An Old Friend ✔️

TWENTYFIVE

He whined. "Seriously?" 

"Mhmm. What about you, what did you do in your free time." 

He paused for a moment before speaking. "Honestly, I haven't had much free time. I kind of...buried myself in work." 

"Are you that busy?" I asked now worried I wouldn't see him much. 

"I never felt like I had a reason to delegate tasks. Now I have a reason to." 

"Me?" 

"You." 

The whole rest of the weekend we hung out with Yoongi and Namjoon just relaxing. We would go in and out of the pool, hot tub, and even inside to have extravagant meals that Yoongi and Jin would make us. After that weekend, Jungkook started work at Key, as did Hoseok. 

Jimin and I were back in the studio with Sp@de, and there seemed to be some intense tention between the girls. None of them were on que, and their comeback was in a few days. 

Finally, after Jimin and I watched them do the same routine for the 10th time, I snapped.

"What in the hell is going on?" I asked, after Jimin turned the music off. 

"What?" Ivy asked, as she was the leader. 

"There is something going on, and one of you is going to tell me what it is. You are not in sync at all with the choreography, when three days ago you had it down. Do you understand that your comeback is in a few days? Do you not care? Do you want to perform as amateurs? You're better than that!" 

Jimin stood next to me, staying silent as we looked at the five of them in front of us, none of them saying a word. I looked into Ivy's eyes and they were pooling with tears. I noticed that she looked over to Jewel, who was looking away from the group, tears pooling in her eyes as well. 

"Jewel?" 

"Hmmm?" she hummed without looking at me. 

"You want to look at me?" 

She took a deep breath, wiping her face before looking over to me. She looked so sad; it broke my heart. I walked over to her, and knelt down, since she was sitting on the floor. 

"What's wrong?" I asked her in a hushed voice. She shook her head not wanting to talk, and I heard someone sigh from the group, and I knew it was Ivy. Jewel turned over to look at her, but I reached my hand up and took her cheek into my hand and made her look at me. "Don't look at her." I kept my voice low, trying to keep the conversation between the two of us. "Look at me. What is going on?" 

She sniffled and leaned closer to me so only I could hear. "D-do you know what it feels like, to care about someone, and they n-not return the same f-feelings?" 

My heart dropped and I could tell she was trying not to cry and she looked back over to Ivy. I turned to look as well, and Ivy's head was tilted down, tears falling from her eyes. 

I looked back over to Jewel with a heavy heart and was honest. "I do." I nodded. "But right now, we need to put our differences aside. There are three other girls in this group that rely on you and Ivy, and we can't be out of sync this way. Trust me when I say, it hurts me to ask you to push your feelings aside for the good of the group. Its harder than it sounds, and I understand that. But you're strong and I think that just for today, you can hold back your anger so that we can get this routine down, okay?" 

She nodded. "I understand." 

She took a few deep breaths and smiled at me, making me stand up and walk over to Ivy. She kept her head down, not daring to catch my eyes.