tell which of the army of comments he’s responding to.

“No, I’m not drunk,” he smiles, covering his mouth with his free hand. “I guess my face is pretty rosy.”

Now all the comments are fans scolding like middle-aged mothers, saying they don’t believe him, and ‘haven’t they told him a thousand times not to go getting tipsy?’

“You guys are always so suspicious,” he pouts brattily. “But I’m not drunk. I was out with a girl...”

I-!

I see him scroll through the comments for a minute before he responds, his eyes sleepily scanning the infinite wall of text that I’ve given up trying to read at this point, sitting - stewing in my nervous embarrassment.

“Si. Yeah. I was getting dinner with someone I know,” he nods slowly.

.

Someone he knows?

I mean…

I guess it’s true enough but at the same time…

-The fan comments come through faster than ever now - the edge of the screen vomiting up disappointed sentence fragments like nauseated alphabet soup -

‘Just someone you know? Boo! And here we thought you were finally getting yourself a girlfriend, you old geezer. We need your children to keep taking pictures for us when you’re ugly and old.’

He just laughs languidly at all of these, shaking his head.

‘She’s really not your girlfriend???’

She’s not. 

She’s just someone he knows - someone he won’t even tell his mother about -

And throwing her phone onto the coffee table with the live stream still running, she stomps upstairs to her room and flops onto her bed in her jacket - in her dirty clothes - and pulls the blanket up over her head -

We have the lunch with Andrew and Jinho tomorrow. I should just go to sleep-

-To dream about him like any other fangirl.

Not someone he loves.