Epilogue #2
“What? What’s wrong?” Má demands before I can get a word out.
“I didn’t get Aaron’s tux pressed!”
“You scared me.” Má deflates against her chair. “Don’t worry Dani, no one cares about your cat’s tuxedo.”
“But Aaron Purr—”
“Aaron Purr Tsai-Tran,” I sneak in.
Dani nods. “Aaron Purr Tsai-Tran is going to be in the wedding photos too.”
“Tr?i ??t oi. You’re joking, right?” Má rolls her eyes. She’s still bitter that her introduction to our newest family member started with “We have exciting news,” but didn’t end with us showing her a sonogram.
“How dare you,” I tsk at her, feigning outrage. Wrapping my arms around Dani from behind, I make sure to add, “That’s our child.”
“Give me a real grandchild first, then I let you joke about the cat.”
“And that’s my cue to leave.” Mr. Tsai sighs and makes his exit, but not before giving me a consoling good-luck pat on the shoulder. Within seconds of his departure, my own father has made his appearance in the room, sliding a remote control into my hand.
“Parker, if you’re not watching the game, turn on the karaoke for Ba, okay?”
“Right now?” My jaw drops. I can feel blood rising to my neck. “Is it that urgent that you sing ‘Careless Whisper’ the night before my wedding?”
A hearty wail makes me turn on the spot, and Má is sobbing loudly into a tissue. This is nothing new; she’s been a mess of emotions since picking us up at the airport. “What? Why are you crying now?”
She rotates her phone for me to see the email on the screen.
“You’re crying over a shipping notification?”
“They finally shipped your engagement photos! They took so long, I waited months! Coi! So beautiful!”
In the preview, Dani and I, in traditional Vietnamese wedding attire, are posing at Pebble Beach with the Brooklyn Bridge as the backdrop.
The shoot was done by some famous wedding photographer who Dani claims is a big deal—a gift from her boss, Estelle.
In her modern red áo dài, she looks absolutely beautiful.
And did anyone really doubt I could pull off royal blue and gold dragons?
“Dani, I was thinking.” Those are the last words we want to hear when Mr. Tsai moseys back into the kitchen. “My cousin from Taipei has his own band. Maybe you could squeeze him in for a performance. They do a great rendition of Andy Lau’s ‘Wedding March.’”
At this, Ba immediately perks up. “You’re changing the program? I can sing something for you. Dani, what’s your favorite George Michael song?”
Oh my god. There’s so much going on. Why did I assume the Tsai-Tran-Pham trifecta would let me marry the woman I love in peace?
I peek at Dani, and she’s gone hollow-eyed.
Her brain has retreated to its safe place.
I know that look. My fiancée needs to decompress, and it’s up to me to sweep her away from this madness.
“Hey.” I take her hand. “Let’s go for a drive.”
For a blissful moment of time, Dani and I sit in silence in the Jeep, parked in front of Rocky’s Diner. Dani was determined to overwrite the trauma from our past, so we made a habit of coming here once we started dating. Now it’s simply the spot that makes our favorite strawberry milkshakes.
“We’re getting married tomorrow.” I still get the urge to vocalize it from time to time. It’s like saying it out loud makes it all the more real. It’s finally happening.
“We’re getting married tomorrow,” she repeats, and she squeezes my hand. “Are you nervous?”
“Nope.” And I mean it. I’ve never been more sure about anything. Even football doesn’t come close. “Are you?”
“I’m nervous about walking down the aisle. I keep having nightmares where I fall on my face before I get to the altar.” She takes a long sip of her milkshake. “But I’m not nervous about everything that comes after that.”
“I am a little concerned that my dad is treating tomorrow like another karaoke night,” I say as Dani passes the Styrofoam cup to me. “Do you get the feeling everyone else is making our wedding about them?”
“Yes! God, this was supposed to be chill, stress-free. I mean, flying all the way out here was one thing, but I thought that scheduling a wedding on a Friday would deter people from coming. Everyone—even our sympathy invites—is showing up! And they’re all driving me insane!
All my single cousins are asking me to introduce them to your athlete friends.
Like I won’t be too busy getting married to play matchmaker!
Don’t get me started on how everyone’s a food connoisseur, all of a sudden.
Everyone has an opinion on fried bao for cocktail hour. ”
Normally, I love listening to Dani fly off the rails on a tangent. She can make anything sound interesting. But there’s a difference between a spiel on how Fallen Angels both is and isn’t the sequel to Chungking Express and the kind of rant that happens when she’s losing her sense of control.
Suddenly, she whips her head around at me. Her long, dark hair is a pretty flourish under the diner’s neon lights. “Should we just elope?”
I care about the wedding. I really do. But if it meant I got to be Dani’s husband by tomorrow, I would marry her anywhere. The only thing is, I know how much this wedding means to her. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have lugged that binder everywhere for nearly a year. “You don’t mean that.”
“It’s true, I don’t. I could never do that to C?—I mean, Má.” She falls back against her seat and grins to herself. “I like the sound of that. Má.”
Dani ultimately decided not to invite her mother to the wedding.
This way, she said, she couldn’t be disappointed by the inevitable excuse for her not showing up.
I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t regret her choice, and for a while I considered trying to change her mind.
But her mom caught wind of the engagement anyway and had a bouquet delivered with an offer to paint a Beatrice Chen original for us.
She didn’t ask about the wedding, and when I saw how this made Dani breathe a sigh of relief, I took it as a private understanding reached between the two.
The very next morning, Dani called my mom to see if she’d fly over for dress shopping.
As she put it, “The mother of the bride should be there.” The answer was obvious.
I hold up her hand and kiss her knuckles. “At least we have Bali after.”
Her face relaxes with appreciation. “I’m already picturing myself in that private infinity pool.”
“And now I’m picturing you naked in that infinity pool.
” With that image, I’m taken to my own happy place.
I can’t help it. The five-foot-four woman next to me in her plaid pajama bottoms drives me wild.
In a password-protected album on my phone, there are exactly three nudes of Dani from our short tenure apart, before my move to New York.
They might be the most sacred possessions to my name.
I peek over at her in the passenger seat.
She pops the lid off the cup and downs the last of the milkshake with gusto.
And now with a napkin methodically folded into a square, she’s going to wipe the foam off her upper lip.
So cute. It’s a funny thing to feel yourself falling in love with someone over and over again.
In my mind, I can pick out all those small instances, saving each one like a snapshot.
I had the same feeling the night Dani showed up at the St. Regis in that black dress with the mercilessly low neckline.
My head was a void sucking up any intelligible thought, leaving behind a single, resounding Wow.
I was trying desperately to keep my composure around her.
Whiskey was my lifeline, and I was only getting through our conversation at the bar by the grace of alcohol.
I thought about kissing her all night. I didn’t expect she’d beat me to it.
Another moment burned in my memory is when she wore my jersey to my last game as a Green Valley Griffin.
I’d never seen a prettier girl in my life.
And the same was true in that ballroom. I later learned that the black dress belonged to Charlotte.
It almost seems like a crime that I’ll never see Dani in it again or get to take it off her one more time.
The only thing that’s going to top all that is when I see her in her wedding dress.
“I’m going to get one more for the road.” Dani motions to the empty cup and hops out of the Jeep. I try not to check out her ass when she walks back to the diner, but it’s no use.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, snapping me out of my personal paradise.
“I want to go over my best man speech with you.” It’s Nathan.
“I told you, whatever you wrote will be fine. You know me and Dani better than anyone else.”
“So, I can talk about how my commitment-phobe little brother is getting hitched before me? And the time I caught you two sneaking around on Thanksgiving?”
Nathan clued in to our relationship even before Dani and I knew what we were.
I asked him how he figured it out, and he said, “The hickey on her neck after you two disappeared into your bedroom? You’re lucky our parents are so oblivious.
They still think hooking up only happens when you spend the night.
It’s like they’ve never heard of a quickie.
” A disturbing visual that I could’ve gone my entire life without. I hate him.
“You two have so much history, and I want my speech to do it justice. It’s got to make Dani laugh and cry.”
“We’ll review it at the hotel together,” I concede.
I should be a little more compassionate with him.
I’m sure he’s over Irene by now; it’s been two years since the engagement fell through.
But it can’t be easy to watch all the excitement from the sidelines and think about how the centerpieces look like the ones your exfiancée picked out.
I suppose that’s why he booked a two-bedroom suite for us tonight.
He said it was to keep me company, but I think he’s trying to get away from the wedding hysteria at home.