“Oh, right. You have family who cares.” That was one of the things that separated us. My family scrutinized everything I did, every moment. It’s the reason I went to school out of state: to try to get some distance between us. Sam’s family had tons of money but none of the caring that should happen with loving parents. I longed for my relatives to butt out. She longed for someone to show interest in anything she did.
Which meant that she had no understanding of what a family drama like this could do to me.
“Everyone will see it, Sam. My cousins in Hong Kong will see it and talk to my aunts about it who will be shamed, and they’ll scream at my mother. She’ll be mortified, and that’s nothing compared to what those biddies at mah-jongg are going to say to her at home.” I shuddered at the thought. “It’s not just me who’ll twist on the damaged family-honor spit. It’s everyone related to me. And even if I could ignore it, they can’t. It’s too important to them.”
She sighed. “Just how long will the shaming last?”
“Forever. Stuff like this doesn’t go away.” It’d be brought up at every family gathering for generations. I still heard about my great-uncle who was caught urinating in a public fountain and he’d been dead for thirty years. “I’d been doing so well, Sam, and now it’s all gone. A sex tape is proof that I can’t make it on my own. God only knows what will happen if I have to head back to Chicago because I can’t pay my bills.”
“Oh shit.”
“And if I ever confess I don’t want to go to law school, then I might as well step in front of a moving train.”
She took a deep breath. “Let’s not get hasty here.”
I wasn’t being hasty. I was being real. She had no idea the pressure on Chinese girls to perform. Good job, good husband, good face that showed respect to the elders at every turn. I never spoke out, never did anything for myself. Except for that one time on spring break. And again this afternoon in the press box.
And both had ended in disaster.
I flopped backward onto the couch. “What am I going to do?”
“Simple. Go write the story.”
“What?” The word came out more like a squeak.
“Look, everybody has a sex story. And those who don’t, wish they had.” I heard the rustle as she dug into her cabinets, probably for popcorn. “So you had hot sex with a superstar. Who hasn’t had that fantasy?”
“Me.”
“You lived it. And wow, I am never going to look at the announcer booth again without thinking of this.”
Me, neither.
“So write the article. Whatever article you want. Show them that they can’t control you with fear.”
I shook my head. “I’d lose my job as a stringer for sure. And can kiss goodbye any paper wanting to hire me again.”
“Not if the article was really good.”
Not true. Plenty of great articles made zero public impact. Besides it didn’t matter. “Didn’t you hear what I said about my family? My parents would die—literally die—from the mortification.” That wasn’t an exaggeration. My cousin didn’t get into a single Ivy League college and her father had a stroke when he heard the news.
“Okay, that’s bad, but what happens if you cave now? If you give in and don’t write the article.”
I didn’t have to answer. Bills and more bills. Even with a food-service job, I wouldn’t be able to make my rent. And that didn’t even touch the reality of what it’d do to my dreams. If I couldn’t make a go of journalism, then I’d have to move home and face the daily pressure to go into law when I had zero desire to do it.
Then I heard Sam take a deep breath. “What do you want to do? Don’t think about the money or the family drama. Just close your eyes and think about what you want to do right now.”
“I want…” Rob. Well, duh. Even humiliated, I still flushed at the memory of what we’d done. And ached to do it again. But outside of that, what did I want? I picked the next best thing. “I want to write an article about Rob. I want to finish what I started and prove to myself, my jerk ex-boss, and everyone at the paper that I can do it.”
“There you go.”
“But I don’t want to get fired because of it.” And I didn’t want Rob to get fired, either.
I took a deep breath and thought about something Rob had said this afternoon. That even the superstar athletes couldn’t control what happened in their games. And that trying to cover every eventuality would make them crazy.
Could I follow his example? Could I just do what I wanted and pray that it didn’t destroy my life?
“I’m not this bold, Sam.”
