After returning Terry’s reddening cheeks back to her, Genevieve shouted, “A geomancer chose it! My mother had nothing to do with it!”
“Shooooo-ing.” When Nyla sounded it out like that, Aya had to laugh. That’s what Genevieve’s going to do to everyone in about five more seconds. “So elegant. So brave.”
“Says the woman with a real old lady name,” Genevieve snapped. “Seriously. Shu-fen? My grandmother’s name was Shu-fen.”
Nyla shrugged. “I’m not insecure about it, Xiu Ying.”
“I’m Yi-hsuan,” Terry said, hand on her chest. “This is Shu-fen. That over there is the illustrious Chia-jung.” She pointed to Cindy, who was oblivious to the game behind her. “That’s her girlfriend, Wei-lin. Oh, and let’s not forget superstar, Yi Wei Fan, who now goes by Lisa Yi. Or her hot mess of a girlfriend, Wendy Ahn Liu Yang, as is the Singaporean tradition for names.”
“They’re such mouthfuls,” Nyla concurred. “Trying to have the best of both worlds. We get it, you’re super Chinese and British.”
Genevieve drummed her fingers on the bartop. “I let you get away with murder.”
“How did you not know her Chinese name was Xiu Ying after all this time?” Nyla asked Aya, who fanned herself with the envelope from Singapore. “It suits her so well. She’s elegant and brave. Like a butterfly slamming into a window and then getting up and doing it again.”
“Not like Shu-fen, whose natural odor does not live up to her name.”
Nyla rolled her eyes and shoved her shoulder against Terry’s chest. Two seconds later, they were play-fighting until one had wrestled the other against the bar. That’s when the giggles erupted, and Aya realized mixing these women with alcohol was definitely a gamble. “Genevieve is very careful about revealing certain things. For instance, although I’ve seen the cover of her passport a hundred times, she’s never let me see the contents. I’ve asked. I like looking at visa stamps.”
“It’s not because I don’t want you seeing my name,” Genevieve insisted. “It’s my photo. Absolutely horrible.”
“I look like such a stunner in mine,” Aya drolly said.
“You at least look like yourself. I look like I showed up hungover.”
“Did you?” Nyla asked.
Genevieve was red in the face again. “No! Shut up!”
As more laughter was had at her expense, Aya took Genevieve back into her arms and apologized for calling so much attention to a woman’s birth name. “Names here are dreadfully boring,” she said. “Especially Mari’s. Her name literally means truth. Our parents could have given her the characters for jasmine, but no, she’s a big flesh pile of truth. Can’t you see?”
That was perfectly timed for Mari hucking back a shot of tequila. She pumped her fists into the air and declared everyone in the bar was her new best friend. What she didn’t know was that Rose was gaping at the giant wedgie in Mari’s butt.
“She’s living her truth, that’s for sure.”
“Hey, hey!” Lisa appeared at the end of the bar, the selfie stick in her hand almost poking out Terry’s eyes. “Let’s take a picture of you two in front of the sign! I can add it to my Instagram posts.”
“Oh, I don’t know…” Genevieve said.
Aya brushed some hair out of her girlfriend’s face. “I think it would be a good marketing opportunity. Besides, you look so good tonight.” She tugged on the elastic of Genevieve’s black dress. It left little to the imagination, which was how Aya liked it. God willing, I will be getting all up in this dress when we go back to her place later.
Genevieve eventually relented. As the others made space for Aya to lead Genevieve by the hand to the back of the bar, where the orange neon sign glowed in infamy, more than a few words of encouragement rang out above the other ruckus of the building. Aya understood none of it – aside from Mari’s half-drunken yells, anyway.
“They are such a cute couple!” she half-yelled, half-sobbed into her bottle of beer. ”Mou, I wanna go to Singapore and find a new husband! Do any of you ladies have a single brother? I’ll even take your barely legal sons!”
Aya did not bother to translate that. While Mari drank more beer and swayed to the beat of an old Southern All Stars song, Aya looped her arm around Genevieve and posed with her beneath the sign. Sheens of orange illuminated the black hair Genevieve so desperately tried to fix before any cameras went off in their direction.
“You look amazing,” Aya reassured her. “I have an idea to make you worry less about your hair, though.”
“What is it? Tell me! Because my hair is driving me crazy!”
Aya brought her in for a kiss that caused more than a few yelps to erupt and phone cameras to go off.
“Aya!” Genevieve grabbed the front of her girlfriend’s shirt as she chastised her. “What was that for? In front of everyone?”
“Just letting the whole world know how much I love you.”
If there were anything else that would have placated Genevieve at that moment and encouraged her to kiss Aya again, it was lost to the night. I don’t need anything else. Nobody in that bar existed once Aya’s lips were on her girlfriends, their embrace imperfect, their clothes wrinkled, and their hair caught on the static in the air.
I’ve found myself a queen. That’s all Aya saw when she opened her eyes and gazed at that regal visage smiling back at her. The most contented queen to ever rule over my heart.
Genevieve Liu may have been the Queen of Love, but Aya didn’t think that trapped a woman into one frame of identity. Love meant so much more than sex and romance. It was the friends who gave them a hard time but were always there for them when the world was antagonistic. It was the family that firmly believed in the mantra that blood was thicker than water. And it was the whole of the world, where snow fell, rain swelled, and the sun rose again.
To be the queen of that kind of love brought with it a heart as big as the moon. Aya always did love the view of the moon on a warm summer night. The kind of night when she fell in love with Genevieve Liu, queen of Aya’s heart and the bearer of her love.
The End