I tried again to get a response out of him, “You’re so young, Kookie. I’m so young. To promise each other the world five years from now? What do we know of the world? Or of life? Or of love?”
We completed the car ride in silence. He maneuvered the car into a parking space, turned it off, and climbed out. He came over to my door and opened it for me. He stood, gazing down at me, no smile in evidence on his beautiful face. He held his hand out to me, his eyes beckoning me to walk with him.
I sighed again. I reached up, taking his hand, and allowed him to draw me towards him. Stepping from the car, I was surprised when he pulled me roughly into his arms, swinging the door shut behind me. I heard it lock.
Finally, he turned towards me, staring at me, tears in his eyes. “I can tell that you know much of love, so teach me. Teach me what you would expect of me.” As he said this last, he bent his head and whispered it in my ear, his breath teasing my skin.
I shivered at the intimacy he was expertly weaving around me. “Stop it, Kookie! You’re not playing fair! And you know it!” I exclaimed, frustrated.
And I drew myself away from him then reached out and shoved his shoulder lightly. He didn’t budge. He was still filling up my personal space with his delightful self. “Then teach me,” he whispered into my hair, and I shivered again.
His fingers were tracing some indistinct pattern on my forearm now.
Man, did this boy know how to drive a girl nuts!
“Kookie,” I pleaded with him. “Stop.”
“Stop what?” he asked, his face a blank slate as his fingers continued their expert invasion of my soul. He had apparently taken lessons from Tae on looking innocent.
But I didn’t have the fortitude to move his fingers from my arm, so I sighed and directed my energy at answering his question instead, even as his fingers swirled and whirled along my skin, sending tingles into my nerve endings.
“It’s so easy to say we love each other. It’s so easy to fall in love. But, Kookie, that isn’t love at all. Love is staying and fighting when every instinct for self-preservation tells you to flee. Love is staying awake all night to nurse your sick loved one back to health. Love is cradling your screaming baby in your arms all night long when you’re already thoroughly exhausted because you care more for that infant’s suffering than for your own health or sanity.
“Love is day-in, day-out, 24/7, weekdays and weekends, and no overtime. Love is sacrificial. Love is unselfish. Love is extraordinary. Love is patient when someone has stepped on your last nerve. Love endures every hardship without weakening. Love is kind. Love is gentle. Love is fierce when it’s protecting the one loved. Love doesn’t seek its own. But love seeks the welfare of the one loved.
“Love believes in the midst of doubt. Love hopes when all hope is lost. Love puts others first. Love doesn’t demand its own rights or its own way. Love delights in what is right. Love celebrates honesty. Love is a refuge, a place of safety, a shelter from the storms of life. Love perseveres until it overcomes all obstacles.” I ran out of breath, both from my long-winded speech and from the bombs he’d set off in my lungs through his fingertips on my skin.
If love always felt like this, it would be easy. It would be a piece of cake to endure all the junk that life throws at two lovers. But I had enough wisdom to know that there would be days when we would drive each other bananas – and not in a good way. There would be days when he would feel like walking out the door or hanging up the phone. There would be days when I would lock myself in the bathroom and cry alone rather than seeking solace in his arms. He wouldn’t be my refuge on those days. I would need something higher, then. Because there would be days when we would hurt each other, maybe not intentionally, but it would happen, nonetheless. His heart wound would expose my own, and vice versa. And how would we each react then? Would our love prove strong enough? Would it be flexible like a green willow branch, bending where it needed to give way to the winds of change and adversity, or would it snap like some dried-out, old branch rotting on the ground?
Kookie stopped drawing circles on my arm. I instantly missed his touch, my eyes flying to my now lonely arm. I felt like crying even before he opened his mouth.
“So, you don’t love me then?” he whispered, devastated but hiding it, standing in front me, no part of him touching me anymore.
I felt bereft without his fingers or his lips alighting on my skin somewhere. How had he made me crave his touch so much in such a short time? Oh, this was dangerous beyond reason…
“What?” I asked, puzzled and distracted by my own crazy feelings. I was drowning in a sea of them. It was hard to focus on a reasonable argument.
“You’re not willing to persevere to overcome all the obstacles in our way?” His midnight eyes pierced me. With testing and desire. I shivered again, but this time I was alone. Kookie was calling me to account for my beliefs. He was calling out my fears and demanding an explanation. Suddenly, I felt exhausted. The last few hours had been an emotional rollercoaster. Wearily, I scratched my forehead, willing my brain to work. To catch up with my heart which was running away with me.
I looked at him. “Let me ask you this. When the day comes that I need you and Bangtan needs you, who would you choose? Can you seriously tell me you would pick the girl you knew for three days one autumn in Chicago over the men who raised you? That would take an extraordinary amount of love.”
“You don’t think that they love me enough to encourage me to choose you?”
“I don’t think it’s that simple, Kookie. You have obligations. You have millions of people counting on you. Who am I next to them?”
“You are the woman I love!” His words spiraled down deep into my heart, sending out the new shoots of a fresh love.
Good, old Kookie. He’d spoken those words with a passion that had lit a fire in my own soul. That was the other thing that scared me. We both had a passionate nature. Which of us would be the cooling effect when it was needed? Which it surely would be over the course of two lifetimes! How would we each prevent the other from running heedlessly ahead when caution was the wiser course?
