Chapter 32

"How was school today?" my father asked. He'd been swamped at work and since my brother and I were also busy studying for our midterms, we were having pizza for dinner.

I put down the slice of sausage pizza in the hand, cleared my throat and turned to him. "Appa, when is Umma coming back?" My hands had begun to shake so I hid them on my lap.


I'd been planning to have this conversation with him for a while but every time I tried, I chickened out. So I'd given myself a deadline – the day of Min Ki's arrival – and it had finally rolled around. Something about him now being in the same country as me gave me strength.

"Su Jin ah—"

"I'm surprised you care," my brother said, turning to me. "You barely talk to her."

I ignored his statement. It wasn't that I didn't want to speak to her but the only thing I wanted to talk about was when she was coming back home. And she still didn't have a definite answer so we had nothing else to say to one another.


"Appa, are you getting a divorce?" I asked.

"No." He reached for another slice of pizza. "How can you think that? It's not the first time your mother and I have been separated, is it? And we're still married. She just needs to work things out."

"Things like what?" my brother asked coldly.

My father looked a little surprised by his tone. He turned to him and in a calm voice, said, "I don't know."

"Why don't you know? I know. Su Jin knows," my brother said, pointing at me. "It's all your fault."

My father narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"If you treated her like a human being, would she be halfway across the world hiding away from her family?"

"Stop talking rubbish. She's not hiding."

"Yes, she is. If you treated her like a person, she wouldn't do this! What kind of man are you?"

"Op—" I started to say before my brother's hard look shut me up.

"She spent so many years raising us with no help from you," Dong Won continued, "and when you finally decide that it's time to pay attention to your family, you act like she's beneath you! How can you call yourself a man?"

"Watch your tone!"

"Why? Why should I watch my tone? Who do you think you are? What are you going to do?" my brother threw his napkin across the table in anger. "What are you going to do? Tell me! Are you going to send me away like you did her?"

"You obviously have no idea of what you're talking about!" my father yelled back.

"I know exactly what I'm talking about. Just because you've decided to start acting nice doesn't mean that I've forgotten everything!"

I began to say something but my father's voice drowned me out. Then my brother replied in kind and when I saw that they were about to engage in a shouting match, I left them to it.


***

"Jinnie!" a voice said the moment I answered the phone. He'd promised to call the second he got settled in at his new home.

"Oppa. How was your flight?"

"It was good. But do you know what's even better?"

"What?" I laughed. From his tone, I could tell that he was about to say something really cheesy.

"Your voice. It feels so good to hear your voice. Even though it's still over the phone, it feels different, you know? Maybe it's because we are breathing the same air?"

"We're not exactly breathing the same air. You're like thousands of miles away from me."

"But it's still the same country. What time is it over there?"

I looked at my watch. "Like 8:15. What about you?"

"I'm two hours behind. Wow, I really can't believe I'm here. After all the planning, working all those hours, filing out all those applications, I'm finally here. It feels surreal."

I exhaled to loosen the knot in my chest. "I know." It was hard to believe that he was really here.

"But believe me when I say that America isn't what I thought it would be."

"Meaning?"

"I mean that after we landed, we drove for miles and miles and all I saw were trees. It was like I was in a kid's movie and we were driving through a magical kingdom."

I chuckled.

"And the school is nice and big but a serial killer could easily bury a million bodies here and no one would ever know because all I see are shrubs and trees. And a lot of grass and rocks. And let's not even talk about the squirrels everywhere. I think there are more squirrels over here than there are people in the entire country." He sighed. "I really feel like I'm on an episode of Natural Geographic. I actually jumped when I saw the first one – I thought it was going to attack me."

I burst out laughing. "It can't be that bad."

"Believe me, it is. When we finally got here, I wanted to turn around and run but where could I run to? It's not like there's any life outside of the school gates so if I don't die from the sheer exhaustion of running to nowhere, I bet the bears would get me."

"Bears?"

"There have to be bears or some other huge animals in there." Then his voice got softer. "But it's all worth it because you're here with me."

"You think so?" I asked myself as much as I asked him. Even though it was nice hearing him recount his first day in America, I still couldn't ignore that he'd done it all for me. And was I worth it? "You're so far away so we still won't be able to see each other."

"We'll get to see each other," he said confidently.

"Really?"

"Yes. I'm sure about it. Not today but we will eventually."



***

It turned out that Yvette didn't hold a grudge for long because one day, she called me out of the blue and since then, we'd been hanging out often.

It was about three weeks since Min Ki had arrived in the States and we'd settled into a new kind of groove.

I was hanging out with Yvette at the mall when he sent me a text message about his first hiking trip so I shared it with her.

She read it then handed the phone back to me. "So this is what it feels like to be in a long term relationship, huh?"

"I guess so. It feels pretty good. Even though we don't get to see one another very often,"

"Or at all," she interjected.

I frowned. "Or at all. We do manage to talk to each other everyday and I can really see the benefits of him coming over. You know, it's less tense and stressful… plus it's far less draining." I smacked my lips in satisfaction. "It feels pretty good."

Plus having him to talk to all the time made me feel a lot less lonely than I would have otherwise felt. Even though my brother and father were speaking, the house had become a lot more tense since their fight so I just tried to stay out of everyone's way. School wasn't much better. Ali pretty much disappeared from my life so other than some random people and Jonathan, I was pretty much alone. I did occasionally speak to Ryan but it never went further than a quick hello. I knew that I could at least try a little harder to make other friends but now that I had Min Ki with me, even though he wasn't physically around, I didn't mind my newly-found solitude.


"I can't imagine being in a relationship where I couldn't make out with the guy on a regular basis. I like to be touched, you know?" Yvette said as we stepped out of a lingerie shop. She was searching for some new bras but we couldn't find any sales for any bras that didn't look like they belonged on my grandma's grandma.

I laughed. "You're silly," I said, nudging her with my elbow.

"I'm dead serious. You don't know what you're missing out on. That's why I can't be in a long distance relationship because on one drunken day, I'd grab some guy and start making out with him. And I'm sure that won't be too good for our relationship. Plus it doesn't help that I'm not the…"

The image of me kissing Ryan on the steps flashed through my mind but I quickly shook it off.

"… Lying type. It must be hard."

"No one said that love would be easy," I said, sounding like a reality show soundbite.

She turned to me and raised her brow. "Hmm… don't take it the wrong way, but do you love him or do you just think that you love him?"

I rolled my eyes. "What kind of question is that?" Then I thought about it. "What difference does it make, though?"

She looked at me like I was completely nuts. "A lot! It makes a huge difference. Like the difference between what Shah Rukh felt for Kajol and what he felt for Rani."

I scrunched my nose. "What are you talking about now?"

"My favorite film – Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. And you'd know it if you watch it like I've been suggesting."

I sighed. She'd been trying her best to push her Bollywood stuff on me and I just wasn't having it. If Bollywood turned people into sometimes raving lunatics like she obviously was, I wanted no part of it. "What's your point?"

"I'm saying that with Rani, it was just an imagined love. She was beautiful, sexy, smart, sassy – you know, the average guy's wet dream. So Shah Rukh thought that he was in love with her. And it was nice but it wasn't real, true love. With Kajol, it was."

I knitted my brows. Why did it sound familiar? "Is this one of those stories where someone dies for love or something?"

She nodded reluctantly. "But that's not the point. You can learn a thousand lessons from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. The point is that there's a huge difference between true love and imagined love."

I twisted my face as I thought about her words objectively. "But, from his perspective, this Shah guy thought that he loved both women, right?"

She nodded. "So?"

"So, from his perspective, they were both real love. Even if you think one wasn't real and even if you are right, to him, they were both love."

"I'm confused."

"What I'm saying is, to me, there's no difference between thinking I'm in love and being in love because for me, from my perspective," I said, hitting my chest for emphasis, "they are both love. So what difference does it make? True love or imagined love, at the time I'm experiencing it, it still feels like love to me. As far as I'm concerned, it is love. And even when I'm truly in love, I still think I'm in love, right? So they are both the same… to me."

She shook her head. "I'm so confused." When I opened my mouth to explain further, she quickly stopped me. "Enough, okay? I get it. But next time, just say that yes, you're in love."

I was about to respond to her when I heard a very distinct and familiar voice call out my name. With my heart suddenly racing, I slowly turned around to see Min Ki and my brother waving at us. My Min Ki.