“I wanted to let the suspense build.”
Rolling my eyes I laid back down. “You do that but fair warning while the suspense is building I might fall asleep.”
“Fine. Gosh. It’s Malachi Lord.”
I froze, unsure of what to say.
“Silence is not the reaction I was expecting, Esther.”
“Sorry…” I started to drift off but caught myself. “Malachi Lord? As in the author Malachi Lord?”
“New York is a big place but I doubt there are many who share the same.”
She had a point. “I just don’t understand, how can you be—?”
Her laughter cut me off. “Esther you’re so naïve and sweet sometimes it’s funny. Of course I don’t love him. I just mean I have a crush on him. Like a huge heart churning crush. And I’ve been trying to cyberstalk him, you know, to get more information on him, but there isn’t much and your fansite is down.”
It took me a second to process…I really was that tired. It was then that all the questions I’d wanted to ask my grandfather came back into my mind. “Wait. My site is down?!”
I sat up quickly grabbing my laptop again.
“Really your site that’s what you’re worried about I—”
“Li-Mei! It’s not down! You nearly gave me a heart attack! Are you sure you have the right link?”
“Forget about the damn site! My love life is evolving!”
I took a deep breath closing the laptop. “Fine, rewind. You met Malachi Lord today? What happened? What did he say to you? I bet he’s really nice—”
“He’s a total asshole.” She snapped. “And a bit weird…he barely even made eye contact with me. He was like this wounded wolf—if you got too close he’d bite your head off.”
Everything I’d pictured my favorite author to be like had just been incinerated in two sentences. No, wait…
“Well in his defense he did just rescue your mother from a burning car. He was probably just injured and dealing with the stress of it all.”
“Maybe…” She trailed off. “A few nurses were fans and asked for his autograph, apparently he said no and walked away.”
“Well…” I didn’t have an excuse for that one. “Wait, then why do you love him—I mean have a crush on him?”
“Esther,” she said like she couldn’t believe I was asking. “First, he is so handsome. Even more so in person. He’s muscular but not like a meat head, so I guess more fit than muscular. I just wanted to reach out and touch his pecs. Oh, and by the way, he glares with those sultry blue eyes like he knows you know. He’s so handsome he could totally…”
“Secondly?” I cut in before she went down that rabbit hole.
“Oh, right…secondly he saved my mom. And thirdly he saved my mom from a burning car like Superman. And fourthly—”
“Why did you say he saved your mom like it was an afterthought?” I laughed then remembered I hadn’t asked about her mother. “How is she a? Are you in Jersey now with her?”
“Why do you think I’m speaking Mandarin?”
“Li-Mei it is an ungodly time in the morning, does it seem like I’m functioning enough to think right now?”
“I’m speaking in Mandarin,” she went on as if I hadn’t said anything, “so that my mother, who is in her room now, will hear parts of our conversation and be satisfied that I have Chinese friends.”
“Li-Mei…I’m black.”
“She doesn’t know that,” she said it happily and I had to laugh. “Seriously though, you’d think a woman who just had a near death experience would be more worried about herself. Nope! Instead she’s using this as motivation to get me married, because apparently if she died I’d be all alone with my cats who, when I die of old age or of depression or both, will turn on me and start to eat my face because no one would realize that I’d died!”
I held back the laughter that was fighting to break free. With my hand over my mouth I managed to say, “You’re making that up.”