When I was little, my mother used to tell me all sorts of crazy stories about love.  Like if a boy wants to touch my hand, he’s being sweet.  If he wants to touch my face, he’s being thoughtful and caring.  If he wants to touch other parts of me, he’s bad and doesn’t love me.  And I definitely shouldn’t let him touch me.  My dad then added that I should run screaming away from that boy.  My mother also used to tell me that I can’t go out looking for love.  That, one day, it will just appear.  It will find me.

                So whenever I went anywhere, my mom tells me that I used to act extra nonchalant.  Overly casual.  When she asked what I was doing, apparently, I’d say I was ‘not looking’ so love would find me.

                Clearly, I was a strange child.

                Then, when I was ten, my parents went through either a mid-life crisis or a mental break because we picked up, sold most of our belongings, and moved to Seoul.  They suddenly dreamed of opening their own English language school.

                How the hell was love going to find me in Seoul?!  Then I realized it might be easier because, in the upscale, high class area of Seoul where my parents set up shop and bought our very own apartment in a 25 storey sky scraper, I was one of the only few scrawny, little white girls with big green eyes and strawberry blond curly cue hair.

               I fit in with some other nerdy, out of place kids at my international school.  Some white, some Korean.  Didn’t matter to me.  Friends are friends.  My best friend turned out to be a tall, slender boy named Woo, Ji Ho.  Well, he was slender when we met as little kids anyway.  A year later, I was sure this love character my mother had spoken of sent Ji Ho for me to find.

                Six years later, I was still secretly in love with Ji Ho.  Not even my closest girlfriend, Amelia, knew just how badly the torch I held for this kid burned.  It stayed a secret because as soon as the puberty fairies struck him, he bulked up, joined the soccer team, and had girls from every country represented at our school fighting for his attention.  His super cool soccer buddies were a group of serious playboys who had also been touched by whatever it really is that made the Greek gods from long ago look as beautiful as they did.

                Ji Ho never strayed from me though.  I was his irreplaceable best friend.  Always there, never seen as anything more than the goofy, skinny, clumsy girl who puberty hadn’t been nearly as loving towards.

                Not that I was bean pole with acne or anything, but I firmly believe that Lizzie Malden was given my s.  The mix-up was that she was struck twice since she had enough for both of us put together.

                And yet, he still wanted me around.  Which I was grateful for.  I loved him.  I wanted to be in his life, no matter what form it happened to be in.

                I’d perfected, over the years, the best friend role and the best friend look when it came to him dating other girls.  Which he did frequently.  Thankfully, for my delicate heart, they never lasted long.  He had a revolving door of girls in his life.  Which worked for me.  To keep my secret safe, I even tried dating some boys.  I was kind of awkward and inexperienced when it came to boys, but there were plenty of boys who found that endearing.

                Like Soo Won here, apparently, I thought as I looked across the table at the boy with thin rimmed glasses.  I felt bad, but whenever I was out with a boy, he could never hold my attention long enough to keep my brain from replaying memories I had with Ji Ho.

                I swallowed a sigh and giggled lightly when Soo Won did after he finished the story I hadn’t been listening to.

                After a few more minutes, I managed to come up with an excuse about homework or whatever it was that came out of my mouth.  He nodded and agreed.  He was nice though.  He walked me home and after saying he’d see me in school on Monday, I darted into the building so that he wouldn’t be able to ask me about the weekend.  I’m a terrible person, but I can’t help it.  I blame it on being a girl.  Apparently, two X chromosomes makes you prone to being crazy.

                I watched TV with my parents, made some small talk with Amelia on the phone, actually did some homework, whatever I could to pass the time.

                Ji Ho had a date tonight.  I wasn’t looking forward to hearing about any of that, in fact, it made me sickeningly jealous to hear about him going out with other girls.  Touching them, kissing them, being a teenage boy with them.

                But the thing I really liked was that he would almost always sneak into my room at night after his dates to hang out with me so we could talk.  Since most of the time, his dates never ended with any potential of him going much farther with the girl, I was more than happy for him to come tell me about them.

                My second storey apartment made it easy for him to scale the side of the building to get in or, if he was feeling lazy, he’d text me and I go downstairs to sneak him in through our front door.  Our building night guard was notorious for nodding off at his station. 

                Even though I was just his geeky, tom boy best friend, it was still me he liked to snuggle with at night.  I would take what I could get.

                I was reading my latest trashy romance novel when my phone vibrated signaling I’d received a text message.

                Smiling uncontrollably at how quickly my heart began to race, I threw my book to the side and checked it.

                Rapunzel, let down your hair!  Or at least come open your window for me…