He quietly savored the meal as he listened to Dawn’s and her mother’s conversation.
They mainly talked about her mother—not tomorrow’s surgery, but the mundane day-to-day details of a life filled with church and gardening. They also talked about the winter weather in Texas compared to Rhode Island and whether Byron would ever settle down and get married.
“Hopefully to a girl,” their mom said, clasping her hands together and shaking them at the sky. A prayer or a threat to her God? Victor wasn’t sure. “You know your dad and I didn’t find out he also likes men until he was named to that New Jersey Gay Police Committee!”
“Hopefully to anyone who makes him happy long-term,” Dawn edited. “And he would’ve told you before he was named to the New Jersey Police Officer LGBTQ+ Liaison Committee if he wasn’t afraid of how you would react.”
“That tall policeman son of mine is scared of his little parents?” Gyeong sucked her teeth and waved a dismissive hand at Dawn. “You always did indulge him too much. Always worrying about him. Like you are his mother, not his sister.”
Dawn laughed and admitted, “True, true…”
However, Victor inwardly jolted. Had Dawn also not been acting when she told him she was worried about her brother back when they were in high school? Had that truly not been a trick?
“How do you like our version of hot pot, Dawn’s husband?” Gyeong asked, interrupting his thoughts.
Again he told the truth. “It is one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.”
A delighted smile spread across Gyeong’s face, and she clapped her hands together. “Good, good! It’s the least I could do to thank you for bringing my daughter home to me.”
Gyeong’s eyes became a little damp. “I did not realize how much I needed someone here with me until she showed up with you. It feels as if God has ‘come through’ as black ladies at my gardening club say.”
“Aw, Mom,” Dawn said, leaning over to give her small mother a side hug. Her eyes then found Victor’s across the table. “But seriously, thanks. You don’t know how much this means to my mom…and me.”
Their affection, Gyeong’s thank you, the dinner they’d made special with him in mind….a new emotion pierced his chest. One he hadn’t felt in a very, very long time.
Not since Dawn came to his apartment and signed that she liked him too.
Unworthy. He felt unworthy of their soft gazes filled with gratitude. It was too much.
He abruptly rose from the table. “We should check into the hotel.”
“Okay,” Dawn said carefully, standing up as well. “Mom, we’ll be back first thing tomorrow to take you to the—”
That was as far as she got before her mother exploded. “You think you will be staying at a hotel? I already got the guest room ready for you this afternoon!”
Dawn looked helplessly toward Victor as if they were a real husband and wife, and she needed his backup.
“I’ve already made the reservation,” he began to sign to her mother.
“No hotel is as good as my guest room,” Gyeong insisted.
“Actually, it’s the Four Seasons…” he started to answer.
Gyeong stomped into the small foyer at the front of their house before Victor could finish that sentence. And by the time they caught up to her, she had already grabbed hold of the rolling suitcase and backpack he and Dawn had left in the hallway.
Dawn’s little mother charged down the hallway with their luggage, toward what Victor could only assume was the guest room of which she’d spoken so highly.
And if he thought Dawn would be any help in this argument, he was quickly disabused of that notion when she rushed after her mother, calling, “Mom hold on, let me help you with that!”
This was supposed to be about revenge.
But as Victor watched them go, he couldn’t tell what the hell the situation had become.
21
DAWN
So Victor meeting my mom didn’t go quite as I’d expected.
Technically, it was a perfectly pleasant evening. Mom couldn’t drink or eat anything after 9 PM, so after watching an unnecessarily long Marvel movie with us, she knocked off to bed.
We stayed up for a little while longer. In the same room but not necessarily together.
Victor had been on his phone nonstop since dinner. If I quizzed him on the movie we all supposedly just watched, I doubt he would’ve been able to answer any questions about it.
That was A-OK with me. I still wasn’t quite able to wrap my head around him being here. In my parents’ home. Like, chatting with my mom over dinner. And telling her she could choose the television fare because he was okay with whatever she wanted to watch.
Mom doted on Victor the same way she used to fuss over Byron. I could barely stand to go to the bathroom without her asking Victor if he needed anything while I was up. Then grousing behind his back in sign language that “a good wife shouldn’t leave it to the mother-in-law to do the asking.”
“He must really love you,” my mother had said earlier at Cal-Mart when we were shopping. “I don’t know many husbands who would come all this way with their wife just to keep a mother-in-law he’s never met company.”
“Maybe he was curious about you,” I suggested, even though I really did not want to talk about Victor. Especially with my mother.
“Or maybe he loves you that much. I see the way he looks at you whenever your back is turned.”
Yes, like a psycho who thinks he owns me because of something that happened fifteen years ago. I swallowed down the lump of bitterness that welled in my throat. What I had with Victor could be called a lot of things. But love wasn’t one of them.
It was mom’s idea to make Victor the hot pot. But I’d been surprised by how Victor had responded to it. He slurped down what had to be at least five bowls of the DIYish stew. And that super nice compliment he gave us afterward about it being one of the best things he’d ever tasted…
I had forgotten that about him. How sincere he could be about the little things in life. He’d ordered around his security guards, Han, and Phantom like he was entitled to their service. But both times I’d given him a drawing, he had acted like it was the most precious thing he’d ever received.
I hated the conflicted feelings inside of me as I watched him eat. Hated that I loved seeing him enjoy a meal my mom and I had made, especially with him in mind. Hated that it still felt like he was hanging on my every word as I made small talk with my mom.
Not true, not true, not true. Dawn, girl, it is not true. We weren’t who we were in high school anymore. We weren’t even a real husband and wife.
And now, we’d be sleeping in the same bedroom, even though it wasn’t an anniversary night.
I stalled as long as I could after mom left, watching “the YouTube,” as my mom called it while Victor continued to type nonstop on his phone. But eventually, he put the phone away in his suit pocket.
“Come, we should go to bed.”
Not wanting my mom to overhear us, I switched to sign language. “Okay, but you know we’re not going to have sex, right? It’s not our anniversary, and this isn’t a hate fuck kind of situation.”