Rent a Boyfriend - Gloria Chao Page 0,30

after me.

No one understood me or how hard this was. How I felt like I had to split myself in two, neither of them truly Mei, just to make everyone else happy. The one person who I had thought would get it was too busy impressing sororities, and the one person I had wanted to get it had said, That’s absurd. The words made me cringe, made me want to disappear. Made me crave the one person who would understand.

I took out my phone and dialed. I didn’t have much hope—he had stopped taking my calls years ago—but I had to try.

“Mei?” Xing sounded like he had just seen a ghost.

“Hey, Xing Xing,” I said, calling him by his childhood nickname.

“Is everything okay? Are you okay?”

My eyes filled with tears. “I miss you.” I took a breath before I could say the words—the traitorous, condemning words. “Congratulations on your engagement.”

“Thanks. That means a lot.”

I took another breath. “Can we see each other soon?”

A pregnant pause. Then a protective timbre surfaced in his voice. “I don’t want you to get in trouble with them. If they find out, they might cut you off. No tuition, no roof over your head . . .”

This was the brother I remembered—the one who always tried to keep me safe. Who would play Chubby Bunny with me to make me forget the bullies at school, then call the principal to send them to detention.

I mustered my waning courage. “They won’t know.”

Xing was quiet for a moment. “Of course. Let’s meet for dim sum in Chinatown at noon tomorrow.”

I wiped my tears away roughly.

Voicemail from my mother

Mei! Yilong sent me the article and maybe you should try swinging your arms three thousand times a day. It’s supposed to help circulation.

Oh, and speaking of circulation, I read about these spoons that fight fat. I ordered them, of course. You press and push, push the fat away. Poof! Your belly needs it! Luckily your forearms and calves look good. Those are my genes. These spoons will make you měi, Mei.

I know you get out of class in ten minutes! I expect a call then! It’s your mǔqīn.

CHAPTER 12

MEI-BALL

AT THE DIM SUM RESTAURANT, I saw Xing first and needed a moment before I could alert him to my presence.

He was so familiar (always on his phone, not paying attention to his surroundings), yet I didn’t know this person in front of me with lines on his face and wearing a button-down instead of a hoodie. Part of me wanted to reach out and touch him, to make sure he was really there. My parents had scrubbed him from our lives so thoroughly I used to pull out his Dartmouth sweatshirt just to make sure he hadn’t been a product of my imagination. That ratty sweatshirt was all I had left of him since my parents had thrown his stuff on the lawn, then changed the locks. I hated my shiny new brass key, which had replaced the worn silver one. I refused to carry it with me and was locked out of the house more than once, but somehow it felt better to sit and wait on the porch than to carry physical proof of my brother’s nonexistence.

“Xing?” I finally said.

When he saw me, his face completely brightened, the way it used to when we made blanket forts. But then the hesitation crept in. We approached each other slowly, not sure what to do. A handshake was completely weird, but so was a hug since we never did that even before our four years apart. We ended up with an awkward turtle dance, where he stuck his arms out reluctantly, I sort of bobbed and weaved a bit, there were plenty of jagged starts and stops, and finally we managed a one-second hug where he patted me on the back and I didn’t fully enclose my arms around him.

Um, success? I guess that was the most affection any Lu ever exhibited.

Our table was tucked in a remote corner, accompanied by wobbly chairs and a stained tablecloth. A Chinese woman, a stranger, stared at us from across the restaurant. Was she judging my chunky figure or American clothes? Probably a mix of both.

Most of the waitstaff spoke Cantonese, not Mandarin, so we ordered by pointing to dishes on passing carts. As usual, many servers ignored us, some were rude, and others tried to push the less popular items like chicken feet. The best carts never made it past the central