Chapter 31

As soon as I realized what I was doing, I pushed Ryan off me. "What the fu.ck do you think you're doing?" I yelled before wiping my lips furiously to get rid of the taste of him. He tasted just like his smelled, minus the sweat, and having that in my mouth was unsettling. I wiped my lips one last time then backed away from him. "What did you do that for?"

He looked at me like I was crazy. "What did I do? You kissed me first!"

"I didn't...," I started to protest but stopped. I eyed him from the corner of my eye then walked over and sat on the first step.

I placed my elbows on my lap and rested my head in my upturned palms.

The truth was; he was right. I had kissed him first. I glanced at him standing at the other side of the staircase staring down at me then looked away again.

I thought back to what had happened a few moments earlier. After walking out of the building, in excitement, I'd jumped on him and after getting over the initial shock, he held onto me and twirled me around.

I laughed, not just because I was practically floating in the air but also because I was sharing in the joy of having our film somehow place in the competition. Yes, the judges absolutely missed the point and the film had never really been about puberty, the growth process of transitioning from childhood to adulthood and whatever else. It was supposed to be a narrative about immigration and even though we were winning because the crazy judge had read way more into it that we'd planned, we were still ecstatic. At least, I was.

So when I jumped into Ryan's arms and he hugged me back and I felt his body pressing against mine in a way it never had, and I thought about how much I'd thought about him in past few days, I felt this sudden intense urge to be closer to him.

It wasn't planned, after all, other than a few fleeting thoughts, kissing him wasn't something I'd spent several nights dreaming about. Plus it certainly didn't help that I was no kissing expert so almost all I knew about kissing was what I saw on television. But I still wanted to kiss him... in a way I'd never kissed Min Ki Oppa.

So as gravity took over and my body slid against his, my nose quickly rubbing against face till I landed on my feet, that feeling grew more intense. And when my feet were firmly on the ground and my arms still wrapped around him, I reached up and kissed him.

He must have been shocked because his body stiffened but it didn't take long for him to kiss me back.

He pressed his lips against mine and I did the same. Were there supposed to be fireworks? I didn't know. I wasn't even sure if the sensations I felt against my lips were pleasurable but I just knew that it felt nice to feel so close to him. But when the little kisses progressed and it felt right to part my lips, an alarm bell went off in my head. What was I doing? And that was when I regained my senses and pushed him off.

"Why are sitting there quietly? Don't you have anything to say?" he asked, his voice much deeper than I'd ever heard.

I turned to him and shook my head. The look of bewilderment on his face was so intense, so exaggerated, that I couldn't help but laugh. So I did. At first, it started off as a slight chuckle then I looked away and chuckled a bit more. But something compelled me to glance at him again and when I saw that the look had intensified, and he'd begun to look like a crazed cartoon character, I tossed my head back and burst into loud, boisterous laughter. I put my hand on my now aching tummy and laughed and kept laughing till my eyes got teary.

"What the fu.ck?" he cursed.

And that just killed me. Even if I'd planned to stop laughing, it sure wasn't going to be anytime soon. "I'm okay," I managed to say between fits of laughter-induced madness.





***



"Are you okay?" Ryan asked a few minutes later.

I nodded.

"What was so funny?"

I giggled then stopped. I tilted my head to him. "You know I'm a mess, right?"

He raised his brow. "You are?" he asked, still confused.

I nodded. "I sure am." I sat up straight. "That was why I laughed," I said matter-of-factly. Even though Ryan's expression had been the drop of water that tipped the bucket, so to speak, laughing was just a way of letting go of all the tension that had built up inside me for the past days. The other option would have been to cry and I was glad that my body hadn't chosen to go that way. I really don't know what I'd have done if I'd cried in front of him.

"But I feel better. Sorry about the kiss," I said, holding onto the railing and pushing myself up. As I slapped my buttocks to rid my pants of any dirt, Ryan also stood up.

He took hold of my hand and made me look at him. Nervous, I sucked in some breath when I saw how serious he looked.

"Why did you kiss me?" he asked, looking directly into my eyes.

I sighed then averted my gaze. "I'm a mess, remember? There were too many things going on in my head."

I expected him to ask me to expatiate but he didn't. Instead, he let go of my hand but kept his lips together. Thirty seconds later, we were on the pavement, walking against traffic. Since we were already at the tail end of winter, I could already tell that the days had begun to get longer as the sun hadn't yet set. I raised my hand to shield my face from its glare.

"Nothing has changed, right?" Ryan asked about a minute into our walk.

I stopped walking and shook my head. "I'm so sorry. And I really wish I wasn't involving you in all my drama. You don't know how sorry I am."

"Again with the apologies. You still love your boyfriend," he stated, still walking.


"Yes," I said in a small voice. I had no choice but to keep walking so I picked up my feet and caught up with him. "Yes," I repeated and as I said it, I felt a pang of regret. Did kissing Ryan mean that I'd cheated on Min Ki? Not only had I wronged Ryan by leading him on, I'd also betrayed my boyfriend in one fell swoop.

"I'm a really bad girlfriend," I thought aloud.

"Really? Even though you say you're confused, I never once thought you'd leave him for me."

"Really?"

He laughed. "You need to chill," he said, putting his hands in his pockets. "Yes, I like you but it's not like we are Romeo and Juliet and it's a matter of life and death. It doesn't have to be so dramatic - it's really not that deep. You really have to chill out and stop stressing about everything so much."

I smiled, jealous of his easy attitude. Maybe if I were more like him, I wouldn't be in such a dilemma. "I really wish it were so simple. I guess if I knew why I was having these feelings, they'd be easy to sort out, you know. When we were in Seoul, everything was so simple. Never once did my feelings shake and I never looked at another guy. So why now? Why do I feel this way? Is something wrong with me?"

He shrugged. "You're having these feelings because you're 16. It's no big deal. I bet you don't even know why you think you like me."

I nodded slowly. "Yeah, I guess I just have to figure things out."

We got to the end of the road and joined the other people waiting for the walk sign to change.

"When I figure everything out, I'm sure it'll be fine."

"What's there to figure out? Ultimately, you love your boyfriend and you want to be with him. You should focus on that."

He was right. But that didn't really change much. "So while I'm still trying to figure things out, you won't be mad that I still think we shouldn't be apart? From your reaction the other day, I feel like I upset you."

The light changed so we joined the rest of the crowd crossing the street. I asked him if he'd brought his car and he said he'd packed it near the subway station I was walking to. When we were safely at the other side of the road, I resumed our discussion. "You're not mad that we can't be friends?"

"I honestly don't see why we can't be friends because I definitely won't pounce on you unless you're scared that you'll pounce on me." He raised his brow but I could tell he was only half-joking.


When I rolled my eyes in an attempt to hide my embarrassment, he laughed.

"But," he continued, "back to your question. Why would I be mad? Do you really think that it's so hard to be away from you?" He snorted and hissed. "It'll be a breeze. Don't worry about it."

I smiled as I thought of what Min Ki had said on the same subject and how he'd claimed that it was difficult for people to stay away from me. It wasn't like I was some hot seductress but from the way Ryan was acting, like he was no longer bothered that I'd severed our friendship, I wondered if he really did like me. Or maybe, just like I had, he'd also become confused by our closeness and mistaken it for something else. Maybe that was why after some time had passed, he was taking everything in stride. Could that be the difference between my two relationships?

While one was solely about love, the other was about friendship. And no matter what happened and how confused we got, at the end of the day, underneath it all, our relationships never really changed.