The Girl Most Likely To

Chapter Twenty-One

Ba was sitting in his favorite chair, reading the Sunday edition of the World Journal on his tablet, when I came home. He nearly spit out his tea when he saw me walk into the house at six a.m., wearing wrinkled clothes. “You’re just getting home?”

“You didn’t know I’ve been gone?”

That earned me a light smack on the arm.

He grunted as he went back to reading the news. “Go change before your mom sees you like that.”

I ducked into my room as my dad continued to mumble in Mandarin loud enough for me to hear. “What good is flaunting around designer clothes if you look like a crumpled piece of paper?”

I chuckled because I was used to it, but I never understood my parents’ logic. They griped about how it was time for me to grow up, but they still insisted on treating me like a kid. I changed my clothes and packed the rest of my things. If I’d brought my laptop, I would’ve been able to get some work done from here. There was only so much I could do on my phone. My clunky old desktop would probably crash from software updates alone.

I opened the door to the hallway at the same time Ma walked out of her room, stretching her arms. “You’re going back already? Bù xiān chī zǎocān ma?”

I wasn’t planning to eat, not when Danny was waiting for me, but this was a test. The wrong answer would earn me a guilt trip that would last much longer than the time it’d take to sit and have breakfast. I nodded. “Okay.”

While Ma milled around the kitchen, I managed the influx of emails in Nat’s inbox, deleting any that requested a comment.

“Put that away.”

Ma set a plate of steamed scallion buns in front of me. “Eat first.”

My mom always had these buns on hand for a quick grab-and-go breakfast, so she must’ve picked up that I couldn’t stay long. Her mother’s intuition was strong.

I peeled a piece off my bun, eating it layer by layer like string cheese. “I have to go soon. I have a lot of work to do.”

This, she didn’t hassle me about. We were a family that valued work. She knew as well as I did how much time she used to spend at the salon. “But when you have some free time, you should come over more.”

It wasn’t like Ma to make such a request. Did she find out I was laid off? Now that I thought about it, Ma was watching me eat every morsel of this bun. Had she even blinked since I sat down? “Okay,”

I said, treading carefully. “I’m going out of town for the next week, but I should be free after.”

“Good. It’s important to spend more time together, you know? As a family,”

she added.

This was really strange. Was she trying to break some bad news? “Ma. Is everything okay?”

“Your mom misses you,”

my dad chimed in from the living room. Ma shushed Ba, like she was embarrassed at the sentimentality. God forbid she missed me!

“Ta,”

she warned. My mom called my dad a grandpa in Khmer only when she was annoyed. “What’s wrong with spending time with family? That’s how we know what’s going on with each other.”

Something was up. This wasn’t the usual reminder to call more.

“Are you sick?”

I swallowed my bun so fast that I got the hiccups. I pounded my chest, which didn’t help at all. “Is Ba sick?”

“Nobody’s sick!”

Ma wagged an accusing finger at me. “Don’t you have something to tell me?”

Oh, she must know about my job. I should come clean. It was time. They had always trusted me when it came to managing school and work. They should trust me now when I was figuring things out. “Ma, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you—”

“I knew it! You were hiding something from me. Okay. Tell me.”

She sat up straight with both arms flat on the dining table. I steadied myself with a deep breath and opened my mouth to speak, but unable to hold it in any longer, she broke in. “Are you dating someone?”

Wait, what?

“Where did that come from?” I asked.

She pointed out the window. Danny was walking around the driveway like he needed to stretch his legs. Why didn’t he wait in the car? My mom gasped when I sent Danny a text, like it was all the confirmation she needed.

Rachel: Hey. If you need something to do, can you help me with my bags?

From the window, I could see Danny search his surroundings until he finally turned to the house, looking slightly alarmed that he’d been caught. Did he think no one would see him?

“So?”

My mom patted my arm to get my attention. “Are you dating?”

“Yeah,”

I said. There wasn’t any point in lying when Danny was right there. Besides, this just might be the thing to get my parents off my back about Josh. “Do you want to meet him?”

The shock on my mom’s face was priceless. I wished I could’ve taken a picture of it.

“Why would I want to meet him? Is it that serious already?”

Ma was fishing for information under the guise of old-school dating formalities. She needed to chill out.

I went to open the door. “Can’t you just say hi?”

Danny had said he wanted to walk into this with eyes open. Well, he was in for a rude awakening.

“He . . . ey.”

Danny’s smile tightened when he saw my mom loitering behind me at the doorway. “Everyone’s up early.”

He offered my mom a small wave. “Chào c?. I’m Danny.”

“Why is he dressed like a professor?”

my mom asked in Khmer. It was an observation in the form of a question.

“You’re still in your pajamas, Ma,”

I pointed out. Ma crossed her arms, affronted as she tried to hide her clothes. I picked up my overnight bag. “He’s dropping me off at the apartment.”

“He knows where you live? How long have you been dating?”

Ma sputtered as more questions came out of her mouth. “W-wait, what happened to your car?”

My dad stood up, shaking his tablet in the air. “Hey, mèimei! What’s this about your company laying people off?”

He must’ve reached the entertainment section of the newspaper. “Do you still have a job?”

That was my cue to leave. I handed Danny my bag and shooed him until he turned around and started walking back to his car. My parents were so shocked that they didn’t register that I was hugging them. “Don’t worry. Everything’s okay.”

My dad didn’t fall for the bullshit. “Mèimei. Bùyào kāiwánxiào.”

“I’m not,”

I insisted as I walked toward the driveway. It wasn’t a joking matter to me either. I was going to give them all the answers they wanted. But first, I had to get to a safe distance. “My car got totaled and I don’t have a job right now, but I’m handling it.”

“What?!”

Ma and Ba shouted at the same time.

I have everything under control, I thought as I jumped in the car and told Danny to step on it. It wasn’t the most mature way to go about it, but so what? Maturity was overrated. I’d told my parents the truth and that was the most important thing.

“So that went well,”

Danny commented as he drove off. “You couldn’t have, I don’t know, sent a text that I’d be meeting your parents?”

I waved my hand dismissively. “It was like two seconds.”

“Two awkward seconds. They’re probably comparing me to Josh as we speak.”

Knowing my parents, the chances of that were good.

“You were the one who said I shouldn’t care what people think.”

“I meant society at large. People who don’t matter.”

Danny rolled his hands as he tried to come up with another explanation. “Not your parents!”

He shook his head, scolding me. “I think you drank too much pool water last night. It made you unhinged.”

“But you like it, don’t you? Because you liiiike me.”

“Yeah, I do,”

he said without skipping a beat. I was teasing him, but his direct response made something inside me flutter, like my heart was warming up to take flight. “Try not to forget it while you’re gone.”

“I won’t.”

It was all I was going to think about while I was away. Getting Danny back was the only thing in my life that was on the upswing, but I had to press pause. Even though a week wasn’t a long time, after twenty years apart, the idea of waiting any longer felt like a punishment.

A lull fell between us when we arrived at my apartment. There was no white noise from the car as we drove and no music from the radio to break the silence. I had to keep this short and simple. This wasn’t a goodbye. It was a see-you-later.

“Thanks for the ride.”

I got out of the car and threw my bag over my shoulder before Danny could get to it. I didn’t want to prolong this. Everything that needed to be said had been said. Or so I thought.

Danny didn’t let me leave without one last kiss. It was a steady press on my lips, like he wanted to sear it into my memory, adding to the list of things not to forget. When we broke apart, Danny stayed close, so all I could see were his brown eyes, searching mine through a dreamy haze. It made it all the harder to walk away. “Text me later.”