“Cha Ju-hee, the dress you wear is the dream I can never kill.”
While Ju-hee tried on gowns, I sat beside her and stared only at her ankles. When the white lace bit into her skin, the living warmth that once pulsed at my fingertips resurfaced. Last winter, the night she whispered, drunk, “I only need you.” She beamed in front of the mirror. The fitting-room lights draped shadows over her lashes, and the longer those shadows grew, the deeper the cavity in my chest became.
The stylist asked, “How do you like this one?” Ju-hee looked at me—no, through me, as though confirming something. Without thinking, I muttered, like a doctor pronouncing someone dead.
A Funeral Named Desire
I couldn’t believe she was getting married. For ten years I had devoured every first of hers—first kiss, first hand-holding, first cohabitation—all under the label “friend.” We pretended to know each other. Each time she met a new man I quietly burrowed in, murmuring, “The one who truly knows you is me.” She pretended not to notice. Or chose not to.
Once wedding preparations began, everything clarified. The man who would become her husband knew her less than I did. And that seemed to make her happier. Illusion is often lovelier than truth; blindness sweeter than knowledge.
How Mira and I Spent Six Months Trying to Ruin Her Wedding
Mira, the bookstore owner, suffered from the same malady. She, too, stood eight years deep in friendship with a woman about to marry. We traded stories and plotted strategy.
“What do we really want?” Mira asked. “For her to fall into our arms? Or to abandon the wedding altogether?”
Neither. What we wanted was the moment she chose us—not the groom, but us.
We approached in our own ways. Mira tried to plant a fake scandal about the fiancé; I texted Ju-hee, “Just once more, stay with me.” When she met me that night, she already knew.
“You hate that I’m getting married, don’t you? That someone else will stand beside me.”
I couldn’t speak.
She went on. “But I’d feel the same if you married. Still… we’re friends, aren’t we?”
Why Do We Obsess Over What We Cannot Own?
Psychologists call it “social proprietariness”—the ache when something close drifts away. But deeper still is the truth that what we loved was not all of her, but “her-with-me.” We loved each other’s potential. When I was with Ju-hee I could imagine a future of “someday.” When that future vanished, I hadn’t lost her; I’d lost the possibility. That hurt more.
In the End, I Attended Her Wedding
Ju-hee was radiant. The white gown made her an angel. I gave a congratulatory speech: “Ju-hee is the person who knows me best… and that, right now, makes me a little sad.” Everyone laughed. But Ju-hee understood. She looked at me, and we both knew what we had lost.
We had lost our ten years. Not merely the chance to move from friends to lovers, but the ability to possess each other under the name of friendship.
Whom Have You Had to Leave?
I still don’t keep in touch. Yet now and then I take out the invitation she sent. It reads: “I hope you’ll be here.” Reading it, I wonder:
Was it her I walked away from, or the decade-long illusion of “us”?
Is there someone you must leave now—or have you already left, without knowing why? Was it the person you tried to keep, or the “you” that existed only with that person?