Rent a Boyfriend Page 11

  Andrew turned to my father. “I’m sorry, Shǔshú. I just felt like we hadn’t appreciated Jing-Jing’s accomplishment enough.”

  Andrew sat back down. This time the silence was so thick with tension everyone else stopped breathing too.

  We all inhaled our food, trying to speed up our escape from this squirmy, claustrophobic atmosphere.

  I guess I should amend: all of us but Andrew, who was on the clock despite how he had acted ten minutes ago.

  “Did you have a successful month?” he asked my parents. “I’m sure it’s busy with patients wanting to use up their insurance, flexible spending, et cetera, before the year end.”

  My parents grunted, and I think my dad said, “Uh-huh, busy,” between shoveling salt-and-pepper scallops into his mouth.

  Which said a lot, because I knew he loved discussing dental insurance and telling everyone it was a scam—information that, yes, I had relayed to Andrew on my application. Probably why he was bringing it up now.

  It wasn’t going great, but I still gave Andrew points for effort because he didn’t let up for the rest of the meal. And when I was still chewing the last of the roasted duck, he left the table to retrieve a bag from the living room.

  “These are from my parents,” he prefaced before setting down a giant sack of pears. Seriously, giant as in I wasn’t sure how he fit that and all his clothes in his suitcase.

  “You couldn’t have grabbed them sooner?” I quietly joked to him, feeling a surge of hope.

  Except my parents were staring at the fruit, my dad’s lips pursed and my mom’s eyes tight.

  Instead of saying thank you, my mother asked, “Do your parents grow them or something? I wouldn’t think pears thrive in Chicago.”

  “We special-order these,” Andrew said. “I know one of the hardest things for my parents when they immigrated here was adjusting to the food, and Asian pears were one of the many items they missed.” He gestured to the sack. “These are from Korea.”

  “So… they bought them especially for us?” my mother said slowly, a crease forming on her head—a bad and rare sign from don’t-give-yourself-wrinkles Mǎmá Wang.

  “They’re probably expensive and so hard to find,” I added before giving my mother a pleading look. “What a thoughtful gift.”

  “No thank you,” my father said, finally speaking up.

  Jesus. “What? Why? Because of earlier?”

  My parents shook their heads but didn’t elaborate.

  “What is it?” I asked, shocking even myself. I was sick of being in the dark.

  My mother sighed, then explained, “Giving pears is an insult. ‘Lí’ ”—pear—“sounds like ‘lí’ as in ‘fēnlí,’ to separate. We can only assume they’re wishing separation of us from a loved one.” Her voice began to rise. “Maybe they mean Jing-Jing… maybe they want to cause our separation. They’re staking their claim on the two of you in the future, wanting you to stay in Chicago instead of coming back to California!” She slapped the table. “Is this true? Is that what’s happening? Because then it’s war! I was afraid of this when I found out they live in Chicago!”

  Holy cannoli.

  Andrew sputtered, probably because he wasn’t used to a blunder like this in his well-researched world. “I promise that’s not why they gifted these. They always send pears to their closest and most cherished friends. These are imported; they’re quite pricey. I swear these are given to you with respect. And appreciation for you hosting me.”

  My father stood. “It’s hard to believe they wouldn’t know the meaning of this, given their background.” He eyed the pears one last time. “And don’t split one between you two—you’d be dooming your relationship here and now. Fēnlí: ‘separate,’ or ‘split a pear,’ ” he explained.

  “Or maybe you should split one,” my mother spat.

  They both left the table. It was silent between me and Andrew as they trudged up the stairs, then slammed the bedroom door.

  Goddamn it. I couldn’t look at Andrew or the pears.

  Drew CHAPTER 27

  O CHRISTMAS TREE

  As soon as her parents had shut the bedroom door, Jing-Jing said, “Why’d you have to get them the freaking pears?” She was pretending to joke but I could tell she was part serious.

  With a forced laugh I said, “That wasn’t on purpose.” Obviously. Though I was really frigging embarrassed about the mistake. Rent for Your ’Rents did a shit ton of research, but there were so many nuances in each diaspora family’s interpretation of culture that these kerfuffles did happen every so often. “Maybe you helped a future client whose parents are also superstitious about pears?” I offered, knowing that would ease some of her frustration.

  “That helps.” She rubbed her temples. “I guess it’s just as much my fault too. I’ve never heard my parents talk about pears before, but now I’m realizing that I’ve never seen them share one—though before I would’ve just assumed they each wanted their own.”

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” I said. Her comment was in character for her (Eliza Schuyler), but I still wasn’t used to how quick she was to blame herself. “It was pears, not a sack of dog poo. Or a stack of Harry Potter books.”

  That got her to laugh. She’d told me on her application that because the Kuos had declared Harry Potter evil (witchcraft, ahh!), everyone in their community was banned from owning or reading them. Jing-Jing had anyway, borrowing from the library and reading under the covers while sweating through her pajamas worrying she’d be caught. (And I found that detail and the fact that she’d mentioned it not adorable at all.)

  But her laugh was short-lived, and she returned to rubbing her temples. (Did she need some ibuprofen?) Then, suddenly, she dropped her hands and looked at me so sternly my shoulders hunched. “You need to pull yourself together, refocus on the job—it’s like you’ve forgotten why you’re here.”

  “The pears were an accident,” I said, even though I knew this wasn’t about that.

  “You know what I’m talking about.” Her voice was wavering, like she wanted to increase the volume but couldn’t on account of her parents upstairs. “Why’d you have to interrupt my dad?”

  “Because you deserve to be treated better.”

  She shook her head at me. “That’s not your concern.”

  “Someone needs to stand up for you since you aren’t doing it yourself, even though you can and do otherwise.”

  “Don’t.”

  The word was a warning. A start of a sentence but also the punctuation at the end of this topic of conversation.

  She sighed. “Look, what happened in the kitchen earlier, with the cookies…” She took a breath. “That was a mistake. It can’t happen again, and it can’t affect what we’re trying to do here.”

  Oof. My chest hurt.

  What if I can’t help defending you, wanting you to have more?

  As if she read my mind (she probably read it on my face), she reached a hand toward me (but no contact) and said, “You help me the most by getting rid of Hongbo.”

  I nodded. That I could do. I’d find my way back, focus on the assignment so that, like always, my decisions would be made by recalling information, analyzing the situation, and executing. Formulaic, not driven by emotion, yeesh.

  She stood. “Come on, let’s go set up the Christmas tree. Maybe if we make this place more festive it’ll change the mood.”

  “Don’t you want to do that with your parents?”

  “They hate it—I usually do it alone.”

  I know what that’s like.

  Jing-Jing pushed away from the table and I followed her to the den.

  She opened the box and dumped the contents on the floor. Fake branches, ornaments in ziplock bags, free-floating tinsel, and one massive ball of lights fell out.

  “Yikes.” How late were we planning on staying up?

  She forced a short laugh. “I know, sorry.”

  We constructed the tree in silence, with Jing-Jing untangling shit as I stuck
fake branches into the plastic trunk.

  The bedroom door opened slowly and creakily, like the sneaking culprit was trying to mask the sound.

  We shared a hopeful look.

  And then, as if a switch flipped, she grabbed a paper lantern (the kind my family also used to make out of construction paper, glue, and scissors) and threw it at me. Catching on, I laughed and declared, “Oh, it is so on.”

  But before I could retaliate, she hurled, like, twenty things at me (all soft, but still, quite the onslaught).

  Between the laughter, we flung tinsel and streamers and felt ornaments at each other, some of it landing on the tree but most of it hitting our targets.

  When we were short of breath, our fight turned even more playful, with Jing-Jing using the fake snow to give us fluffy beards, and us first linking plastic candy canes to see who could make the longest chain, then dueling with them.

  It had become real for me. I thought maybe it was real for her, too, especially because her mom (or dad) had likely retreated back into the bedroom two play fights ago. But… not your fucking prerogative, Operative.

  You help me the most by getting rid of Hongbo, I repeated in my head, which centered me.

  “I think we’re good,” Jing-Jing whispered, and we put down our candy-cane weapons to assess the aftermath. A gorgeous, shining tree stood tall and confident before us. Just kidding. It was a kid’s tantrum come to life in plastic-fir form, a Charlie Brown tree missing half its branches, with only the bottom third decorated haphazardly as if… well, as if it was the casualty of people fighting near it.

  “Should we start over?” I asked.

  “Nah, it’s late. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

  I nodded. Then, feeling awkward (even though I was trained not to), I wiped my hands on my pants. Then scratched my brow.

  Jing-Jing was standing there watching me, her eyes taking in every fidget.

  When I forced my hands down by my sides, she smiled, threw the last of the tinsel in my hair, said a quick good night, and bounded up the steps two at a time.

  “Sleep loose,” I whispered to no one.

  That night, every time I tried to focus on pajama-clad sheep, Jing-Jing would appear—playing with the sheep, hopping over the fence with one, dancing with another. Always at a distance.

  Chloe

  As I lay in bed, I tried—so hard, I swear—to think about anything else. Sheep. Game theory. My parents. Other strategies to finally kick Hongbo out of my life. But no matter what I was trying to force to the front of my mind, Andrew would pop in, a flash of lips or laughter or tousled hair.

  The faux flirting—or whatever you want to call our Christmas-tree giggle fest—had been real for me. Not at first, especially because of the big speech I’d just given him, but, well, I’m human. And I knew it had been real for him—the fidgety, not-Andrew side.

  Was my solution to the Hongbo problem also going to be my downfall?

  Chloe CHAPTER 28

  LUMINOUS

  December 24

  I woke up exhausted after a night of tossing and turning. Determined not to repeat the pretend-but-real flirting of last night, I joined my parents in the kitchen and asked if they wanted to decorate the tree with me.

  “Why would we? That’s for kids,” my mother said with a yawn over eggs. We were having them sunny-side up with tiánmiàn paste on the side, a sweet-and-savory breakfast that was far better than a reanimated Frankenbāo.

  “Right. Of course.” I tried not to let my emotions show.

  I dished myself an egg and wondered if I’d be able to sneak in making a cup of green tea without my mom pulling out the mother tea, which, lo and behold, was on the counter. Maybe I could get Andrew to do it for me.

  Speaking of, where was he? These were prime winning-the-’rents-over hours, especially before I was awake. Had he gotten overzealous with pajama designing last night and stayed up too late? Damn, did I want to tell him that joke, but it would only make everything harder.

  “Besides, isn’t it already done?” my father added.

  I hurried to the den, scurrying past the couch with a recumbent Andrew, who got up and followed me wordlessly.

  A gorgeous—I mean, it was freaking luminous—tree stood before me, perfectly frosted and decorated with familiar ornaments that evoked too many childhood memories to count. But there were also new touches: crisply folded origami cranes and stars, flowers assembled from cut construction paper, little 3-D paper mooncakes with googly eyes and tiny smiles, and… a few sheep. One dressed as a mooncake, another with a sheepdog on its butt, and one with the cutest little antigravity boots, floating near a half-moon.

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe you did this,” I said, still staring forward even though he was behind me. I couldn’t look away.

  I touched the three sheep individually, purposefully, so he would know I’d seen them. But I wasn’t sure if I should do more than that.

  I finally turned to him. “Did you stay up all night doing this? Why?”

  He shrugged. “Because you thought it could help.”

  “It’s stunning,” I said, gesturing to the whole tree. “It’s like something you’d see in a model home or a Christmas issue of Architectural Digest. Or it’s the work of… an artist,” I realized.

  I stepped closer to the tree and fingered one of the mooncake faces. “You’re so talented.”

  His cheeks flushed. “I was just playing around.”

  “Well, then, that’s all the more impressive.”

  An electrically charged moment passed between us, and, shockingly—pun intended—he ended it first.

  He cleared his throat and took a step away from me. “I was just trying to turn the mood—the bad one I created, sorry,” he said without meeting my gaze. Then he leaned toward me and whispered, “It’s what any good operative would’ve done.”

  His breath on my ear made me shiver. “Right. Of course. Thank you.” Even though I had asked him to distance himself, to stick to his rule, his words etched a painful crack in my glass heart.

  He quickly changed the subject. “Do you want a pear for breakfast?”

  “Sure. Only if we each get one.” Then I sputtered, “Just because I want my own. No other reason.”

  “Of course.”

  Drew

  Thank goodness, because I didn’t want to split a pear because of the other reason. But I respected her wishes and kept that to myself.

  Drew CHAPTER 29

  GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY

  Jing-Jing and I ate our own eggs and own pears, no splitting. The latter was super delish, with so much juice and that unique crunchy texture my parents always raved about (yes, the pear gift was something my real parents did). Mr. and Mrs. Wang hovered silently (and awkwardly) as Jing-Jing and I ate the traitorous fruit, only a pinched look from him and a forced nasal exhale from her. I considered conjuring up an apology email from my parents (which would’ve been almost no work on my part and expertly done by the company—they already had email addresses set up for my “parents”), but I followed my well-trained gut and gave them room to breathe.

  When I’d first sat down, Jing-Jing had tilted her head at me, then at her parents, but I gave her a trust me nod even though I didn’t feel as confident as usual. She’d nodded back at me, but the worry didn’t leave her eyes.

  Not ten minutes later, her parents stood and excused themselves.

  “Make sure you clean up before the party this afternoon,” Mrs. Wang said sternly, mostly to her daughter.

  “We’re going to that?” Jing-Jing asked, completely surprised, and her mother answered, “Of course,” with a wave of her hand.

  When it was just us, Jing-Jing said, “So, uh, apparently we’re going to the annual Christmas Eve party for our little community. The entire congregation usually shows up, even the not-so-religious ones, for the food, of course.” She paused. “And it’s at Hongbo’s parents’ house.”

  “Oh,” I said, the shape of my mouth and eyes matching the so
und that had just come out.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is this a good or bad thing?”

  Jing-Jing tapped her fingers on the table. “I just assumed we wouldn’t be going since my parents wouldn’t want everyone to see us together, but maybe this is their tactic to get me and Hongbo together for a longer stretch of time, where it’s harder for me to run? Except,” she said with emphasis, raising her right index finger, “we’ll use it to our advantage.”

  “My thoughts exactly. Get ready for your entire community to know how in love we are.”

  She grasped her cup and tilted her head toward me. “Do you have any specific tactics in mind? I just… I feel like this is it. The golden opportunity, you know? We have to reach out and”—she grabbed at the air and formed a fist—“clinch this whole thing.”

  “Why don’t we take a walk?” I suggested, ticking my chin up toward her parents’ bedroom.

  She nodded.

  We gobbled up the rest of our (edible, phew) breakfasts, she slipped a sweatshirt over her striped cotton T-shirt, and we went for a scheming walk around the neighborhood.

  Chloe CHAPTER 30

  PRIME STRIP

  As we left the house and started wandering aimlessly, Andrew suggested, “Maybe we can attack this from both sides, not just your parents’. Maybe the Kuos have a weak spot we can hit.”

  “Yes, brilliant.”

  He looked at me expectantly, waiting for more info, but I just nodded, over and over and over again. Stalling. Because in order to figure out a plan, he had to know all the nauseating details, including what I’d left off the application. On purpose. I was about to relive some truly awful moments I’d been trying to forget since they happened. But for the sake of the mission, I sucked in a breath and spat the story out.

  Three months earlier, my life had been pure bliss—no thoughts of Hongbo, and certainly none of him and me together. Using this to her advantage, my mother had tricked me into going on a date with anti-Dreamboat. And on that horrible, life-altering night, I’d started the evening thinking I would be tutoring him for the GMAT in exchange for money.