The Bride Test(10)

“This is all useless,” Khai said. “I won’t change my mind.” And he really didn’t want a strange woman living in his house. His house was his sanctuary, the one place where he could escape people and just be.

When his family wasn’t breaking in, at least.

“You can’t make up your mind before you’ve met her. That’s not fair. Besides, I need her at the restaurant. The new waitress quit, and I need people for the daytime shift. Help me with this,” she said.

Khai scowled at his mom. He keenly sensed she was manipulating him—he wasn’t completely oblivious—but he didn’t know how to get out of this. Also, when she was short on hands, she made Khai and his siblings take time off their day jobs and come in to help. If he had to choose between waiting tables while simultaneously dealing with his mom all day and having a strange woman in his house …

As if sensing weakness, she dove in for the kill. “Tolerate some difficulty and do it for me. It’ll make me happy.”

Shit, shit, shit. Frustration built into a giant ball inside of him, growing bigger and bigger and verging on explosion. There was nothing he could say to that, and she knew it.

She was his mom.

Clinging to his last shred of control, he said, “Only if you promise the matchmaking stops after this. You won’t try to hook me up with Dr. Son’s daughter or the dentist’s daughter or Vy’s friends or anyone. You won’t ambush me with surprise guests when I come over for dinner.”

“Of course,” his mom said as she nodded eagerly. “I promise. Only this summer, only this one time. If you don’t like her, I’ll stop. I don’t think I can find a better girl than M? anyway, and—” She hesitated midsentence, and a thoughtful look crossed her face. “But you have to really try. If I don’t see you trying to make it work, I’ll have to do it again. Do you understand, Kh?i?”

He narrowed his eyes. “What does it mean ‘to try’?”

“It means you’ll do what a real fiancé does. You’ll take her out, introduce her to your friends and family, do things together, things like that. You’ll take her to all the weddings this summer.”

That sounded horrendous.

He couldn’t help grimacing, and Quan burst out laughing.

“You know, Mom, maybe this was a good idea after all,” Quan said.

“See? You kids think I’m crazy, but Mom knows best.”

That was questionable, but Khai had no choice but to say, “Fine. I’ll do all that stuff this summer if you promise to stop with the wife planning after this.”

“I promise, I promise, I promise. I’m so glad you’re being reasonable on this. You’ll like her. You’ll see,” she said, smiling ear to ear like she’d won the Powerball lottery.

Khai was one hundred percent certain she’d be the one seeing, but he kept that to himself. “I’m taking a shower.” He spun around and marched toward his bedroom.

It was just like his mom to hatch a scheme like this. The entire thing was ridiculous. He wasn’t going to change his mind. M? could be the most perfect woman in the world, and it wouldn’t change anything. His liking her was inconsequential. In fact, if he liked her, that was all the more reason why he shouldn’t marry her.





CHAPTER THREE



M? clawed the arms of her seat as the plane landed with a stomach-dipping jerk. Strange mechanical sounds reached her ears, and the lights flickered back on. She never wanted to fly again. Once in her life was enough. The loudspeakers dinged.

“Welcome to San Francisco, California. The local time is 4:20 P.M. Thank you for flying Air China …”

Thank sky and Buddha for English classes in high school, all the bootleg American movies she’d watched, and the audio English lessons she’d been listening to nonstop while she cleaned these past couple of months. She’d understood most of that.

California. She’d finally made it.

That meant she’d be meeting him soon.

Nausea hit her so hard the skin on her face prickled and her vision blurred. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. That wasn’t how she wanted to spend her first moments in the United States of America.

What if they dragged her somewhere for disrupting the peace with her vomit? Or—she glanced at the nice old lady in a hand-knit sweater next to her—spraying the people around her? Could she go to jail for that? Could she get deported for that? Maybe they’d send her back without letting her off the plane.

Everyone started lining up in the aisle, and M? jumped to get her luggage from the overhead bin. A tall man with in a brown leather jacket beat her to her suitcase and pulled it out. “Here, let me get it for you.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Embarrassment locked the English words in her throat. She’d learned the words in school long ago and could read and write a little—enough to fill out the disembarkation form and customs declaration, at least with help from the flight attendant—but actually talking had always been a challenge. She curled her fingers into ineffectual fists. How could she make him stop? All she had in her purse was Vietnamese ??ng, and it amounted to basically nothing here. It wasn’t enough to tip him.

He set the small navy-blue suitcase in the aisle and smiled, and she yanked it close to herself before he could take it hostage. His smile dimmed, and he turned to face the front of the plane. As they filed up the Jetway, she kept expecting him to “help” her more and request payment, but he never did.