Type Shit

type shit 🔥🔥🔥

im-

-; ✧˖*°࿐

Summary: you and colby brock have been friends with benefits for a while, You eventually developed feelings and so did he. But you didn’t know, he would always give you the cold shoulder after sex. you were fed up.

Content tags: jealousy, arguments/yelling, alcohol usage, angst 100%, light smut, MAJOR plot, possibly a happy ending probably not (there is)

Colby b. x reader

(this was in the drafts for like 5 months, my bad if it’s ass)

-; ✧˖*°࿐

———————————————————————————

“fuck.. colby, right there” you whined at the roughness Colby was hitting you with. both you and Colby were almost to your climax, hitting your g-spot constantly and you being fucked dumb.

“you feel so good y/n, no one like you”

these words coming from him felt so good and loved but you knew that the minute he came in you, that would all go away. You wanted to savor the moments where he would say all these sweet nothings in your ear.

“fuck colby….almost ….there.. faster… faster” you tried completely full sentences but you’d become weaker by every thrust and became dumb fucked every time his long, thick, dick would push through your fleshy, pudgy walls.

These words kept him going, probably for another hour if you could handle it. You both were so close, and you got closer together.

“colby!.. I can’t hold it.. I.. need to.. come” “fuck, come for me pretty girl, gimme everything .. you got”

you came after hearing these words, and not a minute less so did he. You could hear your heartbeat going 10 beats per second, your cheeks and ears were hot, forehead covered in beads of sweat, your stomach was all wet from your sweat and his cum that flowed up to your stomach. Colby on the other, was also satisfied, still heavy breathing, eyes closed, so mesmerized the way his dick had a full effect on you and how he had you wrapped around his dick. He felt guilty by what he was about to do. He wanted you to be with him but he just couldn’t bring himself to show this other affectionate side of him, (besides the one side where you are having sex)

“alright.. y/n , you can leave now”

you knew those words were coming but they hurt every time you heard them. You wanted to say something to him that enough is enough. That you were done being his fuck buddy.

“Fine.. colby, I’ll go” as you got up and started putting on your clothes, you turned to him, “but this is the last time you and me are doing this, I’m done with these late night booty calls”

you finally confessed

“w-what?” he said confused on why this sudden change

“yeah, I’m done colby, we’ve been doing this for far too long.. it was bound to happen that one of us was going to catch feelings first.. I had to be the first one,, I want to be more than friends with benefits” you exclaimed

“oh my god y/n , we’ve been over that we just fuck for fun, no strings attached. Why can’t you get that wrapped around your fucking head? I want nothing more..” he didn’t mean any of that. He actually did want to be something more, a label, a reason to call you “mine” “girlfriend” “lover” ,, he just didn’t want to .. at that moment”

you were fighting tears and did not want him to see you in this state, you hated being weak. You couldn’t help but spill a few, “fuck you colby, fuck you… everything about yourself, I never should’ve done this in the first place, you were a waste of my fucking time, I never want to see you again” you said wiping the few tears that fell with your middle finger, collecting the last of your things

you slammed the door as you walked your way out

“ yeah! Fucking go! You know your way out!” He yelled

he was so crushed and hated himself for the way this escalated, he cried the entire night.

-; ✧˖*°࿐

days, weeks, have gone by since you and Colby’s argument. you’ve been crying in your room for weeks, that kat had to make a home visit because you wouldn’t answer texts, calls, or tiktok dms.

kat had a copy of your house key, when she finally found it.

“y/n?… it’s me kat!, I’m here to check in you”

she walked around the house noticing very poor hygiene in the kitchen, dirty dishes being piled up, the living, food wrapped and tissues all over, the bathroom all disorganized and dusty. She knew you were badly hurt since you loved staying clean and loved keeping a tidy,clean, refreshing home. Before she found you she helped you by cleaning the kitchen and the living room.

she finally reached your room, knocked on it a couple of times then walking in.

she saw you under the sheets tissues, food wrappers and dirty dishes all scattered around. The smell of alcohol lightly lingering the room.

“Jesus y/n, how are you living in these conditions?” She walks around trying to get to you. “Cmon y/n, talk to me, what happened?”

you obviously have been awake but have been laying in silence.

it took you a while to speak up again, your voice raspy and groggy from all the crying, screaming and the no verbal communication you lacked for weeks

“what didn’t happen, kat. I cut it quits with Colby in hopes he’d finally let me know that he wanted me more than just a fuck. But then again.. he proved me wrong” you said while sitting up

your hair all tangled and greasy, you rubbed your eyes and your face from frustration

“we had a argument and he basically told me I’m delusional and that he’ll never be with me, I was just a fun fuck for him.. nothing more”

“what the fuck? That’s such a douchebag move!, you know what fuck him, there are other guys out there who will love you and will enjoy fucking you with love instead of lust!”

you laugh at her efforts of trying to cheer you up, her positive energy brought some joy and comfort that encouraged you to get out of bed.

“Thanks kat, your definitely cheered me up, I should probably clean my house” “oh! Don’t worry, I cleaned it up for you,just not your bathroom”

“Awh kat you didn’t have to! Thank you so much”

you started to clean your room with the help of kat, you blasted some of your favorite hype music, city girls being on there

as you finished your room and bathroom, kat spoke up

“omg ! Y/n I just remembered one of the guys is having a party ! We’re all going !! Let’s go!!”

you felt good to deny her offer, “sure ! Why not”

“oh. em. gee !!”

-; ✧˖*°࿐

you and kat had finished up the house, and she left to get ready, you got in the shower right after she left. You took a very long hot shower, scrubbed and shaved all over leaving you smooth and clean.

picking the most sluttiest, breathtaking outfit, that insinuated your natural curves and plump features. You chose this specific outfit because you knew that’s the outfit that had Colby on his knees eating you out for the first time. And this would make him regret not having you.

you did your make up, creating a gothic sort of look, a baddie, too high for males to reach.

so satisfied with your look, you finished in time where the party just started

8:47 pm

you arrive to the party, cars filled the drive way and both sides of the street, music loud to be heard outside the house, people hanging outside the house.

You walked in, in hopes to find kat and the rest of your friends.

“omg hey y/n!!” “hey kat!” You guys hug and exchange sweet words on how beautiful you guys look. kat then drags you to the kitchen for a drink. You look around to see any familiar faces, you see many unknown… until you meet with that familiar face you once would give anything for

“hey Katrina” Colby semi-shouted

kat gave you a ‘omg’ look and you tried you’re best to not give up your feelings and let him see you upset. You quickly grabbed a drink from the cooler, a Jamaican me happy seagrass

“oh hey colbs, what’s up” “I was just gonna ask where Sam was” he said while staring at you, up and down.

You knew this dress still had an effect on him, the way he stared at your boobs and while remembering each hickey that was placed there.

It’d be a lie if he said he didn’t miss you (them),

“Oh yeah! he’s over there by the patio” still staring “uh.. thanks”

“he was so staring”

-; ✧˖*°࿐

you were just sipping on all the wine coolers, until you changed up to drinks mixed with hard liquor, the mixture finally got you and the music was too good to not dance to it. You were still conscious and knew what you were doing.

you went to the dance section and started dancing, moving and swaying your hips to the music. doing the white girl dance (where you move your hips and mess up your hair)

you were having a great time until someone pulled you aside. You weren’t quite sure who it was until they dragged you to a bathroom that looked like no one has used yet. It was Colby

“What the hell colby? why did you just drag me to bathroom” “because I’m wanted to talk to you” “couldn’t you have just asked… you know something like 'hey y/n can I talk to you for a sec?'”

“hey y/n can I talk to you for a sec?”

you give him a glare, “okay what”

“I can’t stand at how insanely attractive you look out there dancing”

“thanks… is that all? .. so I can go”

he looked hesitant, scared; if he should just get over with it.

what if it comes out wrong? or if you finally got over him?

He was scared because you truly were the best thing that happened to him and he was an idiot to let that go. He realized he needs you in his life, you are the one true person to get him to get out of bed everyday.

“uh Colby?” You waved a hand over his face to get him back to reality

“Look y/n I don’t know how to use words correctly, clearly… but what I’m trying to say to you is true and it’s coming from the depths of my heart”

you were still puzzled on what he is trying to refer to but you hoped it would involve him finally confessing his feelings to you

“colbs it’s okay”

that nickname.. that nickname always put him in a trance when you say it.

Colby took a deep breath and proceeded to look at you with his icy blue eyes

“y/n I should’ve never let you walk out that night… I wanted to chase after you but I was too much of a coward to go. Y/n you mean everythi- no you are everything to me”

he paused

you were shocked by his words.. trying to come up with something to say quickly before the moment left

“and I- I love you… more then you know. please y/n..”

he grabbed your hands and made you look at him. You were still trying to find words because you felt the same way, you were happy he finally was able to tell you the words you wanted to hear for so long…

“Colby…”

he waited with pleading eyes, finally being able to touch you after what felt like an eternity, but something in your eyes said something else.

“please y/n”

why can’t you say yes? What is holding you from saying yes?! You thought it would be easier now that it was out in the open, but it’s not and it’s hurting you because now you can’t find the words.

“i don’t know what to say”

“say yes…”

your lip trembled, eyes felt watery from the salted tears that were dreading to come out

“but I’m scared… I’m scared to try”

“me too but together we can figure it out, we will work it out because I believe in us. Please y/n I’m begging… let’s try it together”

his words were just the right words to feel at ease, you were scared but if being scared with Colby meant that you would finally be with him. So be it

“okay… let’s try… together”

-; ✧˖*°࿐

-; ✧˖*°࿐ -; ✧˖*°࿐ -; ✧˖*°࿐

summary: you beg Edward to let you ride him, but obviously he denies it. But you convinced him of another method of riding

Content tags: 18+ ,!smut, thigh riding, dry humping! i think, fingering!, squirting! (this was collecting dust in the drafts for like ever)

short and ass (my bad)

e. cullen x reader

it was a chilly afternoon, the wind blowing, creating small tornados of dried up leaves, scratching the pavement. You and Edward are inside, his small cottage he had in the woods of Forks, Washington.

All afternoon you’ve been cuddled up against your cold skinned boyfriend. But you always feel warm around him.

while cuddling, you accidentally nudged him causing him to groan. to him it hurt but for you, you wanted to hear more.

This caused you to get hot. You started to kiss his cheek, then his jawline, then his neck. He enjoyed it too.

you got on top of him, kissing him, straddling him. He knew what you were doing.

“Y/n stop” he said

“oh cmon Edward, please” you continue kissing him, you now start to grind a bit against him.

“No y/n, you know we can’t, I’d love to but I can’t” he says shamefully while pushing you off of him.

You stop, and look at him in defeat. You’ve always tried to get him to continue but his morals just won’t let him.

Until an idea pops up in you mind.

“Edward” “yeah”

“what if- now hear me out, what if you let me ride you”

his palely skin turns a bit pink

“w-what? That still can’t-“

“no no but not with your dick…. With… your thigh”

he looks at you confused but somewhat interested

“yeah you let me .. ride you but on your thigh. It’s very simple, you let me do all the work and you don’t have to do anything”

You started to straddle him again, caressing his clothed chest.

“You just relax, i promise to make you feel good”

Edward was so mesmerized, he didn’t say anything . He let you take advantage of him. he laid his hands on the side of the couch, letting you do your thing

you got onto his cold and rough thigh. You were still clothed from the bottom.

You looked at him with lustful eyes and slowly grinding on his thigh, he knew this was wrong but he just couldn’t bother stopping you from fucking yourself into him. You just looked so good, eyes partially closed slowly grinding and running your hands up to your tits, and giving them a light squeeze.

you know he was watching your every move, so you grabbed his hands and replaced your hands from the previous position

“cmon baby, don’t be scared” you said slightly out of breath

he was scared but he trusted you and what were you doing. you saw the huge erection growing in his tight pants, you slowly crept your hands to the area that needed the most attention.

“no.. don’t touch” Edward huffed out

“please let.. me”

he held you, closing his eyes, feeling you slowly rubbing yourself on him. You were getting so needy, holding on to his broad shoulders, digging your nails into them.

"mmh.. like that.." you said while tiliting your head back, your eyes closing shut, eyebrows scrunting up in pleasure.

Edward holding you so tight, keeping you in place on his dick, wanting more friction.

you got up, and edward looked at you confused and frustrated, but you pulled down your leggings as well as your panties, quickly trying to shimmy your way out of them

"you keep your pants on" you huffed

your wet slick being absorbed by his jeans, seeing the patch of wetness on his dick print

you began to rub yourself on him, moaning loudly. Edward imagining it was his dick that was pumping into you.

you started to aggressively move your hips trying to get to your high

"fuck Edward.." you moaned. Edward needed to see more of you

he dared and inserted two fingers into you, this caught you by surprise, feeling his icy cold fingers pump you so good. your wetness lubing his fingers perfectly, to easily get in there deeper.

"yeah.. yes.. please edward" tears started to well up, "yeah? you like that? cmon.. look at me"

you tried to open your eyes,

finally looking at how beautiful he was. "atta girl, thats it.. how bad you want it?"

"yes! bad.. p-please. please.."

you stopped rubbing trying to let him continue with his fingers, but he stopped as well. "uh uh, cmon pretty, keeping moving"

frustrated, you kept rubbing on him. his fingers now going faster, placing his thumb on your clit, creating circular motions

"f-fuck ed- im com-"

edward was panting.. on his other hand, holding you tight

"m-me too"

sweat beads starting to fall down your forehead, you leaned forward placing your hot, sweating head on his. feeling the coldness of his skin.

feeling your stomach getting tight, holding onto his head, cry-moaning as you felt yourself release.

"come for me"

your head went back as you squirted and making a big mess on edward's jeans. besides the heatness of your cheeks from the sex, they got hotter of embarrassment of edward seeing you like that.

"o-oh my g-god" you panted out

Edward was shocked, and so incredibly turned on that you can do that.

"im.. im so sorry, this is so embarrassing.." "no no that was so hot" he looked at you with lovely eyes

he kissed you and wiped the sweat under your eyes, "you are so incredibly beautiful"

you smiled at him and fell over on the couch, still bare from the bottom.

"fuck edward..." you said in bliss, smiling to yourself

"well now i have to go change my pants.." he said as he got up

"sorry.."

HOW WAS YOUR DAY: NAMJOON

Summary: Just namjoon fingering you in his studio as he asks you about your day.

Words: 1.3k

Warnings: idol!Namjoon×reader. fingering, squirting, namjoons lap (it's a warning, yes), kissing.

Authors note: I want him. SO BAD. ___________________________________________

"I was uh..I was walking by her when I c-came and she g-gave me such looks-" you try talking as Namjoon’s fingers abuse your clit. He had you sat on his lap, your hands around his shoulders, your hips sat on his left thigh as he spread your legs slightly to fit his hand under your skirt.

"She did?" He asks, you nod whining. His hands work slowly as if he had all the time in the world.

You had visited him at his studio because you missed him. It had been days since you saw him, so you came bearing coffee and food. But as soon as you entered the building, the new recruit in his managing team gave you a dirty look.

You were his girlfriend for fucks sake!

"I wanted to smack her so bad, ohhh my-" you trail as he dips his fingers inside you to gather some wetness getting back to your clit again, rubbing it in faster more precise circles.

You gasp, squirming as he lazily sucks a hickey on your neck while making you see stars.

"So good joon fuck I love your fingers." He hums against your skin, squeezing your waist with his other hand resting against your back while his fingers tortured you back and forth from your climax.

"Did you eat something, love?" You nod, feeling the knot inside you, forming slowly and very gradually. His hands slow down his ministrations, and you whine as you feel your legs shake out of sensitivity.

"Joon-" you breathe out as he smiles proudly at the purple mark he gave you on your neck, marking you as his.

"What did you eat?" He asks with hooded eyes admiring the mark he left while you try to make phrases inside your dizzied head.

"I- some- ah fuck- I had a gimbap with my colleagues, mm-" You words stop with a hitch in your breath as he slides two fingers slowly inside you. You try holding his wrists, but then your hands end up clutching your hair because you feel so good.

"Colleagues, huh?" He says, curling the tip of his fingers slightly to tickle that spot.

"Oh shit right there!" Your head falls back as you feel that spot being rubbed in a way that makes your eyes roll.

"Was Mark there too?" You just gasp as his fingers rub your insides and his thumb rubs your clit from the outside. Your brain short circuiting at the amount of pleasure you're receiving.

You squirm in his hold as his other hand makes you stay still. His tongue licking around your earlobe while his fingers abused the little spongy spot inside you.

"I asked you something, love." his voice was so gentle yet firm, making your mind search for the question he asked. Your brain was too dizzy to think with his thick thighs underneath you along with the hard on he had, so you just moaned, clenching hard around his fingers.

He pulls his hand out and smacks your swollen cunt, shoving his fingers once again. Asking you again, silently.

Was he?

"I dont know, I dont know-" you repeat with a high-pitched whine, your voice echoing and bouncing against his studio walls. You're glad the studio was soundproof, or people might think Namjoon was killing someone in there.

He chuckles mocking your thoughtless face, "so dumb, my baby, look at you, my baby can't answer coz I fuck her open with my fingers huh? My perfect little cocksleeve." You clench hard as he makes you feel smaller by each syllable. You squirm in his hold, making him bite your skin underneath your ear.

"I'm close so close oh-so cl-so-" he chuckles as you babble dumbly, breathing heavily against your ears that it makes your mind wander to how hard he must be right now.

The moment your mind travels to his dick you miss it inside you, you want to feel him inside you, the stretch of his fingers making you miss the way his cock split you open 3 days ago.

3 fucking days.

You think you might die if you dont get fucked by him today.

Your eyes water as you feel your orgasm coming closer, his hard on pressing against the back of your thigh, making your mind swirl with dirty thoughts.

Your fucked out brain getting reminded of the way he pounds you against the mattress, the way he fucked you in his balcony 35 floor above the city. How he fucked you open with his cock in front of his mirror, fingers inside your mouth as he pumped himself dry inside you filling with his warm cum.

His warm cum. Oh god.

"Jesus, you're crushing my hand so hard." He says through his teeth as he feels your thighs tightening around his hand, your face buried in his chest.

When he fastens his pace, he pulls your legs apart by his other free hand, making you spread open for him on his lap. Your other leg now in his hold from under your knee, resting on the table in front of him. You were exposed to the studio walls, feeling vulnerable suddenly.

He keeps you open to the cold air in the room while his warm fingers plunge deep inside you. Squelching so loudly you wanna hide of embarassment, but you're so close you think you'll go crazy.

"Oh god--" you breathe out as he picks up his pace, his stimulation on your clit and the spot inside you constant. You legs shake in his hold and your eyes start tearing up.

"Oh make me cum make me cum please? Please? Oh god please!" You mumble mindlessly, pleading him, requesting him, begging him to make you cum as he coos, his fingers never faltering. Your fingers clutch his hair desperately as you look into his eyes, begging, your eyebrows furrowed as he smiles almost mocking you.

Evil.

"Cum baby, cum whenever you want, make a mess, go on" he says, his breathe heaving in your ears. It's as if he had turned a switch inside you that made you arch your back in his hold. Your cunt squeezing around his fingers as your cum sprays all over his lap. He groans as he feels your walls pushing his fingers out, making him fill you up with his fingers again, making them squelch loudly.

He holds your hips chuckling darkly as you squirt all over his joggers, his fingers fucking you through your high but he needed more so he pulls his fingers out to rub your clit sloppily and you sob.

He pulls you in for a kiss, and you feel your teeth clash as you breathe hard against him. Your body vibrates and thrashing in his hold as he growls against your lips.

"Yeah, good girl," he groans against your lips as you gasp, twitching.

His tongue plunges inside your mouth, and you squeal against his lips, your lips not even moving as you just gasp. Your eyes roll back, your hand clutching onto his neck desperately as his fingers rub your folds, making sure you spill everything you have inside you.

"Thats it thats it, my perfect girl." He coos against your lips, you breathe heavily, tears flowing down your eyes.

You whine, holding his wrists out of oversensitivity, smiling, feeling light-headed.

He smiles looking at you and teases your clit, flicking his index against it. Your body twitches as he does so, just to laugh at how pathetically your body squirms in sensitivity.

"Tch-tch-tch" he mocks you, grinning as your head falls back, his hand cupping your pussy making your eyes roll back. He squeezes, massaging your folds to calm you down.

"You did so good, my baby." He kisses your forehead, caressing your hair. "You okay?" He asks, his voice calming and deep. You nod tiredly.

"Good," he kisses your cheek, "because you're gonna do that again, but on my dick this time," he says, kissing your cheek again, tenderly.

Well, fuck.

___________________________________________

type shit 🤤

LOVELY HUSBAND : CHAN

⸻ synopsis: husband bang chan x f!reader ; genre: fluff, smut (nsfw under cut), headcanons, breeding kink. wc : 0.6k

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to never let you do anything on your own even if it’s something as simple as opening jar. he just sees it as a gesture to show that he loves and cares about you.

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to cancel all his plans, take a day off work, and even spend his entire day taking care of you after finding out you got sick. trust me he wouldn’t be leaving side for even a second except if its for water or food.

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to need i mean absolutely need! to spoil you. he doesn’t a fat load of cash for no reason, you will be getting anything you’ve ever dreamed of. he hates whenever you decide to spend your own money. he thinks its like your throwing him away.

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to accidentally get mad or yell at you and then immediately start apologizing. you know you’re not the reason, sometimes after a stressful day his patience is at a all time low. you forgave him of course but he can’t forgive himself.

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to notice you gain interest in a new restaurant but they aren’t any near you guys so he takes time out of his day to look for recipes and ingredients to cook it for you at home. he loves to see your reaction to his cooking, makes him wanna do it more.

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to notice whenever you were social battery decrease in public, holding you close to him and limiting your conversation with others.

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to always compliment you no matter what. just woke up? beautiful. sweaty after a hot day? gorgeous. you never go a day without 10 different compliments.

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to go all out for movie night. rather than sitting in theaters with a ton of loud random people, you both rather just be alone with each other. he grabs a bunch of pillows and comforters and gets the popcorn ready to watch as much movies as you want or he can possibly take.

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to always be soft with you during sex unless specified. if you want him to go hard he won’t be easy in you.

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to want to cockwarm whenever he’s busy but you’re needy. it would always 9 times out of 10 end up with you guys fucking

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to love the thrill of creampies. he knows you won’t get pregnant because you’re on birth control, but him seeing his cum oozing out of you makes him go crazy

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to make sure you come every time you guys have sex. he could come last or even never, sex for him is never done until you come.

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to explore kinks with you. if you ever wanted to try being dominant he’d be down. it’ll first be mentioned by him as a joke but you had other ideas in mind.

BANG CHAN . . . is the type of husband to take his time while going down on you. you’re 5 orgasms in and hes showing no signs of slowing down. you’d have physical push him off or else he’s not ending soon.

masterpiece

aloneness | by design chapter one

pairing: chan x reader ; hyunjin x reader | wc: 16.2k | genre: adult romance, angst | warnings: childhood best friends to lovers ; heavy angst ; death and grieving ; complicated feelings ; failed relationships ; explicit sexual content. the chapter contains heavy themes that could be upsetting to some. if you're concerned it might be an issue for you, please read the unabridged list of warnings, which also contains nsfw warnings. reader discretion is advised. this work is for adult audiences since it contains mature themes and explicit sexual content.

It had been such a long while, it seemed, since Chris had truly loved you. And you loved him in a desperate way, like trying to hold onto a knife not by its handle, but by its blade.

To be intimate with love, the true kind, also means being intimate with loss.

You grew up in a small enough town that most faces you saw, every day, were familiar ones. The employees at the grocery store saw you become a teenager and later, an adult. You were greeted by your first name if you stepped into the post office. You had become acquainted with specific trees, the twists of certain roads, or the lines of the mountains on the horizon. By no means did that make your life dull, not by your standards anyway. The town’s name is Stormhaven—named so by its founders because of the violent storm that raged the first night they established camp on this land. As grand and frightening as the storm was, it was equally beautiful. Something about the geolocation of the city or perhaps the fact that it’s located where the river melts into the sea makes it prone to storms, and they are, indeed, reputed to be gorgeous.

You did leave momentarily though,  to pursue some major you had no great interest in, but it felt right to try and do something. You were the first of your family to go to college. You thought, foolishly perhaps, that you could teach English—you had always been one to read books and enjoy the intricacies of the language in them. To you, words were no different than pigment, sentences were the oil that made the paint, and books were the finished product, the saturated canvas. Now, here’s the thing—you liked English and you liked art, too, thanks to a book you found at the age of 9 on your uncle’s bookshelf. It was your first introduction to the Italian masters and their masterpieces, and you were a little too young to fully comprehend it, but that did not stop you from appreciating it. 

You were the first of your family to go to college. Your parents owned a small general store on the north side of the city, where there’s more forest than city. It’s perfectly situated though—directly on the one road that leads to the good fishing spots. 

The river is at its narrowest there, narrow enough that if one spoke out loud, they could be heard on the other side when people stood on the shore. There was another camping ground there, and cabins, and if the river was gentle enough, it wasn’t uncommon for people to go across it to make new acquaintances. 

You grew up there, in this place loved by locals and tourists alike. Your family was friends with the family that owned the camping ground down the hill, and it helped make business good for everybody involved. 

It also made your summers a lot less boring—you were an only child, with aloneness often forced on you. And it could have been awful if the owners of the camping ground didn’t have a son who happened to be the same age as you.

Chris was always ‘the good guy’, which, at times, rendered being his friend difficult. Because you had to live up to the standard. You had to deserve it somehow. Chris himself never made you feel this way, of course not, it was only fueled by your own compulsion to compare yourself to him at all times. Chris was a good kid, smart, funny, and nice, and he looked good. It made him very popular with the girls on the camping ground. You weren’t particularly popular with the boys. Or with the girls.

Aloneness forced on you. Defining you, almost. 

Except Chris made sure you were never left out. He always introduced you as his best friend and brought you along even though his fangirls clearly didn’t appreciate you being around. Either Chris was oblivious to it or he just didn’t care—in any case, you spent all of your summers with him, from sunrise to sunset and sometimes after. Chris attended the private school in the next town over, so you didn’t see him a whole lot during the year. Still, your family visited his once in a while for dinner, and you and Chris would hang out in the basement to watch movies and eat potato chips. Life had been easy, once.

It would be a lie to say that everything went smoothly all the time with him. When both of you reached an age where hormones are raging, things got a little complicated. Chris got in a fight—a physical fight—with his best friend during a party. It was just before tourist season. Your parents had gone for a couple weeks for a long overdue vacation—they trusted you and Mrs. Bahng with the store, knowing you could handle it, especially since it wasn’t very busy yet. Of course, you threw a party—a low-key one, just a few people. Some guys from Chris’ school also came along. 

By then, Chris was a handsome young man, charming without trying to be, with a dorkish laugh and a good heart. If somebody had asked you if you had a crush on him then, you would have said no, but you would have been lying to them and to yourself. 

The party quickly took a turn when some of Chris’ friends pulled out the liquor they’d brought. It made you nervous. This was your house after all, and if something happened, your parents would never trust you again. You tasted vodka for the first time that night. First in a red plastic cup, mixed with some cheap lemonade, and after that, on the lips of Chris’ friend when he pulled you to a quiet corner to make out with you. His name was Liam. You saw him once in a while when he spent the night at Chris’ place or something. He wasn’t as popular with girls as Chris was and you suspected he was jealous of him, but then, who wouldn’t be? 

However, Liam turned out to be a little too insistent, touching you in places, and whispering things to your ear. You made up some excuse and fled to your backyard where most people had come to enjoy a small bonfire. You sat with them but your mind was elsewhere, wondering if you ought to let Liam do to you whatever it was he wanted. After all, you weren’t popular, and nobody wanted to date you. Liam was the first guy who kissed you for more than three seconds and who touched you. There might not be one after, so perhaps you shouldn’t pass on that opportunity. 

He did join you by the fire. Liam. He sat not next to you but behind you, his legs locking you in his embrace. It wasn’t even the worst PDA taking place in the group as one of your friends was heavily making out with one of the boys while the others talked. You participated in the conversation, not unaware of the glances Chris shot you a little too often. Maybe, after all, it wouldn’t be a good idea to have sex with his friend. Maybe that made him upset, and you could understand that—he had never pursued any of your friends and had always made it very clear he wasn’t interested in them. You figured he expected the same of you.

But Liam kissed the back of your neck. And then he touched you again and again—your waist, your back, your thighs. He held you in his arms and it birthed a distracting tingling sensation between your legs that you couldn’t blame on the vodka. “Come with me upstairs,” he said into your ear. And you did. You went. 

He kissed you even more in your bedroom, his hands underneath your shirt, his mouth sloppy and wet, too wet. It all happened very fast—you were on your bed and then he was on top of you and he was very hard. It happened so fast, too fast for you to fully process it. It only lasted a few seconds—two thrusts, no more. In between the first and the second, it occurred to you that you hadn't used a condom. And then Liam whimpered pathetically and it was over.

It made you want to throw up, or maybe it was the vodka. Or, maybe, it was just the smell of him—sweat and cheap cigarettes and his musk, which was rather unpleasant in your nose. 

You slid from underneath him, visibly dazed, and it made him upset. Years later, you realized he was mostly upset at himself and ashamed of his premature... conclusion. Still, it was at you he lashed out, maybe for not looking like you had just gotten the dick of the century.

“Don’t be like that,” he told you, shoving his small, softening cock back into his pants.

His sour tone, paired with the soreness between your legs, brought tears to your eyes. It made him more upset even. "What's EVEN the problem anyway?" He raised his voice at you, and whenever someone did that, it always made you cry.

Unfortunately for him, Chris had made his way upstairs, suspecting something wasn’t quite right. He tried to open the door but it was locked. “Let me in.” His voice was unrecognizable, to the point that it frightened you almost. You still felt weird between your legs, sore and empty and full all at once. And above all, unclean. Dirty. You wanted nothing more than showering and washing Liam off you.

“Fucking let me in.”

Liam was very drunk. Instead of post-nut clarity, he had been hit by a strong dose of dopamine that rendered him even less coherent than he had been before. “What is it, Bang? You upset I jumped your virgin friend before you could?”

It occurred to you at that moment that you had never seen Chris angry before, except for fun like when he was playing video games. But something in his voice let you know that the situation was very serious. 

And then he smashed the door open using his shoulder. What happened next would always remain a bit blurry in your memory, but it never left either. Chris grabbed Liam by the collar of his shirt and slammed him against the wall. And then they fought. It was nasty. Liam was taller and bigger than Chris, but he was also drunker—Chris, on the other hand, was quick and properly pissed off. Before you knew it, Liam was pinned to the ground under Chris’ weight, being punched repeatedly in the face. Years later, you would admit this to Christopher—that it felt good to see his fist sink into Liam’s face, to see his lip split open, to hear his whining. Still, you knew it was wrong. Something within you, that night, knew that Chris could seriously injure Liam if he didn’t stop, so you stopped him. 

You stopped Chris, too, when he threatened to reprise his attack as Liam was stirring up. You just wanted everyone gone so he made them leave. You heard more shouting from outside but paid it no mind and just went into the bathroom and turned the shower on.

You stood underneath the water, keeping it as hot as you could, scalding your skin, rubbing soap all over yourself as hard as you could using various tools—a washcloth didn’t really cut it, and neither did your loofah or even your nails. In the end, it was your exfoliating cloth that you used to cleanse your body, emptying your bottle of shower gel, steaming up the entire bathroom. But you washed and washed and washed and rinsed and rinsed and rinsed. You did so until you could no longer feel Liam between your legs, only your skin made sensitive from all the scrubbing. 

Chris was waiting for you, sitting on the floor in the hallway. You had wrapped a towel around your body but it was dark and you didn’t care. You could walk naked outside for all you cared. 

That night, Chris took your face in his bloody, shaking hands and asked you if you were okay. You felt strangely okay, like you should have been sobbing or afraid but you were neither of these things. He, on the other hand, didn’t look too good with bruises and cuts on his face and even more on his knuckles. “Your mom will kill you,” you pointed out. The Bahngs preached pacifism. They were some of the nicest people you had ever met.

That night, you put on some comfortable clothes and made Chris sit in the bathroom while you cleaned his wounds. He insisted he could do it and you knew he could but you wanted to. You needed to do something, something useful if at all possible, and he let you, apologizing the whole time for letting Liam come here, and for being his friend in the first place. “He wasn’t like that before,” he assured you.

People change. You didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to say.

That night, Chris tucked you in bed but you asked him to stay, so he stayed, holding you in his arms. 

You spent that summer working both at the general store and at the campground. You worked a lot and when it raised suspicions in your parents, you simply said you were saving up for college so they didn’t question it. Chris knew, however, that you just needed to keep your mind, and body, busy. So, when there was no work for you to do, he took you on hikes. Hours-long hikes where neither of you really spoke. You just walked side by side. The more summer advanced, the farther you went. 

You started talking again at one point, for no reason at all. It just happened. Chris told you about his upcoming school year and how he still wasn’t exactly sure what he should be doing with his life. That he felt bad he wanted to leave Stormhaven, that he knew his father expected him to take over the business. You felt the same way. You were scared of the future because you didn’t know what you were supposed to do with your life. When you mentioned it, Chris assured you he thought you’d be a great teacher. You returned the compliment, telling him he would be at home in business school, and that it didn’t mean he had to take over the camping ground. He could do something else. 

It’d be great if we went to the same college, he said, and you agreed. It would, indeed, be great. By now, Chris had become something to you that couldn’t quite be defined by words—a best friend? Yes, perhaps. But it was more than that. He took care of you in a way that was so beautiful and so deep, you knew you could never repay him, that you would always be in his debt.

You loved him. And maybe you knew he loved you, too. 

You worked a lot that summer, even picking up shifts at a gardening center in town, owned by one of your friends’ dad. You didn’t think your absolute need to remain busy had anything to do with Liam. You were over it in the sense that few girls get to experience a wonderful and romantic ‘first time’ and that it hadn’t lasted very long anyway. You were over it, too, because Chris was there for you. 

You were over it because both you and Liam were drunk and stupid and young. 

It wasn’t what troubled you really. The problem was that it felt good to be desired for once. You had wanted Liam to touch you, and you had been flattered to feel him through his pants when you sat between his legs. It had even aroused you. The problem was that you didn’t really want to fuck Liam but you let him do it even though you knew deep down that it was a stupid thing to do. Because it was still better than being unwanted, than having aloneness forced on you.

And you felt disgusting for thinking that way. 

You worked so much it made you ill—one day, when you were helping Mr. Bahng and Chris clean up a few campsites, you had a dizzy spell so intense you momentarily passed out, waking up a few seconds later, laying on your back on the soft soil. It was particularly hot that day, especially considering the summer was ending and you were returning to school the week after. Mr. Bahng made you drink water while Chris cooled you down, pouring water into his hands and pressing them on your neck and face. When you regained some color, he was instructed by his dad to take you home—not on foot, of course, on the company’s ATV. It was almost like a walk of shame when Chris dropped you at your place. You kept telling him you were fine but it didn’t exactly feel like it. You just didn’t want him to go out of his way for you. 

Your mother was home and she already knew everything because Christopher’s dad called her. She made you go to bed, saying she would make you a good meal with broth. But you couldn’t stomach the sandwich she made. Or the broth. 

There was a storm that night, quite strong. Chris stayed with you even though you asked him not to. He said he liked you even though he saw you throw up, and tried to make jokes about it. He made you laugh that night, and it was your most heartfelt laugh in a while. You weren’t scared when the power went out because he was there. 

By then, you knew that you loved him in a special way. It made you feel a lot of things when he held you in his arms or when he kissed the top of your head. 

You kept a small battery-powered light in your bathroom, especially for nights like these. You reached for it in the drawer it had always been, and instead of the light, your fingers wrapped themselves around something else, something innocuous, an everyday item. An unopened box of tampons. 

Your whole world collapsed around you, except it was you who fell to your knees, suddenly completely unable to carry your own weight. Your heart ran marathons in your chest and you froze. It was how Chris found you. He looked at you, then at the tampons, and at you again. 

Then he was on his knees too, wrapping his arms around you. The storm outside matched the one in your heart. You had never been as scared as this in your whole life. You didn’t even cry—you just sat in bed, all night, watching the lightning over the river, staring at the stormy sky, thinking, thinking, thinking. You went through every possible scenario you could think of, and in none of them did it make sense to remain pregnant. 

Chris, once again, was there the whole time, not leaving your side that night and taking responsibility for you the next morning. With his brand new driver’s license—not his learner’s—he took his dad’s car and drove both of you two towns away so you could purchase a pregnancy test. He was the one to go into a store and buy three of three different brands. “To make sure,” he told you. You did the first test and it came out positive. 

The second also. You didn’t need to do the third, so you discarded it. You did cry then, in the not-so-clean bathroom stall of a mall you weren’t familiar with. Just a few tears. What went through your mind was this—that just because you had been greedy, just because you wanted to feel desired for one night, you were going to destroy something beautiful.  

Chris was there for you. He held your hands while you made appointments. He drove you two hours away from home just to make sure nobody would know where you went, telling his parents he was taking you to some event you had never heard of. A two-day event, so it would require the trip to be an overnight one. They bought it. They didn’t even care that you would share a hotel room. Your parents trusted Chris. On the first day, you had a lot of tests done. On the morning of the second day, they proceeded to the abortion. It took about five minutes, then it was over. You stared at the ceiling as the doctor was ridding your body of the consequence of your impure greed. During those five minutes, you reflected on how selfish you were. 

Chris stayed with you while you rested at the clinic. You shared some juice with him. Sometimes the cramps hurt you so bad you couldn’t talk, but it only lasted a few seconds. He held your hand. When you were free to go, he drove you two back to the hotel and you took a nap after having a small dose of the painkillers they gave you. It was over but it had never truly begun, and it felt strange. You felt empty. While you were sleeping, Chris went to the nearest drug store and bought just about every type of maxi pad he found. You bled a lot, and it hurt a lot, too.

Chris ordered pizza but you weren’t hungry. You made yourself eat a few bites and showered in very hot water. That night, he tucked you into bed but you asked him to stay, which meant you wanted him by your side and not on the other bed. He looked at you like he was hoping you would say that.

Christopher kissed you on the lips. Just a kiss, lips on lips, almost chaste, and you knew then that you would marry him someday. He kissed you again on your forehead and you buried your face into his neck. 

“I never thought I wanted children before,” you admitted to him. “What if it was wrong to get the abortion?”

“There’s still time,” he promised you. There was a long silence after that, but he added, “You made the right decision for your future. We’ll have a baby someday, okay? You and I.”

You believed him. And you were happy that year, when you realized, finally, that you had let Liam do this to you because you wanted Chris to do it, and you did not think he could ever feel the same way. 

You weren’t accepted into the very renowned university Chris was going to, but your college was just an hour-long drive away so it wasn’t too bad. You saw each other as often as you could during the first semester, but things got complicated as time went on. He was more and more busy and you were less and less enthusiastic about your studies. It turned out, English and teaching English were two very different worlds, and you did not belong in the latter. You couldn’t believe you were being tested on some supposed ‘ways’ to teach certain things to students. There was no such thing for you—every person is different, so how could one even explain another’s learning process? 

You dropped out on your second semester, leaving in the middle of a particularly boring and arduous English Grammar class, heading directly to the parking lot where you had left your car. You drove all the way to Chris’ apartment, which he shared with two other students. He wasn’t home, but one of his roommates, Changbin, informed you he should be back soon and let you in. 

Chris was there for you. It made you feel inadequate. You were always somehow in need of him or of something, but him most often. You were constantly in his debt.

He soothed your tears and promised you that your parents wouldn’t hate you if you dropped out, but he suggested thinking about another major. “There’s still time,” he said. He often said that.

You got a job at a coffee shop and worked there the rest of the year while weighing your options. You visited a lot of places—parks, various attractions, art museums. The museums were your favorites—there was no museum in Stormhaven, obviously, so to have several options to choose from now was quite the upgrade. You spent countless hours wandering in galleries, observing, learning, feeding your soul, after which you went to the library and gathered some books related to whatever you had just seen. Chris joined you sometimes, but it was really just to be with you and you knew it. He didn’t hate art, it just wasn’t for him. It didn't reach his soul like it did yours. You went to concerts with him too, which he liked a lot more. 

He suggested you try applying into art history for next year, and of course you would love that. Only, you were the first of your family to go to college, and you knew that your very practical parents, aunts and uncles would find an art history major rather pointless. An absolute waste of time. Chris insisted though—he went as far as mentioning it during winter break when both of your families sat to share a generous Christmas dinner. As expected, the response was underwhelming.

But what are you gonna do after? There can’t be enough jobs. 

Can’t you read and learn all that stuff in books or on the internet? What’s the point?

Are you sure? Or are you going to drop out again because it turned out it wasn’t for you?

You couldn’t hold it against them. Your family. They weren’t even wrong. 

You took more shifts at the coffee shop, and in the summer you returned home to work at your parents’ general shop. Chris came to spend some time home too, and it was good to be back there together. He was doing great in business school and you were going nowhere though, so as days passed, your mood darkened. He didn’t let you close yourself off, making you tell him the things that were on your mind just to prove you wrong.

“What do you mean, not enough? I loved you before you went to university, so I’ll love you regardless. So don’t say that. I forbid you.”

You stopped saying it, you just didn’t stop thinking it.

The year after, you moved in with Chris and his two roommates. The plan was to find a place for you two but to be together in the meantime. You didn’t mind, really—Jisung and Changbin were good guys, and Jisung told you about a job opening at the bookstore he worked at. You liked this job a lot. You visited all the museums in this new city, too. 

For your birthday, Ji and Changbin even got you an art book. It was a long essay on one painting in particular, an oil painting titled Loss. The painting depicts a lone woman sitting on a wooden chair in a neutral-colored room, almost reminiscent of a Vermeer, but with bolder colors. The room appears empty except for the corner of a bed on the right, and a window on the wall near which the woman sits. She is looking at the ground, but others say she is looking at her hands which are intertwined, holding nothing. The true direction of her gaze is disputed, but her expression is intricate, complex, unreadable. Depending on the viewer’s mood, she sometimes looks simply pensive. Most of the time she appears deeply sorrowful, almost desperate. To some, she shows no emotion. Thing is—art historians cannot agree. Everyone is right. Everyone is wrong.

The true magic of the painting resides in the sunset filtering through the window—it illuminates the room intricately, the shadows created by it adding to the mystery around the woman's expression. The light is accurate in a way that makes it look so real, yet more beautiful than reality. Its painter produced less than fifteen paintings and is yet considered a pioneer solely based on Loss. 

One of the most fascinating things about Loss is that it is… lost. It was stolen in the 90s while it was transported to a museum in New York, where it was meant to be temporarily exposed for a special exhibition. Nobody knows who did it or where it went, or if it still exists even. 

The book mentioned this and so much more, like how the descendants of the painter had been the primary suspects in the case, based on the fact that they had requested a few times that the painting be given back to them. There had been lawful contracts signed though, yielding it to an art society, binding Loss to museum collections for yet another hundred years at least. Since it was an ongoing case, however, details couldn’t be made public. 

You had never seen it in person—and you never would, obviously—but Loss had become your favorite painting. You didn’t need to describe with words the emotions inhabiting her, the woman on it, you just knew you shared them. What you didn’t know, however, was that you would share them even more someday.

Seeing how interested in it you were, Chris took you on a trip for your two-year anniversary—a museum in Seoul was in possession of three paintings by the same artist and one in Japan had two. You visited both locations and he stayed with you as you stood before the canvases, all of them saturated with light. One of them was a lake, as still as a mirror, on which the sunrise reflected so beautifully you shed a few tears. 

At the very end of the trip, Chris took you on an evening walk around a vast park. That’s when he got on one knee and asked you to marry him. He did it in a way that was so proper, so cliché, that it made you laugh and cry at once. You said yes, of course you said yes. It made sense, didn’t it? Growing up together, growing closer. Falling in love and not even feeling it, just waking up one morning and realizing it’s always been there.

You and Chris made love all night in your hotel room, your bodies close and warm and beautiful. He fucked you hard, desperately, confessing how he had been in love with you since childhood. You had long conversations between rounds as you recovered. “Do you ever regret hurting Liam like that?” you asked him, your head resting on his stomach. Many years had gone by since the event, yet neither of you had forgotten it. 

Chris pulled you up so he could look into your eyes. “No,” he said. “I only regret not going after you earlier. I guess I was hurt that you wanted to be with him and not with me. In retrospect, it was stupid. I should have confessed my feelings as soon as I became aware of them. I should have followed you upstairs.”

You kissed him then, deeply, slowly, your heart feeling like it might burst. You found something rather poetic about all of it, and also fair. It was your hidden love that had pushed you in Liam’s arms, and Chris’ repressed feelings also had played their part. You wanted to forget that night and yet you could not, as though something deeply important had happened, important enough that it was still on your mind tonight, merely a few hours after your boyfriend proposed to you, as you climbed onto him to straddle him, never breaking the kiss, his cock growing hard under you, for you. 

It was as though that night had sealed something, putting both Chris and you on a path, and neither of you knew what the destination was. You didn’t mind going in blindly, not if he was by your side. He had always been by your side anyway, and you couldn’t imagine your life without him.

It felt easy. 

Too easy. 

The wedding took place the summer after Chris graduated. Half of the campground had been reserved for it. Friends and family alike came together to celebrate this union that apparently more than half the town had seen coming anyway. It was a beautiful wedding, underneath a blue sky and then the stars. The air smelled like the freshly grown leafage and the soft breeze carried the scent of the ocean, too. You danced and laughed all night, catching up with former high school friends, people you hadn’t seen in so long, introducing them to your and Chris’ new friends. Jisung’s speech was particularly popular—both very funny and moving, it was clear he had spent a lot of time writing it.

Some time between very late and early morning, you made your way with Chris to the small but cozy cabin you had rented for the occasion. Both of you sat in silence at the kitchen table in your wedding attire to drink some water and eat a few snacks. Chris glanced at you with a knowing smile, reaching for your hand over the table. You smiled at him, too. 

You showered together after slowly undressing each other, and you knew that you would never forget your wedding night. You sucked his cock in the shower and he gently played with your clit, kissing and nibbling at your neck, calling you sweet things. You started fucking on the bathroom counter then moved onto the bed where Chris ate your pussy until you came, and then he fucked you. And when he came, you kept fucking him until he got hard again. You would never forget this and you knew it. That night, you felt loved and desired. You knew it was much like a drug—those were feelings one gets easily addicted to. But you didn’t care. You felt more beautiful, more important then than you ever had. 

When both of you collapsed, spent, satiated, panting, Chris held you in his arms as he so often did, and yet you never grew tired of it. He kissed the top of your head. “Let’s stay here,” he told you.

“Good news then, we rented it for a week, you pointed out with a chuckle.

“No, I mean Stormhaven.” He shook his head. “We don’t have to if you’d rather go back to the city, but it feels at home here, with you.”

You felt the same. So you stayed.

You bought a house in the northern part of town, in the same neighborhood you two had been raised in. As the procedures took place, Chris and you also pondered over the careers you may or may not want. The city’s hardware store was for sale—you could take up a bigger loan and make it yours, you and him. Then Chris’ parents mentioned they were thinking about retiring, and now that their son was back in town, they would be more at peace to do so. 

So, instead, they gave the campground to both of you. That year, your parents decided to sell you the general store too, and for a very low price. They even sold their house and bought an RV with the objective of being on the road and seeing as many things as they could. 

Those years were good ones. Even though you feared things would slow down with Chris, they didn’t. Business was good, life was even better. One night, as you two were getting into bed, Chris watched you as you opened a new box of birth control pills. He took it out of your hands, looked at you, and asked, “Do you still want to have a baby with me someday?”

You thought about it for a few seconds. You had discussed this prior to the wedding, of course. The conclusion had been that you weren’t sure you could be a good mother, so you couldn’t be sure you wanted to be one. Chris understood, but couldn’t see how you would be a bad parent. He wanted kids, and this was something you knew before even dating him. 

Here’s one of the ugliest truths in life—sometimes, you want something. Other times, you want to want something. The two are very different concepts except the human mind, when driven by the heart, is completely unable to distinguish them. It is an excessively shameful thing to admit to it.

You didn’t know at the time. What you wanted and what you didn’t want. It sounded nice, idyllic even, the idea of it—raising a child with Chris, your high school sweetheart, in this house that you made your home in, in the town that saw both of you grow up. It felt right, like life coming full circle, except grander than before.

You didn’t know at the time. You only knew that you loved Christopher more than anything, and that if you were going to have a baby with somebody, it would be him. 

You didn’t take your birth control that night. 

A poet might say that one can only see light if there is darkness. And he would be right, but you would also tell him to fuck right off.

Your mother died when you were six months pregnant. A hidden heart condition. She died in her sleep—your father found her in the morning when he woke up. It traumatized him. 

One day many months prior to that, you found out you couldn’t stomach onions anymore. In fact, the scent of them gave you nausea. It was then that you realized you hadn’t had a proper period in a while. When you mentioned it to Chris, he took your hand and guided you toward the car. “Do you want to buy the test here or in Blue Harbor, like the good old times?” His smile was playful, but a little nervous. Truth be told, if you were indeed pregnant, you didn’t want anyone to know yet, so you made your way to Blue Harbor’s mall, just like you had years ago.

The mall had changed a little but you found a drug store, and Chris insisted he would go get the tests. But you needed other items so you went in anyway. 

You saw Liam as you were shopping for shampoo. He was wearing the store’s uniform. It looked like he was a manager of some sort, by the way he was talking to the girl behind the cash register. You froze, your breath and heartbeat coming to a halt. For some reason, you remembered him with a bloody face. He looked very normal that day. A little thicker than he used to be, just like the rest of you. 

He saw you, too, and color drained from his face. He seemed stuck between wanting to go see you and running away. 

You waited for the pain to hit. You waited for tears, even—you had cried so much after the abortion that you assumed you were scarred for life. But you felt nothing, which almost frightened you. You ought to feel something, right?

You took one step toward the cash register, then another. It wasn’t to go speak to Liam. It was to be there when Chris would go and pay for his purchases. 

Liam saw Chris and actually recoiled. Chris stopped in his tracks, speechless, getting visibly pissed off. But you didn’t want him to be angry. You didn’t want a scene to take place. You wanted the memory of Liam to have as little weight as possible in your life.

You took a deep breath. “Let’s hurry,” you said to Chris. “I’m getting tired.” It wasn’t even true.

Chris blinked, staring at you for a few seconds before putting three pregnancy tests on the counter. You added some toothpaste and shampoo, pretending Liam wasn’t there while the other employee rang your items. 

You made sure to flash your wedding ring and took Chris’ hand in yours. It felt good to make sure Liam saw it. So he would know you carried no parts of him with you. So he would know he didn’t really matter, not in your life, and not in Chris’. 

You spoke very little on the way home. You kept your gaze on the horizon, processing everything. You knew the tests would come out positive. You could feel it within you, this life that was growing. It had a weight to it, light for now, but still very much there. You just knew it. 

You peed on a stick. Then another, and both were positive. You discarded the third test, and Chris cried with you. Before that day, you thought you knew what unconditional love was, but you had been wrong. This—this beautiful burden, this miracle inside you, that was as unconditional as anything could be. 

The shock of losing your mother was so great that it sent you to the hospital, and you were scared to lose your baby, too. Your little girl, who you loved so much already, who already meant the world to you. Chris and you hadn’t been able to find a good enough name yet but that wasn’t important. She was healthy, the doctors assured you of it—it was you who was in distress, and you needed to get a grip before it affected your unborn child. 

None of it was easy. The funeral, then the burial. Supporting your father through it was the worst, though.

But Chris was there for you. He always was. 

He was the perfect husband, the perfect friend, and he would be the perfect father. You could feel it in your bones. There was no way in hell you deserved him and yet he remained by your side. He moved his home office to the basement and painted the upstairs room in pretty shades of green, applying a leaf-patterned wallpaper on one of the walls, turning the room into the loveliest of nurseries. Jisung and Changbin came to help with it, and having them in the house helped you a lot. Your father was there too. The house was too full but sometimes it’s how things have to be. Or else, aloneness would be forced upon you. 

You woke up in the middle of one night with your whole lower body feeling like it was being split in two—it was then that you realized you were just about to give birth. You panicked and yet Chris remained calm. He grabbed the bag he had packed for you and he drove you to the hospital, talking you through the few contractions that overtook you, not blinking an eye at your nails digging into his skin as you held onto him. When it got a little worse, he realized that none of what he was saying helped, so he made you talk. 

He asked you about art. 

You hadn’t been in a museum in entirely too long, but you kept your books and the memories of all of it in your heart. Chris asked if you picked up an interest in a particular art movement these days. He asked you if you had discovered a piece of art that you especially liked recently. You told him that while you hadn’t discovered anything, you had read an interesting article about Artemisia Gentileschi’s most iconic work—Judith Slaying Holofernes. Explaining to Chris the analysis of the art historian you had read helped you get through the worst of the contractions so far.

It also led both of you to agree that your baby’s name would be Judith. 

As you got into Blue Harbor, it felt, a little, like a fire was catching inside you and like it was trying to exit between your legs. 

You begged Chris to drive faster, but it was winter and he didn’t want to risk anything on the slippery road. 

So he asked you to talk to him about your favorite painting. 

Loss. 

Few things were known about this painting. It had been painted in Italy by a man who came from Asia to study Venetian art, but also visited France, the Netherlands, England, and more. He brought with him his wife—the woman in the painting, or so the stories said. They had a son, and soon after, a daughter. 

The daughter became ill, and she died. 

Maybe it was fate, or something much darker, but it was as you remembered the woman’s sorrowful gaze that you realized something was wrong. Chris assured you it was just the contractions but you knew it wasn’t. You could feel it in your bones.

You could feel it creep in, approaching, lurking—aloneness. 

They proceeded to an emergency C-section but it wasn’t enough to save Judith. She had been dead inside you already, they said. They said it wasn’t your fault. 

Forced upon you. Aloneness. 

Loss.

You never really get over it. Loss.

Some voids cannot be filled, they are meant to remain wastelands, barren, contaminated. 

Judith was that to you. And to Christopher. 

You’d swear he fell out of love for you the moment he saw his daughter’s tiny lifeless body being pulled from inside you. For the first time in your whole entire life, he couldn’t be there for you. You couldn’t even be there for him either. It was the beginning of the end, only, you didn’t want to let go.

You had dreams, terrible ones. In some, Judith was alive and well, in which case it made waking up the most difficult thing. In other nightmares, though, you were giving birth to her and she wasn’t much more than blood and flesh pouring from between your legs, yet you loved her nonetheless. 

One night, you dreamt that Liam came into the general store while you worked and stabbed your pregnant belly.

You went to therapy—separately, then together. It did nothing. Some voids cannot be filled. You both made efforts to appear happy, maybe in the hopes of faking it until you made it. Chris took you on dates, and you took him on dates. You hired a handful of employees for the store and the campground so that you’d have more time, but in the end, that also did nothing. All it did was give you more time to be sad at home instead of being sad at work.

Chris had it worse than you, or maybe he just couldn’t hide it as well as you. He ate very little and slept even less. He went on long hikes and usually came back after dusk smelling like sweat and like the forest. You’d ask where he went, if he had a good hike. He’d give you responses but nothing else. 

One day he didn’t come home at all, and his phone went straight to voicemail. You tried to rationalize it, to remind yourself that most trails didn’t have great coverage anyway, and that he knew his way around the forest. You didn’t sleep that night. You couldn’t sleep. When you heard the front door at four in the morning, you flipped your pillow so that he wouldn’t be able to feel how damp it was. You wiped the tears off your cheeks and buried your face under the covers. Chris didn’t stop by the bedroom—just a minute later, he was in the shower.

You missed him. And it felt wrong to miss someone whose scent permeated the bedsheets you lay on. You were losing him, too, and you knew it because aloneness was drowning you even when he was standing right next to you.

That night, you joined Chris in the bathroom. You sat on the counter, observing him. Condensation was gradually covering the glass of the shower but you saw him in a different light—skinnier, with bruises here and there, acquired on his long hikes, no doubt. He saw you but he didn’t acknowledge you.

There were thoughts weighing you down, and you knew that speaking them out loud wouldn’t help, but you had to anyway.

“Chris, I think it would be easier for you if you admitted to yourself, and maybe even to me, that you hate me.”

He turned to you then, water rolling down his shoulders. “I don’t hate you. I’m just sad. My baby is dead. Can’t I be sad?”

“You can be sad, of course.”  You stood, making your way toward the shower, sliding the door open. You would never not be moved by him, his naked body. You felt a tumble in your belly. “But you also resent me.” 

He had the grace not to deny it this time. He averted his gaze. “I don’t want to. I know it’s not your fault. I’m sick in the head.” 

You thought it must feel somewhat the same to be stabbed in the chest. Not even in the heart, no—immediate death would be merciful compared to this. Instead, Chris had pushed a serrated blade just two inches away from the organ, sparing you, hurting you more. 

“Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe it is.” Some truths are meant to remain unspoken, but you loved Chris enough to believe he deserved to know it anyway. “I wasn’t sure at first. That I wanted a baby. Up until the moment I saw the little + sign on the first pregnancy test, I wasn't really sure I wanted to be a mother. I just wanted to be with you.” You gulped, swallowing your tears. “All these years, I felt like I should have kept that first baby. I don’t know why, it just felt like it. Mind you, I didn’t feel that before the abortion, only sometime after. Almost like I knew it would come back and haunt me somehow. Well, it did. Life punished me.”

Chris took a step toward you, cupping your face in his warm, damp hand. Water rolled down your neck and onto the t-shirt you slept in. “That’s not how it works. You didn’t manifest Judith into a stillborn.” He lowered his face close to yours, kissing you, kissing you like he meant it. 

He pulled you into the shower, kissing you deeper, and you wrapped your arms around his neck. “I love you,” Chris said, pulling your shirt off you. And you knew he did. But he also resented you. The two weren’t mutually exclusive. 

He pinned you to the wall and kissed you, guiding himself at your entrance. You felt him grow hard inside your cunt as he fucked his despair into you. “Fuck me like you hate me,” you begged him. “I deserve it.” 

He pulled away at that, only to wrap your legs around his waist, picking you up. He carried you to your bed, leaving a trail of soapy water behind. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, burying himself inside you again. 

He fucked you hard, harder than he ever had, holding you by your throat or sometimes by a fist in your hair. He fucked you from behind, then flipped you over to look into your eyes as he pounded into your soaked pussy. You hadn’t known a life without Christopher and without his love and his comfort. You wondered how you would keep existing without it. You wondered if you would be able to live without managing to pay off your debt to him. Even as he spilled himself into you, filling you with his sorrow, you wondered how you would cope. 

Even with Chris toppling over you, his weight on your body, his cock softening in your cunt, you felt alone.

Jisung turned to the rest of the room. “Does anyone want more cake?” 

A few hands shot upright, accompanied by enthusiastic statements. The ghost of a smile appeared on your lips as Jisung began his distribution of dessert. This was how you liked your house best—when it was crowded with people you loved. On other days, it felt empty, bleak, too quiet. 

Next to you, Chris shifted his weight on his seat, glancing at you. You stared back at your husband as he forced a smile on his lips. 

You leaned toward him, a frown on your brow. “Are you tired?”

He wrapped an arm around your shoulders, almost out of habit, and pulled you closer. “I’m just drunk,” he whispered into your ear, eliciting a faint chuckle from you. “Are you tired?”

You were tired, but then you had been tired for years, it felt like. You simply shook your head, knowing it was good for Chris to see people—you didn’t want him to put an end to the festivities on your behalf. Besides, they were celebrating your birthday, so you would feel bad to throw people out.

You watched as Jisung went around the room with the cheesecake leftovers. Chris kept his arm around your shoulders and you let it comfort you a little, even though he didn’t really mean it. It was muscle memory. 

Those who didn’t grab cheesecake were now pouring more wine into their glasses—you handed yours to Arina—Jisung’s fiancée—and she filled it again, and Chris’ too. 

“I heard on the radio that they forecast a particularly sunny summer,” Felix said, speaking to you and Chris specifically, although most guests were also paying attention. “I reckon business will be good for you guys this year.”

“I hope so,” Chris responded, squeezing your shoulder as a public testimony that he still gave somewhat of a shit about you. Maybe this was why you liked your house best when your friends were here—because your husband had to pretend he still loved you when people were around. “We’re thinking of hiring a couple more people, actually.”

“That’s awesome!” Felix flashed a bright smile at you. “I’ll have to try and make time to come visit. It’s been so long since I actually walked around the campground.” 

You knew he meant well, and you knew Felix wasn’t even lying—he had been friends with Chris in high school and he knew the area well despite having moved away a while ago. You knew that at this moment, Felix genuinely wanted to come again later, during the peak of summer season, to see the area at its most beautiful and lively, but you also knew he wouldn’t. Because that’s just how life was. Difficult. He would be busy somehow. And when he wouldn’t be busy, he would want to relax. Or go on a date. Or watch a movie. And you didn’t hold it against him. It had been at least a year since you went over to his place anyway.

“Man, you really should!” Chris nodded, raising his glass at Felix. We expanded a little, to accommodate for trout season. It was too crowded last year.” 

You were about to comment how it was a good problem to have, only you saw at the other end of the table Changbin and his girlfriend, Naomi, exchange a long, quiet stare, then turning to Arina and looking at her wine glass, which was still full. 

Something stirred within you. You knew what was about to happen, and you knew it was probably within your power to stop it. Only, you lacked the strength to do so, and words eluded you anyway. Or will, perhaps.

“Say, Ari,” Naomi told her friend with a mischievous smile on her face. She spoke at low volume, not trying to overpower the main conversation, in which Chris was telling Felix about the sudden and unexpected rise in trout population in the area. “I don’t think I saw you take a single sip of that wine.”

You knew for sure then, by the way color drained from Arina’s face before she turned crimson in half a second, and from the way Jisung almost dropped the cake as he went to put it back on the countertop. 

You couldn’t tell what hurt most—the way Arina’s gaze looked for you but how she dared not look you in the eyes in your own home, or the fact that she was pregnant at all.

Naomi reached over her boyfriend to give Arina the gentlest nudge. “Girl!” 

Changbin took Naomi’s hand in his, pulling it under the table quickly, pushing his own plate of cheesecake in front of her. “Want some? I don’t think I can eat all of it after all.” 

Not saying it was worse. Jisung stared at Arina, then at Changbin, avoiding your eyes at all costs. Meanwhile, the discussion between Chris and Felix was coming to an end as they realized that something was happening around the table. 

You couldn’t hold it against Naomi—she was the latest addition to your friend group, after all, and she didn’t know. Or didn’t know a lot about it all anyway. And even if she did know... You still couldn’t hold it against her. There was no reason for the rest of the world to remain stuck in the past the way you and Chris were. There was no reason for the rest of the world not to be happy at such a joyful prospect. 

Chris let his arm fall back, freeing your shoulders. You felt very alone then.

You knew it had to be you. It had to be you who said something or else the situation would get even more embarrassing and awkward. There had been many moments like this in the past few years, so you knew your way around them by now, no matter how unpleasant. It had to be you. It always had to be you.

“Ari, is it true then?” The thing with sorrow is it often turns people into excellent liars. You didn’t like this about you, but you could be very convincing when you had to be. You looked very happy when you needed to. “Is it really true?”

A timid smile reappeared on your friend’s lips. After a quick glance at Jisung, she nodded gently. “Yes, it’s true.”

As the table erupted in congratulations and a full-on interrogation—How long have you known? How far along are you? Oh my god can it really be true?—you plastered a smile on your face and remained in your seat. There was something else about lying—you had to learn not to overdo it. Proper dosage was essential to how believable you were. You couldn’t jump in place and clap and sing because your friend was pregnant, then people would look at you weird. They would know you’re faking it. They might even deduce that you have been faking it for a long time.

The ghost of Chris on the chair next to you disappeared when he pulled away, as expected. You recognized your own rehearsed smile on his face. 

“I really didn’t want…” Arina began, then stopped mid-sentence as she was searching for her words. Or rather, as she was thinking of the least hurtful way to remind you that your baby had died inside you. “We really didn’t want to crash the party with the news. We wanted to wait.” This, she said to you. 

“It’s alright,” you lied. It was not alright. You hadn’t had a happy birthday in a long time but this one had just turned into a genuine nightmare, as you felt yourself fall into a pit of darkness. Or rather like you were becoming one. “I’m very, very happy for you.”

“It’s such great news,” Chris chimed in. “Let us know if there’s anything we can do, yeah?”

But of course, they wouldn’t want you to come near their beloved child, and you understood that. Because you were cursed. 

The news indeed put an end to the party, which you knew was justified by people feeling awkward. Or maybe they just didn’t want to see the color of your grief. Arina was the last to leave—she stood with you in the doorway while Jisung and the other guys were chatting by their cars. She spared you from another apology but she held you in her arms. “It’ll be your turn soon,” she assured. People said those things sometimes, and it was to alleviate their guilt.

Chris joined you in the kitchen as you were putting empty cups in a trash bag. He grabbed some plates and began rinsing them in the sink.

You knew you had to say something. You knew it had to be you, no matter how unpleasant. 

“The cake was really good,” you commented. 

“Right?” Chris put a little too much enthusiasm into his response. “Mrs. Allen makes the best cakes.” Mrs. Allen owned the only bakery in this part of the city, and everybody feared the day she would decide to retire. Most of her income came from locals purchasing her goods for special occasions or simply because they craved something sweet.

“She does,” you agreed. “Thank you for the birthday party, and for my gift.” He had offered you a hydroponic garden system, something you had mentioned being interested in but weren’t quite sure it would fit in your kitchen. 

“No problem.” He spoke at low volume, now loading the dishwasher. It seemed, for a few instants, as though he was about to say something meaningful. But he finished clearing the countertops. “How about I run you a bath?” 

You accepted his offer, half hoping for something that couldn’t be true, which was that he would join you. Except he wouldn’t and you were well aware of that fact. Most nights, he pretended to fall asleep on the couch so he wouldn’t join you in the bed.

Last week, he saw the notification on your phone. According to your calendar, your peak fertility window begins now and will end in twenty-four hours. You still kept the fertility app. Maybe out of habit, but certainly not out of hope—Christopher had never truly said he wanted another child. Maybe it didn’t really matter either. You hadn’t gone back on birth control and there had been absolutely no pregnancy scares. Not that you had been particularly active… Except that now, you were certain Chris wouldn’t touch you for a long time. Because last week, after seeing the notification, Chris kissed you like he hadn’t kissed you in a while. He lay you in bed and undressed you and touched you and you touched him, too. But he couldn’t make love to you. He tried.

He really tried. Until tears were staining his cheeks. You took him in your mouth. You got on top, hoping he would grow hard inside you. But he didn’t. He apologized profusely but he didn’t need to. You had learned to discern the hints life left behind. Some things were meant to be and some weren’t. 

How unfair though. How unfair was it that you and Chris weren’t actually meant to be if you loved him this much? If you had loved him all of your life?

He did run you a bath, with all of your favorite things in it—jasmine oil, candles all around, piano music playing from a small speaker. It didn’t stop you from hearing him locking himself in what had been the nursery. In what still was the nursery—absolutely nothing had changed. Not one thing had been moved. The door just remained closed. Always. 

Could you have been wrong all this time? What if it wasn’t Chris who was meant for you, but aloneness? What if the withering of your heart was your own fault? After all, Judith had been inside you when her heart stopped beating. It had nothing to do with Chris, or with anybody else. Still, it was all he saw in you—the place in which his daughter died.

He was right. It was all that you were. A coffin, a graveyard, a tomb. All at once. And it was all that you would ever be, for as long as you would live.

A crackling sound coming from the walkie-talkie on the counter made you jump. You inhaled sharply, looking away from the laptop screen to offer an apologetic smile to the two clients who were checking into the campground. 

You weren’t supposed to be here today—usually, on Fridays, you operated the general shop, and Chris the campground. Mostly because even though they were now under the same business, you were both more used to those specific establishments, having been raised into them. Only, it was the campground’s big summer opening and Chris was overseeing the event. There would be a concert tonight, by a local band who played covers, and games and other activities were offered during the day. 

Since food was involved, it was less likely for people to stop by the general shop tonight—so you left it in your most trusted employee’s hands, knowing Jeongin would be more than able to handle himself there. He was probably going to sell sunscreen and hats all day—it was stunningly sunny. 

You grabbed the walkie-talkie, walking a few footsteps away to listen carefully. It was Jeongin’s voice that came in.

“Boss,” he said, and you still didn’t know who he was talking to because he called both Chris and you like that. “There’s someone here asking if we sell paint, and I’ve just been looking everywhere and…” 

A faint click followed Jeongin’s question, indicating that Chris had joined the conversation. “Paint?” he repeated. He could barely be heard over the music playing over there. “Paint?” 

You returned to the clients who had finished filling out their security forms while the other two chatted over the radio. You handed them their keycards to unlock the gate and various other spots on the site. You didn’t need to go too in-depth with them—it was the third summer they came here. “Thank you for choosing us again,” you told them with a smile. “If you have issues or an emergency, do call the number at the bottom of the map and someone will come to you.” 

The couple—a man and a woman in their 70s—thanked you warmly and returned to their RV outside. They had rented a space for two weeks. They reminded you a little of your parents. Had they looked this happy when they were on their trips? 

The debate over the walkie-talkie distracted you before you could tear up, even though you missed your mother terribly. 

“Not spray paint, boss,” Jeongin insisted. “Like, just paint.” You heard a voice speaking inaudibly behind him, and then the young man added, “Not wall paint or spray paint. Paint for art. Watercolor?” He said the last word as though he was only repeating it while being wildly unsure about it. 

Everything clicked into place then as you finally understood what they wanted. You grabbed your radio and joined the discussion again. “I didn’t have enough time to stock up the kids’ section,” you explained. It was a mistake on your part, caused by your sleep troubles as of late. After all, it wasn’t uncommon at all for parents to grab a few toys for their children before entering the campground. “Most of the stuff is still in boxes in the back store. I know where it is, I can guide you.”

Jeongin’s line cut abruptly—he had let go of his Talk button. “Jeongin?” Chris asked.

He came back almost immediately. “He says no, boss. He’s asking if we sell real watercolor, not children's stuff.” 

You suppressed a laugh and heard your husband do the same. While nobody in the area understood the importance of art more than you, you couldn’t help but find it humorous that someone would stop at a very rustic-looking general store on the side of the road of a small city to ask for legitimate art supplies. 

You looked at the beautiful landscape out the window—the river, the shore, and behind it all, the mountains. As pretty as a painting. 

“Please apologize on our behalf,” you told Jeongin. “We don’t carry art supplies of the sort. Offer them a discount on their purchase.” 

“Thanks, boss.” And Jeongin tuned out for good, leaving you and Chris alone on the line.

You let a few seconds pass. “How are things over there?” you asked, either to make conversation or because you desperately wanted your husband to speak to you. About anything. Anything at all.

“Pretty good actually. They’re loving the lemonade.” You two had made many batches of it early this morning. Quietly. In your kitchen. Squeezing lemons and then weighing sugar and making raspberry syrup, for the pink lemonade. Alone. “How are you holding up in there?” 

“It’s fine. Every time I’m here, it reminds me of those mornings my mom would have your mom babysit me, and she’d drag me here and put me to work.” The Park Office had been renovated since then, but it smelled the same as it used to. Like cedar and pine, with faint salt undertones. “Should we start carrying art supplies?”

“Man, I don’t know.” Chris laughed and he sounded like he meant it. It made a burst of light appear in your chest, even if it was only temporarily. “Oh, I gotta go. We need ice.”

“Let me know if I can do anything.” But Chris was already gone. 

Your life had reached a point where you doubted that any ice was actually needed. You imagined Chris just wanted to find a good enough reason not to speak to you, just you. He fared well enough—and so did you—in the presence of others, as though they motivated him to pretend better. The first night he didn’t come back home, you thought he was cheating on you. In the end, the sound of his shower woke you up at six in the morning. When you asked him where he’d been, he said he worked on some repairs at the camping ground.

It happened more and more often. Then some of his clothes disappeared from inside his drawers. It happened over weeks, so it gave you time to prepare. To form some sort of shell to brace yourself from the impact of it. By then, he rarely slept in your bed anymore, preferring the guest room or the living room. But when he did, you barely recognized your husband. It did not feel like him, that person under the sheets. 

During your sleepless nights, you pondered over it a lot. You were well aware that Chris hadn’t brought up divorce because it would feel like a failure for him. Like he had failed this marriage and you. You knew there was also the whole issue of the Riverside Campground and Riverside General Store, now become one. The legal problems that would surface during the divorce would be awful, and you knew it. Neither of you had felt the need to get a prenup or anything of the sort. 

Honest to god, you had thought you would be with Chris for the rest of your life. And maybe he had felt the same, and it was why he was so reluctant to leave you. 

Sometimes, you wanted to tell him that it was okay. If he was seeing another woman. He wasn’t going to keep fucking you, was he? Not when you were a graveyard. You couldn’t force him to love you either. He had stopped loving you a long time ago—it just took him a while to come to the realization. You wanted to hate him. To resent him. But all that you could do about Chris was love him, no matter how broken, how misaligned that love had become.

There was this unspoken agreement that at work and around your friends, you made it look like everything was okay. You hadn’t told a soul about your marital problems and you assumed Chris probably hadn’t either. 

Every day you woke up with the clear intention to sit down with Chris and to talk. To make him say that this—all of this—made no fucking sense. That you had to get a divorce, no matter how cumbersome it would be. Nothing could be worse than this anyway. 

And as the coward that you were, every day, you found ways to avoid that conversation. 

A car coming down the road caught your attention, pulling you out of your deep thoughts. The darkness lingered within you, but you appreciated every occasion to be distracted from it. Even work.

The car—a black Jeep Patriot that looked like a rental—stopped at the designated parking space for check-ins. Noticing that, you made sure that none of the tears that had tickled your eyes had messed with your mascara. Unfortunately, it was a little smudged in one place, but you managed to mostly fix it just in time to welcome the customer.

A man that you supposed was in his mid-20s  entered the park office looking a little confused yet resolute. He had hiking attire—dark green cargo pants, a generic t-shirt, and a lightweight jacket. Holding his phone and often looking at it, he made his way to the counter slowly. 

“Hello,” you said before he had even reached you, prompting him to look up. He was, by all standards, pretty, with feline-like eyes and gentle traits. “Will you be checking in with us today, sir?” 

He responded to your smile with a polite one. “Yes. I made the reservation a while ago. Under Lee, Minho.” 

You typed his name into the laptop, quickly pulling up his reservation file. You raised your eyebrows as you looked at it—it was the first time you saw it really, Chris was the one who took care of this stuff usually.

“I have it here,” you told him, double-checking to make sure you had read everything right. “You made an extended stay reservation for two adults in one of our RVs?” 

The campground welcomed RVs on one side and tents on the other, also offering to rent either installation for those who needed them. Renting a fully equipped, luxury RV was by far the most expensive booking option you sold, and he had requested it until the end of the season. From the first day to the very last. 

“Yes, that’s me.” His smile became a little more comfortable, and a little warmer, too. “You seem surprised.”

“Oh, I’m just not used to it—usually, it’s the cabins on the other side of the rivers that get this sort of clientele.” 

You took the credit card—black—that he handed you without you having to ask. You actually had nothing against Pineview Cabins. People who wanted a cabin wanted a cabin, and those who wanted something else came to you. Besides, the owners were a mother and her son, and they were lovely.

“Cabins are for tourists,” Lee Minho said jokingly.

You finished entering his information in the system and gave the card back, finding it a bit easier to smile in his laid-back presence. No matter how long you had spent enduring it, you had never been very good at aloneness. 

“There is a form we require guests to fill—for security purposes,” you explained to him, sliding on the counter the form in question, secured on a clipboard. You shot a glance behind him, looking at his car through the front window, where you could see that there was someone in the passenger seat. “Both of you will have to fill one,” you added, pulling out a second clipboard. “I can go and hand this one to them while you fill yours if you’d like.”

The man shook his head, the corner of his lips curving up. “Nah. Let me call him. He can sulk about paint sometime later.” 

It clicked into place then—this man, and whoever was in his car, had been the ones who, just moments ago, were at the general shop asking for watercolors. 

“It was you!” You bit your lip. “I’m really sorry we couldn’t accommodate you better. I’ll—”

Minho, who had just finished typing a text on his phone, put the device back in his pocket and grabbed one of the pens to start filling out his form. “No need to apologize. I don’t know why he expected to find some legit watercolors here.” 

“Ah, artists.” You spoke in a tone that was clearly sarcastic but not offensive. 

“This one is something, for sure.”

As if on cue, the front door was opened by the man beckoned by Minho through a text and a little voice inside your head said, Yes, this one is something indeed. He was tall, holding himself straight with a perfect posture and yet in a totally nonchalant manner. Still, he was graceful. You saw it in the way he pulled the door open, in the way he took off his fancy designer sunglasses to put them on his head, in the way he adjusted his half ponytail right after. 

If Minho was dressed as though he was heading out for a three-day hike, this one, the artist, was the complete opposite. A loose white graphic tee hung on his broad shoulders. With it, he wore oversized jeans, and he even had another shirt tied around his waist, as though he had expected the weather to be cooler. A multitude of jewelry pieces adorned his body—a few silver necklaces around his dainty neck, many bracelets on his wrists, and rings, too. The ensemble screamed intentional chaos.

The more seconds passed, the closer he was to you and the counter, and you were utterly unable to take your eyes off him. Not just because he had just entered the room and it was a normal thing to look at someone who approached to check-in. But because you had never seen anybody like him before.

He was beautiful, and there was no other way to put it. His face was seemingly perfect—his big, dark eyes were scanning his surroundings as though to evaluate the potential dangers. The rounded tip of his nose complemented his cheekbones well. 

He had a pretty mouth—his lips were obscenely plush. Rosy red. Enticing. With a velvety quality to them. Skin like honey-coated satin. Hair like silk soaked in black ink. 

He was the kind of person who just oozed charisma. Effortlessly. The kind of person whose presence changes the whole vibe of the room. The kind of person everybody notices without them trying. Often, without them wishing for it at all. 

There was a point where you realized you should say something—he was just a few steps away now, close enough that Minho had turned to him. Close enough that you could smell him—he carried with him a strong yet not heavy scent reminiscent of amber and roses with woodsy and musky undertones. You took a deep breath but it wasn’t even to brace yourself to be in his presence. It was to inhale more and more of this alluring smell. It took everything in your power not to immediately ask him what his cologne was. 

“There you are. Here.” It was Minho who spoke first in the end, sliding the second clipboard and another pen toward his friend. Or brother. Or cousin.

Or boyfriend, maybe. 

You had to say something. “Hello.” Simple. Ordinary. A skeleton key of greetings. 

He briefly looked away from the clipboard to acknowledge your presence. “Hi.” 

He didn’t seem thrilled about having been called in here and you felt bad about it for some reason, even though you had been asking guests to fill out a security form for years now. 

“Sorry about this. It’s for security purposes,” you explained. 

“It’s no problem at all,” Minho assured. He was already halfway through his form. 

You gave him a quick nod. “And sorry about the watercolors, too,” you added.

At this, the handsome man reacted a bit more. He straightened up from the counter to face you. It felt, a little, like the air had been kicked out of your lungs. Being face to face, so close to him, felt like falling from a high place. 

He spoke to you softly, almost timidly, like he wasn’t sure he ought to speak at all. “The airline lost my art supplies bag and sent it to the wrong destination. I just wanted to have something while they manage to send it to me.” His voice was pleasant. Smokey and warm, it had a strangely comforting tone.

You barely understood the words he said, not because it was a difficult concept to comprehend, but because of the intonation in which he spoke as well as his pronunciation. It was so unique it demanded your whole attention. As if the placement of his lips at any given time, and the movements of his tongue as he spoke, came together as an orchestra that played an elegant symphony. 

“We actually put in the address of the campground,” Minho interrupted as if he had just remembered that detail. “I hope it’s okay? They should be sending the bag here sometime next week.”

“Or the week after,” the artist sighed, rolling his eyes before returning to his form. His handwriting was small and neat. 

“It’s not a problem at all.” It occurred to you then that you had things to get done to check them in, so you returned to your laptop to get to work. “We’ll let you know as soon as it gets here.” You bit your lip, torn over your curiosity and your pulse quickening so fast it frightened you. “Do you exclusively paint in aquarelle?” 

You reported your attention to your screen as soon as you asked the question, regretting it immediately. Like sending a risky text. Warmth spread at the back of your neck, reaching your cheeks and even your ears. Get a fucking grip.

He was handsome, yes. He was the kind of beautiful that nobody could ignore, yes. To blush a little when he looked into your eyes was one thing. But to be entranced by this stranger like this, to have your heart threatening to jump out of your chest, for your breathing to turn shallow in his presence… That was something else. 

At first, you blamed your many sleepless nights—you had a lot of accumulated fatigue, so it would be normal not to be in your right mind. Then you blamed your lingering heartache. The sorrow you carried with you anywhere you went. The wedding ring on your finger that felt like it weighed a ton while meaning so little anymore.

Then shame crept up from somewhere deep within you, tugging at your heart.

No matter how painful the state of your marriage was, you remained married. And there was nothing wrong with finding somebody else attractive, of course, but this felt different. It felt like you ought to take several steps back and internalize that no matter how hot and interesting this guy was, it wasn’t even for you to take notice of it. He painted. So what? He was insanely hot. So what? He wasn’t the first handsome dude you met during your marital life. He smelled good. Okay? He had pretty lips, but who cares?

GET A FUCKING GRIP!

You figured it was your brain trying to save you. You had known for a long time that your marriage was over and that nothing could save it. It had been such a long while, it seemed, since Chris had truly loved you. And you loved him in a desperate way, like trying to hold onto a knife not by its handle, but by its blade.

Your thought process only took about two seconds, but they felt like two very long seconds. In the end, none of this mattered—even if Chris divorced you, and even if this young god had any interest in you, which was impossible, you would still not do anything about it. If you hadn’t even been able to trust in your life-long conviction that you would grow old with Chris, then you were certainly not going to open your heart to anybody else. Ever. 

The man stared at you like he was thinking about his response before saying it. Minho was done with his form and handed it back to you. 

“He does a lot of things,” he said in the artist’s place. “I bought a painting from him. That’s how we met. It’s watercolor and oil, right?” He turned to the handsome man, who nodded.

“Yes, and encaustic paint,” he added, his voice suddenly a little smaller. “It’s made of—”

“Yes, wax. Hot wax.” You cut him off before he could finish his sentence, feeling a little bad that he felt compelled to explain everything, considering how he looked like he didn’t want to talk to you at all. He was most likely an introvert. It used to be difficult for you, too, to talk to strangers. But you became used to it through this place over the years. Or maybe in a desperate attempt not to be alone.

He stared at you with his eyebrows raised just slightly. “Do you paint, too?”

You couldn’t help a nervous laugh from escaping your lips. “God, no. I wish though. I just… appreciate.”

“Then I’ll have to show you his stuff. Brilliant.” Minho gave his companion a not-so-gentle slap on the back. 

“I’d love to,” you replied, taking the signed form from the artist. “We’ve actually been looking into buying a piece for the main lodge, where we hold some events, activities, shows, stuff like that. We did a few renovations last year, and there’s a wall that’s just so empty and bland. Maybe we—”

Two things happened at once then.

Out of habit—and because you had to as it was literally your job—you let your gaze trail down the form you were now holding. You also realized that you were overdoing it with the conversation, talking a little too quickly just to make up for the fact that you were a nervous wreck. The guy had checked in using a black card. There was about no chance for you to be able to afford anything this young god painted, right?

Then your brain processed the words it was reading.

Full name: Hwang, Hyunjin

Hwang, like Hwang Naro, the painter behind Loss, the artwork that had been fascinating you for years. And he just happened to be a painter, too. For some reason. Loss dated back to the 1850s after all, so there was no correlation to be made. Hwang Naro. Hwang Hyunjin.

Immediately, you reminded yourself that many people shared a last name in Korea after all, so it was only a minor coincidence. Painting was a common hobby, wasn’t it?

“Uh, is there a problem, Miss?” Hyunjin inquired, leaning in closer to also look at his form to double-check.

It wouldn’t have felt any different if you had been kicked in the solar plexus. His scent invaded your nostrils and then your lungs, and it was so violent that you had to hold onto the counter. When he looked up again, you noticed more details on his face. The mole under his eyes. The faint lines on his lips. The other mole on his jaw. The shape of his eyes, perfect, intricate, elegant. Their shade deep enough that you could drown in them. 

You remembered the book Jisung and Changbin had given you for your birthday once, the essay about the painting. One of the chapters contained various interviews and letters from people who had known Naro—he signed his paintings without his family name. One of the interviews had been conducted in the late 1880s, by an author who would later publish it in a journal in the early 1900s. He had spoken to Cornelia, a maid who had worked for the Hwangs during her youth while the family resided in Leiden, a small city in South Holland.

Everybody in town knew that Mr. Naro was handsome and kind. He liked to visit the botanical gardens to practice his colors and florals, and some visitors went there to watch him, too. He would sometimes carry with him small pieces of canvas and hand out sketches to children. Mr. Naro was fond of children, and he loved his only son very much, more than I have ever seen a father love anything before. The women envied his wife and the men envied him, for he was a proper gentleman and loved by all. He and his family lived modestly despite the money he made selling his paintings and giving art courses. 

He summoned me to the courtyard of the house one afternoon. He was painting the sky, which was blue and beautiful. Mr. Naro told me he freed me from my employment. When I panicked, he said, “Fret not, Cornelia, it has nothing to do with your abilities. I am most content having you under my roof.” Mr. Naro looked me in the eyes and said I should take some time to visit places and fall in love, either with the world or with a man, or a woman even. He assured me I would be welcome to return after my trip if I wished, and that if he happened to be gone by then, he would ensure the University hired me. 

He gave me money, more than I had ever seen in my life, and a bag for my travels. I refused yet he insisted, no matter how immense the gift, disproportionate to what I thought I deserved. He said my heart’s color was Alizarin Crimson, with a just drop of Naples Yellow and another of Ultramarine, all of those softened in Flemish White. As he spoke, he mixed the colors on his palette, right in front of my eyes. The final result was a gorgeous pink that reminded me of the carnations that used to grow in my grandmother’s garden. He used that pink to paint a stunning bird in the sky, shading it with black and blue, defining the feathers also with white. He gave me the painting and said, “This is your heart. Do you want to keep it caged up here?” 

I heard he had similar interactions with other maids and even students. I traveled to France where I met my husband and became a dancer. I never forgot Mr. Naro. I never forgot Mr. Naro’s eyes, so dark they were more black than brown, yet soft, gentle, and sad. I wanted to be a painter so I could accurately blend paints to recreate that color, just to see it one more time.

The painting, titled Cornelia’s Colors, was now at home at Musée d’Orsay, and you had been lucky enough to see it with your own two eyes a few years ago, during a short European trip with Christopher. It had been given to the museum by the maid-turned-dancer’s descendants. 

But it was not the intricacies of the painting that were on your mind at that moment, not even the expert blending of the colors on it. It was the shade of Hyunjin’s eyes. So dark they were more black than brown, yet soft, gentle, and sad. 

You shook your head faintly, as though chasing away the thoughts invading it.

“Did I miss something?” Hyunjin asked again, glancing at his sheet. 

“N—No, it’s all good.” And yet, by the way they were looking at you, you were very much aware that your reaction must have been noticed. For a split second, you wondered what would be weirder—if you mentioned something or if you just moved on. “It’s just, your name,” you said before you could even really think about it. “You have the same family name as the artist who painted my favorite painting. And you paint too. So I thought it was just a nice coincidence.” 

Something in Hyunjin’s already somber eyes shifted, worsening the darkness in them. His body language changed in a matter of seconds as he stood straight up again, keeping his shoulders straight. He removed the sunglasses from the top of his head, ready to put them on his nose again. 

Minho stared at him, and then at you again. “It’s not really a coincidence, is it?” he told Hyunjin.

Hyunjin rolled his eyes so faintly you almost didn’t catch it. He took a deep breath, the exhale ending with a sigh—in the dictionary, under Bored, a picture of him at that very moment could serve as a definition for the word. You felt so bad you wanted to hide under the counter like you used to when you were little. 

“Guess not,” Hyunjin said with a shrug. “He’s my great-great-grandfather.” 

Too many seconds passed before you reacted—before the information even made it to your brain. 

You were standing in the presence of Hwang Naro’s direct descendant. You were breathing the same air as him, you were looking upon his divinely sculpted face. You were hearing his voice, coated with amber and honey. 

“Oh my god,” was all you managed, whispering under your breath, a frown digging itself between your brows. “I’m so sorry, I—”

Hyunjin waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not important.” 

Not important. Except his great-great-grandfather had been the artist behind the painting that you had always favored. The painting that had turned out to be prophetic, for you at least. 

“What are the odds though?” Minho, contrary to Hyunjin or you, seemed very enthusiastic about all of this. “I knew it was a good idea to drag you here, Hwang.”

By the look on Hyunjin’s face, you could tell he felt very differently. It triggered your brain back into place though, as you became excessively self-conscious. Of yourself. Of your reaction. You could understand why your mind latched onto any good or interesting thing it saw, because your life had become bleak and empty. Yet it was stupid to care about any of that. To this man, the painting meant nothing, and it didn’t appear that his ancestry mattered much more either. He was clearly annoyed with you anyway. 

With trembling hands, you reached for the keycard printer, collecting the two cards you had just printed. You slid them into their protective sleeves, which were attached to lanyards with the campground’s name on them. 

“Here,” you managed, also trying your best to smile. “These will give you access to everything you need—the entry gate, your RV, the laundromat, and the showers. If you lose them, just call this number here.” With that, you handed them maps of the campground, as you did with any new guest. “We’re here. Your site is right there with the other RVs.” You showed them with your index finger, but you felt your insides disintegrating into nothingness. “Just get past the gate and follow Pinecone Lane, you can’t miss it. You have a parking space at your site.”

“This place is huge,” Hyunjin commented—not to you, but to Minho. 

“Bigger than I imagined,” Minho conceded, but he was speaking to you. 

You nodded. “Yes. This is the tent camping site,” you explained. “Here is the main lodge, with the pool. This is the RV site. There’s walkable beach land all around this part too, and you can rent a boat or kayaks here.” 

“Jesus Christ, that’ll be the best summer of my fucking life,” Minho said with a sigh. “I need this vacation. I’m here to fish, I got a permit for it.”

You couldn’t shake the feeling that Minho had picked up on your unease and was trying to distract you from it. It did manage to slow your heartbeat a little. 

“Ah, fishing!” This prompted the smile on your lips to become more genuine. “Of course. Lots of fishing to be done around the estuary. I love striped bass, I haven’t had any in too long.” 

Your father used to love fishing and he would often take you with him. He would cook the bass on a fire with ingredients he gathered in the forest. Those were some of your most precious memories. You’d usually fall asleep by the fire and wake up at the back of the car as he was driving you home. These days, your father’s arthritis was preventing him from enjoying his fishing trips, so he just stopped going. And every year, you told yourself you ought to go fish by yourself, catch a bass, and cook it for him. You never found the time. Or the courage. Or the courage to find the time.

“I’ll make sure to save some for you if I catch any,” Minho promised. 

“Please don’t. Really.” You pressed your lips together, wondering what to say next. Hyunjin’s sunglasses returned before his eyes and they grabbed their card and map. “I hope you have a wonderful stay. Don’t hesitate to call or visit here, the main lodge, or the general store if you need anything.”

“Except paint,” Minho remarked with a clearly sarcastic and humorous tone, sending both you and Hyunjin into a hysterical fit of laughter. 

You laughed so hard you had to lean against the wall behind you with a hand over your mouth while Hyunjin clapped and called Minho a fucking dumbass. You hadn’t laughed this much in a long time. In fact, you couldn’t remember at all when the last time was. You wiped the tears at the corner of your eyes, waving at the two men as they walked out. Minho exited first, and Hyunjin lingered in the door frame, hesitating.

He turned to you. You couldn’t read his expression, not with the sunglasses, but his posture was more relaxed than it had been. “Just curious,” he started. “What is it? Your favorite painting?” 

Your laugh came to a halt the same way a delicate crystal glass would shatter into pieces if someone closed their fist around it. 

“It’s Loss.” You wanted to say more, but your voice remained stuck in your throat. And what would you have said anyway?

He stared at you for a few seconds and nodded slowly before leaving. 

There were still tears on your cheeks, but they no longer tasted like laughter—instead, they had the bitter yet familiar taste of aloneness.

... to be continued.

Note: I feel like I say the same thing over and over—but thank you. I could say it a million times and it wouldn't be enough. Thank you to my readers who not only put up with me, but encourage me as well and motivate me to keep trying to improve and to find my voice.

This story was, once again, extracted from the depths of my heart. It is with the utmost humility that I present it to you—when I started writing it, I did so with the intention, specifically, of not releasing it to the public. It's too personal, I told myself. And then I realized that every story I released contain other parts of my soul, and that this one was no different.

So, here it is. The ramblings of a woman who feels like she graduated at the school of Alone and earned a PhD in Loneliness.

Thank you for your support, and for your love. You guys are the best readers. You know this, right? Love y'all.

Welcome to Stormhaven 🤍

** please note that I will soon be restarting my permanent taglist from scratch as I only wish to keep active readers on them in an effort to put my time in the right places, considering the effort and love i put into what i release. by active readers i mean readers who interact at least a little with my content. i do not expect you to read every single thing i put out or to comment all the time. it's really just that there are many fully inactive/silent readers on the list! if you wish to stay on the list or be added to it, please reach out to me. ask is ideal because I can then tag your ask & return to it, but you can DM me as well! thank you for your understanding. **

taglist:

@abiaswreck ; @accalus ; @aimeexx ; @anylady-fics ; @b4kuho3 ;

@binstitsweat ; @cb97percent ; @chans1aptop ; @chartrucewhore ; @hanjingin ;

@hwan-g ; @hyuneyeon ; @hyunfruits ; @hyunjinswifeee ; @hyunniethepooh

@hyuwunjinie ; @hyyuniverse ; @iam2out ; @imseungminsgf ; @k1ra4a

@leedunno ; @lotus-dly ; @miraworldsstuff ; @mmoonriseflowerr ; @naoristerling

@neosracha ; @palindrome969 ; @shywolfcherryblossom ; @skzfelixlove ; @starseekersworld

@straydhampir ; @suhomylife ; @sunlitwilderness ; @ven-fic-recs ; @yourmercibeaucoupsblog