Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee

Author:Sher Lee [Lee, Sher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2023-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

The night air is balmy, tinged with the scent of salt and rain. The sky is moonless, the stars blotted out by the heavy thunderheads on the horizon. A storm is coming.

As we hurry back to our guesthouse, Theo casts a sidelong look in my direction.

“Sorry for not giving you any heads-up about that kiss,” he says. “It seemed like what a real couple might naturally do after a romantic slow dance. So I went for it.”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” Just thinking about the brief brush of his lips against mine sends goose bumps up and down my arms again. “It felt totally natural to me too.”

“Oh, good. I was worried it might have been awkward.”

Nope, not awkward. Just shorted out a bunch of neural pathways in my brain, that’s all. They’ll regenerate.

Thunder rumbles as we step back into our room. Theo drops his suit jacket on the chaise, pulls the knot of his bow tie loose, and tosses the strip of silk onto the dresser. I reach for my own tie but pause. I don’t want to pull on the wrong end and wind up with a dead knot.

“Glad that the wedding’s almost over?” I ask.

“This might sound hard to believe, but I don’t think anything could be worse than the last wedding I went to,” Theo replies. “My dad’s.”

My ears prick up. I want to know what Theo’s issue with his dad is. “What happened?”

“They had a private ceremony in Napa Valley. Bernard and I were the only ones from my dad’s side.” Theo rubs his neck, ruffling the hair at the back of his head. “When I went to the housewarming party at his new home on Long Island, guess how many pictures of me he had in the entire place? One. At the corner of the mantelpiece. From when I was five.”

There’s nothing I can say to soften that blow. “The family portrait in the hallway of your house is a beautiful picture of the three of you.”

Theo shakes his head. “Not like the photos you have with your mom, aunt, and cousins on the wall of your takeout. That portrait’s nothing more than a snapshot from the past. Even before my dad remarried, he was out of town on business nearly all the time. Bernard was the one cheering in the stands when I won my first junior tennis tournament.” He lets out a mirthless sound. “It’s like the day my mom died, I stopped mattering to him. Well, except when he expects me to shun my relatives and take his side in a public scandal.”

Now I know why emptiness doesn’t just fill Theo’s mansion—it pervades it. He grew up within those walls, with every need taken care of, surrounded by everything one could want…except family. My dad’s barely been in my life since he left for Shanghai, but the difference was, I still had Mom. She did everything she could to make sure I knew I was loved. Theo’s dad should’ve done the same after Theo lost his mother.

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