Prologue:

“When you’re all grown up, you won’t remember the little shit like this anyway.”

Flippant words coming from the man I idolized most. Ever since he arrived here, I knew he was different like me. There wasn’t a particular thing that stood out most—rather, everything he did called my name. Even at thirteen, when he entered my life by crashing into my kitchen with his hands wrapped around my mom’s waist, I knew he was mine.

“So, don’t cry anymore, buddy. Okay? By the time you graduate, none of this shit will matter.”

Once, he had wiped tears from my cheeks and cajoled me into cheering up. Every day of my preteens felt like the night would end with a possible death by bullying. All the kids had known I was a faggot before I had admitted it to myself. Sometimes, it seemed like the bystanders in our life knew us better than anyone else. To my class, I was the queer kid and whenever I came home, I played the role of the happy son. Only around my stepfather did I ever crack.

My too casual and careless stepfather that never knew exactly what his presence did to me. So wrapped up in my mother, he never noticed me much anyway. To him, I was his wife’s kid. A troubled boy who got in school yard fights for a few supposed locker room glances. My mother’s husband, Park Jimin, was my entire world and to him, I was nothing more than a gangly, doe-eyed preteen with too many bruises to count.

“You—you don’t remember things being like this?” I had asked him once as he bandaged up a gash on my knee caused by a group of boys outside my bus stop.

“None of these people will matter to you once you graduate, Gguk. Don’t worry about them. Just focus on your studies and get ahead. Then, one day, you’ll be far beyond their reach.”

As he had smoothed back my hair back then, comforting me as I held back tears, I tried not to focus on the way his hands felt on my body. My eyes had skimmed his strong forearms, memorizing the way his veins stood out against his pale skin. I had wanted to lick them. I still wanted to lick them now at seventeen, two months shy of my birthday.

In America, we stood out for many reasons. One of those reasons being our Korean ethnicity. Mom had moved to the states to follow dad’s work, and less than a year later, he was already moving on to someone new. The girl had been one of his tech assistants and he treated her like a newer model when he made her his wife. Lost in America at twenty with a toddler, Mom had skipped the whole college experience to work. That work brought her to the respected doctor Park Jimin—a man who looked sinfully good at thirty-five in his white coat.

Once, he had used his white doctor’s coat on one of my wounds, patting my bloodied forehead with it before leaving me to search for mom’s first-aid kit. I had been fourteen then and was going through an intense, multiple times a day masturbation phase. I had promised to wash the coat for him as a thank you for his care. I had felt guilty as he agreed with a friendly, father-like smile. Then, I had been his son and he would have never suspected what I had planned for that coat.

Horny and depraved, I had locked myself in my room—all bandaged up while still feeling the aftereffects of his touch—and slipped off my pants. His coat was wrapped snuggly around my cock as I touched myself. After the *** came, the tears followed. I had spent the night crying into my pillow, cursing God for making me queer. Why did the universe have to bring Park Jimin to my doorstep? Why the hell did God have to make him my stepfather?

Somewhere in SoCal, I was lost inside my own skin. Seventeen and going into my senior year, and I knew myself no better than I did as a queer, self-hating preteen. Floating in my pool lounger, under the late July sun, I wished the self-doubt could be sweated out of my pores in the ninety-degree dry heat. Thankfully, my limbs were no longer gangly and were instead, toned from the hours I spent inside our home gym. I looked like a man, but inside, I was still my stepfather’s baby. His cute, doe-eyed boy who’d follow him anywhere and everywhere.

“You’re going to burn out there like that!” Mom hollered from her seat beneath an umbrella.

A magazine was opened on her lap to all of the Hollywood gossip. For some reason, living in California—even Southern California—made her feel as though she were part of it all. Even as a civilian, she strutted around like a Hollywood starlet. It seemed like sharing an area code with a few famous people and being famous were no different.

At noon on a weekend, she sipped her drink as she listened to the faint sounds of the small, man-made waterfall that poured into our pool. To her, every day was a holiday. Nothing was ugly in her world—which, I believed, was why my life remained such a mystery to her. If she knew that I was struggling and borderline suicidal on a good day, her life would no longer be perfect. In her mind, she didn’t have a queer, strange kid. In her eyes, I existed as a box to check off.

She had a kid. Check. Got married. Check. Found a large house to make her friends envious. Check.

Watching her now, sitting so superficial despite no one looking at her, I felt like I was no different than the umbrella over her head or the pool chair that she sat on. I might as well be a piece of furniture. ****, if I were a piece of furniture—one of her many “priceless” vintage pieces—she would probably pay more attention to me.

I wanted to say something like, “You only care because you don’t want a tanned son,” but chose to take the high road and say nothing. Words weren’t exactly meaningful in her world, after all. Unless they were words of praise—which my stepdad constantly showered her with.

As if he were playing the role of a perfect American husband, my stepdad came out of the house with swimming shorts on and an unbuttoned white dress shirt—because Park Jimin didn’t exactly do casual clothes—while carrying a pitcher of fresh margaritas in one hand and a cheese and fruit board in the other.

I lifted my sunglasses up, wanting to see the bare flesh of his chest without the tint. His muscles were sculpted to perfection thanks to the hours he spent in the gym away from my mother. Despite his strong, muscular body, there was an almost androgynous quality to his features. While he had a sharp jawline and intense eyes, his lips were plumped in a way no surgeon could ever achieve. He looked handsome and beautiful all at once.

Whenever my eyes found him, it felt almost impossible to look away. He could disregard me all day. He could be careless, never recognizing the feelings of this queer teen that he cared for. After all, he was in his forties now and I had yet to graduate high school. To him, my feelings must not matter at all. I doubted he ever thought of them.

“When you’re all grown up, you won’t remember little shit like this anyway.” These words still hung around my neck like a noose. Would Park Jimin be another thing for me to forget about one day? This could be a phase, after all, because Park Jimin was my stepfather.

And I … I was no one.