Chapter 58: The question

The next day was Wednesday, and for some inexplicable reason, I woke up earlier than I would wake up during workdays, with a feeling of immediate happiness forming inside me already. However, I was still peacefully rolling over in my head. I stayed in my blanket, feeling the coldness coming from it and occasionally blinking my eyes as I stared at my ceiling while I rearranged what occurred between Evan and me last night. "That wasn't a dream, right?" I uttered, my hands fidgeting with the tag of my blanket. "Evan feels the same way, too? Wait, am I still dreaming?" I sat down and pinched my arms to have a reality check, and when I confirmed I wasn't dreaming, I laid again and covered myself with the blanket, my feet kicking underneath it out of the sudden fluttering of my heart. I yelped in joy when I remembered everything he said last night-each word sweetly replaying inside my mind as though they were making me butterflies in my stomach. 'I'm in love with you, too, Misty." "Oh, my God!" I softly tapped my cheeks numerously and kept on flapping my legs underneath my blanket so the adrenaline rush of having to feel a fluttering heart would somehow fade. And when I finally collected myself back to being normal, I proceeded to make my bed. "Let's get ready for work, shall we?" Realizing the running time, I hurried up to fix myself to get ready for work. This day was going to be productive as I planned on finalizing the manuscript of my book so that I could hand it to Ms. Rose for evaluation and editing. Although I had some doubts and worries in the process that I feared affected my creative work, I must still pursue my goal. Being alone under the warmth of the water running from the shower made me concentrate and realize what was happening between us. Now that we both said our feelings to each other, our . . . relationship has changed. We were no longer just friends-neighbor friends-at this point, so I felt more concerned about him. Thus, I was firm on suggesting just keeping this to ourselves first. Although I had a feeling that I was going to be poor at this, knowing perfectly how even just Evan's eye smile could make my cheeks crimson. I finally finished my manuscript in the afternoon and passed it to Ms. Grace for her holistic feedback. I might be a developmental editor, but I penchant the thought that there was likely a train of problems and mistakes with my book. I was a little surprised that I managed to stay focused at this hour, battling with the paddling of my heart as Evan occasionally kept on sending messages during his breaks from work. The heart emoji was a dead giveaway of making me ultimately smile and my cheeks blush. "Please don't be easy on me, Ms. Grace," I pleaded to her as soon as I gave her the file. "I am open to your critical analysis and everything." "Of course, dear! When I give this back to you, you can start the revision right away." I spent an hour at Kayla's before returning to my unit that night. I wanted to tell her about what happened, about the current situation between Evan and me. She had been my confidante all this time; although I spent a lot of time denying my feelings for Evan, during those times, Kayla hammered my mind to accept the truth finally. Since last night, I had been keeping the overflowing emotions all by myself, and now I wanted my best friend to know about the situation. "Let me make this clear," Kayla reckoned while kneading dough. "Evan-the Evan Park-has feelings for you, too? Oh, wait." She halted and immediately turned to me. "He loves you too?" She almost sounded like she was close to whimpering out of happiness for me. I simply nodded and shyly smiled at her. "I told you he feels the same way!" Kayla said and slapped my arms as the baking powder puffed in the air while fancying the actual thought that she was right about Evan's feelings for me. "Ouch, Kayla. Stop it." "Oops, sorry." Kayla stopped mauling my arms and pulled me outside the kitchen to sit on one of the empty tables. When she finally calmed down, she uttered in a sobbing-like and affectionate tone, "Oh, my gosh, Misty. You have no idea how happy I am for you. You finally allow yourself to love someone and be loved by someone, and I think Evan is destined for you." She sniffed her nose, which she then wiped using a tissue, and I could feel how sincere Kayla was, so I even loved her. "He's such a nice guy, and you two complement each other," Kayla denoted and held my hands. "So did you, guys . . . kiss or something already? Because-" "Kayla!" I ratted out of sheer embarrassment-although there was nothing to be embarrassed about, anyway-even getting the attention of an old lady paying for her order at the counter two tables away from us. "We, uh, that's . . . still unlikely to happen." Kayla rolled her eyes at me as though she didn't believe me, indicating that she took my remark as if I had told her a joke. "Tss," she sarcastically hissed. "Whatever. Two adults occupying the eighth floor of a condominium all by themselves still didn't kiss? Yeah, right." Last night, we opted to ride a taxi back to our condominium. Though we never exchanged a conversation during the whole ride-a little awkwardness was a given between two persons who had confessed their love for each other-we held hands that entire time, silently stealing glances at each other. That was it. Nothing more. ****** On Sunday night, I was sitting on my floor checking some emails from Ms. Grace regarding my book, telling me that she already had finished a few pages of it, which was relieving. She didn't tell me her feedback as she wanted to do it all at once. Once I was done checking all my emails-more like deleting everything that was in my spam folder, which mainly included all the subscriptions from stores I never really purchased at-I took my journal and wrote things I wanted to do in this . . . relationship with Evan. "What am I even doing?" I asked myself and immediately stopped when I finished writing about three things. I took my time staring at my writing, thinking if Evan might want to do these things-Netflix nights; eating at an unlimited pizza shop; library, art gallery, museum dates; going to the beach, and- "Ah, I doubt it." He had many more things to do rather than waste his sweet time doing these silly things with me. But knowing how nice of a guy he was ignited me to believe that he might want to spend some of his time with me. "No, but this is silly." When I was about to stand up and head to my kitchen for a warm liquid, my doorbell rang abruptly, and I yelped in surprise, falling back to the floor. As an adrenaline rush waved over me as I was expecting no one tonight, I quickly crawled to the door and hastily opened it, my hand poorly stretched on the doorknob. A shocked Evan greeted me; his hands were inside his pocket as he continued darting some puzzled stares at me. Still on the floor, I just returned the look at him, and he must've realized that something had happened because a few seconds passed, and his expression suddenly turned to be worried. "Misty, are you hurt?" He panicked and helped me stand up, his good hands accompanying my back. "I heard a loud thump. Did you fall or something?" "No, I'm okay. W-what are you doing here? I thought you were having a fan sign event." "It ended two hours ago." "But aren't you going to work on your next album tonight?" Evan grimaced, closed the door behind us, and plopped himself on my sofa. Beforehand, he already informed me about his fan sign events today-both online and offline events-so I wasn't expecting him tonight. And a fan sign would typically take about an hour, so I assumed he would rest right after, and I didn't want to bother him knowing he had a long day. If I knew about him visiting, I would've fixed myself a little. Even when we were just friends, I didn't care about my look, but now I was becoming conscious. Is this normal, though? "Yeah, I already finished some compositions earlier, so I also want to spend time with my girl," he said, and somehow, the 'my girl' part sounded crisp and firm but a little funny. Or perhaps, I was still not used to him adoring me. I blinked, then blinked again upon hearing what he said. I didn't know how to react or even feel. Was I supposed to feel flattered because of his sudden endearment? I mean, after that night, nothing really changed between us; although we were already aware of each other's feelings, somehow, the awkwardness still prevailed. But Evan became even sweeter than usual, although we never really discussed our relationship status or label. "What?" he asked. "You"-I pointed my forefinger at him and stiffly smiled-"just called me your girl." "I did." His eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "What about it?" I snorted and eventually covered my mouth because I could readily feel close to laughing. "That's really"- I snorted again-"awkward to hear. I mean, we're not in a relationship or something. You didn't even ask me." He must've thought I was kidding because his furrowed eyebrows deepened. I just stared at him, letting him study me in return for a moment. His fox-like eyes were really captivating. The more I stared at him for no reason other than acknowledging his beautiful eyes, the more I realized he was serious about what I said. I thought he was irritated, but something might be wrong with me because I still found him adorable. I tried to suppress a growing giggle, but as soon as I was about to cover my mouth, Evan abruptly grabbed my wrist and pulled me, making me directly fall on him. "Evan! You sneaky man!" I raged, softly hitting his chest once. I was basically on top of him, trapped by his legs, and I could smell his almond, and milky-scented body wash that, at some point, I didn't want to get up anymore and just hug him all night. A slight smirk replaced his frown of irritation. Then my unit resonated with his familiar laugh-that one distinctive laugh of him whenever he successfully made fun of me-but suddenly calmed into a humming sound, his lips sealed, akin to the noises of a pigeon. "Misty, I missed you," he denoted and gently wrapped his arms around me, his warmth starting to wash over me. I just scrunched my nose at him as a response. I knew Evan could sometimes be this clingy, but I couldn't help but still feel shy in this kind of intimate situation, as though we hadn't hugged each other before. Like this was the first time we ever hugged. "Evan, I need to fix the mess on the floor first, and-" "Let's cuddle, please?" he asked, his voice pruned with a sugary-like tone, and he even tightened his legs, locking my lower body, but I couldn't care less about it. For a brief moment, I liked feeling the warmth from his body. His presence was something I wished for today, although-at the back of my mind-I was also feeling guilty, knowing he had other vital schedules to meet. "Misty, pretty please?" His playful, sulking voice again gave in and hissed, "Fine." I tilted my head back so that I could look into his face and check if he was sulking; my hands shamelessly placed on his chest and saw that he was pouting-a 183-cm grown-up man with approximately 54 cm shoulder and a built body was indeed sulking like a cute kid with his puppy eyes. "Evan?" "Hmm?" "Earlier, before your fan sign today, you were trying to tell and ask me something?" Evan nodded, but he seemed preoccupied as if he was in the process of choosing the right words to say. Clearly quite taken aback. "What was it all about?" He closed his eyes briefly, and a sudden realization hit me for a moment. Was he going to ask what I was thinking? I felt my heart slowly thudding, and it intensified in time when his eyes opened. "Misty . . ." he trailed off and softly caressed my cheek using his thumb finger. "My heart calls for you, and I'd do anything to make you smile, so I hope you won't get tired of my face because I plan on bugging you for the long, long, longest time." Baffled at what he meant, I fixed my eyes on him, and I noticed something strange but somehow affectionate in his eyes, behind his attempt at humor for his reasoning: a little imploring and engaging enough not to break the stare even for a millisecond. "Aw, Evan, I like that prospect." I twirled the strand of hair covering his eye and smiled. As long as you-" "Don't cut off the fruit yogurt supply, I know," he sarcastically spoofed. "No, what I mean to say was . . . as long you give me your Netflix password so I don't have to pay for a subscription monthly and cancel it before the month ends, so it won't be charged to my card. And once you gave me the password, don't change my username to parasite 1, 2, 3, or whatever kind of parasite you want." Suddenly, my unit fell deafeningly quiet, and Evan's face looked so hilarious out of pure amusement at my remark. His lips parted, and he seemed lost for words, but then a few seconds later, the silence was replaced by his whooping laughter as if he had entirely swallowed the Cheshire Cat. "Oh, what do I do?" he happily snapped, unclasping one of his arms tightened around me to wipe off his tear of joy. "I really love it when you're a being a smart-ass." "Are you done humoring my mere suggestion?" I rolled my eyes at him. "But can you get to the point, what is it that you wanted to ask me?" And his serious expression was once more evident, like a sudden change in the wind cycle. But then, he smiled and looked at me very fondly. "I wanted to ask if . . ." "If?" "You will make me the happiest man on the planet right now if you say yes and nothing but yes to being my girlfriend. Can you be my girlfriend, Misty Song Brooke?" I wanted to cry, feeling my heart pinched. But not in the way it felt painful, as it was rather swelling with mere happiness and contentment, knowing such a question came from Evan. I could grab my pen and journal right now to date this particular moment as the most fateful that ever happened to me; considering the fact that I never really cared about boys-well, I used to be, not until Evan-it was understandable that I was never anyone's girlfriend. And now, it changed, and it was going to be Evan-the one and only Evan Park; the popular, handsome k-pop idol; the idol who'd make everyone's heart flutter through his songs; but most importantly, the man who lived across my unit and who practically bugged me all the time. And he made me fall in love with him ever since I got to know him more. "Misty?" he queried with a bit of worry. "It's okay, don't worry about it. You don't have to answer right now. I just wanted you to know." I was perfectly aware of our different worlds: a k-pop idol being loved by people and a simple developmental editor slash fan. Of course, he would be more popular and idolized in the long run, but still, I wanted to try. I wanted to be with him. I wanted to acknowledge his love. "Yes," I uttered and leaned my face back on his chest again as if to hear our hearts pound in rhythm at this exact moment. "What?" he asked. Ostensibly, he didn't get me. "My answer is yes, Evan Park. I want to be your girlfriend."