Part - V - Depression C3/5

It’s too L(H)ate for us.

“Am I late?” Hoseok tossed his coat on the empty chair between us and threw his purse down. His pale cheeks were rosy from the blustery wind outside and his hair was wild from the short walk to the coffee shop.

Starbucks. Not Yoongi’s alternate reality coffee purgatory.

“No, I’m early.” I smiled at him, but my face felt oddly stretched and uncomfortable.

The barista at the end of the counter called his name and Hoseok left me for a moment to pick up his giant macchiato. He sat back down a minute later and held up his hand for me to stay quiet while he took the first sip of his drink.

This time when I smiled it was small but natural.

“You look like hell,” he murmured after he’d gotten his fix.

“I feel like hell.”

“How was Thanksgiving?”

I thought back to the day spent at my parents’ house. Jungwon and Soyeon hadn’t been there. They’d traveled to Soyeon’s parents’ in Incheon for the week. It had been an awkward six hours. My dad had spent the entire day watching football and my mom had spent it trying to overfeed me and grill me about Taehyung.

The turkey took two hours longer than it was supposed to and my pie didn’t turn out a fact my mother couldn’t help but point out. More than once.

“Awful,” I finally told Hoseok. “How was yours?”

“Equally awful. Next year let’s have our own celebration. We’ll start new traditions, drink wine all day long, and wear sweatpants.”

I perked up a little bit. “That sounds amazing. We’re adults after all. We should be able to spend the day how we want.”

He sat up straighter too. “Just because we don’t have families of our own, doesn’t mean we should be relegated to suffering with our parents for every holiday. Why not come up with our own thing?”

My rising spirits took a sharp plunge, and I thought I would be sick. I didn’t want to make this about me. I didn’t want to spend our entire Black Friday psychoanalyzing my depression. But I couldn’t form words. I couldn’t make anything come out of my mouth.

Hoseok noticed my change of mood immediately. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I wasn’t trying to insult you.”

“You didn’t,” I rushed to assure him. “It’s just…I used to have a family, you know? It wasn’t much of one, but it was mine. And now…now I don’t. It’s just weird. It’s, uh, surreal. I’m not sure that I’ve entirely grasped the concept of being alone again.”

“Oh, baby,” Hoseok sighed. “You don’t have to grasp it yet. And I swear I wasn’t trying to rub it in your face. I just wasn’t thinking.”

“I know. God, I’m sorry. I hate that I’m so self-absorbed. I feel like you’re so sick of me, but I just can’t seem to stop. I thought it would get easier… instead, it just seems to get harder and harder.”

“I’m not sick of you,” Hoseok assured me. He pushed his wild red hair out of his face and leaned toward me. “I actually understand more than you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never told you this before because, well, honestly, I haven’t really told anyone in a very long time… It’s hard for me to talk about. Really hard. I shouldn’t have kept it from you. It’s just…I couldn’t make myself say the words.” I watched him intently; afraid that any change in my expression would spook him.

I had no idea what he was going to say, but I felt the heavy importance of it. Finally, after a long pause in which he seemed to need to pull himself together, he said quietly, “I, uh, I was married before.”

“Wait, what?” I slid forward in my seat until I perched on the very edge. Hoseok had never even alluded to a previous marriage before. I knew he had some serious hang-ups, but I never could have imagined that they possibly stemmed from marriage! I took in a shuddering breath and had the worst feeling that I didn’t really know my best friend, that he was just as much of a mystery as the rest of the world.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he growled. “It’s not that I didn’t trust you or wanted to keep it a secret, it’s just that…well, it’s embarrassing! I try not to ever think about it, let alone actually talk about it. Besides, it was a long time ago and has nothing to do with who I am today.”

“It has something to do with who you are today,” I argued.

His expression crumpled and I realized all of the bravado had been exactly that…just a show of bravery to hide his past wounds…his past agony.

“You’re right,” he sighed. “It does. But I’m serious when I say it was a long time ago. I’m a different person today. I moved on with my life. Really, I built a new life for myself. I just, I just wanted to let you know that I really do understand what you’re going through. And I also know that it gets better…that it won’t always hurt like this.”

“What happened? Tell me, please?”

He rolled his eyes at my soft tone but wiggled in a way that let me know he was gearing himself up for a conversation he didn’t want to have but would have for me. “You know I have a…precarious relationship with my parents?”

He lifted his eyebrows waiting for my acknowledgment. I nodded once and he continued, “They’ve always been overbearing, completely impossible. Ever since I can remember, they’ve always wanted to...control me. It’s always been difficult to live with their expectations, but especially during high school, and even more so when it came to my future and how I would live it out. They had a certain set of demands they wanted me to meet and I just wanted to, I don’t know, be a kid…be free. I just wanted to live out from under their thumb.”

He paused for a moment, seeming lost in the past. I reached out and squeezed his hand. It was a gentle move of sympathy on my part, but he jerked at the contact, jerked awake from whatever memories had momentarily imprisoned him.

“Naturally,” he continued, “I jumped at the first opportunity to get away from them. That opportunity came in the form of Marc, my high school sweetheart. We were so in love. Seriously, Jungkook, you wouldn’t have even recognized me. I was out of control. The world revolved around Marc. The sun rose and set with him. And when he wanted to get married straight out of high school I didn’t even think twice. I saw an opportunity to get away from my parents and bonus, I would be married to the man of my dreams.”

“You got married at eighteen? I thought I married young! Holy shit, Hoseok!”

He dropped his face into his hand, “I know,” he groaned. “It’s embarrassing. I have no idea what I was thinking. And looking back now I realize how stupid I was. I wasn’t in love, I was infatuated. And there just wasn’t enough substance between us for anything to last.”

“What happened?”

“Well, we got married without my parent’s knowledge. We just snuck off to the courthouse and called it good. I didn’t even change my name. I didn’t know I had to! I thought it would be like an automatic thing.”

I smiled at the eighteen-year-old version of my friend.

“Anyway, my parents were furious, as you can imagine. No, they were beyond furious. I have never in my life seen them so outraged. They cut me off completely, and for the first time in my life, I was introduced to the real world. Marc was equally furious. Apparently, his young and in-love plan included living on my parents’ wealth. His parents were a little more forgiving, and let us move into their basement, but they couldn’t help us beyond that. All of our plans for college were abandoned as we went to work full-time at crap-paying jobs and tried to navigate our lives as newlyweds. My parents are crazy, don’t get me wrong. But I had a promising future, even if it wasn’t the one I would have chosen. I was suddenly faced with a life I didn’t want and an alpha I didn’t love…I wasn’t even sure I liked him anymore. It took exactly eighteen months for us to decide that neither of us was willing to fight for happiness in a miserable marriage that was headed nowhere. And then…then he started cheating on me. He didn’t even try to hide it. I think he wanted me to know or find out. I think he wanted out but didn’t want to be the one responsible for ending it. Not that he didn’t play his part. But he was like that. He never took responsibility for his mistakes. He couldn’t keep a job for the same reason. I put up with the cheating longer than I should have. I don’t know why. I knew my life had sunk about as low as it could go, but I was afraid of what else could happen if I left him. At least with Marc, I had a roof over my head.”

My heart broke for my friend. I wanted to give him a hug, but I could sense that he did not want to be touched right now. His back was stiff and his shoulders painfully held back. He was just barely holding himself together. If I did anything to spook him, he would lose it.

“What did you do?” I asked carefully.

“The one thing I swore I would never do.” he gave me a sad, defeated smile. “I went back to my parents. I begged them for their forgiveness and for their help.”

“They gave it to you,” I concluded.

He spoke to them now and it seemed very much against his will.

“They did,” he confirmed. “They helped me with the divorce, or I should say annulment. They let me move back in with them. In fact, after I went to them I never saw Marc again, except for the last time in court. They took care of removing my things from his house and all of the documents that needed to be signed or whatever. They saved me. And then they paid my way through school. They helped me move on with my life as if I never left them.”

Sensing that their help cost him deeply, I whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

He waved my apology as if it wasn’t necessary. “I got my way in the end, though. They thought they were giving me a practice with my degree, something they could brag to their country club friends about and recommend to all of the miserable people they know. They never saw the whole guidance counselor at an inner-city school thing coming. It still pisses them off.”

We shared a victorious smile. “I wondered why you were so much older than me.”

He stuck his tongue out. “Only a few years. It’s not like I have tenure.”

“Thank you for telling me that.”

He shrugged self-consciously, “I just wanted you to know that I mean it when I say it gets better. It hurts. God, it hurts. But it doesn’t always.”

“I need to hear that. Keep telling me. Don’t stop.”

He gave me a sad smile. “It’s kind of nice, though.”

All of my breath whooshed out of me and I thought for a second I would start choking. “What?”

“Taehyung. At least he’s putting up a fight for you. Marc didn’t. Or at least I never heard about it if he did, but I’m almost one hundred percent positive he just signed whatever papers my parents shoved in front of him and never thought about me again. We weren’t right for each other, don’t get me wrong. And what we did was so completely stupid. But looking back…I don’t know…it would have been nice if he fought for me. It would have somehow soothed my ego after all of this time. I wouldn’t feel so…discarded.”

A million of my own thoughts tumbled around in my head, but I put them aside for now and said, “You’re not discarded, Hoseok. He was an idiot. You guys were so young. He was too young and immature to realize how amazing he had it.”

Hoseok tilted his head to stare out the window. “I haven’t been able to look him up since. Not once. I know he’s on Facebook because I see our mutual high school friends comment on his posts sometimes, but I’m too afraid of what I’ll find. I know what I want to find. I want him to be alone and miserable and working a dead-end job or still living in his parent’s basement.” His pretty lips turned down in a frown. “But I’m too afraid that he’ll be happily married to a yoga instructor for a spouse and six perfect kids that model for Vogue.”

I let out a surprised laugh, “He’s not married to a yoga instructor and if he has six kids then they’re all from different omegas.”

He wrinkled his nose, “I like that.”

“You’re a catch. Any guy would be lucky to have you.”

His gaze found mine again and his grey eyes sparkled like silver from unshed tears. “You too, Jungkook. Whatever happened with Taehyung does not define you. There’s a better relationship out there. You’ll find it.”

“Maybe,” I whispered. But what I really thought was no. There wasn’t a better relationship out there. I’d been given a good one…a great one and I’d mismanaged it.

I’d poisoned it.

I’d destroyed it.

I didn’t deserve a better relationship after how I’d treated this one.

“Jungkook?”

The harsh, guttural tone came from above me. Feeling the coffee I’d just finished swirl and churn in my belly, I slowly lifted my eyes to stare up at the very last person on earth I wanted to see.

Kim Namjoon. My friend. Taehyung’s brother.

“Hey, Hyung,” I smiled patiently, despite the rotten feeling inside me, despite the urge to run screaming from the coffee shop, waving my arms over my head like a lunatic. I didn’t expect Namjoon after his last call to find me here of all places.

“Jungkook, what are you doing?” he sneered.

“Talking with my friend?”

His mouth spread in a cruel grin, “No, I mean what are you actually doing.”

“You know my friend, Hoseok.” I tilted my head in his direction.

Namjoon nodded once, “Hoseok.”

Hoseok clicked his manicured nails on the wooden tabletop. “Namjoon.”

“Do you know what I’m doing here, Jungkook? Why I would choose this particular Starbucks in the middle of my busy Friday?”

“Because you wanted to find me?” I leaned forward, uncharacteristically mean-spirited.

His grin disappeared. “I’m picking up a coffee for my brother. He had to work today. They’re letting him work on production. They like him there. They think he’s a natural.”

I struggled to swallow against my closing throat. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

He loomed over us, not moving even after the barista called his name.

I let out a frustrated sigh. He was ruining my afternoon. “Do you want to bite me of something more?”

His jaw flexed, just like Taehyung’s would have. I licked my dry lips and tried not to slam my hands down on the table and demand that he leave.

“He’s miserable Jungkook,” Namjoon finally ground out. “He…He’s not over you.”

My heart pounded against my chest cavity once, painfully, then stopped beating altogether. “I’m not over him either,” I finally admitted. “That’s not what this is about.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Namjoon persisted. “Jungkook, you both were perfect together.”

Hoseok let out a sound of pure irritation and I snapped, “I know exactly what I’m doing. And Namjoon, so does he. I don’t know what he told you to turn so bitter at me, but he wanted this too. We came to this decision together.”

“Then why is he doing everything in his power to stop it?”

My eyebrows shot to my hairline. “Is that what he’s doing? He’s trying to win me back by taking everything from me?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” he muttered.

“But isn’t that the point? If he’s trying to get me back, shouldn’t I understand what he’s doing? So far he’s done nothing but make this more miserable than it needs to be and hurt me beyond repair. If Taehyung didn’t want the divorce, he wouldn’t have gotten the lawyer he did or written the list of demands that he did! If Taehyung didn’t want the divorce, he would never have moved out of our house!”

Namjoon sighed. “That shows exactly how little you know him.”

I opened my mouth to launch into another argument, but before I could say anything he added, “And it shows how very little you realize the damage you’ve done.”

Now we are taking sides.

Before I could come up with anything else, he turned around and stalked out of the building, forgetting his coffee on the counter. I watched him go, wondering if I should chase after him with the abandoned cups or if I should leave before he came back in for them. In the end, I just sat there and he never came back.

The confused barista eventually threw the coffee away.

“God, he’s an asshole,” Hoseok declared.

“Yeah.”

“How dare he!” he continued, then launched into a rant about the stupidity and absurdity of the situation.

I only half-listened though. I couldn’t get his words out of my head or write him off so completely.

It shows how little you know him. It shows how very little you realize the damage you’ve done.

I told my students all the time that if they wanted to do anything with their lives, they had to take responsibility for their actions.

That was why I chose the classics I did. The Scarlet Letter… Romeo and Juliet...

I practically preached responsibility.

And yet I had done nothing but blame and blame and blame Taehyung for destroying our marriage…for making our divorce as awful as possible.

I let him take all of the blame without ever owning up to my end. Hoseok and I finished our coffee and then headed off to do some minor Black Friday shopping. But I never got over Namjoon’s accusation.

And I couldn’t shake the bitter feeling that he was right.

!!~~~~!!