Give Love a Chai (Common Threads Book 2)

by Smartypants Romance

  Lucky me.

  Chapter Eight

  Andrew

  December 1, 2008

  Ting,

  I’m sorry for ignoring you these past two weeks. I needed some time alone to deal with the news. I’m sure you’ve heard from my mom, or maybe she told your parents—my dad is up for parole. I want him to stay in jail, far away, forever. He deserves hell for what he’s put my mom and me through. You’ve never met him, and I thank God that you haven’t. Because he was a piece of shit, even before he embezzled at his firm. He manipulated people when he was bored, stole from people when he wanted something that wasn’t his. That’s the person that I remember, not this well-behaved, reformed person that his lawyer is arguing for. But then, he has always been charming.

  Do you ever wonder if we’ll turn into our parents? You might think your parents are nosy and overprotective, but they love you. I try so hard to not be like my dad. To keep my head down. But sometimes, I just feel so angry at the world (like this parole hearing) that I wonder if I’m not turning into him.

  Do you think I’ll end up like him?

  Yours,

  Andrew

  I was irrationally, hopelessly drawn to her. My head told me to fly back to Chicago, that it was over, and to sign whatever thing I needed to in order to move on. Instead, I spent the past couple of days in Boston, working out of a hotel and trying to figure out if I was crazy for attending my wife’s engagement party. To a different man.

  When I didn’t see her at the front of the ballroom, I headed straight inside, barely acknowledging my wife’s fiancé. That “f” word was an infection that my body fought against.

  Ah, there she was. Instead of being at the center of the crowd at her own party, she was in a corner, in deep conversation with one of my former classmates and colleagues, Pippa. I was reminded again of how small the world was.

  My heart pounded faster than the music blaring around me. My feet moved on their own accord. I stupidly whispered, “Hi,” even though there was no way she could have heard across the room.

  Yet, as if my greeting had been whispered intimately in her ear, Tia glanced up right at me. I couldn’t have looked away from her warm brown eyes even if I had wanted to. Some part deep inside of me recognized her, took solace and joy in the sight of her, and could never get enough of her.

  I couldn’t tell you what she was wearing, because well, she looked beautiful in everything, so what did her wearing this shirt or that dress matter? What I did notice was her smile, her lips parted slightly, the soft and dreamy expression on her lovely face. It was as if she had missed me in the few days since we had last seen each other.

  My feet propelled me to her. In the background, I could vaguely hear my name being called out and others heading toward Tia too. Whoever they were, they didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except this woman in front of me.

  Tia stood up and stepped into my waiting arms. I held her tightly against me, burying my face in her dark brown, almost black hair. She smelled like Lip Smackers, tea, and something so intricately her.

  My body fit around her curves. And curves, she did have, I noticed appreciatively. They felt soft and warm around my hard body. Hard because I worked out. But yes, also in that way too.

  “Ahem. Stop mauling each other right in front of me. You’re just rubbing it in my face, when I haven’t gotten any action in months. This is a hotel, get a room.”

  My face reddening, I broke away from Tia, smiling sheepishly at Pippa. Pippa had spent all three years of law school flirting with me like it was her job. From the beginning, I had known that she was doing it more to get a reaction from me than because she was actually serious. She was pretty much never serious—the class clown without a filter. I liked her because of that. You could always tell what she thought of you.

  “Are you ready?” Pippa asked, her eyes sparkling with mischief, looking at both myself and Tia.

  Confused, I turned around.

  Shit.

  It was the un-welcoming brigade.

  Mr. and Mrs. Wang looked horrified and a little scared, as if I were a zombie coming back from the dead trying to steal their precious daughter from her Prince Charming.

  Clayton looked thoughtful and bristling at the same time. No longer the easygoing acquaintance from earlier that week, I could sense his suspicions warring with his desire to trust Tia. As soon as he reached us, he put his hand on the small of Tia’s back, tension radiating off of both of them.

  Senator and Mrs. Davenport were wearing identical smiles, lips thinned to harsh lines. I didn’t know how much Tia’s parents or Clayton had told them about me or our relationship. Judging by the fact that I hadn’t been accosted by the not-so-hidden bodyguards around the ballroom, my guess was nothing or some partial, glossed-over story.

  I was tired of being nothing or some skimmed-over story. Tia and I had a past. A long, intertwined past that had shaped both of us. I wanted to shout to the ballroom and demand that they stop treating me like some dirty secret. Was I so awful to everyone’s current lives that I needed to be handled like an explosive? Yes, compared to Clayton, who do I think I am?

  Even though my first instinct was to throw Tia over my shoulder and escape, instead, I forced myself to stay. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Wang. Hey, Clayton.” I stretched out my hand to the Davenports. “Hi, I’m Andrew.”

  As if it was second nature, the Davenports shook my hand automatically. They looked inquiringly at the Wangs, who had drawn Tia over to the side. Huddling together, they alternated shooting questions at their daughter and smiling at the rest of us, as if to say everything’s fine.

  “Ting Ting, ni zai gan shen me? Ta wei shen me zai zhe?”

  “Mama, Baba,” Tia said, her cheeks flushed with discomfort. “Wo men deng yi xia zai shuo ba.”

  “Nu er, ni bie gan chun shi, bie gao su Clayton, bie lang fei zhe ge ji hui.”

  I didn’t know exactly what they were arguing about. It had been a long time since I had tried to learn Chinese—ten years to be exact. However, it was not hard to guess that they were furious at seeing me here and probably nervous that Clayton and his parents would find out about us.

  Senator Davenport cleared his throat. He was a commanding man and that small sound, despite the noise in the room, drew our attention. “Can someone please tell us what’s going on?”

  “I went to school with Clayton,” I started, tired of having others discuss me like I wasn’t standing right there, “and I knew Ting—Tia back in Colorado.”

  “Knew how?” asked Mrs. Davenport sharply.

  “They just friends, kids play—”

  “Andrew’s mama clean our resort, nothing else. They—”

  There it was. With the Wangs’ hurried statements, I was reduced to the kid who was only tolerated because my mother was the Wangs’ maid. No matter what I had achieved, I was still the poor kid who had to be watched carefully in case I ever turned into my dad.

  “Mama,” Tia said, “that wasn’t very nice.”

  “Is true, no?” her mom retorted.

  “You know he’s more than just Ms. Parker’s son, and that we—”

  “Tia.” I put a soothing hand on her arm. She drew back immediately as if burned.

  That hurt. Her public rejection, though not a big movement, was worse than her parents writing me off or the Davenports looking at me as if I had purposely come to ruin their son’s shining moment. It was a deeper fall from grace that I hadn’t thought was possible.

  “I invited Andrew,” Clayton cut in, his eyes flickering away from the spot on Tia’s arm that I had reached for. “I ran into him this week and asked him to come, since he’s friends with both Tia and me.”

  Before anyone else could comment, Clayton said, “Mr. and Mrs. Wang, it must be a surprise to see someone you knew from Colorado. What a small world. Have you had a chance to meet my aunt Jenna Mae and uncle Bob from Texas? They just came back from a trip to Beijing. Mom, Dad—do you want to take Tia’s parents around a
nd introduce them?”

  I hated that Clayton was Tia’s fiancé and that he already had everyone’s seal of approval. However, even I could grudgingly admire how easily he diffused the situation and redirected conversations. With his parents and Tia’s parents still suspicious but safely distracted by their guests a few feet away, he came back to Tia, Pippa, and me.

  “We should talk, away from this,” I said, indicating the crowded ballroom with my hand.

  “I don’t know if there’s anything we need to say,” protested Tia. “Maybe later? We should probably stay here. I mean, Mrs. Davenport has worked so hard to put this party together.”

  “She can enjoy it. We”—I pointed to the hellish triangle of Tia, Clayton, and myself—“need to talk.”

  “I agree,” said Clayton. “I don’t know what’s happening here, but it’s more than you two dating in the past. On the other hand, I agree with Tia that we need to stay. It is our engagement party, and we don’t want any gossip. The party’s supposed to end around eleven p.m. Let’s talk then.”

  I watched as Tia and Clayton walked away to mingle with their guests. I was surprised that Tia had told him that we had dated. Did she tell him that we were married?

  If I had to be honest, I would admit that they looked good together. Her dark brown hair contrasted with his blond hair. He was social and comfortable with himself. She was quieter in crowds but one-on-one with someone, she was funny, self-deprecating, and charming. Tia was not going to leave Clayton, at least, not for someone like me. So what the hell was I still doing here, waiting for a conversation that would lead nowhere?

  It wasn’t as if I had actively pined for her for the last ten years. The first few years, she had been a constant in my brain. More recently, the frequency of thinking of Tia had slowed to occasional curiosity. I should go and leave them alone.

  “Want to get out of here?”

  I had forgotten that Pippa was still there, and knowing her, loving all of the drama playing out in front of her. How much had Tia told her about all of this?

  I shrugged. “Sure, know a place nearby? As you’ve heard, I have a meeting back here at eleven.”

  “Google says there’s a bar with great cocktails down the street,” she replied, turning her phone toward me. For all I knew, she could have been flashing photos of cats in kilts, with how fast she was waving her phone in front of my face.

  “Andrew!” a voice called out to my left. The heavily accented voice made me want to keep walking, straight to the bar and drown myself in shots. Forget my one-drink-max rule. This was a special occasion.

  However, the part of me that had always wanted his approval stopped. I steeled myself against Mr. Wang’s lecture. When we were kids, Mr. Wang disciplined Tia not by grounding her or taking away privileges like TV. Instead, he gave lengthy lectures that somehow ended in cautionary tales about Communism and becoming zookeepers. It didn’t matter what Tia had done. In Mr. Wang’s lectures, she always wound up as a zookeeper if she didn’t listen to her parents. Occasionally, Mr. Wang’s affinity for lectures extended to me too, like when he heard from my mom that I had skipped school one day. Apparently, I was also destined to clean monkey shit. I was still wary of zoos.

  “Hi, Mr. Wang,” I greeted for the second time that evening, trying to keep my voice friendly.

  Pippa the Nosy One made no move to step out of earshot. Oddly enough, I was glad to have her physically by my side, even if there was no way she was actually on my side of this Tia-Clayton-Andrew triangle.

  “Andrew.” Mr. Wang paused, as if searching for the right words. The Wangs had moved to the United States when Tia was eight years old and Mr. Wang had decided to personally oversee some of his real estate investments in Breckenridge. Mr. Wang’s English was perfectly understandable once you got used to his cadence, but clearly this topic required words outside of his familiar real estate jargon.

  He cleared his throat and started again, “You and Ting Ting are no more. You two—too young before. A big mistake. You leave, she get back up. Now, she has good, big chance to do good things—” He waved his hand around the ballroom as if this room could capture all that she had accomplished and her potential.

  “She’s already doing great things,” I insisted.

  Looking pained, Mr. Wang said, “Yes, she is a good girl—she go to good college, get PhD, now professor. Her mama and I are proud of her. She have chance to marry a senator’s son now.”

  I waited for him to say more. He didn’t. As if marrying a senator’s son was self-explanatory, Mr. Wang rocked back on his heels. We stood there silently assessing one another.

  I liked Mr. Wang. Truly. Yes, he had a propensity to lecture, was overprotective and doled out too much advice. However, in comparison to the deceitful father I had who hadn’t cared a shit about me, I appreciated that Mr. Wang protected his only child.

  “Mr. Wang,” I said. “I care about your daughter. I want the best for her.”

  “You care about her?” he asked. “Go away. Let her marry Clayton.”

  “I didn’t know they were getting married until this week. I’m not trying to take her away from Clayton. I’m just trying to figure out—”

  “You think I not see? I see you look at Ting Ting—same now, same when you as a boy,” he spat out, his voice rising with a hint of desperation. “After you leave, she in big pain. You make her sad. Andrew, I always like you, even as kid. You better than your father. You think my wife and I need so much clean in the house? No! We very clean people. Your mother not want to take money for your college cost, so we give her more work. So, I like you—you good boy.”

  I was stunned. Like law school, my college tuition had been covered by scholarships. However, there had still been costs for the dorm rooms, food, and books. Waiting tables at the local diner only covered so much, and I had been too grateful to ask when my mom slipped me extra money whenever she visited me in college. To think that it was Tia’s parents who had funneled the money to help me was … It shocked me to the core.

  I had always thought the Wangs disapproved of me. And maybe they did. But they also saw enough good in me to help me in a way that wouldn’t hurt my mother’s pride. Or, maybe they helped so that I’d stay at college and away from their daughter. Either way, I was grateful to the man in front of me.

  “Mr. Wang,” I said, simply. “I didn’t know you had helped. Thank you.”

  He dismissed the thanks, looking slightly embarrassed to have said anything. “You a friend to Ting Ting and need help. We help a little.”

  “How much did you give to my mother? I can pay you back, with interest,” I insisted. I didn’t want to be in debt to anyone, much less to Tia’s dad. It put me at a disadvantage, and I needed all of the advantages I could get.

  Mr. Wang looked at me, assessing. “You want help? Leave Boston. No call Ting Ting. No email. No WeChat. She marry Clayton. He give her good life. He take care of her. He maybe be senator or governor—my daughter have better and easy life with him. Listen, Andrew, okay?”

  He made so much sense. I should agree. Yet, words refused to come out.

  At my silence, Mr. Wang waved me off, muttering Chinese under his breath as he headed back to intercept his wife who was making a beeline for us. Mrs. Wang was a woman who liked things settled, and by the time she thought of something that needed to be done, she was already impatient to have it complete. I was unsettling her daughter’s life, and I could see the stress on her face.

  I didn’t like the thought of disappointing or stressing Tia’s parents. However, I also didn’t want to promise to leave Tia alone if I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure that I would keep the promise.

  I stole another glance around the ballroom, looking for Tia. She was half hidden in a crowd of people our age, a forced smile on her face, as they laughed enthusiastically and talked over each other. I wanted to rescue her, to steal her away from this loud crowd and take her somewhere private where we could just be.

  Before I could
do something stupid, Clayton leaned in to whisper something in her ear, earning him a genuine smile. She’s not mine to rescue. I needed to get it through my dumb head—she wasn’t mine. She hadn’t been mine for a long time. I needed to support her in whatever she wanted to tell Clayton later that night and to pull myself out of this situation as quickly as possible. When I got back to Chicago, I vowed to sign those stupid divorce papers. No more.

  “I think you need a drink even more than me,” Pippa said, at my side. For such a chatty and loud person, she sure was quiet when drama was unfolding. For the second time that night, I had forgotten about her.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  We headed to the bar down the street. It was too trendy for my taste, and the alcohol menu had too many pages of drinks with punny cocktail names. But they had little booths for privacy, and the lighting was dark enough to hide my turmoil.

  “So, are you single?” asked Pippa suddenly. She hadn’t spoken a word to me since we left the ballroom.

  “I date,” I said vaguely.

  “What does that mean? I swear, this is the problem with dating nowadays. Everyone’s so ambiguous and afraid to define a relationship or non-relationship, you end up not knowing what you’re dealing with,” huffed Pippa, clearly passionate about this. “It’s even worse with dating apps where there are so many choices. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been forced to get on the apps: Bumble, Tinder, OkCupid, CoffeeMeetsBagel, Cowboys Singles.”

  I barked out a laugh. “Why are you on a cowboys app?”

  She shrugged. “Why not? It’s not like I’m having success in Boston.”

  “Not that it’s really your business, but I am single,” I conceded. Looking back, I hadn’t realized how boring my dating life had been recently. With buying a townhouse and getting a new job at Cipher Systems as their in-house lawyer, I had been busy. That and dating had seemed so draining lately. I hadn’t been interested enough to even go on a second date in over a year. What’s the point if I could tell from the first date that it wasn’t going anywhere? I knew what it was like to fall in love, and it felt like a waste of time to string someone along if I knew that I wasn’t going to fall in love with them.