Chapter 6 #5
him to do it, and from there I will take over. I will be the grandmother to any child he has, not you.
Anything else? Roses asked, her voice eerily monotone.
“Just some advice from his mother, who will always know him best,” Iris said, resuming in English. “Wayward is ambitious,
yes, but what he cares most about is this family. I know your reasons for approaching him to produce an heir are twofold,
not just material. I would explain to him your other reason. It might just be the tipping point for him.”
“And what other reason is that?” Roses asked. She knew she had been played, and she was about to confirm by whom.
Iris set her teacup on the table and stood up to leave. “Tell him about the hungry ghosts,” she said. Then she strode out
of the office.
Now betrayed as well, Roses stared at the chinoiserie teacups on the antique table for a moment. Suddenly, she raised her
fist and brought it down swiftly upon Iris’s teacup, smashing it into pieces. Her hand was bleeding as she walked back to
her desk.
She was going to have to deal with April.
Her ear pressed to the wall, Bessie Machado cringed when she heard the teacup shatter. Carefully she backed away without making a sound.
The Sunfang Global Building’s service elevator had once opened directly into Roses’s office as a private transport, but upon
Master Chu’s urging, Roses had the hall leading to it sealed off many years ago—otherwise the company’s wealth would escape,
as the old fortune teller had warned. And it was in this sealed hallway that Bessie had been listening to the entirety of
the astounding conversation between the Sunfang Global CEO and Wayward’s mother.
Bessie clicked the down button on the service elevator, which opened for her immediately. As she tiptoed in, her brain was
spinning.
The women’s tense mano a mano had been in Mandarin at times, which Bessie did not understand, though she did think she heard
Wayward’s famous cousin Sunbern mentioned a few times.
But the rest of it that had been in plain English had shocked her.
As the elevator descended safely away from Roses’s office, Bessie exclaimed to herself, “?Cono de la madre! What is this Sunfang
Trust, what’s up with the crazy cult, and what the HELL are hungry ghosts?”
It was hours after the last bell rang when Jamaal Golightly finally exited Mar Vista Middle School, finished with grading
the last of his students’ American history papers on the Civil War, half of which had clearly been clumsily generated by AI.
The winter sun was setting, and he shivered in his too-thin jacket.
As he walked onto the nearly empty parking lot toward his old Honda, he saw a familiar figure leaning against the car. His
pulse quickened as he approached.
“Wayward?” Jamaal said, taken aback. He had not seen his ex-boyfriend for nearly half a year.
Wayward was shivering too, wearing only a tank top and running shorts. He smiled nervously as he bounced from foot to foot.
“I was jogging in the area, and I thought I’d say hi. Didn’t your classes end a while ago?”’
Jamaal quickly unlocked his car with a beep. “You’ve been waiting here this whole time? Get in before you freeze. I can’t
believe you ran all the way here from Melrose.”
The men climbed into the car, Wayward sitting shotgun. Jamaal started the engine and turned on the heater. As he looked over
at his shivering former lover of three years, Jamaal remembered how they first met.
Actually, they had technically been seeing each other for a long time before they ever spoke. They shopped at the same Trader
Joe’s when they both lived in West Hollywood four years ago, back when Jamaal had first moved to Los Angeles after completing
his difficult Teach for America post in Washington, DC.
Working with the underfunded and at-risk youth in the capital of the richest country in the world had disillusioned Jamaal,
twenty-six years old at the time. He’d just wanted to kick back and enjoy himself for a while, and what better place to do
that than in one of the gay meccas of the world? And enjoy himself he did for a while, as plenty of WeHo welcomed the dashing
newcomer with open arms . . . and legs.
Jamaal Golightly was homegrown in Savannah, Georgia, though his Afro-Latino roots on both sides were from various sunbathed
islands in the Caribbean. He had a slight Southern drawl that especially came out whenever he was excited or upset, and while
he was not a big smiler, his amber eyes would instead light up in a way that could only be described as twinkling. He was
tall with a neatly trimmed flattop, and he looked skinny in his usually understated clothes—but underneath, his effortlessly
sexy physique was ripped with naturally taut muscle and sprinkled with a light layer of curly body hair.
Despite that first summer of carefree fun, Jamaal was not a fuckboy at heart.
The random hookups and flaky dates soon grew tiresome and bland, blending together like the perpetually sunny days of his new city.
Near the start of autumn, he was in this state of doldrums and buying groceries at Trader Joe’s when his hand bumped into someone else’s as they both reached for the last jar of Speculoos cookie butter.
“Whoops, my bad,” Jamaal said good-naturedly. He turned to see who his competition was, and was surprised to recognize one
of the other regulars that often shopped at the same time as him.
The young man was about his age, a few inches shorter, and was not on Grindr—Jamaal had pointedly checked upon seeing him
around in the past. That said, whenever Jamaal had tried to make eye contact in the aisles of the store, he had always gotten
the impression that his Trader Joe’s crush was scowling back at him, so he had never approached him. Besides, boys like that
did not typically go for boys like Jamaal.
But now the stranger was looking a bit flustered too, and not in an unfriendly way. “Oh, sorry!” he replied to Jamaal. “I
was spacing out, didn’t see you.”
Jamaal nodded. “Same here, but I’ve seen you around here, right?”
Wayward blushed in a way that melted Jamaal just a little. “Yeah, I’ve seen you around too,” Wayward said. “Anyway, you should
have the cookie butter. I eat way too much of it.”
“No, no.” Jamaal’s Southern drawl emerged. “You have it, good sir, I insist.”
Wayward laughed. “What if I insist too?”
Jamaal shrugged. “Well, maybe we can share it.”
Wayward looked confused. “How would we share it?”
With a seductive firmness, Jamaal took the thick jar and thrusted it into Wayward’s basket. “I’m sure we’ll figure out a way,”
he said, his amber eyes twinkling.
Thirty minutes later, they were two blocks away in Jamaal’s apartment, having the best sex of their lives.
Jamaal shifted his car into gear and they drove out of the parking lot. “I can give you a lift home,” he said, “but why aren’t
you at work? Since when do you go running past noon?”
Wayward did not look at him, instead staring out the window as they drove through a residential neighborhood. “Yeah, a ride
home would be nice, thank you,” he replied softly.
Jamaal was irritated before he could help it. “So we don’t talk for months, and randomly you show up one day without warning
and you don’t even want to talk about it? Wayward, what’s going on with you? Can you look at me?”
Wayward turned toward Jamaal but could not look him in the eye. “Work has been complicated,” he said.
Jamaal had to bite his tongue to keep from scoffing. When they had first started dating, Wayward had been shady about where
he worked; Jamaal had figured out that Wayward was an executive at Sunfang Global by looking him up on LinkedIn. He got another
shock when Wayward told him that he was the grandson of one of the Sunfang founders. Turns out Jamaal’s new boyfriend was
an heir apparent to the very controversial corporation that stood against everything that Jamaal believed in.
But at that point, Jamaal was in too deep. He had already fallen for Wayward.
Jamaal gripped the steering wheel tightly. “I always said you were too good for that company.”
Wayward chewed on his thumbnail, his eyes still unfocused. “Well, I have the chance to stay and change it.”
A car behind them honked loudly as Jamaal almost missed a left turn light. “What’s complicated at work?” Jamaal asked.
“It’s pretty simple actually,” Wayward replied. “My aunt wants to promote me to company president, but first she says I need to have a son to continue the family lineage.”
“WHAT!” With that, Jamaal abruptly pulled over to the side of the road and turned on his hazard lights, fearful he would get
them in a car accident should he hear any more insanity. “Wayward, what sort of fucked-up shit is that?” he cried out. “You
said no, right?”
Finally, Wayward met Jamaal’s eyes. “Didn’t we used to talk about starting a family? Isn’t that what you wanted from me? Isn’t
that why you left?”
Jamaal reached over to grasp Wayward’s hands, as though he could squeeze the delusion out of him. “That’s not the reason we
broke up, and you know it.”
It had been a sneaking suspicion of Jamaal’s over the course of their relationship: Wayward’s frenzied work habits, his chronic
insomnia, his unpredictable mood swings, and that disassociated vacancy in his eyes sometimes when they made love. Jamaal
finally confirmed it two years in when he found Wayward’s secret drawer in their bathroom, a trapdoor compartment under the
sink that was filled with packets of sparkling silver powder.
When Jamaal had confronted him about this stash, Wayward had disappeared for days, only to return one night covered with cuts
and bruises, seven pounds thinner. Jamaal took him back when he tearfully promised he would stop using. But this brutal cycle
happened many times: confrontation, disappearance, and reconciliation. What scared Jamaal the most was that Wayward did not
seem to have a rock bottom—he was a base jumper of rock bottoms.
After a year of this, Jamaal told Wayward that he wanted to have a family someday, so he could not be with an addict. He left
the day after Wayward turned twenty-nine.
“You only remember the bad things about me,” Wayward sighed as Jamaal resumed driving. “We had happiness too.”
Jamaal nodded sadly. They did have happiness too.
Being with Wayward was thrilling. Yes, there were scary lows, but the highs with him were unforgettable.
Together, they had traveled the world, backpacking from Haiti to the Dominican, diving in the islands of Southeast Asia, horseback riding across Eastern Europe, expedition boating through the , and chasing the Northern Lights in the Arctic Circle.
But nothing beat what it felt like in their own bed back home, when he had his body wrapped around Wayward, as though their
limbs could never be untangled, breathing each other in as they whispered sweet nothings under the covers.
Jamaal never doubted how much they loved each other. The only problem was that there was something Wayward loved even more.
They drove in silence for the rest of the ride. As they were approaching that familiar town house, Jamaal glanced over at
Wayward. “You’ve given up everything for Sunfang Global, your happiness, your health, your family—”
“You,” Wayward interjected.
“Yes, me too.” Jamaal nodded. “Now they want your literal firstborn, Wayward. When are you going to learn? This job is never
going to love you back.”
“I’m clean now,” Wayward said. Never mind that for the past week, he’d been wanting a fix, and had Lola actually responded
to his texts, his clean streak may have ended then and there.
Jamaal looked over at him, softening. “You are? I’m glad, Wayward. Really, I am.” He paused. “Is that why you came to see
me today? To tell me that?”
“I don’t know,” Wayward whispered. He looked down. “I guess I just wanted to see you, J.”
But the way he’d hesitated scared Jamaal back into silence.
The car stopped in front of Wayward’s place. The two men looked at each other again, their hearts symmetrically broken. Jamaal
almost reached out to pull Wayward to him, to hold him close like he once had, but he was too scared of jumping in again.
Instead, he only patted him on the shoulder.
“So what are you going to do?” Jamaal asked. “Are you going to listen to your aunt and have this kid?”
Wayward opened the passenger door, then looked back at him. “You don’t think I should,” he said.
“Yes,” Jamaal replied. “I don’t think you should.”
Wayward got out of the car, then leaned in through the window. “I never told you how sorry I am for everything, Jamaal. I
know that I wasn’t easy to love.”
Right then, Jamaal wanted to tell Wayward that he still wasn’t easy to love. That he had never stopped loving him from the
moment they both reached for that jar of cookie butter. That in the months they had been apart, he still dreamed of Wayward
at night, so that when he woke up each morning, it was like losing him all over again.
But Jamaal Golightly only nodded, unable to say the words.
Then he drove away, leaving Wayward standing alone in front of the empty town house they had once called their home.