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write-it-good-imagines · 4 months

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Nothing More(M) - Two

~5k words - please, enjoy!

I see you as a stranger but it’s different… I have those marks of love, my soul is hurt. Can’t you stay closer when the lights turn down, so that you’ll feel you don’t have me?

“Then what? You just casually claimed you’re fine to be her fuck buddy?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll have sex, at the expense of her telling you more about herself?”

“…yes.”

“You’re stupid.”

Jinyoung grabbed at the bridge of his nose before dropping down on the leather chair of the practice studio.

“I’m not?” Mark said with some sort of reinforced conviction, like that was his brightest accomplishment. “It’s pretty fair, if you ask me.”

“Fair?” Jinyoung repeated, leaning forward on top of his knees. “You know absolutely nothing about this girl, for which you are developing an unrequited affection.”

“I know things.”

“Like?”

Mark opened his mouth to answer but the words ceased to exist. With Jinyoung cocking his eyebrow and a half-mockery half-pitiful expression plastered on his face, Mark realized he really did not know much.

“She’s, uhm, a manager at Seoul Medical Private practice.”

Jinyoung nodded, as if prompting Mark to continue talking.

“And a part-time bartender.”

“Mhm. I suppose that’s it.”

“That’s it.”

A sigh escaped through Mark’s lips. “But isn’t this the whole point of casual sex? You don’t ask questions and you don’t seek answers.”

“Except you are doing both, one-sidedly.” Jinyoung rose from his seat to place a hand on Mark’s shoulder, not trying to mask the evident worry in his eyes. “You’re not that guy.”

Mark looked at the other, and ultimately away. The silence of his reflection in the studio mirror was interrupted by the other 5 members, crowding the room with their usual infectious cheerfulness. Before breaking away from Mark, Jinyoung patted him on the shoulder and pursed his lips into a small smile. “You’re not that guy”.

“Knock-knock,” Jonathan’s voice chirped before leaning his tall body against the doorframe of Samantha’s new office. “I like this room. It’s much more spacious and you finally have big windows. Think you can grow a plant in here?”

Samantha put her pen away after having signed a document. She smiled up at Jonathan. “What can I help you with, Doctor Williams?”

Jonathan took the liberty to look around the office, searching for something specific. It still was there, Samantha’s doctor coat, dropping from the hanger. “I have an interesting case, which I’ll probably definitely operate on.”

She knew where that was going. “And?”

Jonathan stopped by the hanger, tracing his fingers over the white ironed material. “And I want Doctor Stoss to scrub in with me.”

“I am not a neurosurgeon, last time I checked.”

“But you agree that you’re still a surgeon.”

Samantha looked back at the wooden surface of the desk, trying to busy herself with anything other than that discussion Jonathan knowingly started. “Then again, I was not a neurosurgeon”.

The man came over to the desk, prompting his hands on either side of it. He leaned closer to Samantha, forcing her to look up at him. “I have a 7-month-old pregnant woman with a tumor on her brain. I want the best OB-GYN resident in this hospital to scrub in with me and deliver the baby or keep the baby in safely.”

She looked away. Jonathan peeled a hand off from the desk to bring up to her chin, on a tender touch. “I will repeat that if you think you didn’t hear it clearly enough”.

“Jonathan, I’m not ready.” Samantha breathed shakily and had to close and squeeze her eyes in an attempt to keep that past incident away from surfacing violently. “I’m not ready.”

Jonathan let his hand slide further to caress the fragile skin of her cheek. “Let us help you. Let me help you. We all know that wasn’t on you.”

“What’s it to you?” Samantha opened her eyes to pierce into the other’s emerald ones. Jonathan jerked his head back in surprise, the contact between them breaking in response. The tip of his tongue wet the bottom lip and exhaled an exasperated sigh.

“It is that you chose that bastard over me. It also is that I loved you and I am beating myself up everyday you are not picking up the damn scalpel. I should have beat him much more than I did.”

“Jonathan—”

He pushed forward. “And now that you finally threw him out of your life, and a good part of your life for that matter, you keep away from me. I am still here.”

Samantha’s eyes were pacing back and forth between his features, his eyes, and his lips, as if trying to grasp the words he was speaking and put them together in such a manner that made sense. She looked at him with a look that was stuck somewhere between past and present, a look that let him know everything was a mistake. A look that also let him know there was no way to rewrite the past. And he wished he hadn’t seen that look.

“You don’t love me, Jonathan. I can’t have you trying to love two women at the same time. Not when one of them is just a ghost in your memory.”

He scoffed. Samantha did not let him speak. “You stopped loving me the moment I made my choice. And it’s okay. Because I don’t hold any grudge against you. Because you love Leena.”

Jonathan straightened his body and Samantha could not read his expression. “Let me go.”

“He killed that woman, Sam. He did. He was desperate to show off to the Chief.”

“Jonathan, I am not having this discussion—”

“You trusted him against your better judgement. You couldn’t have saved neither of them—”

“Jonathan, get out.”

The man lifted both his hands to signal he was giving up. “I can’t let you go, Sam. I just can’t. You’re losing yourself and you’re not picking up my hand. You used to take us by the hand.”

Samantha turned her chair away from Jonathan and fixated her eyes on a void point outside the window. Her brain triggered the moments she tried shoving away like skeletons in a closet. She wanted to desperately believe skeletons do not always come back.

“I assume we’re still meeting to go out tonight. We’re supposed to celebrate the new manager.”

The last thing she heard was the sound of the door slamming violently behind. Before a tear dropped loosely, Samantha thought about Mark.

In the fervent ruckus of practicing and perfecting their next concert, which was set to start in 6 days, the guys, drenched in sweat, with their ankles hurting after more than 5 continuous hours, decided to take a water break. Mark dropped to the ground, crossing his legs, and holding his body up with his arms. Before Jackson threw him a towel, Mark thought about Samantha. It had been a couple of days since they’d heard from one another.

“Hey, Mark,” Bambam chirped, a cheeky tone blatantly carrying his words “girlfriend’s calling.”

Mark’s head perked up almost instantly.

“She’s not his girlfriend.” Jinyoung breathed, pouring what was left of the water in the bottle on his head.

“I don’t think she’s not his girlfriend” Jackson joined in, throwing the shirt over his head.

“Could you stop making assumptions?” Mark jolted from his place, eager to try and put an early end to the teasing he was just about to receive. “I swear to God, if I am picking up this phone and you’ll be hovering over my shoulders, I’ll kick you in the nuts.”

Youngjae placed his hands protectively over the threatened jewels. “Don’t hit hard?”

At that point, he gave up.

“Hey stranger.”

“Hey,” she answered on the other end of the line, with a slight delay. “I’m sorry I didn’t text you earlier.”

“Yeah, no, that’s fine. It’s quite actually none of my business.” Mark saw in the mirror the displeased expressions of Jackson and Jaebom, while Yugyeom and Bambam covered their mouths dramatically. ‘That’s bad’, Jackson mouthed to Jinyoung.

Against his expectations, Mark was met with silence on the other line. Suddenly, he felt awkward for the first time since meeting her. Mark never meant to sound accusative. If anything, he might have waited for her to text. “I mean, part of the deal, right?”

“…yeah.”

“Listen, I didn’t mean that. It’s just been a very long day.” A small pause, in tune with all the other members who seemed to have drawn in their breaths for what Mark would have said next. “I can use some good company. If you want to meet up?”

“Yeah, sure, sounds good to me.”

Mark was not convinced it sounded good to her. He cleared his throat. “So, uh, do you want to meet tonight?"

Another pause. “I cannot really meet tonight, I have surgery.” She heard his sharp gasp. “Not surgery on me, surgery on someone else. I’m, uh, a resident.”

“A resident? A surgical resident?” There was a collective gasp from all of the boys, accompanied by shocked faces staring at Mark in the mirror.

“You didn’t take me as the smart type, huh? I guess smart people don’t have fuck buddies after all.”

“No, that’s—”

“Listen, I have to go. For the record, I didn’t call to get you to bend me over the table. I… I wanted to see how you were doing. Bye.”

Mark did not have any chance to protest before the dial tone echoed in his ear. The phone slid away from his ear, intrigued initially, then a furrow between his eyebrows made him wonder what he did wrong for her to dismiss him like that.

“A surgical resident,” Jaebum repeated, gesturing with his hands like an orchestra conductor to calm down the overly excited group. “That’s cool.”

“Cool? That’s fucking insane. Do you think I could find an arrangement like yours?” Bambam blurted out and earned a smack on the head from the leader. Jinyoung followed Mark with his eyes. He sensed the uncertainty and the sliver of self-doubt oozing from the other. Just when he was about to say something, Jackson went over to start the music set, to rescue Mark from the dozens of questions he was about to receive, to which he held no answers. Jinyoung thanked him with a head dip.

Jonathan was cleaning his hands when the OR doors slid open. He couldn’t hide the evident shock on his face, not that it mattered. For all he knew, he wanted her to see the shock imprinted on his face.

“Don’t tell me.”

The shock deepened when he noticed she was dressed in surgical scrubs. Then a sly smirk on his face. “You look so hot dressed like this.”

Samantha kicked the water tank with her foot, choosing not to add any comment.

“I missed you.”

She gasped at the other’s confession. Her head tilted for her to look over her shoulder in the depth of his eyes. Coming to the OR was impulsive, an impulsive decision after Mark reiterated their arrangement. Samantha knew it sounded frivolous. Only then did she truly register the words Jonathan said to her. The memories, the hope, the dream. With all the disappointments they carried. Before she knew, she found herself in the OR.

“If you keep staring at me like that, I might push you against the wall and you’d lose the bet.”

“Doesn’t that make you the loser?” she retorted, a smirk stretching the corners of her lips. “I’m just observing, that’s it. There is already a GYN resident in there.”

Jonathan shook his hands lightly to dispose of the surplus of dripping water. He turned to her as he kicked the OR door open, and if Samantha did not know any better, she would say he was relieved of her presence. “Not if you kissed me first.”

Pacing was not Mark’s way of coping with things in general. For what sentiment he paced that evening, in the lobby hall of the hospital, he could not tell. No one likes hospitals in particular, but it wasn’t the hospital’s fervid smell of chlorine that provoked Mark’s pacing. It was Samantha’s sharp dismissal that stained his thoughts. And he didn’t care, or that’s what he kept trying to convince himself of. Jinyoung’s words popped in his mind yet again.

You’re not that guy.

When he braced himself to stop pacing, he approached the nurse’s station. “Hi, good evening. I am looking for Samantha…”

The awkward pause sneaked in. A woman whose last name he had no idea about, who was supposed to be his casual sex call.

“She’s a manager here at this hospital.”

“Oh, Doctor Stoss you meant. Yes, the surgery in OR 4 has just ended, she should be here any minute with Doctor Williams.”

Mark did not get enough time to thank the nurse when he got distracted by an electrifying sound he himself had caused before. His attention turned magnetically toward the source of the joyful laughter, only to be met by Doctor Jonathan Williams, with his hands in his jeans pockets. He was making Samantha laugh.

“Mark?” she turned to him in a blink, same way Jonathan turned to her.

“So you’re the Mark,” Jonathan said, faking one of his best smiles. Samantha was too taken aback to realize Jonathan was, in fact, a tad bothered by the other’s presence.

Mark quirked an eyebrow involuntarily at the other man. He was exactly as Samantha described him, tall, handsome, cocky. Trustful. And he knew about them two, which could have changed the situation. Complicate it.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here is all, Mark. I told you I had surgery.”

“Yeah, no, I heard, I wanted to make sure you were fine.” If it weren’t for his fingers numbing from his tightened grip around the Lindt chocolate box, he would have forgotten about them entirely. Mark extended his arm towards Samantha in a successful but unforeseen attempt to leave her speechless. It was Jonathan’s turn to cock an eyebrow.

“You shouldn’t have…” Samantha looked up at Jonathan. She was growing annoyed with his displeased antics. Not that Mark would know. “I am busy tonight, we’ll gather with Leena to celebrate, you know. Me.”

“Totally.” Mark nodded with a serene expression. “I will go. If we don’t see each other again before I go, it was nice enough seeing you like this, Doctor.”

There was something about his serene smile that tied a knot in Samantha’s stomach. In her imagination, Mark was not supposed to be that. He was not supposed to come looking for her, to bring her chocolate and call her endearingly on her title. He was not supposed to sketch a hue of pink across her face. Mark was supposed to sleep with her and forget about her.

“Go where? I wouldn’t say you are leaving,” Leena chimed in, allowing her curly hair to bounce freely against her short-sleeved shirt, “though we won’t force you to join us for drinks.”

“Ah, as much as I’d love to,” Mark replied, his eyes searching for Samantha once again, “I wasn’t invited. I’m not barging.”

“We’re inviting you now.” Jonathan cleared his throat and painted a puzzled expression on Samantha’s face. “You said so yourself, you would love to, would you not?”

Mark hesitated. He suddenly pondered over the fact that a fuck buddy would not meet the other’s friends.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to feel pressured by these two anyway.”

“No, I… I think I’d love to.”

Saturday night in a popular high-profile club in Seoul city could rival all levels of imagination. Stories that would go unknown for all eternity, on people who’d enter the club to enjoy, to fool around, to forget, on a busy dancefloor, with extravagant lights and liquor. Samantha’s cousin had one of the most sought-after clubs of the capital and on good merit. It hit Samantha that she never did face the other side of the bar counter. It had always been easier to be the one serving the poison than the one to drink it.

The reservation for Samantha’s group was made on a booth better shielded from the crowded center of the club. She waved a hand at the security guys outside and guided the four of them to their spot.

“Wow, I can’t believe I never came to this club,” said Jonathan with a newly discovered admiration for the place.

“Maybe your relationships would have been more successful.” Leena stuck his tongue out at him and the other rolled his eyes at her remark. Albeit hiding a smile behind the façade.

Mark guided Samantha to take her seat first and the latter offered a smile. She refused instead.

“I’ll go get the drinks because I am that cool and that fast. What would you like to have?”

Not long after Samantha disappeared in the nightly crowd, Mark took a seat somewhat cornered by the curious eyes of Samantha’s friends. One would say that, with all the public attention and the fame, he would get used to the squinting.

“So, you and Sam,” Jonathan begun, rolling the sleeves of his shirt as if preparing himself for some sort of a confrontation with the other man. “How’s it going?”

“Fine? I think.” He replied much less inconsistently than he would have hoped. Truth be told, he did not really know how to reply to such a question. The answer would have been straightforward for someone who sleeps with another person for fun but one does not consider verbalizing how such a relationship would ‘be’. When it is not even a relationship. “She’s amazing.”

“I bet she is.”

“Jonathan!” Leena smacked his shoulder. “Please forgive him, we have been friends since college, and he gets over-protective over her sometimes…”

Mark pondered over the girl’s words. If he would not want to be involved with Samantha, he wouldn’t mind about their arrangement. “It’s totally fine. I am a stranger who sleeps with your friend. Nothing more.”

The conversation was cut short by Samantha returning with the tray of drinks. After serving everyone, more out of habit than anything else, she seated herself beside Mark. “So, what did you two press Mark about?”

Jonathan raised both his eyebrows and his glass in a swift motion, to grab a solid gulp of his whiskey on the rocks. “Nothing in particular.”

“So, a surgeon, huh?” Mark took a hold of his dark beer to mimic Jonathan’s earlier gesture. “Can you do both? Management and save lives?”

Samantha looked down at her glass to swirl the straw around. Mark was not ill intended, and she also was not prepared to reveal too much about herself. She never planned to do so anyhow.

I want you to tell me about you in exchange.

“I took a step back from surgery for a while. It became a bit overwhelming. But I did not want to leave the hospital and the community, so I applied for a more ‘business’ like job. Now I am manager.”

“Today was just her first step coming back to surgery full time.” Jonathan smiled and shot a wink to Samantha’s direction.

Leena immediately became confused. “Surgery? You went into surgery today?”

Samantha looked over at Jonathan with a piercing look. Mark figured she had not revealed that to the other woman. “Jonathan told me he had a 7-month-old pregnant woman with a brain tumor. He came to me to ask me to scrub in. I just watched the fetal monitor, that’s all. Luckily, there was no need to step in.”

“Interesting,” concluded Leena to take a sip of her Margarita. “Samantha, can we have a word?”

Samantha looked over at Mark with an apologetic look. Guilt started building up that she purposely dragged him into her personal life. Mark raised his bottle once again, with his lips pursed into a silent surrender. It was flattering, in a way, that she honored her half of their agreement. With each word sent out into the world by the three of them, Mark’s curiosity blossomed. Perhaps more eager and too easily.

“So, how’s the sex?”

Mark choked on the beer. “I’m sorry?”

“Nah, I am just curious how a stranger in a bar got in her bed.”

Ah, thought Mark. Jonathan did not know.

“I am not entitled to tell you that.”

“Heroic.”

“You actually went into surgery? And you did not think to tell me, as well?”

Samantha looked at Leena. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen that mixture of hurt and betrayal on the other’s face. “It was impulsive. Johnny came to my office to tell me about his case, and then we sort of fought—”

“Why did you fight about?”

The moment Samantha put her hands on her hips, Leena knew. “Fought about you.”

“It’s not what you think—”

“He still hasn’t let go of you. Did you tell him that Mark is your fuck buddy?”

Silence. “I see. It’s not like you’re trying too hard to push him either.”

“Leena I don’t want him, I don’t love him. And he loves you. It’s quite visible with the naked eye.”

“It’s not when the moment you fuck another guy, he becomes all protective over a woman who is not even his to begin with!”

Leena stopped in her tracks, almost in disbelief that she let something out which she did not consider she would. Samantha grabbed her by the wrist to tug her through the crowd.

“What are you doing?” screamed Leena over the booming music.

“I am tired of being the middleman between you two fools. He is crushing so hard over you and as cocky and almighty you say he is, he is a coward. So, you’ll speak to him while I have sex in the back room. 30 minutes enough?”

By the time the girls returned to their booth, Leena had not been given the choice to ingest the newly divulged pieces of information. The two arrived in the evasive silence of the two men who could have prayed for a disaster to occur so that they’d escape the involuntary cage they’d been placed under.

“Leena has something to talk to you about Jonathan. So, while you two resolve your lover’s quarrel, I am going to steal Mark from this table.”

Mark extended his body upwards faster than he would have liked to and put his hands together in a silent apology. He threw one last look over his shoulder at the two surgeons and then had to concentrate on his feet to follow an apparently flustered Samantha. The woman guided the two into a room to the far back of the club.

A small room, still neatly decorated with a tall mirror, half a dozen lockers, and all the necessities an employee starting their shift would need. Samantha slammed the door behind them and locked it in an agile movement of the wrist. She prompted her body against the door to relieve a sigh.

“You know, against all odds, I like your friends.” Mark chuckled and took a couple of steps to seat himself on the closest chair. “A bit intense but they seem like genuine people.”

“You don’t say.”

The day had been full and heavy of unsettled emotions for Samantha. Rarely do plans turn out to be exactly how you imagine them. Samantha’s plan was to enjoy a managerial Saturday, having drinks and getting drunk in her favorite club, not reminiscent of the cold past but optimistic of the unexplored future. She could not find a plausible explanation of why she joined the surgery in the evening, of why she allowed Mark to enter a significant piece of her life in meeting her friends.

Only, she did know the explanation for all of the events. She joined in surgery because Jonathan was right. She allowed Mark to enter her life because he exceeded all her expectations of him, because, in a split of a moment, she acknowledged she wanted him to get to know her. To know the great OB-GYN resident that she was.

And this shattered the reality from under her feet.

He was supposed to be a tight hug that turned into sex. Nothing more.

“Hey, are you alright?”

Samantha did not realize when Mark stood up to enter her proximity. His hand found her cheek in a motion that was so natural he surprised himself of it.

She was supposed to be a tight hug that turned into sex. Nothing more.

“Yeah. I am tired of all these unrequited feelings and of all these unspoken memories and I just hope Jonathan lets me go already so he can be with Leena.”

Samantha smiled tiredly and leaned into Mark’s touch. He had a hunch that her confession held much more power than being about just her two friends. And he wanted to ask, the more he wanted to ask the more his heart picked up a beat in his chest.

“Huh, I think the only people who did not know they love each other are Jonathan and Leena.” He declared instead, locking his eyes with hers. Unbeknownst to him, his other hand gained a free will to intertwine with Samantha’s fingers. Mark wanted to stop. He wanted to stop his body from gravitating towards hers.

“Thanks for the chat,” Samantha laughed and ignored the burning in her chest and the buzzing in her head altogether. If she were drunk, she would have blamed it all on the alcohol, and she would have justified herself for the reason it was so scorching to look into Mark’s orbits.

Mark brought his head to rest against her shoulder and the sudden contact set her skin on fire. The devil on her shoulder wanted Mark to rip her shirt so he could touch her better.

“So, I promised Leena I’d get her 30 minutes to freely talk to Jonathan,” Samantha dismissed the dangerous thought to make space for dirty ones. Dirty ones that wouldn’t leave her longing in the morning. “Do you think we could give them that?”

“I…” Mark murmured and pushed himself away, his hand still protecting her cheek. “I want to kiss you, so, so bad.”

“What are you waiting for?”

I want to. And I can’t.

If I kiss you now, I am afraid I’ll fall in love with you.

Samantha untangled their fingers to reach up to his face. Tips of her fingers set ablaze.

Mark sighed and glued their foreheads together. Their noses were brushing against one another, and Samantha could feel each inspiration Mark took into his chest. “I cannot make love to you and leave the next day like I am the worst scum to have ever walked this Earth. I am not that guy.”

Samantha was not sure she understood the breathy words gliding out of Mark’s mouth. She was dazzled by the wording he chose.

“You aren’t making love to me Mark. We are having sex, it is just sex.”

A modest scoff carried Mark’s silhouette to wrap his arms around her frame. He felt Samantha’s body rigid in his embrace. Mark couldn’t let her see the disappointment nesting in his eyes. He couldn’t allow himself to believe in the disappointment nesting in his eyes. He went ahead and assumed a miscalculation. He had to set himself straight.

I guess it is just sex.

“Jonathan asked me how’s sex with you.”

Samantha’s chest deflated helplessly. The sudden hug and the hasty words made her afraid and nervous Mark would want to go on with his life, that he would put a stop to them. She did not want him to put a stop to them. “So? What’d you tell him?”

“Nothing.”

She furrowed her brows.

“But I am going to tell you how sex with you is.”

Mark pulled away from the hug to face her, resting his left hand against the door, the other prepared to do a demonstration on her body. Samantha could not tell how he was feeling, what he was thinking. He looked stoic.

“If I kiss you right here, behind the lobe of your ear,” Mark traced his index along her skin and Samantha felt like he could ignite it “you’ll gasp. Grab my hair and pull me into you.”

Mark’s words were even, collected. His eyes were glued to each piece of her body he was busy with. Reading her like an open book. “If I cup your breasts,” Mark ran the back of his finger over her clothed breast, a moan eluding from her lips “you’ll moan. Like you did just now.”

His hand travelled to her hip, tips of his fingers digging into the fabric of her trousers. She was unlucky it had such a thin texture. “If I grab you by your hips, this is the part where I usually slide myself inside you and you nip your fingers into my back. “

Mark brought his free hand to cusp her cheek and prompt her to look at him. By all means, Samantha was expecting to recognize anything comparable to lust, carnality. What she found instead was a stubborn tenderness that was a stranger to simply having sex.

I want to make love to you.

“Mark?” she whispered when he didn’t move.

“Will you be mad at me if we don’t have sex tonight, princess?” he stated, loosening his clasp on her hip, but caressing her cheek with his other thumb. “I am tired and I left Milo alone too much.”

Against her will, Samantha let out a whimper. Mark took her entire essence and played with it in his hands, reassembling it at his will in mere minutes. In such a short period, Mark took his time to memorize her characteristics, her reactions, and her feelings. Mark took his time to make an effort on how to please her. He never did what Mark did.

I don’t want you to go, Mark.

“Sure, absolutely. I understand.” She nodded, placing her hand above his. “When are you, uhm… when are you flying out?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“When will you be back?”

Why would I want to know?

Mark chuckled and admired her for a moment. He was aware he was leaving her hot and bothered. He did not assume for a moment that she was inquiring for any other reason.

God are you beautiful.

“It’s going to be three long weeks, give or take. You’re going to have to find a replacement for me.”

I hope you don’t find a replacement for me.

Samantha giggled. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

The phone in Mark’s pocket buzzed up with messages. He wanted to pull away, but Samantha kept his hand in place. “Kiss me goodbye at least?”

The night highway was chasing pointlessly after the black van, transporting Mark and his group to the airport. Mark’s eyes were aimed at the blurry lights, the hues of orange and red cutting through the depth of the sky. He pulled over the hood of his sweatshirt and checked his phone. Still devoid of any messages.

Jinyoung was chatting with the others when he noticed abruptly Mark did not join the lively discussion. He stealthily excused himself from the group, with a little help from Jackson to keep the others at bay from questioning too much.

“Hey,” Jinyoung plopped himself into the seat next to Mark. The latter snapped from the whirlwind of his thoughts.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“I think you should tell me what’s up, Mark.”

Mark laughed and turned his body towards the other. “That obvious?”

“A bit.” Jinyoung agreed. “Have you heard from her yet?”

The other shrugged his shoulders. “Nope. We didn’t, you know, do anything. We just went out with her friends. Intense guys, lucky me I have a bit of training from y’all.”

“But?” Jinyoung questioned, still leaving Mark to his own pace. “She must’ve been a bit disappointed you never did anything.”

Mark tilted his head to look out the window. He wished his thoughts would blurry like the reality on the highway. “Yeah, she must’ve been.”

“And you? Were you expecting anything to happen? Did you kiss her, I don’t know, goodbye?”

Mark was a bit shocked by her request. Still, against his better judgement, he drew in closer, to seal the distance between their lips. “You are irresistible, you know that?”

Jinyoung just knew something was bothering Mark. Maybe regret, or maybe repentance.

“No, I didn’t kiss her.” Previous chapter Next chapter

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