Cheaters ✓

Worth It?

30 December 2020

It was easily the strangest day of my life. I felt like a villain as well as a hero. I felt liberated as well as confined. I loved and hated myself at the same time. I had never felt such dichotomy within me before. It all started when the doorbell rang in the morning. I opened the door to find Yoongi there. For a moment, I thought it was some lucid dream. Everything seemed real but I felt like if I touched anything, it would all dissolve. I was convinced that he was really there only when he spoke.

'How did you know where I live?' I asked.

'I would have invited you inside if you were standing at my door,' he said.

I was too taken aback, I guess, to adhere to basic etiquette. I moved aside saying, 'Please come in.' He did. I closed the door behind him.

We were physically intimate, we were in love, we had plans of eloping, but we had never even considered visiting each other's homes. He had never seemed very comfortable talking about his home, so I had never brought it up.

'I did something the last time we met which I didn't tell you about,' he said, setting down on the couch.

'What?' I asked as I went towards the kitchen to get him a glass of water.

'You don't have to be all formal,' he said, taking the glass from my hand and emptying it in one go.

'What did you do?' I egged him on.

'I followed you after we said our goodbyes. And then it wasn't that difficult to find out where exactly you lived in DFL Enclave,'

'You could have told me. I would have tidied up.'

'Why? I don't mind it,' he said. He looked around. His gaze stopped on a framed photo of Jungkook and me.

'May I?' he asked.

'Sure.'

Yoongi picked up the frame and looked at the photograph closely. As if he was inspecting it.

'Jungkook, my husband,' I said. I felt guilty saying Jungkook's name in front of him. Why exactly, I didn't know. Yoongi didn't say anything. He traced its outline with his finger and then kept it back. Looking around, he said, 'Won't you show me around?'

'Of course.' I stood up. So did he.

I took him to the kitchen. He touched the dishes, the cutlery, the appliances, as if he was imprinting them in his memory. He stopped beside the coffee machine. I had told him many times over morning texts that I was preparing my coffee while talking to him.

Next, I took him to the bedroom. He stared at the bed for a few seconds. There was an awkward silence. I didn't know if I was expected to say something, I thought. I went into the study, it would divert his attention. But as I started walking he asked me something and I froze,.

'This is where you and Jungkook make love?' he asked I didn't know if it was a rhetorical question or he expected me to say something in response. I chose to remain quite.

'Could you please get my phone? I left it in the drawing room,' he said. I was happy to find a reason to leave the bedroom. When I came back, I paused by the door. Yoongi was on the bed, naked.

'Make love to me, Taehyung,' he said. I don't know what happened to me. It was like I was amidst a storm, which had taken away my power of thinking or decision-making. All I could do was go with it. And the storm pulled me towards Yoongi. He stripped me, pulled me on to the bed-- Jungkook and my nuptial bed—and we made love.

Once we were done, he got up, pulling the bed cover with him, and opened the door to the balcony. He went out, I followed. We stayed there for a while, in each other's arms. We didn't talk. The concept of home is ingrained in us to such an extent, I thought, that even a minute possibility of it makes us hold on to it, regardless of how gypsy or bohemian we are at heart. I wasn't very comfortable being with Yoongi at my place. And yet I knew he was the one I was planning to disappear with. Why was I feeling bad about letting go ot my life with Jungkook when I had already made my decision? I didn't know if Yoongi felt the same way or not, but I was crying inside. A part of me wanted to confess to Jungkook that I was leaving him for Yoongi. But the other part, which knew Jungkook would never be able to accept it, overpowered it. I had to answer a simple question to justify my plan with Yoongi: Was he worth it? I found myself tightening my grasp around him, as if all the answers of the heart lay in the way you physically possessed someone.