Chapter 32
Chapter
Greg insists on driving us on Saturday—and he does take more of an active interest in maintaining his old Acura than I do my old Honda, so I don’t fight him.
For the first hour of the drive, we crawl down wide Orange County freeways, stuck in traffic, vague anxiety about seeing my family swirling in my gut.
Even though I’m relieved to be spending time with Greg again, I can’t figure out how to fill the silence between us.
He taps his fingers on the wheel and offers up some old gossip about mutual friends, but eventually he runs out and goes quiet.
Greg glances over and asks, “You nervous?”
“I’m that obvious?” I lean my head against the window. “I don’t know, I feel like I’m bad at family.”
Somehow going to see my relatives always feels like a test of character—a spotlight shining on everything that’s lacking about my life. The way Mom would pointedly say, Jamie is dating a banker or Rosie graduated from med school or Why can’t you be helpful like your cousins?
“Why do you think you’re bad at family?” Greg asks.
I never managed to put this feeling to words so bluntly, back when we were close.
“Mom always seemed unhappy with me, I guess.”
Greg turns that over in his head for a while, focused on the road, sunglasses on.
He looks even better than usual, somehow.
My eyes skate over his smooth cheeks, his full lips.
He’s dressed casually today, and his dad’s chain is out over his T-shirt.
It seems like he got a fresh haircut for this occasion.
“I love your mom, but…” Greg says, picking up his thought after such a long pause, I assumed we’d dropped it. “But maybe…that wasn’t a you problem. That she was unhappy.”
I turn to face the ocean, chewing over what he said.
Mom always said I should try to be warmer, friendlier, more inviting—but in some ways, she was closed off and cold herself.
Tita Wendy would rib her about it. You’re so aloof, hard to know, she’d say, swatting at her with a rolled-up newspaper after she tried to introduce Mom to some of her friends and she gave them a chilly reception.
The conditions must have aligned just right when Tita Wendy broke through Mom’s defenses, like an eclipse or something—to be repeated only once every few decades.
I glance at Greg again, and with the ocean to my right and the sun in my eyes, flying down the coast, I have the sudden powerful urge to run a hand through the hair on the back of his neck. But it passes quickly, like always.
As we walk up to Tito Rob and Tita Rina’s house, awkward moments from years past play in my head.
We’d come down here once or twice a year when I was growing up, and I was always struck by how close all my other cousins were, more like siblings.
Mom wanted me to get closer to them—but then, from the way she acted, it also seemed like she didn’t want me to get too close.
The way she made excuses not to come herself.
The way she’d constantly tell me to stay out of the sun, and lied about where she was from.
The way she panicked when I was in kindergarten and I’d been spending time with another Filipino girl whose family came over more recently, and I’d started saying peenk instead of pink.
And I know, I can’t blame her for everything.
But somewhere along the line, I started to feel like I’m all sharp edges and uncomfortable pauses around my cousins, where they’re warm and natural and fluid.
I was clueless about all these things they just knew—card games at Christmas, how to dance, how to score 100 at karaoke.
I was clumsy at everything, uncomfortable in my skin.
We go inside, and there’s a cluster of Titos sitting around the TV watching basketball.
I recognize a few of them, the rotating cast of older men who are vaguely related to me but aren’t my mom’s actual brothers, and whose names I would probably mix up, if you quizzed me.
One time when I was twelve and I brought a Percy Jackson book to read at one of these things, the guy in the center of the couch asked me why I wasn’t reading the Bible instead.
Through the screen door to the backyard, I see Tito Rob—my mom’s actual younger brother—working the grill. We head out into the backyard, and he spots me and throws his arms out wide.
“Ruby!” he says, giving me a stiff bear hug, still holding the tongs he was using in one hand. “It’s been too long. I haven’t seen you since the, since the—” He was probably going to say funeral, but somewhere midsentence maybe he regretted bringing it up.
“Yes!” I say, patting him on the back. “It’s been too long.”
“Come on, help yourself, eat.” He gestures with the tongs at the long table crammed full with aluminum casserole dishes.
I make myself a plate, loading up on Tita Rina’s famous lumpia.
It’s been years since I had these—the timing was always wrong when I came back from the East Coast for a visit.
I can’t help but immediately pick one up and take a bite.
The crunchy wrapping, the rich, savory filling—it’s food like a warm embrace.
Mom would get annoyed any time I said something about Tita Rina’s lumpia. Who has the time to make that? she’d say. Of course she can, being married to someone who can help.
“You’re a worrier like your mom, ha?” Tito Rob says, catching me frozen in front of the food table mid-bite. He sets down a serving dish of barbecue skewers and points at me. “Ah ah ah! I can see it. You’re worrying right now.”
“You got me!” I say, doing a single finger gun with my free hand.
“You know, Roobs…” Tito Rob snaps the tongs together, fidgeting. “You’re welcome here anytime. Whatever is happening. You’re all alone up there—we worry about you.” He reaches out to squeeze my arm with his non-tong-holding hand.
“Have some more,” he adds, nodding toward the table. “Take some home, too, if you want.”
Maybe I’ve been dense in the past—maybe I’d block out every little thing that showed they love me, selectively focus on the dissonant moments and ways I was coming up short. Maybe everything that’s happened lately has heightened my senses, disoriented me so much I’m paying more attention.
But the mixture of worry and acceptance in his voice, and the gentle way he tells me to eat more—it sounds so much like We love you, it’s overwhelming, and tears intrude at the edge of my vision. I really have become such a crybaby these days.
Someone else comes up to talk to Tito Rob, and I excuse myself and hurry through the house, back onto the front steps.
“Ruby. Hey.” Greg comes through the door and sits on the stoop, putting an arm around me and drawing me close, face pressed into his shirt.
“What is it?” he says quietly. “You can tell me.”
“It sounds stupid,” I mumble into his chest.
“Not to me.”
I sit upright and take the tissue he hands me. “I think I’ve always felt like…Mom kind of hates me.” It’s embarrassing how jagged and blunt it sounds, how juvenile. “Like I know she loves me, but—also, she hates me. And I thought that meant they’re going to hate me too. So I avoid them.”
“No way they hate you.” Greg wraps both arms around my shoulders and gives me a squeeze. “And I felt like your mom hated me too, honestly. So.”
That makes me laugh, and he laughs too. We’re jostling against each other, chests shaking, his arms still around me.
“It must be hard when it’s like she wants you to be a different person,” he says, voice low. The present tense gives me vertigo.
“But I’m glad you’re this person,” Greg adds, leaning back and brushing some hair out of my face. “I love her, you know?”
The blood rushes to my head, and I scramble to stand.
“I should go find Trisha!” I exclaim as Greg blinks up at me. “She wanted me to come, I have to say hi.”
The second time Greg and I kissed, we were on the couch in my living room, trying to study. His grades were bad, and his mom begged me to help—and textbooks open beside us, we drifted into each other, fumbling fingers on my cheeks and fireworks between my ears.
But my mom walked in, and it wasn’t a huge surprise that she freaked out. I knew by then what she thought of him.
The next day, I overheard her having an urgent, hushed conversation with Tita Wendy on the phone, but I could pick out only every few words.
Afterward, she cornered me and said, “Look, I love Greg, but he’s not right for you. You want someone who can set you up for a nice life. Someone who’ll lift you up, earn more than you. I don’t think Greg’s that kind of person. Trust me, I know what’s best for you.”
Who’s saying anything about the rest of our lives? I wanted to scream. I’m in high school!
I was all ready to defy my mom—We’re in love! To hell with everyone else!
But then things got weird. Greg acted like nothing had happened. He was distant, avoiding me. And it crushed me, but I was desperate not to show it.
I felt so stupid. Oh. He wasn’t even that serious. I was the fool who fell harder and got bruised on the way down. Something shifted overnight and he was hanging out with all these new people—before I knew it, we didn’t even have the same friends anymore. Soon we were barely speaking at all.
In his tagged photos on Instagram, I’d see him at parties with new friends—with other girls. And when we’d see each other because of our moms, our small talk got awfully strained.
One time I tried addressing it directly, and he clammed up and said, We don’t have to overthink it, okay? So we never talked about it again, even though those two stolen kisses became my baseline, the one I’d subconsciously use to measure every first encounter with someone new.
But I’m over that now—it’s ancient history. I’m dating someone who really likes me. I should have brought him today—I will, next time! And I have the maturity and perspective to know that Greg was saying he loves me as a friend.
I swing by the food table and grab a couple skewers, biting into the blackened chicken. It’s perfectly smoky, tangy, and sweet from Tito Rob’s Jufran and Sprite marinade.
Tita Rina’s sitting at a table they’ve set up in the yard, gossiping with my other aunties in rapid Tagalog and laughing. I’ve missed that sound, even though I don’t know what they’re saying. Weird how the texture and music of a language can feel like home, even if you don’t understand a word.
She spots me and waves me over. “Ruby, it’s been so long, glad you made it! Come here, let me see you!”
She launches into a stream of updates about all the cousins who are around my age: where they’re working now, the cities they’ve moved to, all the engagements and babies on the way.
Across the lawn, Greg’s crouched down next to Tito Rob and Tita Rina’s younger kids, Gabe and Michael.
Last time I checked, they were in fourth and fifth grades.
Greg’s talking to them seriously, gesturing to the Switch in Gabe’s hands.
Gabe hands Greg the game, and Greg sits cross-legged on the grass while both of my little cousins point and shout instructions.
Tita Rina’s updates have wound to a close, and I take the opening. “Have you seen Trisha?” I ask.
She points to the backyard play set Tito Rob built at least ten years ago. “I think she’s turned into a bat,” Tita Rina says with a laugh.
And sure enough, there’s Trisha, hanging upside down from the monkey bars, scrolling on her phone, hair almost trailing the ground.
My heart clenches as I cut across the yard toward her. Little weirdo like me.
“Hey.” I sit down on the swing and bite into the turon on my paper plate—crispy egg roll wrapper covered in honey, creamy fried banana inside.
“Hey, Ate Ruby.” If Trisha was excited to see me, she’s not showing it now. She keeps scrolling on her phone, perfectly content to be upside down.
“Doesn’t the blood go to your head like that?”
“Good for thinking,” she says.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask around another mouthful of turon. “What are you into these days?”
Trisha sighs. “That’s such an old-person question.”
I laugh. “Sure, probably.”
“Do you actually want to know, or are you just making conversation?”
“Um, yeah. I want to know!”
Trisha hesitates for a while. “I’m working on a project about self-limiting beliefs.” She gives me a pointed look. “Seems like you would have a bunch of those.”
Wow, burn. She wanted me to come because I’m a good research subject? Most Neurotic Ate of the Year Award.
But then again, she’s not wrong.
“Okay. I’m interested. Tell me more. Is this…a school project?”
“It’s my own thing. On TikTok.” Trisha sets her phone on the ground, grabs the bars to hoist herself up, and drops back down on her feet. “You should follow me,” she adds, and tells me the username.
She perches on the plastic slide next to me and launches into a detailed explanation, asking me a few loaded questions, and before I know it, I’m spilling my guts to her—telling her the whole story about Mom being a ghost in Slack, though I make her swear she won’t tell her parents.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Who do you think I am? Of course I won’t tell them that.
” But she seems to believe me out of hand, asking thoughtful follow-up questions about the situation.
And when I get all the way to the end of the story, she gives me a sage little hmm. “I don’t know, Ate Ruby,” she says. “Maybe you’re the one holding yourself back. You’re so focused on who your mom wants you to be, but who do you want to be?”
It sounds so cliché and simple when she puts it like that, but I feel exposed and clammy in the open air of the backyard, realizing I don’t have an answer.
“I’ll have to think about it,” I say, standing from the swing. “But I should get back on the road soon. Traffic is going to be killer.”
I find Greg in the living room watching basketball with my Titos, chatting with them and reacting to the game like he does this every weekend. I really envy him, how he’s good with people. How he can insert himself into a new situation and be at home.