Page 41 of I Did Something Bad
“I have to go to the bathroom!” My announcement comes down like a sledgehammer, but hey, at least it breaks the uncomfortable tension. “Sorry.” I grimace. “I…” I scramble around at the table before my eyes land on my glass of watermelon juice. “I hada lotof watermelon juice,” I say.
“Oh, I feel you, thamee,” Su quips. “Once, I made the mistake of eating half a watermelon for breakfast before a road trip, and it ended up taking us three times as long to get there!”
I nod enthusiastically, like I’ve never heard a truer statement in my life. “Yeah, and I have areallysmall bladder. My doctor was concerned at my last checkup.” I want to suck the words back in as soon as they’ve left my mouth. It’s not even true! As far as I know, I have a normal-sized bladder.
“Oh!” Su says, taken aback but not wanting to appear rude. “You should go then, thamee. Don’t want a UTI!”
I give a weak laugh, not believing that I’m talking about UTIs with Tyler Tun’s mother. “No, I don’t!”
I push my chair back against the wall and stand up. To my right, Alex does the same and everyone tohisright follows suit, the last person being Tyler. It’s a tight squeeze thanks to our proximity to the corner, and as I awkwardly wiggle my way out between these near-complete strangers and a table stacked with bamboo trays of dim sum, I try to recall why I said I had to go to the bathroom right now even though I could’ve probably held it in for another hour?
Oh right, because Tyler shot me a single smile and the feral part of me that hasn’t had sex in six months wanted to jump up and crawl across the table and undress him then and there. Tyler, who—
“Tyler!” Su yells, but it’s too late.
Two kids playing a game of tag run right into him, and I watch him fold, knees buckling. He tries to grab his mother’s outstretched hand but misses. I extend my arm to catch him as he stumbles in my direction. He manages to grip myshoulders, only for us both to tumble backward and rest horizontally on the maroon carpeted floor, Tyler right on top of me. I catch sight of the cap hurtling in the air above his head while the sunglasses that he had hung on his shirt’s neckline slide under the table.
“Fuck,” he whispers a nanosecond before somebody screeches and screams, “It’s Tyler Tun!”
I freeze as murmurs of “Is that Tyler Tun?” and “Holy shit, that’s Tyler Tun!” become louder and less murmur-like around us until they’re an overlapping chatter, like birds squawking in the jungle over two shiny pieces of fruit (weare the fruit).
“We have to go,” Tyler says through gritted teeth. Before I can nod, he’s already scrambling to his feet and stretching out for me.
“May—” I whisper, but Tyler squeezes my arm before I can look for her.
“Don’t look at her,” he says sharply. “They’re looking at us. If you look at her, they’ll look at her, too.”
“Okay,” I say. In fact, I don’t look anywhere but the floor as I clutch his hand and try to get up without one of my boobs popping out in front of the entire restaurant. “My shoe,” I mutter when, once upright, I realize I’m tipping to the left.
“Here!” Tyler’s aunt Nilar (the tailor) says, grabbing the shoe which had flown under her chair. Tyler takes it and gives it to me, and, holding on to his shoulder, I hop on one foot to put it on.
“Here’s your bag,” Alex says, and they fling my purse around the table before one of Tyler’s uncles hands it to me.
“Ready?” Tyler asks.
I nod. Only then do I look up—and my whole being spasms with regret when I come face-to-face with a sea of cell phones that boasts the steadiness and intensity of a SWAT team’s lasers. They’re all pointed right at us, and they stay trained on us as we run out of the dining area and toward the fire escape stairs, Tyler leading the way, my feet following his, our hands clasped as though we’re hanging from a cliff and either we both survive, or neither does.
Eleven
“Tyler Tun’s Darling’s Dim Sum Debut,’” Clarissa says through the phone, enunciating eachsandd. “‘Dim Sum and Chill.’ ‘Tyler Tun’s Dim Sum Dine and Dash, but Who Is His Accomplice?’”
We didn’t dine and dash,I retort in my head. Out loud, though, all I say is, “Clarissa, I can explain.”
“Please,” Clarissa says, and I can picture her unamused countenance as she swipes the headline tabs closed. Headlines that everybody I know—and their mother and second cousins—have been texting me since before my alarm went off. My phone log is a list of red: missed calls from my parents, Nay, Thidar, even Patrick (although I have a feeling this was Thidar trying to be sneaky). I hadn’t picked up a single one. Because I was busy getting ready for a 9A.M.call time, because I am a professional, a journalist who is still on the job. Or at least, IhopeI’m still on the job. Judging by Clarissa’s tone and the fact that she didn’t even respond with a “hello” when I’d picked up withmy most effusive “Morning, Clarissa!” I might actually not have this specific job for much longer.
“We were having lunch—”
“With his family,” Clarissa clarifies for the record.
“Yes,” I state coolly.
“On a Sunday.”
“He invited me.”
A pause. “Khin. You know I’m not into bullshitting, so I’m going to come out and ask it. Are you and Tyler dating?”
“What? No!” I yell. Beside me, Tyler, who had otherwise directed his intense focus out the window since the start of this call, rolls his shoulders. The quiet back here is biting, so I have no doubt he can hear every word on the other line.
