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Mei had spent nearly her entire life in Oakland. She was born and raised here. She’d gone through the Caldecott Tunnel for college but made the trip home at least twice a month to reassure her parents that she was alive, eat as much of her mom’s cooking as humanly possible and sit on the couch to watch a sports game — whatever Bay Area team was playing — with her dad in near silence. To soak up the sounds and smell of home. Their small two-bedroom apartment above an import market in Chinatown was the safest place in the entire world as far as Mei was concerned. So the decision to move home after she left Miles had been a no-brainer.
She’d thrown a couple of suitcases in her trunk, driven the twenty minutes across town, and folded herself into maybe the only place in the city that didn’t feel soaked in memories of the life she’d built with him.
She’d wanted — needed — to feel safe in the cocoon of her parents’ home in the heart of the city she loved. She wanted the familiar sounds of her city within a city. She wanted to sit at her mother’s feet and let her comb, oil and braid her hair. She wanted to cry silently while her mother’s sure but gentle hands reassured her that nothing was as bad as it seemed. She wanted to walk into the kitchen early in the morning, before the sun was fully out, and see her dad at the kitchen table reading the morning paper in his work uniform, a cigarette burning out in the ashtray on the windowsill and her mother fussing at him in Cantonese about the smell while she cooked. For weeks she’d needed to putter around the apartment in nothing but old pajamas stained with tears and the fading scent of him. She’d wanted to hide.
Eventually though, she had to venture back out in the world, mostly just to appease her mother. At first she only left the house for a few hours at a time, rediscovering familiar streets she knew like the back of her hand even as they had seemingly changed in big and small ways. Her small forays reminded her that Miles wasn’t the center of the world; he’d just been the center of her world. But now it was time to restructure and build something new.
Outside had its own perils. Every now and then she’d look up from a book she was pretending to read in the park to find an old woman staring at her in a way she found as familiar as disconcerting. Those looks wondered, “Are you Ahn’s granddaughter? Are you married? You should meet my grandson.” She had to fight the urge to run from those inquiries and invitations. She wasn’t Ahn’s granddaughter. She wasn’t married anymore. She wasn’t ready to meet anyone’s grandson; she maybe never would be again. But she didn’t run. Instead, she bore those inquiries with a stiff back and pained smile that she hoped seemed polite, before grabbing her unread book and purse and then walking briskly — not running — home.
In that small apartment she loved, Mei got to pretend to be a version of herself before Miles was even a thought in her head. She was her parents’ only and favorite child; her dad’s most persistent and corniest joke. In Chinatown, she was “you, girl,” to the woman with broken English who didn’t bother to speak Chinese to her because she assumed Mei wouldn’t understand, but needed help getting her grocery cart across the street, nonetheless. She was “Mei. Yin and Jimmy’s daughter, Homecoming queen,” at Mr. Wang’s shop when she stopped in to pick up bones for her mother’s soup. He always introduced her that way to other customers before unfurling a near perfect recitation of her life-long achievements. She used to find it grating as a teenager, hating that she couldn’t just pick up her mom’s order and leave. But now that she was older, wiser, and more bruised by life, she appreciated the butcher’s obvious pride in her and sometimes stayed for a few minutes to chat if the shop wasn’t too busy.
Coming home was a kind of relief if only because no one introduced her as Miles’s wife. She wasn’t Mrs. Jefferson here. No one even made a tv show-related joke about her married name. Because she wasn’t married anymore. And at home she could pretend for a few minutes — sometimes even hours — that she never had been. It gave her as much relief as agony. But what didn’t, these days?
The only people she ran into on a day-to-day basis who knew that she’d once been Miles Jefferson’s college sweetheart and wife were her parents, because she still wasn’t ready to see any of the people she’d invited to their wedding on a regular basis. Even after more than three years. She didn’t want to see pity or judgment in their eyes. She didn’t want to feel like more of a failure than she already did. She could only just handle the way her parents sometimes looked at her, as if she were bruised fruit; still cherished, but tender in some places and maybe skinned raw in others; someone they had to handle with just a bit more care than before.
But sometimes the weight of their soft voices — much softer than normal — made her want to shrivel up and die, because they knew what she had lost and they didn’t know how to help her fix it. Because Mei, only child of Yin and Jimmy, was in her thirties, childless, divorced and sleeping on the twin bed she’d had most of her life. And she’d never felt like more of a failure.
All of her cousins and friends were having babies, moving to the East Coast for new jobs, or going on treks around the world to “find themselves.” But she was in her childhood bedroom, sometimes too afraid to venture further than the living room just in case she started crying unexpectedly in the middle of a very public place and couldn’t stop. Again.
At first, her parents had been understanding. Her mom put her hair in detailed fishtail braids so she felt pretty. Her parents plucked food from their own bowls at each meal, depositing them on her own dish or at times directly into her mouth, so she would know how much they loved her. Her dad even volunteered to watch reruns of The OC with her, even though he hated it.
But after four years, they were done handling Mei with kid gloves.
She couldn’t count the number of times her mom had suggested she move in with Candace or even get her own place. Her dad had sounded almost excited to tell her that his boss’s daughter was getting a divorce too. “Maybe you two can move in together,” he’d suggested kindheartedly.
At another point in her life, Mei would have jumped at the opportunity to get out from under her parents’ protective wing. Or she would have been offended at them trying to pawn her off. But now, she pretended as if she couldn’t hear their suggestions, fear paralyzing her heart at the prospect of starting over again.
She’d never been alone before.
But apparently even her parents’ hospitality was running thin, especially her father’s.
He’d made no secret of the fact that they hadn’t minded being empty nesters and were eager to go back to that. Mei had shuddered at the implication and fiercely ignored him when he brought that up, running back to her room with her ears plugged. As pathetic as it sounded, she was perfectly prepared to spend another four years hiding away at home, only leaving for work and to run errands around the neighborhood for her mom, avoiding their overt suggestions that she move out.
But then, just after Christmas, she’d accidentally pushed her dad over the edge.
She’d just gone down to the kitchen for a late-night snack. She’d been halfway through a plastic container of her mom’s glass noodles when her dad had turned on the kitchen light. Mei’s chopsticks froze halfway between the container and her open mouth. She’d met her father’s hard gaze with wide eyes and then cringed. He’d clearly been planning to have this dish for his late-night snack too.
“Sixty days,” he’d ground out, shaking his finger at her. “I want you married or in your own apartment in two months.”
“Dad—”
“No. I’ve worked too hard not to be able to eat my own leftovers in the middle of the night. We raised you. You’re an adult. Get your own leftovers,” he’d said, before turning the lights off and walking back to bed. “I love you,” he’d called from the hallway, his voice annoyed, but still kind.
And just like that, the holding pattern of Mei’s life post-divorce came to an end.
She’d hoped that in the clear light of day her dad would change his mind. The next morning, she’d set a basket of his favorite pork buns in front of him. She’d woken up early to make them with more than a little help from her mom. She folded her hands in front of her and smiled awkwardly at him as he plucked a single bun from the bamboo basket and ate it. Just the one. Then he got up from his chair, kissed Mei and her mother on their cheeks and walked from the kitchen.
“Sixty days!” he’d called from the front door.
That was a month ago.
Her impending homelessness should have lit a fire under her ass, but it only made her anxiousness spiral. It was hard to imagine her life getting any worse than being a mid-30s divorcée about to be kicked out of her parents’ house like a freeloader. She’d entertained the idea of asking Candace to let her crash on her couch just until her dad changed his mind. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
And then Candace and Ezra had hooked up in Ecuador over New Year’s Eve and the idea of telling Candace about her life, knowing that she’d tell Ezra, who’d tell Miles... No. She couldn’t bear that. There had to be another way, she’d thought. But in a month she hadn’t managed to find a way through her predicament and as her eviction loomed, her life only seemed to get worse.
She hadn’t told anyone, but ever since the divorce she’d hardly slept. It wasn’t the small bed or the fact that one of their neighbors liked to watch reruns of Law & Order between the hours of midnight and four, loud enough for Mei to hear every word. It was because, for over a decade, she’d gone to bed nearly every night practically cocooned inside Miles’s too long arms and legs. Apparently four years wasn’t enough time for her body and mind to stop needing him to fall naturally asleep.
It was a chilly late winter morning and she’d been up for most of the night. She could see the sky lightening through her bedroom window as she waited for her alarm to go off. She contemplated the day ahead of her knowing that it would hold nothing more fascinating than the possibility of picking up sushi for lunch.
When her phone beeped that she had a new text message, she yawned as she typed in her pass code, pressed the text message app and then froze.
She hadn’t seen that particular group message labeled “United Friends of Benetton” at the top of her app in years. It ate up so much of her phone’s memory that when she’d taken it in to get fixed last month, the guy at Sprint had suggested she delete it. He’d also pointed out that another message thread was eating up even more of her available memory and her phone would work so much better if she cleaned them out.
“It’s with someone called ‘Dead to Me,’” he’d told her.
She’d upgraded her memory instead.
Because it was one thing to divorce Miles. It was another thing to get rid of a decade and a half of their text messages. And an entirely different thing to get rid of their group chat with Candace and Ezra. She could chart so many of her most significant moments by messages in those threads. And the group chat in particular was as precious to her as the file folders full of images on her laptop of the four of them together over the years. But seeing it at the top of her app made her heart stop for what felt like minutes.
Her finger hovered over the bold text for a few heartbeats. She held her breath and then exhaled, pressing the message open at the same time.
The block of gray text was so long Mei sucked in a hard breath, thinking it was from Miles. He always used to send such long messages that Ezra was perpetually annoyed, and Candace once admitted to catching up on his messages only when she was bored on a plane with literally nowhere else to go. But Mei had loved every one of those essays.
Miles’s enthusiasm for literally everything had always been one of the things she’d admired about him. When they’d just started dating, she used to read and re-read all of his text messages, marveling not just at how excited he was to tell her about failing his chemistry midterm, but also that he’d pressed the buttons on his flip phone so many times to do it. That felt like dedication. Like love, her young heart had decided.
But this message wasn’t from Miles. It was from Candace.
Hey nerds. Wanted to let you both know that we’re alive. We haven’t eloped (Miles tell your mom, my cousin Shar is lying for clout). And I’m not pregnant. But I did quit my job. Also Ezra gave away a bunch of money and I saw his tax return, so he’s just a regular multi-millionaire these days. Someone tell People mag.
Now let’s get down to business.
Pack a bag bitches, we’re going to Paris for Valentine’s Day! (Not to get married. Ezra’s cousin Yosef is also lying for clout.) And we want our bffs there with us. All expenses paid by Ezra of course. (No one should have this much money.) Oh, Ezra wants me to tell you that he would never type bffs.
Mei, you can wear that ugly beret you bought against my sound advice! And Miles, you can practice that French you’re always lying about studying!
––––––––
It was such a Candace message that it pulled an unexpectedly hoarse puff of laughter from Mei’s dry throat. She missed her. She and Ezra had been traveling around South America since New Year’s, only popping up online sporadically to post pictures — without captions — on their social media, completely oblivious to all their family and friends going nuts in the comments because they were together. Finally.
Mei didn’t comment, but she did sometimes lie in bed in the middle of the night, alternating between tossing and turning and swiping through the pictures of her friends, smiling at how happy they looked together. Hating the small sliver of bitterness ruining that joy.
Another message appeared before she could even fully process the first.
We know things are weird right now, but please don’t say no. We were all friends before we were anything else. Think about it?
There was so much in these messages to take in that it made Mei’s stomach roil. She was happy for Candace and Ezra. Watching them tiptoe around one another and break their own hearts for so long was sad and frustrating. But it was impossible to think of them without thinking of Miles.
They used to lie awake some nights and talk about the latest in their own personal long-running television drama starring their two best friends. How often had Ezra indirectly asked about Candace in an hour span? At what point in the night did Candace give up the pretense of not being interested in the latest Ezra news? What new romantic relationship had they tanked on the off chance that the other person was finally ready? She and Miles had secretly — and shamefully — taken small solace in the fact that their own love story had been much more straightforward.
But now the entire world was turned on its axis.
Miles had a bachelor pad in El Cerrito — according to her cousin Karen’s boyfriend, Rick — and she was sleeping on a twin bed older than wi-fi. Meanwhile, Candace and Ezra were their friend group’s #couplegoals.
Her phone beeped again. This message was just a picture.
It took a while to load with her parents’ slow wi-fi, but the picture made Mei tear up. It was a picture of Candace and Ezra in an open-air square, the Andes mountains behind them, the sky a fiery orange and people milling in the background. But she only passively took in those details because her eyes zeroed in on Candace. Her best friend was wearing the deep plum wrap dress that made her look beautiful and delicate. Ezra was standing next to her, his arms wrapped around her waist as he pressed a kiss to her left cheek; but even the angle couldn’t hide the smile on his face. And Candace’s smile was clearly a laugh that Mei could practically hear ringing in her ears.
She’d known them for more than half her life and had never seen either of them look so happy.
Count me in.
She typed the message quickly and hit send before fear and sadness could overtake her. Because this request wasn’t about her and Miles. For once, it was about Candace and Ezra. And no one knew how much this picture meant — how much they’d had to go through to get there — better than Mei.
And Miles.
How could I say no?
Somehow Mei felt the vibrating notification of his message deep in her chest. It boomed like a four-ton weight. It made her gasp and sit up in bed. She pressed the phone down into the tangle of covers and sheets around her, as if she could push it straight through the mattress, the floor, the apartments below, the concrete, and straight into the earth’s core. But she couldn’t do that. She didn’t even really want to.
Instead, she lifted her hand and began to scroll up through the latest months and years of their collective friendship. She scrolled past the tense message she’d sent, telling Candace and Ezra that they all needed to talk. It was one of the last things she and Miles had done together: breaking the news of their divorce to the two people they loved liked family.
She kept scrolling up and up and up, until she found the thing she was looking for.
It was an old picture Mei had found during their move into what was supposed to be their forever home. The house they’d planned to raise kids in. This was the house where they’d planned to have their multicultural barbecues each summer and Miles had joked that the neighbors would probably have the police on speed dial. That had been the house where they’d planned to grow old.
“Not too many stairs,” Mei remembered saying with approval, “so when your back and my hip give out, we can just move to the first floor and give the kids and grandkids the second floor when they visit.”
“The kids and grandkids chipping in on this mortgage?” Miles had joked, and then swept her into a one-armed embrace against his side and pressed a kiss into her hair.
But this picture was older than that memory.
She didn’t know exactly who had taken it, but she knew for sure that it was from their sophomore year. It was during that short but awful period of time when they were all experimenting with their hair. Miles had a head full of stubby dreadlocks, Mei had neon pink highlights, Candace was wearing her thick curly hair in two buns on her head, “like a Black Princess Leia,” Miles had noted, and Ezra’s hair was in long, shaggy strands that fell limply around his shoulders. They looked terrible.
“Like a mashup of every c-list cartoon gang,” she’d said to Miles, just before taking a picture of the image with her phone and sending it to their group chat.
If she could go back in time and tell her twenty-year-old self that those streaks would haunt her and Miles would only be hers for about a decade more, she wouldn’t have believed it. Because that Mei had been certain that Miles was her soulmate. That Mei couldn’t have ever imagined the slow, painful dissolution of their relationship. That Mei didn’t yet know what it felt like to watch someone you love grow and change and succeed as they became someone you still liked but didn’t love anymore. And that Mei didn’t know what it felt like to watch someone else come to the same realization about her.
That Mei couldn’t have imagined what it would be like to slowly grow apart from the only man she’d ever been in love with and be unable to figure out how to stop it.
But this Mei knew the painful realities of that all too well. She’d lived through it and just barely survived it. Or maybe she hadn’t. That was still unclear.
She put her phone face down on the bedside table and lay back onto her pillows, covering her head with the blanket. She’d have to get up soon. And apparently, she had a trip to Paris to pack for. And she needed to put in a request for time off from work. These new things would be distractions from apartment hunting, she supposed, trying desperately to see the silver lining around her shattered heart. It had been so long since she’d had something to look forward to.
But first, she needed to cry.