by Helen Hoang
“Don’t make it sound like you dated him for me,” she says stiffly.
I almost laugh. That’s exactly why I dated him. Priscilla is my smart, beautiful, extremely successful big sister, the person I respect most in the entire world. In lots of ways, she’s more of a mom to me than my actual mom. For as far back as I can remember, I’ve been striving to earn her approval, and Julian is most definitely Priscilla approved—as well as parent approved.
I don’t know how to respond, so I just say, “Okay.”
“Don’t have an attitude, Anna,” she snaps. “He got you to come out and do things, be social, not just hole up in your apartment with your music. You were smiling and laughing more. You were happy.”
“Smiling and laughing doesn’t always mean happy.”
“I can tell when you’re happy,” she says confidently.
I shake my head quietly. There’s no way she knows when I’m happy, not when the things I say and do around her are specifically designed to make her happy.
“I’ve started seeing a therapist,” I blurt out, surprising myself with the confession. It’s something I’ve been intentionally holding back out of fear, but so much has happened. I guess I want her to know now.
“Oh. Wow. Okay,” she says. I’ve stunned her into inarticulation—a rare occurrence for socially savvy Priscilla.
I press a hand to my chest and hold my breath as I wait for her to say more.
“Do Mom and Dad know?” she asks.
A short laugh bubbles out of me. “No.”
“That’s probably for the best.” She clears her throat before asking, “How did you even find this therapist?”
“I searched for ‘therapist’ plus ‘local’ and picked the one that sounded the best.”
She makes a sound in her throat—just a sound, it’s not even a word, but I know she disapproves. After a moment, she asks, “Was it because of Julian?”
“No, it wasn’t because of Julian. It was before he—we—it was just before that,” I say awkwardly. “I’ve been having trouble with my music. Ever since the tour and that YouTube video and everything.”
“You could have talked to me about this instead of some random person you found on the Internet,” Priscilla says in a frustrated voice. “We’re family. I’m always here for you. It’s the pressure, right? Pressure is my life. I can talk you through it.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and refrain from groaning. I know what’s coming.
“Prioritize, break things into small achievable tasks, and make a to-do list. I do that every day,” she says.
I zone out as she tells me how satisfying it is to check things off her list and gives her TED Talk on how to present to CEOs and big bosses. I’ve heard all this stuff before. It doesn’t help. My compulsions are too strong.
The door to my balcony opens a crack, and Quan holds up my electric toothbrush, a silent question on his face.
I cover the bottom of my phone and say, “I have extra toothbrush heads. Feel free to take one. Also, feel free to sleep longer. You look really tired.”
He smiles and self-consciously rubs a hand over his head. “Thanks, but I have something this morning. I’m just going to . . .” He points over his shoulder, back toward the bathroom, and heads away.
Guilt spills through me. I don’t like that he’s sleep-deprived because of me.
“I thought you said you hadn’t seen Julian in a while,” Priscilla says, interrupting my thoughts. “But he’s at your place right now? How does that work?”
She’s not here to see, but I duck my head anyway. “That, uh, wasn’t Julian.”
“No way,” she says. “You’re seeing someone else?”
It takes me a while to respond. Things between me and Quan aren’t easy to explain when I hardly understand them myself. “I figured if he could see other people, I could, too.”
“I mean, yeah. Of course you can,” Priscilla says, but she still sounds stunned. “How did you meet him?”
I narrow my eyes. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“The Internet again?” she replies, sounding like I’m physically hurting her. “And you spent the night with him? Who are you and what have you done with my baby sister? Is he shady? Are you okay? Do you need help getting him to leave? Or are you at his place?”
“He’s not shady, and I’m fine. We didn’t even—” I release a frustrated breath. Priscilla doesn’t need to hear about my sex life. I certainly don’t want to hear about hers. I’d rather jump off my balcony. “He’s at my place, but he’s leaving soon. Don’t worry about it, okay?”
There’s noise on Priscilla’s end, like she’s entered a busy restaurant, and she says, “I have to go, but I’ll call you later, all right?”
“That’s fine. Bye, Je je,” I say.
“Bye, Mui mui.”
The call disconnects, and I slowly lower the phone from my ear, my thoughts heavy from what I told her and even more so from what I didn’t tell her. My diagnosis is looming over me, and I want to talk about it. Maybe I need to talk about it in order to really understand and accept it. But I’m also afraid.
If she’s suddenly ashamed of me, it’ll break my heart.
Back inside my apartment, Quan is crouched by the front door, tying his shoelaces. When he sees me, he asks, “Je? That’s Chinese, right?”
“Yeah, Cantonese. That’s almost all I can say, though.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “My brother is like that with Vietnamese. He understands it pretty well, though.”
“Oh, I don’t understand it either,” I say lightly.
I expect him to laugh like other people do when I say things like this, but he doesn’t. Instead, he asks, “Is that hard for you sometimes? One of my cousins only speaks English, and he gets teased a lot by family for it. They give his parents crap for it, too, and then his parents blame him.”
“Actually, yeah,” I admit. “My big sister is almost quadrilingual—she speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, and a bit of a rare dialect from the south, in addition to English, of course—and me . . .” I lift a shoulder. “When I was little, they couldn’t get me to talk at all, and the doctor suspected all the languages were too much for me. Apparently, as soon as they only spoke one language with me, things started to click. I never picked up anything else after that. It embarrasses my mom.”
“Well, I don’t speak any Chinese,” he says as he finishes tying his laces and stands up. When he gets a good look at my ugly bathrobe, he grins.
My face heats instantly. I didn’t think ahead when I put this on earlier, and I should have. With Julian, I was always alert and careful, so he never saw me like this. But it’s too late now. “I know it’s ugly, but it’s really soft.”
“It’s really . . . bright. Is it salmon color?” Still grinning, he approaches me and pulls the front together tighter, like he’s trying to keep me warm. He doesn’t seem disgusted or derisive, and it’s making me feel off-balance.
“It’s coral,” I say. “I don’t wear this and imagine I’m a tropical fish in the ocean, if that’s what you’re thinking. When I’m home, where people can’t see me, I like to wear bright colors and rainbows and things. It makes me happy. A little.”
His brow creases. “Why does it have to be where people can’t see you?”
“Because people are mean. They say things like ‘Did you see her?’ ‘I can’t believe she’s wearing that’ or they just look at each other and laugh—at me. I hate being laughed at. It used to happen a lot, but I’ve gotten better at preventing it.”
“I’ll wear rainbows out with you. I don’t give a shit,” he nearly growls as he pulls me close unexpectedly and hugs me.
I’m not used to affectionate acts like this—my family definitely isn’t touchy-feely, and neither was Julian—so it takes me a second or two to relax and rest my cheek on his chest. Wh
en I imagine badass Quan decked out in rainbows and people’s confused reactions, I smile and say, “That would be something.”
“Something awesome, yeah.”
He hugs me tighter, and happiness expands in my chest. I love this, being held by him, feeling safe.
“It was thoughtless of me to ask, but thank you for staying,” I say.
“It was no problem,” he says. “Are you feeling better now?”
“I am.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
A barrage of emotions wells up at his suggestion—fear, excitement, anxiety, uncertainty, and, greatest of all, hope—and I swallow it down. “You have somewhere you need to be, remember?”
“I can be late. It’s just kendo practice with my cousin and brother. Then teaching kids’ class later.”
“You’re the only Asian I know who actually does martial arts,” I comment, intentionally skirting around the issue.
He laughs. “I guess I’m a walking stereotype, then. Guess who my childhood idol was? Hint: There weren’t a ton of options.”
I gasp. “No.”
“Bruce Lee, yeah,” he says with another laugh. “My calligraphy is that quote of his translated into Vietnamese. You know the one.”
“Be water, my friend,” I say in a deep voice that is my approximation of Bruce Lee.
“Yeah, but the whole quote, starting with ‘Empty your mind,’ ” he says.
As the realization hits me, I pull away and look at the tattoos on his arms like I’m seeing them for the first time—the waves, the sea creatures. It appears he tried to take Bruce Lee’s advice literally. “I can’t believe it. You’re dorky.”
A huge grin covers his face, though he looks almost shy. “A little, yeah.”
I touch my fingers to the fish that’s inked onto his forearm and trace the scales on his smooth skin. I can’t stop smiling. His dorkiness delights me. This shy side of him, too. “This looks like a sea carp.”
“It’s a koi fish, and don’t go accusing me of putting freshwater fish in the ocean. My arms are different bodies of water from the rest of me.”
I laugh helplessly. “That’s such a dorky thing to say, Quan.”
“You like it.”
“I do. You might even be more—”
He cuts me off with a deep kiss that makes me cling to him. He tastes clean, faintly of my toothpaste, but salty, mysterious. When he pulls away, I bite back a protest. I could kiss him forever.
“Tomorrow night, right?” he asks, watching me carefully.
I put on a smile and nod, but I feel slightly panicked. Tomorrow is the last time I’ll see him. Ever. That’s been the biggest benefit to our interactions since this started, but it doesn’t feel that way now. Something’s changed.
Even so, it’s a reminder of why I’ve been seeing him in the first place. I can tell him things that I can’t tell other people. Because he doesn’t matter.
Except he does.
But I really won’t be seeing him after tomorrow. That’s what we both want. Well, I used to. I don’t know what I want anymore.
“You asked about yesterday.” I can’t bring myself to look him in the face, so I focus on his T-shirt as I say, “My therapist told me something.” My heart beats so hard I can feel it in my throat. This moment is loud, weighted.
He takes my hands in his and holds on. “What did she say?”
“She said I’m—” Something occurs to me, and I gaze up at him curiously. “Do you think I’m anything like your brother?”
He lifts his eyebrows. “I . . . don’t know? I haven’t thought about it before. Why?”
“We’re not similar at all?”
“You’re a lot prettier than he is,” he says with a twinkle in his eyes.
I shake my head, though I smile, too. “That’s not what I mean, but thank you.”
“Then what do you mean? I won’t be a dick, I promise.”
That’s when I realize that I trust him. Over the past weeks, he’s proven time and again that he respects me, that he won’t hurt me. I can tell him things. Not because he doesn’t matter. But because he is kind.
“She told me I’m on the autism spectrum,” I say. And there it is. The words are out. It feels real now.
“Is that it?” he asks, like he’s still waiting for me to share the big news.
A disbelieving laugh spills out of me. “That’s it.”
He tilts his head to the side and looks at me in a considering way.
When he doesn’t speak for the longest time, my insecurities catch up with me, and I say, “If this changes things and you don’t want to meet tomorrow, I completely understand and—”
“I want to meet tomorrow,” he says quickly. “I was trying to think of similarities between you and my brother.”
“And?”
“Honestly, you’re both really different, and I don’t even know what to look for. I’m not a therapist or anything. What do you think? Does it feel right to you?” he asks, and I can tell that’s what matters to him. He trusts me to know myself. I didn’t know how important that was to me until now.
I get to be the expert on me.
I touch the center of my chest and nod slowly as my eyes sting. “It fits. When my therapist described autism to me, when I read about it, I felt understood in a way I’ve never been before. I felt seen, the real me, and accepted. All my life, I’ve been told that I need to change and be . . . something else, something more, and I try. Sometimes I try so hard it feels like I’m breaking. Like my music right now, no matter what I do I can’t get it to be more. Being told that it’s okay to be me, it’s . . .” I shake my head as words fail me.
He touches his thumb to the corner of my eye, wiping a tear away. “Then why are you so sad?”
“I don’t know.” I laugh, but a knot is forming in my throat. I swipe at my eyes with my sleeves. “I can’t seem to stop crying.”
He gathers me closer and holds me tight, pressing his cheek to my forehead, his skin to my skin. His calmness spreads to me, the steady beating of his heart, the even rhythm of his breathing.
When his pocket buzzes, we’re both startled.
“It’s just my phone,” he says. “Ignore it.” But it keeps buzzing.
“You should answer. It might be important.”
With a sigh, he breaks away from me and lifts his phone to his ear. “Hey . . . No, sorry, I just got held up with something . . . I probably won’t make it today—”
“No, no, please,” I hurry to say. “You should go. I’m okay, really.” I don’t want him canceling his plans on my behalf, especially when I’m not having any sort of emergency.
“Hold on a sec,” he says into the phone before putting it on mute and focusing on me. “Are you sure? I can stay, and we can get breakfast or something. Whatever you want.”
“That’s super nice of you, but . . .” A series of excuses and tiny lies pile up in my mouth, but I decide to be honest and say, “I need to be alone and process things. Plus, I have to practice soon, and I can’t do that with you here. It’s better if you go.”
He smiles in understanding and unmutes the phone to say, “Actually, I’ll head down. See you guys in a bit.” After hanging up, he clasps one of my hands. “Sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. You should go. You’re already late.”
He leans in and kisses me softly on the lips. It’s the briefest kiss, but shivers ripple over me. “Tomorrow night.”
I nod. “Tomorrow night.”
He squeezes my hand once before he leaves. As I shut the door behind him, I hesitate. Neither of us said good-bye.
But tomorrow we will.
FIFTEEN
Quan
After practice, we decide to hang out in Khai’s backyard and have drinks to celebrate the LVMH news instead of going
out. He’s remodeling and just had a fire pit installed. There’s nice outdoor furniture and blooming whatever-the-fuck trees (the flowers are purple, that’s all I know), and the fire keeps people from getting cold at night. It’s a sweet arrangement.
“What are we celebrating again?” Khai asks as he hands margaritas to me and Michael. He makes the best margaritas. They’re strong, and he lines the rim with salt—my favorite part.
“Good news with LVMH,” I say.
“Have you guys signed anything?” he asks.
I take a sip of my drink, and yeah, it’s really good. “Nah, it’s too early for that.”
“So we’re celebrating a phone call?” he asks with a skeptical frown.
Michael laughs. “Yeah, we’re celebrating a phone call. It was a good one. Cheers.” He holds out his drink, and we all clink our glasses together. As I’m swallowing a mouthful of tequila and lime juice, he adds, “We’re also celebrating Quan’s new girlfriend.”
I choke and alcohol burns down my windpipe, making me wheeze and cough while Khai pounds not so helpfully on my back. When I can finally breathe, I rasp out, “What the fuck? She’s not my girlfriend.”
Khai perks up and looks to Michael for confirmation. “He’s seeing someone?”
Over the rim of his margarita glass, Michael grins like that cat from Alice in Wonderland. “He is.”
“We’re hooking up. That hardly counts as ‘seeing someone,’ ” I say, and I don’t like that I’m right.
Michael rolls his eyes. “Did you guys finally get it on last night?”
“No, she was crying and upset about stuff and I’m not an asshole,” I say.
“He heard she was crying and ran over to see her so fast,” Michael says to Khai in a loud fake whisper. “Our man Quan has himself a girlfriend.”
Khai nods tentatively. “If I was only hooking up with someone, I’d stay away from them when they were crying.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I say firmly.