“Yes, Eli,” I replied with a small smirk I couldn’t stifle. He was just so adorable when he was worked up like this.
He heard the tease in my tone, and finally his shoulders loosened with the gust of his exhale. “Don’t ye know tha a cat will always chase my Mouse?”
“I’m yours?” I asked tentatively, needing to hear it.
“Only and always,” he promised, leaning in for a small kiss to seal the deal. “Let’s go home. I’ll take ye to the doctor to have this properly looked at.”
Emotion swam in my eyes, knowing the kind of devotion you had to have for a person to take them to the doctor. Maybe that was a small gesture to some – those girls are very lucky. To me, it was the declaration every woman needs to hear.
I shook my head at the notion that we were finished, finding my wobbly knees and pushing myself up off the ground. “No. We’re almost to the top. We’re climbing this stinking mountain, and then we can cross it off our list. We made it this far; no point in turning back now.”
The others were hesitant, but I was determined. I slung my backpack over my shoulders once more, picked up the Swiss Army knife I’d dropped in the fight, and motioned for them to follow. One way or another, we were going to make today count.
I thanked the pain in my arm for being a constant reminder that I was alive. I knew that when I died someday, I would do it with no regrets, and with the memory that I’d punched a mountain lion in the face to save my friend, mere minutes before Eli pledged himself to me.
21
Boyfriend Eggroll
“You’ve got bags under your eyes, young lady. It’s one thing to go out and have fun at night, but clearly you’re not sleeping enough.” Mr. Li was in full-on lecture mode. I’d learned it was best if I just let him get it all out, instead of offering up any kind of defense.
I hefted myself up to sit on the kitchen counter of his busy restaurant, my legs burning after a long day on my feet at the clinic, followed by the arduous trudge up the hill to the bodega. It had been two weeks since our mountain trek, but Mr. Li still paused a few times every night to glare at the faded marks on my arm from the mountain lion. The smell of a bajillion eggrolls permeated the air, making my stomach cry out for something greasy and delicious. I debated making an excuse, but I opted for the truth instead. “I started seeing someone, actually.”
Mr. Li banged his wooden spoon on the steel pot. “That Irish man, yes. I was wondering when you’d fess up.”
I gaped at him. “Did Brady tell you?”
“He didn’t have to. You’ve had your head in the clouds for a couple months now. Plus, I noticed you never mentioning your new roommate. Very suspicious.” He kept his eyes on the sauté pan, swirling the snow peas around with garlic, just the way I like them. I’d left work an hour earlier than usual (which was still with more than four hours of overtime), so my meal wasn’t quite ready yet.
“You don’t have to cook me dinner, you know. I understand it’s not convenient to stop everything for this.”
“Today is a special day. Today you have a boyfriend.”
I raised my eyebrow at him. “These are my boyfriend snow peas?” When Mr. Li squinted at my humor, I pressed my luck by voicing my desire. “If it’s my special day, can I have an eggroll, too? I’ll pay for it and everything. I’ll be your best customer if you let me have just one eggroll.”
Mr. Li shook his head. “Eggrolls have too much sodium. You need to live a long time, and that won’t happen if you clog your arteries with fried food.”
“Just this once?” I pleaded, giving him my best puppy eyes.
He squinted at me and gave me a long sigh, as if he was vexed that I only wanted more and more of his delicious cooking. “Chinese food is boring. You’ll eat my snow peas, brown rice and baked chicken with a light low-sodium hoisin sauce.” He huffed at me with his signature stink-eye. “But I suppose just this once, an eggroll on the side will be okay. Only once, you understand? When I had my heart attack, the doctors told me no more fried food. Eggrolls are fried food. Do you want to have a heart attack?”
I grinned, my legs kicking back and forth against the cabinet below the stainless steel countertop, as if I were a little girl. “No, Dad. I promise not to have a heart attack tonight, and not to eat any fried foods other than yours.”
He finished cooking my dinner, and then carried my plate and his out into the dining room, where no one else was allowed to be served his heart-healthy specialties. We sat at a table near the kitchen, away from the other patrons in the red bedecked dining room. There were cheap Chinese tchotchkes all over, and a big picture of Jet Li on the wall behind the carryout counter. He liked to tell people Jet Li was his cousin. The smell of onions and soy sauce permeated everything, making me starving for anything that came from his kitchen. There were gold fixtures that hung down at each booth, giving low light for hushed conversations.
Mr. Li possessed no such indoor voice. “Tell me about this boyfriend. Is he a good man? Does he open doors?”
I nodded, relishing the game we played where he was my father, and I was the obedient daughter. It was a cherished charade on both ends. He needed a child who would take his advice, and I occasionally wondered what life would be like if I had a dad who’d stuck around long enough to, you know, meet me. “Eli’s a good guy. Very handsome.”
Mr. Li grimaced. “I don’t care about handsome. Handsome doesn’t pay the bills. Does he have a job? Is he a hard worker?”
I speared my snow peas, loving the deep bass smell of the hoisin sauce that only Mr. Li knew how to tweak just so. There was a sweetness to it, and I never understood how he got it to sing that way for him, but the flavors were a welcome symphony through every single bite. “He works security for his boss. Pays his portion of the bills without a problem. No skeletons in his closet that I can tell. It’s still new, but I like what I’ve learned so far.”
“Hmm.” Mr. Li was not impressed, but he had nothing disparaging to say about that. “He’s a citizen, or is he here on visa? Is he trying to seduce you to get a green card?”
I choked on my water, blinking away the moisture as I coughed. I was about to open my mouth to answer when Eli’s voice made me jump. “I’ve got dual citizenship, so I don’t need Violet to stay in the country. I’m with her because I want to be.”
Mr. Li squinted up at Eli with a scrutinizing frown, as if calculating all the ways the handsome Irishman didn’t measure up. “Sit down, young man. I have questions for you.”
Eli shrugged. “Ask me anything. I’ve nothing to hide from her.”
I quirked an eyebrow up at Eli, noting that he carried a bouquet of daisies in his fist. “It’s good to see you. I thought you were working tonight. Everything alright?”
“Aye. I stopped home on my lunch break to see your smile for a few. When ye called me on your way home, I knew I had a bit of time before the club really got going. Decided to take my break with you. Here.” He handed me the bouquet, kissing my cheek just to heat his lips with the warmth he seduced out of me. He had a thing for bringing me flowers once a week, and I had a thing for loving his sweet gestures.
Mr. Li shook his head at my girlish swoon. He decided to hijack our mini-date, and went right for the jugular. “Good. That’s plenty of time for me to get to know your new boyfriend,” Mr. Li declared with the look of kill-and-destroy about him.
I squirmed in my chair, wondering if this was the best idea. “I don’t know, guys. I’m a little tired. I think maybe I should call it a night.”
Eli scooted into the booth next to me and draped his arm nonchalantly around the back of the seat. To the outside observer, I’m sure it looked casual, but I could feel the underlying current of, “I’m with her, and you’ll deal with it, old man.” Eli kissed my temple and settled in for a round of rapid-fire questioning. Each inquiry made me want to run and hide, begging Mr. Li to go easy on the very new thing we were only just starting to explore. Eli was a champ, answering each question, even when it
came out like an accusation. The only one Eli faltered on was when Mr. Li asked Eli how many relationships he’d ever had.
“We don’t have to talk about that,” I insisted, my appetite gone after five bites. My daisies were resting on the table beside me, begging me to use them as an excuse to dart upstairs and escape the drama to put them in water.
“No, no. It’s alright. I had a girlfriend back in my school days, and one on and off while I was in the Service, but since then, I’ve moved around a lot and didn’t feel like putting down any roots. So two, I guess.” He frowned. “Tha sounds strange. There’s nothing wrong with me; I’ve never been much into settling down, until I found Violet.”
I rested my hand on his thigh under the table to steady us both. “Really?” I asked, gazing up at him.
The corner of his mouth tugged upward, giving me that easy adoration I was really starting to love. “Really. Never saw the point until ye batted those lashes at me.”
Mr. Li frowned that his interrogation had driven us straight into a tender moment. “Enough of the eyes. You can do that on your own time, mister. Your father, is he a good man? What does he do?”
“He’s a farmer, sir.”
It was Mr. Li’s turn to falter. “A farmer, eh? What does he raise?”
“Sheep mostly, and cabbage.”
“I used to raise goats back in China. My father had over a hundred goats at one point,” he said with pride.
“Tha’s a lot to keep track of. The farm next to ours raised goats. I spent a fair bit of time around there. Did ye ever come across Anaplasmosis?”
Mr. Li’s eyes widened. “Yes! All the time. My father said not to vaccinate, but I would anyway. It was the more economical choice.”
“Right? If tha spreads through the flock, ye have to eliminate the infected ones, which is far more costly.”
“Exactly! It was the one way I defied my father, and he never let me forget it, so I never let him forget that I was right!” Mr. Li laughed at the old memory even I didn’t know about his childhood. “Do you still make chèvre, now that you’re in the States?”
“Not in a while, though I’m sure I still know how. We had sheep, so I can make manchego in my sleep.”
Mr. Li clapped his hands together excitedly. “Tomorrow I’ll buy sheep’s milk and goat’s milk from the store in town. I teach you to make the goat’s cheese, and you make the sheep cheese for me.”
Eli grinned and reached his arm across the table to shake hands with the suddenly eager Mr. Li. “Deal.” It was amazing how quickly Eli turned the interrogation around. I guess he just had that way about him.
Mr. Li sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “I like this boy, Violet. Why didn’t you bring him around here before?”
“Um, because of the third degree you just gave him!” I retorted with a loud guffaw. “Men are weird.”
Mr. Li stood and held his finger up to Eli. “Wait here. I’ll make you some dinner. Are you picky?”
“Whatever ye have leftovers of is fine by me.”
Mr. Li shook his head with an animated frown. “Chinese food is so bad for you, and has one flavor: salt. A farm boy should never eat Chinese food. I’ll make you something good. Something healthy for a man with an important job.” He started talking to himself as he walked away. “Security. Not bad. He can keep her safe.”
I gaped up at Eli. “Well, how’d you pull that one off? Luck of the Irish, indeed.”
Eli exhaled the nerves he’d had on standby. “He’s intense. But hey, I met your Da, and I think he approves. Tha’s gotta count for something.”
I gazed into his eyes that were so captivating, they erased the blaring red and gold that surrounded us in the clamber of the noisy restaurant. “You sat through that interrogation for me, answering to a man that isn’t even my actual dad. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did. I told ye, I’m in this. He’s important to ye, so he should know I’m sniffing around his daughter.” Eli leaned over and picked up my eggroll, chomping on the end with gusto and eating half of it in one bite.
“Hey! That’s my boyfriend eggroll.”
“Huh?”
22
Coming Home Late
“Eli is so lucky Mr. Li gave us a bag of eggrolls to replace the one he ganked off my plate. We almost had our first fight.”
Caty plopped on the couch next to where I sat on the floor, my paperwork spread out on the coffee table. You know, just like how Mick Jagger spends his Friday nights. “I can’t believe Mr. Li actually gave Eli the green light. Hand me another eggroll? It’s torture to smell the Chinese food all night, and not be able to eat any.”
“I swear, it’s like each one is better than the last. I keep thinking I’ll get sick of them, but I never do.” I wiped a crumb off my chart and filled in the notes about the various dysfunctions plaguing Patient 43732’s right deltoid. If only Keith would switch to digital files. EMR is so much easier. “How’d you spend your time this evening?”
Caty sighed and slumped on the cushion. “I had my ear glued to those Rosetta Stone French lessons you got us after I finished grading. Every time I started getting depressed and angry, I put the headphones back on and hit the books. We are totally crossing off ‘learn French’ from our list this month. This Rosetta Stone stuff is no joke. I even spoke to the French teacher at school, and she gave me some of the handouts she gives her intro students, so I could practice.”
“First step, learn French. Second step, go to Paris. Easy-peasy, right? Only a few thousand bucks per person. We’ve all got that lying around, right?” I grumbled. “I hate the list items we have to save for. It’s like, the worst lesson in patience ever. This would be the perfect time for us to go, too. I mean, Christmas break isn’t too far out for you. I so wish we could go then. Even Brady’s not working during most of that stretch.”
“You think Ireland Bob will look good in a beret, posing in front of the Eiffel Tower?” She waggled her eyebrows at me suggestively.
I scrubbed my fists against my forehead. “Great. Now that’s in my head. He’s already too handsome to begin with.”
She whistled long and low. “An international trip with your special guy? That’s serious relationship stuff.”
I nodded, but didn’t want to discuss something so new just yet, so I switched topics. “Operation: Dennis-Is-Going-Down is coming along swimmingly. I re-signed Dennis up for about a million porn sites using his work email address, since they scrubbed his computer after the first wave. Worst case scenario, it’s a little annoying to get penis ads popping up every five seconds. Best case scenario, his computer gets digital herpes, and the IT guy has to come check it out. He’ll have to fish through Dennis’ inbox, and he’ll see any office relationship stuff they’ve been trying to keep oh-so-secret. Plus, there’s the bonus of Amber finding out through the work grapevine that Dennis has a porn addiction. Getting caught once is a mishap. Twice? Now, that’s intentional animal porn-seeking behavior.”
Caty giggled. “That’s a good one.”
“I thought you’d like it. I did it to Dennis’ personal email, too, so I wouldn’t open anything he sends you for a good long while. Did you know there’s people on pogo sticks porn? Then there’s the animal variety, but I’m too much a lady to tell you the titles of those. Suffice to say, he’ll get a burning eyeful of things no human should ever have to see. Serves him right for looking for love in places he shouldn’t.” I cleared my throat. “That humane trap I set up in the bushes of the parking lot? It caught a skunk last night. I may or may not have waited until Dennis left for work, and then released it into his house. Might not want to go inside for a while.”
Caty gulped, keeping her eyes on the paper she was grading. “Do you think he’s in love with her?”
“I think he’s in love with his penis.”
Caty giggled, breaking out of her funk. “I love you, you know. You and Brady fighting for me? It helps more than I can tell you. I’m still feeling kind
of bulldozed. And Eli getting me that hidden camera from his work? I’m not sure I want to see more of the proof that Dennis is a cheating bastard, but Eli was right; it doesn’t hurt to have the affair caught on tape. Though, there’s been less of him cheating, thanks to your stellar laxative protein shake.”
“I do what I can.”
“Every time he kisses me, I feel the lie, and wonder how I didn’t see it for so long. He wants to catch a late movie tonight, so that’s where I’ll be, to keep up appearances until I figure out my big move.”
“Want me to be the third wheel?”
“No. I’ve been dodging him too much. He’ll start to get suspicious. I’m not ready to pull the trigger yet.”
Caty and I chatted until Brady came home, his mouth in a hard line when Caty mentioned her plans with Dennis. “You look like you’re coming down with the flu,” he suggested, moving closer to rest the back of his hand across her forehead.
She reached out and stroked his bicep, softening his frustration. Then they both glanced at me and inhaled sharply, taking a step back, as if they had been caught doing… I’m not exactly sure, but I’d never seen that look on them together. “I’ll be home late, so don’t wait up.”
“You know I will,” Brady whispered, as if trying to hide his words from me. I wasn’t sure what to make of their body language that was closer than usual, as if they were nurturing some sort of secret. Brady drew her into his arms, and she exhaled her nerves on his shoulder. “Don’t go with him.”
Caty cleared her throat, and then pulled back with a plastered-on smile. “How’s this grin? Do I look like the totally snowed fiancée who has no idea her guy is having an affair?”
Neither of us answered that loaded question. “I love you,” I stated simply. “You look like a woman who’s way too good for Dennis.”
After Caty left, I was still nowhere near finished with my paperwork, because Brady kept randomly fuming about Caty going to the movie with Dennis. “I don’t get it. Why doesn’t she just tell him she knows and be done with it? Why is she breathing the same air as that idiot?”
Violet’s Bucket List Page 16