“Same thing.” She nods. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a nap.”

  I yawn behind my hand. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “No.” She points a finger at me. “You’re already confusing enough and—”

  “Me?” I point at myself. “Confusing? I just didn’t want to go all the way home. You’re closer.”

  She sighs and looks up at the ceiling in annoyance. “Fine. Couch. Go. No ramyeon.”

  “Deal.” I just want to be close to her, so I go to her couch and lie down as if I’m really tired, even though just seeing her has adrenaline coursing through my system.

  She goes into her bedroom. When she comes out to get water, I see she’s changed her clothes. She’s in black sweatpants and a white tank top now. The lights are off in the apartment as she grabs a water bottle from the fridge and returns to her room. I stare at her, even though I know I shouldn’t.

  The couch is comfortable, and still smells like her. It’s this weird addiction I didn’t realize I wanted or needed as I toss and turn with the blanket I grabbed.

  Then I finally open the door to her room and wander in.

  “What could you possibly want?” she asks.

  “A small spoon,” I answer.

  “Like I said, NO ramyeon!”

  “No, I mean like this sort of spoon.” I crawl onto the bed, fully ready for her to knee me in the balls or yell at me.

  Instead, she relaxes against me and mumbles, “This means nothing, even if I’m the small spoon.”

  “It means nothing even if I’m the big spoon.”

  She huffs.

  And falls asleep.

  The last thing I remember is her reaching for my hand.

  When I wake an hour later, she’s sprawled on me, her legs tangled with mine. I don’t have the heart to move, even though I’m starving. She sighs and nudges my neck with her chin.

  It’s heaven.

  Just like our song.

  I hold her tightly.

  And then I get kneed in the balls.

  “Son of a bitch!” I yell.

  “Oh, no!” Ah-Ri pulls away from me. “I’m so sorry! I had a nightmare.”

  “About my dick?” I yell.

  She bursts out laughing and says, “You know, tiny things are scary.”

  “Take it back.” I groan, still in pain but able to flip her onto her back as she laughs.

  “Never!” Ah-Ri announces.

  I start to tickle her sides.

  She lifts her leg. “Don’t you dare.”

  Her stomach growls.

  Mine is getting ready to do the same.

  I want to kiss her, but food first. I pull away. “Want me to order dinner?”

  “You paying?”

  “Do I get something for paying?” I ask.

  She holds up her hand.

  I punch it with my fist and then rest my palm against hers. “Worth it.”

  Her breath hitches.

  I don’t want to ruin the moment, so I leave the room and grab my phone, my hands trembling.

  Our palms kissed again.

  I’m such a nerd.

  But I smile the entire time I look for some good places to eat.

  Later that night, when we’re sitting across from each other, I realize it’s still too far.

  It will always be too far if I’m away from her.

  We decide on pizza, and as she eats in front of me, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl throw back so many slices in my entire life. It’s attractive as hell, and I find myself watching while she chomps down. I’m so proud of her for eating that I can’t stop smiling.

  “You have sauce, right there.” I point to her chin and then rub the sauce off with my thumb.

  She blushes, swallows, and looks away. “Sorry. I was starving.”

  “Same.” I’m not talking about the pizza. I drop my slice and continue to stare. Something about her inspires me and makes me want more than I’m allowed to have. How did this even happen?

  “I like it when you eat,” I whisper.

  She blushes and looks down. “I feel stronger now.”

  “You were always strong.”

  I think of raw beauty, the kind you struggle to explain with just one word. She’s fierce. Powerful. She’s like a thorn on a rose that you’re afraid to touch but need to feel in order for the pain to cleanse you.

  She’s everything.

  And I’m afraid to say anything. So, I sit and watch like an idiot while she eats, while I eat, while we both act like there isn’t this weird tension in the room because of me. Because of us.

  So much is at stake, and I feel sick to my stomach.

  I may even puke up the pizza I ate.

  So much hinges on this.

  Not just my career but also Haneul’s and the girls’. We have one shot, one chance. Shit, we’re like the Avengers at this point because I know how brutal things can get if we fail, and it’s not like our label is super behind us, even though our CEO loved the performance. If the fans hate it, the label will cut us.

  This is called our one shot.

  A chance.

  Because they trust Haneul and me, but…

  Shit.

  My stomach makes a noise, though not because I’m hungry. I’m just freaking the fuck out over all the pressure on us.

  “Be right back.” I stand and run to the bathroom. I don’t puke, but I do stand there and think about all the groups that have made it despite the circumstances and in spite of even their labels being against them.

  Weirdly enough, I keep going. If Stray Kids made it doing things on their terms, so can we.

  But…

  Despite their hella hard work, it kind of feels like a lottery.

  One we could lose.

  “Hey,”Ah-Ri sounds through the bathroom door. “You okay?”

  “Totally fine,” I lie. It seems I always lie to her these days. “Just…thinking.”

  “Yeah, I totally do that for hours in the bathroom, too.”

  I laugh despite the stress. “I’ll be out soon.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “Totally. Let’s burn the building.”

  “I’ll grab the matches,” she kids.

  And I love her for it. I love that she’s making it so I’m not so stressed. So I’m smiling rather than frowning and wondering if the world really will burn.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I’m a good partner in crime.”

  “And to think I didn’t realize I needed one of those until now,” I say.

  The door opens, and I see her poke her head in. Fuck, she’s pretty. And I hate how pretty she is because it’s so damn distracting when I need to focus.

  “Good.” She walks in, and the door clicks shut.

  It feels like one of those moments.

  The ones where you’re like, oh, shit, this might actually be it, and I might never come back from this. But I don’t even care anymore because…

  Her.

  So, I wait.

  I wait for her to approach me.

  And she does.

  I’m still, completely unable to move but fully aware of her beautiful features, her dark hair, eyes, and the shy smile she tries to hide.

  My heart hammers against my chest.

  My emotions are all over the place. I try to stay calm.

  And then she touches me. Just a soft brush of her fingertips against my mouth as if she’s trying to figure out why we have this connection, why we both have this tension, this feeling.

  I wait.

  I don’t want to, but I do.

  She leans in and brushes a kiss across my mouth. “This is a bad idea, isn’t it?”

  “It was a bad idea the second I asked myself what you tasted like,” I say.

  She pulls away. “When was that?”

  “The first argument we had,” I confess. “The one where you basically told me you would taste bitter then so sweet I would probably die from it. The first time you opened that pretty damn mouth. Then. It was then.”

  She presses her lips to mine so hard that I almost stumble backward, and I know I should stop her.

  But I don’t.

  Because this is what I want.

  What I need.

  Her.

  I grab her sweatshirt and pull it over her head, surprised that she lets me, and then I’m suddenly backed against the counter, pulling her with me, my hands with a mind of their own as clothes start to fall.

  My phone rings in my pocket. So does hers. I want to ignore it but know that something’s clearly wrong if it’s not stopping. With a curse, I pull away from Ah-Ri and look down at my screen. She’s already on hers.

  “Jisoo texted,” she says. “Something about an emergency meeting.”

  Dread fills my body as I answer my phone. “Yeah?”

  It’s Haneul.

  He’s already called twice.

  “Look,” he says, “I just got some more information. SWT is dropping a song early, like literally when we were supposed to release our mini-album. I guess they decided to surprise their fans as a thank you after the whole scandal with Lucas and that one fan who turned out to be setting him up in order to ruin his career. Marketing felt like it was great timing, and the buildup has been so good they went along with it.”

  “Of course, they are.” My chest heaves. I know they don’t plan this shit, and I know that it’s more about timing than anything. They aren’t trying to screw us, but it feels like it right now. It really does. We were already low on time. But now? Now, it’s like…a clusterfuck of stress.

  Ah-Ri looks at her phone. “Of course, they are. Why are we even trying? Our teaser and MV likely won’t even be enough.”

  “Hey, this isn’t over. None of this.” I press a finger to her lips. “Promise me that we’ll finish what we started tonight.” I hold the phone away and wait for her to answer me.

  She grins. “Guess you’ll just have to see.”

  “No.” I hold her tighter. “I don’t think I can handle the stress, especially now. Promise me.”

  Her eyes soften as I hear Haneul talking through the phone. But for some reason, this seems just as important. “I promise.” Her lips feel soft against my finger. “That we’ll talk. Is that good enough?”

  “No.” I’m gruff as I pull away. “But it’s all I’ll get, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.” I nod.

  “Okay.” Her lips are swollen. I did that.

  Pride wells up in me as we walk out of the bathroom and into the living room. I hop back on the phone and put it on speaker. I’m on cloud nine until Haneul continues talking.

  “So, as I mentioned, SWT is releasing their single the same week we were going to drop the mini-album. We either fix our release date, or we just take our chances going up against them on the same day.”

  I hang my head and then look up. “We can’t compete; you know that. We talked about that before when we decided to do the teaser. They’re like the next BTS.”

  “Yeah,” Haneul says. “I’m very aware of how popular they are.”

  “So, we release earlier,” Ah-Ri says. “And we kill it.”

  I know what this means.

  Sleepless nights.

  Stress.

  More stress.

  Oh, yeah, and stress.

  I look at her, needing more direction than oh, yeah, let’s just do this and kill it. This means we’ll have no lives until we wrap everything.

  “It’s going to be brutal,” she finally says and then reaches for my hand. “We have no choice. We have to make this work.”

  “Okay.” I sigh. “So, even though it’ll be weird…we ask permission to live together or at least in the same building…as a group. All of us. So we can practice.”

  “Is that smart?” Haneul asks on the phone. “If fans find out—I don’t know, man. We can always ask or we can just bust our asses in the training rooms.”

  I look at Ah-Ri, knowing it’s not smart at all. Still, I ask, “Do we have any other choice? I feel like we’re running out of options.”

  “No,” Haneul says. “It’s this or nothing.”

  “All right.” I sigh. “Call the label and see what we can do. If anything. Maybe the girls just come over and practice with us in the apartment when we can’t use the practice rooms. We need to get to work.”

  “I’ll get Jisoo on the phone, too,” Ah-Ri says. “It looks like sleep will be a thing of the past now, huh?”

  “I’m headed to the practice room. You guys in?” Haneul says through the phone.

  I want to say no, but he’s right; we need more practice, which means evenings and shit—just all of it.

  “Yeah,” I say. “We’ll meet you guys there.”

  “We can do this,” Haneul says.

  I want to say: “But can we?”

  Instead, I just agree.

  Things are about to get way more complicated.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ah-Ri

  It’s late, and I’m confused. I still taste him on my lips, and now we’re all in the practice room at the label, trying to figure out what to do with our next four songs and pull off this seemingly impossible feat.

  Recording them isn’t going to be the issue.

  No, the problem will be the choreography for our Showcase. In the States, you release your single or album and see how things go. You don’t have the same Showcase that we do in Korea. It’s so much pressure that it makes me want to crawl under the covers of my bed when I think about it.

  Our Showcase will be everything.

  It’s our reveal to the world.

  Things must be perfect.

  Not only that, but we’ll have variety shows and other live performances to follow, so we can’t exactly be out of sync, even a little bit.

  And all of this has to happen now in record time.

  Hours later, as sweat pours down my face, I check my phone.

  It’s two in the morning, and we need to be at the studio at eight a.m. I take another drink of water, and Jisoo passes me a protein bar.

  Thankful, I scarf it down and stare at myself in the mirror again.

  “This choreography is harder,” Jisoo says almost to herself. “It feels intense. Less fluid.”

  “Yeah,” I agree. “It’s almost…angry.”

  The guys are quiet.

  Finally, Ryan speaks up. “My sister wrote it.”

  “The song?” I ask.

  “Yeah.” He doesn’t look at me in the mirror, he just stares down at his feet. “She wrote it before she died.”

  “Was she angry?” Jisoo asks.

  I shoot her a look.

  “What?” She shrugs. “It’s a powerful song, but it is angry.”

  “We wrote it together,” Ryan says, seeming lost as he clears his throat. “My parents weren’t always there for us. So, yeah, we wrote an angry song. I never thought it would release, but after her…after she—” He runs his hands through his hair.

  “Hey, let’s just focus on the dancing for now,” Haneul says.

  We ignore the tension, which seems to be a theme with all of us now, and I practice every dance sequence like my life depends on it. Haneul moves toward me. We’re supposed to look like we’re about to kiss and then are each pulled away.

  He smiles at me each time we get close, and for some reason, Ryan pulls me back harder and harder from him until I’m convinced I’ll fall to the floor.

  “Hey,” I say for the tenth time. “You don’t have to jerk me away so hard.”

  He gulps. “Sorry.” His gaze falls to Haneul. “I just wanted to make it believable.”

  “Yeah, well, I believe it.” I shake it off. “Just trust me.”

  I swear that phrase hangs between us.

  Trust me.

  Trust us.

  Trust what, though?

  This weird friendship that has crossed basically every boundary ever? How do you even navigate something like that? Especially since it’s not fair to our other two members, who are just trying to survive this debut.

  We practice for one more hour. By the time we’re done, everyone’s exhausted, starving, and ready for bed.

  Jisoo and Haneul leave first. I follow, not even bothering to talk to Ryan as I walk to the dorms. While it would have been convenient to live together so we could eat, sleep, and breathe the same sweaty practice air—the label said it might cause too much scandal before our debut.

  Ryan’s silent as he walks next to me.

  I don’t argue when he comes into my place and shuts the door. Just like I don’t argue when he locks it and crawls into bed next to me after we both separately shower from all our hard work.

  We don’t discuss the lines we’re continuing to cross, and I wonder how I fell for him so fast. Then, I wake up to find him holding me close.

  I’m the small spoon again.

  I hate that it makes me smile to wake up in his arms when I know it can only end in heartbreak.

  We’re in the same group. How can we ever make this work?

  I don’t know. But I pretend to sleep as he kisses my forehead. When the alarm from my phone sounds again, he curses, gets up, and says, “Pray you have coffee.”

  “Red Bull,” I grumble.

  “Even better.” He looks like a god as he walks around my room in nothing but black boxer briefs. He puts on his white shirt from the night before and then turns and looks at me. “One day, or maybe one night…”

  “Is that a threat? Or are you just too tired to finish your thoughts?” I tease.

  His eyes rake down my body. “It’s a promise.”

  He walks out of my room.

  And I believe him.

  I believe it’s a promise, even when it feels like a threat. There is no way this will end with us parting as best friends. If it does end.

  No way.

  We’ve both already allowed ourselves to think past that. And now, we’re going to be damned because of it if it ends badly or if anyone finds out.

  Nobody can know.

  We’ll live a life of constant secrets.

  So why does it still sound like a good idea when I lie back against the pillow and think about how he held me?

  I justify it all.

  And then I get up and go into the kitchen, wrapping my arms around his body.