Page 26 of Not Your Valentine
On Sunday morning, I’m drinking coffee and eating fruit—no leftover cheesecake today—when I get a text. It’s Taylor, sending me not a heart-shaped cake but a heart-shaped platter of charcuterie. Some of the meat has been rolled to look like roses. I imagine him picking up a piece of cheese—my favorite kind, because of course he’d know what that is—and holding it to my lips, his fingers lingering as I take the cheese into my mouth, then sliding farther down my body.
The lie we’re telling the world…I can’t help wishing it were real.
No, that’s not true. I don’t wish I were in a relationship. I’ve sworn off relationships. But I usually only have sex when I have a boyfriend, and it’s been a while, that’s all. My expensive vibrator is nice—I splurged for a top-of-the-line one—but sometimes you want to kiss someone and feel someone else’s body against yours. At least, I do, even if I’m normally content to be alone in my apartment.
So, yeah, I wish I could end my dry streak, but that’s it, and it’s not as if I’m going to make a move. It wouldn’t be smart.
Historically, morning hasn’t been a particularly horny time for me. Maybe when I wake up with someone in my bed, but when I’m alone? Not so much. Morning isn’t when I pull my vibrator out of my bedside table.
Today, however, is different…
Chapter 9
When the doorbell rings, I freeze in the middle of washing the green onions.
“Aiyah, why are you just standing there?” Mom asks. “Your boyfriend is here.”
I’m so out of sorts that I nearly protest and say Taylor isn’t my boyfriend, although some part of me is pleased to hear her call him that.
Yep, I’m flustered at the prospect of seeing him for the first time since last weekend. For the first time since I, well…you know.
Taylor doesn’t have a car, so I offered to pick him up, but he insisted on taking transit so I wouldn’t need to leave in the middle of dinner preparations. For the Lunar New Year’s Eve, I always head to my parents’ house mid-afternoon to help with the cooking. I’m the only person my mother can stand to have in the kitchen with her, even though, as a general rule, I’m less agreeable than the other members of the family. But in the kitchen with my mother, I know my place: I do what she says, and I don’t question it. I don’t try to put my own spin on things.
I dry my hands on a towel before heading to the front door. Shirley has beaten me there.
“You must be Taylor.” Her voice sounds totally natural. Not. “Helen says you went to our high school, but it was a pretty big school. You don’t look familiar.”
Well, that’s better than my sister immediately sharing every embarrassing story from my childhood. I like to pretend there aren’t any such stories, but there totally are.
Shirley steps aside, and for the first time in a week, I get a look at Taylor in person.
A part of me thought that when I saw him today, I’d realize that it was a very temporary attraction and I was over it.
Not so.
Today, he’s wearing corduroys and a cozy sweater—I want to press myself against him so I can feel just how cozy it is—and when he looks in my direction, his smile broadens.
“Hi,” I say at last, holding out my hands. “Let me take that from you.”
He passes over the fruit basket he brought, then removes his jacket and shoes. He’s just straightened up when my mom strides into the hallway, followed by my father and Bec. Mom gives him an assessing gaze.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Tsang,” Taylor says.
“Helen hasn’t told me much about you. I have many questions for you later, okay?” Mom probably made a list of questions and went over it with my father. He will have been tasked with asking a few of those questions while she and I finish up in the kitchen.
But Taylor, even if he isn’t a surgeon or some other profession guaranteed to impress Asian parents, doesn’t seem alarmed.
As I return to the kitchen with my mother—Taylor offered his help but I declined—I hear him and my sister laughing about something.
Mom and I work in silence for a few minutes before she says, “You really like him. I can tell by the way you look at him.”
I keep my eyes focused on the cutting board, feeling moderately horrified. I wasn’t trying to look at him in any particular way, so whatever she saw was—gasp!—natural.
“How do I look at him?” I venture at last.
“Ah, hard to explain. Like you are very fond of him, and you want to be alone so you can smooch him.”
“Mom!”
