Chapter 17. Bubble Tea Makes Everything Better
CHAPTER 17
Bubble Tea Makes Everything Better
If birthdays were deemed an unworthy celebration in my family, Lunar New Years were the complete opposite. Traditionally, it was the perfect time to catch up with relatives, to eat an obscene amount of food, and for kids to collect piles of angpaos. Everyone would be encouraged to wear new clothes, preferably in red, famously believed to scare away bad spirits and represent success and good fortune. It was one of my favorite celebrations of the year, because I got to see out-of-town or overseas cousins that I wouldn’t normally see otherwise.
When my Engkong and Emak were still alive, and whenever they came for a visit to the States, they used to tell me stories about how their families couldn’t celebrate their heritage back home in Jakarta. The early Indonesian government had prohibited their citizens of Chinese descent from observing traditional Chinese customs and strongly encouraged them to shed much of their Chinese identity. As a result, people like my parents and Alec’s mother had grown up with Indonesian as their mother tongue and had adopted Indonesian-sounding names. My father’s surname, originally Pang in Cantonese, was altered to the more acceptable Pangestu. The owner of Java Spice, Mr. Tanujaya, would formerly be a Tan. Kim’s family name, Halim, would be an Indonesianized version of Lim.
But even though the discriminatory laws had been revoked after Indonesia’s fourth president, my grandparents said it was still felt in many areas, causing many Chinese Indonesians to flee overseas. For some people, the minute they settled in a new country, they reverted to their Chinese surnames and began to observe the traditional customs again, keen to rediscover their ethnic traditions. Like my parents. Not only that, but all our celebrations were also tinged with touches of Indonesia, so to me, Lunar New Year represented a delightful fusion of the two cultures that were the essence of my family.
And, of course, my parents, being my parents, had taken it a step further: using the occasion as the perfect time for them to network and show off.
Every year, without fail, they would invite their wealthy friends and business partners over. The preparation for the day would take at least a week, with my mother meticulously planning and executing everything with military precision. She’d have long, strategically planned lists of gifts and hampers to be sent to said friends and business partners. Our house would be cleaned from top to bottom; every corner wiped and dusted, every nook and cranny swept and scrubbed, any unnecessary clutter ruthlessly discarded. Eric and I had had to show her that our rooms were spotless, and it had probably been one of the more stressful times of my life, waiting for her to finish her thorough inspection.
Then there was the food. She always made sure we served an elaborate, lavish banquet that could put even the poshest Michelin star restaurant to shame. Eight different whole fish dishes; platters of oysters, crabs, and lobsters; gourmet spring rolls; all kinds of noodles and dumplings; egg tarts and sesame balls; and plates of yee sang—the good luck salad. We’d also have some Indonesian-style desserts: kue keranjang, lapis legit, and bakpia, along with piles of oranges, pears, longans, and lychees. Everything was supposed to represent wealth and prosperity, but more importantly, it was designed to impress their important guests.
Once everyone was fed, it was time to trot out the lion dance troupe. I didn’t know how our neighbors tolerated the noise, year after year. Because for the next twenty minutes, the house would be filled with loud, thunderous beats of drums, cymbals, and erupting firecrackers.
It was basically similar to our annual New Year’s Eve bash, only on steroids.
But even though my parents had placed a slightly twisted importance on the tradition, I’d always associated Lunar New Year with joy, and a fun day of celebration with family and friends. So when Jenna sent digital flyers about the annual parade and festival happening in Chinatown to our WhatsApp group chat, we immediately made plans to check it out.
It was a gloomy Sunday, but not even the imposing gray clouds looming above could stop the hundreds of people crowding Port Benedict Chinatown. It stretched between three streets in the middle of the city center, about fifteen minutes’ walk from the Plaza, marked at the entrance with a magnificent red gateway and two stone lions on each side. Rows of Asian restaurants, grocery stores, hairdressers, and cute boutiques lined the streets, with colorful signs in Mandarin, Japanese, or Vietnamese.
Right then, the street fair was in full swing. Bright red-and-yellow lanterns hung above, strings of firecrackers were draped across shop entrances, and the various stalls selling food, drinks, and decorations were all packed with customers. All the wonderful festivities should have brought back some fond memories of home, but somehow, this year, I couldn’t get into the right frame of mind to enjoy the celebration.
Kim and Jenna were walking ahead of me, and I could hear Jenna telling Kim about the various Lunar New Year festivals they had in Australia, in her hometown of Melbourne.
“There’d be one every weekend in different suburbs,” she was saying. “But the biggest one is in Melbourne Chinatown, where they’d have the dragon dance parade. The whole of February would be chock-full of these festivals and eating a shitload of food.” She sighed. “I miss it. My mother wanted me to come home this year, because we had relatives visiting from Singapore and Malaysia, but work has been super busy.”
“That sounds awesome,” Kim said. “I wish I’d grown up with those traditions. My grandparents don’t really celebrate them anymore. We didn’t even do red packets when I was growing up. Hey, maybe we should make this our new annual tradition!”
They continued chatting, and I heard Kim telling Jenna about an artisan brand of hand-dyed alpaca yarn she’d found online. I zoned out after a while, as my mind drifted back to Alec’s last message. The revelation was too much for my brain to comprehend. And I had so many questions. Why hadn’t he said those words when I confessed my crush to him all those years ago? Why was he so cold and aloof when we were younger? I’d been obsessing, analyzing, and re-analyzing his five short, devastating words, alternating between disbelief, thrill, anger, and finally defeat, because after all these years, he’d obviously gotten over his crush, since he was now interested in someone else, wasn’t he?
“Whoa.” Jenna gasped loudly, stopping in her tracks, causing me to bump into her. “Ellie, is that Chris Pratt?”
I blinked. “Huh?”
She pointed to a man standing at one of the stalls on my right. “There. Wait, it’s Chris Pine.” She squinted her eyes, presumably to get a better look at whoever she was looking at. “No, hang on, it’s the first Captain America himself.”
“What?” I craned my neck, as Kim let out a snicker. Realizing that I’d fallen for their joke, I rolled my eyes. “Ha-ha, hilarious, you guys.”
“You’ve been off in la-la land for the past ten minutes.” Jenna grinned, as we continued walking. “I had to get your attention somehow.”
We stopped at a bubble tea stall, and I waited to answer as we ordered our drinks. “Sorry. I had a late night,” I said. “Anyway, what were you saying about the artisan yarn, Kim?”
“I’m stocking them, they’re coming next week. But never mind that, how are things with Signor Building Expert?”
“Nowhere. Confusing. He’s interested in someone else, remember?”
The bubble tea lady called out our number, then handed us Kim’s brown sugar milk tea, Jenna’s lychee oolong tea, and my oat milk tea.
“He’s not,” Kim insisted. “I’m even willing to bet my entire shop inventory, including my brand-new expensive artisan yarn. That’s how confident I am.”
“You’re wrong. I saw pictures of them looking very friendly together.”
“Show me.”
I pulled out my phone, thumbed open his account, and showed them photos of Alec and the cute brunette.
“That’s not her,” Kim immediately said.
“How do you know? He liked all her most recent posts.”
“I liked all your posts,” Kim pointed out. “Doesn’t mean I’m interested in you. He could just be a very supportive friend, like me.”
Jenna was scrolling through the photos. “They’re mostly group pictures, and she’s not overly touchy-feely with him. I don’t think there’s anything between them.”
“Then why did he tell me he liked someone else? I don’t understand.”
“I told you already,” Jenna replied. “Self-preservation.”
I decided I needed to tell them both because I had spent way too much time overanalyzing my own thoughts. “Something happened.”
Kim’s eyes widened. “Between you and Signor Hottie?”
Jenna looked excited. “Something of the sexy, moaning, groaning kind?”
Sipping my tea absentmindedly, I told them everything, including his last text messages. Jenna was smiling from ear to ear when I finished, while Kim was watching me with a shrewd look on her face.
“You know what that means, don’t you?” She waved her cup of milk tea at me. “Jenna and I were right. He likes you.”
Jenna nodded. “Otherwise he wouldn’t be going out of his way to do all those things for you. He got you cute pajamas in your favorite color, for goodness’ sake! It might seem simple, but trust me, it speaks volumes. It shows that he’s paying attention. I’ve never had anyone I’ve dated in the past buy me cute pajamas or made me birthday noodles.”
“You need to find better exes,” Kim commented. “But I agree.”
“My point is,” Jenna continued, “I understand that you might be reluctant to trust him and admit to yourself that you like him, because it’s scary. You’re scared that he might hurt you again. But he’s doing all the right things now. So maybe he’s not the same person that had hurt you in the past. Maybe he’s changed.”
Her next words were drowned by the booming, rhythmic drumbeats, and the cymbals and gongs that filled the air, signaling the start of the dragon dance performance. Ten costumed dancers, each holding poles attached to the long body of a giant, fierce-looking red-and-gold dragon puppet, began to move in time with the beats; swaying and swishing the poles in a wavelike motion, bringing the puppet to life. The crowd took videos as the dancers holding the heads began jumping over the dragon’s middle section, followed by the rest of the performers, before turning around in a spiraled formation, creating a mesmerizing visual spectacle.
But I wasn’t paying attention to the dragon dance, or the lion dancers that appeared after.
I was thinking about what Jenna had said.
Because she was right.
The younger Alec from a decade ago probably wouldn’t even remember when my birthday was, or what my favorite color was. He wouldn’t even know what low-GI foods or insulin pumps were, let alone want to learn about how they work. That Alec had run for the hills at the first sign of trouble.
But the older version of him had more than proven he had changed. That he wasn’t the same person who had hurt and abandoned me all those years ago. He did thoughtful things to look after me, wonderful things that made me realize that he accepted and appreciated me for who I was, diabetes and all. He made a conscious effort to get to know the real me, to be involved in my world, even though a lot of other people didn’t care to, or even want to. And if I ever needed proof that he was now a different, a better person, all I needed to do was look at the ever-expanding list of Alec’s Supremely Thoughtful Gestures.
Maybe Jenna was right. That it was okay for me to finally admit that I like him.
That I more than like him.
My stomach sank as realization hit me: I was falling for him again, in a major way. It was inevitable, hurtling toward me at a breakneck speed.
And no matter how many lists or plans I made, there was nothing I could do to stop it.