The Way You Make Me Feel(50)
“We’ll get three mul naengmyeon,” my dad said, pointing at the menu just in case his Korean wasn’t quite up to snuff. “And one galbi.” A meal with my dad was never complete unless we added more meat. In this case, grilled beef short ribs that would come out sizzling on a stone plate.
“Did you want to ask your girlfriend if that’s what she wants?” I asked pointedly. Sometimes my dad could be such a dude.
He looked chastised for a second, but Kody put her hand on his arm. “Oh, it’s fine. Adrian always orders at Korean places. And I order the sushi,” she said with a wink at him. They exchanged this intimate look that made me wrinkle my nose involuntarily.
“You’re a sushi expert?” I asked politely, taking a swig of some of the cold barley tea the server handed us.
Kody shrugged, her long brass earrings shaped like crescent moons jangling. “Kind of. I lived in Japan for a few years.”
“She’s fluent in Japanese!” my dad bragged.
Something about my dad’s pride made my stomach clench a little. The only time he talked like that was when it was about me.
Our side dishes arrived—small bowls of white radish kimchi, regular cabbage kimchi, some potato salad with apple slices, and little marinated black beans. My dad and I dug into them, me going straight for the potato salad and my dad for the radish kimchi. “You can tell the quality of a Korean restaurant by its side dishes,” my dad often said. Side dishes were always free, so it was impressive when a restaurant took care to make them tasty.
Kody picked up a slice of the cabbage kimchi. “So, Clara. Adrian tells me you’re doing a great job on the truck.”
“Yeah, we’ve been killing it,” I said as I poked around the potato salad with my chopsticks until I found a slice of apple. I glanced at Kody. Maybe I could use her presence to my advantage. Pai might be in better spirits, or at the very least want to look nicer around her. “That reminds me, considering how well we’ve been doing, could I still meet M?e in Tulum?” I opened my eyes as wide as they would go.
Pai looked at me, annoyed. “Really? You want to bring that up now?”
I had to give Kody credit, she was cool as a cucumber. We might as well have been talking about the weather, poking around the side dishes.
“Why not? I’ve proven my worthiness, blah blah blah.”
Pai made a face. “Are you kidding me?”
Before I could answer, the server arrived with a tray holding three metal bowls of noodles, frosted over with the cold. Also on the tray was vinegar in a squeeze bottle and a little glass jar of Korean mustard. Before handing us our bowls, the server took out a pair of scissors from his apron pocket and cut the noodles—first left to right, then top to bottom.
To avoid my dad, I took the mustard and spooned a tiny dollop into the icy beef broth. If you put more than that, there was the danger of lighting your entire brain on fire. Then I squeezed a healthy amount of vinegar in and mixed everything around with my chopsticks. We were silent for a few minutes as we dug into our food, and when the plate of sizzling galbi arrived we attacked that too without speaking. For all my chattiness, I had been taught to respect good food and give it my full attention. When I was able to catch my breath after inhaling my noodles, I looked up at my dad. “I think I’ve proven myself. It only seems fair to let me go.”
Kody slurped her noodles.
Pai put his chopsticks down. “That’s the problem, Shorty. You were supposed to learn something from this—not just get it over with to meet your mom at some resort.”
I couldn’t believe it. He wanted to give me a lecture right now, in front of Kody. Who finally looked uncomfortable, by the way—picking up the bowl to take a sip of the soup so that her face was obscured from us. “I did learn something!”
“Oh yeah? What?”
Why was he being such a jerk right now? His combative tone immediately put me on the defensive. “I learned how to make a stupid pastel.”
Pai was silent, his clean-shaven jaw clenched, his body very still. Kody moved toward him, and he immediately relaxed. Watching this interaction made me want to throw my bowl of noodles at them. Why did they suddenly feel so close together and me so far away? The table between us felt like an ocean.
He eventually spoke. “Yeah. So no, you’re not going to Tulum.”
“Pai!” The whine came out before I could stop it.
Leaning forward, Pai pointed a chopstick at me. “It’s not just because you’re being a little butthole right now. It’s because your mom has nothing planned. Did she already book your flight? Because it would be really expensive this late in the game. No, she wouldn’t even think about that. She has no concept of money or responsibility.”
My face burned. Pai’s feelings about my mom weren’t a surprise, but I didn’t want to hear them laid out in front of Kody, of all people. Suddenly I hated everything about her—starting with her shaggy haircut and ending with her on-trend black clogs.
“We didn’t plan anything because you’ve been a total drag all summer, and I haven’t had a minute,” I said, keeping my voice low but feeling my anger build.
Kody paled, and my dad pushed himself away from the table. “I’m getting the check.”
The ride home was silent, and as soon as we parked, I muttered a good-bye to Kody, jumped out of the car, and ran up the stairs to the apartment. When I got to my room, I pulled my curtains aside and watched Kody hug my dad good-bye and then get into her own car. The need to talk to my mom was overwhelming. When I called her, it went to her voice mail. I didn’t do voice mail, so I texted her.