Chapter 37
CHAPTER 37
One week later
I roll over and grimace when the remote jabs my ribs. I freeze, then slump back into the couch again, remembering where I am. And that Mei’s not here at Johnny’s with me. It’s been a week and a half since I saw her last. Ten days, working on eleven. No word from her to tell me she’s okay. Or tell me where she went, maybe? If she plans on ever coming back once she “fixes” everything?
It’s just me, Johnny, and his roommates. I’m the stranger here, but it’s a billion times better than being the stranger at The Clubhouse with New Mom. Actually, no—I’d have to have an original mom to have a new one, and we know how that went. So just…Kenna. Kenna who’s nice. Kenna who makes Dad smile like I haven’t seen him smile, ever. Kenna who loves Jesus and is honest and straightforward and who I think I’d even like if Dad wasn’t all over her. If I hadn’t walked in on them on the couch. The same couch, in the same compromising situation I once was with Mei. Wish Meemaw was the one to walk in on that private moment instead of me.
Think I’d like Kenna if having her around didn’t remind me that I’m a guest at The Clubhouse now, a third wheel. I’d probably like her if having a girl around didn’t remind me every second of every day that I’m Ray Miller 2.0: no girl and will hate women for the rest of my life because they ruin everything. Dad only made it single for eighteen years. I’ll crush his record.
I snatch the remote and turn on the TV, desperate for noise to drown my thoughts, but the Food Network is featuring Chinese cuisine. Click. The Discovery Channel’s uncovering the secrets of Asia. Click, click, click. HGTV is doing House Hunters International. In Taiwan. Of course they are.
I swear, shut off the TV, and toss the remote on the floor. Johnny’s apartment is pretty quiet since it’s four in the morning, and he and his roommates just went to bed a couple hours ago. It’s only been two days since Dad dropped me off here. I thanked him and hugged him goodbye before closing the apartment door. In all the time I spent worrying about Dad being alone, it never crossed my mind I’d be the one flying solo in the end.
I dig my fingertips into my chest over my heart. I swear I’m bleeding internally. I woke up every ten minutes last night feeling like I was suffocating, but it was just me gasping for air that smells like moldy laundry and stale grilled cheese.
Thoughts and memories of Mei are crawling all over me, pinning me down and forcing me to remember the past nine months. When my phone finally says 6 AM, I stagger to my feet, adjust the brace on my leg, and fold up my couch bed. I hobble into the bathroom and brace myself against the counter. Looking at the mirror, I wanna rip it off the wall. Smash it. But Johnny saunters in, dressed for work.
“Hey, man.” He stands beside me and adjusts his tie in the mirror. “Get any sleep last night?”
“Nah.”
He glances at me out of the corner of his eye, buttoning his shirt sleeves. “Listen, maybe it’s time to?—”
“Nope.” I shake my head, hoping he’ll stop.
“Okay, okay. Fine, but I’m gonna help you through this, bro. Promise.” Johnny looks at me with as much sincerity as he possesses. “It’s all gonna be smooth. You work on getting that facial hair under control, I’ll work on the rest of your life. Like getting you a job. I’ll see if they’ll hire you at the restaurant. That cool with you?”
I nod to satisfy him. Johnny slaps my back, and I teeter a little. He laughs, so I slap the back of his head.
“Alright, alright—sorry, man. Forgot you’re crippled. For the first time in our lives, I could cream you. Wanna go for a run later?” He ducks and darts out of the bathroom when I try to hit him without losing my balance.
“Okay, but for reals,” he says, popping his head around the doorjamb. “Couple people coming over this afternoon. I’m trying to get off early, but if they get here before me, answer the door, man. Let them in. Act civilized. Catch you later. Eat whatever you can find.”
But what I’ll actually do is lay on the couch, stare at the ceiling, and slip back and forth between reality and memory. Torture myself with Mei thoughts and wonder where she went. Think about her note and what it meant or didn’t mean. Why’d she have to be so vague?
I shower and brush my teeth but don’t bother shaving before I assume my position on the couch, my leg itchy and hot and restless. A few hours later, someone knocks on the door and since Johnny isn’t home, I push myself up and hobble over. I open the door and stare at the person on the other side, my hand gripping the doorknob.
Her eyes widen and travel down my body, then return to my face, confused. “Marcus?”
I’ve given a girl everything I have—emptied myself for her. So when my eyes meet this girl’s, it takes me a few long seconds to register who she is. But once I do, everything stills. “Tavah?” My voice sounds like I’m happy to see her, but my jacked up heart retreats farther inside my hollow body, unable to offer emotions.
“It’s…been a minute.” Her eyebrows go up, then down. She’s confused. Not sure if it’s from seeing me or seeing me like this. “Prom seems like forever ago.”
My heart burrows deeper. “Sorry. Yeah, wow. You surprised me.” She hasn’t taken her eyes off mine, and my insides are squirming. “It seems like a lifetime ago.”
“Yeah.” A smile finally spreads across her face.
A giggling group of girls comes up the stairs behind her, and Tavah turns toward them. “You’ll never believe who’s here, guys!”
The girls stop and stare. I recognize them from high school but have no clue what their names are, so I smile and offer a half-wave. “Uh…come on in. Johnny’ll be here in a bit.” I edge the door open wider, looking down as the girls walk in.
I try to recover and drag my eyes to Tavah’s whose are just waiting. But for what? Acknowledgement? Actual words? I can’t even breathe normally these days, so thoughts to words? Not likely.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, her smile shining right on me. “And what happened?” She points to my brace.
With superhuman effort, I haul my voice up from its depths of despair. “Uh, I live here. Now. As of two days ago. But just for now. Just until next semester starts. Hopefully. Looking for a place. I…had surgery.”
Tavah tilts her head. “I thought you were at Stanford.”
The statement punches me—lays my mind out cold. But before I can pick up my brain and slap it back to life, the front door opens again, and a wave of relief that Johnny’s home crashes over me.
But it’s not Johnny. And he didn’t warn me that Lin was included in the “people coming over”.
She flings the door shut and turns around, and when her eyes sweep across me, they crash land on my face. The impact jolts me so hard I bolt for the bathroom, limping and hobbling until I slam the door and ease onto the closed toilet. I lean forward, breathing in and out, and the swell of nausea subsides. I have to get away from girls who aren’t my wife but are too much a part of her. Away from silence that leads to memories. I want the memories, just not with Tavah and a bunch of girls watching me. Not with Lin and all the questions she’ll ask that are so much bigger than the ones I want to ask her. Like if she knows where Mei is.
I’m three blocks from The Clubhouse. My leg is throbbing, my armpits are screaming from the crutches, and I’m breathing like an eighty-year-old lifetime smoker. Or maybe it’s anxiety from being back in Chinatown. I thought being here would freak me out way less than being at Johnny’s, surrounded by girls who aren’t Mei. I was wrong. I’m being violently reminded why I moved to Johnny’s a few days ago.
Dad had called in the middle of my meltdown, and I’d answered. He’d called to catch up and invite me to Sunday dinner, but I told him I wanted to drop by tonight instead. His voice had gone from shock to excitement. I’d gotten out of Johnny’s apartment as fast as I could, telling the gawking girls hanging out in the kitchen that I had an appointment as I’d hobbled past them, Lin on my heels trying to talk to me until I shut the door in her face.
I stop my desperate pilgrimage to The Clubhouse when I round the corner and see Zhang’s. But it’s not Zhang’s anymore; it’s a breakfast place I hadn’t noticed in my post-Indiana, post-Mei, painkiller haze.
I stand on the sidewalk, watching people walk through the door. The croissant sculptures in the window display don’t even know they’ve shoved a part of my life completely out of existence. I wanna limp through the door and yell at someone for not leaving one freaking piece of my life where it belongs, but a voice I wasn’t ready to hear calls to me. I look around and meet a pair of familiar eyes and a smile that squeezes my heart.
“Marcus Miller, I have missed you so, boy.” This woman looks like Guo and sounds like Guo, but it can’t be Guo. It’s a different old woman sitting in a wheelchair outside the shop where there used to be a bamboo chair.
“It seems we are very different than the last time we saw each other,” Guo says, motioning toward my leg. She sets her forearms on the arms of the wheelchair like it’s an old friend.
I can’t find my voice; it took off at the sight of her. Finally, I manage to gather enough of it to form two audible words. “What happened?” I rasp and cautiously move forward to take her hands. “Guo?”
“Ugly Chao happened. Though he wasn’t brave enough to do the job himself, of course, so he sent another ugly man to break my knees. He didn’t get what he wanted and threw a fit about it.” She holds my hand, letting out a long sigh. “But I think you must know what he wanted his ugly men to do because he tried the same on you, yes?” She searches my face, but I look away. “I am so sorry, boy.” She blinks up at me but I’m frozen, information slamming against me. “Tell me everything. Why you are back. And where is Mei Li?”
What am I supposed to do? Sit and cry to Guo who’s in a wheelchair because of Mei and me? Given the chance, I’d kill Nick for what he did to Guo, then kill him again for what he did to us. I shake my head. Look at the cement, my eyes following the spiderweb of cracks. “She’s fixing her life. Without me. So I’m here. Starting a different one, I guess.”
Guo studies her lap. “Do you know where she is?”
I shake my head. “No. Do you?”
Guo doesn’t answer my question but asks another. “So she is alone somewhere?”
“Yep.” Makes two of us.
“That’s not good.”
“Nope,” I say, barely a whisper. “Guo, I…unless you know where she is, I don’t wanna talk about her.”
She smooths my hand but won’t look at me. “I do not know where she is.”
I want to go back to when I knew—all the way back. Rewind time and walk by this shop, talk to Guo about my day, and steal looks at Mei’s window, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. I want to leave notes for her again and wait for the text telling me she got them and can’t wait to see me after school. I want Guo to tease me and have functioning legs and all the answers like she used to. I could use a whole pot of her tea, laced with everything she’s got that will take me away and make me forget.
“But I do know one thing,” she says.
My head snaps to Guo, my spiraling thoughts suspended on their way down. “What?”
She taps the arm of her wheelchair. “She could never stay away from you.”
My jaw clenches. “She’s done a great job of it. For almost two weeks. No call, no text, nothing. A few vague words scribbled on an envelope saying she was out.”
Guo nods, silence weaving between us when what I want is answers from someone about where Mei is and why. I know I said things. I know my words hurt her, but to leave? I’ve never once considered leaving her, no matter how frustrated or hurt I was.
I turn from Guo so she can’t see the tears in my eyes. I get myself under control and turn back to her, but a woman inside the shop distracts me. For a second, I swear it’s Mei, and my body jerks to a stop. But then the woman turns. Not Mei. Of course not. Mei’s out there somewhere, far away from here and me. Somewhere Nick could find her.
I look away, and all I can see is Guo in her wheelchair and this once-familiar street that feels tilted and empty despite the crowds and cars. My old bedroom window, the invisible trail I wore in the sidewalk between Mei’s apartment and mine, mentally and physically. The only thing I don’t see is Mei, but something inside me builds. The woman in the shop wasn’t her, but Mei’s out there somewhere. She can’t leave me with only a note that says nothing. I wanna ask her why. Talk to her. Apologize. Work things out or make her tell me we’re over to my face.
“I’m so sorry, Guo.” I’m sorry for failing, for disappointing her, for everything that happened to her because of us. For the choices we made and the running and the lying and the stupid diamonds—the reason we had to keep running. And Mei took them with her when she left, like she wanted a target on her back so she could run some more.
I swallow. We didn’t get to talk about any of this before she took off. And I still haven’t told Dad what Nick was really after; there was too much happening, and my feelings were blocking the way for any real words to come out. But if I took him up on his offer to find Mei, he’d find the diamonds. If he found those, he could use them to lure Nick. Hopefully far, far away from Mei. If he finds Nick, the whole thing’s over. Problem fixed, Mei and me together, no more running.
My heart picks up and I squeeze Guo’s hand, grounding myself. Then I kiss the top of her head. “Gotta go. But I’ll stop by again soon.”
I turn and hobble across the street. An oncoming car screeches to a stop, and I limp faster toward The Clubhouse. Seeing Guo’s willpower to keep going despite everything she’s been through loads me with guilt and sadness but also gives me a shot of determination. Maybe she’s right: maybe Mei really wouldn’t stay away from me. Maybe there’s another reason she left. I don’t know. But what I do know for sure is that Dad finds missing people for a living and this time, I need it to be Mei.