Page 170 of The Rom-Commers

And so they had a little ceremony in the community garden, and then Salvador helped my dad move all his instruments next door—and Mrs. Otsuka didn’t even have to put foam cushions on her sharp corners, because by that point, my dad had been spending so much time at her place that she’d already done it.

She took on a lot of caregiving, marrying my dad. But she told me once that it’s worth it. He cures her loneliness. He shines light on her shadows. He makes her laugh all day long and into the night. That’s how she sees it: she takes care of him, but he takes care of her, too. And it’s so plain to see that they have much more fun together than they’d ever have apart.

My dad started learning Japanese, by the way. Turns out, he has a knack for languages.

And he also has a great tutor.

Sylvie and Salvador turned my dad’s old room into a guest room. Sylvie also decided to redecorate the apartment in her spare time—dismantling our childhood bunk beds, and wallpapering an accent wall with tropical flowers, and filling up the windowsill with succulents in bright painted pots. She made a Pinterest page and everything.

Now Sylvie and Salvador are working hard, and saving up, andhoping to buy a house big enough for all of them, and a gaggle of kids, at some point. Sylvie even googled our sunny, rambling childhood home to see if that might be an option—but it had been bulldozed to make way for a megamansion.

“Maybe it’s better this way,” I said as Sylvie ranted about it on the phone. “Maybe life is telling us to keep moving forward.”

Kenji continues to come visit every summer and go to camps at the science museum. And it turned out, he has twin younger sisters, who started joining him when they got old enough. My dad loves it when all the kids show up at the apartment and fill it with life and scampering and giggling, and he’s taught them all how to play the harmonica.

“It’s alotof harmonicas,” Sylvie says. “They could start a Bob Dylan tribute band.”

AND ME? WHATbecame of me?

I moved to LA and kept writing.

I got my own tiny apartment for a while, right above a tattoo parlor.

It did just happen to be walking distance from Charlie’s place, but I swear that was a coincidence. Mostly.

It was my first time living alone in my life, and I did some hard-core nesting—amassing a block-printed cloth napkin collection, stocking up on kooky coffee mugs, and diving full-immersion into a throw-pillow lifestyle.

“What is it with women and throw pillows?” Charlie asked when my bed got so laden with them, it was hard to find the mattress.

“I think the words you’re looking for are ‘thank you,’” I said.

Charlie fully supported my commitment to independence.

But, even still, every single day… he asked me to marry him.

Which I loved.

Even though, every day, I also evaded the question.

A smile would take over my face, and I’d say, “You don’t have to be married to be happy.”

And Charlie wouldn’t disagree.

“I just want to belong to you,” he’d say. “And I want you to belong to me.”

And then I’d push him down into all those throw pillows in a way that left no doubt about who belonged to whom.

But I still resisted saying yes—in that way you can when absolutely everybody knows youwantto say yes. And youwillsay yes—eventually.

And anticipation is half the fun.

One great thing about being writers is that our jobs are portable. So we spend summers in Houston, in Sylvie and Salvador’s guest room. It’s a total circus: Sylvie, Salvador, their two golden retrievers, our dad, Mrs. Otsuka (who, once we were family, encouraged us all to call her by her first name, Mitsuko), all three of her grandkids, and Charlie and me. All of us just back and forth between apartments, and sharing food, and babysitting, and helping out, and working in the community garden, and buzzing with kinetic energy in that cheery, noisy way that happens sometimes when families are piled into close quarters.

Sometimes we even add Jack Stapleton and his cute wife, Hannah, into the mix, and we all squeeze in around the dining table, grandkids on various knees, and have little impromptu sing-alongs after dinner.

Though my dad has never stopped calling Jack “Jake Singleton.”

And Jack never corrects him.

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