Thirty-Three
The day after our maybe date is not weird but also isn’t not weird.
Sam warned me he’d be busy but texts me little thoughts throughout the day, and I find myself carrying my phone around with me in case I miss one. It’s not productive and I finally text Anjali after getting ready for bed.
jfc it was totally a date, she writes.
I stare at the screen. My phone rings.
“You know it was a date,” Anjali says.
I wrap the plush robe closer around me and adjust the pearl-infused sheet mask Mei left out for me to get it out of my eye. “It was, right?”
“Kissing? Hot chocolate? Holding hands?”
“What does it mean, though?”
Anjali snorts. “That you enjoy each other’s company and are getting to know each other. And want to bang.”
“Probably.”
“You mispronounced ‘definitely’ as ‘probably.’”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” The mask slips again and I try not to move my mouth too much when I speak.
“None of this is a good idea.”
“I don’t need to compound it.”
“You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to,” she reminds me. “The question is if you want to.”
“I don’t know.”
“Then figure it out before you go further.”
Easy for her to say—she doesn’t have to deal with the dreamboat that is Sam Yao up close and personal. I give a noncommittal response and change the topic. “How’s work?”
“I had to reprimand a guy on my team,” she says. “He thought it was a good idea to use a photo of Miley Cyrus on the wrecking ball as his laptop background.”
“Why?”
“Said it was a cultural meme. I walked him through how it was a bad idea, and he took it better than I expected. Not Todd level.”
“Still irritating.”
“I’ll say. Speaking of Todd, has he acted up like the immature man-child that he is?” I’d told her what happened at the Chanel show.
“Nope.”
“Good. Bullies like that back down when they’re challenged.”
“Let’s not waste breath talking about him anymore.” Todd is out of my life. “Did you finish with the life coach?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Canceled the last two sessions. I’m in control here. Not him.”
“You tell him.”
“I run my life, and if that means I remain moderately dictatorial, so be it.”
“No one tells you what to do, within reason.”
“No one’s the boss of me, except my boss.”
We both slap the phone in a virtual high five.
* * *
The next morning I wake to a text from Sam. Breakfast? When do I get to test Eppy?
Yes and soon, I text back.
We meet out on the street and Sam’s in his usual disguise of ball cap, black jeans, and black T-shirt. He has a coffee that he hands to me—a latte, exactly as I like it—and a paper bag with what I suspect are pastries.
We stroll down to the lake and take a seat on one of the benches where he hands me a croissant and takes a bite of his own. It’s peaceful with him, watching the sun glisten on the lake, alone except for a stream of panting joggers who speed by.
I’ve been thinking about what Anjali said about Todd acting out and how I’d deal with it. Todd is a wound that’s currently stanched and I want completely cauterized.
“Then we called the company and had her reinstated.” Sam finishes his story about a colleague and I suddenly turn to look at him, croissant halfway to my mouth.
I don’t have to deal with Todd by myself, because he’s no longer only a me problem. There are people better equipped to deal with Todd than I am, and all I have to do is ask.
“I need to ask you a favor,” I say.
“Sure.” No hesitation.
“It’s about Todd.”
Sam only nods when I tell him I’m concerned Todd might try to get back at me, and as usual, the siren call of Fangli’s name spurs him into action. “I’ll take care of it,” he says.
“What are you going to do?”
He looks thoughtful. “Hire some goons to break his legs?”
I hesitate, unsure if he’s kidding.
He lifts the brim of his hat to look me better in the eyes. “I’m going to talk to my lawyer, Gracie. No kneecaps will be broken.”
“Good.”
“Unless the lawyer recommends it, and then what can I do?”
I nod seriously. “It’s a law if a lawyer says it.”
There it is. The end of Todd in my life, not with a bang but with a lawyer’s dry language.
Very satisfying.
Sam’s phone rings. He looks at it, silences it, and then eats the rest of his croissant.
“Your mom?” He only gets that tight look around his mouth when it’s Lu Lili.
“She’s stepped up her campaign.” He glances at the phone, then flips it over so the screen is covered.
“How so?”
He sighs. “She called Denis.”
“The director for your next movie?” After this, Sam is due to start filming on a corporate spy action movie that I haven’t been thinking about because it reminds me how finite our time together is.
“He told me yesterday. She didn’t threaten him—Lili doesn’t do anything so crass—but she said she wanted his advice on how to get me to see reason.”
“Wow.”
“I know,” he says. I look left and right to confirm we’re the only ones on the boardwalk, then pull him in to lean against me. The faint thump of his heart sounds against my arm and I trace little circles on his shoulder, feeling the muscles slowly relax. I have a moment of unreality, that I’m sitting here with Sam Yao, but he’s only Sam, a guy I like who happens to be talking about problems with his iconic mother and his new action movie—normal person stuff. “Luckily Denis took it well.”
“Is she trying to sabotage you?” What kind of a mother does this?
“She would say she’s looking out for my future.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.” His shrug shifts against me. “What can I do? It’s impossible to make her see reason.”
“That’s a bit defeatist.”
“You don’t know my mother,” he says darkly. The phone vibrates between us and we ignore it.
“Aren’t you the one who told me there are enough people in the world ready to pull me down and that I didn’t need to join them? Same goes for you.”
“Hardly the same thing.” He stands, then turns away, tugging his hat down to hide his face as a pod of runners approaches en masse. “Can we walk for a bit?”
We go west to the Music Garden and wander the paths through the landscaped plants. The sun is already hot but the garden retains some of the coolness from the night.
“What will you do when Fangli goes back home?” he asks as he balances on the edge of a grass-covered step. I reach out to grab him as he tilts back, but he only winks at me.
“Find a job, I guess.” I’m not enthusiastic.
“Not Eppy?”
A warm flush comes over me; he believes in it enough to think I can make it a business. “I’ll have to do that on the side. Need to pay the bills.”
He hands me a card. “Robin Banerjee.”
I gaze at it. “What?”
“Didn’t get a chance to talk to him the other night, so I asked around. Apparently he’s a nice guy.” He nods at the card. “That’s his personal cell.”
“You did this for me?” I take the card. There it is, black font on matte card stock. Robin Banerjee’s cell number. At the Chanel party, I’d been torn between wanting Sam to intercede and needing to do it myself. That’s faded. Help isn’t anything to be ashamed of and it doesn’t take away from my independence.
“I want one thing in return.”
“What?”
“You let me use Eppy right away. With Deng gone, I’m desperate to keep my life in order.”
I take my phone out and send him the hidden URL right then and there. Then I pause. “You got me this number and you have no idea if Eppy works or not.”
“I believe in you,” he says. “You haven’t failed at anything I’ve seen you try yet.”
When was the last time someone had this blind faith in me, even more than I have in myself? Combined with what Fangli said the other night, it makes my vision go a little blurry. “Thank you.”
“Except for faking laryngitis at the art gallery,” he adds. “That was bad.”
“Silence, you.”
The phone vibrates in his pocket again and this time he pulls it out with a muffled curse. “My mother again.”
“Answer it.”
He stares at the screen and doesn’t move.
“Sam, take the call.”
“For you.” With a sigh, he answers. “Wei?” There’s a long silence that stretches. I try to read Sam’s expression, but all he does is squint into the middle distance like an old-time pirate scoping out the horizon for land.
Then comes a burst of Mandarin and more silence. I walk over to the water’s edge to give him some privacy, because whatever the two of them are talking about is causing Sam so much tension his entire body is clenched tight. Sam, worldwide star, has mega-mother issues. I never would have thought his life was anything but charmed.
Instantly, I’m ashamed at how shallow I am. This is what Sam was telling me in the car, that I had trouble seeing beyond all the trappings of fame. No matter what, money will help smooth over whatever problems Sam and Fangli experience—that’s not even up for debate—but the more I see of them, the more they become people rather than characters. The more I care about them.
I glance back. Sam’s frowning at the sky as he listens and he doesn’t need me spying on him. When he looks over, I make a gesture that I hope will be correctly interpreted as Take your time; to give you space, I am going to go for a quick walk. At his nod, I head down toward the tall ship moored at the end of a pier about fifty meters away.
He’s waiting for me when I get back. “That was interesting,” he says, tossing his phone from one hand to another. He doesn’t use a cell-phone cover so I need to turn away because all I can picture is the screen shattered on the ground when it drops.
We walk along the water and I thump the palm of my hand on the thick pedestals that line the edge of the path, which apart from more runners in the distance, is empty at this early morning hour. “Were you honest with her?”
“I was.”
“Not a success?”
He kisses the top of my head and I do my best not to melt. “You can say that.”
“She won’t get off your back about joining your father’s company?”
“Lili only mentioned it once.” He pauses. “She has a new goal now.”
“What’s that?”
“She decided I’m going to marry Fangli.”
“What?” I twist around to see him laughing, but not in a happy, life is good way.
“She mentioned it before but I headed her off. Now she’s determined because she saw clips of us in Toronto and knows we’d be a successful match because of how we looked at each other. Except, in those clips, I was with you.”
“She didn’t see that I wasn’t Fangli?”
“I told you, you’re good. Also, the image she sent me as proof of this predestined love wasn’t a close-up.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’d better warn Fangli.” He takes out his phone and frowns. “Too late. Her father called her.”
“Your mom and her dad know each other?”
“Fangli’s father is very influential, which means Lili absolutely knows him.” His expression is less a smile than a line formed by his lips pulling tight.
I shrug. “Well, what if they do want you to get married? You’re thirty. They can’t make you.”
“I wouldn’t put it past them to announce it on our behalf,” he says grimly. “My mother would see it as helping the family business, given Fangli’s father’s role in government.”
“Does she live in the Victorian age?”
He raises his eyebrows. “You think these marriages don’t happen all the time?”
“I never had to think about it.”
“Lili does.” He looks at the sky. Clouds have swept in with a heavy wind. “We should head back. Looks like rain.”
He doesn’t move, though, and drops his gaze to the harbor in front of us. The boats bob on the water as they strain against their moorings.
“Hey, Sam?”
“What?”
I lean over so my shoulder grazes his arm. “It’s okay to not want all that.”
“I know.” He speaks quickly and gives a harsh laugh that almost hurts to hear.
“No, Sam.” I tug on his arm so he looks at me. “I mean it.”
“I owe her,” he says. “I’ve had an easy ride because of my parents. Their names, the connections. I’d be nowhere if it wasn’t for them.”
I can’t argue that because it’s definitely true being the treasured son of a film star will give you the most head start of head starts so I focus on the real matter. “You owe them love,” I say. “Not some outdated sense of filial loyalty where you abase yourself to their orders.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Probably not.” I shrug. “Tell me. Would it be so bad to be CEO?”
“I’d never escape her then.” The words spill out and Sam looks astonished. “Holy shit,” he says. “I’m a terrible son.”
“No.” I step around so I’m between him and the water. “You can want to live your life, Sam. Lu Lili has her own life. She doesn’t need yours as well.”
He rubs the side of his cheek and I hear the slight scrape of his stubble as he works his fingers nervously back and forth while his eyes move between my face and over my shoulder. Then his hand drops back to his side and he stops moving completely. “Okay.”
What a wonderfully fluid word that is, depending on the tone. Give it an emphasis at the end and you have joyful triumph (o-KAY!). Draw out the beginning for a nice dose of doubtful hesitation (ooo-kay?). Then there’s the way Sam says it now, hushed and vulnerable as if the O is a window through which he can see a road he never knew existed.
“Okay,” I say back. Used to ease this time.
“Okay.” Firm and decisive. End of conversation.
He gives the water a final look before he bends down and captures my mouth under his. This time he moves slowly enough for me to feel the shape of his lips against mine before he shifts the tempo and pulls me tight as the kiss deepens. His big hands slide from my shoulders until he holds both my hands in his and the kiss changes to soft flutters against my mouth.
It’s only him and me, standing by a wind-blown lake.
I can never tire of this.
* * *
“I can’t believe she called my father.” Fangli gives Sam a tired look across the table. The three of us assemble after Fangli and Sam get off from work. Fangli picks at the sashimi in front of her, her brows knit together.
“What did he say?” asks Sam.
“My father thinks it’s a good idea. He’s been after me to marry because he wants a grandchild.” She pulls her hair back into a ponytail and lets it drop down. “Why now? We’ve known each other for years.”
“Lili says we look happy together.”
Fangli groans. “That’s Gracie, not me.”
“Sorry,” I say weakly. “I can dial it back.”
Sam puts his hand on mine. Fangli notices and her eyes widen. “Oh my God,” she says. “How long has this been going on?”
“What?” we ask in unison.
She stares pointedly at our hands, because Sam hasn’t moved. “No wonder they think we should get married.” Then she laughs and I can tell she’s not upset but more bemused at the situation.
Then she shoots me a look. “You didn’t say a word the other night.” Another frown, this one at Sam as she points at him with a dramatic gesture. “Neither did you!”
He snorts. “You took that right out of January February.”
“When I was accusing my mother-in-law of murder.” She nods. “It’s a powerful movement.”
“Very good,” he compliments her.
“But not an appropriate reflection on the situation.” Fangli winks. “Unlike when I unleashed it on my killer mother-in-law, I’m happy for you.”
He tightens his hand on mine as Mei comes into the room. Her immobile face stiffens even more and I assume she’s put off by PDA. She turns to Fangli and speaks quickly.
“My therapist is here,” Fangli says. She wiggles her eyebrows at me and leaves, Mei closing the connecting door firmly behind them.
“She said that more openly than I would have thought,” I say.
He nods proudly. “She’s trying hard.” Then he gets up to clear the dishes. “Do you have plans for tonight?”
I play it casual. “Not really.”
He sits back down. “Want to come here, then?”
I go over and sit on his lap. Sam takes my leg and pulls me over until I’m straddling him and we’re face-to-face. He’s warm and the flutters that start in my stomach take only moments to ripple out over every inch of my skin. Sam runs his hands along my back, and when I bend to kiss him, I make sure my eyes stay on him.
Two hours later, I’m very glad I shaved above my knees.