Sushi for One? (10 page)

“Wanna bet a pizza on it?”

She held out a fist, and they bumped knuckles. “You’re on. Loser buys.”

In the team circle, Jill introduced the other players. Carol leaned close to whisper to him. “Watch out. Lex is going to be intense this game ’cuz she’s playing against Kin-Mun.”

“Is he her boyfriend?” Aiden had heard bad tales about significant others playing against each other. Not that he cared if Kin-Mun was Lex’s boyfriend. Nope, he didn’t care at all.

“Naw, they’ve been friends forever. If they haven’t dated by now, they never will.”

“Aiden, you know coed rotation, right?” Jill asked.

Everyone stared at him. It seemed like people were holding their breath. “Uh . . . sort of.”

“Define ‘sort of.’ ” Lex looked at him hard.

“My class instructor explained it to us, but I’ve never played it.”

Lex groaned and looked at the ceiling. The other players were more restrained.

Jill laughed. “Well, we’ll try it. We’ll tell you where to go.”

They set up with Aiden in middle back — the easiest position for a guy in coed rotation — so he could watch how the other guys moved in the complex pattern. Except it stuck him in the prime passing zone.

He shanked the first serve. However, Lex — the front-row setter —raced down his high, wide pass and made a brilliant set to their strong side hitter, who slammed a line drive past Kin-Mun’s three-story-tall block.

“Haa!” Lex heckled Kin-Mun under the net. He made a face at her.

The game continued with the two scores neck and neck. Lex dove and rolled. She screamed possession as she ran down shanked passes or blocked hits. She became a blazing fireball on the court.

Stop watching her. And stop liking it.

Just observing her made him step up his game. He dove for balls.

He became more territorial when passing. His passes marginally improved.

“Game point!” The ref signaled the serve.

Lex served. Kin-Mun, in the front row, passed the ball and then set up for a hit. Aiden leaped to block . . .

He actually got a touch on it. The ball sailed high.

“Got it!”

“Mine!”

He and Lex shouted at the same time. He was closer to it. He ran —

“Oomph!” He and Lex went down in a tangle of limbs. He slapped his hands on the floor to keep his face from planting nose-first. Lex toppled next to him.

Another body tripped over his arm and dropped on him.
Ow!
An elbow hit his ribcage.

“Umph!” Lex groaned next to him as yet another player flipped over someone’s legs and came down on Lex’s head.

Somewhere, Jill was laughing.

Lex’s face lay six inches away from him. She lifted her head and glowered at him.

Aiden already knew he should say his last prayers now. Lex was going to kill him. Slowly.

She was going to kill him. Slowly.

Lex sat on the sidelines watching the last game of the night. She hated sitting out, but she had to take her turn.

“You can’t be too mad at the guy.” Robyn, whose team referee’d on the far court, watched Aiden dive for a shanked ball. His assertive play made up for a girl’s timid defense in the back row.

“We lost that first game. Kin-Mun is never going to let me forget this.”

“Oh, come on. It’s only pizza.”

“I had such high hopes for this season when I saw the team Jill had picked. Even Neal wasn’t a bad fourth round guy. But then Neal had knee surgery and we got Aiden.”

“I think Aiden’s better than Neal.”

Lex turned her head to stare at her. “How?”

“Aiden gives 110 percent on the court. He’s more aggressive than Neal, and he stays in position.”

Lex couldn’t argue with Robyn, but she still didn’t like having him on her team, where she had to see him every week. “He’s awkward.”

“He’s not that graceful right now, but hopefully he’ll get better.”

Lex pursed her lips.

Robyn motioned to him. “He’s also a pretty cool player. He doesn’t get upset.”

Aiden always had that calm, composed look on his face. “He’s so bland.”

“He doesn’t cuss at himself or anybody else. He never gets emotional. Unlike somebody I know.” Robyn nudged her.

“I’m not emotional.”

“Suuure. You
never
yell at anyone on the court.”

Kin-Mun’s team reff ’d the game. He saw her glowering, and he did his dorky “laugh and point.”

“Ooooh, I’m never going to live this down.”

“It’s your fault. You heckled Kin-Mun first.”

Lex huffed. She couldn’t keep her massive mouth shut.

She had more important things to worry about, anyway. Like employment. And a volleyball sponsor. “Do you know anyone else who might be able to sponsor my girls’ team?”

Robyn’s mouth opened to the size of a
musubi
rice ball. “You mean Jim said no?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? What did he say?”

Lex frowned, remembering. “He seemed kind of evasive. I figured he didn’t like hurting my feelings by saying no.”

“I don’t understand. He can totally afford it.” Robyn peered at where Jim reff’d a game on the third court. “I’m going to talk to him.”

“Don’t. I’ll find another sponsor.”

“I can’t think of anybody else who has the money to do it.”

Lex sighed. “I’ll keep looking.”

“I don’t understand why Jim said no. It must be something serious that happened, or someone scary who threatened him not to do it.”

Lex laughed. “Who in the world would scare him? King Kong?”

TWELVE

L
ex’s head whirled. Not just from circling the biology labs where Trish was supposed to be, but also from the chorus of chemicals smelling up each lab. If she hadn’t run into Trish’s boss, Lex would still be wandering through the labs trying to find her.

She walked down the sunny path to the other biotech research building, but she couldn’t enjoy the warm day. Trish hadn’t been to church again. Come to think of it, she hadn’t talked to her cousin for a couple of weeks, and they usually gabbed pretty often. Was she okay?

Lex entered the glass doors to the lobby of S-building and stopped in her tracks. “What are you doing here?”

Aiden turned and backed away like she had the bird flu virus.

“Hello to you, too.”

Lex peered over the counter of the receptionist’s desk at the empty chair. “Did you ring the buzzer?”

“Five minutes ago.” He hit the buzzer again. “Happy?”

“Satisfied.”

“What are you doing here?” Aiden looked genuinely curious.

“Looking for Trish.”

Alarm flickered across Aiden’s face, but then he assumed that bland-as-rice expression. “She works here?”

He had so much control over his expression. Lex wondered what it would be like to rile him. “She doesn’t work in this building. Anxious to see her again?” Lex smirked.

His eyebrow twitched — a crack in his calm mask. “Can’t get away from you two.”

“What?” Lex feigned shock. “You’re the one who’s stalking me, buddy.”

“You came through those doors after I did. Looks like you’re the one who can’t leave me alone.”

He was teasing her. Lex smiled. Maybe he wasn’t as colorless as she first thought.

The receptionist clicked through the magnetically locked doors from the labs into the lobby area. “Who are you seeing?”

“Trish Sakai.”

“Spenser Wong.”

The receptionist called Trish and Spenser to snap at them about their guests at the front.

Spenser came first — a tall, broad Asian guy with the Hollywood look of Chow Yun-Fat and Russell Wong rolled into one. He didn’t even glance at Lex. “Hey, Aiden. Ready to go to lunch? It’s gotta be fast today. I have an assay running.” They left out the front glass door.

Trish came through the magnetically locked door a few minutes later. “Hi, Lex. What are you doing here?”

“Want to go out for lunch?”

“Sure. Come in, let me finish up my experiment.”

Lex trailed Trish to yet another smelly lab. Trish donned a lab coat and pointed to a chair a few feet away. “Stay there while I finish pipetting these.” She seated herself in front of a big inset hood with air whooshing up through a pipe in the ceiling.

“Why did you come all the way here?” Trish had to shout above the noise as she manipulated some delicate instruments and canisters of liquid inside the hood.

“I can’t find you anywhere else. Why haven’t you been answering your phone?”

Trish had her back to Lex so she couldn’t see her expression, but Trish’s silence said it all.

“What gives? You haven’t been to church lately, either.”

“I’ve, uh . . . been with Kazuo.”

“The Japanese waiter?”

“Yeah.”

“Even on Sunday mornings?”

“We, uh . . . go out for breakfast.”

A dark suspicion nagged on the edges of Lex’s mind, but she didn’t voice it. Maybe if she ignored it, it wouldn’t be true. “Oh.”

“I saw Grandma once a couple weeks ago. We were having breakfast at Hobee’s.”

“How did dear Grandma look?”

Trish gave her a sidelong look. “Leeex. She’s not a monster. She was having breakfast with Mr. and Mrs. Tomoyoshi.”

Oh, no.
Lex’s heart suddenly put on twenty pounds and thudded to the bottom of her stomach. She buried her head in her hands.

“What were they talking about?”

“How should I know? I just went over to say hi. I mentioned you. How you were trying so hard to find a sponsor — ”

“Trish!” Lex jumped off her chair. “You didn’t!”

“Didn’t what?”

“Tell Grandma I was looking for a sponsor.”

Trish pouted and knit her brows. “Oh, did I say sponsor? I must have said boyfriend. Yes, I’m sure I said boyfriend.” But the quaver in Trish’s voice and the whiteness of her face said otherwise.

Lex remembered Mr. Tomoyoshi’s abrupt about-face. Jim’s evasive no. The other business owners who politely turned her down.

Grandma’s influence rooted deep into the Japanese American community because Grandpa’s bank’s loan ser vices had been so reliable for everyone. Lex knew without a doubt that Grandma had been talking to business owners — warning, bribing, or calling in favors so that they wouldn’t agree to Lex’s petition of sponsorship.

“Trish, how could you?”

“I made an innocent mistake.” Trish chewed at her bottom lip.

“What are you going to do?”

Lex took a few deep breaths, but it didn’t calm the simmering in her gut. “I’m going to talk to Grandma.”

Lex didn’t hate children, but right now, she just wanted them all to be quiet.

“Grandma!” Lex’s yell could barely be heard over the cacophony of children’s voices inside Lotus Preschool. Grandma stood at the far end of the playroom, listening while Lex’s cousin’s son Eric prattled about his day. If only Grandma would listen to her grandchildren that way.

“Hi there, Eric. Grandma, I need to talk to you.”

“Eric, say hi to your cousin Lex.”

“Hi your caw-zin Leksss.”

“Grandma . . .”

“We’ll talk after I drive Eric home to his mommy. Don’t you want to see your mommy?”

Eric smiled up at his great-grandma and placed a sticky hand on the immaculate cream skirt.

“No, we’ll talk now. It took me long enough to track you down,”

Lex insisted.

“I always pick up Eric on Wednesdays.” Grandma watched Eric take out plastic dinosaurs from the toy box. Such an attentive, loving great-grandma. Ha!

“Grandma, stop influencing all the business owners.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She aimed her sing-songy tone at Eric instead of Lex.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Lex suddenly felt rather stupid demanding her Grandma do anything. She couldn’t even prove that she’d influenced Mr. Tomoyoshi or Jim. “If I want another sponsor, it’s none of your business, because you’re the one who decided to drop the girls’ team.”

“I haven’t dropped them yet.” Grandma’s sugary sweet voice had a definite sharp edge. “Didn’t we have an agreement?”

“You can’t force me to just find someone to love. Tons of my friends are actively looking for a significant other and not finding anybody.”

“Your problem is that you weren’t looking at all.”

“Dad doesn’t care!” Lex flung out her arms — luckily, there weren’t any bodies over two feet tall in her vicinity. “Why does it matter so much to you?”

Grandma blinked, and for a fraction of a moment, she looked old and tired. She absently rubbed her right hip, the one she’d been favoring the day of the Red Egg and Ginger party. Then in the next moment, the look melted away.

Had Lex imagined it? Grandma never seemed
old.
She always had the perfect clothes, perfect poise, perfect health. Or maybe that’s what she wanted people to think. Was Grandma feeling her age just like the rest of the human race? Was that what was behind her campaign for more great-grandchildren?

Grandma’s fierce eyes stabbed into Lex with renewed force. “It’s for your own good, you know.”

Lex rolled her eyes.
Save me from bossy, control-freak grandmas with good intentions.

Grandma’s eyes narrowed to black toothpicks. “See? You’re not taking me seriously. Well, you’ll take me seriously if you can’t find another sponsor.”

“Why are you punishing those junior high girls? This has nothing to do with them.”

“They matter to you.” Shrewdness glittered in her hard gaze, the same smarts that made her such a good partner for Grandpa’s business. “I am not playing games, Lex. If you don’t start looking for a boyfriend, I can talk to other people who matter to you too.”

A sliver of ice dropped down her shirt. “What do you mean? You wouldn’t.”

“You’ve seen how much influence I have. What if Richard were evicted from his apartment? What if your father’s car were repossessed?”

Would she really do that to her own son? Her grandson? Just for one granddaughter?

Lex had challenged her, put her back up. Like a Tasmanian devil, Grandma didn’t take growls from the enemy as warnings — they were acts of aggression. And she responded in kind.

Grandma bent and picked up Eric. “Time to go home, sweetie.”

Her direct gaze made Lex back up a step. “I had better see more effort, Lex.” Grandma walked out of the daycare.

Lex refused to play dead just because Grandma snarled. But she wouldn’t be stupid either. She dashed in late to the Singles Group meeting on Thursday night with twofold purpose — date trolling, but also sponsor seeking, in the one place she knew Grandma couldn’t penetrate.

Church.

Grandma didn’t understand Lex’s and her three cousins’ faith, but even Grandma wouldn’t go up against God.

Lex had tried talking to the older members of the church last Sunday. They were all distantly friendly to her, a little aloof. They tended to prefer to hang out with their friends, who were their own age and spoke to them in Japanese or Chinese or Korean. The language barrier itself made their relationship with Lex a bit wide. She felt uncomfortable asking them for sponsorship — almost as if it would be rude.

She also realized she didn’t talk much with the married-with-kids crowd. It seemed kind of rude to ask them for sponsorship when most of them barely remembered her name. She didn’t have a clue who else she could approach.

So she stuck with the church family she knew — the singles.

Except Lex had lost precious pre-Singles Group mix and mingle time. Trish had said she’d pick Lex up, but after twenty minutes and no Trish — not that Lex had been ready by 6:30, but she’d been ready by 6:40 at least — Lex had jumped into her Honda and limped to church.

The worship leaders tuned their guitars — Lex had about five minutes. She regretted now how plainly she’d informed all the guys about her non-interest in anything more than friendship. She suspected they were all a little afraid of her.

But maybe she could lean on their sense of Christian charity. “Hey, Alvin.”

“Hi, Lex.” He had the wary look of a trapped animal.

Lex mentally went down her Ephesians List. Alvin was a Christian (faithful attendee) and had a good job (engineer), but there was no physical attraction (bug eyes and wide mouth made him look like a toad), he didn’t play an interesting sport (fishing, which Lex didn’t have the patience for), and he had really bad dandruff (enough said).

“Alvin, would you consider donating to a junior high school volleyball team?”

His eyes lit up, which made him look really freaky, like a frog with electric eyes. “Oooh, a junior high school ministry? How great.”

“Uh . . . not exactly a ministry.”

The lights went out. “No?”

She did ministry-like stuff, didn’t she? “Well, sometimes the girls confide in me about boys and stuff, and I try to talk to them about God.”

“Is it evangelical?”

“Uh . . .”

“Do you open their eyes and their hearts to the depth of their sin, leading to death, and their need for a personal savior?”

Lex blinked and stared at him.

Alvin took that to mean encouragement. “Do you lead them in a prayer of confession and surrender to Christ, inviting Jesus to dwell in their hearts?”

“Not . . . exactly. I coach them to play volleyball.”

“Do you have outreach where you invite non-believers to come and experience the love of God’s children?”

“Um . . . well, anyone can join. It’s a club team.”

“Do you have prayer and worship before and after each game?”

“That would be a no.”

“What do you do with them?”

“I tell them God loves them and cares about their problems. I tell them I’ll pray for their girlfriends to forgive them, and for boys to notice them, and — ”

In shock, Alvin eased away from her. “That’s not a ministry.