Feelings

1: Accidents

"Excited for the first day?" asks Dad as he cooks bacon and eggs.

"Mmm..." I mumble. I still can't completely get used to the time here after coming back from Korea. Every summer we go to stay with my grandparents. On Dad's side. I can mostly understand if someone speaks to me in Korean, but I can't write or speak Korean. It's a bit strange.

I can hear the pan hiss as Dad adds salt and pepper to the food. The clock reads 7:02 AM when I collapse on a seat.

"Ah, here, fresh off the stove." Dad settles a still hot pan between us where the bacon and eggs are still slightly sizzling. The good thing about going with Dad is that he already knew how to cook before the divorce so luckily, I didn't have to suffer any bad cooking. Not like I'm glad we moved away from Mom. I still look at the last picture all three us were in sometimes.

See, the thing is, Mom was really ambitious and all that. I think from what I was able to piece together from the late-night conversations her and Dad would have, she said that she felt that we were slowing her down somehow, holding her back from doing all the stuff she wanted to. It was mostly her talking and explaining why a divorce might be an option. Dad mostly just said "ok" and stuff like that. I think he sort of also just accepted what was coming at him. The thing that probably wasn't normal about their divorce was that Mom let Dad have full custody of me. Like she didn't even want me anymore.

The day we moved in, we didn't have much because Mom got the house, I remember hearing Dad cry that night in his bedroom through the door. I stayed there, leaning against the door, listening to him cry. I myself didn't cry at all about the whole divorce and moving out thing. Outside of that one time I heard him cry, Dad seemed and seems all normal and chill. 

Dad stabs his egg with a fork. "So, I see Zoe's with you for most of your classes."

When I look up Dad's smirking at me and his eyebrows are going up and down. He thinks Zoe's my girlfriend!

"No Dad, we're just friends. Zoe is simply a girl who is my friend. Nothing more." I imply firmly. These kinds of conversations have been popping up everywhere recently. I don't know why Dad is suddenly obsessing over it but I find it insanely uncomfortable.

"Just saying, usually kids around your age begin to have special relationships with each other," he suggests. "Never too late to consider becoming more than friends with Zoe. Who knows? You haven't even had you first kiss yet! What if it's with her?" Dad takes a long sip of tea. He doesn't like coffee, so he gets caffeine from tea.

This is too much. "All right, I'm done. I need to get ready anyways," I snap. As I walk away from the table I can still hear Dad laugh while he cleans up

"You never know Jae, you never know," he chuckles.

I quickly brush my teeth and throw on my neutral colour clothes. Having a variety of colour in my clothes never really interested me. Most of my clothes are white, brown, black or something in between. There are a few colourful things I have like purple, but not much. I'm like when you search up "Korean boy" but way more lame and without the round glasses. My outfit for today is a black sweater over a white shirt and beige jeans. I take my bag to the living room. "Ok, I'm going now!"

Dad shouts across the room, "Say hi to Zoe for me!"

"Dad!" I groan, exasperated. The elevator's been broken down for months now and no one in the building has ever seen anyone try to fix it. We aren't affected by it too much because we live on the 2nd floor. Once I step outside there's a cool breeze blowing. The time is 8:11 right now, school starts at 8:45 and it takes around 20 minutes to get to school. That's enough time to get to Southview.