Chapter 21

Onew awoke to the sound of brass music drifting up the stairs.  Muffled voices carried as well, along with the padding of feet.

He rolled from the bed, and rubbed his eyes, trying to remove the sleep from his eyes.  He scratched at his hair and looked around in the same semi-confused state that he had woken up in for the past few days in Lex's house.  The smell of cooking food drifted up to him and the suddenly rose to full consciousness.  It was Thanksgiving Day - the reason that they had flown out to America in the first place…or at least the reason that the show did.

Onew grabbed a pair of sweatpants to pull on over his boxers and escaped to the bathroom before heading downstairs. 

He walked in the kitchen to see Lex, still in her pajamas, crying over a cutting board.  He was worried until he noticed the small pile of onions nearby. 

"Do you always chop up onions first thing in the morning?" He questioned, realizing that it was only 8AM.

"I do on Thanksgiving," she gubbed out, her voice nasally as she leaned her head back to try and escape the fumes temporarily.  "This is for the stuffing..."

"What's stuffing?" Onew asked, genuinely confused.

Lex smirked, "It's my favorite part of the meal.  You know that bread we set out a couple of days ago?" 

Onew nodded, he'd been confused when she told him that they were going to intentionally let three full loaves of bread go stale.

"Well, we tear it all up and mix it with a wet mix of butter, onion, celery, black pepper, salt and sage.  They were shove as much as we can get into the turkey before we start to cook it."

She dumped the remnants of her cutting board into a pot on the stove that was already filled with a ridiculous amount of melted butter and all of the other ingredients that Lex had been talking about.  She turned the heat back on and stirred it all together until it was warm.

Then her mother came in and shoed Lex out.

"Go watch the parade - Onew's never seen an American parade before."

"He still won't - it's on TV..." Lex muttered but she washed her hands in a vain attempt to rid herself of the smell of 5 finely minced onions. 

Onew was scuttled downstairs to the family room and shoved next to Lex's brother on the couch.  Lex plopped down on the floor, automatically leaning herself against Onew's legs.  Onew felt his face heat up and bit and tried desperately to focus on the massive balloons on the television screen and not on Lex or the shaking laughter that Andy was exhibiting next to him at the singer’s obvious insecurity with her brother so close. 

But Onew loved how comfortable Lex had become around him.  There was this effortless sense of belonging that Onew felt when he was with her, and now it seemed like she was starting to get the same feeling. 

Around noon Onew's stomach started to grumble audibly.  They hadn't eaten any breakfast - and it looked like they weren't going to be putting any lunch on the table either.  The wonderful smells of Thanksgiving were wafting through the house, the cooking of the turkey, the freshly chopped vegetables, butter melting to be lathered on the rolls, where all just coming together and making his hunger worse.

After a particularly loud growl Lex started to laugh, and bent her head back so that it rested on his knees to talk to him.  "We can't eat now.  There is going to be so much food on that table that it might just collapse under the weight.  Just wait a few more hours and the turkey will be done and we'll be able to eat."

Onew pouted at her.  He didn’t usually try and pull out that move, with it being aegyo and all it was more Taemin’s territory, but he was hungry dammit!

"Oh alright." She laughed, and grabbed Onew's hand to pull him upstairs into the kitchen. 

In English she asked her mother, "Are the organs and stuff done?"  She jerked a thumb in Onew's direction, "He just can't wait."

"Oh yeah they're done.  Does he want the heart?  Looks like a good one."

Lex lifted her eyebrows and looked back at Onew.  "She might just like you."

"Is she going to let me eat?"  Onew asked hopefully. 

"Yeah, she's offering you the heart.  It's her favorite part."

"She eats the heart?"  Onew looked a little taken aback.

Lex crossed her arms and stared Onew down.  "All the weird parts of animals that Koreans eat - chicken feet, pig's feet, cow intestine, silk worm larvae," Lex listed off all of the weird things that she had eaten in Korea, "all of that, and you think that eating the heart muscle is weird?  It's a piece of dark meat and it's really good.  All my mom is going to let you eat before dinner is going to have to have something to do with Thanksgiving so this is it."  She crossed her arms and look at Onew with a challenging gaze, quirking one eyebrow and staring him down.

She smirked at Onew as his stomach growled again. 

"Alright, alright, I'll take the heart...if,"  Onew paused and said in English to Lex's mother, "If you will share it with me."

She looked positively tickled that Onew had even offered.  And Lex nodded approvingly in his direction. 

Honestly - the heart was good.  It was a small, tender piece of dark meat and Onew was glad that Lex had guilted him into trying it in the first place.  But he wasn’t going to tell her that quite yet.

*****

Onew stared at the sheer amount of food that filled the table.  Between everyone's individual plates and all of the platters and bowls holding food on the table, Onew thought Lex had been right - the table might collapse under the weight soon enough.  He just hoped he had eaten most of it by then.

Onew sat back and watched the Western meal with an anthropologist’s eye.  He knew that it was supposed to be different from the kind of meals that he grew up enjoying, but he wasn't exactly sure how it was supposed to be.  He watched as Lex's Uncle carved the bird, making large slices of meat and placing them on a serving platter that was placed ceremoniously in the middle of the table, one side filled with dark meat, the other with white meat. 

Onew's mouth watered as the tray was set down directly in front of him. 

Out of the corner of Lex whispered to him, "Do not use your personal fork to grab anything off of the serving trays and don't reach across the table for anything.  Ask for it to be passed to you.  And don’t start eating until after they say Grace.” 

“What’s Grace?” He hissed back.

Andy, on Onew’s other side, answered instead.  “Before we eat, after everyone has food on their plate, we say a short prayer thanking God for blessing our table with food.”

Onew nodded.  “You know I was raised Buddhist right?” he whispered back to Lex.

She shrugged, “I know it’s a prayer, but it’s not really a religious thing as we do it.  It’s more of just expressing gratitude for there being food on our table and for having had a good year.”

Onew nodded, that sounded alright, and thinking about the woman sitting next to him, he thought that he had a lot to be thankful for.