Page 143 of Alice Chen's Reality Check

“No, for going on TV. It was a brave thing to do, to try something so far out of your comfort zone. I didn’t realize how unhappy you were with Chase—with everything, really—until I saw you and Daniel together on the show.”

“You know Daniel and I were just acting in most of the interviews.”

“It wasn’t just the interviews,” Cindy insists. “It was the way he looked at you. You just seemed to get each other.”

I glance up from the soup to Daniel, and his gaze meets mine, a soft smile crossing his lips.

“Thanks, Cindy,” I say, and she rubs my arm. “But that still doesn’t make up for the fact that you killed my plants while I was gone.”

“If you recall, I was watering them right when I got your phone call.”

“And you knocked them all over.”

“My best friend jumped into a volcano! I was in a state of distress!” Cindy ruffles my hair. “I promise I’ll get you some new plant babies.”

“I’m holding you to that. Now get out of the kitchen. Some of us need to actually cook.” I swat at Cindy with a kitchen towel, and she scampers back to the couch.

With a minimal amount of swearing and burned fingers, we manage to put the three-course meal on the table by the time my mom’s show is wrapping up.

“Beautiful. Delicious. Amazing,” Cindy raves.

“Mmfm mm,” Tara agrees, already digging in. “Guys, you gottagive me the recipe.”

Daniel and I exchange a nervous glance as my mom delicately picks up a dumpling with her chopsticks and takes her first bite.

“Well, Mrs. Chen? Does it pass muster?” Daniel asks.

My mother gives the dumpling a shrewd look, and I pray she got one that had salt.

“Not bad,” she says finally.

Daniel and I high-five each other across the table.

“High praise from Mrs. Chen,” Daniel says.

“I think I’ve reached my finest moment as a daughter. Lightning should just strike me now before I mess anything up,” I murmur. I spoon more mushrooms onto my mother’s plate.

Daniel and I might not have won any money, but after the show aired, H2Whoa reached out to me. Apparently because I was drinking their product in almost every shot, they wanted me to become their official brand representative. For ten thousand dollars each month, I post three silly videos of me drinking H2Whoa—drinking upside down on the floor, drinking next to a weird cat statue, drinking in the park while beet red from attempting to improve my cardio fitness. They don’t care how I do it, which has made it fun. Ten thousand dollars a month is enough to pay off the medical bills and buy my mom all the best mushrooms that we can cook.

I also managed to convince the company to sponsor a weekend tutoring program to help students struggling with math. They call it H2+2=Whoa, which is so wrong that I can’t even begin to explain it to their sales rep, but I still take the money they pay me to run the program and make them look good.

Thinking of H2Whoa, I take a little video of a can of it next to my prized mushroom dish. “Perfect pairing?” I caption it. When I post it, Selena is actually the first one to reply, with a bunch of heart-eye cat emojis and the comment “ur killing it, girl!”

Selena and I have stayed in touch. Selena actually started a group chat with me, Daniel, and Chase, which is of course called Secret Alliance.Mostly it’s just cute animal videos and recipe links, but it’s been nice keeping in touch. We’re not quite at the point where we’re all going on double dates or anything, but I can tell that in the future we’ll all be friends. Especially now that I don’t have to be the one worrying about Chase’s taxes.

As everyone is eating, Daniel clears his throat. “As you all know, this is the one-year anniversary of when Alice and I got together.”

Tara and Cindy cheer together.

“And I wanted to take a moment to mark this occasion, now that we’ve successfully avoided burning down the kitchen.” From under the table, Daniel produces a huge bouquet of flowers—the tropical kind that the production crew would have out for filming, filled with hibiscus and orchids set against palm fronds.

“Ooh!” Tara says. “Stunning.”

“Did you get those from Costco?” Cindy asks, admiring the flowers.

Even my mom looks impressed.

“Yeah, tell her where you got them. I haven’t gotten flowers in a minute,” Tara teases. Cindy laughs, leaning over to kiss her.

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