Rent a Boyfriend - Gloria Chao Page 0,8

this with my clients. Nothing about the company or training, and nothing about my personal life.” His slight frown hinted at some kerfuffle from the past.

“Sorry. I wasn’t trying to pry—I mostly wanted to know because I often wish I could turn off part of my brain. Just… constant worrying about stuff I know I shouldn’t be worrying about, but knowing that it’s not worth my time doesn’t seem to do anything.”

His eyes flicked toward my parents’ bedroom. “Uh, I think you have a right to be worried about stuff. Stressed, even.”

I laughed—loudly—and, having surprised myself, I had to muffle the noise so my parents wouldn’t hear. Or maybe it would be good if they heard?

“Were they what you expected?” I asked even though I really wanted to ask, How do they compare with the other parents you’ve met on jobs? which would then seamlessly transition into What are the other girls like? Am I different? What’s wrong with me? Can I talk to one of them so I feel less alone?

He smiled. “Yes. You’re not my first, you know.” He coughed. “Sorry, I actually didn’t mean for it to come out that way. I just meant a lot of the client parents have similarities. Not completely, of course, but I’ve seen enough to be able to make some conclusions based on certain things I see.” He gestured to the cabinets surrounding us. “Given how your parents boxed up the leftovers, I’m guessing one of these is dedicated to recycled ziplocks and washed-out margarine tubs.”

I pulled out the drawer with the free plastic utensils, chopsticks, and soy sauces from past deliveries, then opened the door to our cabinet dedicated to crinkled but “perfectly good” recycled foil and plastic grocery bags. We laughed together, and the guilt from poking fun at my parents was quickly overshadowed by my wonderment that someone else understood.

“And this clearly wasn’t your first Thanksgiving with Chinese food and turkey,” I added. “Did a past mistake teach you that eating more Chinese food than turkey equals two mooncake points or whatever?”

He laughed. “Mooncake points? I love that!”

I hadn’t meant to let him in on that joke of mine, but now that he approved, I wondered what other jokes he might laugh at.

“Speaking of…,” he said, then stood and retrieved the box of mooncakes he’d brought. In front of me, he opened it and raised an eyebrow exactly as I had with the pie. “This is the good stuff too, trust me,” he said.

We each snatched one, took a bite, and groaned. I’d never met a mooncake I didn’t like, but this was by far the best I’d ever had.

“You haven’t eaten a mooncake until you’ve had one of these,” he said.

“For real.” I took three more bites in rapid succession. “How’d you find these? Does the company have, like, taste tests for this stuff?” I let out a short laugh. “Mooncake taster—what an awesome job. I’d apply in a heartbeat.”

He gave me a tight smile.

“Sorry,” I said when I realized I was asking him about the company not five minutes after he’d told me his no-company-talk rule.

“All good,” he said with a shrug. Then he finished off his mooncake in two big bites, bidding me a muffled good night before he’d even swallowed.

Drew

Yes, we have taste tests. Because a mooncake can buy your way in. It’s infinite mooncake points, if you will.

I kept that joke to myself even though I was pretty sure it would have killed.

Chloe CHAPTER 6

FRANKENBĀO

November 27

We didn’t do breakfast in this family. Which explained why, the morning after Thanksgiving, the dining table was covered in very, um, inventive breakfast food—Frankenstein’s version of it, with pieces put together from different cultures to form one monstrous mess. You can’t mix cultures that way, I always wanted to throw back at my mother, but she wouldn’t get it. For the record, I think fusion food can be fabulous, but my mother is more concerned with presentation than taste, so giving her a buffet of ingredients to play with is similar to handing the kitchen over to my cousin’s daughter, whose specialty is cheese-and-red-bean pancakes because “the yellow and red are so pretty together.”

Andrew bit into a scrambled egg, ketchup, and Kraft Single sandwich on pan-fried raisin bread drizzled in ginger honey. How he didn’t spit it out immediately was beyond my taste buds and certainly made me feel better about his backbreaking price.

He swallowed his sweet-and-salty lump with a grin. “Thank you for making me feel