Page 41 of The Boyfriend List
Still in the kitchen, I spy my mom pulling things out of the freezer for thetang yuan—the sweet sesame-filled dumplings that go into the sesame pudding—and I go over to help her.
Her heavy sigh in place of a ‘thank you’ tells me that she’s had the same conversation with Dad that I just did.
After pulling out a pot and pouring the sesame pudding mixture into it, and adding some bars of cane sugar, I stir the dessert. Mom rubs her temples. “Your father’s retirement dinner is next weekend.”
“I heard.” Well, I didn’t hear the date, but I already know I don’t want to be there.
“It’s not that I don’t want to go.” She rolls her eyes as Dad laughs too loudly at something Brooklyn says. “But you know those family dinners always takeforever. He justlovesto talk and talk and talk. And he always accuses me of not liking his family. There’s nothing wrong with his family; the only thing I can’t stand is how they all like to leave me out of their conversations.”
She huffs a dramatic sigh. I stir the sesame pudding to get it free of lumps.
“Have you tried telling him that?” It’s a tired tactic for disaster, I know, but I find myself asking her that all the same. She’ll never take my suggestion to actually tell him her concerns to his face. If she did, he’d just find a way to twist her words into something else and get even more upset.
“I can’t tell him anything,” she mutters, taking out eleven small bowls from a cupboard and setting them on the island. I don’t argue with her, just ladling each bowl full of dessert.
Everyone files into the kitchen a moment later, as if we don’t have enough food around the table already. We all take our dessert and add our preferred number of sesame dumplings. For me, that’s two. For Hattie and Queenie, that’s seventeen (between the two of them).
After dinner, Troy and I wash the dishes side by side. We never used the dishwasher growing up—each of us would rotate dish duty and we had too many dishes to fit in the dishwasher anyways—so we don't use it now. It's what my dad's always complained about, saying sarcastically that he's sorry he doesn't make enough money for us to have a large enough dishwasher.
As Troy rinses a plate and hands it to me to dry and put away, I wonder if I should tell him. Troy feels like my only ally in this house against the indifference of our other siblings and the blind wrath of our father. But even he doesn't notice what our mom goes through.
"What's new with you?" Troy asks me as he finishes rinsing a pot. "No offence, but you look like crap, man."
I chuckle dryly. "Thanks, bro."
"No, I say that with all seriousness." He drops the nonchalant brother act and puts on his concerned older brother hat. "You look like you haven't eaten or slept properly in weeks."
"It's Gloria," I say before I can stop myself. At least that's a truth I can tell.
Troy raises an eyebrow. "Your coworker?"
"We've been friends for eight years, but yes, we're coworkers." There's so much more that I could tell him, but I can't. He’d just tell me to get over my fears and ask her out.
"What's up with her?"
"She's… dating."
Troy chuckles. "That's what people do. They go on dates and get married and have kids."
The thought of Gloria doing that with someone else immobilizes me. Yet the thought of having children with her paralyzes me as well. "Yeah. Of course."
"So why do you look like Perry just stole your chocolate orange at Christmas?" Troy eyes me.
"I'm in love with her," I blurt out. "Or at least, I like her. A lot."
"Does she have a boyfriend?" Troy scrubs a grease stain on a baking sheet.
"No…"
"Then what's the problem? Ask her out."
"I can't just ask her out!" I say with a groan.
"She's not your subordinate. I'm sure there's no rule against a tax lawyer dating a corporate lawyer. It's not like you two work in different firms. What's the issue here?" Troy looks at me like he did when I was five and couldn't recite the multiplication tables. He's a math whiz.
"She wants children," I say.
"Like, right now?" Troy is insufferable, I swear.
