Chapter 6
“Auntie Cassie, can you please play Billy Joel?”
“Sure, Oz.” I select “Uptown Girl,” and it immediately gets everyone in the car shaking and grooving, including Marcella’s son, Mica, who is seven and usually only responds to Minecraft sound effects.
Their dad and Marcella’s husband, Logan, is wedged between the car seats doing a limited-movement dance with his upper body. Billy Joel is always the right move.
“I can’t wait to see what new massage chairs Halmoni has,” Marcella says over the music. The way she says “Halmoni” is so phonetically accurate that I’m always a little proud of my white friend. “I need it really badly.”
Something in her voice makes me look over at her sharply. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she says wearily. “Just, you know, opening a new restaurant is sapping my will to live.”
“Is it the clown-town contractor again?”
“Just one in a long line of offensive men,” she says with a groan, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. “I wish someone could knock me out until everything’s over.”
“You for sure get first dibs on the massage chair.”
There’ll be a line of people waiting for it.
My birthday dinner involves my entire extended family: Emoni and her kids Josh and Brian and their kids and spouses, plus Sunny and Stu, and my grandparents.
Mar and Co. are also my fam, so they always come, too.
This pre-birthday birthday dinner is a tradition that started when I began bailing town on the actual day years ago.
When we get to my grandparents’ house, Ozzie and Mica are instantly suffocated into big hugs and words of praise from my grandparents.
“Such a beautiful dress!”
“Look at this tall, big boy!”
I don’t bother giving them the “less-gendered compliments, please” lecture because these are old Korean people I’m dealing with. Then Emoni’s grandkids come storming in—ten-year-old Griffin, seven-year-old Hayes, and four-year-old Aidan.
They are definitely more excited to see Ozzie and Mica than me, but their meticulous manners force them to halt in front of me and give me kisses and hugs.
“Why are you so tall?” I complain to Griffin.
He can’t even hide his pride as he stands straight on his sock-clad toes.
He’s wearing cool skater pants and an ironic T-shirt of some kind and my heart squeezes.
I don’t see them as much as I want to. They’re all scattered throughout California—Griffin and Hayes live in the Bay Area with their parents Josh and Lisa, and Aidan and baby Wally live in Orange County with their parents Brian and Wes.
Technically, these kids are the same generation in my family as me.
We live on the same height in the family tree.
But because Emoni is almost a decade younger than Halmoni, and Mom had me when she was just twenty-two, we’re all a little staggered age-wise.
Growing up without siblings, and then later without parents, I never quite fit in with Josh and Brian, technically my second cousins, and then was way too old to connect with their kids except as an aunt figure.
But as I ruffle their hair, sniff their necks as I squeeze their little wriggly bodies—all the loneliness feels overshadowed by my intense love for these kids.
Ozzie and Mica are absorbed into this kid-ball as they roll out into the house and Marcella asks after the massage chair.
I walk into the kitchen—a sprawling, tiled dream space with giant casement windows and a view of the pool—where the rest of the family is gathered.
“Happy birthday, Cass!” Lisa, Josh’s wife, says as she throws her arms around me.
A drink is shoved into my hand. “Here,” says Josh dryly. “Numb yourself to the chaos.”
“And the impending four-oh,” Brian’s husband, Wes, says with a grimace. The newest member of the family, eight-month-old Wally, is strapped to him like a baby possum.
Brian swats him with his arm. “Come on.”
It strikes me again: I am the only childless and unmarried family member here. I take a swig of my chilled white wine before kissing the soft downy cheeks of the baby. “I’ve missed you guys,” I coo.
“Not really,” Brian says. “You miss the kids.”
“Why not both, though?” I say with a grin. Halmoni walks in and everyone straightens. Wes and Josh hide their beers for some reason.
“How was the drive?” Halmoni asks me as she pats my back.
“Fine,” I say as I take baby Wally from Wes. “Can I help with dinner?”
“No. You’re not allowed.” Emoni has popped in silently like an assassin, as is her style.
She lives here, too—ever since she was widowed.
If my grandparents had their way, the entire family would be shoved into this house.
It’s a large Spanish-style villa and they’ve lived here since I was a child, but before I was born they had lived in K-Town, which was just a few short but significant blocks to the south.
This house hosts every gathering. All major holidays, and one very important occasion: my mother’s death anniversary. Which, of course, happens to be my birthday. Emoni’s kids roll into town for it, without fail, every year. I love them for that.
Emoni takes Wally from me, and Sunny and Uncle Stu walk in from the French doors leading to the yard—Sunny holding rose clippings and Stu carrying an empty cooler.
Sunny and Stu live a few blocks over in a house that inexplicably looks like the cottage from The Holiday.
Everything about them is aesthetically pleasing—their home, their handsome labradoodles, and their own physical appearances.
Uncle Stu gives me a hug, his thick salt-and-pepper hair voluminous and his peacock-blue cashmere sweater softer than a baby lamb.
“New glasses?” I ask, tapping his tortoiseshell frames.
He grins, his face impossibly handsome with its eye crinkles and glass-cutting jawline. “Never miss a thing, Cass.”
“I follow your every item of clothing like unhinged people follow Taylor Swift’s private jet travel,” I say.
He laughs and throws his arm around me. “That is unhinged, but happy birthday, favorite niece.”
“Only niece.”
When Sunny first matched with Stu, we had all been holding our breaths. She had waited so long to find out who her fated was—was he going to live up to her expectations? This was a woman who only stayed in hotels that didn’t allow children and had sheets with thread counts over five hundred.
When she came back from her first date with Stu, I was twenty-four years old and staying up late watching TV with my grandparents.
We were trying to act casual while watching a Korean variety show when we heard a car pull up.
Halmoni and I made eye contact and she lifted an eyebrow.
I knew what she wanted me to do, so I casually walked over to the window and peeked out the curtain.
A car I didn’t recognize was idling on the curb.
But I could see Sunny’s face in the passenger seat.
Oh, god, was I about to witness a make-out session by my aunt?
Luckily, I was spared that, and instead I saw a man get out of the driver’s side and open the door for her.
He was handsome and dressed like an old-fashioned movie star—light suit, white shirt unbuttoned at the top on that warm evening.
Check and check for Sunny. And the way he took her hand when she got out of the car—impeccable.
I felt my heart racing for Sunny as the two walked toward the front step, it was all just so romantic and dreamy in the L.A.
moonlight with the white roses blooming along the path.
Then Stu tripped on a step.
And fell into a rosebush.
Still holding Sunny’s hand.
I gasped and covered my mouth. My grandparents were next to me in a second. “What happened?” Halmoni asked, shoving in next to me. Halabuji’s head bobbed around trying to see over us.
“He just fell,” I whispered—mortified for him.
Sunny, in her beautiful Missoni wrap dress, was horizontal on the concrete path and Stu was disentangling himself from the thorny bush. The three of us held our breaths as these two impeccably dressed, dignified humans found themselves sprawled in front of the house.
Then Stu fell back into the bush and started laughing hysterically. Sunny looked paralyzed for a second, sitting up as she stared at the man across from her. He was laughing so hard that he clutched his chest with both hands. Is this guy off his rocker?
Then Sunny’s face cracked into the biggest smile I had ever seen on her—it actually took my breath away.
Had my aunt ever been this happy? She got to her high-heels-clad feet, hiked her dress up, and held her hand out to him as she laughed.
He looked up at her, and he was dazzled.
Actual stars in his eyes. He took her hand and she heaved him up.
As they stood next to each other, laughing and trying to catch their breaths, I closed the curtain.
“Let’s give them some privacy,” I said in a hush, pushing my grandparents back to the sofa.
But things were changed in the room—we knew Sunny had found her fated.
And the sheen of tears in Halmoni’s eyes expressed a relief so profound that it made me reach over and squeeze her hand. This was the power of love.
In present day, Stu squeezes my arm and says, “Welcome to another great decade, Cass.”
After being properly plied with wine and massage chairs, we all sit down to dinner in the backyard.
Twinkly string lights drape across the pillars of the stone terrace, and the water feature, a small babbling brook that feeds into their pool and hot tub, is lit up as well.
White roses and lavender bloom around us and I feel incredibly lucky for all of it.