25

He shouldn’t have kissed her, because he had a girlfriend. He also shouldn’t have kissed her, because she hadn’t known how much she’d like it. And now she knew. She’d liked it. A lot.

It had been a full day since they’d sat together on those bleachers, and Jisu still couldn’t stop thinking about Dave. How right his kiss had felt. Even though she knew it was wrong.

But butterflies in her stomach aside, thinking about it made her mad each time. It was wrong. What he did was wrong. Sophie was still his girlfriend.

And Jisu and Dave were friends. Why did he have to ruin things between them like this? Why now? Now that Austin was fully out of her system and she was well on her way to establishing something consistent and normal with Phil?

Jisu stared at her laptop screen. For the past hour, she had been trying to draft an email to her old teachers at Daewon to ask for recommendation letters. But she was too preoccupied with the events of the last twenty-four hours.

Focus, Jisu. Focus.

She shut her eyes and tried to clear away any and all thoughts of Dave. Getting off the wait list was her priority. Boys were a distraction. She could deal with them later. She opened her eyes and placed her hands on the keyboard, like a pianist about to tackle a concerto.

She was just a few sentences into drafting the email when her phone dinged. It was Phil.

Ugh. Boys always seemed to text at the most inconvenient times. It was their extra sense, like they could smell it when you truly wanted to stop thinking about them. Jisu did feel bad for getting so annoyed. Phil had done nothing wrong. But sitting in a theater next to him for two hours and doing nothing was the last thing she wanted to do. He was nice, but that was it. It wasn’t worth getting distracted by nice. She needed to focus. Jisu hadn’t yet heard from UChicago, so the least she could do was try her best to get into Harvard, even if it was by the skin of her teeth.

It was a white lie. Jisu knew that she would continue to go on seons as long as Ms. Moon continued to send her parents an invoice. She could withstand an hour or two making small talk with a stranger. But she couldn’t go down the long path with one when she knew in the long run that it wouldn’t work out. She especially couldn’t do that to Phil, who had been nothing but nice. It was better to cut him loose now than to find herself in an emotional gray area several dates later.

Jisu put her phone facedown on her desk. Ever since Dave had kissed her, a messy ball of anxiety had formed in her stomach and grown daily. It expanded every time she thought of the endless seons Ms. Moon had lined up for her. It poked her in the sides whenever she thought of the colleges she had yet to hear from. It kept her up at night when she remembered Dave’s face close to hers, his lips touching hers...and then remembered Sophie immediately after.

But closing the loop on Phil helped chip away at her nerves. It was one less thing to worry about. Jisu turned her attention back to the email she was writing.

Ding. Another notification. Now what? It was an email from Ms. Moon.

Jisu rolled her eyes and confirmed with Ms. Moon that yes, she would dutifully show up to the seon. She returned to her original email. It was going to take her all day to draft this. Her thoughts wandered briefly again to Dave. What was he up to now? Did he feel guilty? Or regretful? Was he going to tell Sophie that he had kissed someone else? And that it was her?

It didn’t matter what he was thinking. Jisu shouldn’t care.