Page 15 of Four Aunties and a Wedding

L.A. is all short, sprawling buildings, whereas Oxford is filled with tall, magnificent, brick and sandstone buildings decorated with tortured stone and marble, crenellations, pillars, and spires. The inside of the Randolph Hotel is just as impressive as the outside, the floors a dark hardwood, chandeliers dripping from the ceiling, everything gilded in rich leather. It’s the kind of place where people speak in low, hushed tones of rev—

“Wah, this place surely very expensive, innit?” Ma’s voice, loud under normal circumstances, is a shout in the quiet atmosphere. Heads turn. Eyes crawl over us.

“Cor, yes, this place so fancy, ah?” Second Aunt says just as loudly. “You get discount or not, Meddy? If not, maybe can ask for discount, ah?”

I turn to Big Aunt, a pleading look on my face. I can’t tell Ma and Second Aunt to speak quietly, or not haggle for a discount, but she can. Big Aunt is a sensible woman. She’ll get it. She sees the desperate expression on my face and pats my shoulder reassuringly. I breathe out. She’ll tell them to drop the ridiculous accents and that a discount is out of the question.

“You kids choose well,” she says solemnly. “We no need ask for discount.” Oh, thank god. “This hotel...” She nods politely at the receptionists, who are all staring at us, and says loudly, enunciating each word, “This hotel is dog’s bollocks.”

•••

I can’t look the bellboy in the eye when he drops off our luggage. Knowing what everyone in this building must think of them. Of us. Argh.

“Still thinking of what happened downstairs?” Nathan says, toweling his hair dry as he walks out of the bathroom. Normally, I would take a moment to admire his abs, especially when he’s only wearing a towel wrapped around his waist, but right now I’m still too stressed out over my family’s behavior.

“Like I can ever forget that. ‘Dog’s bollocks’? I mean, what the hell was Big Aunt trying to say?”

Nathan laughs. “Well, to be fair, ‘dog’s bollocks’ means awesome, so she’s not wrong. This hotelispretty awesome.”

“You know what I mean,” I groan, flinging myself onto the bed and burying my face in the fluffy pillows.

“I know,” he says gently. The bed sags slightly as he sits down next to me. He rubs my back and I melt against his touch. “They’re just being themselves. Their wonderful, loving selves. You’re usually okay with them. What’s really bothering you? Is it my parents?”

His parents, Annie and Chris, are just about as different as anyone can get from Ma and the aunts. Sometimes, I even forget that Chris was originally from Hong Kong. His family had immigrated to England when he was just three years old, and he was put through the best boarding schools England had to offer. He’s basically a modernized Mr.Darcy now, both in manner and speech. A teeny tiny part of me may have wished, in mydarkest hours, that my family had integrated more fully into their adopted countries, like Chris had.

I turn my head to look at him. “Well, yeah. Of course I’m nervous about your parents. Your folks are so polite and well-behaved and—”

“Anal? Walk around with sticks up their arses?”

“No!” I laugh. “They’re great. I bet they’ve never embarrassed you at school events or called anything dog’s bollocks. Why does ‘dog’s bollocks’ even mean ‘awesome’? What is wrong with you Brits?”

“Hmm. Good question. Well, I’m sure your aunts will say it again over dinner to describe my mum’s food or something, and we can have a lively conversation about the epistemology of the term ‘dog’s bollocks.’ ”

I groan into the pillows again.

“It’ll be fine,” Nathan laughs. “They’ll fit right in.”

“My family has never fit right in anywhere.”

“They’ll fit right in with my family.”

I have to smile at his hopeless optimism. As though the wildly different Asian diaspora experiences weren’t enough, his parents are also significantly wealthier than my family. Old money: Nathan’s grandparents had made a killing trading in Hong Kong before moving to England. And their wealthy upbringing has always been so obvious to me whenever I’ve been around them. I mean, they have different glasses for white wine and red wine, for god’s sake. Talk about fancy. Ma and the aunts rarely ever drink, except for Fourth Aunt, who drinks everything out of those red party cups because she’s a frat boy at heart.

Then my eyes trail down his stupidly perfect face to his stupidly perfect chest and those stupidly perfect abs.

“What are you looking at with that pervy expression of yours?”

I pull him down on top of me. “Just admiring the goods before I marry them.”

He pushes a stray lock of hair away from my face and then kisses me slow and deep, and for the next hour or so, I blissfully forget about my family and their strange new accents.

6

Nathan was wrong. I was right.

Normally, I would be happy about this, but right now, I would’ve given anything for it to be the other way around.

He is wrong about his parents loving my mother and aunts. I can see it in their faces as soon as we arrive at the house. His parents greet me and Nathan with hugs and good cheer, just as I remember them, but when they go to greet my family, they falter. And who can blame them?

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