Page 64 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

He sighed and glanced off in the distance, looking so much like an Instagram model that I could kick him. Or kiss him. Possibly both.

“I wish you’d tell me why you hateThe Joy Luck Clubso much,” he said.

This was such a strange request that I couldn’t help pushing a little harder. “Is this your way of saying you want to join the book club, too? Because the going rate is twenty grand. I don’t think you can afford it.”

No smile that time, either. I gave up.

“Look—what do you want me to say?” A fully public parking lot was a strange place to have this conversation, but if Lincoln wanted to do it here, I had no other choice. “It’s just a book.”

“That’s a pretty strange thing coming from the mouth of a budding author.”

He said those last two words—budding author—like he had to physically slice them from his tongue in order to get them out.

“Are you…mad that I’m writing?”

He was careful not to look at me, his gaze fixed instead on a crushed paper cup teeming with ants. “I’m not mad. I’m just trying to get ahead of this thing, that’s all.”

I had no idea whatthinghe was talking about—or why it was getting him all hot and bothered—but something about the tight coil of his posture warned me to tread lightly.

“It’s pretty obvious why that book annoys me,” I said. I watched as the ants discovered a patch of sticky residue and started crawling over each other to get to it. “It’s the most cliché thing in the world for a gay little mama’s boy from the Philippines to see himself written so clearly in those pages, but there you have it.”

Lincoln looked over at me, startled. He’d never heard me talk so bitterly about myself before, but that was because I’d never opened this particular wound. Not where he could see it, anyway.

“‘Oh, her strength! her weakness!—both pulling me apart,’” I said, grimacing wryly. Like the way I’d pulled the quote for Maisey the other day, this one came easily. Obviously, I’d spent more time in Tan’s complicated world than I liked to admit.

“Is that from the book?”

“I asked my mom once what would have happened to us if I hadn’t fallen into that well when I was seven,” I said by way of answer. “Did you know that? Came out with it, point-blank. If my literal descent into fame had never occurred, what would we have done? What would have become of us?”

“And what was her response?”

I laughed. There was no humor in the sound, and I could feel the nausea rising up from somewhere deep inside me, but I couldn’t stop now. Lincoln had asked, so Lincoln would be answered.

“She told me to try again.”

“To try what again? Falling into a well?”

I scoffed. “Of course not. She wanted me to try mystoryagain. To reach back through time and really remember what happened that day.” I’d never said the words out loud before, even though I’d been sitting on them for a long time.

“Mateo…”

“For years, I thought maybe she’d done it on purpose, you know?” My question was purely rhetorical. Of course Lincoln knew. He knew everything—or, rather, hewouldin about two minutes. “I thought she might have manufactured the accident as some kind of PR blitz to catapult her into the fame she so desperately wanted.”

“Mateo,” he said again, more determined this time. “Althea wouldn’t have done that. She worships the ground you walk on.”

I flung up a hand to stave him off. I had to get this out now or I wasn’t sure I ever would.

“Please. You know as well as I do that the only hallowed ground in our family is wherevershe’sstanding.” I paused, wanting to take a moment to corral my thoughts but afraid of what else Lincoln might say if I left him the space. “I know that’s a stupid reason to hate a book, but I can’t help it. Every time I crack those pages, I can’t help thinking how much easier my life would be if my mom was a little bit less…”

Lincoln supplied a few possible answers. “Glamorous? Fun?” The last one came out hard: “Loving?”

“It was me,” I said, forcing my gaze to lock on his. What I saw there scared me more than anything else in the world—even spending three days at the bottom of a well.

Especiallythat.

“I was me,” I said again, more determined this time. “I’m the one who manufactured it, not her. I needed to get away from her, and at that age, the only place I could think to do it was twenty feet underground.”

When Lincoln didn’t respond, I dropped my voice and let the rest of my restraint go.