Page 90 of You Had Me at Hello World
“No, I didn’t protect you,” she says. “I was a shell of myselffor many years. You suffered in ways no child should have to endure. And I’m sorry. I know I can never make it up to you.”
Hearing her say that is like permission, somehow, to finally admit how painful it’s been. My eyes tingle with the threat of tears. If I even try to speak, I think I might lose it, so all I do is nod and wait for the moment to pass.
“I have something to give you.” She reaches into her handbag and fishes out a piece of yellowed paper. It’s a handwritten letter, torn and tattered and taped together again.
Just like my heart, I think, and then am immediately mortified by how angsty-emo-band that thought is. I might as well start wearing raccoon eyeliner.
“Your biological father sent this last year. It’s for you. I don’t know how he found our address,” she says. “When Michael saw it, he got mad and ripped it up. I rescued it from the garbage and fixed it as best as I could.”
She brought this here from Oregon. She must’ve hidden it in her purse, all this time.
My throat is suddenly tight.
Gingerly, I take the letter from her as if it’s a grenade. “Why couldn’t he just write an email?”
“Maybe he did and it got deleted by Michael. He has all my passwords.”
The paper is thin and worn, but the ink is still legible. It’s written in Chinese, which I can’t read. And like, okay, I get it. Dude’s Chinese, he’s going to write in the language he knows.But this is the first contact he’s tried to make with his American daughter, and he couldn’t be bothered to use a translation app?
“Why didn’t you give me this earlier?”
“I was scared he’d break your heart again. I wanted to wait until you were eighteen. But you’ve been forced to grow up more quickly than most teenagers. I think you’re mature enough to decide for yourself what relationship you want to have with your father.” She hesitates. “But be careful.”
“Yeah, no sh—um, I know. Honestly, I don’t think I’m even going to reach out to him.” I’m tempted to ball up the letter and Kobe it into the nearest wastebasket. Although given how bad my aim is, I might end up hitting some unwitting bystander in the eye.
“Don’t be rash. He’s your father. And he regrets what happened and he wants to be part of your life.”
I shrug. “Well, he’s had a decade to fix that and he didn’t.” I try to say this casually, like I don’t care, but the words come out unsteady.
“No love is perfect,” she says. “But you don’t need perfect.Baobei, don’t shut everyone out of your life because you’re in pain. You have to let people in. Even if they might hurt you.” The way she says it, I’m not sure we’re talking about my father anymore.
And somehow those are the words that break me open.
My body slackens. Mom holds me while I cry, really cry, this embarrassing, heaving falling-apart. My soul is wringingitself out and I don’t know what will be left when it’s done.
“Char, that boy loves you,” she murmurs into my hair. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you. It’s more than some teenage fling. You should let him love you.”
“But… you with Baba, with Michael…” I can barely get the words out between sobs.
“The problem wasn’t love itself,” she says. “But love is only as good as the heart as it comes from. Michael had a cruel and volatile heart. Your father had a selfish and weak heart. But Khoi is so pure and good.”
It feels like I’m drowning in a million different emotions. Over the years I’ve built this wall around my heart, brick by brick, so that nothing could leak through. So that I could protect the rest of myself from the poison that burns there. And now she’s swinging a wrecking ball and demolishing everything. It’s so unfair.
“Do you love him too?” she asks.
My first instinct is to dodge the question, the same way I did yesterday when he asked the same thing. But—no. I can’t spend my entire life running away.
Do I love Khoi? What does it mean to love somebody? I like kissing him. I like touching him. Being with him feels like my entire being has dissolved into gold dust. Our last night together flashes through my mind—his bare skin on mine, his fingertips grazing me everywhere—and suddenly I’m too warm. Oh God, I really don’t want to be thinking about this in front of my mother.
Anyway, there’s lust and then there’s love, and I’m not entirely sure what the difference is, but they aren’t the same thing. I’m sure about that.
And this has to be deeper than sheer desire. This is a boy who flew across the country for me, faced down my terrifying stepdad. He saw how fucked up my family is, and he still didn’t leave.
This is real.
Khoi makes me feel like I can be braver and better than I am. Like I can be myself in all my ugly, messy ways and he will still accept me. And I know that he will always have my back when the world is a hell storm.
Before I met him, I felt so alone and unworthy, like I was flailing in dark, choppy waters. Now I have a lighthouse. And the lighthouse is Khoi Astor.
