The Heart Principle (The Kiss Quotient 3)

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” I ask.

He doesn’t open his eyes to acknowledge me, but his brow furrows and his moans continue. There’s nothing I can do other than hold his hand, so that’s what I do. His hand remains limp. He doesn’t hold me back. He never does.

In a way, he’s been gone since he had his stroke. He’s still alive, but I lost him months ago. Perhaps I’ve been mourning all this time without realizing it.

Can you hurt without knowing it?

When he falls asleep and stops moaning, the tension in my body eases, but I still hear those E-flats in my head. They repeat on an endless loop.

My mom enters the room quietly, checks the spreadsheet to see if I’ve kept on track, and sits on the sofa next to the bed. “Everyone just left.” When I don’t say anything, she adds, “They said good things about you.”

I don’t have energy for this, but I force myself to smile like I mean it and say, “That’s nice of them.”

“Especially Chen Ayi,” my mom says, referring to Julian’s mom. “From what I saw a little bit ago, it’s obvious you two are back together again. I’m relieved. That other . . .” She shakes her head and wrinkles her nose.

“Quan’s been really good to me,” I say, feeling like I need to defend him.

“Of course he’s good to you. He knows how lucky he’d be to have you. Look at you. Look at him. But Julian is good to you, too,” she says.

I don’t understand why Quan would be lucky to have me. I’m a mess. My life is a mess. I haven’t even been able to tell him that I love him.

But I think I do.

I think I’ve fallen hopelessly and irrevocably in love with him, like seahorses and anglerfish do.

“You need to talk to that Quan,” my mom says. “He’s not a bad person. He deserves for you to treat him with respect. Be kind when you end things.”

Tears blur my vision, but I hold them back. “He makes me happy, Ma.”

My mom sighs and gets up to come to my side. “He’s a phase. You don’t marry boys like that.”

“He doesn’t feel like a phase.”

“Trust me, okay?” my mom says. Her voice is gentle, her expression caring, and I’m reminded that she loves me. She doesn’t have a Make Anna Miserable agenda. She wants what’s best for me—unless it conflicts with what’s best for my dad or Priscilla. Then I’m a lower priority. Because I’m youngest and female and unremarkable. That’s just how things are. “You’re young. You don’t know the value of what you have. But I know. Julian will take care of you, Anna. You need that. You knew how we felt about your music career, but you chose it anyway. Now you have to be realistic.”

“I’m not good at anything else,” I remind her.

When my parents first signed me up for violin lessons, I think they did harbor the hope that I was a prodigy and would go places. When special talents never arose, they kept me in lessons because it would look good on my college applications if I was “well-rounded.”

That’s how it worked for Priscilla. She performed a violin solo at Carnegie Hall when she was in high school, and that experience, coupled with her exemplary academic record, got her into Stanford, where she majored in economics, and then went on to receive an MBA. Everyone was horrified when I announced that instead of following in Priscilla’s footsteps, I wanted to use my musical training to be an actual musician.

“You didn’t try anything else,” my mom says with a distasteful twist of her mouth. “You could have taken over my accounting business. I would have been happy to hand it to you.”

“I’m horrible at math. Besides, I’m doing okay now,” I say, hopeful that I’ve finally proven to her that my one rebellion was truly the best choice for me.

My mom pins a hard look on me. “You know your success is temporary. Soon you’ll be back to struggling to pay your rent.”

My throat swells, and I bite the inside of my lip so the small physical pain can distract me from my turbulent emotions. I hold my dad’s hand tighter, stroke my thumb over his pockmarked knuckles. He doesn’t hold me back.

“You know I tell you these things so it’ll hurt less when you hear it from others,” my mom says softly.

Swallowing past the tightness in my throat, I nod.

“Mom is tired, so I’m going to sleep now.” She strokes my hair much like Julian did earlier, and I hold still and let her, even though it feels like ants are crawling on my scalp. It’s how she demonstrates affection for me. When I was young, I lashed out when people—my grandparents, aunts, uncles, et cetera—tried to touch me this way, and I was chastised and punished for it. It hurt people’s feelings and made them feel rejected, a terrible sin, especially between a child and an elder, so I learned, by necessity, to grit my teeth through it. I grit my teeth now. “You’re a good girl, Anna. What we’re doing is hard, but you don’t complain. You always listen. You make me proud.”

With one last pat on my head, she leaves. Tears swim in my eyes before falling onto the back of my dad’s hand. I wipe them away with my sleeve, but they keep falling.

I don’t make a single sound as I cry.