The Love We Choose

Chapter 50

After a quick breakfast of leftovers, Huan and Lynne spent the better part of the next morning cleaning Mrs. Zhang's home. Their original plan to divide and conquer eventually yielded to a joint room-by-room sweep with Mrs. Zhang overseeing things. Thankfully, Lynne had organized the kitchen and Huan had put away most of the tables and chairs in the shed the night before.

Once they were finished and Lynne had brought her things downstairs, she made her excuses to leave to Mrs. Zhang, giving the woman a kiss on the cheek and a hug.

"You never come and visit me like you used to. What, you don't like me anymore? Or just too busy to make time for a poor old lady? What should I expect? My son is the same way," she made a disapproving tutting noise.

"Sorry, Mama Ying. I guess we'll have to make it up to you," Lynne shot Huan a look over his mother's shoulder. "How about we come over for dinner this upcoming Friday?"

The older woman narrowed her eyes at her, "are you serious? Both of you?"

"Suuure," Huan agreed. He didn't have anything set in stone with Veronica yet, but he'd be going over to her apartment on Tuesday anyway.

"You sure know how to put a smile on this old woman's heart."

"When are you going to drop the 'I'm so old act, mama?'" Huan asked her as he gave her a hug.

"Never, don't tell me you're leaving too?"

"Yeah, I'm gonna bum a ride home off of Lyndy. I have a shift tonight and want to take a nap."

"Oh well. I am holding you both to Friday! Be here on time," she leveled them with a lingering look at Huan.

XXX

Once they had been on the road for a while, Huan noticed that Lynne's jaw was set tight. Their usual banter hadn't flowed through the air in the car. She had seemed to avoid him during the previous night. "What's going on with you? Your thoughts seem so loud I can hear them over the music."

"You know, one of these days your Aunt Jieli is going to deign to remember that I can understand Mandarin and Cantonese. I had half a mind to go over to her and remind her that this hagwei has got two Bachelor's and two Master's degrees under her belt while her friend's dimwitted, mouth-breather of a son can barely tie his own shoes, let alone maintain a junior leadership position at his own father's company. And those two harpies kept on going on about me like I wasn't in the room. Karen Li is officially off the list for your potential wives. Her mother is a two-faced racist asshole. You don't need that energy in your life," she bit out, the anger evident in her low tone.

"Calm down Lynne. A, Karen Li was never on my list for potential wives, that was the aunts' doing. B, getting into it with Auntie Jieli wouldn't be worth it in the long run anyway. You know how she is. And most importantly, C, this stress can't be good for the mooncake."

"I know. I know. I need to think about the fetus." Lynne stated, letting out a deep sigh while she switched lanes. "But that woman is infuriating. Please promise me that she will NEVER be in a room alone with our fetus once it's born."

"Could you stop calling him or her a fetus please? I'm conjuring up images of everything I saw in my med-school textbooks and let me tell you, the mental visual is not a pleasant one."

"Ok, I'm going to limit it to mooncake now. It's sticking in my personal lexicon." She told him, placing her left hand over her stomach. Just skimming four months into her pregnancy, her stomach was losing its flat appearance and becoming a little pouchy and gaining a firm quality. The flowy dark grey shirt and wide-leg black pants she wore were enough to conceal the evidence that Lynne was growing a tiny human.