Page 53 of Dial A for Aunties

“Have some tea, Meddy, you’re too anxious,” Fourth Aunt says, passing me a steaming cup of my favorite tea, Tie Guan Yin.

“Tea got caffeine, will stress her out even more. Better you justdo Tai Chi, Meddy. Come, you do with me.” Second Aunt plucks the teacup out of my hand and places it on the desk before launching into a Tai Chi pose. “Parting the Wild Horse’s Mane,” she says, stretching out both hands.

This is impossible. “I’m going to the balcony to think.” I stride outside and close the sliding door behind me. Leaning against the balcony railing, I breathe out a huge sigh. Before me is the mountain view, which is a nice way of saying “not ocean view,” but the sight of all the trees and greenery is soothing to me. Okay, so. Ah Guan was an even bigger shit than I thought. I close my eyes. Let’s pretend to be him for a second. I’ve got a duffel bag filled with expensive gifts. What do I do?

I get off the island as fast as I can.

They’d sent us an e-mail with travel details. I take out my phone and open the e-mail, scrolling down to “Vendors boat timetable.” Sure enough, there’s a yacht for vendors who aren’t staying overnight scheduled to leave in fifteen minutes. The next one leaves in six hours’ time. Ah Guan would’ve wanted to leave ASAP. How would he have smuggled the duffel bag out, though?

The lilies. He would’ve arrived here with crates of them. I guess he could just stuff the duffel bag into one of those crates and nobody would be the wiser. Right. So. That was most likely his plan. Now that I’ve figured it out, what do I do? I took the duffel bag because I didn’t want Maureen to find out that he’s not here. I thought maybe it would be best to keep up the appearance of having him still be alive. But if I go along with their plan, it means I would be stealing from Jacqueline and Tom. And they don’t deserve that. I’m already a killer; I really don’t need to add “thief” to the growing list of crimes.

I’ll return the gifts to them. Just gotta figure out how. Can’t exactly march up to Jacqueline and tell her that her maid of honor is a lying, thieving jerk, because then I’d have to explain how Ifound out. Maybe I could just leave the duffel bag outside the bridal suite? But then Maureen would know that something went wrong on Ah Guan’s end. Argh. Okay. I’ll figure it out somehow. In the meantime, I’ll just have a freaking dead body and a bag full of stolen goods in my room, because of course I do.

There’s a knock on the glass door. I open it and Fourth Aunt says, “You’re going to be here awhile, right? Er Jie and I are going to lunch. We’re starving.”

“Oh. Yeah, of course. Go. Thanks for watching the—you know—while I was gone.”

“Of course, that what family do,” Second Aunt says. They slip on their shoes, call out their goodbyes to me, and leave the room. I go back inside, closing the balcony door behind me, and sip the tea that Fourth Aunt had made for me. With a sigh, I plop down on the other bed, staring at Ah Guan. Or rather, the lump that’s covered by the duvet. Oh lord, it’s just hit me that one of us will have to sleep in this bed that housed a dead body for hours. Inconceivable. I’ll just—I’ll sleep in the bathtub. Or with Ma. Or on the floor. Anywhere but the bed Ah Guan’s corpse is cooling down in. I look at the stocking feet sticking out. How surreal that there’s an actual human body underneath that. A human body I killed. And there, on the desk, the duffel bag. I pick it up and put it inside the closet. Seems wrong to just leave a bag full of stolen jewelry and money out in the open like that.

Just as I’m sliding the closet door shut, there’s another knock. Without thinking, I swing it open, saying, “Did you forget something, Fourth—” The last word chokes halfway up my throat. Because there, standing in front of me, isn’t Fourth Aunt or Second Aunt.

It’s Nathan.

21

“Nathan!” I cry, hoping that came out more “pleasantly surprised” than “shocked and horrified.” Not that I would be shocked or horrified to see him under normal circumstances, that is, when I do not have a dead body AND a bag full of stolen things in my room. I slide out of the room and pull the door shut behind me, and only then do I breathe easier.

And there he is. My Nathan. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he says, smiling at me as though I’m the only person he wants to see in the entire world. He’s had this effect on people since our college days. He’d smile at the cashier at Safeway, and the kid would just melt. “I had some free time—okay, I don’t, actually, I made some free time—Meddy, I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“Me too.” Technically a lie—I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the corpse—but also not technically a lie, given that I’ve been obsessing over him for the past four years. I guess that’s what he wanted to hear, because next thing I know, his arms arearound my waist, pulling me close. He pauses, his lips only a single, lonely inch from mine, and the yearning inside me takes over and I close the distance.

Every kiss we have steals my breath, stops the spinning of the world, and this one is no different. Time stops, air molecules freeze, and in this moment, there’s no me, or him, or everything else. Just us. I kiss him hungrily, and he kisses back with equal fervor. My lips part slightly, and he slides his tongue into my mouth. Molten lava fills my belly. I can’t have enough of him. The taste of him is intoxicating, the gentle caress of his tongue on mine sending me spinning into mindlessness. His hands hold me tight, possessively, and when one of them moves to cup my breast, I arch my back like a cat, filling his palm, feeling my skin burst into flames at the touch. God, I want him so badly.

“Can we go inside?” he murmurs, his lips tracing the words against my neck, making me whimper with need. I wrap my arms around him even tighter, words tumbling out of my mouth without much meaning.

Inside. Where we could rip off each other’s clothes, skin kissing skin, his warmth against mine, inside me—

Inside. Where Ah Guan’s corpse lies, cooling. My eyes fly open. I might as well have gotten an electric shock. All of my muscles tense, and I turn into a salt pillar. “Inside?” I squeak.

Nathan pulls back a little. He searches my eyes. “Yeah, I thought—” He blushes. “Sorry if I’m moving too fast—”

“No! No, you’re not. I really, really want to go inside with you. You won’t believe how much I’ve been fantasizing about that. It’s just—shit, actually, I just locked myself out.” I pat my pockets for my key card. I’m not even lying. In my panic to close the door when I found Nathan here, I forgot to grab the key card from the desk.

“Oh. That’s okay, I’ve got a master key.” He takes a card outof his pocket and smiles. “Look, I know this is moving really fast, but um—I’d actually love to just be able to sit down with you and talk, we have so much to catch up on and if I’m being totally honest, you know, I still don’t understand where we went wrong back in college. I drove myself crazy trying to figure out what I did, and I don’t want to make that same mistake now.”

“You didn’t. It was nothing you did.”

Confusion crosses his face.

“I was too scared to go east with you and I just freaked. I wanted to stay and help the family business, but I didn’t want to risk you giving up on your job offer, so. Yeah. Biggest mistake of my life. Believe me, I kick myself every day for letting you go.”

Nathan smiles, and god, it’s beautiful. It’s like years are shaved off his face. “So. I didn’t fuck it up?”

“God, no! You were the love of my life. I want to talk too, properly—”

He waves the key card at the door before I can say “but,” and the light above the knob turns from red to green. The lock slides with a click, and Nathan opens the door for me. My heart stops. My entire being has frozen.

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