Yes, It's Another Cliché Love Story

Fifteen

Lee Young's POV

I got in my apartment and was in the verge of breaking down. I hadn’t felt that miserable since my parents disowned me all those years ago.

I had always been a good son, a filial son. I never got into trouble with anyone, I was always ready to help anyone in need and I was the pride of my parents.

My performance at school was among the best both academically and in sports. I had a lot of trophies to prove it. Teachers always said I had a bright future and would use me as an example. Neighbors always told my parents how fortunate they were to have me as a son.

I got in one of the leading universities in my country after I was done with the Mandatory Military Training and my parents told anyone that cared to listen. I didn’t slacker off or get absorbed into the carefree lifestyle that came with being away from the parents. I didn’t make a lot of friends so I didn’t go out drinking or clubbing or to parties. I led a pretty boring life that would make any parent proud.

In my final year, I decided to come out to my parents. I had lived with the secret long enough and I was ready to come clean. Their reaction wasn’t a dramatic one, of course my mom cried but after listening to everything I had to say, all my dad said was that he couldn’t have a gay son and after the phase was over, I could go back home.

Every day after that made me wish that I hadn’t come out to them. They cut me off completely and even told me to stay away from my brother so as not to influence him into the lifestyle.

I had been raised with a silver spoon, never had I asked for anything and not gotten it from when I was a kid. Not having access to that lifestyle was like waking up one day and finding all your limbs gone. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit but I got my point across.

Being gay for me wasn’t a phase and I didn’t stop finding men more attractive to me compared to women just because I wanted it to. I withdrew from my friends because if my own family could cut me off just like that, it wouldn’t take much for these strangers I just met to do the same.

The heavens were on my side because I got an internship at a leading tech company in the city I lived in after I graduated.

Unfortunately, my father knew of a few influential people in that company, since he owned a mid-sized tech company himself, and after I completed my internship they told me they couldn’t hire me.

I was good at what I did and soon after, I got a job at a growing company. Before I did, life was hard. I was living on a hand-to mouth pay-roll as a delivery guy.

Not a day went by that I didn’t contemplate going to my parents and telling them that it had been a phase and I was straight again. I knew people who led secret lives and I could have done it too. I knew my parents would force me to get married just to prove it and I didn’t want to subject someone else to my misery.

A few months after I got my job, I got my first serious boyfriend. We dated for six months and lived together for a year before he got married. It was heartbreaking but I understood his predicament. I decided to stay single and played the field for about two years before I met Jang Yoon Ho.

Jang Yoon Ho was too good to be true and that should have been the first give-away. He was perfect in every sense of the word. The sex was amazing, he was successful in his field, he was good looking and despite being away on ‘business trips’ most of the time, he still made time for us.

We were together for two blissful years and it felt like it was only getting better, until his wife called and told me to stay away from her husband. Jang Yoon Ho and I didn’t break up. I just ghosted my way out of his life or was it vice versa? Either way, we both stopped contacting each other.

My mother somehow got the news and she came and cursed me out at work for getting involved with a married man saying I was going to hell for more than one reason. She didn’t want to know that the man had hidden his marital status from me and I doubt she cared.

The owner of the company heard about it and that’s how I lost my job. The letter of termination said that the company didn’t want to get involved with an immoral person as it would be associated with them. I understood.

Luckily, I’d saved up enough to get me by as I looked for another job. I wanted a job in another city and applied to every post I came across that said abroad or another city.

When I got an email from a globally recognized non-governmental organization, I was ecstatic and nervous at the same time. The interview was held through a video call with a panel of five consisting of three men and two women.

They asked if there were places I wouldn’t be okay with and I told them that I was okay with anywhere as long as there weren’t any political unrests or a war.

There was another interview a few days later and when they were done, they told me that I got the job and I would be stationed in one of four places; South Africa, Kenya, Australia or Denmark.

My family and I had gone to Australia for a vacation when I was younger and I loved it there. If I got stationed there and found a man to love and love me back then we could even get legally married. I had also heard of South Africa and Denmark but not much about Kenya. I had to research on it but at the same time hoping I wasn’t going to have to go there.

The disappointment I felt as I read the email telling me I would be stationed in Kenya was palpable to anyone around me.

The journey was exhausting and it took me a week after I got there before I officially reporting to work.

When I saw Joey for the first time, it was love at first sight. It sounds so cliché but it’s true.

I avoided talking to him unless it was work related because I was scared he’d see through me and it would put him off.

It took me by surprise when he handed me a container filled with cookies and said that they were from his mom. Under the lid was a note asking me to be inclusive of her son because he felt left out and under no condition was I allowed to show him the note. 

At first, I thought Joey telling me that they were from his mom was just a code or something but people at the office talked a lot and I soon found out that he did indeed live with his mom.

I replied to the note by saying that her son was intimidating and reclusive and that was why it was hard to start a casual conversation with him. The chocolate fudge that came next had her phone number and I called her. I liked her before I met her.

She gave me tips on how to warm up to her son and before long Joey and I were talking like old friends. I don’t know if she knew that she was playing cupid.

She said she wanted to meet me and we scheduled for a lunch meeting which Joey joined.

“I see the way you look at Joey,” she said when he excused himself.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I said trying to hide my face from her by taking a sip of my drink.

“You like Joey, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” I had to be careful. Admitting that I liked her son would be equivalent to coming out to her and the last time I did that things didn’t go well.

“I don’t mind if you do,” I looked at her clearly surprised, “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You don’t mind a guy crushing on your son?”

“I also don’t mind my son crushing on a guy,” what kind of mom was this?

“Is Joey…gay?”

“Gosh no and if he is, he doesn’t know it yet,”

“Do you think he’d like me back if I told him?”

“I don’t know if he would but what I do know is that if you do tell him blatantly, he’ll run,”

“We don’t want that,”

“Not after all the work we put in to get you two to be friends,” we both laughed out loud thinking back on it.
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