Rent a Boyfriend - Gloria Chao Page 0,41
and my cup dangling between my legs. “I have such a . . . complicated . . . relationship with them.” I took a breath, then said words I had never admitted out loud before. Words I’d barely admitted to myself. “I don’t agree with them sometimes . . . a lot of times.”
The Pavlovian guilt started to wash over me. I waited, half-expecting the ancestors to send me a warning sign, maybe in the shape of a blizzard, but the only movement was Darren tilting his head to urge me to continue.
“They think that just because they’re older, they know what’s best for me and my future.” I paused to glance at him, then clarified. “Specifically, my career. But they don’t know me well enough to know what I want.” Hell, I barely know me well enough.
“What do your parents want you to do?”
I hesitated. For a second I was transported back to the courtyard, when he had first asked about my dreams. I still felt the urge to run, but then his warm, caring gaze met mine, and I caved. “They want me to be a doctor.”
His eyes widened. “Uh-oh.”
It was only two sounds, not even a real word, but it sent all the walls up. I waited, my muscles frozen in anxious anticipation.
He faux coughed, fidgeted, then finally said, “You, uh, use your hand sanitizer a lot. And when we were on the Saferide, you touched the handle with as little surface area as possible, which wasn’t all that safe, by the way. And . . .” He (finally) trailed off, probably because my cheeks were flushed—their contrast to the cold air was jarring.
His voice softened. “I mean, hey, I get it—all the studies show how effective hand sanitizer is. I should really carry some with me too. But, uh”—he nudged me—“you seem to have a thing about germs?”
I surprised myself by laughing. “Okay, you made your point.”
The teasing crinkle appeared. “Nothing to be embarrassed about. You’re perpetually clean and you always smell like pomegranate. Seems like there’s only upside.”
“That’s because you haven’t fully seen in here,” I joked, tapping on my temple. I was so used to hiding this part of me that it was instinct to deflect. Though really, all I wanted was to tell him more, just to hear him say over and over in different ways how all of this was okay.
“Yet,” he said. “I haven’t fully seen in there yet.”
I tried to will my heart to stop beating so damn fast. “You know, it’s ironic—I think it’s my mom’s fault I’m this way. She used to bring our own utensils to Chinatown, saying that their silverware was too dirty.”
“Yet somehow she trusted the food they made?”
“Just one prime example of Mǎmá Lu’s airtight logic.”
He chuckled, then said, “Well, if doctor isn’t your dream job, what is?” The warmth in his voice alleviated the heaviness of what he was asking.
“I would love to open a dance studio. I think.”
He beamed. “I was going to guess something with dance. The way your face lit up when I mentioned piques . . .” He placed a hand over his heart. “It made me want to learn.”
My leg jiggled. “I actually dreamed of opening a studio when I was younger, when I was too naive to know my parents had already planned out my life.”
Darren scooted to the edge of the bench to face me. He placed a hand on my knee, and I froze like the surrounding ice. “I think it’s selfless how much you care about your parents, but I think you deserve better than sacrificing who you are for their sake.”
“It’s not selfless when I do it out of fear. Or guilt.”
He leaned back, sending snow flurries in the air. My leg felt hot where his hand had been. “I don’t think it’s that black-and-white,” he said.
“It’s not a panda?”
His lip quirked up on one side (the right, never the left). “No, not a panda.”
“Well, whatever it is, make it disappear. Then this would be easy.”
He waved his arms like a conductor. “Kiemasu!”
I shifted away, startled.
He laughed. “It means ‘vanish.’ There was this Japanese magician my sister and I loved as kids. We used to practice terrible magic tricks and yell ‘kiemasu’ at each other.”
I committed the new word to my vernacular. “Can you show me a trick?”
He swept his hand over his hot chocolate, yelled “kiemasu,” then shook the cup, the absence of sloshing proving his trick successful.
I laughed, deep and unladylike.
He