But instead, I went to the kitchen and scooped some of the leftover sinigang stew Mom had going in the slow cooker all day over a bowl of microwave rice. Evading Mika's questions had been hard enough. I didn't feel like lying straight to mom's face just yet. I'd already done enough of that this afternoon. I'd given her the super-sketchy rundown of what had happened to Dad then rushed off, supposedly to meet a surfing client. But I was actually hurrying to withdraw life savings from the bank before they closed.
As soon as the pleasantly sour broth stew hit my tongue, I knew I'd made the right decision. They didn't call basically every dish that came out of the Philippines comfort food for nothing.
By the time I was done scarfing down dinner, I couldn't say I had forgotten what had transpired that night. But as I made the trip to my parent's room, I could almost not feel the Fae King's hands squeezing my ass as I humped his clothed dick in a frenzy. Almost….
I found my parents sitting up in bed laughing along with This is Us, my dad's favorite show. Wow, it was only Tuesday, and it had already been the craziest week I've ever had, but here they were laughing like they didn't have a care in the world.
The sight of them didn't upset me, though. It reminded me why everything I did tonight was totally worth it. Sure, my dad had shrunk a lot since his diagnosis, and his rich brown face was now mottled with a purplish bruise around his eye. But he still held my pretty little Filipina mother's hand and laughed uproariously at all of Randall's jokes, no matter how big or small they were.
They were okay. And they'd stay okay. That was all that mattered, even if the Fae King's phone gift burned like an omen in the back pocket of my jean shorts.
"Jazzy, you alright, anaak?" Mom asked when she noticed me poking my head through the door.
Anaak…my child…my heart squeezed at the Tagalog endearment she still used with my sister and me even though we were now both older than she was when she gave birth to us. Her soft question made me even more determined to keep her out of this mess.
My father also regarded me, and with even more worry in his eyes than my mother's—he never would have sent me to pay off his debt. But he probably had his suspicions about where I disappeared to so quickly after Mom got home.
"I'm fine. Everything's fine," I assured them both. "Just checking in before I call it a night."
Guilt flashed across my father's face. But my mother said, "Oh, your father's doing much better. I'm just still so upset about what happened. That new drug was going so well, but he still had that nasty fall. Do you think it's already wearing off? Mika says that's not how drugs work, and your dad says he just stood up too fast, but I'm scared."
I bet she was. I glanced at Dad. Only a portion of the guilt in his expression was because of what he'd done with my sister's money, I suspected. Before the bad deal he'd made with K Diamond behind our backs, Dad was a good person, an honorable person who served his country and prided himself on paying his debts on time. Plus, Mom was the love of his life. I knew he probably hated lying to her even more than I did.
Which is why I pasted on a smile and just said good night before leaving them to their dramedy.
However, that smile fell off my face as soon as I got back to my room and pulled out my phone—no, scratch that—phones. I had two of them now.
The iPhone sat on my bed, silent and blank, but it somehow still managed to come off as dangerous. Meanwhile, angry text messages from Brad covered my old Galaxy's whole screen.
BRAD: What do you mean you're not coming?
BRAD: Jazz?
BRAD: Jazz?
BRAD: WTF? Dad was set to turn down a bunch of other buyers because he wanted to sell his biz to you AT A DEEP DISCOUNT. This is real messed up, Jazz. Is this because I dumped you?
BRAD: Because if this is because I dumped you, that's real messed up too.
Okay, well, the guilt wasn't entirely done with me yet.
I sighed and started composing a much longer message to Brad about how sorry I was and how I'd bailed because of a family emergency, not because of our breakup. Did he think I was sitting around heartbroken over him? I'd barely given him a second thought since he forced me to choose between him and staying in Hawaii to be with my parents after Mika and I figured out how sick dad truly was when he collapsed at Christmas dinner.
