4
Junior Year, Six Years Ago
“This is unreal,” I breathe out as I gaze out the airplane window.
“Yeah.”
I look down at my hand, nestled in Nathan’s. It looks so tiny in his paw. He gives it a squeeze, and we smile at each other. Holy shit, I’m actually doing this. In about ten hours, we’ll be landing at London Heathrow airport, where we’ll be greeted by his parents. Oh my god. I cannot.
“Stop freaking out.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay, tell your face to stop freaking out.”
I force a smile, which comes out as a grimace.
“That is officially the weirdest smile in the history of smiles,” he says, leaning over to kiss me. “Mmm, I love it when I kiss your teeth.”
That gets a laugh out of me, which makes me feel a tiny bit better. But not much. Because holy SHITBALLS, man! I’m on a plane with Nathan! On the way to meet his family! For Christmas! In England! What is this life?
“Hey, how come you don’t have an English accent?” I never thought of it, but now that we’re actually on our way to London, it strikes me that Nathan sounds about as American as it gets.
“It’s because my parents moved around a lot when I was little, so I was always put into international schools. Even in England, they put me in an international school. Easier to transfer my grades that way. Do you want me to sound English? Oi can talk Brit-ish for you, luv.”
“Oh god. Okay, you can’t carry it off.” I shudder, and he laughs.
“By the way, I got Selena those AirPods she’s been lusting after for Christmas. Signed it from you and me.”
I gape at him. “Really? That’s so generous.” I’d given her an assortment of moisturizers from Bath and Body Works.
“Well, yeah, none of this would’ve been possible without her help.”
“True.” Over the last two years, Selena has come home with me on many weekends. She’s a hit with my family; my aunts tell her she’s the daughter they wish they had (which—hello, what about me? But whatever), and Ma tells her she’s the sister she wished I had, which I have to agree with. And when Nathan invited me to his home for Christmas, Selena gave me the best gift anyone could come up with. She’d told Ma she wanted me to come back with her to Northern California for Christmas, and Ma had agreed without hesitation, since my family doesn’t celebrate Christmas anyway.
Nathan takes out his tablet from his backpack and sets it up on our tray table. “I downloaded Immortals for the flight.”
“Ooh, you are a godsend, Nathan Chan.”
“I figured shots of a topless Henry Cavill would help take your mind off meeting my folks.”
I roll my eyes. “There is way too much boobage in Immortals for you to act all selfless.”
“True.” He laughs, then leans in and lowers his voice. “But yours are my favorite.”
I smack his arm, but honestly, I’m sort of grinning at that. He pulls me closer so I can rest my head on his shoulder and we settle down to watch the movie. At some point, we both fall asleep. When the air attendant wakes us up hours later, I find to my immense horror that my head is stuck at a weird angle.
“Oh, no. No, no.” I try to turn it, but pain shoots down my spine, and I squeak.
Nathan stretches, yawning. “What’s up, funsize?”
“I fell asleep badly, and now my neck’s refusing to turn.”
He stares at me for two beats before bursting out laughing. “Are you secretly a ninety-year-old woman?”
“Don’t insult me, kid. I’m only eighty-seven. Ugh. I can’t meet your parents like this!” I gesture wildly at my slanted head.
“Calm down. Come here.” Nathan places a hand on the back of my neck and begins to massage it.
“Ow, ooh, ah.” Is it painful or is it good as hell? I can’t decide.
“Stop twitching.”
“Please put on your seat belts and face forward,” an air attendant reminds us with a pointed look.
We do as we’re told. Despite Nathan’s best efforts, my head’s still stuck at an angle. Whenever this happens, I usually have to wait until I can sleep it off before I regain normal flexibility in my neck. So. I really am going to meet his parents with a slanted head. Okay, that’s totally fine. I am not at all freaking out about that.
Once we get off the plane, Nathan tries again to massage some movement back into my neck and shoulders, then he says, “Well, this’ll be fun.” He laughs when I hit him, catching my fist and kissing it. “It’s so cute when you hit me with your teeny-weeny hand. It’ll be okay. They are going to love you so much they won’t let you go back to the States.”
And, despite the crooked neck, he’s right.
As soon as we get our bags and go into the arrivals hall, there’s a shout and suddenly his parents are right there. His mom, a beautiful tall blonde, gives me a quick hug, and his dad, an Asian man who looks like what I imagine Nathan will look like thirty years down the road, gives me one of those awkward hugs that my mom and aunts often do.
“Oh, it’s lovely to have you two here,” his mom says.
“Hi, Mrs. Chan.”
She pooh-poohs at me. “Call me Annie, none of that Mrs. Chan business. And that’s Chris.” She points at Nathan’s dad, who smiles at me.
“Alright then, son?” Chris says.
“Alright, Dad.”
Huh. Nathan does speak British after all.
When we walk outside, I gasp at the sharp, unforgiving cold, which slices right through my hoodie. Nathan takes out a jacket he’s brought for me, which is about three sizes too big but is delightfully warm and smells of him.
The drive from Heathrow to Oxford takes almost two hours, and by the time we get off the freeway—or motorway, as it’s called here—I’m exhausted. Though Chris and Annie are perfectly pleasant, they’re so different from Ma and my aunts that I’m constantly on edge, desperate to make the best impression possible. Conversation with them is somewhat stilted, and I wonder if this is what all English families are like, if they all use words like “lovely” and “delightful” instead of shouting and flapping like my family does.
It only cements the decision I’ve made about keeping Nathan from my family for as long as humanly possible. Which is getting tougher and tougher to pull off. Nathan wants to meet Ma. And all my aunties. It’s a bit of a sore spot in our otherwise perfect relationship. I’m so worried that he thinks I haven’t introduced him to my family because I’m ashamed of him. Why don’t I take him home with me one weekend? he’d ask. They’d be delighted, they would. And they would, if they knew about him.
But.
It’s not even just the stark differences in our families that’s holding me back from taking him home. My whole life, I’ve followed all of Ma’s rules. I even chose to stay in L.A. for her. I love Ma, but I also want to be separate from her. Even thinking it makes me wince; it feels so much like a betrayal. But I do. I’m a horrible, selfish person, and I know I need to keep that part of me buried. I know that after college, I’ll have to go back home, be with Ma. And for now, I just want Nathan all to myself. I want to keep him as separate as I can from Ma and my aunts. If that’s selfish, then let me be selfish, just for now, just until we graduate. I don’t want him to be swallowed up by my loud, overbearing family. I don’t want him to see me the way I am with them—quiet and benign. I want him to see the real me—the one on campus, where I can really be myself, free and sarcastic and sharp. A challenge instead of a shadow. Then, of course, there’s the curse. What if taking him home means it finds me even sooner than it had found my mom and aunts? I’ve tried explaining my reasoning for keeping him away from my family, but each time I just end up verbally flailing, and then the conversation ends with him hurt and disappointed.
His parents’ house is worthy of an interior design magazine. In fact, it has been featured in Home & Garden magazine, Nathan tells me when my mouth drops open once we walk inside.
Nathan takes me up to his bedroom, and I gape at how tidy and tasteful everything is. It has a navy blue color scheme, and I can imagine what a neat kid he must’ve been because everything is in its place. I think back to my own room back in San Gabriel and how, just last weekend, I’d found a forgotten coffee mug that had actual mushrooms growing in it. Not even mold but like full-grown mushrooms, with stalks and heads and everything.
“So this is my childhood home, and that’s my family,” Nathan says, dropping our bags on the carpeted floor. “You okay? I’m sorry, I know they can be a bit much.”
“Are you kidding? They’re amazing. And your house is amazing.” Not at all like mine, I want to say, but I don’t, because honestly, I’m embarrassed. Ma and my aunts are practically hoarders. They say it has to do with growing up poor. The bathroom, for example, has no fewer than twenty-seven bottles of face cream. I know, I counted them when I was fifteen, and the pile hasn’t moved in the last five years. They’re all almost empty. When I asked Ma why she doesn’t throw them away, she says, “Maybe one day I need, then how?” I guess a grower of mushrooms in coffee cups is not one to judge.
Nathan wraps his hands around my waist, his fingers brushing underneath my shirt. I shiver when he touches my skin. “Hey, none of that, not right now. Your parents are right below us,” I scold, smacking his arm.
He grins and kisses me. “I’m not doing anything,” he says, in between kisses. “I just love touching you here.” His hands splay across my back, and I melt against him.
“You’ve got your horny face on,” I say.
“What does my horny face look like?”
I lean back and try to imitate it, and Nathan bursts out laughing.
“Seriously? If my horny face looks like that, why did you ever start sleeping with me?”
“Out of pity.” Then I squeal as he catches me and flings me over one shoulder as though I’m a sack of potatoes. “Don’t make me fart while my butt’s right next to your face!”
“I dare you to.” Nathan laughs, but then he lowers me gently onto his bed and kisses me again, this time slow and deep. By the time he stops, I’m out of breath and aching for him. He presses his forehead against mine. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me too.”
I bite my lip against my smile, then gasp as he starts sucking lightly at my neck. Maybe it’s because we were friends before we started seeing each other. Whatever it is, Nathan seems to know exactly what I want and how I want it. Every touch is addicting, the smell of him intoxicating. It’s weird, finding out that we’re not just compatible as friends. Shirts are flung off, jeans tugged down, and soon we’re in our underwear, and the touch of his skin against mine is so good my entire body is blushing. We’ve done this probably close to a hundred times by now, but still, when Nathan takes off my bra, he does so with reverence, his breath coming out slow and sweet as my breasts are laid bare before him.
As always, I have to fight the instinct to cover them, but Nathan is so gentle, bending down to kiss my jawline, my neck, my chest, before his mouth finds my nipple and I am lost. I forget everything—the curse, my Ma and aunts, even my own name. I bury my fingers in his hair, and there’s just me and Nathan. Everything Nathan. Nathan’s mouth, Nathan’s fingers, Nathan’s body. The first time was a bit awkward and lasted all of four minutes. But by now we’ve found a rhythm that drives all thought from my head and turns me into a being of need. And when our eyes meet, neither of us looks away until the very last gasp.
Later, lying in bed next to him, I realize something. We’ve been together for almost two years now, and he’s the first one I tell everything to—when I get my papers back, when we’re assigned terrible coursework, when the leader of the photography club says anything dumb, which is all the time. And he does the same, telling me every interesting detail about his econ classes, sharing his wildest dreams of owning a fancy hotel in the future, even telling me how much weight he’s doing at the gym. I guess the last one’s him showing off, but I don’t mind. I like that Nathan wants to impress me, because I want to impress him too. And he does impress me. Even after two years, which involves a lot of farting and embarrassing bedroom stuff (queefs, anyone?), I still find Nathan impressive as hell. I love him. I want a life with him.
To hell with the family curse. It doesn’t matter. I’m in Oxford, England. This is where curses go to die. I almost laugh out loud at the thought. I haven’t really stopped to think about how much half-believing in the curse has weighed me down, but now I realize that I’ve always felt it lurking behind my back, felt it giving me an expiration date. But it’s stupid. Why damn the relationship when there’s nothing wrong with it? I make a choice.
When I get home, I’m going to tell Ma about Nathan. I’ll tell her everything. I’ll even tell my aunts. I’ll tell them all over Sunday dim sum, since they’re always happy when they’re eating dim sum. That’ll go over well.