Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 169305 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 847(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169305 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 847(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Then Romeo’s.
Then mine.
“Shit, Zach. You’re still at sixty-five.” Oliver cackled. “Are you fucking kidding me? Are you even human?”
I was not, in fact, very human at all.
And I wished to stay that way.
Humanity was messy, mediocre, and prone to mistakes.
I’d made up my mind.
I wasn’t going to find her.
I was better off forgetting she’d ever existed.
“Zachary, pay attention. What about this one?” Across the office, Mom dangled a Polaroid of a long-haired, scarlet-lipped beauty. “I do adore her family. Her mother is in our country club. She’s a tax lawyer. Works at Clarke & Young. Not a partner just yet…” Her delicate brows slammed together as she skimmed her file. “No, no. She won’t do. Too lazy. She only volunteered twice in college.”
Mom boomeranged the photo into the trash pile on the rug. Dozens of pictures scattered across the coffee table, coating the entire surface.
All potential brides for yours truly.
All eligible.
All as boring as a freshly painted white wall.
This particular batch had missed the soirée, during which I’d failed my task—choosing a bride by midnight.
Yesterday, Mom had barged into her friend’s dating agency and confiscated these dossiers. This marked the birth of Plan X.
(She’d labored through A to W over the last five years when it became clear that I’d need divine intervention to drag me down the aisle.)
I yawned, keeping my feet propped over my desk, ankles crossed, as I tossed a tennis ball up to the ceiling. Back and forth. Back and forth. “So what if she isn’t a partner?”
“She’s already twenty-five. She should be well on her way to owning her own firm by now.” Mom’s head snapped up. “You surprise me sometimes.”
Perhaps because you’re the one who’s changed, Mother.
Sun Yu Wen—American name Constance—had a one-track mind.
To find me a bride.
She was running out of time, and I was running out of options. Especially after she’d chalked up the ball as a terrible failure. She’d thrown it for me to pick a future wife.
In reality, I didn’t even leave my office.
At this point, my best bet was a mail-order bride.
A mail-order bride would not huff when I lodged her in the guesthouse.
Would not flinch when I made her go through IVF to avoid touching her.
Would not sulk when I retreated into one of my dark moods, where I didn’t want to see or hear from anyone.
Would not protest when she realized all I had to offer her was money and premium sperm.
I tossed the ball. “Why does it matter that she’s not an overachiever?”
I knew I’d poked the bear, but I had trouble accepting my fate—and a whole entire wife I did not desire.
Mom wanted to live vicariously through me. She knew she’d never remarry. Never open up to someone else.
So, she’d decided, unilaterally, that I needed to stuff her void with a picture-perfect daughter-in-law, grandchildren galore, and more people for her to take care of.
And it was a void.
After Dad’s death, Mom even changed her last name from Zhao to Sun, a huge deal because:
One) Chinese women did not change their surnames.
And two) “Zhao Yu Wen sounds lightyears better.” Her words, not mine.
Mom smoothed her tweed Chanel jacket, her lips twitching downward. “Are you saying you’d like to marry a bum?”
“I’m saying you remind me of Grandma.”
The same grandma who never approved of her marriage to Dad. A sore spot for Mom. One I prodded only when necessary.
Mom shook her head, pinching the corner of a Polaroid so tight, her fingers reddened. “I didn’t raise you to behave like this.”
“Must’ve been one of the nannies.”
We’d had three on rotation.
I still sent them postcards, mooncakes, and fruit baskets every New Year, much to my mother’s chagrin.
Mom did not approve of me treating them as humans. When it came to the nannies, her jealousy reared its ugly head fast.
She still hadn’t realized I didn’t actually have a relationship with them. I just didn’t have one with her, either.
After Dad died, she’d spent the remainder of my teens zoned out, lost in grief, until my aunt snapped her back into shape.
Speak of the devil.
Zhao Yu Ting—American name Celeste (but Celeste Ayi to me)—burst into my office, clad in a gauche Juicy Couture tracksuit and a Gucci fanny pack, looking like a caricature of a rich tourist.
“I’ve arrived.” She held three designer shopping bags on each forearm and boba tea clasped between manicured fingers.
I dug my fingers into my eye sockets. “You were never invited.”
She rushed to me, awarding me with air kisses a solid foot away from each cheek. She knew better than to touch me.
“My apologies for missing your little soirée, Zachary. You know I fly to Seoul for my facial every fifteenth of the month.”
“It’s fine.”
I did not invite her to the party, either.
Mainly because Celeste Ayi could not be trusted with a credit card, let alone other people. She’d probably cause a diplomatic crisis.