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When Iris woke up the next morning, she was warm and cozy. Not because Alex was wrapped around her—no, he was on the far side of the bed. They were not touching at all.
The reason she was warm and cozy was because she’d stolen all the blankets during the night. She blamed it on the fact that she wasn’t used to sharing a bed. She didn’t do relationships, and though she had one-night stands on occasion, she didn’t always spend the night.
And now she had all the blankets and Alex had none...and he was naked. He lay on his back, one arm thrown over his head, his legs spread slightly, which gave her quite the view.
Mm.
At four o’clock in the morning, she’d woken up to go to the washroom, and when she’d come back to bed, he’d been awake, too. They’d made out in the darkness of the room, and he’d kissed his way down her body and given her another orgasm and made her promise, once more, that she would be there in the light of the morning.
Now it was seven-thirty, and she was here. She wouldn’t sneak out like last time, and she’d let him sleep for a little longer.
After admiring his naked form for another minute, she slipped out of bed and went to the front door, where she found her clothes from yesterday in a pile. She put them on, then checked her phone.
Her mother had sent her several text messages. There were three pictures, two of shirts and one of the most hideous pair of shorts Iris had ever seen. Who wore orange shorts?
Apparently, Mom had purchased all of these clothes for her. In all likelihood, they had been on sale and couldn’t be returned. Iris sighed. Her mother liked to do this. No matter how often Iris protested and said that she was twenty-seven years old and didn’t need her mother to buy her clothes, her mother didn’t listen. On occasion, Mom found something that wasn’t bad, but in general, the stuff she bought wasn’t at all to Iris’s taste. Like the orange shorts.
Iris texted her mother. A moment later, her phone buzzed.
Call me, the message said.
She glanced toward the bedroom, where Alex was sleeping. If she went to the far end of the living room and spoke quietly, hopefully that wouldn’t be enough to rouse him.
“Iris!” Mom nearly shouted when she answered the phone.
Iris held her phone away from her ear. “Could you stop screaming? It’s really not necessary.”
“Why are you whispering?”
Because I’m at a guy’s apartment, and he’s still sleeping.
“No reason,” Iris said, not in the mood for scandalizing her mother this morning. She raised the volume of her voice just a touch. “Why did you want me to call?”
“I want to know what you think of the clothes.”
“The shorts are super ugly.”
“They’re retro.”
“Whatever.” Iris curled up on the couch and hoped this conversation wouldn’t be too long. “The shirts are okay.”
“You know, being enthusiastic wouldn’t kill you.”
“I’m enthusiastic. Just not when talking about retro clothes before eight o’clock in the morning. I haven’t had my coffee yet.”
“I have something else to tell you, too. Your father and I were talking, and we thought maybe one of the reasons you weren’t interested in Phillip was that you don’t like Asian men.”
Iris didn’t know where to even start with this. And her father and mother talking...that was more like her mother talking and her father occasionally nodding his head.
“The problem with Phillip,” she began, “was that he already had a girlfriend. Or perhaps she’s his fiancée by now.”
“That was unfortunate, but did you like him otherwise? He’s cute, no?”
“He’s okay.”
“I know you’re used to Western standards of attractiveness, but—”
“Oh my God. Mom.”
“The men you think are more than okay—are they all white? Like the guy I met at your apartment, the one with all the tattoos...”
Iris was getting a headache. “Stop it.”
“Perhaps you should open your mind a bit.”
A part of her wanted to snap a photo of Alex lying in bed—above the shoulders, of course—and send it to her mother to shut her up.
Nothing would shut her mother up, though.
“My mind is sufficiently open,” Iris said. “For your information, I have no problem with Asian men, Chinese or otherwise—didn’t we already have this discussion after Natalie’s wedding? My problem is with my mother involving herself in my love life.”
“Did you know there’s a game show in China where parents pick partners for their adult children? It’s quite a hit.”
Iris shuddered. “How awful.”
“Anyway, I really think you should try expanding your mind.”
Listening wasn’t her mother’s strong point.
“You know what would expand my mind?” Iris muttered. “Drugs.”
“Iris!”
“I’m kidding.”
“I sure hope so,” Mom said, and Iris could picture her look of disapproval. “What was I saying... Oh, yes. I’ve found a very nice white man for you. His name is Ivan, and he’s an engineer like you. Computer engineer, I think. Anyway, I have to go. See you later!”
“I hope you’re not planning to bring him over today.”
But her mother had already hung up.
Iris put down the phone with a sigh. Her mother really should have had more kids so she would have more people’s lives to interfere in. Alas, her parents had struggled to conceive.
Her thoughts returned to the naked man lying in bed. The man whose apartment she was in. The man who probably missed bickering with his mother.
She felt a strange pressure in her chest.
She did love her mother, and her mother loved her, even if their relationship was complicated and often revolved around arguing.
Iris started a pot of coffee and looked in the fridge to see what Alex had to eat. When she saw he had eggs and butter, she decided to make him scrambled eggs. Wouldn’t he enjoy waking up to a home-cooked meal?
Then she heard her grandmother’s voice in her head. Iris is very bad in the kitchen.
True, something like eggs Benedict was out of the question, but Iris could manage scrambled eggs. She’d made them many times for herself before. What could go wrong? It was difficult to screw up scrambled eggs.
She broke two eggs into a bowl. Unfortunately, the third egg didn’t break the first time she knocked it against the counter, and on her second attempt, she knocked it too hard and the egg white and yolk came out of the shell and dropped onto the floor.
She’d ruined one egg, but that was okay. She’d clean it up and continue.
A couple minutes later, there were four eggs in the bowl, and she’d beaten them with a little milk. She turned on the frying pan and added some butter. Once the pan was hot, she dumped in the eggs. She poured herself a cup of coffee, then figured she ought to wake Alex up, seeing as his breakfast was cooking and it was after eight o’clock.
She went into the bedroom and lay down next to him, draping her arm across his body and pressing a kiss to his cheek.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey, yourself.” He opened his eyes and pulled her into his arms. “It’s nice to see you first thing in the morning.”
His words made her warm inside.
Jesus, this man was turning her into a marshmallow. Making her feel warm inside, inspiring her to cook him breakfast...
She even experienced a momentary longing to have a real relationship with him.
“If you’re wondering why you don’t have any blankets,” she said, not wanting to dwell on those thoughts, “it’s because I stole them in the night. When I got up, I didn’t put them over you because, well, you look so nice when you’re naked.”
“Mm. Is that so?”
His words were rough with sleep. God, he had such a sexy voice.
He rolled on top of her and rocked his hips against her, his erection pressing between her thighs. Yes, that was good. They would fuck, and she would forget her budding feelings for him. Having sex was a very sensible plan.
He slipped his fingers between her legs and spent a long time giving her even more pleasure than he had in the middle of the night. She was just coming down from her second orgasm when he said, “I smell something burning.”
Just then, the smoke detector went off.
“Shit!” She jumped out of bed. Her legs were unsteady, but somehow she managed to make it to the kitchen and pull the pan of burnt scrambled eggs off the element.
Alex chuckled as he joined her by the stove and wrapped his arms around her. “So it’s true. You really are a disaster in the kitchen.”
“It’s your fault.”
“My fault?”
“You were so...so...sexy that I felt compelled to cook for you.”
“You know, if someone hadn’t stolen the blanket in the middle of the night, you might not have noticed how sexy I am. And it’s not like I forced you to cook. Or to wake me up while you had something on the stove.”
“I was planning to head right back to the kitchen after I woke you up, but you distracted me. You touched me. And kissed me. Everywhere.”
“That sounds truly awful. I’ll have to remember never to touch you and kiss you again.” He doubled over in laughter. “I can’t believe you screwed up scrambled eggs. Scrambled eggs!”
“If you keep laughing, I’m not going to let you have any coffee, and I did not screw up when I made the coffee. My coffee is delicious!”
She tried to sound offended by his comments, but she was secretly pleased she’d made him laugh so hard, even though it had involved her burning breakfast. Soon, she was laughing along with him. If anyone had been there to see them, it would be quite a sight: two naked people, laughing their heads off in the kitchen.
“Unfortunately,” she said once she’d calmed down, “there are only two more eggs in the fridge. There would have been three, but one of them slid onto the floor when I cracked it open.”
“We’ll go out for breakfast.” He looked in the direction of the bedroom, then turned back and winked at her. “After we finish what we started.” He swept her up into his arms. “I promise to kiss and touch you everywhere.”
* * *
Alex did indeed fulfill his promise of kissing and touching her everywhere.
Happily sated, Iris relaxed against the pillows as he headed to the washroom, but when he came back, she jumped out of bed.
“All right, let’s go out,” she said.
He chuckled as he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her back into bed. “Why the rush? Do you have anywhere else you need to be today?”
“No...”
“So stay here with me, just for a little while.”
“Um, okay.”
He held her from behind and pulled the sheet up to her waist.
“Just like this?” she asked.
“Yes, just like this.”
“I don’t get it.”
He sighed. “You’re always moving. You always have something to do. Try doing nothing for a little while.”
“I’m not much of a cuddler.”
He sat up and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Fine. We can go out for breakfast now.”
Dammit, she missed his body heat. “No, not yet.”
She pulled him back down, and as he wrapped his arms around her, she thought that maybe she could get used to this cuddling business. When she was with a guy, all of the ways they touched were usually sexual. But although she was naked now, this was different.
Alex was right. She was always moving, always staying busy. She didn’t even have the patience to wait for scrambled eggs to cook.
She considered trying to start a conversation, but in the end, she just luxuriated in the press of his chest against her back, his strong arms, the soft sheets, the sunlight streaming through the thin curtains. She was simply in this moment with him, enjoying the sensations.
“Okay now?” he murmured.
“Yes,” she said. “More than okay.”
* * *
When Iris got home after having a late breakfast with Alex, Rebecca was sitting on the couch next to Ngin Ngin.
“I’ve been sewing for the baby,” Ngin Ngin said, holding up a tiny green shirt.
“You don’t need to.” Rebecca laid a hand on her grandmother’s arm.
“Of course I don’t need to, but I want to! What do I have to do all day, other than make sure Iris isn’t burning down the kitchen?”
“I’m standing right here,” Iris said, not saying anything about the kitchen she’d nearly burned down that morning.
Ngin Ngin looked up and smiled. “How was your night? You had good sex?”
“Ngin Ngin!”
Rebecca muffled her laughter with her hand.
“I’m not stupid,” Ngin Ngin said. “I know what you were doing.”
“That doesn’t mean you need to say anything about it.”
“I know, but it’s fun to tease you. I’m not judging, don’t worry. If I was sixty years younger, I’d do the same thing. Alex is very handsome and polite. I approve.”
“I can’t believe you brought Alex to meet Ngin Ngin,” Rebecca said.
“Neither can I,” Iris muttered, but after a moment of thought, she decided she didn’t regret it. She’d done it because it seemed like he missed having an interfering female presence in his life. Not that anyone could replace his mother, of course, but she’d thought her grandmother would make him smile. And she had.
“You use...” Ngin Ngin paused, like she was searching for a word. “Flogger? Handcuff? Sex toy? I read about these on Kindle. Is this what all young people are doing these days? BDSM?”
“What sort of books did you buy her?” Rebecca asked.
“Nothing with floggers.”
“I bought books myself,” Ngin Ngin said. “Dee showed me how. This one I’m reading now, it has a black cover with red roses. Very artistic. No roses in the book, though. It is...interesting. I like Kindle. I make big font. Good for my old eyes, and I can buy books without walking to the store.”
Dear God. The e-reader had been a mistake. Iris imagined her grandmother bringing up BDSM at a family gathering, and she would have to explain how Ngin Ngin had gotten such knowledge.
“Can we talk about something else?” Iris asked as she sat down on the couch beside Ngin Ngin. “Anything else? Please?”
“Fine, fine. You are a prude. You only talk about this stuff with Alex.” Ngin Ngin tapped Rebecca’s laptop, which was sitting on the table. “You were going to show me Facebook, yes? That’s why you brought this?”
Rebecca nodded. “Simon put up a bunch of pictures of Livvy. I thought you’d want to see them.” She opened Facebook and clicked on one of Simon’s photo albums. They went through the pictures, starting with a couple of Livvy at Natalie’s wedding.
“She looks so sweet in that dress,” Ngin Ngin said. “And she called me pretty! I know she called everyone pretty, but still.”
Next, there were a couple pictures by the water in Stanley Park, including one of the whole family: Seth, Simon, and Livvy. There was also a picture of Livvy at some sort of music class for toddlers, and another of her sitting in a swing, wearing a serious expression.
“You help me learn to use the computer?” Ngin Ngin turned to Iris. “I want to use Facebook so I can look at pictures myself.”
“You don’t need to,” Iris said. “I’ll make a point of showing you the pictures whenever Simon posts them, okay?”
“I should still learn. I know you think I’m too old, but I didn’t learn English until I was a senior citizen, and now I speak pretty good, no?”
“If I teach you to use the internet, I’m afraid you’ll start looking at porn.”
“What are you talking about? What is this porn thing?”
“Um,” Rebecca said.
“Um,” Iris said.
Ngin Ngin laughed. “That was a joke. I know what porn is. I promise not to look at it, just pictures of family. You know what else I want to do? I want to put old pictures into computer. I have albums upstairs. You can do this, yes?”
“I don’t have a scanner,” Iris said, “but we can get one and do it.” It was a good idea.
“Okay. I want to use computer just for Facebook and old photos. I promise, I will do nothing else.”
“You know,” Rebecca said, “maybe there’s a class at the community center you could take. Sometimes they have classes to teach older people how to use the computer. We can look into that for you, okay?”
Ngin Ngin nodded, and they returned to looking at Simon’s pictures. There was a photo of Livvy “reading” a book upside down, and another of Seth holding a dinosaur hand puppet up to her face, which made her grin. In the next photo, the dinosaur puppet was pretending to eat Livvy’s ear.
Ngin Ngin put a hand to her eyes and sniffed.
“Are you crying?” Iris asked. “What’s wrong?” She handed a tissue to her grandmother.
“It’s so sad,” Ngin Ngin said. “I won’t get to see her grow up.”
“I know they live on the other side of the country,” Rebecca said gently, “but they’ll come to visit. They’ll be here at Thanksgiving. Maybe Christmas.”
“Not what I mean. By the time she’s an adult like you, I will be dead. I won’t get to see pictures of her graduation or wedding. I only know her as a little girl. She’s cute now, but I want to see what she is like when she’s older. But by the time she finishes high school, I will be a hundred and eight. Nobody lives that long.” She put her hand on Rebecca’s pregnant belly. “Your baby, too.”
“Maybe you’ll live to be a hundred and twenty,” Rebecca said, placing her hand over Ngin Ngin’s. “Maybe you’ll be in the Guinness Book of World Records. You’re in good health.”
Nobody said anything for a minute. Iris couldn’t help but imagine life without her grandmother, and she was sure Rebecca was doing the same.
“I love you,” Rebecca said, a tear sliding down her cheek.
“Aiyah,” Ngin Ngin said. “Now I make everyone sentimental. I should not think about such things. Rebecca, you cry easily when pregnant? I was like that, too. Both times, I cried over ads on television, even though I didn’t understand any of the words!”
* * *
That afternoon, Iris located the box of old photo albums in the storage room upstairs and brought them down to the living room. Ngin Ngin was at the bakery with Mrs. Yee, so there was no one to give her the story behind each of the photos.
Iris started with the two albums from her father’s childhood. She’d seen them before, but not in many years. The colors were dull and faded, and some of the photographs were torn. It was strange to see her relatives frozen in time like this, the moments preserved decades later—her father as a child, her grandmother as a young woman.
Actually, Iris looked a little like Ngin Ngin had when she was young. There was something about the shape of her face, the way she held herself.
Would Iris look like Ngin Ngin in sixty-four years? Would she even live to be eighty or ninety?
There was a picture of Ngin Ngin and Yeh Yeh at Christmas, a Christmas tree in the background. Another of them at a wedding reception in a Chinese banquet hall. In both pictures, her grandmother was smiling, even though her marriage had hardly been happy. Yeh Yeh’s death nearly twenty years ago seemed to have opened up a world of independence and freedom for Ngin Ngin, which she’d embraced. She’d learned things she’d never had a chance to learn when she was young; she’d made so many friends.
Iris would not marry and then wait until she was an old lady to have true freedom. Of course, if she got married—and to her dismay, Alex immediately popped into her head—it didn’t have to be like her grandmother’s marriage. It probably wouldn’t be near as stifling.
Still, it would feel like she was giving up a part of herself, and she refused to let anyone have that power over her. She didn’t want a marriage. She didn’t want a relationship.
When she’d walked home from the diner after breakfast, she’d had a bit of a spring in her step, and now that unsettled her. She’d invited Alex over to meet her grandmother last night, and she’d slept over at his apartment, eaten breakfast with him, and snuggled up to him.
He was starting to feel like a boyfriend, and for a moment, she’d even liked that idea.
Iris forced herself to take a deep breath. It was okay. She was still in control of her life. They’d spent one rather intimate night together, that was all. She’d cool things off a little. The thought of never seeing him again outside of work was unbearable, but a short break would do them good. Then they could continue to occasionally have sex—it really was spectacular sex.
She returned to looking at the pictures and tried to push Alex out of her mind.
Unfortunately, she didn’t quite succeed.