“You have little-brother-of-a-sister energy.”
He laughs. “Okay.”
“It’s a compliment. They are the best guys to date,” I say with a grin.
“Date?”
“You know what I mean,” I say with an eye roll.
He shows me photos of his nieces and nephew, and I genuinely look at each one with interest. They have his amber-flecked eyes and sweet expressions. And, in a moment of complete surprise, I see a future for him with his own children, and I know he’ll be a wonderful dad. I can’t tell if this is a face-reading thing or just an intuitionthing. Either way, I am spooked by it and change the subject to his pet turtle who enjoyed swimming in the toilet.
In turn, I talk to him about my grandmother, Sunny, and Emoni. He wants to know everything about them and then admits to me, “I might be a little obsessed with old Asian people.” I find out his Chinese grandparents died before he was born, and he’s always had this idea of an extended family that would nourish his Chinese roots. He’s envious that I had this matriarchal force my entire life, that my Koreanness is woven into me naturally. That I keep a rice cooker on my counter all the time, that I can understand Korean fluently even if I speak it like a toddler.
As the afternoon sun grows low in the sky and the bougainvillea starts to turn golden in its light, he sets me on top of the kitchen counter and reaches under my linen dress. He gets down on his knees, and I feel the breeze kick in through the open windows as I press back against the vintage cornflower-blue tiles and close my eyes. Which means that it’s impossible, yet again, to kick him to the curb.
This is my birthday treat, I tell myself. This is what turning forty deserves. When it turns dark, I turn on the firepit on the deck and we sit in a chair together, me in his lap with a giant blanket wrapped around us. I’ve made us martinis with thinly sliced lemon peels curled into them, the glasses frosty and beading by the fire. We inevitably start kissing, under the stars with an owl hooting from a treetop deep in the canyon. The cold air feels like a baptism on my skin, the surface of my body intensely hot. I welcome it.
9
I drive us to K-Town that night and I worry that the spell of our fun weekend will be broken if we leave the invisible boundaries of my L.A. neighborhood. But we’re both famished in that way that only a solid twenty-four hours of boning makes you and nothing but good Korean food will do the trick.
We park in a strip mall that is packed to the brim with cars even at ten p.m., leaving my car with a valet who has to be a Tetris master in order to make this work. The valet will cost three dollars, and I will tip heavily from bougie guilt. But it’s all worth it for the hand-cut noodles that taste like they are pulled from the dreams of a starving person.
When we finally get seated in a booth, surrounded by drunk college kids and senior citizens alike, Ellis asks, “Okay, what should I order?”
“You only order the chicken kalguksu,” I say bossily. You don’t “experiment” with perfection. You don’t “try out other things on the menu.” I am evangelical about my Korean food. Don’t you dare try to add cheese to anything related to kimchi or I will cut you. When our taciturn server comes to take our order, I order for us—two giantbowls of hand-cut noodles with shredded chicken, chunks of potatoes, and julienned curls of squash.
The side dishes arrive—thinly sliced pickled daikon radishes, marinated soybeans, and a potato salad with apple slices. Ellis’s forearms brace the table as he leans forward to get a good look at all the banchan. “What are your favorites?”
“Favorite banchan?” I ask.
“Yeah. I love these guys,” he says as he pokes his metal chopsticks into the sesame oil–marinated soybeans.
“What?Those?” I say with disgust.
He holds up a healthy amount between his chopsticks and waves them at me. “Yo, these are underrated af.”
I close my eyes briefly. “Wow. Kongnamul described as underrated af. Never thought I’d see the day.”
“It’s true,” he says between chewing. “They are the baseline banchan. Just a perfect light marinadeandprotein? God’s gift.”
His enthusiasm is contagious, and I laugh as I slide the kongnamul closer to him. “Help yourself. Me, I’m all about that potato salad.”
“Oh, the workhorse of the banchan.” He swipes a bit of the potato salad. “Really fills you up when the food’s taking too long.”
I point my chopsticks at him. “Exactly.” I’m impressed by his Korean-food knowledge but honestly, anyone who lives in L.A. long enough becomes a Korean-food expert.
Our noodles come out in two giant metal bowls, steaming in glorious heaps. For a few seconds, we’re quiet as we attack our food—pulling up scorching hot noodles and cooling them off, taking delicate sips of the cloudy chicken broth, making little piles of noodles topped with the pickled radish slices on our spoons.
“So, you had no plans today?” I finally ask between mouthfuls.
He makes a funny face at me. “This is my plan.”
“You planned on…this?” I raise my eyebrow suggestively. “Pretty bold.”
His cheeks turn red. It’s adorable. “No, I mean…I don’t really make plans. I go where the wind takes me.”
A sobering wash of cold comes over me. Right. This guy has no obligations, his entire life is spread out before him like a wonderful buffet o’ potential. Suddenly, the harsh lighting, the voices of the servers and diners—they all wake me up from the Ellis stupor I’ve been floating in for the past twenty-four hours.
