New Girlfriend

            My roommate’s eyes were so wide, I thought they were going to pop out of his head.  Sungmin just sat on his bed and stared at me as I went through my women’s wardrobe, a large pile forming on my bed, trying to decide which dress would be best to wear when having lunch with my future mother in law.  

            “Pink or purple?”

            “Pink,” Sungmin said.  “Quit changing the subject.  He kissed you?”

            “You’re just saying pink because it’s your favorite color,” I complained, frowning as I looked at the girly looking dress.

            “I’m saying it because it seems the most feminine and conservative of the two, which I think his mother will like,” Sungmin said.  “Why did he kiss you?  Do you think he was half asleep still?”

            I shook my head and slipped the dress on.  It did look the best, admittedly, and would look adorable with some white tights and flats.  “I woke up to him kissing me.  Then he waited for me to wake up a little and started kissing me some more.”  I closed my eyes, thinking back to the way he was kissing me and how he’d tried to move in closer before I pulled away from him, out of fear that he would realize I wasn’t a woman.  “He wouldn’t have stopped if I hadn’t pulled away.”

            Sungmin placed his hands over his heart.  “Ryeowook!  He likes you!”

             “No, he likes Ryeosuni!” I said, walking over to the mirror and grabbing onto my brush.  I aggressively began to run it through my wig, which was full of tangles from sleeping in it all night.  “I want him to kiss me, but not when I’m a girl!”

            Sungmin stood up and walked over to me, stealing the brush from me.  “Give me that before you ruin your hair.”  I handed it over at him and pouted at my sad reflection in the mirror.  Ryeosuni was very pretty, but I was tired of looking at her.  “What if it doesn’t matter to him?”

            I took deep breaths, trying to settle my emotions.  “Even if it doesn’t matter to him if I’m a man, I’m not sure if he’s going to forgive me when he finds out that I’ve been lying to him all this time.  I was about to tell him the truth when his mother arrived.  And now Ryeowook has no boyfriends and Ryeosuni has two.  The longer this goes on, the worse things get.”

            Sungmin chuckled a little.  “You need to tell that to quit hogging all the good men!”

            I nodded, smiling.

            “Speaking of es, Heena dropped of your cellphone and jacket last night,” Sungmin informed me.  “I plugged in your cellphone to charge.”

            “What was her excuse for ditching me in the club?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest as Sungmin began to style my hair up into a half pony. 

            “She noticed Kyuhyun in the club with his friend and decided to tell the waiter, which is apparently a friend of theirs, that you were there,” Sungmin explained.  “She knew that Kyuhyun had been looking for you the last couple days and figured he’d gladly bring you home.  She didn’t want to get in the way.”

            “That little !”

            “Are you really that upset?” Sungmin asked, rummaging through the hair pins until he found one that he liked with pink and white flowers.  “Can you argue with the results?  If it weren’t for Kyuhyun’s mother showing up, you’d probably still be in bed with him now.”

            “No.  I was about to tell him I wasn’t really Ryeosuni at all,” I reminded him.  “Odds are, he would have thrown me out at that point.”

            “Wook, he’s gay.”

            “That doesn’t mean he’s going to be thrilled about me pretending to be a woman for the last couple weeks,” I argued.

            “Maybe not,” he conceded, pinning my hair up.  “Although, considering the fact that he is gay, he might be more relieved to find out you are.”

            “I mean, maybe he’ll be thankful to find out that he wasn’t really starting to become attracted to women after all, but I still think he’s going to be pissed when he finds out I’m a man.  And I really don’t want him to find out by accident before I have the chance to tell him.  I think that will be worse.”

“Aren’t you glad that I talked you into shaving before you left last night.  I think it would have been awkward to wake up with a morning shadow.”

            “I’m just in shock that my wig didn’t come off in my sleep.”

            “Well, you told me to pin it well because you’d be dancing.  I didn’t want it falling off in the club,” Sungmin pointed out.  Sungmin finished with my hair and then slapped my .  “There.  You’re ready to have lunch with your future mother-in-law.”

            The car ride was tense for a stretch as Ryeosuni kept fidgeting and wrapping her fingers around sections of her skirt.  I finally just reached over and grabbed onto her hand.  “Quit acting nervous.  She just wants to get to know you better.”

            “Is she going to ask us questions about us?”

            “I honestly don’t know.  You’re the first girlfriend she’s ever met.”

            She looked over at me with horrified eyes. 

“The rest of them were boyfriends!  I didn’t bring them over to my parents’ house,” I reminded her.  “I don’t know what she’s going to ask.”  There goes my attempt at settling her down.

            “Then you shouldn’t have lied to her about us dating!”

            “What did you want me to tell her?  Did you want me to tell her that you were Yesung’s girlfriend?  Because it looked pretty damn obvious that we’d both been sleeping in the same bed together all night,” I pointed out. “Why would you be in bed with me if your Yesung’s girlfriend?”

            “That is such a good question,” she conceded.

            “Anyway, it’s a little late to take it back now,” I pointed out.  “I think we’ll just have to stay together.”

            “I don’t plan to take it back,” she only said.

            “Good.  Because if she likes you, we’ll probably have to get married.  Just so you understand what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

            She looked over at me, trying to gauge if I was being serious.

            When I smirked, she finally reached over and smacked me in the arm with her free hand.  “You had me worried that she would actually expect that.”

            “I mean, she will start talking about me getting married the moment she gets home, but she wouldn’t expect me to actually do it for a couple years.  So, you either have to break up with me in the next couple years or figure out what kind of wedding you’d like.”

            “Be serious!  I’m still dating Yesung,” she reminded me.  “And his parents are coming into town next weekend!  I have to do this all over again then!”

            “Think of this as a practice run.  Unless you just want to do it once.”  I glanced over at her.  She was looking around at the scenery around us, trying to figure out where we were.  I tightened my grip on her hand.  “You could just dump Yesung and date me instead.  Then you’d only have to meet one set of parents.”

            “If only it were that simple.”

            “It is.”

            “We really do have to discuss a few things later, but we are not going to have time before meeting up with your mother,” she told me. 

            I stopped at a light and squeezed her hand, taking an opportunity to look her over.  “You look really nice in that dress.”

            Ryeosuni took a deep breath and looked away.  “Thank you.”

            “I thought you looked cuter when you were wearing my clothes this morning though.”

            She looked over at me then and her eyes narrowed.  “What do you mean by that?”

            I shook my head and smiled.  “Nothing,” I simply said, leaning in and kissing her.

            The car behind us honked and I realized that the light was green and started driving again.  We were nearly to the restaurant already.  As she pointed out, it wasn’t a good time to start any lengthy or complicated conversations, but one was very overdue.

            I pulled up to the restaurant a couple minutes later and grabbed onto Ryeosuni’s hand as we walked up to the door.  I thought it encouraging that she never tried to pull away, but it was possible she was simply afraid that my mother would see us.  And she probably was, knowing her. 

            As we walked into the restaurant, I looked around and spotted her in the corner, near the window.  And my father was sitting next to her.  She must have called him the moment she left my dorm room and either pulled him out of an important meeting or called him home from whatever plans he had for the weekend.  The moment they spotted us heading for the table, they both stood up and cordially greeted us—as if mom hadn’t just found Ryeosuni in bed with me two hours ago—and insisted we sit down.  Mom introduced her to my father and she let Ryeosuni know that my father insisted on meeting my new girlfriend, as if I’d had so many of them in the past, the moment she called and told him about her and insisted on joining them for lunch.  Thankfully, they didn’t start any hard questioning until the waiter had come over to take our orders and delivered our drinks because I downed about half my wine right away just to numb myself little.

            “So,” my mother began, “how long have you been going out.”

            I quickly answered before Ryeosuni did.  If she only told them a couple weeks, my mother would give me a hard time about sleeping with her so early on in the relationship, since that wasn’t a good way to building up a solid foundation, or some bull thing like that.  “Since the beginning of the school year.  About a week or two in, right?”

            Ryeosuni quickly nodded. 

            “How did you two meet?”

            Ryeosuni paused a little too long and I came up with the first answer that sounded most plausible.  “Yesung set us up on a blind date.”

            The fact that Ryeosuni gave me a startled look for a split second before smiling at my mother didn’t escape my notice.  Perhaps the suspicions I’d ha