Where We Left Off
As he slammed the door to his bedroom, he thought about how this didn't use to affect him as much. Before he departed for college, Jinyoung had witnessed his parents fight so much that he could actually sort of bear it. But when they started up again in front of him tonight, he realized that five years away from home had chipped away at the defensive membrane he had learned to put on whenever these eruptions happened.
It was so stupid, he thought. Every and any little thing could set them off. His mother had neglected to set a place at the table for his father. So naturally, his father brought it up, and it turned into an issue. Then Boyoung got involved, frustrated that they had done this in front of her fiancee. Then, his mother stormed up to the master bedroom, threatening to run away.
She wouldn't. She never did, not for long, anyway, and never permanently. It was a favorite empty threat of hers.
He started pacing, wondering what he ever did in the past to get through times like these.
Jinyoung went over to the window, which gave him a view down into the garden out back. Minji was there, taking another call from a client. He and Minji were somewhat similar, he thought, in that they both considered themselves workaholics, but even he didn't have clients this needy. Whoever it was, he or she seemed to need constant guidance and hand-holding. Minji was turned away, so he couldn't read her expression. He hoped the phone call would end soon. He hoped she would come up soon. He never did bode well on his own, especially when his parents were at it again.
He momentarily considered going down to the garden himself. He could sneak up behind Minji and hug her from the back. She hated being interrupted while on a call, but given the circumstances, maybe she would understand?
That was when something caught his attention in the periphery. It came from beyond the grassy gap between the Parks' backyard and the row of traditional houses in the distance. A light flashed twice.
Jinyoung held his breath. Was that real? Did he really see that?
It was their signal, their secret code. His and Jisoo's. They came up with it when they were about twelve or thirteen. Two flashes. That was their code for "Are you awake?" and, tacitly, it also meant "can I come over?"
Jinyoung clenched his fist against the desk. He was positive that it was her. Two flashes, two beats, each one timed uniformly.
Was she asking to come over? Now? He looked down at the digital clock on his desk and saw that it was almost ten in the evening. His family would be getting ready for bed soon. It was hardly the ideal time.
Yet, then again, the lateness of the hour had never stopped them before. They used to use the light signal to sneak out to parties at one in the morning or go on 3 am pancake runs at the 24-hour diner.
And he did miss her. God, did he miss her. Especially now.
Jinyoung switched all the lights off in his room. Then he lifted the blinds up from the window and reached for the lamp on his desktop, flicking it on, off, on, off.
Jisoo sat in the driver's seat, nervously tapping her thumbs against the wheel. She was parked on the street in front of the Parks' house and it was almost ten in the evening. It was a very short drive, five or so minutes, but it only took thirty seconds on the roads for her to start panicking.
Which was weird because she never panicked on her way to the Parks' house. Ever. The Parks' house was like her second home, or at least it was five years ago.
Jennie's flyer was folded in half and lying on the passenger seat. Jisoo tried to come up with a script of some sort. It would be too awkward if she just handed him the flyer and left. That wasn't the purpose of their light signals. Two flashes meant "Are you up?" Two flashes meant "Is this a bad time?" Two flashes meant something important had come up.
She had decided she was going to be friends with him again. Five years had passed. She was sure that that was enough time. She was sure that by now, she ought to be well out of love with him and ready to ease back into a steady, completely platonic friendship with him. After all, that was why she had come home: to move on from her failures, including this one. But none of that was going to happen unless she addressed her long silence. Five years was also a lot of time to catch up to.
She was in the middle of settling on her words when she saw the Parks' screen door swing open, and a figure emerged. Jinyoung stood on the porch, looking left and right twice before seeing her sitting in the car.
With a sigh, Jisoo grabbed the flyer and then exited the vehicle. Jinyoung watched her as she crossed the street, jogged up to the porch, and then stopped in front of him.
Déjà vu.
They stood there for a little while, staring without trying to make it obvious that they were staring. Their last meeting had been fast and brief, and Jinyoung didn't have a chance to get a good look at Jisoo. He was curious about her.
She had gained a little weight, giving her a womanly silhouette. Her skin was a little tanner, kissed by California sunshine. She had always had puffs under her eyes, but this was the first time they made her look tired. All at once, the tenseness in his body left him, little by little.
It was good to see her. He needed to see her.
"Hey," Jisoo said, putting on a smile because she wasn't sure what else to do. Jinyoung flashed one back at her.
"Hi."
"Is your whole family home?" she asked. Jinyoung looked back at the front door for a minute.
"Yeah, they're just inside," he said.
Jisoo nodded. What else? "Is your girlfriend staying here, too?" she asked.
"Yeah, she's taking a phone call right now in Miyoung's garden," he said. Minji didn't know he was out here talking to Jisoo. He wasn't sure what to think of that fact.
"Oh. I see," Jisoo said, hating how stale this conversation was. She was in the middle of trying to come up with another thing to say when Jinyoung let out a deep breath and said:
"So, what's up? I saw you signal."
"Oh, right," Jisoo said. She held Jennie's flyer out to him. "Um, I actually just came to give you this. It's a flyer for our first five-year high school reunion, for the class of 2012."
Jinyoung took the flyer and smoothed it out. It was a little tough to read the mismatched fonts, but after squinting at it a bit, he was able to make out the event title and the dates, times, and locations. This reunion was to be a summer-long affair. He smirked.
"Damn. 2012," he said. At twenty-two, they could hardly be considered old. But at twenty-two, 2012 was one-fifth of their lifetime away.
"It feels like it was a hundred years ago," Jisoo said, chuckling. "But at the same time, it also feels like it was just last week. Jennie's putting it together, and she's worked so hard on it, so I've been helping her reach out to our classmates and stuff."
Jinyoung looked down at the list of events. The first one was a cocktail mixer that was coming up in a week. It was taking place in their high school gym. He laughed quietly to himself thinking about rolling up to his old school again. A trip down amnesia lane.
"Jennie as in... Jennie Kim?" Jinyoung asked.
Jisoo crossed her arms and nodded. "Yeah. She's the alumni relations coordinator now."
Jinyoung blinked at her. "Jennie Kim is the alumni relations coordinator?"
If memory served, Jinyoung knew Jennie Kim as the school's angry goth wallflower who spent all her time incurring uniform infractions and searching for a color darker than black. He was about to say all this aloud, but one look at his expression and Jisoo could already tell what he was thinking. She laughed.
"She also has both arms all tatted up now," Jisoo said. "And she has an industrial piercing. And she now works for the school district."
Jinyoung laughed. Amusing. "She used to scare me back in high school," he said.
"She's actually pretty cool," Jisoo said. "I always sort of wanted to be friends with her, but I thought she was hard to approach. But we've been hanging out a lot lately, and she's chill. You'd like her."
He smirked. That was just like Jisoo to make friends with the loners and the nerds and the other weirdos. In fact, he happened to be the first weirdo she befriended. He wondered if she could be friends with Minji, too.
"Anyway," Jisoo said. "She has a really cool summer planned out for everyone interested."
Jinyoung nodded. "Are you going?" he asked.
She had been asking herself that question. A year or two ago, she might have thought this was lame. But tonight she felt differently.
"Yeah. I think so," she said.
Jinyoung nodded again, looking content with her answer. Then they were silent again, and Jinyoung was staring at her like he knew that that wasn't all she came here to say. Jisoo chewed on the inside of her cheek. She didn't come here with a script to stick to and she didn't have enough time on the drive over to plan one. So she sucked in a breath and decided to just speak candidly to him. The way she always used to.
"Jinyoung, I know that it's been a while since we last talked," she began. Jinyoung folded up the flyer and gave her his undivided attention.
"And I know that I was totally shit at keeping in touch all these years," she continued.
Jinyoung's eyes flicked down to his shoes and then back up at her. "Yeah, how about that?" he said. "Why did you stop talking to me?"
She was suddenly overcome with shame all over again.
"I... I don't know," Jisoo said. "Things just got so crazy when I got to Los Angeles. I got swept up in all of it, I barely had time to even think about my old life."
Jinyoung flinched inwardly. Jisoo let out a deep breath.
"I'm sorry," she said. "The point is, I came here to say that, if you want, I still want to be friends."
His eyes widened.
"Things don't have to be different," Jisoo continued. "We can go back to how we were before. A lot of time has passed. You got taller and got nicer hair, and me, I turned into even more of a loser, but I still feel like at their core, people don't really change. We could pick up where we left off."
Of course, she didn't mean exactly where they left off. Because technically, they left off with Jisoo running away from him after kissing him. It made perfect sense to her why their friendship turned stale and cold after a parting like that, but she didn't want to bring that up again.
Jinyoung wasn't entirely satisfied. He knew Jisoo. He knew that there was more to those five years she spent ignoring him than she let on. If this encounter had happened three or four years earlier, he probably would have been pissed at her. But at this point, he was just happy to see her, happy that she was talking to him again, happy that she still wanted him in her life.
That was friends did for each other, after all. Overlook each other's mistakes.
"Okay," he said gently. "Sure."
Jisoo felt so relieved. She let out a long, deep sigh, and her posture relaxed. She smiled.
"Thank you," she said. Jisoo wasn't sure what to do at this point. Should she hug him? Should they shake hands? What was next? Jinyoung looked like he was wondering the same thing. They both shifted their weight from one leg to the other, and then Jinyoung broke the silence by clearing his throat.
"So," he said. "Since we're... 'picking up where we left off'..."
Jisoo leaned forward a little, anticipating what he would say next. He smirked and he looked up at her.
"You know," he said. "I don't think you ever returned my Nintendo DS before you went to LA."
Jisoo frowned.
A/N: Hey! Thanks everyone for the all the comments thus far! And thank you, subscribers, as well. Please keep them coming. Also, just a reminder that I did revise the prologue if anyone is interested in re-reading it. You'll still be able to understand the rest of the story even if you don't, though. Just thought it needed to show a bit more of their relationship.