The Next Best Thing: Part II

Forty-Six

The snow ushered in a different, improved Min, a brave Min fed up with lying to herself and the people she loved. This was a Min following her dreams without any negative voices whispering in her ears.

She spent the few weeks leading up to Christmas planning something for her and Lily, for their little family to spend time together and be sisterly again. She'd lost both her parents but she'd gained something better, a high self-esteem.

Lily moved out as well, living with us temporarily until she could bring herself to getting a place of her own, a grownup girl in grownup New York City.

She'd confronted her mother about everything she'd subjected Min to. Lily vowed to forgive her when the time came but refused to ever forget that Lila Kanagawa watched, unfazed, as her daughter suffered emotionally and psychologically her entire childhood.

"I decided to take Lily to the Turks. We were supposed to go there as a family, the four of us, for my fourteenth birthday."

Min was going over their holiday itinerary, and I was making sure her mommy brain had actually booked the plane tickets for the next evening's flight out to Miami. Initially I'd suggested the French Polynesia but it wasn't convenient, considering they'd arrive early Christmas morning.

"Should I even bother asking why?" I asked. I wasn't going to be dragged into this emotional reminiscent pitfall.

"It's actually a really good story. Shut up and listen. So plans changed, and Lily and I spent it at Carla's watching telenovela. She gave me the talk, you know, the birds and the bees, and about what sex was all about. I had just started liking Andy around that time as well, so I asked him if he would ever have sex with me." Now this was interesting.

"What did he say?"

"His exact words, which I remember to this day, were,'I would never have sex with you because it's disrespectful to your beauty, the inner beauty I am in love with. I'd make love to you because that's what you deserve'," she said with a naughty smirk. "He was the perfect gentleman and he waited two more years for me. So, the moral of this story-"

"Ooh, there's a moral?" I cooed sarcastically.

"Zoe, I want you to know that Eoin respects you too much at this stage of your relationship just to sleep with you. He loves you Zo. He loves you so much it literally makes me sick and it makes me want to strangle you, I'm so jealous," she said.

Her newfound insight was spilling out of her at every turn, opening my eyes to the things I was ignorant to.

"I'm just glad you two waited because this, what you have, is so real. It's so beautiful watching it blossom before my eyes, in your perspective and his as well. He's made you so much happier and accepting of being loved, the concept that someone can love you."

Eoin never forced me to believe that he meant everything he told me, trusting me to trust that he wasn't toying with my heart. He allowed me the time, the chance to call upon this love I felt towards him, the one laying dormant in the pit of my stomach.

He was patient and forgiving, teaching me to be patient with him, to give him his time. He would be committing himself to me in such a personal and deep level that would take away from us much more than it would give back, consolidate.

"I just want him to tell you all this so that you can finally do the deed. You've been so sexually frustrated lately," she noted. "It really doesn't help me either because I'm so hormonal every day and my frustration is much, much worse."

"I thought pregnant people weren't supposed to have sex," I thought aloud.

"Zoe, just because we're carrying God's creation in our wombs doesn't mean we can't have needs to be satisfied. The women in my yoga class actually have crazy sex lives you should be envious of."

"Stop, Min!" I laughed. "That's enough now."
"And because they're so flexible-"

"I'm not listening to this conversation anymore." I got up off the couch and ran into the kitchen, dialling Eoin's number on my phone.

He picked up after three rings and I was relieved to hear his voice, even just for a little bit. It didn't help, not in the slightest, what I was feeling for him at that moment, a cow in heat in a bull pen.

I pictured his face, his eyes dedicating his concentration solely on me and his lips encouraging a passionate make out session that could potentially cause me to lose my mind.

"...so I'll have to call you later," he concluded his brief conversation virtually with himself. "Bye, babe." And he hung up on me fantasizing about us, together for the first time after the long struggle.