Amidst The Stars

Dates and Pudding

  "Bring her over!"

  Struggling to keep his patience as he shoved a pan of red date pudding into the steamer, Vicente asked for what was probably the hundredth time, "but why?"

  Yao's voice was muffled slightly over the sound of sizzling as he tossed bean sprouts and hard tofu in a wok. "You never stop talking about her. You're always 'Madeline this' and 'Madeline that' and I want to see her so I can see what's so good about her!"

  "Plus — " Ling popped her head into the window from outside the kitchen — "you missed over eighty of our calls during that hot date with her the other day. I want to know why you ignore your dear siblings in favour of her."

  Vicente opened the cover of their second steamer, fanning away the cloud of steam that emerged to pick up the tray of custard buns. "It wasn't a date. We don't go on dates."

  "You go for coffee nearly every day to talk!" Ling said, "and I'm ninety-nine percent sure you two don't talk about school stuff."

  "They probably talk about how to be quiet and dull." Leon joined his sister at the window and grabbed a steaming plate of shredded chicken to take outside. "Like, every afternoon they ask each other, 'hey, how do I be as boring and emo as possible?' and that goes on for an entire hour."

  "I'm not emo." He poured coffee into a half-full glass of iced milk tea and placed it in front of the plate Leon was holding.

  Leon picked up the glass of yuen yeung with his other hand and shrugged, then left to deliver the food.

  "Come on, bring her over tomorrow afternoon." Yao began beating an egg with a pair of chopsticks, shouting over the noise of steel striking against steel. "I'll make you two something, and you can have your deep conversations here."

  He pulled out the pan of red date pudding and grabbed a butter knife to ease the sticky red-and-white treats out of their moulds. The smell of red dates and coconut milk filled the air. "Madeline and I don't have deep conversations. We just talk about baking or school. And sometimes about other stuff, but nothing we've ever talked about was 'deep'."

  "You talk about baking your school?" Leon had reappeared at the window. "How would you even find an oven big enough to fit the entire campus in it?"

  "'Baking or school', Ka Long, not 'baking our school'." Vicente popped the last of the red date puddings out of the mould and tossed the pan into the nearby sink. "We're just friends who talk about random things. I don't know why you're so worked up about it."

  "Bring her over anyways," Yao said. "She's the only friend you have here and I'd like to meet her.",

  "But she lives in the city centre, what if she doesn't want to come to this part of Trofilos?"

  "Aiyah, stop making excuses." He slammed the wok down on the stove with a mighty CLANG. "If she's really your friend she won't care about where you live. Invite her here and have some tea with her. If she doesn't like it here, you can just go back to that stuffy coffee shop near the city hall. Okay?"

  With a sigh, Vicente began to neatly arrange the red date puddings on a plate and said in defeat, "okay, fine. I'll ask her. But if she says no, we're going to The Cove like we always do."

  Once the day was over and the siblings had returned to their apartment, Vicente took his phone out to text Madeline.

  Do you want to go to my brother's restaurant after classes tomorrow? (Sent 21:31)
  My siblings want to meet you, for some reason (Sent 21:31)