Chapter 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 giant bowls 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 marinade and protein? 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.
“Mm, the wind,” I say, distracted by the sudden jolt of reality. He seems to sense it immediately.
“But that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t really happy to hear from you last night,” he says. “I was hoping you’d change your mind.”
“Did I change my mind?” I raise my eyebrow, the playfulness not quite coming through.
A little line appears between his eyes. A line that will not take root in his face for another decade, at least. Mine is removed by an injection every few months. “What do you mean?”
I regret my sharpness. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be flip about it.
But…this weekend. Will probably just be this weekend, right?
I know you think it’s silly for me to beat the ‘but I’m turning forty’ drum, but it’s real.
I personally can’t go where the wind takes me.
Certain biological things dictate decisions in my life.
” There’s a tenseness in my body when I say this.
It’s the first time, ever, when dating anyone, that I’ve admitted to the fact that I probably want to have children one day.
That, at some point, I have to commit to the idea and stop fucking around.
And I’ve never admitted it because unless I was talking to Daniel Nam, it wouldn’t matter.
But something about Ellis makes me feel like I have to explain it. That he does matter, a little bit.
He is completely calm and serious when he says, “And what makes you think that I don’t fit into certain biological things?”
The unintended euphemism makes both of us pause for a second. Then I say, “There’s no way you want to have kids anytime soon.”
“You don’t know that,” he says with a shrug. And it’s so easy, so casual that it only reaffirms that he doesn’t understand the weight of these kinds of decisions. Because when you’re twenty-eight, they are still abstract.
“Even if you did, I can’t gamble on the hope that maybe sometime in a few years, the guy I’m seeing might want to have kids,” I say.
“It’s a really sobering reality for a lot of straight women.
If we want a family, we have to be five steps ahead of men.
We don’t have the luxury of figuring it out as we go. ”
“I get that, I really do,” he says earnestly. “But there’s also room for romance, for the falling in love of it all.”
The words are jarring, and then the tug in my ribs feels like it’s yanking me forward and I physically sit back to put distance between us.
His foot had been hooked with mine under the table, and I pull it away in the movement.
Because what he’s revealing is an intense belief in romance—the same that I have.
He puts his chopsticks down. “Listen, I’m not trying to coerce you.
I just think that, even when you need to get down to business because of, ah, biological realities”—I make a face and he looks exasperated—“you know what I mean. Even then, there’s a certain alchemy that can happen, and that sometimes it takes time to see if the experiment works.
” He pauses. “That sounds unromantic. Replace experiment with magic.”
I laugh. If only he knew what I know about magic. “Do you think I don’t believe in love? That’s my literal job.”
“Is it? Or is it matchmaking?” He also sits back and crosses his arms. Our food is getting cold between us.
The challenge in his tone is the first real bit of friction I feel from Ellis, and it’s kind of intriguing.
Is it about his male ego? Or something more deeply felt in his value system?
“Matchmaking is ultimately about love. That’s the whole point.
Especially my agency—it’s called ‘One & Only’ because we believe there is one right person out there for you. ”
“Just one?”
I hold back from being too adamant here, not wanting to hint at the truth. “Well, if there is more than one—the one we find you will be the last one.”
“Pretty confident there,” he says, a bit of cheekiness sneaking back into our serious shift.
“The one thing I have earned by living almost four decades is confidence in this one thing,” I say with a smile.
He nods, his face softening. “I admire that. I wish I had it.”
“You will.”
“How do you know I’m any good at what I do?”
I stare at him, intently. “Hm. You’ve shown an incredible work ethic and, ah—quick ability to learn new skills in the time I’ve known you.”
His face flames red and he ducks his head down to fiddle with his chopsticks. “Yeah, well. I think my parents would have something to say about my work ethic.”
I tilt my head. “What do you mean?”
The chopsticks in his hands are turning into whittled-down pieces of wood. “Ah, nothing.”
“You can’t just bring up parental disappointment and not elaborate.”
“They’re not disappointed,” he says quickly. “They are annoyingly always supportive.”
“Wow. Big problems.”
He flicks the chopstick wrapper at me. “But you know, they were worried for a while because I was kind of nomadic. Going from one job to another until this one.”
“You seem really into your current job, though,” I say, remembering the way he lit up when he talked about it at the coffee shop.
“I am into it,” he says with assurance, voice earnest again. “But it’s something I discovered, didn’t pursue. Anyway, I’m the baby in a family full of very type A people.”
“Does that bother you?”
He looks thoughtful. “No. Sometimes the role you play is a burden, but mine is pretty true to me. Life is short—I’m okay with the unexpected. I think the unexpected brings some of the most meaningful experiences.”
My mouth hitches up in a smile as our eyes catch. The subtext isn’t lost on me.
When we get back to my house, suddenly I see it: his sweatshirt thrown on the floor.
The way he kind of kicks his shoes into the general vicinity of my shoe rack.
This guy does go where the wind takes him, and I feel his youth like it’s a palpable thing I can hold in my hands. There’s a little warning bell there.
But that’s a problem for Tomorrow Cassia. My clothes end up next to his, leaving a trail to the bedroom.