His mom watched her peel the fruit with a tiny nod. “Michael is making bún riêu tonight. It’s really good. Has he made it for you yet?”
Stella shook her head as she trained her eyes on the grapefruit. “No, he hasn’t.” Did his mom know Michael had been spending nights at her place? Did she disapprove?
“Mommy, when is the bún riêu ready?” Janie trounced into the room and paused, smiling at her. “Hi, Stella.”
Stella returned her smile. “Hi. Michael said ten more minutes.”
Janie flopped into a scuffed armchair, throwing a jean-clad leg over the arm. “Starving and all I had for lunch was some crackers. I’ve been doing homework since ten this morning.”
Stella silently held out the bowl of peeled grapefruit while Mẹ glowered at her daughter. “You’re getting too pale.” Turning to Stella, she asked, “Can you see how pale she is?”
Janie snatched the bowl and inhaled piece after piece. Stella’s jaw almost dropped. Did she know how much time it took to peel the things?
“Maybe a little pale?” Stella said.
Mẹ spoke to Ngoại in Vietnamese, and Ngoại cast a disapproving look Janie’s way. Stella didn’t understand what she said when she spoke, but it sounded ominous.
“Thanks for throwing me under the bus, Chị Hai.” A crooked grin almost identical to Michael’s flashed as Janie winked, and Stella’s chest turned to mush.
“What does Chị Hai mean?”
Mẹ smiled as she focused on peeling fruit.
Janie popped the last grapefruit slice into her mouth. “It means Sister Two. Michael is my Anh Hai, which means Brother Two. I’m down by the bottom with number six because I had the poor luck to be fifth born. We don’t start at one, by the way. I think one is reserved for parents or something. That’s South Vietnamese interfamily naming convention. You get his number because you’re his.”
A goofy grin teased at Stella’s lips as her heart did clumsy flips and flops. She loved the idea of getting Michael’s number. It made them a pair. Like the shoes by the front door and their hands on the piano.
Janie laughed and said something in Vietnamese to her mom and grandma. They both looked at Stella and laughed as they voiced their agreement.
“Michael’s been really happy this month,” Janie said. “Like embarrassingly happy. The general consensus is it’s because of you.”
She caught her breath. “Has he really?”
“Yeah. He’s obnoxious when he’s happy.”
Stella bit her lip to hide her smile. All of the emotion boiling inside her chest made her feel like it would rupture open, spewing rainbows and glitter. “He’s never obnoxious.”
Janie snorted. “I bet he doesn’t make you smell his socks.”
She choked on a laugh.
“What’s going on here?” Michael asked from the doorway.
His hair stood up in complete disarray, and his face was still flushed from beating up on his sister. He wore a wrinkled white button-down over a plain T-shirt and faded jeans. He was gorgeous.
“Telling her about the socks, dickhead,” Janie said with an evil smirk.
Mẹ sent her a sharp narrow-eyed look, and Janie shrank into her chair.
“I mean, Anh Hai,” she mumbled.
“That’s right. Give me my respect.” His smile was superior and lofty and . . . obnoxious. Stella loved it. “Come on, dinner’s ready.”
Out in the kitchen, his mom went about dishing rice noodles into giant bowls and ladling soup over the top. Janie took the first bowl and brought it to the table where Ngoại sat, cutting everything into little pieces with a scissors before squeezing in lime.
Michael pulled her to the side. “Hi.” He swept his eyes over her and ran his hands down her back, pressing her close. “I like this dress on you. Are the seams bothering you?”
“No, they’re fine. The problem is in the front.”
“What is it? Want me to fix it?” He unbuttoned her black cardigan and inspected the construction of the tight-fitting Lycra dress with a frown. “I don’t see anything obvious.”
“Can you sew a-a-a . . .” She glanced at his family as they set bowls at the table and dropped her voice. “Can you sew a bra into it?”
A wicked smile spread over his mouth, and he opened her cardigan wide to look at the hard points of her nipples. “I could, but I’m not going to.”
He pulled her into the dining room and leaned her against the wall. When he palmed her breasts and tweaked at her nipples, she gasped as her body softened in a jolting flash.
“This is a very high-fashion look, you know.” He bent down and brushed his lips against her temple, her cheek, and finally her mouth—a whisper-light touch that left Stella wanting. “You know how I feel about fashion.”
She snuck her fingers underneath his shirt to touch the hard ridges of his belly. “It’s indecent.”
He kissed her again, deep and slow this time, and pulled away with hooded eyes. “You’d be cold without the cardigan, anyway. No bra.” He rubbed her nipples in exactly the right way to make her limbs melt. “Look at you getting weak in the knees for me. So hot, Stella.”
He captured her lips and stroked his tongue into her mouth. When he pulled her hips flush against his arousal, heat arrowed through her body and made her toes curl. She shouldn’t want him again. Their morning had been particularly acrobatic today, and she’d barely made it to work on time.
The tension on her scalp loosened, and her hair tumbled free. He worked a hand under her dress and gripped her inner thigh.
“Ugh, get a room.” One of his sisters stomped by.
Michael broke away with laughing eyes and high color. “You’re just mad because you didn’t win.”
“You’re a dick,” Maddie said.
After his sister disappeared into the kitchen, Michael ran his fingers through Stella’s hair. “Are you okay? Too embarrassing getting caught?”
She shook her head. She didn’t care if she was caught as long as it was with him.
He planted his hands on the wall behind her and lined his body up against hers so they fit just right, hardness to softness, curves to hollows. “Sexy Stella.”
Their lips joined for another breathless kiss.
“Oh my God, get a room.”
Stella jumped at the brusqueness of Sophie’s voice, and Michael laughed as he broke away. Without looking at them, Sophie marched into the kitchen.
“Let’s eat.” He grabbed Stella’s hand and led her to the two empty seats at the kitchen table.
When everyone cast knowing glances at them, she blushed and stared down at her bowl. Slices of tomato and green herbs floated atop an orange soup thickened with something that looked like scrambled eggs.
“You should wear your hair down more often, Stella,” Sophie said. “Might want to pull it up to eat, though. It’ll get dirty.” She held a jar of brown-colored something out to her. “Want some?”
Stella reached for it. “What is—”
Michael snatched it and set it on the table. “She’ll faint if she smells it, Soph. Her nose is super sensitive.”
Sophie shrugged. “Stinks but tastes good.”
The label was mostly Chinese, but at the bottom it read Fine Shrimp Sauce.
“I like shrimp,” Stella said.
Michael pushed the jar to the other side of the table. “Not this kind of shrimp. Even I can’t eat this stuff.”
“Let her try it, Michael,” Sophie said.
When Stella’s gaze fell upon Janie and Maddie, both girls shook their heads in matching horror.
With an impatient sigh, Mẹ grabbed the jar and put it in front of Stella. “This is mắm ruốc. The correct way to eat bún riêu is with mắm ruốc.”
Stella closed her fingers around the jar. Feeling a lot like Snow White with her apple, she brought it to her nose. On the first whiff, her eyes watered. It was fishy, shrimpy, and potent. Upon her second and third sniffs, however, the smell lost some of its force. “You just put it in the soup?”
Mẹ spooned a dollop into Stella’s bowl. “Like this. And lime and chili sauce.” She squeezed lime in and added a spoonful of red spicy-looking sauce.