Rent a Boyfriend Page 7

  “Andrew, we insist,” my mother said, glaring at me.

  “Uh…” Andrew looked from my mother to me.

  “Jing-Jing, a word?” my mother said, ticking her head toward the bathroom.

  Unngghhhh. I reluctantly followed her, glancing at Andrew one last time to try to read his face, which seemed to say, Sorry, wouldn’t want to be in your shoes. (At least it didn’t say, $$$!)

  My mother rudely closed the door behind us. “Jing-Jing, you have to bring him back for Christmas. I can’t decide what I think of him after just three days!”

  “You decided with Hongbo in like a minute.”

  She slapped the air. “I did not! We’ve known him and his family for decades! You haven’t even introduced me to Andrew’s parents yet—how can I know if he’s good or not without knowing where he comes from?”

  Did Rent for Your ’Rents also provide fake in-laws? Damn, this hole was starting to feel deep. And I was getting pretty tired from digging.

  “Men can only pretend for so long,” my mother continued. “You need more time with him to see his true character. You’ve barely been together; the minimum is two years, Jing-Jing! Two years before a man can stop acting and show you what’s beneath.” Oh man, so much irony there. “But we don’t have that kind of time with Hongbo’s proposal hanging over us!”

  “Mǎmá, I’ve met his parents. Don’t you trust me? And he already told his family he’d be there for Christmas—it was part of the reason why they didn’t object when he came here this weekend! You have to respect their—”

  “Either Andrew comes or Hongbo comes.”

  I couldn’t stand her sometimes. Oftentimes. “Well, maybe I’ll just go spend Christmas with Andrew’s family.”

  Her eyes flared. “Don’t threaten me. And don’t miss time with us for something as petty as this. We’re getting old, Jing-Jing, especially your father.” Her tone dipped with the last three words, so subtle no one else would notice, but I was hyperattuned to her.

  I thought of what my father had said to Andrew, the cupping, even the change in his financial plan from Mutual funds are the only safe bet to investing in No One Systems for the first time. A large chunk of our savings, he’d said to Hongbo.

  “Is Bǎbá sick?” I asked.

  The shock in my mother’s eyes seemed to be less from the idea and more from the fact that I was asking. But it quickly shifted and she tsked. “He’s just old. If you were more xiàoshùn toward me and Bǎbá, you wouldn’t ask me something like that.”

  She was changing the subject on purpose. Bringing up filial piety because she knew what that did to me. Slapped me into submission even though I already felt like I always put their feelings, their wants first, above mine.

  “Please tell me if Bǎbá is sick.”

  She ignored me. “Show us how xiàoshùn you are and bring Andrew home for Christmas, okay? We want to see both of you. Most important, though? I need to get to know him better, before Hongbo’s proposal deadline.”

  She swept out of the bathroom.

  There was something wrong with my dad. How serious, I wasn’t sure, but they wouldn’t keep it from me if it was simply a cold. I had to find a way to get to the bottom of it. Which was just one more problem to add to the pile. Because I didn’t have enough money to afford Andrew again next month. But I didn’t really have a choice, did I?

  Drew

  Mrs. Wang returned to the table first, smiling at me. “It’s settled, Andrew. You’ll join us for Christmas. If your parents want to, they’re welcome to come here for the holiday—your brother, too. Then you’ll all be together and they can’t be upset.”

  I was caught off guard for a second (a rarity) but managed to pull it together. “That’s so generous of you. I will of course let them know. I’m afraid they tend to host all the extended family for the holidays since our house is the most centrally located and the largest”—her eyes gleamed, and I felt a little gross—“so they likely won’t be able to come, but I’m sure they will be so appreciative of the invitation.”

  I really hoped Mrs. Wang was not ballsy (rude?) enough to invite herself and Mr. Wang over to “my” house for the holidays instead.

  Also, mental note: bring the Wangs something from “my parents” if Jing-Jing rebooks me.

  “Ah! Too bad. Maybe we can find another time to meet them.”

  Did Jing-Jing have enough money to rent some in-laws?

  “Excuse me, I’m going to check on Jing-Jing,” I said, putting my napkin down and walking to the closed bathroom door.

  “She might be going to the bathroom!” Mrs. Wang called out to me. “Number one, of course, but still.”

  I rapped my knuckles lightly, just a couple times. “Jing-Jing? Are you okay?”

  The door opened so quickly it startled me, and before I’d even realized what was happening, she brushed past me and returned to the table.

  “I’m fine,” she said brusquely as she whizzed by.

  Throughout dinner, as the Wangs asked me more about my parents and brother, Jing-Jing’s plastic smile slowly faded. At one point I tried to brush her hand with mine, but she pulled away. Not wanting to push it, I gave her space, but a knot slowly formed in my throat.

  Jing-Jing didn’t eat much, which was out of the ordinary. I missed her enthusiastic bites that, since Mrs. Wang was always scrutinizing her, felt like subtle F-Us to her mother and maybe even the rest of society (not to be dramatic).

  I tried several times to loop her into the conversation (even finding a way to bring up her favorite economics professor), but she was as listless as the two-day-old pie on the counter.

  After dinner, she excused herself to bed, claiming she had a headache. And unlike before, when I could tell she was constantly thinking about how to use every second of this weekend to accomplish our mission, she didn’t seem to care that her already-paid-for time was going to waste.

  I thought about going after her, trying to be a friend again, but… not your prerogative, Operative.

  Chloe CHAPTER 16

  PRETENDING

  I hugged my dad extra tight when saying good night—did he notice? Did my mother?

  My father was eleven years older than my mother, which had never felt that significant, but then again, it still wasn’t, because sickness didn’t discriminate. I tried to step further and further back into my memories, one visit home at a time, trying to pinpoint when their words or actions had first started to change.

  But then I realized we didn’t talk much. Didn’t do much. It was just stifling silence all the time, the constant urge to shove food, water, anything in my mouth just for something to fucking do. Andrew’s presence had shifted that, which should have made me feel better about the money I’d spent, but for some reason it only irked me. Why did it take this actor to improve our family dynamic, and was it even real given that he wasn’t? Were we all pretending, putting on a better face to fool everyone around us, even our family? I guess I’d been doing that my whole life, with Jing-Jing. Did anyone else go by two names and feel like that separated who they were? Did Andrew’s other clients?

  I considered getting a midnight snack—I hadn’t eaten enough at dinner, and I was starving—but instead of going downstairs for mooncakes, I scrounged in my room until I found three very expired granola bars from my high school days, stashed in my drawers for whenever Frankenbāo appeared.

  They tasted as shitty as I felt.

  Drew

  She didn’t come downstairs that night.

  Chloe CHAPTER 17

  OFF THE CLOCK

  November 29

  As I said good-bye to my parents early Sunday morning, I blinked rapidly to hold back tears.

  This trip had been more emotional than I’d anticipated—which was saying something, since I had anticipated PMS-level roller coasters. It wasn’t just about my father’s possible-but-definite illness, but everything. Part of me even wished I could have a few more hours with my parents, but I’d picked the earliest flig
ht out to avoid going to church and seeing Hongbo. And because I couldn’t afford to rent Andrew another day.

  Andrew shook hands with my father, then hugged my mother.

  “Safe travels,” my mom called out, waving her hand up and down so frantically it looked like she was trying to fly with one arm.

  “Are you trying to be the golden duck, Mǎmá?” I joked. To my delight, she laughed and flapped harder.

  “If I’m a golden duck, I’m twenty-four karats!” she called back.

  My chest hurt as I piled into the Uber with Jorge, 4.9 stars.

  “Are you okay?” Andrew asked as I stared after my parents, too many thoughts fighting for center stage in my brain.

  I ignored him as I continued to stare, worrying about my parents’ health, worrying about what I was supposed to do next, wondering when everything had become so messy.

  “Remember when you were young,” I said, still gazing out the window even though my parents were out of view, “and things seemed so easy yet so hard? I wish we’d known then to enjoy it while it lasted.”

  “Or maybe things would hurt more now if you’d enjoyed it then,” Andrew said quietly. Then he quickly changed the subject by asking me again if I was okay.

  “You’re off the clock,” I replied. “You don’t have to bother.”

  I could feel him shaking his head even though I couldn’t see him.

  “C’mon, Jing-Jing.”

  It’s Chloe, I wanted to tell him, but instead I said, “That’s not even my name, at least not outside my church community. Just like how I’m guessing you aren’t Andrew outside these jobs.” I turned to face him. “I don’t really know how I got here. I feel like I blinked and then—poof—I’m caught in the middle of a ridiculous web of lies I created, and now I’m going to have to spend the next month finding the money to hire you again. I thought this was going to be a one-time thing.”

  But my plan was obviously poorly thought out and on fire.

  It was silent in the car. Even Jorge the driver seemed to have stopped breathing.

  “I’m sorry. I was trying to help, not…” Andrew paused, but I didn’t want to hear what he had to say next.

  “Where do you want to be dropped off?” I asked.

  “Here’s fine,” he said, voice robotic.

  Because he doesn’t want me to know where he lives. The company had run extensive background checks on both of us for each other’s safety, but one could never be too safe.

  “Thanks, Andrew. Or whoever you are.” I stuck my hand out and he took it. I held on a second longer than I needed to. “Really, though. Thank you. You did me a solid, and I really am just… so grateful. I’ll, uh, see you at Christmas if I can get the money together.”

  He nodded at me, then exited the car swiftly. His bag was already in hand; he must not have put it in the trunk because he knew he’d be making a quick escape.

  I slumped in my seat as Jorge pulled off. He handed me a travel pack of tissues and said nothing.

  I gave out two five-star ratings that day.

  Drew

  Not your prerogative, Operative.

  AFTER THANKSGIVING

  Chloe CHAPTER 18

  BETTER SKIN

  Whenever I left California and landed in Chicago, it felt like I shed my old skin and put on a more comfortable, better fitting one.

  My steps were already more confident as I swiped into my dorm and made my way to my single.

  I waved shyly to my floormate, Summer, who was, as usual, surrounded by a group of friends. She’d invited me out with them a few times to parties, but since I don’t drink, I’d said no and they’d soon stopped asking.

  High school had sucked and I couldn’t wait to get to college, but I wish I’d been more prepared for how important alcohol would be. I was immediately declared a party pooper by the couple of groups I had tried to be a part of. Maybe if the drinkers had also been missing the gene to metabolize alcohol and zoomed past buzzed straight to raging hangover, they’d understand, but to them, I was just no fun. I thought I was plenty of fun even without alcohol—and didn’t drunk people find everyone fun?—but apparently drinking was an all-or-nothing kind of activity.

  I had “friends,” as in people with whom I worked on problem sets and had dinner, but no one I was close enough to tell about Andrew. Maybe if I’d had someone, I wouldn’t have gone through with the rental, so I couldn’t decide whether I was grateful or sad for that.

  My closest friend in high school, Genevieve, was a friend of circumstance, in that we started hanging out because my parents approved of her. That girl could give Rent for Your ’Rents operatives a run for their money. In front of my parents, she was shy, obedient, and studious, one of my only classmates to win them over. But when they weren’t around, she was do-any-dare, seek-all-thrills wild. Sometimes I wondered what she saw in me, but based on her taste in romantic relationships, I think she liked the challenge my parents posed. A different kind of chase. When she went to UCLA and I went to Chicago, we fell out of touch, though knowing her, she would be happy to hear from me. But she wasn’t really a tell-me-your-feelings, ride-or-die kind of friend. And she would not have understood—her parents were the opposite of mine.

  I threw my luggage in the corner of my dorm room, telling myself I’d unpack when I didn’t feel like death. Then I took the fastest shower in history and flopped on my twin bed like a dead fish. Even though I felt like I’d just pulled an all-nighter, even though my single felt like home and every poster, knickknack, and crack held both comfort and a story, I tossed and turned most of the night.

  Now that I was alone, now that the mission and navigating my parents weren’t at the forefront of my mind, dangerous questions started to form. Had Andrew meant it when he said he liked my organization, my passion, the real me? I like the version of you from the application, he’d said.

  I repeated that sentence in my mind several times. I’d always been too scared to show my true, bright-red, fiery colors to anyone, since my previous environment punished me for them, but… he’d seen Chloe on his own and had even figured out that Jing-Jing existed as the shiny front that other people wanted, not me. And apparently not him. The same guy who was somehow more in tune with my feelings than maybe I was. Who had laughed over my mooncake points, Frankenbāo, and tile-eating jokes—which, for the record, had felt real. And he’d seen the puke green of Hongbo immediately, defending me while also somehow recognizing that I could defend myself, too.

  You’re just attracted to the attentiveness you paid for, the part he’s playing, the rational part of my brain told me. It’s the same as being attracted to a character in a movie—a.k.a. not real, not pursuable. He’s trained to be whoever he needs to be, lies flowing from his lips like honey, lies told so well everyone devours them easily.

  Yet sometimes I’d felt like I could see the real him underneath, the one with tics and good vision and a love for banh mis.

  I wanted to know his story—his real one—and ask him his thoughts on my mess, my parents, my decisions. He seemed to understand what it was like to have parents like mine. To have that pressure, that need to please them even though you were hurting yourself to do it.

  But the real him was off-limits. Partly because of his rule and partly because he had clearly rejected me when I’d poked him, but mostly because that would be like adding accelerant to this on-fire mess of a plan.

  I tried to distract myself from these too-complicated, no-solution issues. And, of course, my masochistic mind wandered to the time in second grade when I’d farted during a schoolwide moment of silence.

  When I finally did fall asleep, my subconscious combined the two, forcing me to dream-live through farting in front of Andrew and my parents at the Thanksgiving table.

  Upon waking the next morning, I felt just as drained as yesterday, but at least this weekend and Andrew felt like the past. What magic sleep had, even fart-filled sleep.

  Drew CHAPTER 19

  FOOL


  November 30

  After each job, especially holiday ones, I felt drained. Social situations are rough for anyone, but as an operative, I was pretending to be someone else 24/7, even worrying about accidentally talking in my sleep and ruining my cover. (My boy James Bond deserves a pay raise.)

  Non-holidays were less busy, for obvious reasons, so I was going to have a lighter load until Christmas (and whether Jing-Jing—er, whoever she was—hired me or not, I told myself it didn’t matter). I still had jobs in between, but they were usually one-evening dinners, a Saturday get-together, or a church visit plus brunch, which were all more forgiving than a multiday holiday immersion.

  Chinese New Year was by far the busiest (and most lucrative) holiday, the one around which Rent for Your ’Rents originated. The practice of bringing home a fake boyfriend for Lunar New Year was more common in China, with women going to the classifieds to find actors for hire. Our founder, known to everyone as just Mr. J, saw a need in the Asian-heavy California communities and started with just a few operatives—himself, his brother, and a close friend. Six years later, we had approximately a hundred operatives in several locations. I’d even recruited a couple of artist buddies, though we were a small subset (the majority being aspiring actors, of course, who made up almost all of the LA branch).

  My East Palo Alto apartment was “cozy and quaint”—officially, since my super had said it twenty times during the initial tour. It wasn’t much (nine hundred square feet and overrun by some pretty scrappy ants), but it had become home, both because it was mine and because of my roommate, Jason, who was a fellow artist and operative. (We’d met through friends of a friend of a friend; then I’d recruited him to Rent for Your ’Rents.) Talking art with him and boosting each other’s creative energies was as wonderful as game nights with him and his boyfriend, Marshall. I was the Splendor champ; Jason, Takenoko; and Marshall, Ticket to Ride.