13
“So did you have a nice time?”
Jia had a spoonful of Cheerios halfway to her mouth when her grandmother walked into the kitchen. She’d gotten home well past
Mimi’s bedtime and had quietly snuck in and put herself to bed shortly thereafter. But Jia couldn’t sleep. She’d been playing
the date over and over in her mind. Not so much the date itself but the run-in with Henry. The heat in his warning to stay
away from Matthew. The heat from his body as he’d made his wishes known.
The look on Henry’s face when he’d walked past her and out the door.
Was he mad at her? She couldn’t think of one thing she’d done to possibly make him upset. But he was clearly irritated last
night. He wasn’t jealous, was he? No, it couldn’t be that. And it bothered her. Jia really didn’t like it when someone took
issue with her. Maybe she could reach out and make it right.
She shook her head.
No.
Jia was a grown woman and could decide who to spend time with. What was with that warning? And shouldn’t she be the one who
was irritated with him? He’d fired her, and now he was here as a reminder that she was a failure at life. She got here first.
She should be the one that was mad. She didn’t even get the chance to march out of the restaurant with a sour look on her face.
“Jia? Honey?”
Jia looked up from her Cheerios and saw her grandmother staring back at her.
“Oh, sorry, Grandma. I was spacing out,” Jia said.
“So how was the date?” she asked again.
“Oh my god, Mimi, we have to go back to the Del Rey. The food was incredible. It’s right up your alley. And the vibes were
immaculate. I had this cocktail—” Jia stopped. Did she have that cocktail before she went to the bathroom and ran into Henry?
Or was it the one she had at the end of the night when Henry was leaving the restaurant and walked right past her?
“What’s with the scrunched nose? The cocktail wasn’t good?” Mimi asked.
Jia shook herself out of her memory. “Oh, no. The cocktail was amazing! But Henry Shin was there. And he was being all macho-caveman
telling me to be careful. And I was like, what business is it of yours? And he was like, growl and grunt. And he said I had bad friends! Can you believe that? Well, he didn’t exactly say those words, so maybe I won’t put that
on him. But still.”
Mimi sat there, staring at her granddaughter, nodding her head as if totally understanding where she was coming from. Yup,
Mimi and Jia were of the same cloth. She probably felt the same way about Henry.
“Jia, honey, I’ve been meaning to ask you this. And you know I don’t like to pry.”
Jia slid her gaze over to her grandmother. “Since when have you not liked to pry, Grandmother? I seem to recall you’ve been
prying about details in my life and everyone else’s for as long as I’ve been alive. And don’t get me wrong, I love that about
you. It’s because you care. And I like to believe I inherited this very trait from you as well,” she said.
“Well, that may be the case. And you’re right, I care. So tell me right now why this young man has gotten so far under your
skin. What did he do?”
“What young man?” Jia asked. “Oh, Matthew? I mean, he’s not under my skin exactly. He did say something that kind of raised
a red flag last night. And I don’t know how I feel about him helping people sell their homes . . .” Jia wondered if Matthew
had sold the home that Dennis had moved into. Is that how Henry knew Matthew? Maybe Henry was just projecting his bad feelings
about Matthew onto her. Okay, this made her feel a little bit better.
“Not Matthew, my dear. Dennis’s grandson, Hank,” Mimi clarified.
“Henry,” Jia corrected her. She could never see him as Hank again. She could barely see him as anything other than Henry J.
Shin, Esquire. Jia was so preoccupied by the fact that he was here this summer—what were the odds?—that she didn’t even realize
she’d just googled Esquire on her phone to see why lawyers used those letters in the first place.
“Exactly,” her grandmother said, bringing her out of her thoughts.
Jia raised her head from her phone. Mimi’s left eyebrow lifted high to her forehead. Jia’s shoulders dropped as she conceded.
“Urgh,” she let out. “I don’t know that it’s even worth going over. It’s just, he confuses me is all.”
The corner of her grandmother’s mouth lifted. Jia could see where her mind was going. It was time to set her grandmother’s
errant thoughts and assumptions straight. Let her know how she and Henry were acquainted. Jia couldn’t have her thinking otherwise.
“Okay, Mimi, here’s the tea.” Jia grabbed both of Mimi’s hands and held them so that she’d be braced for the news. “Henry
and I know each other . . . from before Dennis moved to Sunset Hills,” Jia admitted.
Her grandma stared at Jia for a second, examining her the way that she did when she thought she needed to be reading between
the lines. She nodded once, as if coming to a conclusion. “Wait one second,” she said, holding up a finger while walking to
the back slider door.
“Mildred,” she called out to the house to the left of them.
“Yeah?” a voice called back.
“Gather the ladies and meet at the bench in ten,” Mimi instructed.
“I’m in my bathrobe. Can we make it twenty?”
“Ten minutes. No one’s paying any attention to an eighty-year-old woman walking around in a bathrobe,” she said.
She went back into the house.
“Did you just call the troops in? Grandma, I don’t want this to be a big Sunset Hills ordeal. I don’t want everyone gossiping
about it,” Jia said.
“If you’re this torn up about a boy, especially one that we know personally, we need the troops, my dear. We’ve got hundreds
of years of heartache and wisdom between us. We’ll get you through this.”
“Grandma, you’ve got this all wrong. I don’t have feelings for Henry other than maybe annoyance and irritation,” Jia protested.
“And that’s exactly why we need the big guns.”
Ten minutes later, five women were gathered at the northwest corner of the neighborhood park, where a bench dedicated to Mr.
Charles K. Lee sat beneath a huge palm tree. Jia being the youngest among them by fifty years, she allowed two of them to
sit, while her grandmother sat in a foldable camping chair she’d made Jia bring with them, and Betty rolled up in her electric
scooter.
Mildred did indeed show up in her bathrobe, complete with fuzzy slippers and a bonnet over her curlers.
“What’s the emergency, Mimi? Mildred said it was a code red. I was about to drink my morning Smooth Move tea,” Betty announced.
“Oh, Betty, I’m so sorry we interrupted teatime. It’s not actually an emergency,” Jia said.
“Jia says Henry irritates her,” Mimi said.
The women all nodded in unison.
“So, how is he in the sack?” Gladys asked.
“Gladys!” Jia was shocked at the forwardness of these women. “I cannot disclose that information,” she said.
All eyes widened in shock. Jia slapped her hand over her mouth. “I mean, not that I’ve slept with him or anything. But if
I had, a lady never sleeps and tells. At least not to her grandmother and her friends. Oh god.”
The women all nodded at Jia with knowing smiles.
“It was just a matter of time, honey. You’re the only two young ones here. You’re both lookers. And he makes you feisty. That’s
the spark,” Mimi explained.
“Well, just to clarify, it happened before either of us got here,” Jia admitted.
“Well, all right then. Tell us everything, hon. Was it mind-blowing? Did he give you the big O? Did you have a crush on him?
Or was it a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind of night just to get it out of your system? You don’t have to love him to have sex
with him. We all know that’s how it works these days,” Betty said.
Jia’s mouth dropped open, and her cheeks warmed to a cherry pink. How did Betty understand her sex life better than Jia herself?
“You ladies are a lot looser than I realized,” Jia joked.
“Please, have you seen him jogging in the morning? I went out to my driveway to get the morning paper just to watch him go
by in his flimsy shorts with his shirt off. And I don’t actually even get the paper delivered anymore,” Mildred admitted.
“It is definitely a sight,” Jia had to agree. “I don’t have to like the man to admire what he’s got.”
“He’s blessed in all the ways.”
The ladies all giggled.
Jia wasn’t sure how she felt having this conversation with her grandmother and her friends. But just thinking of how Henry
would likely be mortified by it brought her a little bit of joy.
“You ladies are wonderful, and I love you all. Thank you for the advice. But there really isn’t a problem. It’s more of an
inconvenience. A coincidence. An annoyance.”
“That’s a lot of -nces,” Betty said. “In my experience, the more a woman protests with big vocabulary, the more likely it is she’s trying to convince
herself she’s not interested.”
Jia needed to get the women up to speed before they started planning some rendezvous between her and Henry. “Okay. So remember how I got fired from my job and escaped the city to come hang with Mimi to figure my life out?”
They all nodded. It was well-known around The Sunset that Jia was in hiding from her reality and they were to handle her with
the softest gloves possible. Maybe that was why they all showed up to the stuff she planned for them and were so effusive
and complimentary to her about her organizational skills. Jia liked to believe it was more than that, though. She hoped it
was because they were all enjoying themselves as much as she was.
“Well, he was the one who fired me from my job back in New York. Technically, I guess, Genevieve in HR fired me. But Henry’s
name was the signature that sealed the deal.”
Silence.
Jia would let that soak in. She’d let them realize that she and Henry were fated to be against each other. And maybe that
made it okay for him to be mad at her. And for her to be mad at him back . . . a little. She’d give them a sec to change their
tune.
“Well, praise be,” Mimi said.
“Good boy,” Betty chimed in.
“He’s good-looking and has sense?” Gladys added.
“I bet his handwriting is all stern and hot and demanding,” Mildred said.
What did demanding handwriting even look like?
“Hey, wait a minute. You’re all supposed to be on my side.” Jia pouted, feelings hurt.
“We are. And this guy saved you from a miserable job that you hated and that didn’t treat you right,” Mimi said, rubbing Jia’s
back from her chair.
“He did you a favor. And basically ended up giving us at The Sunset a gift,” Betty said, reaching her hand out and grabbing
Jia’s. “You.”
Jia was shocked at their responses. A tear welled up in her right eye. This was equal parts sweet and kind of twisted. They celebrated a guy who fired her because she hated her job? That was weird.
“Don’t give him too much credit. He wasn’t actually my boss. He just signed the paperwork. I didn’t even know it was him until
I put two and two together at the happy hour.”
“So before then, you were down to jump his bones?” Gladys asked.
“Scotch might have been involved. The expensive stuff,” Jia answered.
“Well, I’m sure he had a good reason for signing the paperwork. At least he wasn’t the creepy boss. That makes me feel better
about him,” Mildred said.
“And we should all be so lucky to find a man who knows how to fire us up,” Gladys added. “He really presses your buttons.
And girl, that’s a gift.”
“No need to look deeper than we have to. Henry and I have a weird history. And because of it, it’s hard to know how to act
around him is all. So maybe it’s best we just avoid each other for the time that we both have left here. And then he’ll be
gone. Poof. No longer to be seen.” She shrugged her shoulder. “Anyways, ladies, the sun’s getting higher. Let’s get you all
indoors before it’s too hot. How about I make us all breakfast? Acai bowls?”
“Sure, honey. But can you make your blueberry pancakes instead? I love those,” Betty said.
“You betcha,” Jia said. She turned to start the walk back home.
“We’ll be right behind you, love,” Mimi said, waving her hand to encourage her on.
When she was a few steps ahead, Mimi turned to the ladies and tapped her right shoulder two times, rubbed her nose, and pulled her left ear three times. She ended the pattern with a snap and a nod.
The ladies all snapped and nodded back in response.
The signal was put out there, and they all knew what they were going to do.
They were going to make sure these two young lovebirds (shoulder taps) did the nasty (nose rub) within three days (ear pulls).
If nothing else, the people at Sunset Hills were romantics. They believed in true love. And maybe these two just needed a
little push in the right direction.
Operation Hookup had begun, and the troops had been activated.