Sincerely, Vantae

SILVER RING

I stood in the kitchen with my mother, marinating chicken in barbeque sauce while she tossed a salad.

"I like Eunwoo," she said, smiling at me.

"I do, too." I looked outside the window where he was helping Roseanne set up seats in the backyard. "He's perfect, honestly."

"How so?"

I thought about pulling out my spreadsheet and showing her how he was a perfect ten in the "intensity of the kisses" and "genuine conversations" categories, but I'd held back.

"He does the sweetest things for me in France—calls me to wake me up every morning, runs with me on the weekends, listens to me whenever I want to talk...He's also an amazing kisser."

She laughed. "An amazing kisser?"

"The best guy I've ever kissed." Except vantae...

An image of vantae kissing me at the EPIC party—controlling my lips with his, suddenly ran across my mind and I forced myself to brush it away.

"He said he wants to ask me something over dinner tonight when everyone is here," I said. "You think he's going to propose?"

"This early?" Her eyes widened. "I would hope not."

"He's not," I said, laughing. "I like him a lot, though...You think you could see us together long term?"

"Not sure; although I've always thought you would end up with vantae." She smiled, setting down the salad.

"What? When did you think that?"

"I've always thought that. I still do."

What the... "Do you not see eunwoo, my current boyfriend, out there?"

"I do," she said. "I think he really cares about you, but I know the two of you aren't in love...I know for a fact that vantae loves you more than you'll ever know."

"Because he's upset that I have a boyfriend? Because he's being rude and mean to me?"

"Because he was here every week that you were gone, asking about you, wanting to know if we'd talked, hoping you would call while he was here."

"Right..."

"It's true." She held the cheese grater up to my face and I saw that there were tears welling in my eyes. "I'm not trying to tell you what to do. I'm just telling you what I think, and I think, whether you want to admit it or not, that you belong with vantae."

"He said he didn't feel anything for me when we..."

"When you what?"

I sighed. I didn't want to talk about my sex-life with my mom, but she was the closest thing I had to a female BFF so I let it out. "We had sex before I went abroad...We actually had sex a few times..." I paused, waiting for a shocked reaction, at least a gasp, but I got nothing. "And I um...I asked him if he felt something between us changing, because I definitely did. I asked him if he had feelings that were more than friend-like, if he felt like there was something more than sex between us, and he said no."

"You asked him that in person?"

"No. It was in a text message. Same thing."

"It's really not." She clucked her teeth. "Maybe there's a reason he said that."

"Yeah, to tell me the truth and to confirm that we should've never had sex...Could you at least try to look surprised about all of this? I had sex with him. Sex. With. vantae."

She laughed. "I'm not surprised at all, lili. I'm only shocked it took this long for it to happen."

"Are you sure you're my mother?"