I sat next to Hamlet, but barely talked to him as I shoveled seconds, then thirds, into my mouth.
“I’m impressed by your appetite!” Hamlet’s grandmother exclaimed at the end of the meal, nodding toward my absolutely pristine plate.
I looked down, a little sheepish. “I love to eat.”
“Good,” she said, getting up to clear our dishes. Her approval pleased me.
Hamlet jumped up from the table to take them from her. “Here, we’ll do that. You guys go watch a show and relax.”
“Thank you so much, everything was delicious. I’ll have to share your lamb recipe with my dad,” I said as I carried the dishes over to the sink.
“She never shares her recipes! Greedy,” Hamlet’s grandpa said with a belch.
Hamlet froze next to me at the sink so I whispered, “My dad and I have burp contests.”
The chair scraped loudly against the linoleum floor when his grandpa stood up. “You’re going to make your date do dishes?”
I held up a hand, already soapy. “He also said I’d have to do your laundry tonight, so…”
Both his grandparents cackled all the way to the family room.“She’s funny,” Hamlet’s grandpa declared, and I flushed with pleasure. The words to my heart.
Hamlet and I stood side by side washing the dishes, me scrubbing and Hamlet rinsing then drying.
“So, we have a dishwasher, but we never use it,” he said at one point, gesturing toward it.
I nodded. “Let me guess, you use it as a dish rack?”
“Yes! I thought it was a Chinese thing?”
“It is very much a non-American thing. My dad still inspects every dish afterward, like he’s trying to ‘catch it’ not working right.”
He laughed. “Your dad’s the best.”
“I guess,” I said, handing him a glass. “Your grandparents are pretty cool, too.”
“You’re probably wondering why I live with them.”
I scratched my face with a soapy hand. “Oh, um, yeah, that did occur to me.”
“My parents moved back to Beijing because their business was growing so much. That was a couple years ago. So now I live with these guys.” He lifted his chin toward the living room. “Who aren’t my real grandparents.”
I looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, they’re my parents’ friends’ parents. So, family friends, essentially.”
Hm. I turned the water on a little more forcefully. “Oh, okay.”
“I know that sounds weird to you. But my parents wanted me to stay here for my schooling.”
“Oh, okay.” It made me a little sad then, how he was working an entire summer tossing a sign up into the air, separated from his family. Driving a Lexus because his parents thought maybe that made up for the fact that they lived in separate countries.
With the last dish washed, I shut the water off. My hands were wet, but I couldn’t find a dry towel.
“Here.” Hamlet took one of my hands and then pulled up the bottom of his shirt to wipe it off. Then he took the other and dried that one, too.
What an incredibly sexy thing to do for a dork.
“Thank you,” I muttered as I looked around at anywhere but his abs.
