21

A week later, Stella still had no idea what she was doing in terms of seducing Michael. He seemed happy—she knew she was—but the end of their first month was coming up, and she had no confidence that he’d want to sign on for more.

That night, his mom was having her over for dinner again. Stella racked her brain for clever ways she might ask his family for advice regarding Michael. If anyone knew him, it would be them. But how could she ask without them suspecting something was strange about her relationship with Michael? They thought she and Michael were dating for real.

As he’d instructed her to do, Stella let herself into his mom’s house and set her shoes against the wall next to Michael’s. Her black heels looked tiny next to his leather loafers, but she liked seeing them sitting next to each other. It pleased her on a fundamental level.

She placed a box of pears on the front table next to the bronze Buddha, and grunts and heavy breathing drew her attention to the sitting room to the right. She padded over and stared at a pretzel formation of limbs on the carpet by the upright piano. It seemed to contain Michael and another girl. Stella would have been jealous, but the whole ordeal looked really uncomfortable.

“Just give up and say it,” Michael gritted out.

“No, I had that armbar. You only got out because of your steroid abuse.”

“I do not use steroids, and you only got the armbar because I didn’t want to crush your boobs.”

“Going for your balls next time.”

Looking closer, Stella saw they both had their arms locked around each other’s throats. Like anacondas in a death match, neither was willing to let go.

“Maybe call it a draw?” Stella suggested.

“Hi, Stella,” a voice chirped. His sister’s face was covered in a curtain of dark hair, and Stella had no idea which one it was. There were so many of them. “Your girlfriend is here, Michael. Give up.”

“Dinner is ready in ten minutes.” The red hue to Michael’s face was rather concerning but completely self-inflicted, as far as Stella could tell. “I’ll be with you in a second.”

“Only if you’re giving up. Who’s your daddy?” his sister said as she flexed the impressive arm wrapped around his neck.

“Not some little brat.”

The two rolled on the carpet, kicking and flailing their legs.

“I’m going to say hi to your mom and grandma, then,” Stella said. She would have preferred Michael’s company when she greeted them, but this thing between Michael and his sister looked like it was going to take a while.

Neither of them responded. They probably couldn’t spare the oxygen for talking.

She meandered through the house, which was actually quite enormous—you wouldn’t guess from the outside. His mom and grandma were seated in the family room, peeling grapefruit meat from their individual segments as they spoke in musical Vietnamese. Two men in a monkey suit and a pig suit flew across the screen of the muted TV.

“Hi . . . Wai?” She bowed her head awkwardly. She could not wrap her tongue around the pronunciation of the word for grandma, ngoại.

Michael’s grandma smiled and waved her to the empty space on the aged leather sofa. As usual, she had a scarf wrapped around her head and tied under her chin. Adorable grandma. Was she staying away from the lawn shears lately?

Nodding at his mom, she said, “Hi, Mẹ,” and sat in the indicated spot, feeling her stomach knot and her muscles tense. Even though she’d seen his mom a handful of times by now, she was still horribly nervous around the woman. Every word had to be measured before Stella could let it out of her mouth, every action considered. She didn’t want to mess up again. This was Michael’s mom—the most important woman in his life since he didn’t have a real girlfriend. All thoughts of asking for advice with Michael evaporated in the face of her anxiety.

His mom held out a bowl of perfect, skinless yellow-green grapefruit slices. Stella had never seen grapefruit peeled quite like this, and she took a slice out of a mixture of curiosity and fear of insulting her. Once she bit into the fruit, sweetness exploded on her tongue, untarnished by the usual bitterness of the skin.

She covered her mouth in surprise. “It’s really good.”

“Have more.” His mom smiled and set the bowl down in Stella’s lap. Today she was wearing a striped pink button-down and floral print jeans. Her glasses perched on the top of her head at a distracted angle. “Get salt if you want. E likes it with salt.”

“No, thank you.” Stella ate one more, two more before she made herself stop. It looked like a lot of work peeling them this way. In an effort to keep her hands busy, she picked up half of a grapefruit and tried to copy his mom’s technique, all too aware of the stilted silence in the room.

His mom watched her peel the fruit with a tiny nod. “Michael is making bún riêu tonight. It’s really good. Has he made it for you yet?”

Stella shook her head as she trained her eyes on the grapefruit. “No, he hasn’t.” Did his mom know Michael had been spending nights at her place? Did she disapprove?

“Mommy, when is the bún riêu ready?” Janie trounced into the room and paused, smiling at her. “Hi, Stella.”

Stella returned her smile. “Hi. Michael said ten more minutes.”

Janie flopped into a scuffed armchair, throwing a jean-clad leg over the arm. “Starving and all I had for lunch was some crackers. I’ve been doing homework since ten this morning.”

Stella silently held out the bowl of peeled grapefruit while Mẹ glowered at her daughter. “You’re getting too pale.” Turning to Stella, she asked, “Can you see how pale she is?”

Janie snatched the bowl and inhaled piece after piece. Stella’s jaw almost dropped. Did she know how much time it took to peel the things?

“Maybe a little pale?” Stella said.

Mẹ spoke to Ngoại in Vietnamese, and Ngoại cast a disapproving look Janie’s way. Stella didn’t understand what she said when she spoke, but it sounded ominous.

“Thanks for throwing me under the bus, Chị Hai.” A crooked grin almost identical to Michael’s flashed as Janie winked, and Stella’s chest turned to mush.

“What does Chị Hai mean?”

Mẹ smiled as she focused on peeling fruit.

Janie popped the last grapefruit slice into her mouth. “It means Sister Two. Michael is my Anh Hai, which means Brother Two. I’m down by the bottom with number six because I had the poor luck to be fifth born. We don’t start at one, by the way. I think one is reserved for parents or something. That’s South Vietnamese interfamily naming convention. You get his number because you’re his.”

A goofy grin teased at Stella’s lips as her heart did clumsy flips and flops. She loved the idea of getting Michael’s number. It made them a pair. Like the shoes by the front door and their hands on the piano.

Janie laughed and said something in Vietnamese to her mom and grandma. They both looked at Stella and laughed as they voiced their agreement.

“Michael’s been really happy this month,” Janie said. “Like embarrassingly happy. The general consensus is it’s because of you.”

She caught her breath. “Has he really?”

“Yeah. He’s obnoxious when he’s happy.”

Stella bit her lip to hide her smile. All of the emotion boiling inside her chest made her feel like it would rupture open, spewing rainbows and glitter. “He’s never obnoxious.”

Janie snorted. “I bet he doesn’t make you smell his socks.”

She choked on a laugh.

“What’s going on here?” Michael asked from the doorway.

His hair stood up in complete disarray, and his face was still flushed from beating up on his sister. He wore a wrinkled white button-down over a plain T-shirt and faded jeans. He was gorgeous.

“Telling her about the socks, dickhead,” Janie said with an evil smirk.

Mẹ sent her a sharp narrow-eyed look, and Janie shrank into her chair.

“I mean, Anh Hai,” she mumbled.

“That’s right. Give me my respect.” His smile was superior and lofty and . . . obnoxious. Stella loved it. “Come on, dinner’s ready.”

Out in the kitchen, his mom went about dishing rice noodles into giant bowls and ladling soup over the top. Janie took the first bowl and brought it to the table where Ngoại sat, cutting everything into little pieces with a scissors before squeezing in lime.

Michael pulled her to the side. “Hi.” He swept his eyes over her and ran his hands down her back, pressing her close. “I like this dress on you. Are the seams bothering you?”

“No, they’re fine. The problem is in the front.”

“What is it? Want me to fix it?” He unbuttoned her black cardigan and inspected the construction of the tight-fitting Lycra dress with a frown. “I don’t see anything obvious.”

“Can you sew a-a-a . . .” She glanced at his family as they set bowls at the table and dropped her voice. “Can you sew a bra into it?”

A wicked smile spread over his mouth, and he opened her cardigan wide to look at the hard points of her nipples. “I could, but I’m not going to.”

He pulled her into the dining room and leaned her against the wall. When he palmed her breasts and tweaked at her nipples, she gasped as her body softened in a jolting flash.

“This is a very high-fashion look, you know.” He bent down and brushed his lips against her temple, her cheek, and finally her mouth—a whisper-light touch that left Stella wanting. “You know how I feel about fashion.”

She snuck her fingers underneath his shirt to touch the hard ridges of his belly. “It’s indecent.”

He kissed her again, deep and slow this time, and pulled away with hooded eyes. “You’d be cold without the cardigan, anyway. No bra.” He rubbed her nipples in exactly the right way to make her limbs melt. “Look at you getting weak in the knees for me. So hot, Stella.”

He captured her lips and stroked his tongue into her mouth. When he pulled her hips flush against his arousal, heat arrowed through her body and made her toes curl. She shouldn’t want him again. Their morning had been particularly acrobatic today, and she’d barely made it to work on time.

The tension on her scalp loosened, and her hair tumbled free. He worked a hand under her dress and gripped her inner thigh.

“Ugh, get a room.” One of his sisters stomped by.

Michael broke away with laughing eyes and high color. “You’re just mad because you didn’t win.”

“You’re a dick,” Maddie said.

After his sister disappeared into the kitchen, Michael ran his fingers through Stella’s hair. “Are you okay? Too embarrassing getting caught?”

She shook her head. She didn’t care if she was caught as long as it was with him.

He planted his hands on the wall behind her and lined his body up against hers so they fit just right, hardness to softness, curves to hollows. “Sexy Stella.”

Their lips joined for another breathless kiss.

“Oh my God, get a room.”

Stella jumped at the brusqueness of Sophie’s voice, and Michael laughed as he broke away. Without looking at them, Sophie marched into the kitchen.

“Let’s eat.” He grabbed Stella’s hand and led her to the two empty seats at the kitchen table.

When everyone cast knowing glances at them, she blushed and stared down at her bowl. Slices of tomato and green herbs floated atop an orange soup thickened with something that looked like scrambled eggs.

“You should wear your hair down more often, Stella,” Sophie said. “Might want to pull it up to eat, though. It’ll get dirty.” She held a jar of brown-colored something out to her. “Want some?”

Stella reached for it. “What is—”

Michael snatched it and set it on the table. “She’ll faint if she smells it, Soph. Her nose is super sensitive.”

Sophie shrugged. “Stinks but tastes good.”

The label was mostly Chinese, but at the bottom it read Fine Shrimp Sauce.

“I like shrimp,” Stella said.

Michael pushed the jar to the other side of the table. “Not this kind of shrimp. Even I can’t eat this stuff.”

“Let her try it, Michael,” Sophie said.

When Stella’s gaze fell upon Janie and Maddie, both girls shook their heads in matching horror.

With an impatient sigh, Mẹ grabbed the jar and put it in front of Stella. “This is mắm ruốc. The correct way to eat bún riêu is with mắm ruốc.”

Stella closed her fingers around the jar. Feeling a lot like Snow White with her apple, she brought it to her nose. On the first whiff, her eyes watered. It was fishy, shrimpy, and potent. Upon her second and third sniffs, however, the smell lost some of its force. “You just put it in the soup?”

Mẹ spooned a dollop into Stella’s bowl. “Like this. And lime and chili sauce.” She squeezed lime in and added a spoonful of red spicy-looking sauce.

As she picked up her chopsticks and soup spoon, Michael watched her with wide, apologetic eyes. She mixed everything together, twirled the noodles around her chopsticks, and placed them in her spoon with broth like she’d seen Sophie do. Then she put it in her mouth.

It tasted . . . good. Salty, a little sweet, a little tangy. She grinned as she had another spoonful. “I like it.”

“It’s good, right?” Sophie asked. “High five, you.”

Stella high-fived Michael’s sister, feeling silly but also like she’d made up for refusing to eat the BPA-laced food. His mom was smiling, Ngoại was mmmming, and Janie and Maddie were muttering to themselves.

“They refuse to try it,” Mẹ said, pointing to the two youngest.

“It smells like death,” Janie said.

Maddie nodded emphatically. “Dead bodies.”

Mẹ blasted them with a harsh string of Vietnamese, and both girls cowered.

Under the table, Michael squeezed her leg. He leaned toward her to whisper in her ear. “Do you really like it? You don’t have to eat it. I can get you something else.”

“I really do.” She’d still eat it even if she hated it, though. His mom looked proud and vindicated. And it wasn’t poisoned. Not that she knew of.

He brushed his lips over hers once before pulling away with a cough and a laugh. “I can smell it on you.”

She stuffed another spoonful in her mouth, glaring at him as she swiped the hair away from her face with a forearm.

“Here, let me get your hair.” He unlooped her rubber band from his wrist and gathered her hair away from her face in a ponytail.

“Thank you.”

He smiled and pinched her chin. By the look in his eyes, she knew he would have kissed her if his family hadn’t been watching—and she didn’t smell like Fine Shrimp Sauce and dead bodies.

“Gross, stop undressing her with your eyes,” Sophie said.

“Seriously,” Maddie chimed in.

“And since when do you keep rubber bands handy for her hair? Whipped much?” Janie added.

Stella contemplated diving into her soup bowl.

Michael merely shrugged and grinned. Then he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple.

Dinner passed in a blur as his sisters alternated between bickering and teasing. His mom interjected now and then with firm mediation or withering glances, but Stella had a feeling the woman was content. Once everyone had finished their soup and filled themselves with skinless grapefruit, Mẹ ordered Janie and Maddie to clear the table and wash the dishes.

Michael took her hand, preparing to take her home, but his mom waved them toward the family room.

“Stella, I have something to show you.”

Michael groaned. “Mẹ, no, not today.”

“What is it?” Stella was helplessly curious.

“How about next time?” Michael asked.

“He was really cute,” Mẹ said.

“Baby pictures?” Stella all but danced in place. “Michael, I want to see them.”

He grudgingly followed as she towed him after his mom into the family room. Mẹ handed Stella a fat picture album, and mother and son sat on either side of her on the couch.

She smoothed her fingers over the velvet cover of the album. The one her mom kept for her was almost identical to this one. It was the kind with sticky pages and the thin plastic cover sheet that peeled off. The first page was a grainy ultrasound printout and a picture of a wrinkle-faced infant who looked like he was a thousand years old. As the pages progressed, however, he cuted up quickly.

There were pictures of Ngoại holding him, of him learning to walk and trying to pick up a watermelon. In one picture, chubby toddler Michael wore a little suit—was it his first suit?—in between a young couple. The woman was a very young, very beautiful version of his mom wearing a white traditional Vietnamese dress with pink flowers embroidered on the front. The man had to be his father. He was tall and blond and had Michael’s crooked grin.

“You were beautiful, Mẹ,” Stella said, running her fingertips down the flowing dress. “I love the dress.”

“I still have that aó dài. You can take it home with you tonight if you want.”

“I can really have it?”

“It doesn’t fit me anymore, and Michael’s sisters aren’t interested. They only fought over the jewelry, but that’s all gone.” Mẹ’s voice was subdued, and her eyes lingered over the blond man’s face. “This is Michael’s dad. Very handsome, ah?”

Michael turned the page without a word.

His chubbiness was gradually replaced with gangly limbs and male beauty. He smiled often and was full of life and fun. There were dozens of pictures of him and his baby sisters surrounded by passels of full-blooded Vietnamese cousins. He looked out of place next to them with his paler skin and non-Asian features, just as he must have looked out of place next to all of his peers at school for the exact opposite reasons. What had it been like not fitting in anywhere?

Maybe it hadn’t been that different from her own experience growing up.

There were pictures of early teens Michael playing chess with his dad, his face creased in intense concentration, pictures of him frowning over science projects, pictures of him dressed in full kendo-sparring gear like a little badass, where the front flaps of his uniform displayed his last name in caps: LARSEN.

When he flipped the page quickly and shot her an alarmed look, she kept her face blank, pretending she hadn’t seen it. She wasn’t good at lying, but she knew how to pretend she was okay. She’d been doing it around people since she was little.

She hated doing it with him.

Was it that important to him that she didn’t know his real name? What did he think she’d do with the information? The knowledge that he didn’t trust her dimmed the warm glow the evening had given her. Was she foolish for hoping she could make him hers?

When she surfaced enough from her thoughts to notice the photos again, they’d almost reached the back of the album. The pictures showed off a nearly full-grown Michael who was so gorgeous she couldn’t help sighing. He stood next to his beaming father, chess tournament trophy in hand, kendo tournament trophy in hand, science fair trophy in hand.

“That’s a lot of trophies,” she commented.

“Dad liked it when I won, so I tried really hard.”

“Michael was valedictorian at his high school,” his mom said, looking at Michael with boundless love.

Stella smiled. “I knew you were smart.”

“It was just hard work. I figured out how to test well. You’re way smarter than me, Stella.”

She searched his closed-off face, wondering why he discounted himself like that. “I wasn’t valedictorian. I only did well in math and science.”

“My dad would have preferred that.”

Michael flipped to the last page.

There, he graduated from the San Francisco Fashion Institute. His shoulders were squared, his expression determined. His parents were in the picture, his mother visibly bursting with proud happiness while his father looked like he’d been forced into the photograph. His hair had gone mostly white over the years, and while he was still an attractive older man, he looked worn and cynical. The crooked grin was gone.

“He didn’t want you to go to design school.”

Michael shrugged. “It wasn’t his decision.” His voice was flat, his usually vivid eyes dull.

Stella covered his hand with hers and squeezed. He turned his hand over, interlaced their fingers, and squeezed back.

“Michael is very talented. When he graduated, he had five job offers. He worked for a big designer in New York before we needed him at home because his dad left.” Mẹ gazed off into space, the set of her mouth bitter, before she blinked and focused on Michael. “But I’m glad I called you home. You were ruining yourself. Too many women, Michael. You don’t need a hundred women. Just one good one.”

His mom patted Stella’s leg, and Stella felt a terrible, deep wanting well up inside. Right now, she was considered a good woman. What would his mom think if she knew about the labels Stella had been purposefully withholding? Would she suddenly become unsuitable for her son? What kind of mother wanted an autistic daughter-in-law and possibly autistic grandbabies?

And since when had she started thinking about marriage and babies? She and Michael weren’t in a real relationship. Would he date her if he didn’t need the money? If he were free to be with whomever he wished, would he pick her?

“Okay,” his mom said briskly. “That’s all of the pictures. Michael, come help Mẹ with my iPad while I find the aó dài.”

Michael gave a resigned sigh and stood.

“Can I look at these pictures longer?” Stella asked.

Mẹ smiled and nodded, but Stella had only looked at the pictures for a minute or two when Janie wandered into the room. She held a meaty textbook in her hands.

“So is it true you’re an economist?” Janie asked. She shifted her bare feet on the carpet until her knees pointed together.

“It’s true. You’re in your third year at Stanford, right? That’s a really good program.” Stella remembered now that Michael’s mom had wanted her to speak to Janie about her work. “What’s the textbook for? Do you need help with your homework?”

Janie hugged the book to her chest and sat down in the armchair she’d occupied earlier. “I was more hoping . . .” She took a breath. “I was hoping you could help me get an internship? Maybe send my résumé to colleagues who are hiring? I’m having a hard time getting interviews. I have no experience, obviously, and I did really bad my first year. My GPA hasn’t recovered. But I know my stuff. This is what I want to do.”

“Do you have a copy of your résumé handy?” As soon as the words left Stella’s mouth, she wanted to recall them. She sounded like she was in interview mode, and Janie looked nervous.

Janie pulled a sheet of paper from her textbook—an international macroeconomics tome—and handed it to her.

The résumé described her passion for economic theory in concise language, listed relevant coursework and skills, and displayed her grade point average. In her major, it was 3.5. Cumulative, it was 2.9. Definitely not the numbers she needed to get into brand-name institutions, even as a Stanford student.

As gently as she was capable, Stella asked, “Can I ask what happened in your first year?”

Janie stared down at her textbook. “It’s when Mom was really sick. It was a hard time for everybody. We had to take turns taking care of Mom and running the shop, and we were already overwhelmed with the repercussions of the separation and all that. I didn’t balance my time well. Honestly, I didn’t care about school at that point, which is stupid because it’s so expensive and we were hurting for money.”

Wait, why had they been hurting for money? Did it have something to do with Michael’s dad? From the outside, they looked well off. The shop seemed to do well. They owned this house. She wanted to ask so badly, her fingers clawed at the edges of the photo album, but that was rude. She might feel like she knew these people, but it hadn’t been that long since she’d first met them.

And the last time she’d pried, she’d put Michael’s mom in tears. She never wanted to make someone cry again.

Lamely, she said, “I see.”

“Do you think I have a chance of getting an internship with those grades? Is there anything I can do to make my résumé more attractive?”

With Janie’s grades, her résumé was easy to overlook. However . . . The beginning of an idea took root in Stella’s mind, and she tilted her head, looking at Janie in a new light. “Are you interested in econometrics?”