Chapter 2
“Here you are, love.” Dad put a mug down on the table in front of me, curls of steam wafting up from the murky yellow liquid. I eyed it sceptically as he took a seat next to me, putting his own mug down.
Camomile tea. Neither of us really liked it, but Mum always had a cup in the evenings, and I guess he was just used to making it.
“Your Mum’s mastectomy surgery went well,” he said matter-of-factly, as if we were discussing the car going in for a service.
I looked at him. Watched might have been a better word, because I couldn’t fathom how he could possibly be so calm, when I was a hair's breadth from the edge.
“You saw her?” I asked, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.
Dad nodded. “Briefly, after she was brought up from recovery.”
“How was she?”
“Groggy,” he admitted. “But her surgeon said it all went perfectly well, and she might be home by Sunday.”
“Sunday?” I echoed, disbelief making me nearly shout the word.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise. I had spent some time looking up breast cancer, and the process of what came after.
But I still couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that patients were sent home within a few days after something that – to me – seemed like life-changing surgery.
It felt like the world should stop turning for a while, not encourage you to walk about and get out of bed.
Dad nodded, as if he understood my surprise.
“Staying ambulatory is the general advice, nowadays,” he said, as if reciting something from memory, and coincidentally mirroring the advice I remembered reading. “She’ll be monitored for a couple days, but then if everything is fine, they’ll discharge her.”
“Is she not also having…” How do I say ‘breast implants’ to my dad? Instead, I made a vague gesture to my own chest, watching as comprehension lifted the frown off his face, and he laughed.
“She had the reconstruction done at the same time,” he said, still smiling. “We’ve been joking about it all week, how she might as well get them both done. Y’know, get the full page-six look.”
“She’s not!” I gasped, scandalised, which only made my Dad laugh harder.
“No, love,” he said, wiping his thumb under his eye. “I’m pulling your leg.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” I muttered.
We slipped into a comfortable silence. The kind of peace you only find with the people who know every part of you.
That was always the thing about Ernest. He may not be my biological father, but he might as well be.
They say you don’t get to choose your family, but he had, and he couldn’t love us any better. He had chosen me as just as much as he’d chosen my mum.
It was as this thought crossed my mind that my thoughts drifted – as they so often did – to Jihoon.
I felt like a pot on a stove, about to bubble over with all the secrets I’d had to keep.
Sitting here, in my parent’s warm kitchen, sipping the drink my Dad had made for me because my mum wasn’t here for him to make it for her, I just…
I couldn’t tuck this part of myself back into the cupboard.
So, I told him. I opened my mouth, and everything from the past year just… fell out.
I told him about GVibes. I told him meeting Jihoon at Pisces. He laughed when I described how I’d decked it in the lobby, but he nodded approvingly when I told him how Jihoon had come over to help me.
To my surprise, he’d known exactly who I was talking about when I told him Jihoon was a member of GVibes.
He just smiled, and said, “I pay attention, love.”
I’d had to take a moment to swallow down the lump in my throat before I could continue.
I talked about the way we’d only been able to talk for months, a long-distance ‘situationship’, which I’d been about to explain the concept of, before he interrupted me, holding up his hand.
“I’ve watched Love Island, I know what a ‘situationship’ is,” he assured.
His smile faded as I talked about what it had been like – not being able to be seen together in public. The choice I’d made to try and make peace with being a secret.
His frown deepened as I told him about the leaked footage in the conference room, ultimately leading to me making the decision to leave LA.
Moving to Korea, getting the job at ENT and taking Korean lessons. All of it pieced together to present the semblance of a ‘normal’ life.
I didn’t try and sugarcoat much. Including the pictures from the ball leading to speculation regarding Joon’s ‘secret girlfriend’.
When I told him of the plans we’d made, I’d had to force myself to power on, to ignore the burn in my throat. To blink away the regret at all the missed opportunities.
The tour. Jeju vacations, even just visiting Namsan Tower. Things we thought we’d have time for, but that had never come to pass.
He didn’t interrupt me, just watched me as I spoke, his expression intent, but neutral.
Until at last I wound down to the end. The way I described my last days in Korea, handing in my notice and the last time I saw Jihoon. Standing in the airport terminal, shoulders hunched.
My words dried up, raindrops on pavement, evaporating.
“And now?” He asked, gently.
His question threw me for a second.
“Now, what?”
“Are you still together?”
His face was gentle. No judgement, only genuine care for my well-being. But his question confused me. It had never occurred to me that that option would be on the table, or be a consequence of me leaving.
“Yes, of course.” I frowned.
Dad nodded thoughtfully, as if my answer didn’t surprise him.
“And the plan is to go back once… once everything goes back to normal?”
“Yes,” I said, but it felt like the word had caught on my teeth on the way out. Like the threads of a jumper snagging against an uneven bit of wood. My fingers tightened around the hot cup of tea.
“You’re not pregnant?”
I nearly spat out the tea I’d taken that moment to sip.
“Dad! Jesus Chr- Why would you think that?”
His lips quirked as he handed me one of the terrycloth tea towels stacked at the end of the table. He watched me wipe my face for a moment before replying.
“Well, your mum went abroad and came home with you, so…”
I blinked. Once, twice and then I burst out laughing, seeing the mischievous gleam in his eyes.
“No, Pops. I am not knocked up.”
“Good,” he said, matter-of-factly. “We only have a two-bed. We’d have had to up-size, and we only just paid the mortgage off on this place.”