Won picked up a wedge of lime and squeezed it into his soup bowl, cupping a protective hand around it. “Then he has to tell me about his mom’s dementia, how he’s the only one who takes care of her, blah blah blah—”
“Don’t compare me and Carly to one of your meaningless sexcapades, please.”
“Point is, there’s only one way you get through these things,” Won said. “Cold turkey.” The next step in my regimen, Won instructed, was keeping a journal. “Your first assignment is to write down all of the things you hated about her,” he said.
“There’s nothing,” I replied. “I didn’t want to break up.” I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have gotten so— I lost it. When she said—”
“This is a safe space. You can tell me,” Won said. He leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “She had that white girl funk downstairs, didn’t she.”
I told him he was fired, effective immediately.
“I don’t know how you do all that shit anyway. It looks so scary, all that skin, like it’s about to attack you.” He clawed the air with his hands in loose fists, fingers half-curled, as if defending himself against a predator.
“You’re literally the stupidest person I know,” I said. My mouth was half-full, and a bit of cilantro flew out and landed on the table. “I do mean literally.”
“Okay, okay. Enough joking around.” He reached into the canvas messenger bag that hung from the back of his chair and took out a small blue notebook, bound with a spiral ring. “You have to make a list,” Won said. “When you start feeling all nostalgic, remembering the good times, you’ll have this in your hands as a reality check.”
I touched a finger to the blue elastic band running down the right side of the cover.
“What if I never meet anyone ever again,” I said after a moment.
“Jane,” he said. “We’re twenty-six. What are you talking about?”
“What if Carly was the one?”
“She wasn’t, though.”
“How do you know?” I said. “What if she was my chance—”
“If we’re both still single by the time we turn thirty, let’s get married,” he said. “I’m serious, Jane. Think about the registry—”
“Your mom would be so happy,” I said.
“We should invite Miss King,” he added.
“Obviously she’ll officiate,” I said.
“What about Fiona?” Then he asked if I’d talked to her lately. I mumbled something about the three-hour time difference between us.
“She broke up with Jasper. Did you hear?” he said. “I don’t know how, but they’re still living together.”
“What?” I said. “Why?”
“You should call her,” he said. “She’s going through major—”
“Why doesn’t she call me?” I said. “She has my number.”
Won looked at me for a moment but didn’t press it.
“I’m going through some shit, too.” I stared back at Won, and he knew I wasn’t just talking about the breakup with Carly. Suddenly the joke he made about us getting married wasn’t funny at all. It made me think of my parents. My dad. Then I was angry, and I wanted lunch to end.
I made up an excuse about forgetting an appointment. Won knew I was lying, but I didn’t care.
“Take the notebook,” he said. I swiped it off the table before I cut out, leaving Won by himself.
* * *
? ? ?
Lately, it seemed anger trembled under the surface of my skin, behind my eyeballs: hot emotion lying in wait for any opportunity to erupt. It was what happened with Carly, too. Without thinking, I’d slapped her. Said things I regret now. Won was right. Cold-ass, rock-hard, freezer-burned turkey was the way it had to be. Not like I had a choice, anyway. She wasn’t returning my calls or emails.
At home that afternoon, I cracked the notebook open. I wrote today’s date at the top of the first page. Stared at the lined sheet for a while. I felt silly, transported to the oily-faced, gangly teenage girl writing at her desk, transcribing the daily accounts of injuries she suffered, slights perceived large and small, the general and vast unfairness of everything.
Last time I kept a diary I was still living at home. I stopped writing in it after Mah began snooping in my room. Though I’d kept it hidden inside a shoe box under my bed, Mah managed to dig it up; that was how she found out about me and Ping, my piano teacher. Baba had moved to Taipei, then to Shanghai. In those years it felt as if Mah and I were constantly tearing at each other’s throats, never a moment’s peace between us. We’d never been close, my mother and me; I was my father’s child. Without Baba’s protection—Mah had always accused him of coddling me—I was left to fend for myself, her paranoia fueled by the hearsay culture of suburban Taiwanese mothers who circulated alarmist emails on, for example, the resurgence of the 1970s party drug called Ecstasy among American teens; how pedophiles insinuated themselves into AOL chat rooms; what to do if you’ve been kidnapped and locked inside the trunk of a Toyota Camry.