Yolk(18)

“Right?” she says. “I had such a craving this morning. You sure you don’t want more tofu?”

“No, I’m good.”

We eat silently.

“Do you have roommates?” she asks after a while.

“Just one.”

“How’s that going? Is she cool?”

I think of Jeremy fucking that woman in my bedroom. I nod a few times. Something must have passed across my face because she stops chewing. She lifts her sock-covered foot off the floor and pokes my haunch, hard.

“It’s a dude, isn’t it?” she asks with her mouth full.

I pull my chopsticks out of my mouth.

“You’re living with a boyfriend, aren’t you?” I have never been able to lie to June. She also has this way of rolling her eyes without rolling her eyes.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

She chortles.

“Who’s on the lease—you or him?”

“It’s fine,” I tell her quietly. “He’s leaving soon.”

“You broke up?”

“No, we didn’t break up. We can’t break up because it’s not like that.”

She makes a rumbly noise in the back of her throat as I stare at my food. “Well,” she says, shaking her head. “At least you’re consistent.”

I set my bowl down on the mirrored coffee table harder than I’d meant to.

“He’s not on the lease.”

Truth is, I’m not either. There is no lease and it’s some guy called David Buxbaum’s name on the apartment because I’m living in a rent-controlled illegal sublet, and I still get his jury summonses.

“Okay,” she says.

Again I sense the math in her brain, the deepening of the wrinkle between her brows, but she lets it go. I’m staring down at my bowl when her blue cotton foot creeps back into my sight line and prods me again. This time on my arm.

I glare at her. She keeps nudging me, smiling as she pushes her bowl toward me. She wants me to get her seconds. “With more kimchi, too, please,” she says sweetly.

“Ugh, fine.” I roll my eyes, getting up. “I need sauce anyway.”

“Am I ever going to meet this asshole?” she calls out from the living room. “I guess it’s pointless to ask if he’s white.” I add more rice to both our bowls in silence, along with kimchi. I dump a fuckton angry scarlet chili shards into June’s bowl. I’m annoyed at my sister, but I’m aware that something’s loosening between us.

“Here you go.” I hand her the bowl before sitting down, smiling just as sweetly.

“What’s his name?” She picks up a whole pepper with her chopsticks and sets it on the chrome top of the coffee table.

I eat my food.

“Let me guess—it’s Tyler. Ooh, no, it’s Tanner. Oh, what’s up with that guy Chase Rice? Isn’t he on a TV show? How perfect is that name for a white dude who only fucks with Asian chicks?”

She sets another chili beside the first one. I get up and hand her a paper towel torn in half. Even in such a nice house, June’s a slob.

“So, what’s up? Like, cancer-wise?”

June raises her brows. “Cancer-wise?”

I just wanted a change of topic.

“Got my pathology report,” she continues, extracting more peppers.

“And?”

“They referred me to a gynecologic oncology surgeon.”

“And?”

“I’m gonna go see them.”

Gynecologic oncology surgeon. I glance down at the gloopy red-brown sauce in my bowl. “When?”

“In the morning.”

She’s not smiling anymore, utterly focused on her napkin. It’s why she called me. It’s why she wanted home-cooked food.

“Wait? You have surgery tomorrow?”

She sets her bowl on the table and doesn’t immediately respond.

“June?” Everyone in my family does this, gets really pissed off or shuts down when you ask them a question they deem too personal.

“June?” I ask my hands quietly. My nail polish has chipped off except on my thumbs. I try another tactic.

“Where’s the appointment?” I ask conversationally, pretending to take another bite of food.

Past her head, on top of her pale wood credenza, on a shelf below the TV, I see the pastel-colored DVD case from the Gilmore Girls box set. The familiar sight makes the tightness in my chest catch at my throat.

“Everything’s on the Upper East Side,” she says finally. “Total fucking schlep. And I hate when they take the FDR.”

“Take the Q.”

“I have cancer. I’m not poor.”

I choke a little.

My phone lights up on the coffee table. Jeremy again. Her eyes flit over to it, so I flip it over.

“We’re just talking tomorrow. Going over the biopsy results.”

I wonder if I’m supposed to go with her, but I feel stupid asking after all this time. She probably has friends she’d rather be with. People she’s close to.

“Thanks,” I tell her. She looks up at me as if I’ve said something stupid.

“Will you do something for me?”

I plonk my bowl down in my lap and nod solemnly.