Chapter Thirty-Nine: Bảo

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE BẢO

I don’t know what else to do but hold Linh. Drop a kiss on her head now and then. And just hold her more. She’s trembling, her voice breaks, and I don’t have anything to give her but physical comfort. Still, it feels empty, temporary, and Linh needs more than that.

“I mean, I’ve never seen them look at me that way. Especially my mother. It looked like I broke her heart.” Linh sniffs. “And maybe I was too honest toward the end. Throwing that photo in their faces only complicated things more.”

“Don’t think that. You got it out there. All the things you were holding back for months. It’s there.” I wouldn’t say that telling my mom about Linh made things better—but it didn’t make things worse. Just uncomfortable. I’m more disturbed that she pretends as if we never had that conversation, as if she hopes I’ll forget about it.

“But now everything’s a mess!” Linh gestures to the ground, as if the argument with her parents were physical things just scattered below our feet. “It’s all out there, but tangled up, messy, and—”

“It’s out there,” I try saying. “You don’t have to lie anymore.”

That’s not the right thing to say. I can tell by her face falling, her voice turning dull. “I guess that was the actual problem for them. Lying. Me, lying. You saw it from the beginning.”

“Hey, don’t go there,” I counter as gently as possible. “If you’re a liar, I am too. And parents blow up. They say things in the heat of the moment. I’ve argued before with my parents. You have too, probably.”

“Not like this, Bảo. Never like this.” She slides off the desk, sniffing and wiping back stray tears, looking so defeated.

“It hurts, Linh. I know it does. But there’s always a way out.”

“How?” Linh asks, an edge to her voice. “Tell me how. Because I don’t think I can keep doing this, Bảo. Trying to defend what I’ve been doing. And what we were about to do, digging into the past.” I read between the lines. Does she want to give up?

“Don’t you want to know?” I ask, reaching for her hands. “Don’t you want us?”

She doesn’t move.

“Oh.” I never thought a nonresponse could hurt me so much. Not a word, but that look on her face. Empty.

“I don’t think I can keep doing this, Bảo.”

“You’re scared, Linh. I know you are.”

“Ever since we started this… no, even met, I think, my life has been about putting one fire out after the next.”

“So, what? You think it’d be better if we’d never met? Never spoke to each other again?”

The bell ringing to announce first period cuts through our silence.

“Maybe, Bảo. Maybe.”