Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(44)

She whispered back: Don’t we have to?

Me and Joy wait. She wraps an arm tight around my shoulders and pulls me in for an urgent whisper.

“Your dad’s gonna be okay,” she says, and wipes a tear I hadn’t noticed was there. Then she rests my head on her shoulder, just as she rested hers on mine not too long ago. It’s like my heart has turned to lead and is now too heavy to carry alone, so Joy is helping me. She drove us here. She checked us in.

I look up to see a little boy across from us, smiling at us from behind a chair. He’s probably waiting for me to kiss her, I think. He thinks we’re together.

Buzz-buzz. It’s Q. I unlock my phone and hand it to Joy.

“Just read it to me,” I say. I don’t know if I can even formulate a sentence right now.

“You want me to read your phone.”

“I am a man with nothing to hide, Joy Song.”

“Metaphor incoming,” mutters Joy. She reads. “I trust tonight’s romantic masquerade proceeded most excellently, old bean?”

Joy lowers the phone. “Is this how you guys really talk?”

I rake my face with a limp hand, like a weary king. “Just tell him what’s going on.”

Joy tells Q. Q drops the Old Boy routine and declares he’s coming over as soon as he can, over and out.

“Shit,” I say. “Tell him it’s too far. Tell him it’s too late at night.”

“He’s already in the car,” says Joy. “True friends can be such a pain, right?”

I smile at her. She smiles at me. Across the way, the little boy giggles aloud and stares at both of us.

Buzz-buzz.

“It’s Brit,” says Joy, offering me the phone.

“Just read it to me,” I say.

Joy eyes me—really?—and reads. “I love you I love you I love you, heart eyes emoji, heart eyes emoji, blowing kiss emoji, two pink hearts emoji.”

I sit up and look at my phone screen.

“You were serious about the I love yous,” says Joy.

“Tell her I love you back, no emojis.”

Joy squints at me. “You should let her know what’s going on with your dad.”

“No way,” I say, and instantly hate myself for saying it. “I couldn’t stop her from coming over, and then—”

“And then nuh-duh-duh-dee-duh, got it,” says Joy, nodding. She types I love you too! and turns off the phone. I like that she understands my trepidation without me even having to explain it. I like that she knows the last thing anyone needs is all the drama of Brit showing up, me having to act like we’re not together, and all the rest of it.

Q sends updates on his ETA, and each time, Joy holds out my phone for my thumbprint before giving me her reports.

I like that Joy Song is taking care of me.

“Li?” calls a voice.

We look back, and a trim Korean-American nurse finds our eyes. When we approach, he tweaks his mouth into a frowny face.

“I’m so sorry, our security protocol is family members only,” he says.

I lean in. “Come on, holmes, my dad’s just been shot.”

The nurse taps his fluorescent clipboard three times—let-me-think—and says, “All right. This way.”

We get to the room—an actual room with a door, not one of those curtained-off deals—and the nurse announces us with some Korean I don’t quite grasp, and then I see Dad lying in bed peering back at me through an oxygen mask the color of ocean glass. I see Mom leaning over him, watching his every breath.

I thank the nurse and take a step closer. I see little tubes coming out from under the blanket, connected to a big syringe, an IV drip, something else.

Mom looks up. “Aigu, Joy, you don’t have to coming.”

“Mom, is Dad okay?” I say.

Mom starts fussing to clear a chair for Joy to sit in. “Too far. You driving?”

Dad is shot, I just got here, and now Mom’s playing host? The whole thing makes me snap.

“Mom, what the hell happened?” I bark.

“Why you shouting, Frank?”

“I’m sorry,” I bark.

“Frank, Frank, how about you sit?” says Joy.

“I’ve been sitting forever.”

Then Joy gently encircles my wrist with her cool fingers, and I relax.

“They shooting three times,” says Mom. “One hit the lung, cracked one rib. Make a hole. Doctor already put the Band-Aid. Doctor so good. He like you, Korean, but no speaking Korean.”

Sorry I grew up in the wrong country, I want to snap. I’m in a bad mood. I just want answers.

“Mom,” I say, as evenly as I can. “Who shot Dad? When? How bad is it?”

“American man, Caucasian man, he coming in,” says Mom with disgust. “I never seeing him before. Only white customer is Charlie, right? That man come in, he asking Daddy how much is the lottery ticket, he so stupid.”

“The sign says the price right there,” I say. Because it does.

“Then he take out kind of antique gun, and he shooting.”

“Bmfmfmfbm,” says Dad through his mask.

“What?” I say.

“Small bullet, only twenty-two caliber. White man, he run away.” Out of nowhere, Mom laughs. “At first Daddy feeling okay, not that much pain. He calling police. But then, oh boy. Hard to breathing. Because tiny-tiny hole in lung.”