“No, it wasn’t because of Julian. It was before he—we—it was just before that,” I say awkwardly. “I’ve been having trouble with my music. Ever since the tour and that YouTube video and everything.”
“You could have talked to me about this instead of some random person you found on the Internet,” Priscilla says in a frustrated voice. “We’re family. I’m always here for you. It’s the pressure, right? Pressure is my life. I can talk you through it.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and refrain from groaning. I know what’s coming.
“Prioritize, break things into small achievable tasks, and make a to-do list. I do that every day,” she says.
I zone out as she tells me how satisfying it is to check things off her list and gives her TED Talk on how to present to CEOs and big bosses. I’ve heard all this stuff before. It doesn’t help. My compulsions are too strong.
The door to my balcony opens a crack, and Quan holds up my electric toothbrush, a silent question on his face.
I cover the bottom of my phone and say, “I have extra toothbrush heads. Feel free to take one. Also, feel free to sleep longer. You look really tired.”
He smiles and self-consciously rubs a hand over his head. “Thanks, but I have something this morning. I’m just going to . . .” He points over his shoulder, back toward the bathroom, and heads away.
Guilt spills through me. I don’t like that he’s sleep-deprived because of me.
“I thought you said you hadn’t seen Julian in a while,” Priscilla says, interrupting my thoughts. “But he’s at your place right now? How does that work?”
She’s not here to see, but I duck my head anyway. “That, uh, wasn’t Julian.”
“No way,” she says. “You’re seeing someone else?”
It takes me a while to respond. Things between me and Quan aren’t easy to explain when I hardly understand them myself. “I figured if he could see other people, I could, too.”
“I mean, yeah. Of course you can,” Priscilla says, but she still sounds stunned. “How did you meet him?”
I narrow my eyes. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“The Internet again?” she replies, sounding like I’m physically hurting her. “And you spent the night with him? Who are you and what have you done with my baby sister? Is he shady? Are you okay? Do you need help getting him to leave? Or are you at his place?”
“He’s not shady, and I’m fine. We didn’t even—” I release a frustrated breath. Priscilla doesn’t need to hear about my sex life. I certainly don’t want to hear about hers. I’d rather jump off my balcony. “He’s at my place, but he’s leaving soon. Don’t worry about it, okay?”
There’s noise on Priscilla’s end, like she’s entered a busy restaurant, and she says, “I have to go, but I’ll call you later, all right?”
“That’s fine. Bye, Je je,” I say.
“Bye, Mui mui.”
The call disconnects, and I slowly lower the phone from my ear, my thoughts heavy from what I told her and even more so from what I didn’t tell her. My diagnosis is looming over me, and I want to talk about it. Maybe I need to talk about it in order to really understand and accept it. But I’m also afraid.
If she’s suddenly ashamed of me, it’ll break my heart.
Back inside my apartment, Quan is crouched by the front door, tying his shoelaces. When he sees me, he asks, “Je? That’s Chinese, right?”
“Yeah, Cantonese. That’s almost all I can say, though.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “My brother is like that with Vietnamese. He understands it pretty well, though.”
“Oh, I don’t understand it either,” I say lightly.
I expect him to laugh like other people do when I say things like this, but he doesn’t. Instead, he asks, “Is that hard for you sometimes? One of my cousins only speaks English, and he gets teased a lot by family for it. They give his parents crap for it, too, and then his parents blame him.”
“Actually, yeah,” I admit. “My big sister is almost quadrilingual—she speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, and a bit of a rare dialect from the south, in addition to English, of course—and me . . .” I lift a shoulder. “When I was little, they couldn’t get me to talk at all, and the doctor suspected all the languages were too much for me. Apparently, as soon as they only spoke one language with me, things started to click. I never picked up anything else after that. It embarrasses my mom.”
“Well, I don’t speak any Chinese,” he says as he finishes tying his laces and stands up. When he gets a good look at my ugly bathrobe, he grins.
My face heats instantly. I didn’t think ahead when I put this on earlier, and I should have. With Julian, I was always alert and careful, so he never saw me like this. But it’s too late now. “I know it’s ugly, but it’s really soft.”