Fullepub 
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Bảo
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN BẢO
I’d showed up here without any expectations and just started painting. Everything was already there; Chef Lê had already bought everything Linh would need, so sure that she’d answer his call and accept the offer. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Linh was already busy, and this was the last thing she needed to add to her pile.
Then she appeared. The white of the column glowed under the light and she was entranced. I was entranced by her. But I tried to hide it. Act like we’re just friends because that’s what we are. Just friends.
Is it possible to be this happy?
Our kiss steals the air from my lungs, and that’s the only reason I eventually pull away from Linh. I rest my forehead against hers, disoriented. I never thought I’d ever feel weak-kneed—that was for damsels in distress or elderly people with low blood pressure—but I guess it’s the same for first kisses.
Linh’s eyes are hazy when I look into them, then I watch them clear up, reality rushing back with a vengeance. I read all of this easily because I know her worries. Some of them are mine exactly. She opens her mouth. “Just pause,” I say, desperate to keep the moment to ourselves. Her mouth closes. “We can delay it for a few more minutes.”
“You’re acting like me,” she says, half teasingly. “But once we step outside, nothing’s changed. We’ll still be Bảo Nguyễn and Linh Mai, whose families hate each other.”
“But here,” I counter, arms going around her waist, “even if it’s just for a little while, we’re Bảo Nguyễn and Linh Mai, food reviewer and artist. And we’ve made it work for the past few months,” I try saying.
Linh smiles sadly because she knows I’m stalling. Her hand goes back into my hair, and if I could ever pick a moment to freeze, it’d be now, with that tender look in her eyes. Tired, yet hopeful. Indulgent. Actually, just one adjective wouldn’t be enough to explain it.
“Hey.” I touch her chin, marveling that I’m allowed to do this. How easily it comes to me. “We’ll figure it out. One step at a time.”
“Okay,” she says before kissing me. “What’s the next step?”
I try to think of lighter things that don’t have to do with our families, a breach we’ll need to figure out how to navigate.
“I’m your boyfriend.”
“I would think that was obvious.”
“I guess Ali and Việt saw this coming before us. We’ll need to let them know.”
“What do you mean? Ali knew how I felt, but Việt did, too?”
“Apparently they talk to each other. About us.”
“Oh God.” Linh rests her forehead against my chest. She mumbles something that I can’t hear.
“What’s that?”
“Romeo and Juliet. Ali’s not going to shut up about us being Romeo and Juliet now.”
“We kind of are,” I say. “Our parents hate each other. Our secret meetings. This column looks like it’d even fit the time period.”
“Are you saying you’re going to poison yourself? Will I need to find a dagger somewhere?”
“And a tomb. We need to be prepared.”
She laughs, but doesn’t say anything. Just lets me hold her. Or she’s holding me. It’s all the same at this point.
From behind the curtain, I hear Chef Lê and Saffron whisper-arguing. “So should I knock, then?”
“Bry, baby, it’s a curtain. You can’t knock.”
After letting Chef Lê bear-hug us—Saffron shaking her head all the while—and tell us how he “knew it,” we talk about the column and his initial vision. He wants it to complement the red wall yet act like a statement piece—something to lure people when they come into the dining room. He hands Linh a couple of photos of his family—many of them of his mother from throughout her life. They remind me of the black-and-white photos on our wall and our family altars. When my relatives were posing for those portraits, I wonder if they knew what they’d be used for, if their sober stares were made on purpose.
Ultimately, Chef Lê says, he’s leaving other elements up to Linh but he’d like to have his family incorporated somehow.
“I have a few ideas,” Linh says, holding the photo while doing another walk around the column, taking in how much space she has to work with. She’s very much an artist at work, not some high school student playing around.
And she’s my girlfriend. Girlfriend. I beam at her, even if she’s not paying me any attention. I think about the kiss. I think about her worries. And of course, thoughts of my mom and dad seep in, threatening to taint these new feelings, but I hold on to the memory of our kiss.
Chef Lê spreads out the photos, moving them around like puzzle pieces. He’s explaining what he knows about them so that Linh can decide which ones to work with.
When we first met him, he talked about the questions he had that will never be answered. He talked about discovering parts of his past in innocuous, unexpected ways.
If I look into my family’s past, could I find an answer that would explain today?
Linh is arranging times to start on the mural and unexpectedly throws a question my way. “Are you free for the next couple of Thursdays? Chef Lê says that works for him.”
“Do you want me here too?”
“Of course I want you here.”
“Like… paint?” I gesture to my clothing. Linh’s face twists. Ah. That’s an obvious answer.
Saffron steps in smoothly. “You’re welcome to just hang around. Do homework and the like. Bry will try not to bother you too much.”
“Always trying to insult me, isn’t she?”
“Really?” I ask, ignoring Chef Lê. Linh squeezes my arm excitedly. “Sure, I can do that.”
In an irreverent move that only Chef Lê could manage, he finger-guns me. And I guess we have a deal.
