TEXAS WAS TOO DAMN HOT.
This I told my older brother, Tommy, over and over during the course of spring break. Each time I got out of the shower. Each time Quentin and I crashed back into his apartment from a day of sight-seeing.
Today, we'd visited a collection of places that was, in the simplest terms, stereotypically Texan. A museum of the evolution of soft drink cans over time. An art exhibit featuring sculptures wrought from old guns.
The two hallmarks of the Lone Star State.
"Of all places to do your Med placement," I began in the evening, while slicing okra in Tommy's kitchen. "Why Texas? It's so hot."
"Why not Texas?" Tommy returned, tossing a pan of cubed tofu pieces.
He was indubitably the best cook out of the four siblings. But that was probably because he'd been living on his own for the longest. Olly had Wenghao with whom to share domestic duties, and Kevin still lived at home.
Tommy had always been the lone wolf type, providing for himself and standing on his own two feet.
"It's scenic, and I love the accent," Tommy shrugged. "Plus. Southern charm at all that."
"You would be a lone ranger in another life," I chuckled.
Behind the fierce hiss of the wok and the rhythmic scrapes of my knife on the wooden cutting board, I heard the shower running. Quen was taking his second shower of the day. He hated the heat as much as I did, and walking around in the April sunshine made him sweat like crazy. Somewhere in his upbringing, Tommy must have missed the memo about being from the East Coast like the rest of us.
"Speaking of," Tommy snorted. "Okay, not really speaking of. You know what I learnt about the other day? Assless chaps. I got invited to a costume party with the other residents—and someone suggested I wear those. Everyone laughed."
I bit down on the burst of laughter welling up in my throat. "Poor Tommy."
"No, not poor Tommy. Impressive Tommy with the buns of steel. I would have stolen the spotlight."
I mimed vomiting into the wok, "Blergh. Don't you dare plant that image into my head."
By the time Quen emerged from the bathroom, clad in a T-shirt from the company at which he'd secured a summer internship, with towel-dry hair, Tommy and I had plated up. On the table sat several platters of vegetables and tofu, with the rice cooker in the middle of the table.
"Guys," Quentin moaned, pausing when he entered the dining room. "You said I could help."
My chest fluttered at the sight of Quen's rumpled hair, sticking up in inky strands. "Sorry," I half-smiled, "Tommy hates people 'helping' in his kitchen. But he's too nice to say that to your face."
"Wha—" Tommy gasped.
He glanced at me like I had just stabbed him in the back by revealing the sassy personality underneath his buttoned-up exterior.
"What?" I arched my eyebrows.
"Okay. Fine. You got me. Sorry, buddy," Tommy told Quen, "It's just how I am. Consider this your welcome to the family."
Quen threw back his head as he barked a laugh. My heart felt full as I took a seat and dug in, seeing my easy-going boyfriend and dramatic-ass brother getting along.
Quen and I were slowly making our way around the members of each other's family. Tommy was the first up out of the Mings. For the Lunar New Year, I had gone to Carsonville to meet his lovely parents, and I'd already told Kevin and Olly about our relationship—the latter having followed along with my melodramatic escapades since I first started crushing on Quen.
All of these visits were test runs for the big one.
Mom.
I had yet to tell my parents I was in a committed relationship. I had yet to speak to them since Christmas, other than general updates in the group WeChat.
I hadn't called Mom over the phone since our huge fight. So it was still unresolved.
"I don't know how she's going to react," I vented over dinner.
Mealtimes weren't just time for eating. They were for gossip, complaints, and laughter. They were home brought to the nearest table, and it was a comfort that Tommy and Quen shared the same tradition as I launched into my anxieties.
"She doesn't like me since I yelled at her."
"That's not true. Olly and I have been talking after each of her visits home—Mom's hurt. And she's guilty. You know that she doesn't parent in the white liberal way."
"I know that. And I still love her and appreciate everything she's done for us."
"But she didn't know that. To her, the way she parents is the only effective way to do it. She's always thought she was doing the best by you, because it worked for Olly and I, and when you told her that she'd been hurting you for years and years, well, she would have been crushed. Even Kevin never said anything that outright to her."
Fuck. My gut dropped. I hadn't meant to hurt Mom. And she hadn't meant to hurt me. The guilt swallowed me like the violent gush at the end of a water slide. I wished I was in New York. I wanted to hug Mom.
"She's doing some major soul-searching," Tommy continued, oblivious to my turmoil. Or incredibly aware and lightening the mood. "And she'll be fine. Remember how bad she wanted grandchildren from Olly? She'll be happy you're one step closer to popping kids out."
Quen coughed.
I shook my head at him. "Don't worry, I don't plan to do that anytime soon." I turned my attention back to my brother. "And Olly was older. Mom was worried about the leftover woman thing."
Leftover woman: the belief that any unmarried woman older than twenty-five must have been defective, somehow, cast aside like the unwanted fibrous stems of an okra pod.
"We all know how selective her double standards are," I reminded Tommy, though as a man he'd escaped a lot of the gendered expectations placed on the daughters. "I'm too skinny when she wants me to eat another serving, until I'm too fat when I'm not a size zero. If I'm twenty-something, I should be focusing on my grades and my career, and then— boom, you're twenty-something. When are you getting married? Do you truly think she'll react positively?"
Tommy sucked his cheeks in, mulling over my argument. He didn't even try to argue because it was true. We all had grown up wedged between extremely selective standards, with barely a hair's width for error.
Excluding Olly, who had the perfect doctor-daughter-wife shtick going on, we were all deficient. Tommy was living alone despite being twenty-seven—and he was vegetarian. This was a big deal for Mom and Dad, whose favourite mainland dishes heroed meat. Kevin had never gone to college. And now I was flouting all my years of tuition and diligent study to go into highly-exclusive research.
Tommy turned to Quen. "What do you study again?"
"Double major in Engineering and Physics."
"Current GPA?"
I frowned warningly. "Tommy."
"What? You want to know how Mom will react?" He jerked his chin in Quen's direction, who blinked innocently back at me, like a puppy being examined for adoption. Goddamn, he was too cute. "He's your make or break."
Quen offered, "Three point eight."
"Do you speak Mandarin?"
"可以. Well, a bit."
Tommy nodded approvingly. "Shoe size?"
"I'm a—"
"Whoa!" I hissed, extending my leg to kick my older brother under the table. Part of me suspected Tommy was getting distracted from the matter of Mom, sliding into interrogating Quen for his own satisfaction. "Privacy, man."
Tommy cracked up laughing, shooting me an unapologetic grin. "Sorry." He didn't look like it. "But you're fine."
"You think?" I wondered. Quen shot me a wink.
My older brother nodded, giving me a genuine comforting smile. "Do you know what she bought the other day?"
"What?"
"English Breakfast tea. In bags. She knows you like it."
"Oh, my God."
Tea. In bags.
Not a clump of twigs and roots in a gallon glass jar, stored high in the cupboards above the old broken rice cookers that still worked as insulating containers. We'd had English Breakfast in the house before, but only bulk-bought in loose leaf form, from some herbal medicine place.
"Big deal?" Quen wondered.
"Huge deal," I whispered. Bagged tea.
"That's why I think things will be fine. She listened to you, Krista. She's changing," Tommy reasoned. "Super slowly, but still. I'm sure by the time you see each other again, she will be nothing but happy for you and Quentin."
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
It was so hot I wanted to sleep naked, but I refrained because Tommy didn't have the habit of knocking before entering.
The pale moonlight streamed into Tommy's tiny guest room, where Quen and I shared the bed. It was also far too hot to cuddle. He was perusing apartment listings in New York City on his phone, and I was calling Viv and Riley.
Them and the Jays had landed in a single inn room in Panama City Beach. Two double beds. One bathroom. One week of insanity. Of course, I could have gone. But my social battery was low on the best of days. Spring break in extremely close quarters with my four chaotic best friends would have been, with love, a fucking nightmare.
"Do you think you'll be able to get out of the room tomorrow?"
Viv had been room-bound the entire day because her endometriosis cramps flared up. Jamie had volunteered to stay the whole time with her. And they still hadn't gotten together, which Jake took great pleasure in lauding over me. By now I was invested in more than a silly bet or fifty bucks. I thought my two friends could be great together. I couldn't believe they were so blind about their feelings. Or stubborn.
Then again, this was Viv we were talking about. She taught the word stubborn to concrete.
She was lying against fluffy white pillows on the bed. To prevent their voices crossing over and forming a feedback loop on the shared call, Riley was holed up in the bathroom.
"I think so. By dinner time the worst of it had already passed," Viv answered.
"That's good. I mean, I would love spending the whole time in my room," I said. "I could take a bath."
Viv pouted, her double chin folding into existence. "I've had enough of baths. If I'm paying to be here, I want to really see the place."
"I agree. Jake tries his best, but he cannot take photos for shit," Riley admitted. It was a good thing Jake couldn't hear her, or he'd have delivered a verbal butt-whooping. "I need to go sightseeing with someone who can work my phone camera."
"I just— I can't believe four of you are in one room."
"It's economical," Viv said.
"Oh, I bet. How is it sharing a room with the twins?"
Riley shrugged. "They get ready in ten minutes and then bitch about us being slow."
"Why don't they just wake up later than you?"
"That's what I said," Viv exclaimed. Her face tilted to the side, and she told them: "Krista said you guys should stay in bed in the morning instead of making yourselves wait on purpose."
"Hi, Kris!" Jake's perky voice came through my earphones, from some unseen corner of their inn room. One room. Christ. "How's Texas?"
"It's hot."
"She says it's hot," Viv told the twins, AirPods in.
"We are high performance athletes. During semesters, our bodies are up and in the gym at the crack of dawn," Jamie said loudly. "We can't just turn all of this off on spring break." Probably gestured to his muscles.
Riley scoffed. "Did you hear that clownery?"
"Yes."
Viv prompted me: "Response?"
I immediately told her, "Tell Jamie that I remember a day when he walked into the common room for his morning coffee at seven in the evening. Crack of dawn, my ass."
"Oh, yeah," Riley chortled, remembering how invested Jamie had been on keeping this a secret.
"Ha, that's good—" Viv cackled. Then it sank in. "Wait. I can't say that!"
I smirked. Yes, because she had been the one who made him wake up so late. Kept him up all night. And now they were fucking around pretending like they weren't in love.
"Okay, but please tell us what's going on there. Just this once," I begged. "Are you guys going to date? Are you just going to stay friends? You can answer in a way that masks the topic of conversation."
Unlike me, Viv didn't vent her emotions away. She drank them away, and I'd learned not to expect any confessions from her. Still, I waited.
Viv sighed. Seconds ticked by, and I watched on camera and her gaze drifted in Jamie's direction. Then her voice was ridiculously peppy, as if she was talking about getting a new purse from a sugar daddy.
"Well, it's not really up to me."
Ah. She wanted him.
"If it was up to you, would you want to? Pepperoni for yes. Anything else for no."
Riley and I held our breaths as we waited. This was a rare moment of vulnerability from Viv. Much as she liked to pretend she was a heart-eating husk of a woman, and therefore abhorred admitting romantic feelings, we knew her better than she knew herself.
"Pepperoni."
Aw. Poor thing.
"Oh, my God, are you ordering pizza now?" Jake's excited voice bounced down the line. "Can you add a meatlover's for me?"
I barked a laugh at the group chat.
Vivian: Good job. You couldn't pick any other code words?
Viv answered through clenched teeth, her brown eyes rolling, "Sure thing, Jake."
"I got it, Viv," Riley piped up. "I'll order two pepperoni and one meatlover's."
Viv sighed against her pillow. "Lifesaver."
We chatted away until the spontaneous pizza order arrived downstairs, and Jake went to collect. It sounded like they were having fun at the beach, romantic tension, menstrual hell and testosterone aside.
"How are the girls?" Quen asked me when I hung up.
He rolled onto his side to face me, phone clutched in hand. I slipped my glasses off of my face, folding and placing them on the nightstand. I pulled him closer, pressing a soft kiss to his lips.
"Surprisingly, not dying from sharing a room with the Jays. They're doing well."
"Glad to hear it." He flipped his screen toward me.
Peeling wallpaper, once floral, now reminding me more of the brown weeds growing in the cracks of concrete. Uneven floors that transitioned from hardwood to tile to carpet throughout the one bedroom, one bathroom unit.
"Look at this. I know it's a fixer-upper, but here."
One image showed an uneven wooden floor with brown stains scattered over the surface. The two oriel windows in the background, flashing views of New York City, could have succulents on the sill. I could picture Rudy sitting there.
"Imagine that we sand and repolish the flooring here."
Quen swiped his finger, bringing up what would be the master bedroom if there was a bed inside it. "Then paint this room a lighter shade. It'd expand the place right out." Another swipe, another scene. "And the dinner table could go there, if we get a narrow one. Then we could host so many people if we had to. Tight fit. But a fit. Right?"
My heart swelled with appreciation. Quen took the initiative on our apartment-hunting while I crammed for grad school. I trusted his interior design taste more than I trusted mine. I trusted everything in him with everything in me.
When I saw the passion and anticipation behind Quen's eyes, the eagerness he had to build a home with me over the summer, I could hardly believe I'd found someone like him. Honest and consistent and devoted.
He asked excitedly, "You see it?"
Quentin glanced up at me, clearly expressing favouritism for this apartment. It was instantly my favourite, too. With the window at his back, I couldn't see any of his features but the glint of his eyes. The moonlight fell around him like he was a gift from above.
"I do."
I saw my future. Our future.
And it looked perfect.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
A / N :
The next chapter is the epilogue. I wrote this story in about two months, but the publishing process took a lot longer. I can remember the emotions I felt writing these last few chapters as I release these on Wattpad. Pride and hope and squishy lovey dovey stuff.
I am !! emotional !!
See you at the end,
Aimee x