The Way Back | ✓

7.1

"Talia, please," he begged, hands up in surrender. "Don't move. I don't understand why you want to move. Your whole life is here. You grew up here. You love Porte Orlands."

"No, I don't love Porte Orlands. Not anymore. Not the same way you do, at least," she said, shaking her head. "You have happy memories here, Andy. I do too but lately, it feels suffocating. My parents give me crap for getting into a complicated relationship with you. They liked you at first but they saw the struggle I was going through when we had our kid and when we got married. They hated your parents. The in-laws — I guess that cliche stands in this case. Our families didn't get along—"

"But we did."

"Until we didn't anymore. We just don't fit on the same page or in the same story—"

He scoffed. "If you're going to use metaphors at least use them right. We'll always be in the same story, no matter how much distance is between us. Figuratively and literally. Because we have our daughter and with her, we always fall in the same story."

She sighed, her lack of words speaking in abundance. They didn't understand the other and it was infuriating to the both of them.

"I'm tired, Andy. I just want an out."

"Moving away doesn't have to be your way out of this slump you've fallen into."

"This slump?" she quizzed with a scoff. His words, of course, offended her.

"I'm in a slump too," he tried to say but she wouldn't have any of it. She simply turned her head and gave him the cold shoulder. Literally.

Knowing that she wasn't going to budge and that she wasn't willing to speak it out or reason anymore, he got onto his feet and buttoned up his suit jacket. He stood there for a moment, assessing her cold frame. There was so much he wanted to say but in that moment he was at a loss for words, his ability to communicate escaping him.

"Just think about it, okay?" he pleaded at last, giving his ex one last look before he turned on his heel, conflict raging war inside of him.

Later that night he went to his parents to have dinner. He dearly missed his mother's food and he'd gotten off a call in the afternoon with a headache after his mother shouted at him through the phone for not coming by often anymore.

"My son has become a stranger, no?" she had said, tsking through the phone.

"I've been busy, Mama," he sighed. His day hadn't started off well and now the first thing his mother said when he decided to call her to check up on them was an attack on him. He just wanted to bury his head into work and go home late, and then let London take him into her arms and soothe his aching heart.

"I'm going to make Gua Bao tonight. Come for dinner, erzi," she said softly, after she was done giving him a piece of her mind. Even if he did explain that he was busy between work, his daughter and his new relationship, his mother would not accept the excuse.

"Do you really want to miss out on Gua Bao?" When she said that there was no way he could deny her request. He missed his mother's Gua Bao. She made the best Gua Bao in the whole goddamn world.

That was how he found himself that Monday evening having dinner with his parents, his father quiet as usual as his mother babbled on, slipping between English and Mandarin with ease.

"Erzi," Meling Cai said, a smile brightening up her face as she leaned across the table to reach for the dish. "Have some more."

Andrew smiled back at his mother and served more beef noodles without complaint. "I've missed this so much, Mama," he said, referring to the Gua Bao and the beef noodles that she had made. He was going to go home stuffed to the max.