Chapter 1 - I Like It When We Are Together

James Lee is my best friend. Well, he is also my sister Jackie’s classmate and her friend too but we are definitely besties. He is older than me by 4 years and he moved to the city when I was 12, so that made him 16 that time. He was transferred from South Korea during mid semester. His previous school had different system, so he had to adjust and wait for another year to enroll in the local school. He ended up going to the same class as my sister.

I met him 3 months after school started. Jackie invited few of her classmates to our house for some school project. My mom ordered me to bring them snack and drinks. I recognized every single one of her friends but not this new emo boy. That was the first time I saw him.

My first impression about James Lee... wasn’t that good. 

He was not ugly but definitely not the coolest guy out there. He was only one year older than my sister, but he actually looked older than that. Maybe because he was too thin and too tall for his age, and the way he scrunched down all the time due to his height made his posture terrible. His hair were a little too long and sometimes he brushed his bangs to the side, showing his wide forehead. Jackie forced me to stay with her friends and I greeted him politely. He shook my hands awkwardly and when he spoke, he had this raw low voice, which was quite nice.

He was nicer than I initially thought too. No one cared about my presence but he actually talked to me. His joke was so lame and he was a bit shy, but he had warm eyes and this crooked eye-smile that somehow made him looked more attractive. He was so kind and he always helped me with the dishes, and he brought me food every time he visited Jackie.

Long story short, the three of us quickly became friends because he also went to the same church like me and my sister. It turned out that we were so similar. Our family are both immigrants, he is Korean and I am Chinese. Our parents and grandparents moved to the States long ago and we were both born in Los Angeles. The three of us also liked music and loved to sing, so we decided to form this little church band.

We never performed anywhere but we hung out together, like a couple days on the week after school. We would gather somewhere, most of the times at our house, and we would do our homework or learn languages first. My sister and I taught him Chinese and he taught us Korean. I’m pretty decent in Korean now, thanks to him. At the end of the day, we would practice our band together. James would play guitar and sing, and Jackie would sing along with him. Me... I don’t know, I tried to sing too. I remember that I envied them for being able to play instruments and have beautiful singing voices at the same time. It made me kinda feel like an outcast, an extra. Young me promised to learn how to sing and play music. One reason why I want to be a musician one day.

Our live together didn’t last long. Two years in and James had to move back to S. Korea. By this time, he and Jackie were high school Sophomores and I was an 8th middle schooler. James had just started his 11th grade so he probably had to re-enroll and finish the rest of his high school days in his new school.

On the night before he left, James visited our house for the last time. He bribed us with snack and soda to watch some movie, so Jackie and I couldn’t refuse. We had to stop after 2 movies because mom scolded my sister for not studying for her test day. James, who stopped going to school since a week ago, laughed at her for whining at us.

After Jackie left, we didn’t feel like watching anymore but we let the TV on. James and I just talked about random things for the rest of the night. I lied down on the couch and James was on the floor.

“Remember when we just met? Dude, you look so awkward and emo back then. Your hair was this long,” I  said while showing him our old photo in my oldie-but-goldie phone.

“Yeah, but I look better now?” James wriggled his brows and smiled his crooked smile.

“Not quite yet. You need to gain some weight,” I placed my hand on my chin, judging him jokingly.

He laughed at it and I rolled to the floor. I sat beside him and we watched random sitcom in silent. The light from the TV illuminated James’ hard expression in the dark and I felt a little sad now that it was merely hours until he left.

“Will you be back again?” I asked with mouth full of chips. My head fell to his shoulder, which grew wider over these 2 years. 

“I don’t know. My grandparents want me to stay there for a while.”

“That’s too bad. We have gotten so close.”

He circled his arm around my shoulder and patted my head.

“I’ll send you texts and we can Facetime all night, all day long," he said again, a little too cheerful this time.

“Promise me you’ll visit me and Jackie someday.”

“Promise me you’re gonna miss me too.”

I smiled at him and he looked back at me. His expression was unreadable.

“I’ll miss you badly, J.”

And with that, his face came closer and before I realized what was happening, I felt his lips on mine. I mean, it was not a real kiss because our lips only touched.

Although I knew this was only friendly kiss, I dreamed of kissing Harry Taylor, our school heartthrob, when we became Prom King and Queen one day. We would kiss under the mistletoe and he would look at me like I was the most beautiful girl and everyone would cheer at us.

But here I was, in my living room, with James, the awkward and emo-slender boy, who happened to be my best friend. The kiss was short and salty and it tasted like chips, and although it was my first kiss, I couldn’t yell at him because he cried after he released me. That made me cry too.

The next day, Jackie and I went to LAX to drop him off. Our eyes were red and swollen, but he covered his face with face mask and a cap. We hugged and bid goodbye and he gave us one of his lucky toy. I cried again when he finally had to leave, but we already promised that we would still catch up with each others.

That day, I cried all day and ditched my homework. My mom scolded me the next day because our home teacher told them that I missed it. I told James about it and his short reply quickly changed my mood. We Facetimed when he just arrived at his grandparents’ house in S. Korea and he quickly gave me a two-hours tour of his house and his new bedroom.

The messages came regularly for a while. For the first 2 weeks, we used to Facetime all night (for me, he lived in Asia) tirelessly. But because of our time differences, it became a little difficult to do it everyday so we had to reduce it to few times in a week. Then, he got some new crush and the frequency of his message was down to zero. Sometimes he just texted me after a month and the convo stayed for one whole week, but we stopped again and restarted the whole thing the next month.

I was happy for him when he got accepted into a basketball team and got closer to his crush, but he seemed to forget about me over the time. One time, he cancell