She smirked at his answer. Her face was illuminated by the soft glow of the dwindling night life and his heart skipped another beat as she placed the hot drink in his hands. "I knew you didn't like Americano. The guys told me you didn't." She took his drink, sipping on it and he relaxed, fully accepting her drink as his own when she didn't make a face a at the bitter taste.
"They did?" JieMi's brows furrowed. Of course, they knew, they were the ones to introduce coffee to him at 16. But why would she ask about him? Why would she want to know about him after everything? She should hate him. She must hate him. Amber seemed to have read his expression because she answered him without another word.
"Wanted to know more about you so I asked. They told me you liked omelettes with cheese and bacon for breakfast. And you liked it extra cheesy and extra salty." He flushed, biting his lips. He did. He liked food that was strong on the tongue and maybe that was why he could swallow down the food she'd made for him. Maybe that was why it didn't taste like ash to his tongue, like all the other meals he'd been having for weeks. "But there were somethings that they argued over, things they didn't know. Like your favourite colour."
"Black." He answered quickly, although his mind hovered over peach and gold, maybe amber.
"Mmm, a simple sophisticated choice." Amber hummed, nodding quickly. "Coffee or beer?"
JieMi furrowed his brows, nibbling on his lips. "Depends?" He made a face.
"Chore you hate?"
"Scrubbing the toilet."
JieMi used to get that a lot when he was naughty. The guys would give him that chore as punishment for being hot-headed or stubborn. Those were simpler days, days when a quick punishment like washing the toilet could earn him their forgiveness. His face fell a little at the thought. He wouldn't mind washing the toilet a hundred times as long as Amber could forgive him.
"Forests or beaches?"
"Beaches."
He had a dream of walking along the coast with the love of his life, sink his toes into the sand and pick seashells as the sun rose into the sky. But Ha-Eun didn't like sand, she hated it. She hated a lot of things.
"Day or Night?"
"Day."
The nights were always too long and he couldn't sleep, his mind always filled with thoughts and regrets. At least in the day when he had work, he could pretend and forget. Pretend that everything was okay. Pretend that he hadn't tried to kill his soulmate. Pretend that he was okay. At night, there was no point pretending, not with only himself and his shadow in his room. And his tears would flow freely then.
"Favourite food right now?"
"Apple pie."
Amber stopped with her questions then her eyes widening. "That's really popular in IDOL. I'll have to bake it, one day, just to satisfy everyone's cravings. Seriously." JieMi swallowed thickly, pressing his lips together. And the words spilled from his lips before he could stop them.
"That's because you smell like apples." She froze then, turning to him with a brow raised and he panicked, his chest tight as he wondered if that was the right thing to say. Or if he could say those words.
"I guess I do, they tell me that all the time too. Is it bad?" She sniffed at her hair, taking the strands between her fingers. And JieMi longed to take those strands to his lips and inhale, burry his face into her neck and drench himself in her beautiful, beautiful smell. To rub himself over her so that she would smell like him too, to mark her and make her his—Hold on, that was a strange thought.
"It's not bad," JieMi assured her, furrowing his brows and biting the corners of his lips. "But it does make you smell like pie." It was a good smell, one that he would love to wake up to, one that he would love to be beside. He liked that smell; he adored that smell. It made him so hungry for her, for her lips, for her touch, for her taste. For her everything.
"Yeah, makes you hungry, doesn't it?" She huffed, tilting her head with a sweet grin on her lips.
"A little." He admitted and his nose twitched. He squeezed it, pinching at the bridge. What was wrong with him? It went away after a while and he rubbed it twice for good measure, hoping the muscle would calm down. "But it's a good smell," he assured her again, dropping his hand back into his pocket.
He took a huge whiff of her heavenly scent, letting the sweetness coat his sinuses and drench his head in thick sugary syrup. And then he was alert, his eyes snapped wide open, no longer half closed and just a tad drowsy. He blinked feeling strangely energetic and on the go, his heart speeding up quickly. He glanced down at his drink, peering at the coffee. The caffeine was working really well today. Did they get him two shots of espresso instead of one?
"Do you enjoy photography?" She asked and he blinked, his lips quirking upwards.
"I do." He nodded and the topic compelled him to speak. "I like capturing the world in my eyes in the way I see things. The exotic in the mundane, the phenomenon in the everyday. It's just really, really fulfilling when I can freeze bits of those memories in life. The best parts that always seem to slip away? Like the light of the sun or the grass when it's—I—I'm talking too much."
He gulped down the coffee, letting the hot liquid spill down his throat. Talking about photography was boring to others, he knew that, it wasn't exactly the most interesting topic and not many understood—
"No, no, excuse me mister." She gave him a look, one that told him to retract his words. "I study photography too!" She snorted, running her fingers through her hair, a fond smile on her face. "I get it." She leaned back against the bench, sipping on her coffee. "We rarely appreciate our current moment in time. We're always running, always chasing the next goal. But sometimes, it's just so much better if we can just sit back and appreciate living. The sound of the rain, the feeling of cold air on your skin. The colours of the sky. The taste of this coffee." She glanced at him. "Your presence. Simple things, things that you like, things that can make you happy. The camera helps, doesn't it?"
"It does." He beamed, his lips parted as his eyes drifted to hers, noting the honesty in them. "You…Really like being with me?" He paused, glancing down at his black shoes, then back up to her. "I mean—"
"Yeah, what's there not to like?" Amber shrugged, her eyes going back to the distant sky. It was turning into a soft pink hue, an indication of the rising sun. That soon this moment would end and he would have to get to Ha-Eun's. His heart twisted at the thought. "I feel comfortable with you. If you want to talk about science, we're soulmates. We're meant to run on the same wavelength." Amber grinned and his heart skipped another painful beat. "I like you."
His eyes snapped open and he stared at her then, but she wasn't looking at him still engrossed with the rising sun. She liked him? His stomach fluttered, and his mouth hung, agape, wide-open, a door trap for flies, an exposure of his feelings. She liked him??? The shock was heart-pounding, almost nauseating, and his face lit up like the sun, so red that he could feel the heat burning the air. He swore he was almost smoking, steaming at how embarrassed he felt; his body was quivering, delirious with happiness—
"S-sorry, I mean—I put you on a tough spot again. I meant platonically. I don't like like you." She explained, unable to meet his eye as she flourished her hands waving it in surrender. A white flag he hated, a white flag he wanted her to put back. And his heart sunk, strangely rejected, strangely irritated, strangely fucking friend-zoned. "I know you have a girlfriend so don't get mad." She gulped down her coffee and his heart…It was fucking mad at her words.
He gave her a disgruntled grunt, one that sounded a little too unhappy. But he knew she was right; she always was right. And God. It fucking sucked, but she was right. He did have a girlfriend, one that he couldn't leave, one that he loved. One that he had to stick to because of his stupidity. He gulped, the thought was strange, like bad taste in his mouth, one that couldn't go away. And he chewed on the lid of his cup, gnawing on it, irritated and awfully frustrated.
He was so fucking upset it was maddening. He wanted to rip his hair out, he wanted to curse and swear at the world. He wanted to kill his past self for being such a stupid little fucking idiot because fuck that mother fucker. Fuck that stupid little Wang JieMi for not fucking waiting, for not fucking apologising, for not being fucking—What the fuck was this? His eyes widened as he stopped himself from biting the lid through, putting down the empty cup. A mood swing?
"Hey, you okay?" He blinked rapidly, turning to look at Amber. Her brows were furrowed and her face was a little too close to him for comfort. "You don't look so good. I mean you looked pale before, but now you're red all over. Even your neck is a little too red."
His eyes widened as she grew closer and closer. His lips trembled as his gaze roamed over her gorgeous face, desperately searching for an escape from the never-ending longing but everything about her made his body hum. The sweet brown orbs with flecks of gold, the dark curls that framed her pretty face, the long lashes, the pink peach cheeks, and those, red, red full lips. So red and so delicious that he wanted to bite into them and suckle on them, draw out her moans with his lips, taste her sweet little mouth and touch her body with roaming fingers until they found the hottest, wettest spot.
And oh God he was going to die.
Amber placed a cool hand to his forehead, an innocent test for his temperature. And his body jerked. It was as if she had lit him on fire, as if she'd turned on a switch inside him unlocking something that made his ass hot as fuck and spots on his head felt oddly tingly. But he didn't care about his flaming ass or head, it was his cock that held his full fucking attention because God help him.
JieMi was so sensitive that her hand on his head felt just like her hand on his cock, and not just the shaft. It seemed right there at the most sensitive spot, at the place where his pleasure spurted up his spine and could make him cum in seconds. At the place where the shaft met the head, where the skin could be pulled back to reveal the rounded spongey curve of his swollen cockhead.
The moan that escaped was natural, a guttural sound that rasped out of his throat straight from his sobbing cock which at this point felt as if it was almost ready to orgasm. He managed to stifle it with a sharp snap of his teeth over his lips and it smoothed out into a low hum, a soft groan that made her eyes round with shock and her sweet, rosebud lips part into a look of stunned shock. And he stood up so abruptly that she winced as the wind from his movement slapped her eyeballs. JieMi backed, away panic lacing his voice as his eyes looked at anything but her.
Anything but her.