The letter continued.
Breeze glanced over at Joonie. The tears sliding freely down his face shocked her. Had her words really touched his heart that much? She felt answering tears beginning to form in her own eyes. She didn’t want to disturb him, but she also didn’t want to read anymore. There was much contained in that second letter that she didn’t want to relive. So she turned towards him and reached up to gently wipe the tears from the cheek nearest to her.
Namjoon sat still as her fingers brushed his cheek, removing the tell-tale signs of a heart so touched by her words that he couldn’t yet speak. Then he sensed that she was leaning over him to reach his other cheek. This sweet suspicion was confirmed a few moments later when he felt the butterfly wings of her fingertips catching the tears on the right side of his face and carrying them far away from him. A few moments later, he felt her gingerly place the book back on his lap. Then he heard her whisper.
“Here. Read the rest, please. It’s quite long.”
His eyes found where she had stopped.
“I found I Need U last night. And boy, did I need you last night! Your words became a tourniquet for my heart on the evening the boy I’ve loved for years stabbed me with the most callous of words. I still can’t breathe because of those words. But then your words found me. It’s as though that girl you wrote the song for did to you what he did to me. And I knew you understood. I knew I wasn’t as alone as I felt.”
Then she quoted some of the song Namjoon and his friends had sung.
“‘Because of you, I’m becoming ruined…All of the things you said are like a mask. It hides the truth and rips me apart. It pierces me, I’m going crazy, I hate this. Take it all away. But you’re my everything.’”
Then she punctuated it with her own answering thoughts.
“He was for so long, you know. My everything. I thought the sun rose with him. I thought the moon shone only because he breathed. I thought my life would be perfect if he would just look at me. But then one day he looked at me, and my heart broke.”
More of the words of his song echoed back to him.
“‘Why am I in love alone, why am I hurting alone? I need you…Why do I keep needing you when I know I’ll get hurt? Why is it you? Why did it have to be you? Why can’t I leave you?’”
Then, again, her response.
“I did leave him…finally. I ran out of my own sweet sixteen party, the one my mother spent weeks secretly planning, as I fled from that cruel boy and the words which he’d heedlessly flung at me. Arrows dripping poison entering my heart. That poison leaked out in the tears that poured down my face. The kind rain revealed itself that dark night to hide my pain from the world. The gentle rain mixed with my tears, and the darkness of the city blended with my fears, and I knew I was alone. All alone.”
She paused to quote more of the words that had come to her rescue that night.
“‘I’m just talking to myself again…just tell me it wasn’t love. I have no courage to say that.’”
Then she continued her own story.
“It wasn’t love. Joonie, you gave me the courage to say that. No boy that loved me could ever have let escape his lips the words he launched at me that night, like flaming rockets bent on destroying my heart. They would have too but for you, Joonie, and your words. Your words showed me that I wasn’t alone. That someone understood my private pain.
“I loved him for so long. And for a while, I thought he liked me too. He smiled at me. And my heart melted. Stupid heart! It didn’t recognize a mask when it saw one! He spoke to me, and my knees quaked. Stupid knees! They didn’t recognize an earthquake bent on destruction! He reached for me, and my heart sighed. Stupid heart! It didn’t recognize a player when confronted by one.
“I did one thing right, though, Joonie. I didn’t let him kiss me. I was so tempted to, but something held me back. Some little snippet of wisdom sat on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, and a cold breeze of doubt blew through my heart, and I pulled back. It’s why he hated me. He launched those icy words at me because I wouldn’t give him my first kiss that night. Can you believe it?”
Namjoon sighed with relief. Then he wondered if she had since given it away. He glanced quickly at her, but no answers were forthcoming in her face. She was looking the other direction, out over the river. Setting his gaze firmly back on the page of her book, he continued to read silently.
“He’d come to my party that evening. I’d waited years for him to notice me. Three days before my birthday, he smiled at me in class. And the sun rose in my heart. The next day, he spoke to me for the first time. The moon was reflecting his light back to me that evening as I lay in bed. I couldn’t sleep from the excitement. He knew my name!
“Then, the night of my party, when I was dressed in my favorite little, black dress – the sleeveless one that twirled around me as I spun, making me feel like both a grown woman and a little child, set free to dance – he took my hand and led me out to the balcony that overlooked the entire Chicago skyline. So beautiful! It was the stuff dreams are made of. Until he bent his head to kiss me, and I suddenly realized that we’d never even had a real conversation. Every single one had been a fantasy playing in my own mind. He couldn’t possibly be after my heart. He didn’t even know me. In that moment, I felt cheap, and I pulled away.
“He was suddenly very angry. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked me.
“‘You never even talked to me until two days ago, and now you want to kiss me?’ I confronted him. That’s when he turned on me like a rabid dog.
“He smirked at me and launched those explosive words at me, ‘You thought you were my dream girl? You? You’re just average. Worse than that. You’re a quiet mouse who hides at the back of the classroom. Why would I even look at you? Why would I even notice you? I just thought you’d be an easy conquest. You’re always staring at me. I thought you wanted me.’
“I stared at him for a moment. He was right. I had wanted him, but I didn’t anymore. Not after he’d thrown those horrible words at me! How could I possibly have wasted four years on someone so cruel? How had I been so blind?
“I could feel the tears coming, and I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry, so I turned around and walked away. I walked back into the party room and all the way to the other side, out the doorway into the restaurant, and then through the restaurant, past all those tables full of strangers, and out into the pouring rain. Thankfully, the tears didn’t fall until the first raindrop hit my cheek. Then I ran all the way to my hotel. It was only later that I thought to text my mother.
“In the safety of that hotel room, I opened my phone and Googled ‘sad love song,’ and ‘BTS I Need U’ popped up. First song. A miracle had happened on the worst night of my entire life. Joonie, you had found me in the moment of my greatest need.”
