Weddings and Wasabi (3 page)

“At least no one got the cupcakes yet,” Lex muttered. “What a waste that would have been.”

Venus whipped out her cell phone. “Trish called a few minutes ago to say she was on the way, but I’ll tell her to meet us at Jenn’s house instead. I’m sure you wouldn’t want her to miss this spread.”

Loaded with trays and Tupperware containers, the three cousins headed toward the door, ignoring some curious looks from relatives. Jenn toed her shoes on and tried to free a hand so she could open the door. “Let’s put the food in the car first, then come back for our coats and—”

The front door swung open. “Jenn!” her mother said. She sounded alarmed rather than just surprised to see her at the door.

A man stood beside her—Asian, older, with a mustache and a wide smile. “This is Jenn? How nice to meet you.” He held a hand out to her, but faltered when he saw her arms laden with food.

“Did you just get here?” Mom asked.

“No, I’m leaving.” Jenn tried to shuffle a Tupperware but it almost fell to the floor.

“Oh.” The man’s face fell. “I was looking forward to chatting with you.”

For some reason, Mom was avoiding Jenn’s eyes.

Her grip tightened on the food carriers. “I’m sorry, do I know you?” He obviously knew who she was.

“I apologize. Here I am going on like this. Max Hiroyama.” He wrapped his arm around Jenn’s mom. “Your mother and I have been dating for a few weeks.”

“How could she not tell me?” Jenn stabbed a fork viciously into a shrimp
shu mai
steamed dumpling.

“No.” Venus waved her chopsticks at Jenn, still holding onto her salt-and-pepper fried shrimp. “The real question is, how could she tell you
there,
along with all the other relatives—”

“
In front
of all the other relatives.” Trish added her stabbing chopsticks to the firing squad at Jenn, although her air-stabbing flung a chow mein noodle onto Jenn’s plate.

“—rather than telling you privately beforehand.” Venus bit the head off the shrimp.

Lex spooned some black bean sauce shrimp onto a mound of rice. “Jenn, you made a lot of shrimp dishes for the party.”

“And the problem with that is …?” Venus gave her a
look.

“I can take that shrimp if you—” Trish reached for Lex’s plate.

Lex
whapped
her cousin’s chopsticks out of the way. “I wasn’t complaining.”

A faint cry sounded from Jenn’s living room, and Trish got up. “Elyssa’s awake, time to feed her.”

“Feed her in there, please.” Lex’s face was already almost as green as the sautéed Chinese broccoli.

Venus rolled her eyes. “You are such a baby. It’s only breast milk, it’s not blood.”

“It’s a bodily fluid, and I don’t nag you about your Mr. Monk impressions so stop nagging me about my neuroses.” Lex took a sip of green tea, and her color improved.

“Besides, she’s almost off the milk by now anyway,” Trish called back to them as she exited Jenn’s kitchen and entered the living room. Her coos to her daughter carried to them.

“So what are you going to do?” Venus asked Jenn.

She toyed with her shrimp and portabella mushroom tart. What a waste of time it was to work on these when no one except themselves was enjoying them.

Except after the way her family had treated her, she didn’t
want
any of them enjoying these. So this wasn’t a waste—it was actually preventing this food from going to waste on ungrateful, pushy, unsympathetic …

“I want to show them that if I don’t matter to them, then they don’t matter to me.”

“Huh?” Lex’s chopstick stopped halfway to her open mouth.

“Back up, Jenn,” Venus said.

Jenn set down her mushroom tart. “They wouldn’t listen to me about Brad. In fact, they didn’t even care.
I
didn’t matter to them.”

Venus looked down at her plate and chewed her lip, but didn’t say anything.

Because Jenn was right. “Mimi and her wonderful new boyfriend—who’s a Yip, by the way, and we all know they can do no wrong—were the only ones they cared about. Not Jenn and her culinary degree—oh, except when it came to expecting me to work for Aunty Aikiko.”

“But didn’t you take all those night courses so you could work for her?”

“It wasn’t just for her. I wanted to learn how to be a chef. I wanted to someday own my own restaurant, not take over for her.”

“And did you tell this lovely plan to Aunty at all?” Venus drawled.

Jenn’s answer stuck in her throat. “Uh, no. But in my defense, she never mentioned about me taking over the restaurant until today.”

“Oh come on.” Lex set down her chopsticks, loaded with a mound of noodles. “You knew that’s what Aunty was expecting.”

Jenn rubbed her forehead with her hand. “Yes, I know, I know. Maybe I was in denial.”

“Well, what about now? What are you going to do now?” Venus speared a shrimp tempura. “If you tell me you’re going to meekly quit your job to go work for Aunty, I will take this plate of shrimp and leave.”

“Not without giving me some.” Lex snatched one from the plate.

“Honestly, is food the only thing you guys can think about?” Trish demanded as she entered the kitchen, baby Elyssa in her arms. “This is serious. The family has majorly dissed Jenn.”

Silence fell over the four of them as they watched the food grow cold.

“Not that food isn’t important.” Trish snatched a bacon-rolled shrimp.

They munched in silence for a while, then suddenly Trish said, “I’ve got it. Cater my wedding.”

Jenn frowned at her. “I thought I
was
catering your wedding.”

“I mean, as my
caterer
.”

Jenn blinked at her.

“She means, start your own catering business,” Venus said, her eyes bright. “Trish’s wedding will be your trial run.”

“Use that culinary degree for your own business, not Aunty Aikiko’s,” Lex said.

“You don’t matter to them? Well then, Aunty’s restaurant doesn’t matter to you,” Trish added. “But who matters to you? Me! I’m your girl.” She held out her fist and Jenn weakly bumped it with hers.

Not work for Aunty Aikiko? Jenn felt a weird combination of elation and terror. “But … my job.” Programming paid well in the Bay Area. Catering … not so much.

“When were you going to start work at the restaurant?” Venus asked.

“Never,” Jenn shot back.

“I mean before they hacked you off, genius.”

“Oh. I dunno … a month or two.”

“So you were going to give notice at your computer programming job in a month or two?”

“Oh. Well, yeah.” But it had been a nebulous thing in her mind. She still had a hard time believing she’d gotten her culinary degree at last.

“So what’s stopping you from quitting early and starting your own catering business?”

“Health insurance.” The words fell from her lips like the first cold drops of rain from a storm front.

There was a beat of thoughtful silence around the kitchen table. Snatches of memory went through her mind—driving her mom to the hospital for chemo, holding her head as she threw up into the toilet, watching her weakly sipping tea, praying for Jesus to please take the cancer away. And He had.

If Jenn worked for Aunty Aikiko, she’d have the health insurance offered to all the restaurant employees. If she started her own business, she’d have to pay for her own insurance.

“Quitting my job seems irresponsible,” Jenn said. “What if Mom’s cancer comes back?”

“You can’t live life based on ‘what ifs,’” Venus said quietly. “Sometimes you just have to take a leap and go for it. If Aunty’s cancer comes back, then you reevaluate and figure out your options.”

“But that’s … that’s scary.” Jenn hated how small her voice was, but she couldn’t imagine doing what Venus was suggesting. Sure, Venus was smart and driven. Trish was fearless and adventurous. Lex was gutsy and stubborn. She was … just Jenn.

“You can’t live your life being afraid, Jenn.” Lex’s eyes were steady. “Otherwise, you might as well bow your head like a good little Asian girl and go work for Aunty Aikiko at the restaurant.
For the rest of your life.”

The words were hollow like a death sentence. Jenn shuddered. No, she couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t.

She turned to Venus. “Okay, Miss CEO, what do I do first?”

“You’ve lived your entire life in California and you’ve never driven with the top down?”

The rush of the wind whipping past Jenn’s RAV4 made Trish shout to be heard. In lieu of a retractable top, they’d opened the windows and the sunroof.

“I never had a convertible, doofus.” Jenn navigated the winding country road at a nice, safe, speed.

“We should have rented one for today.” Trish tipped her head back and smiled at the sunlight dappling through the trees lining the road. “Days like these were made for convertibles.”

“Since when did you drive a convertible?”

“I rode in an ex-boyfriend’s Cabriolet.”

Jenn giggled. “Very sexy. Which ex was this?”

“Ted. It gets even better—it was his
mother’s
Cabriolet.”

“Ted? I don’t remember a Ted.”

“You and Venus were both getting your masters’ degrees at Stanford at the time. And Ted had a drinking problem so he only lasted a few weeks.”

Jenn and Venus had been ecstatic to be accepted for transfer to Stanford in their junior years at San Jose State. They had taken the five-year engineering program to get their masters’ degrees with only one extra year of schooling as opposed to two. Venus had also gotten into the MBA program and continued with that while Jenn had immediately gotten a computer programming job. In the meantime, Trish and Lex had graduated from San Jose State and gotten jobs in their fields.

A new song came on the radio, and Trish immediately reached a hand out to turn up the volume. “I love this song.”

It was “Let It Rise” by Big Daddy Weave, and the music filled the car. Trish’s head fell back, her eyes closed, she flung her hands out—nearly poking Jenn’s eye out—and she belted out the lyrics. It was as if her entire body was lifted in worship to God.

The sight made Jenn a little uncomfortable. Trish’s complete … abandon. It made Jenn wonder a little about their faiths.

Jenn had become a Christian when she was living with Trish, Venus, and Lex during their years going to San Jose State University. Trish had come home one day, wildly excited about something she said changed her entire life. Lex and Venus had been skeptical, but Jenn, who’d always been closer to Trish, could see that this was a
real
change, and something about the way Trish talked about it made Jenn want to know more. The four of them had gone to church that Sunday—Venus cynically said Trish only wanted to go to meet some cute guys—but they’d all come out of that service feeling different. And they’d gone back week after week, until one service there was a call for people to sign up for baptism, and all four of them had signed up.

Trish had backslidden a little a couple years ago, but she’d renewed her relationship with Jesus since then. She was more confident, more … filled. And at times like these, watching her express her faith, it made Jenn feel a little
stale
.

That was silly. Jenn read her Bible every day, she went to a weekly Bible study, she went to church a lot more consistently than any of her cousins, and she knew Jesus loved her and had died for her on the cross. What else was there in being a Christian?

After the song ended, silence descended on the two of them for a time, until Jenn broke it. “It’s nice not going in to work on a day like this,” she admitted. “You’re sure you can take off work?”

“I’ve accumulated too much vacation. My boss said I had to use it or lose it. And it’s not like Spenser and I can take a long honeymoon because Elyssa’s still breast-feeding. So I’ve been taking off days here and there to plan for the wedding.”

“The winery knows to expect us, right?”

“Yes.” Trish didn’t open her eyes. “I was standing right next to Kathi when she phoned her cousin to ask if we could visit today.”

Jenn privately thought Trish just wanted to get Jenn out of her house as opposed to
needing
to visit this Saratoga winery to sample their wines, even if her coworker’s cousin’s family owned it. They could have simply bought a bottle and tried it one night at home.

But Jenn’s mom had been moaning and whining about Jenn quitting her job (last day was yesterday!), and after escaping the house like a convict, she realized it was very relaxing to go somewhere new during the day. She felt like she was playing hooky.

“How did The Conversation with Aunty Aikiko go?” Trish asked.

“Kind of frightening, actually.”

“Let me guess.” Trish gave her sidelong look. “Lots of crying and wailing about you failing in your familial duty, disappointing Aunty’s expectations of you working for her, being a bad niece?”

“No. None of that.”

“None?” Trish turned to look at her, surprise in her face.

“That’s what was frightening about it.”