Kelsey walked across the UCLA quad, the air smelling of cut grass and hot concrete, the setting sun casting long shadows. Sprinklers hissed cool mist into the dry heat. Football season had just ended, and for the first time in three months, since that awkward drink with Tenley’s swim coach, she felt like she could breathe for a minute. Is this how Han felt all the time? Scheduled out? Hectic? They hadn’t called or talked all week. Some comeback was taking all his time. Texting back happened over business days now instead of hours.
She’d tried. Really tried. To go on dates. To be a normal college girl. She couldn’t. Every guy was too short, or too muscly, or didn’t make her laugh. And definitely didn’t understand her. She just thought maybe the frat guys or athletes weren’t for her. Maybe it would get better after college? The thought felt hollow, a lie she told herself while walking to her empty apartment.
Her phone was a dead weight in her back pocket. She didn’t check it. She knew what wasn’t there. A week of silence was a new record, a fragile, terrible thing they were both carefully not acknowledging. She was saving him the pain, she told herself. He was saving her the complication. They were making it easier for each other. The grand, stupid lie of it made her chest ache.
Her apartment was quiet, still holding the day’s warmth. She dropped her bag by the door, kicked off her sandals, and went straight to the fridge. The inside light was too bright. She grabbed a water bottle, the condensation cool against her palm, and leaned against the counter. The silence was a physical presence. It had been following her for years, she realized. A quiet that only existed when he wasn’t there, in person or on the line. A Han-shaped silence.
She took her water to the living room window, looking down at the street below. People moved in pairs, groups, laughing. Normal. She took a long drink. The water was flavorless. Everything was flavorless. She compared every sunset to the desert ones they’d watched from her car. Every joke to his dumb, perfect timing. Every silence to the easy, comfortable ones they used to share. She knew, with a certainty that felt like a stone in her gut, that he was doing the same. Comparing every city to Phoenix, every person to her. They were orbiting each other from opposite sides of the planet, pretending not to feel the gravity.
Her phone buzzed on the coffee table. A single, sharp vibration. Her heart did a stupid, hopeful leap before she could stop it. She walked over, forcing her steps to be slow. It was a notification from a dating app she’d forgotten to delete. Some guy named Mark. “Hey, saw your profile. You’re cute. Wanna grab a drink?”
She stared at the words. Cute. A drink. The exhausting cycle of explaining herself to a stranger. Having to be charming, and interesting, and not too much. Having to hide the fact that her heart was a thousand miles away, tied to a boy on a screen who was too scared to claim it. She deleted the notification. Then she opened the app and deleted her entire profile. The action felt decisive. A little violent. A relief.
The apartment seemed even quieter after that. She sat on the couch, pulling her knees to her chest. She scrolled past Han’s name in her messages. Their last exchange was four days old. Her: “Good luck with rehearsals. Don’t forget to eat.” Him, twelve hours later: “Thanks. Tired. Talk soon?” She’d replied with a heart emoji. He’d left it on read. Talk soon. A placeholder. A promise they were both too afraid to keep.
She opened her photo gallery instead, scrolling back through years. There they were, frozen in pixels. Han, sixteen and grinning, squinting in the Arizona sun, his arm slung over her shoulders. Her, in her cheer uniform, face painted, leaning into him. Photos from his last night, the one in the driveway she never looked back from. Her own face looked back at her, trying so hard to be brave. She’d kissed his cheek. She could still feel the scratch of his jaw, the way he’d gone perfectly still.
She zoomed in on one photo. It was from a few weeks before he left. They were in her convertible, parked somewhere overlooking the city lights. She was mid-laugh, head thrown back. He wasn’t looking at the view. He was looking at her. The expression on his face wasn’t friendly. It was hungry. Devoted. A look she’d seen then and deliberately misunderstood. A look she now saw with painful, perfect clarity.
Her thumb hovered over the call button next to his name. The time in Korea would be… what? Late morning? He’d be in rehearsals. Or in a meeting. Or sleeping. She had a dozen practical, reasonable excuses not to press it. They were the same excuses she’d used for years. She was protecting their friendship. She was being understanding. She was making it easier.
The truth was simpler, and harder. She was scared. Scared that if she finally said the thing hanging between them, the delicate world they’d built across oceans would shatter. Scared that the love she’d carried for so long was a one-way street. Scared that “just friends” was all he would ever be able to give, and by asking for more, she’d lose even that.
But the silence of the last week felt different. It felt like a crack in the foundation. The jealous tension during that last video call, when he’d watched her get ready for a date—it had changed the air. He’d looked at her like he wanted to reach through the screen and stop her. And she’d ended the call using his stage name, putting professional, careful distance between them because his real feelings felt too dangerous to face.
She put the phone down, screen facing the couch cushion. She couldn’t call. Not like this, wound up and lonely in her quiet apartment. It wouldn’t be fair. To either of them.
Instead, she got up and went to the small balcony. The evening was cooling down. She rested her forearms on the railing, the metal still warm from the sun. She wondered what he was doing right now. If he was on a break, drinking water. If he was thinking about schedules, choreography, lyrics. If, in a quiet moment, his mind ever drifted to a sun-bleached highway and a girl in a blue car playing their song too loud.
The thought was a specific, piercing ache. She missed him. Not the idol, not the distant friend. She missed the boy who knew the exact cadence of her laugh. Who could sit with her in silence and it meant everything. Who looked at her like she was a secret only he understood.
Her phone buzzed again from inside. Once. Then, a few seconds later, again. Two texts in quick succession. It wasn’t the app this time. Her breath caught. She didn’t move for a long moment, letting the hope and fear war inside her. Making it easier for each other. What a joke. There was nothing easy about this.
She walked back inside, her steps slow on the cool floor. She picked up the phone. The screen lit up with two notifications.
Han: “Rehearsal just ended.”
A pause, the typing bubbles appearing, disappearing, then appearing again. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
The second message came through.
Han: “Can I call you?”