ITRODUCTION

Jung Ewon (Aeon Rhodes)

SHOES. Pregnant pause while you read that one-word sentence and wonder what the I'm talking about. Okay, that was fun.

Now, here's why I'm bringing up footwear. First off, I like it. I don't waste a ton of money on clothes, but I don't enjoy looking lik a slob, so I probably spend more than I should, and that includes investing in a nice pair of loafers. I have a friend who jokes that you can tell a guy is straight by looking at his shoes. Basically, his theory is that if a mman's shoes are awful, he likes s. It's pretty funny watching him point people out and make his assessments, and I'm going to admit that's he's pretty spot-on most of the time. Now, my guess is that right about now you're wondering where I'm going with this little anecdote. The answer is: nowhere. I just think it's a funny story and talking about shoes made me think of it.

Back to my reason for this topic, I'm a size eight and a half. Nichkhun is a thirteen. You stopped paying attention, right? At this very moment you're thinking about our and if the old adage about size being related to shoe size is true. Cut it out. That's a bunch of bull perpetrated by NBA stars. And I'm not just saying that because I measure in at barely five feet six inches.

Anyway, I'm smaller than Nichkhun. He is taller, broader, thicker, just bigger, and his shoes are no exception. Now, I know some guys might be intimidated by someone who is a solid nine inches taller, someone whose body can wrap around theirs so completely that almost no part of them, front or back, is exposed. I'm not one of those guys. I have always found Nichkhun's size a huge turn-on. And that (finally) brings me to the next photo in the album.

At eighteen, I wasn't quite brave enough to venture into videos or pictures, but one evening, when Nichkhun went into the hall to talk to his father on the phone, I noticed our shoes. They were in a pile in the corner of his room where we'd kicked them off before sprawling in front of the TV and playing video games-my All Stars and his Nikes. Seeing the difference in the size of those shoes immediatelly brought to my mind the difference in the sizes of our bodies. 

I ignored my sudden , grabbed my camera, and snapped a picture. And that's the next picture in the album-our shoes standing proxy for our very different body types. Almost twenty years later, I still get hard looking at it.

(By the way, going back to that whole shoe-size--size thing, Nichkhun has a good three inches on me in the department. Total of eight long, hard satisfying inches for me to enjoy. Just saying)

Jung Ewon (Aeon Rhodes)

The shouting woke me up. My mother and my sister were being so damn loud, they probably woke up the whole building. They fought a lot, had always fought a lot, but not like that night. I was about to put the pillow over my head to block out the worst of the noise when my door slammed open so hard it bounced off the wall.

I shot up, gasped, and said "What's going on?"

Sunny was standing in my doorway, the low light coming in from the front room let me her face, so I knew she had been crying "Sorry." she said "I didn't mean to wake you up, but I wanted to say good-bye."

We both flinched when we heard my mother's bedroom door slam. Wow, looked like we were the drama family that night.

"What do you mean good-bye?"

She walked over and sat down on my bed "I'm moving to Vegas with Woo Bin."

"But you guys broke up last year. And he's married. And Vegas? ...Las Vegas!?" I screeched the last one.

"Well, his divorce is going to be final next week, he's moving, and he wants to take me with him."

"But...Las Vegas?"

Sunny bobbed her head "There's no snow there, lots of jobs, he already rented a nice house with a yard and tree. I've seen pictures, it's perfect. I just know I'll like living there."

Great. She saw pictures of some house on the other side of the globe and the next thing you know she was going to drop everything and go there with a guy who had done nothing but lie to her, the woman he was married to, and probably everybody else in the greater tri-state area, wich was why he needed to move out west. No wonder my mother had been yelling. I wanted to do the same thing but forced myself to act calm.

"And what about Woo Bin?" I asked "Are you sure you trust him after everything that happened?"

She shrugged "He says he loves me, told me he'd marry me once everything was settled with his ex, but-" she sighed deeply "-you know I haven't been happy for a long time, Ewonnie. I'm sick of fighting with Mom about every part of my life. It's too damn expensive for me to move out. Everything is gray and dirty. You can only see little bits of the sky above the buildings. Even if things don't work out with Woo Bin, this is my chance to get out." she me my gaze "Tell me you understand."

I got all of that, I did. Sunny was twenty-one years old and she had to live her life in whatever way she wanted. I loved my sister and I didn't want to lose her, but if moving to Nevada was what she wanted to do, I wouldn't try to guilt her into staying. I blinked away tears and tried to think of something supportive to say "I'll miss you." was all I could get out.

Sunny threw her arms around me and buried her face in my neck "I'll call you all the time, andmaybe you can come visit in the winter. we'll wear shorts and jog outside."

"Okay." I said and then sniffled as I returned her hug, squezing her tightly. 

After a few minutes, she sat up, cleared , and wiped her palms over her eyes "Now I'm all puffy and red."

"Just a little." I smiled faintly "But you're still the prettiest girl around."

We looked at each other for another few seconds, and then she took a deep breath, got up and walked out of my room.

I'm not going to say that my sister walked out of my life that night, but I will tell you that phone calls and rare visits aren't the same as living together under one roof. Sunny never moved back to Busan, and to this day, I haven't stopped missing her.

"Ewon! Nichkhun's here and I'm leaving for work." my mom called out.

I walked out into the front room and found myself smiling just at the sight of my boyfriend. He always  did that to me. Nuchkhun caught my gaze and beamed "Hey." he said.

"Hi." I answered. My mom was digging through her purse "When are you getting home?" I asked her.

She located her keys and then put her purse and another bag onver her shoulder and reached for the doorknob "I have a twelve tonight  and the I'm doing home care so I won't be back until late tomorrow."

I wakned over and kissed her cheek "You look tired, Mom."

"Don't worry. I'm fine. lock up after me, okay?"

"Sure."

She left and I closed the door with a sigh.

"Your mom does look beat." Nichkhun whispered into my ear. He had walked up right behind me and pressed his chest to my back. He was big and warm and strong and hard. Always hard.

I ground back against him "Yeah." I said "She works so much. I don't make enough at the dance studio to pay for more than just my own clothes and food and stuff."

Nichkhun kissed the back of my neck "Someday you will. You're really talented, baby. Someday you'll be dancing on Broadway. You'll see. People are going to pay tons of money to watch you."

"I hope so."

He rubbed circles on my stomach and kissed his was from my earlobe, across my jaw, to my chin. I leaned back and supported my weight easily. It felt good-his touch, the sound of his breath, the feeling of his heart beating against me-and the I let myself relax. Like they so often did, those gentle caresses got power and lower until Nichkhun was rubbing his palm against my groin and cupping my balls.

I was hard because, well, I was eighteen and my boyfriend was in the room so, yeah, instant , and I thought I knew where things were going, but then he surprised me and said "You wanna watch a show or play Mario or something?"

I glanced back at him over my shoulder and furrowed my brow in confusion.

Nichkhun raised one corner of his mouth "I promise to ravage you later, but I think maybe you need to unwind a little first. You've been working a lot too and studying for finals."

"I;m fine." I said.

"You sound like your mother." he pointed out.

"Mario sounds good."

Nichkhun chuckled "See that? I'm a master persuader."

"Whatever." I rolled my eyes.

We had just settled in for the game-me laying on the floor in fronof the TV, Nichkhun sprawled on the couch with the controller in his hand-when there was a loud, fast knock on the door.

Nichkhun!" his mom shouted.

He jumped to his feet and rushed to the door, opening the three locks in fast succession before swinging it open "Is everything okay?" he asked. 

She held athe portable phone out to him "It's your father." she said "He has news."

From the smile on her face, I knew it was nothing bad. Nichkhun put the phone to his ear and said "Hello?" Then he covered his other ear and stepped into the hallway. Yenjit Ajumma followed.

Our apartments were close enough that the phone worked sometimes, but it was usually pretty spotty, so I fugured he was going to walk a bit closer to his apartment. I paused the game and scrambled up to get a drink. On my way to the kichen, I noticed our shoes in the corner of the room under a window. They were in a pile, but you could see all four and a ray of light was coming through the window and hitting just right. It struck me as a good shot, so I got my camera and snapped a few pictures.

By the time I was done, I'd decided to put an end to Nichkhun's mission to cheer me up through the electronics and instaid ask him to cheer me up through ion. I had just put away my camera when I heard Nichkhun walk it in. I strutted out to him, ready to pour on the seduction, but I stooped short when I saw how he looked.

"What's wrong?" I asked and then rushed over to him "Did something happen to your dad of Shin Hye?"

he shook his head slowly, paused, and then nodded "Nothing is wrong, but something did happen. Shin Hye is pregnant." He smiled broadly and made a sound that was dangerously close to a giggle "I'm going to have a sister!"

It took me minute to catch up and then I hugged him "That's great!" I said "But I thought you said they couldn't have kids."

"I did. That's what they thought too. And she's almost forty-five, so they game up on it a long time ago, but somehow it finally happened. My dad said Shin Hye is doing well and the doctor said the baby seems healthy, so in four or five months, I'm getting a baby sister."

It was exciting for a while. After she hung up with Nichkhun's dad Yenjit Ajumma came running in cheering and boucing about the new baby being added their family. By then, I was so used to his parents and how close all four of theem were that it didn't even strike me as weird the the woman felt so connected to her ex's upcoming birth.

Anyway, I uderstood how wonderful it was to have a sibbling. Even though she now lived million of miles away, Sunny was still my confidant and, along with Nichkhun and Sandara, one of my best friends. And besides, Nichkhun was happy, so happy. But, as I was often apt to do, I didn't think through the details of the Nichkhun-having-a-sister thing. Maybe if I had, I would have been better prepared when I walked into Nichkhun's room a week later and found him sitting on his bed looking nervous as hell.

"Hi." I said.

"hey." he opened his arms and I crawled into his lap "I have news Ewon." He said it just like that. He had news. And he didn't even wait for me to respond before he continued "I'm going to transfer to UNLV."

My jaw dropped "You're leaving me?" I said, before I could think about how self-centered that sounded.

"No." he shook his head "I'm not leaving you. I'm just going to move for a few years so I can be closer to my dad and Shin Hye and the new baby. School is cheap there,and I can live in the dorms and still be less than a half hour from my dad's house, so I can really get to know her. But it's only until graduation, Ewon, I promise, and then I'll be back."

In retrospect, I think I was in shock and didn't truly snap out of it until after he'd gone. I remember promises of frequent phone calls and letters and visits. I remember the two of us being all over each other whenever we were alone, which, francly, was no different tahn how we'd been from our first mutual . But I don't remember feeling sad, truly feeling sad, until about a week after Nichkhun moved away.

I went straight from school to my job at the dance studio. He had an evening study group. Between those things and the time chnage and who knows what else, we missed our daily phone call. I'm pretty sure that's when it really hit me that he was gone and all the promises about things staying exactly the same between us weren't going to come to pass.

It took a little longer than that for things to unravel. We hung in there for close to a year. But Yenjit Ajumma and Dave Ajeoshi went to Nevada for every holiday because Nichkhun's dad had a giant house, and it made more sense than having the now-four-person Nevada contingent fly to Busan and crowd together in a small apartment. It was to expensive for me to fly there, and even if it wasn't, I couldn't afford to take time off work. I was saving every penny to take more dance classes, working hard auditioning for whatever community theater had casting call. That meant those frequent visits we'd planned to make didn't happen.

With everything we both had going on, the telphone calls eventually bacame less frequent. Then the lettes died off all together. And at some point, one of us suggested that we call things off, at least until he moved back to country. But he loved being a big part of his sister's life, loved the slower pace out West, loved the warm weather, so I think we both knew by then that he wasn't ever coming back.

In retrospect, I realize that at twenty and twenty-one, it would have been damn hard to maintain a relationship even if we'd lived in the same city. Doing it long-distance was more than we could handle. But at the time, all I could do was ache bone deep and wonder what I'd done wrong, why I'd driven Nichkhun away.

For another year or two, we called each other on birthdays, and I still spent a good bit of tim with his mom and stepdad. But then I started feeling like just when I was getting a little better, something would remind me of Nichkhun and I'd regress all over again. So I asked him to stop calling and I did the same.

I danced every minute I wasn't working and landed enough roles to be able to move out of my mom's place and into a dump in Seoul. I cut my hair. I started going by Aeon Rhodes, my childhood nickname, because my agent said that with my blue eyes and foreign name it made me sound more exotic and like a star. I even tried to listening to hip hop which started to gain more and more attention. That's how I welcomed the new millennium. Basically, I did everything humanly possible to put Nichkhun Buck Horvejkul in my rearview mirror and, eventually, I succeeded. Mostly