Page 74 of Well, That Was Unexpected

Finally, she clears her throat and turns away, mumbling, “Aiya, we’ll see.”

I’m not letting this one go so easily. I know my mother well enough to know that she’s the best cockblocker—er, blocker—of her own happiness. “No, Ma. I don’t want to leave it at ‘we’ll see.’ I haven’t seen you this happy in…” My voice trails off as I try to remember the last time I’ve seen Mama this joyous, this alive. “I can’t remember,” I whisper, the words coming out hoarse with emotion. She’s given up so much for me. “You’ve got plans with Eighth Aunt, right? Like, you guys are adults, you’ve worked out how to make it work, yes?”

“Aduh, don’t be ridiculous. She lives all the way here, I live in LA…”

“Those are just bullshit excuses and you know it.”

Mama’s eyes narrow, and I reach out for her hand.

“Please, promise me you won’t give up again just because you think it’s not proper or normal or whatever? Please try to make it work with Eighth Aunt? It’s different now. You can FaceTime each other whenever, and she’s filthy rich, so she can fly to see you whenever, and we can visit Indonesia often too, and of course, you have the rest of this summer with her!”

A single tear slips down Mama’s cheek, followed by another, and another. She nods wordlessly. “But we need to go back to LA because—”

“No, actually.” It’s not until I say it that I realize it’s true. I don’t want to go back to LA. Not yet, anyway. Even though I’ve crashed and burned so spectacularly here, even though I’ve managed to turn this trip into a hellfire scandal of Miley Cyrus proportions, even though a huge part of me is scrambling to escape and get the hell out of here. Despite all those things, there is still a small kernel of defiance inside me. A voice, tiny but impossible to ignore, that tells me I should stay. That I’m strong enough to stay. For all of my life, I’ve run away whenever things get too real. But this is my chance to get to know my roots, and I’m done running.

I look at Mama and smile my first real smile since we left Bali. “I want to stay, at least until the end of the summer. And this time, I want to get to know everything about Jakarta and ourfamily.”

“You want the truth? The truth is I’m the liar. I was the one who misled Sharlot into dating me.”

“George!”

I hit the Pause button. Rewind a few beats.

“The truth is I’m the liar. I was the one who misled Sharlot into dating me.”

“George!”

“George!”

I frown. It takes a second for me to realize that someone outside of the video has actually called my name. I look up to see Eighth Aunt, Papa, Nainai, and Eleanor bunched up at the doorway. I sigh, letting my head drop back onto the bed so my face is buried in my fluffy duvet. I understand why I have to stay locked up in my own house—and honestly, there are worse places to have to be locked up in—but seeing my family is a very painful reminder of how I’ve hurt them and everyone else around me, especially Sharlot.

“Son, why don’t you come out of your room, ya? It’s been three days now,” Papa says.

“When we asked you to lie low and not leave the house,” Eighth Aunt says, striding in, “we didn’t mean for you to literally stay in your room.”

“Yeah, gege. We do have an actual mansion for you to prowl in,” Eleanor says, plopping onto the foot of my bed.

“I’m fine,” I say, or start to say anyway, but get derailed when Nainai yanks my ear. “Ow!”

“You are obviously not fine,” she warbles. “Not ever since that no-good girl tricked you. Took advantage of my grandson!”

We all stare at Nainai guiltily, and then look back and forth at one another, like who’s going to be the one who reminds her that I wasn’t exactly innocent in the whole debacle? I sigh and say, “Nainai, I was doing the exact same thing to her as she was to me.”

“Yes, but you didn’t have any malicious intent!” she snaps.

“Well, I mean, she probably didn’t either.”

Nainai makes a “pfft” noise. “I know these no-good girls, always trying to worm their way into our family. When your mother died, I had to fight off many of these no-good women who tried to claw their way into your papa’s heart.”

I’ve been brought up not to argue back with my elders, but Nainai’s misogyny is unbearable, and exactly the kind of crap that all the gossip sites have been spouting. Somehow, in the eye of the media, my transgressions matter less than Sharlot’s. She’s the witch harpy, the gold digger, the snake who schemed her way to my side, and I’m just the clueless, sweet-natured boy who wastaken along for the ride. I only know this from TV, of course, because all of my electronics were quickly confiscated just in case I got the urge to ruin everything for the family company. Because of course, everything is about keeping the family company intact, keeping our image clean and our stocks up.

“Nainai, I love you, but you’re wrong.”

Nainai’s eyebrows shoots up into her hairline. “What did you say, Ming Fa?”

“You’re wrong,” I say this as gently as I can, because she is, after all, my grandmother. “Sharlot isn’t like that at all. She’s a good person. I was the one who tricked her. If anything, I’m the scumbag around here. A hypocrite, especially considering myapp.”

“That’s not true—”

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