Khai didn’t even try to talk then. His brain had shorted and refused to compute.
“I bought her all sorts of fruit.” She moved the boxes on the counter around. “Lychees, rambutans …”
As she continued to list off tropical fruits, his mind finally caught up with him. “Mom, no.” The words came out with unintentional strength and volume, but it was justified. He ignored the instinct that told him he was committing sacrilege by saying no to his mom. “I’m not getting married, and she’s not staying here, and you can’t do things like this.” This was the twenty-first century, for fuck’s sake. People didn’t run around purchasing wives for their sons anymore.
She pursed her lips and propped her hands on her hips, looking like an aerobics instructor from the eighties in her hot-pink sweat suit and short hair with a flattening perm. “I already booked the banquet hall for the wedding. The deposit was a thousand dollars.”
“Mom.”
“I picked August eighth. I know how much you like the number eight.”
He raked his fingers through his hair and suppressed a growl. “I’ll refund you the thousand dollars. Please give me the contact information for the banquet hall so I can cancel.”
“Don’t be this way, Khải. Keep an open mind,” she said. “I don’t want you to be lonely.”
He released a disbelieving breath. “I’m not lonely. I like being alone.”
Lonely was for people who had feelings, which he didn’t.
It wasn’t loneliness if it could be eradicated with work or a Netflix marathon or a good book. Real loneliness would stick with you all the time. Real loneliness would hurt you nonstop.
Khai didn’t hurt. He felt nothing most of the time.
That was exactly why he steered clear of romantic relationships. If someone liked him that way, he’d only end up disappointing them when he couldn’t reciprocate. It wouldn’t be right.
“Mom, I won’t do it, and you can’t force me.”
She crossed her arms. “I know I can’t force you. I don’t want to force you. If you honestly don’t like her, then you shouldn’t marry her. But I’m asking you to give her a chance. Let her stay here for the summer. If you still don’t like her at the end, send her home. It’s that easy.” She switched her attention to Quan. “Talk some sense into your brother.”
Quan held his hands up as a constipated kind of smile stretched over his mouth. “I got nothing.”
Their mom glared at him.
“This is all useless,” Khai said. “I won’t change my mind.” And he really didn’t want a strange woman living in his house. His house was his sanctuary, the one place where he could escape people and just be.
When his family wasn’t breaking in, at least.
“You can’t make up your mind before you’ve met her. That’s not fair. Besides, I need her at the restaurant. The new waitress quit, and I need people for the daytime shift. Help me with this,” she said.
Khai scowled at his mom. He keenly sensed she was manipulating him—he wasn’t completely oblivious—but he didn’t know how to get out of this. Also, when she was short on hands, she made Khai and his siblings take time off their day jobs and come in to help. If he had to choose between waiting tables while simultaneously dealing with his mom all day and having a strange woman in his house …
As if sensing weakness, she dove in for the kill. “Tolerate some difficulty and do it for me. It’ll make me happy.”
Shit, shit, shit. Frustration built into a giant ball inside of him, growing bigger and bigger and verging on explosion. There was nothing he could say to that, and she knew it.
She was his mom.
Clinging to his last shred of control, he said, “Only if you promise the matchmaking stops after this. You won’t try to hook me up with Dr. Son’s daughter or the dentist’s daughter or Vy’s friends or anyone. You won’t ambush me with surprise guests when I come over for dinner.”
“Of course,” his mom said as she nodded eagerly. “I promise. Only this summer, only this one time. If you don’t like her, I’ll stop. I don’t think I can find a better girl than Mỹ anyway, and—” She hesitated midsentence, and a thoughtful look crossed her face. “But you have to really try. If I don’t see you trying to make it work, I’ll have to do it again. Do you understand, Khải?”
He narrowed his eyes. “What does it mean ‘to try’?”
“It means you’ll do what a real fiancé does. You’ll take her out, introduce her to your friends and family, do things together, things like that. You’ll take her to all the weddings this summer.”
That sounded horrendous.
He couldn’t help grimacing, and Quan burst out laughing.
“You know, Mom, maybe this was a good idea after all,” Quan said.
“See? You kids think I’m crazy, but Mom knows best.”
That was questionable, but Khai had no choice but to say, “Fine. I’ll do all that stuff this summer if you promise to stop with the wife planning after this.”
“I promise, I promise, I promise. I’m so glad you’re being reasonable on this. You’ll like her. You’ll see,” she said, smiling ear to ear like she’d won the Powerball lottery.
Khai was one hundred percent certain she’d be the one seeing, but he kept that to himself. “I’m taking a shower.” He spun around and marched toward his bedroom.
It was just like his mom to hatch a scheme like this. The entire thing was ridiculous. He wasn’t going to change his mind. Mỹ could be the most perfect woman in the world, and it wouldn’t change anything. His liking her was inconsequential. In fact, if he liked her, that was all the more reason why he shouldn’t marry her.
CHAPTER THREE
Mỹ clawed the arms of her seat as the plane landed with a stomach-dipping jerk. Strange mechanical sounds reached her ears, and the lights flickered back on. She never wanted to fly again. Once in her life was enough. The loudspeakers dinged.
“Welcome to San Francisco, California. The local time is 4:20 P.M. Thank you for flying Air China …”
Thank sky and Buddha for English classes in high school, all the bootleg American movies she’d watched, and the audio English lessons she’d been listening to nonstop while she cleaned these past couple of months. She’d understood most of that.
California. She’d finally made it.
That meant she’d be meeting him soon.
Nausea hit her so hard the skin on her face prickled and her vision blurred. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. That wasn’t how she wanted to spend her first moments in the United States of America.
What if they dragged her somewhere for disrupting the peace with her vomit? Or—she glanced at the nice old lady in a hand-knit sweater next to her—spraying the people around her? Could she go to jail for that? Could she get deported for that? Maybe they’d send her back without letting her off the plane.
Everyone started lining up in the aisle, and Mỹ jumped to get her luggage from the overhead bin. A tall man with in a brown leather jacket beat her to her suitcase and pulled it out. “Here, let me get it for you.”