"How was it with the new employee today?" Greta asked, surrounded by colorful flower arrangements. As cyclical as a menstrual cycle, every month, flowers overtook our house for a week as Greta, Talia, me, and sometimes Dad sorted out our monthly subscription orders.

"If it were up to me, I'd fire him immediately," I replied.

"Maybe you shouldn't be so quick to judge people, Romy."

I plopped myself onto the couch. The smell of floral juices wafted into my nose—along with some other deliciousness coming from the kitchen. "He refused to clean or learn about flowers, broke Talia's radio, and ditched the shop in the middle of his shift." 

Greta looked up from her laptop and adjusted her glasses over her large nose. "Oh... That's a problem."

"I texted Talia. She said we'll talk later, but she's giving him another chance no matter what I say."

"Jack is his name, yes? I know his mother." Greta closed her laptop. A stray hydrangea petal lay tucked between a curl in her hair. "He's a sweet boy. Just troubled, is all."

My eyes bulged out their sockets. "Three things. One, you know his mother? Is that why you hired him? Two, sweet boy? He's a total brat. And three—according to just about everyone, I'm troubled, too, but no one's making excuses for me. Or calling me a sweet girl."

Greta sighed, far too used to my mini rants, far too used to tuning them out. "Because you're not a sweet girl, Romy."

"Right. I'm suddenly a cold-blooded killer just because some sad, underpaid psychologist said I'm a sociopath."

"That doesn't have anything to do with—"

"It has everything to do with it. It's all about learning empathy until it's time to have empathy for me."

Wow. Good line. I needed to write it down somewhere for the next time I needed to argue my case. I should be a lawyer so someone could start paying me for it.

"Anyway, what's for dinner?" I asked. "I'm starving. Is Dad actually cooking? What's the occasion?"

Greta pursed her lips. "We invited Jack and his mom over for dinner."

Great. Excellent. Just wonderful.

"Can't wait to see him explain his job abandonment," I laughed. 

Dad came out of the kitchen, wearing his pink cooking apron. I always teased him for it—the fabric had little cartoon flowers printed all over—but he claimed it was an essential for "special occasions". 

"Did you tell her?" he asked Greta. 

"I told her Jack is coming," she said.

He refused to meet my eye when he clarified, "I meant... about Romy's mother."

I reached across a clump of hydrangeas to pat Greta's arm. "What are you talking about? She's right here."

"Not Greta," he said. "Grace."

It'd been so long since I heard her name. "What about her?"

"She moved to Seattle last week."

I winced. "Good for her."

"And we invited her to have dinner with us tonight."

White fog clouded my vision. "You told me I'd never have to see her again."

"Things changed," Dad said. "It's time to learn how to forgive."

I stood. I reached for the nearest vase and threw it at the wall. The ceramic shattered, and the pieces clattered to the floor along with a clump of dirt and flowers. 

No one made a sound. I ran up the stairs, barely holding it in when I got to my room.

Dad had the nerve to not only call her my mother, but invite her to dinner. Naive as ever, she'd taken advantage of it while they were together. And he let her. Because he "loved" her.

When I was ten, he used to say, she won't be living with us anymore, Romy; she doesn't understand how to be a mother; she doesn't understand how to love.

And that was a lie, because Grace did understand how to love.

She just never understood how to love me.

If anything could make me the cold-blooded killer Greta dumbly worried I'd be, it was this. But I didn't want to hurt anyone. What I really wanted was to burn all the flowers downstairs and break everything around me, but that'd only fit into the troubled, angry teenage girl label hanging over my head.

But I wouldn't back down. Wouldn't stay in my room while Grace Nakamoto made herself comfortable in my house. So when it came time for dinner, I went down. Sat at the end of the table with a butter knife in hand. Glared at Grace sitting on my right, her clothes as neat as Talia's.

"We were just talking about you," Dad said, a nervous shake to his words. "I was telling her about the flower shop, about your great grades."

For years, when I tried to remember her face, some random Asian woman came up, manufactured by my brain. But the second I saw her again, the blurry memories sharpened. Four years. Four years, and she looked the same. Basically the forty-something version of me. An hourglass figure on the chubbier side, full cheeks, and long, black hair. 

And she had the nerve to smile at me. The same smile as when I visited her as a kid, her tactic to make me believe that soon, she'd be back home. 

Yeah, that didn't happen.

"How was work today, Romy?" she asked, breaking the silence. 

The sound of my name coming from her was one of the few things in this world to unsettle me.

"It's great earning an honest living," I said flatly. "I wonder when you'll try it."

Dad's eyes bulged. Greta pressed her fingers to her temples. Talia knew the most about Grace— the only one who didn't give me an excuse like she's your mom at the end of the day; you have to love her—but even she looked as frazzled as Dad.

"Romy's doing great," he said to break another long silence, then pulled on his collar and looked at Greta. "When is the boy, erm, Jack coming?" 

"Who is he?" Grace asked. Always so nosy. "Your boyfriend?"

"He's our new employee," I said. "I don't have a boyfriend."

"She's never had one!" exclaimed Dad, laughing a little bit. "Can you believe it? A girl like her?"

I tried to laugh along with dad, but all that kept coming to my mind were the names of all the boys I had dated.

Eli Fuentes being the last, though I'd cut that off before he could make it official. 

"Wow," Grace said, feigning surprise. It was getting hard to breathe. The delicious smell from before now made me want to puke. 

The doorbell rang. And I couldn't believe it, but Jack and his mom walking in suddenly didn't seem like the worst thing.

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"So, Jack, how are you liking the new job?" Dad asked, cutting into a bolinho de bacalhau. The traditional Brazilian dish was something he only made a few times a year. And now I finally knew the occasion.  

Five minutes into dinner, and Dad still didn't get the hint Jack wasn't exactly the type to answer questions. 

"I bet he's loving it," Danielle—his mother, his mother who actually cared about him—said. She sat on the left side of the table, Jack and Greta beside her. Talia on the right with Dad and Grace.

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, it was definitely love what made him leave in the middle of his shift."

Another silence. Jack had his head lowered over his plate, and I watched his forearms flex as he tensed. Maybe it made me as bad as Seth and Megan, but if making him mad was only satisfaction I'd get today, I'd take it. 

"Is that true, Jack?" Danielle asked, but predictably, he didn't respond. 

Talia, her voice far too cheery, quickly said, "It was a misunderstanding. We can say today wasn't his first official shift."

"I sure hope you'll pay him for it," Danielle joked. "It's about time he started funding his rock obsession.

Rock obsession?

"Rock obsession?" Dad asked, chuckling. "That's a little strange."

I didn't think it was possible for him to get even more tense, but Jack's hand tightened around his fork. He looked up enough to glance at me before staring back at his plate.

Oh please, don't act as if this is as bad for you as it is for me right now, I wanted to say. 

Danielle moved a strand of brown hair behind her ear. "You should see his room, it's full of-"

She was cut off by the placement of Jack's hand on her forearm. He glared at her and she sighed after a few seconds, nodding. "Sorry, Jack."

Then, stuffing a forkful of bacalhau into her mouth, she changed the subject: "I have to say, this is delicious! What's in it?"

"Fried cod," Dad said with a smile. "It's what I grew up eating in São Paulo." 

"Oh, I've never visited. That's in Brazil, right?" 

He nodded. 

"I hope you don't mind clearing things up a bit, Caio, but which one is your wife again?" 

Both Greta and Grace's heads perked from either side of the table.

"I am," Greta said. "Grace is Romy's mother."

"Also his ex-wife who just got out of prison," I interrupted, making everyone's eyes bulge this time. "She committed corporate fraud."

But Grace remained calm. "I was released last year, Romy. And Caio told me you spent time in juvenile detention."

My lip quirked in a tense smile. Two could play this game.

Jack looked up, fork mid-air. This time, it was Danielle's turn to stare awkwardly at her plate.

"It's good to give people the opportunity for improvement," Greta said quietly, helping herself to another serving of rice. "For change."

"I'll believe it when she stops being a bad mother," I said.

"Romy," Dad cut in. "We don't need to have this conversation now. You're making our guests uncomfortable."

But Jack was watching this unfold like it was soap opera special #2 of the day, smirking ever-so-slightly, similar to when he broke Talia's radio, but this time, he covered his mouth with his hand, probably trying to hide it. And doing a horrible job. I bet he just found this hilarious. I bet he was living for the drama, way more more than I was comfortable with him witnessing considering I knew nothing about him. Nosy ass.

"Maybe it wasn't that I was a bad mother," Grace murmured, unable to stop herself. "Maybe it was that you were a bad child."

Here I was thinking I'd go the rest of my life without having to see her again. When she went to prison—for the second time—her release never crossed my mind. At thirteen years old, I visited her once, had my grandpa drive me to one of O'ahu's correctional facilities in the middle of a forest reserve just to find pleasure in her misery. Her failure. She started crying in the visitation room, going on about her life falling apart, how she hadn't meant for it to happen again, but her tears dried up when I didn't cry with her. She called me a sociopathic little demon, diagnosing me years before the psychologists would, and I just laughed and laughed at her greasy hair and prison clothes.

The atmosphere around the dinner table thickened. Even the flowers from our subscriptions would wilt underneath this silence, the only sound being clinking forks on plates. How the hell did anyone think this dinner was a good idea? 

Talia patted my arm in what she probably thought was reassurance.

"We're moving the flower shop," Dad finally said. "It's exciting news—we're going to start renting a place closer to downtown."

Danielle smiled, very excited for some simple small talk instead of me airing out my mommy issues. "Oh, that is wonderful."

"How are we going to afford it?" I asked, though the thought of finally moving out of our little dump was the best news in weeks.

Silence again. Greta, Grace, and Dad exchanged looks, but it was Talia who finally came out and said it: "Grace will be helping us out."

I dropped my fork. It clattered on the table, flecking food onto my shirt. "Wow, that explains everything." I let out a bitter laugh that masked how much I truly, desperately, needed to scream. "Moving to Seattle, why Talia wanted a new employee. Except none of you thought to tell me before now. Where did you get the money, Grace?"

She wiped her mouth with a napkin. "My father died a few months ago. I'm using the inheritance to help out with the business."

Some money? Grandpa Tetsuo was totally loaded. "Do I get any?"

"No. He told me it was up to me to help you."

"He trusted you to help me?" I cackled. "Big fucking mistake."

Oops. I cursed, sue me. Jack watched like a fly on the wall, glued to the action, covering his mouth so he wouldn't laugh—at me or with me, I had no idea. Under the table, I kicked his foot, but it only made his smirk break through his lips, and he finally trained his eyes on his plate. His slouched-over, shy soft boy act was the biggest lie of all, but even I tried not to smile. Welcome to Romy Nakamoto Pereira's's full-blown power trip. For once, Dad and Greta couldn't stop it, because honestly? Everyone here could agree I had a point. 

So grandpa Tetsuo died. The same grandpa who drove me to the correctional facility, who tried to teach me Japanese when we visited on weekends on the east side of the island. I was supposed to be his favorite grandchild, but if he hadn't left me a cent of his inheritance—which I doubted; Grace was probably just wanting it for herself—he was dead to me in more ways than one. 

"The new place should be ready to go this week," Greta said. "The most important thing we need is new paint on the walls."

Danielle turned to her son. "I'm sure Jack would love to help paint. Will you do that?" She said the words slowly, like she had to be careful, but he nodded. No smile this time.

"That's great!" Talia exclaimed. "We can make it work on Friday. I'll be there for long enough to set things up, but it'll be mostly Jack and Romy."

It was almost like she was going out of her way to leave us alone together. Maybe she thought it'd make me learn to tolerate him. Maybe she didn't want to be alone with me, to look me in the eye, to tell me she knew about Grace for who knew how long, but left me in the dark.

Therapists usually assumed daddy issues were the culprit behind me acting out, but it was Grace who took the cake. And after today, you could say my issues with everyone multiplied by a factor of ten. Grace might be living off of Tetsuo's hard-earned money, which one could argue was better than meddling in corporate fraud, but if she thought it gave her authority over our business, which one day would be my future flower empire, she was in for a rude awakening. 

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A/N: There's truly nothing I love writing more than awkward dinner scenes.

If you liked this as well, leave a vote and add it to your reading lists 😈 What do you think about Romy and Jack so far? Do you think Romy lashing out is justified? What would you do if you were in her situation?

Song for this chapter (and Romy in general) is Cry by Ashnikko ft. Grimes. 

❀ flowers mentioned in this chapter ❀

✿ hydrangea ✿

This chapter is dedicated to blond- , one of the first readers of the new version of this book. Thank you so much for your support!