by Kelly Yang
“I once had a guy tell me my mouth was too hot,” Jess says, cracking up as she says it. Jess opens her mouth wide, inviting us to feel the temperature.
Florence tosses out another wild theory. “Maybe he’s saying you’re so special, you don’t have to do that. Like you’re wife material, not mistress.”
We all stop talking and look at her.
“Okay, we have to talk about this,” I say, sitting up.
“Yes, we do,” Jess says. Everyone falls quiet as Jess turns to Florence. “Everyone’s wife material. Me, you, your mom, everyone.” As she lifts her eyes to meet Florence’s. “And if one day you meet a guy and he doesn’t understand—”
“About that. There’s something else I need to tell you guys,” Florence says, taking a deep breath.
I reach over and squeeze her hand. You can do this!
“I’m gay,” she says.
Jess and Nancy stare at her.
“Is this a joke?” Jess asks.
“No,” I quickly say.
Jess turns to me. “Wait a minute, you knew about this?” she asks. “I’m the last person to find out?”
“I didn’t know either. Though thinking back,” Nancy says, putting a finger to her chin, “you did have that big-ass poster of Kristen Stewart in your room.”
“I liked Twilight.” Florence shrugs.
“Me too,” I say.
“I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me earlier,” Jess says.
“I didn’t know how you’d react.”
“Hello, do you not know me at all? I am such an ally. I love Karl Lagerfeld, may he rest in peace,” Jess says, making a cross on her chest.
Florence chuckles.
Jess points to me and Florence, smiling. “So, Claire, if the blow jobs don’t work out for you, you can always give this one a call.”
Florence takes a carrot and throws it at her. “Shut up!” she says, laughing.
We all start cracking up, and when the laughing dies down, we lean over to give Florence a hug. I’m so proud of Florence for coming out, and of Jess and Nancy for being so cool with it. Jay walks over from his table as we’re hugging and looks at us, amused.
“What are you guys doing?” he asks.
The girls pull away and say hi. Jay leans over and whispers, “Hi, babe.” I put a hand on his arm, pulling him close. As he gives me a slow, lingering kiss, I feel my insecurities melting. Maybe the girls are right. Maybe I’m overthinking what happened last night.
“I’ll see you later at my house for dinner?” he asks.
I nod.
“Good, because I’m cooking,” he says.
My friends go “aww” as Jay walks away.
Jay’s in the kitchen making caramelized carrots when I walk in. A beautiful roast chicken sits on the counter.
“What’s the special occasion?” I ask, gasping at the chicken. I pose in front of it with my phone and try to take a selfie. The smell brings me straight back to my grandmother’s kitchen in Shanghai.
“No reason. Just wanted to do something nice for my gorgeous, brilliant girlfriend.” He smiles.
He leans over, kisses me, and takes my phone from me so he can take a proper picture of me with the chicken. When he’s done taking my pic, he doesn’t give me back my phone. Instead, he starts browsing my camera roll.
“Hey, give that back,” I protest.
He laughs, tapping on an album called “Childhood Photos.”
“Was this you when you were a kid?” he asks. He shows me the pic. I cringe. It’s one of the few pictures of me with my old eyes. I was about seven.
He studies my face. “You look so different,” he says. “You better not have gotten plastic surgery. I don’t want ugly kids when we get married,” he teases.
I snatch the phone away from him. “Give me that,” I say. “And who said anything about marriage?”
Jay blushes slightly.
“I want my wife to be a virgin,” he says, setting the table. “My mom was a virgin when my dad met her. She’s never slept with anyone else.”
“How do you even know that about her?” I ask, fascinated and low-key disturbed.
“They met when they were seventeen.” Jay shrugs. “Exact same age as us.”
My phone dings.
“Who’s that?” Jay asks. “Is it Dani?”
When I don’t reply, his face clouds over with worry.
“I don’t like that girl. Don’t trust a word she says.”
I chuckle. “Why? What’s she got on you?” I’m only teasing, but he gets upset.
“Nothing! I’m so good! I didn’t even make you finish yesterday!”
About that. I’m glad we’re finally having this conversation. I bite my lip and look up at him. “Why didn’t you?” I ask.
Jay puts down the napkins. He pulls me in and kisses my ear. “Because you’re too sweet to be doing something like that,” he says. “Besides, I could tell you were getting kind of tired.”
I throw up my hands in protest. “I was not!”
I glance down at his phone and ask shyly, “Did you ever do stuff with those other 129 girls?”
He shifts uncomfortably.
“Just tell me . . . ,” I prod. I kiss him lightly on the arm. “I promise I won’t be mad.”
The oven timer goes off. Jay looks relieved. He puts on the oven mitt and retrieves the tray of caramelized carrots.
“Can we talk about it later?” he asks. “Look at all this great food I made. . . .”
I look down at the succulent carrots glistening on the table. “Okay.”
The dinner is delicious, but we don’t end up talking about the 129 meis later because as soon as we finish eating, Jay receives a text. He tells me it’s from a friend and he needs to go and meet up with them in LA. I follow him around the house as he grabs his keys and his wallet and gets ready to go.
“When will you be back?” I ask him.
He shrugs.
“I don’t know,” he says. “But I wouldn’t wait up.”
I furrow my eyebrows. Wait a minute, is he planning to spend the night? Before I can even ask, he’s out the door.
I stay up late waiting for him to come home and eventually drift to sleep on the couch. When I wake up, he’s not there. He’s not at school the next day either. I try his cell, but he doesn’t answer. Jess and the girls throw out wild theories of where he’s at.
“He’s at some new Coachella we don’t know about,” Jess says.
“He didn’t want to invite you because it’s this weird music they make from rain and ice, and he didn’t want you to make fun of him,” Nancy adds. Jess laughs so hard, she nearly spits out her water.
A small smile escapes. Rain Coachella sounds a lot better than the raging orgy I imagined him at with all his meis.
“Or maybe he got abducted. The bad guys are holding him for ransom,” Florence guesses. “His parents are probably wiring the money right now!”
That night, when he’s still not back, I call my mom and ask her what to do. She’s back in Shanghai and fretting over the three pounds she gained eating out in New York.
“He’s probably off on a boys’ trip or something,” she says.
I sigh into the phone. “Can you come over?” I ask.
“Oh, honey, I wish I could,” she says. “But I just got back! I can’t leave your father all alone again so soon, you know that.”
“How is he?” I ask.
“He’s been good,” she says. “Anyway, I’m sure Jay will be back soon.”
That’s my line, I want to say. That’s what I’m supposed to say to her. As we hang up, I think about all the days my mom used to just sit by the window and wait and wait and wait for my dad. I used to wonder how she could do that, and now I’m doing it too. By the third day, I really start to fall apart. I want to go home, but I want to stay at his house, if only to scream at him when he gets home. I toss my swimsuit in my bag and head to the pool. It’s a Saturday and Zach is there again.
“I’ve missed you!” he says, taking off his goggles. “How’ve you been?”
I don’t respond, and he swims over to me. “Shitty week?”
I nod.
“I’m sorry,” he says. His face brightens. “You want to know what I do when I’m having a shitty week?” He pushes himself out of the pool and reaches out a hand. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”
I stare up at him in his wet trunks, water dripping down on me.
Hesitantly, I reach up. For the rest of the afternoon, we take turns doing belly flops in the empty pool. It’s the only time in the last three days when I don’t think about Jay.
Jay finally resurfaces the next day. He comes home on Sunday bearing flowers and bullshit, about how he was hanging out with his friends when his grandpa called and said he wasn’t feeling well, so he had to hop on a flight and go home to see him. I know it’s bullshit, because his passport was here the whole time. I know because I’d gone through his entire room, looking for incriminating photos of him and his 129 meis.
I walk over to the bureau, find the passport and throw it at him. He picks it up and puts it back on the bureau but doesn’t offer any further explanation. Instead, he strips out of his clothes and goes to take a shower. I sit on the floor in the bedroom, holding his shirt up to my nose, trying to detect any traces of perfume.
Jay insists we go out. I say no. I want an explanation, not dinner. But he jumps in the car and I scramble after him, worried he’ll disappear again. I’m not through discussing this with him! He drives us down to Fashion Island, where he pulls me into Cartier.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
He points at one of the bracelets to the shop guy—an 18k solid-gold bangle with little diamonds around it. He hands the guy his black card, doesn’t even look at the price. The shop guy takes the bracelet out of the case and gives it to Jay.
“This is the Cartier forever love bracelet,” Jay says to me, holding up the bracelet. “Forever.”
Our eyes lock as he says the word. Jay slips the bracelet on my right wrist. The tiny little diamonds sparkle in the light.
Jay leans in and kisses me. “I’m sorry I left you,” he says as he screws the bracelet tight around my wrist. “But I’m back now.” He drops the tiny 18k gold screwdriver into his pocket and pulls me toward him.
As he wraps his arms around me, he whispers into my ear, “You’re mine. All mine.”
Fifty-Six
Dani
I’m in my room researching the private equity fund that owns xomegan.com. I finally went to debate practice, though a lot of good it did. Everyone else had been emailed the motion in advance except me. Mr. Connelly said he must have accidentally left me off the email chain. Oops.
I can hear Claire yelling on the phone in her room. Who’s she talking to? I bookmark the page I’m on. It’s the website of Phoenix Capital. I’ve managed to narrow it down to this private equity real estate fund, which strangely enough, is not headquartered here in the US but in Hong Kong.
“I just want to know where you were this week! Why won’t you tell me?” Claire shouts.
I take off my headphones and listen to her conversation.
“If we’re going to be together, we have to be honest with each other,” Claire says. “I need to be able to trust you!” Her voice cracks on the last words.
After they hang up, I walk out of my room and knock gently on hers.
“Hey . . . you okay?” I ask.
Claire walks over and opens the door for me. Her nose is red, and she’s holding a tissue in her hand.
“Just typical boy stuff,” she says, blowing into the tissue.
I sit down on her bed as Claire applies lotion to her tear-stained puffy eyes and tells me what happened with Jay.
“It bugs me so much that he won’t tell me where he went,” she says. Her eyes slide over to a picture of her parents on her bureau. “Maybe because I have trust issues . . .”
“No, it’s not you.” I shake my head. I think back to Jay’s bedroom, the smug look on his face when we walked in on him having sex. “You’re smart to not trust him,” I tell Claire.
She shifts her eyes from her parents’ picture to me and scrutinizes my face. “What do you mean?” she asks. Claire’s instincts hone in on me. “What do you know?”
“Nothing,” I mutter. Quickly, I get up from her bed.
Claire follows me to my room. “Tell me!”
“Nothing!” I insist. But Claire won’t stop pressing me. She corners me in my room, and I buckle under the pressure of her intense eyes. The lotion in her hand falls onto the floor when I tell her what happened in his bedroom that day.
“He asked you guys to join in?” Claire asks. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? When you realized it was him?”
Claire gets up and walks back to her room, slamming the door.
“I’m sorry, Claire,” I say through the door. “I’ve just been going through a lot. I was going to tell you!”
“No, you weren’t! You were going to keep this a secret from me. I thought you were my friend!” she yells from the other side of the door.
Fifty-Seven
Claire
I used to think Jay looked peaceful when he sleeps, his baby face so innocent. I used to feel special sleeping next to him. Now I think of all the others who have been here before me.
“Wake up.” I jab his shoulder with my fingers.
He stirs, opens one eye, starts to smile, then sees the storm on my face.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, sitting up.
“Dani told me,” I say. “You asked her and her friend to join in?” I could feel the heat of his body, the veins on his forehead pulsating as he digests this.
He throws his head back onto the pillow, closes his eyes.
“She’s lying,” he says.
I pull his pillow out from under him and whack him with it.
“No, you’re lying,” I say. “Where were you last week? Tell me!”
He gets up out of bed, throws on a robe, and walks out of the room. I follow him.
“Were you with your whores?” I ask. “Your ‘meis’?” I do air quotes with my fingers.
“Will you shut up?” he yells back. He throws on a pair of pants and a shirt.
“I deserve an answer! Who were you with?” I press.
He crosses his arms at me. His jaw locks. “You deserve an answer?” he mocks. “Why? Because you’re my ‘girlfriend’? You won’t even let me have sex with you!” I feel the cold marble under my toes. He takes a step toward me as he hurls the words at me. “Don’t ever tell me what I can and cannot do!”
Shaking, I reach for my phone. “I’m leaving.”
Jay walks across the room and grabs his car keys. “Don’t bother,” he says, storming past me.
Hate courses through my veins as I push myself through the water.
“Good! Keep kicking!” Zach says. He stands by the edge of the pool timing me. “Wow, you are on fire today!”
I claw my way to the edge, strokes powered by my burning rage as I play back Jay’s words. Don’t ever tell me what I can and cannot do. I open my mouth, gasping for air. The smell of chlorine fills my lungs.
Zach jumps into the pool. He’s in his red trunks. I notice he has only two pairs of swim trunks, unlike Jay’s eighty-five. It’s late afternoon, and it’s just the two of us in the pool.
“Nineteen seconds, not bad,” he says, grinning. He doesn’t notice my tears because of the water. Boys can be so oblivious.
He glances down and points to my wrist. “You’d go faster if you take off your bracelet.”
I shake my head. “I can’t,” I say.
My mouth starts to quiver. I turn away from him.
“What’s wrong?” Zach asks.
A sob builds. My body shakes uncontrollably as I yank on my bracelet. I wish I could take off this nightmare.
“Hey, whoa, it’s okay.” Zach puts his arms around me. Our bodies bob in the water as
he tries to calm me down.
Our eyes meet, and I feel it. There’s a second. A second when I can pull away, say no. I used to sit at home in Shanghai thinking about this second and wondering why my dad could never pull himself away. But in that moment, I couldn’t either.
Zach kisses me.
His lips brush mine. It is not ravenous like Jay’s. It’s slow and soft, a stolen kiss, comforting in ways I could neither comprehend nor explain.
As soon as I open my eyes, though, the guilt unspools in my chest. What have I done?
“You and Dani . . . ,” I start to say.
“We’re just friends,” Zach quickly reminds me.
The warm water sloshes around us. He pulls me in toward him. Our foreheads touch. Warmth radiates toward my lips, sweet, delicious warmth. But this time, I pull away.
I push myself up out of the water and run toward the changing room.
I run all the way home and lie on my bed in my room, hugging my legs, chin wedged between my knees, staring at the wall I share with Dani. It was a mistake. A lapse in judgment. A moment of weakness. I’m never going to tell anyone, not even Jess.
My phone rings. It’s Jay calling for the eighteenth time. I ignore it, like I’ve ignored all his texts. Fifteen minutes later, I hear banging on the door. He’s here. Dani pokes her head in my room. “You want me to tell him to go away?” she asks. I nod.
I hear her answering the door, telling him I’m not here. Jay raises his voice at her. “You said you were going to keep your mouth shut!” he yells at her.
She says something that I can’t hear.
It burns inside me, the fact that the two of them have been hanging on to this secret. And how do I know Dani and her friend didn’t join in that day? Maybe they did. I shake my head, hating what this is turning me into. The person I swore I would never be. I walk outside to confront them, hands gripping my cardigan tight around me.
“Dani, what are you doing?” I ask.
She stands in the sun blinking at me.
“Why are you still talking to him?”
“I’m not!” Dani says.
Jay shouts to me in Mandarin. “Nothing happened, okay? Look at her! You think I’d be interested in her?”