Chapter 16
16
It wasn’t Ket Siong’s original intention to walk Renee home after dinner, given how that had turned out last time. Showing up unannounced outside her brother’s house was bad enough. He didn’t need to add any further reasons for Renee to suspect him of having ulterior motives.
But by the time they got kicked out of the restaurant when it closed at eleven, Renee had had four cocktails, plus half of Ket Siong’s when he abandoned it for being too sweet.
“That’s nothing,” said Renee airily, fumbling with her coat outside the restaurant. The buttons seemed to be giving her trouble. Ket Siong put his hands inside his pockets so he wouldn’t forget himself and try to help. “I’m fine. The walk home will do me good. Google Maps says it’s only twenty-four minutes.”
Ket Siong couldn’t bring himself to leave her.
Renee accepted his offer to accompany her without a flicker of doubt. She talked in unimpaired good spirits all the way back—not about her family, but on much more cheerful subjects: her idea for a childrenswear collection; an essay she’d read recently about the pressures of going viral; an extremely boring person they’d both known as students who was now a performance artist in a three-way marriage.
Ket Siong mostly listened. He wasn’t much of a drinker. Half a cocktail had been enough to loosen his limbs, dull the edge of his thoughts. He kept getting lost in the low music of Renee’s voice, forgetting to follow the words.
As they turned onto the street where she lived, he wondered if he should peel off. But there never came a good point to break off the conversation. He ended up walking her all the way to her door.
“Oh shit, I didn’t realise it was so late,” said Renee, checking her phone. “Your family’s going to be wondering where you are. Are you going to be all right getting home?”
“It’s fine. The Tube’s still running.”
“OK. If you’re sure.” Renee’s eyes were wide and dark, enough to drown in. A floral scent drifted from her hair, reminiscent of summer despite the night’s chill.
“Thanks,” she said. “This evening was nicer than it had any right being.”
“I enjoyed it, too,” said Ket Siong.
He wasn’t really paying attention to what he was saying. Renee’s mouth looked soft, the bottom lip full and red. It would be very easy to bend down and kiss her.
“You should go,” said Renee, after a moment. She was blinking a little, as if emerging from a trance. “I don’t want you to miss the last train.”
Ket Siong stepped back. He felt like he’d had his head dunked in cold water himself.
“Yes,” he said. “Good night.”
It was good, that Renee knew she could rely on him. She was treating him like a friend. He’d take that and be grateful for it.
Tuesday was a work from home day for Ket Hau. When Ket Siong stumbled out of his bedroom in the morning, rubbing his eyes, his brother was eating cereal at the dining table they’d shoved in a corner of the living room, between the beat-up sofa left there by the landlady and the old Yamaha upright Ket Siong had grown up playing—the single biggest relic they’d kept of their previous life in Malaysia.
“Morning,” said Ket Hau. He glanced pointedly at the clock. It was quarter to nine, more than an hour later than Ket Siong would usually have got up.
Ket Siong was too groggy to sense danger. He made a grunt that could have been a greeting and went into the narrow galley kitchen to make himself coffee.
Ket Hau joined him to wash his cereal bowl. He dried the bowl on a tea towel and put it in the dish drainer, eyeing Ket Siong as he stirred his Nescafé, yawning.
“Ma says you left kind of suddenly last night,” said Ket Hau. He’d still been at the office when Ket Siong had left to check on Renee. “Was everything OK with what’s her name—the Tan girl?”
“Who?” Ket Siong said, when his phone buzzed in the back pocket of his jeans.
He didn’t usually keep his phone on himself, but it had struck him, as he dragged himself out of bed, that perhaps Renee might text this morning.
There was no reason she should be in touch, of course. She was a busy person. She would be on her way to work, if not there already.
Still. She had texted last night, out of the blue. There was no harm in being prepared.
As it turned out, the message wasn’t from Renee.
Clarissa says OK to meet, so long as I’m there too. We’re free on Friday if that works for you. 10 am?
Ket Siong replied:
That works. Thanks, Alicia. Where do you want to meet?
He emerged into a silence so thick with meaning it was nearly tangible. Ket Hau was looking at him.
“What?” said Ket Siong.
“Nothing,” said his brother. “I was just asking about last night. Went OK? Didn’t see you when you came back.”
“We had a late dinner,” said Ket Siong absently.
Alicia suggested meeting at the café at Foyles. He texted back to agree.
“I was thinking,” said Ket Hau, when nothing further was forthcoming. “We’re definitely filing this case on Thursday—the other side won’t give us any more extensions—so I’m planning to take leave on Friday. We could do a day out with Ma? I was thinking of taking her to New Malden. We could have Korean food, stock up on sesame oil or whatever. You know that kdrama she’s into, with her third son? They eat a lot of barbeque on the show.”
Ma’s “third son” was an exquisite young Korean man who was in the process of transitioning from being in a boy band to an acting career. Ket Hau was the only one who tormented her sometimes by calling him her long-distance boyfriend.
“I know you have classes from four o’clock, but we should be done in good time,” said Ket Hau.
“I’m meeting someone on Friday morning,” said Ket Siong.
Staring at his phone wouldn’t magically manifest a text from Renee. On the same principle as the watched kettle that doesn’t boil, it was more likely she’d text if he didn’t look at his phone.
He’d just decided to put the phone on top of the wardrobe, so he wouldn’t be tempted to keep checking it, when he realised his brother was speaking.
“What?” said Ket Siong.
Ket Hau took a deep breath. His expression was that of a man pushed beyond endurance. “Siong. As Encik Thiyagu used to say”—this was the discipline teacher at their secondary school, a man with whom Ket Hau had had considerably more to do than Ket Siong—“do some more and you will get two tight slaps. Can you put down your phone for five seconds and talk to me like a human being?”
“Sorry, Ko,” said Ket Siong. He shoved his phone back into his pocket. “It was a late night.”
His brother rarely ever lost his patience with Ket Siong. It seemed to have wrong-footed Ket Hau almost as much as Ket Siong. He expelled his breath in a theatrical sigh.
“You didn’t even notice how good I’m being,” he complained. “Didn’t try to find out who you saw for dinner, didn’t ask where you spent the night. What’s the point of virtue? There’s no reward.”
“Where I spent…” Blood mounted Ket Siong’s face. “I spent it here! You saw me. I came out of our room.”
Ket Hau shrugged. “I only woke up at eight. How do I know? Maybe you sneaked in earlier, like last time.
“I won’t pry,” he added, before Ket Siong could protest. “You tell us when you’re ready. But don’t wait too long to introduce the girl to us, OK? Ma will be excited. Even better than a new third-son interview. She used to worry about you, you know. All those girls at church hanging around you after Mass and you didn’t go for any of them… She started reading these books about what if my kid is gay, how to bring him back to the fold, all that.”
Ket Siong raised his head, glancing sidelong at his brother. Ket Hau didn’t seem to notice.
“ I said don’t worry,” he said. “Siong is just the forever alone kind.”
“I’m not—” sputtered Ket Siong. “What about Yi Wen? You all met Yi Wen.”
Ket Hau crossed his arms. “You dated Yi Wen for three months.”
“It was six months,” muttered Ket Siong.
That had been after he’d returned to Malaysia from London for good, as he’d thought then. It had been a strange time. He didn’t remember much of it.
Yi Wen was a clarinetist. She was the one who had broken things off: “You’re a nice guy, but it’s like dating a robot.” He’d liked her directness, but he’d mostly started going out with her because she’d seemed interested and he had been lonely. It hadn’t really helped with the loneliness.
“I didn’t mean ‘forever alone’ in a bad way,” Ket Hau said. “I told Ma, Siong is picky. Once he finds someone he really likes, it’ll be OK. It’s true, isn’t it?”
Ket Siong stared down at his coffee. “It wasn’t a date, last night.”
Ket Hau snorted. “But just so happens you’re seeing her again on Friday?” He settled back against the counter, making himself comfortable. “If a girl’s making that much time for you, I’d say she’s interested.”
“That’s not—that’s a different thing,” said Ket Siong. “I’m not seeing her.”
Guilt squirmed inside him. How could he be annoyed? Ma wasn’t the only one who’d be excited to hear Ket Siong had found someone. Ket Hau was desperate for him to be happy, too. He knew how much Ket Hau blamed himself for their current circumstances. It would be the best gift Ket Siong could offer his brother—assurance that the fact they’d had to move hadn’t ruined all their lives.
Instead, Ket Siong was doing the one thing Ket Hau had asked him not to do: risking their peace, on the mere possibility of getting an answer about Stephen.
Ket Hau was not privy to Ket Siong’s inner turmoil, of course. He said, “But there is a her.”
“She’s just a friend,” said Ket Siong.
Ket Hau said, disbelieving, “Are you telling me a girl has friendzoned you? Yap Ket Siong, the number one friendzoner in the Klang Valley? Stephen used to say if they piled up all the girls you disappointed one on top of the other, they’d reach up to KLCC Skybridge there. ‘Climb up like a ladder and you can save thirty-five ringgit, don’t need to buy a ticket.’”
Ket Siong remembered. It was a good sign that Ket Hau had mentioned Stephen of his own accord. Maybe he was starting to feel a little better about things.
“I was the one who said we should be friends,” said Ket Siong.
Ket Hau hummed at the back of his throat.
“I see,” he said, in that annoying tone elders adopted to indicate that what they saw was precisely what you did not want them to see.
Ket Siong knocked back the remainder of his coffee, washed the mug, and put it away. This was intended to indicate that it was time to wind up the conversation and get on with their day. Ket Hau was meant to start work at nine thirty anyway, and it was twenty past.
Ket Hau did not take the hint.
“You want my advice?” he said, just as Ket Siong’s phone vibrated in his back pocket.
Once. Twice. A delay, then a third buzz.
“No?” said Ket Siong.
Alicia had no reason to text him three times. It must be the parent of one of his students, asking to reschedule a lesson. It would be rude not to respond promptly to a customer.
Ignoring Ket Siong’s subtle attempt to sidle away, Ket Hau said:
“Life’s too short, Siong. You and I know, better than most people.” He looked Ket Siong in the eye, unexpectedly serious. “If you like this girl, don’t go and give her this bullshit about being friends. Ask her out. If she’s not interested, go find somebody else. Don’t waste your time, OK?”
He clapped Ket Siong on the shoulder and went off to their room, leaving Ket Siong staring after him.
He was roused out of his stupor by his phone vibrating again.
Ket Hau had shut the door behind him. Ket Siong grabbed his phone out of his pocket.
My headddddd
Four and a half cocktails was too many cocktails
A GIF followed, of a bleary-eyed SpongeBob SquarePants getting up off the floor, swaying and burping out a large bubble, accompanied by the caption: This is me
Then, simply:
Thanks for everything, last night
Ket Siong looked at Renee’s messages for a long time.
Ket Hau wasn’t wrong. There were any number of things Ket Siong could say to Renee, to try to set them on a different path. He went so far as to type some of these things out.
Any time. I was glad to hear from you. Call on me whenever you need me.
But Renee had made it clear what she wanted from him. It wasn’t any of this. He deleted the drafts and looked up from his phone. Ran his hand through his hair, breathing out slowly.
No problem. Hope you feel better soon.