“Friend from college,” I blurt out.
Everyone stares at me. It’s clear that neither of my aunts nor my mother is buying the lie.
“College friend,” Nathan says, and then gives me a forced smile I can actually read. One that spells disappointment.
It’s not you, I want to shout at him. It’s me, and my mother, and my aunts, and the fact that we’re on our way to go look for the corpse of some dude I killed last night who was supposed to be YOU, apparently. But I can’t tell him any of it, so we walk the rest of the way in painful silence.
I nearly breathe an audible sigh of relief when we finally go through a set of double doors and find ourselves in a bustling kitchen. Nearly there. The cooler must be around here somewhere. Nathan leads us past the busy chefs and chef underlings, all of them chopping and searing and stirring. They each glance up and greet Nathan as we walk by, and he greets them with an easy smile here, a pat on the back there. He was always effortlessly charming when I knew him back in college, but now he’s even more so. It’s obvious that everyone in here, from the head chef Miguel down to the dishwasher Ming, knows and adores him.
“This is your workstation,” he says to Big Aunt, as we approach a work station. Xiaoling is already there, dozens of fondant flowers spread out in front of her. She jumps to attention, grinning widely at Big Aunt.
“Morning, Chef,” she chirps, and then her eyes widen when she sees the rest of us. “Oh, hi, Aunties. Hey, Meddy. Wasn’t expecting to see you down here.”
“Xiaoling,” Big Aunt says, her voice terse. “Where are coolers?”
“Oh! Well, I thought I’d get an early start, do a bit extra, you know. I wanted to surprise you—”
“Coolers!” Big Aunt snaps, and we all jump, even Nathan. Big Aunt just has that kind of effect on everyone.
“Fridge!” Xiaoling cries, hurrying toward a big steel door. “Is something wrong? Did I do something? I just wanted to help—”
“No, you very good helper,” Big Aunt says, forcing a smile. “You stay there and finish the flowers, okay, good job.”
I’m about to go into the walk-in fridge with my family when Nathan takes my arm.
“Can we talk?” he says.
“Not right now. I need to help out with the—um, the cakes.”
His thick eyebrows come together in confusion, and he gazes down at me from under his thick lashes. I swear, this man and his lashes. “You’re the photographer, right? Why would you need to help out with the cakes?”
“For . . . the . . . photos, obviously.” Yeah, that’s it. “I’m taking photos of the wedding prep. You know how it is nowadays. People want to know everything there is to know about weddings, down to the prep work.”
“Do they? Okay . . .” He sighs. “Maybe later? I don’t know what your schedule’s like. I’m guessing it’s pretty hectic, but if we could—”
I struggle to keep the smile on my face when Ma pops into view from the square window in the steel door, mouthing at me to hurry up and get inside.
“Yeah! Totally, yeah, we’ll talk later.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” I turn to leave, but Nathan catches my hand, giving it a squeeze.
“It’s good seeing you again, Meddy,” he says, quietly, and the sincerity in his voice almost makes me burst into tears. When he turns and walks away, I’m whisked right back to when we broke up all those years ago, when I’d forced myself to stay in my room and do nothing as he left, heartbroken. All sorts of emotions well up inside me, and I have to fight back the sob that’s threatening to rise out of me. I watch him leave, struggling to get my breath under control, and then walk into the fridge.
“Lock the door!” Big Aunt commands in Indonesian as soon as I get inside.
I do as she says, wondering what we’re going to say when someone needs to fetch some ingredient from here. The fridge is large and well-stocked with crates of vegetables and fruit and other assorted ingredients, including crate upon crate of wine bottles. There is a separate section for meats behind a plastic curtain. My aunts and mom have located the right cooler and pulled it out from the shelves and into the meat section so it’s not visible from outside the fridge.
“Okay,” Big Aunt says. “Buka.”
“You open it. It’s your cooler,” Second Aunt says.
Normally, I’d stand back and let them fight it out, because you don’t ever get in between a tiff between Big Aunt and Second Aunt. But running into Nathan has rattled me. I feel untethered, wild. Without a word, I reach for the cooler and lift the lid up. I see what’s inside the cooler, and I scream.