Weddings and Wasabi by Camy Tang

seen me at my worst the past few days,” Jenn said. “I hope that you don’t think I’m like that all the time.”

    “No, I can see you’re making a bid for independence,” he said. “There are always rough spots to iron out.”

    With her family, with herself. “For the first time, I feel like I have the freedom to think about myself.”

    “Have you always wanted to please your family?”

    “Always. I was always the good cousin.” The doormat. The people pleaser. “Now, everything I’m doing is displeasing them.” Her job. Her new business. Her new … what was it that was between them? She felt the attraction. She thought he might feel it, too, but she wasn’t sure.

    “We’ve gone through a lot together in only a few days,” she ventured.

    He paused. A long, horrible, excruciating pause from Jenn’s point of view, but she knew it was probably only a few seconds. Finally he said, with a smile that seemed a bit forced, “Yes, we’ve become friends pretty fast.”

    She hadn’t imagined the emphasis on friend.

    What did he mean, friend? What about that kiss? That mind-numbing, hot jalapeño pepper kiss???

    Then again, maybe it had only been that way for her. Maybe for him, it had been only, Meh.

    Suddenly, the wind blew colder than before, and the rays of the sun were dying. The day was over.

    They walked back to the house, and Jenn chatted with Edward’s cousin David while Mimi talked to Edward about his birthday present, the Harley. She overheard him telling her he’d take her for a spin before they left.

    She squelched her surge of jealousy, then chastised herself. She’d been almost paralyzed with fear while riding that bike. And now she was begrudging Mimi? What was wrong with her?

    She was only a friend, that’s what was wrong with her. She frowned a little as she glared at Edward’s back, following him to the house.

    “There you are!” Edward’s mama met them in the backyard. “I didn’t even get a chance to talk to you at dinner.”

    “Jenn, why don’t you talk to Mama while I take Mimi for a spin on the bike?” Edward suggested.

    Mrs. Castillo rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why your uncle bought that after I told him not to—”

    “You worry too much, Mama.” Edward bussed his mother on the cheek and led Mimi to a small barn nearby, which had been converted into a garage.

    “Edward tells me you’ve started your own business.” Mrs. Castillo sat down on a bench in the backyard, watching a few of the younger cousins playing soccer with the kids.

    “I just started my catering business. I’m doing my cousin Trish’s wedding in a few weeks.”

    “How exciting.” She smiled at Jenn. “You must be a good cook.”

    A few weeks ago, she would have said, I’m only okay, or I’m decent. But why display false modesty? What did it accomplish? It hadn’t raised her esteem in her family’s eyes, so why bother? “I love to cook. I attended culinary school and got my degree.”

    Her eyes widened. “Really? How wonderful. So young, and so driven. You remind me of my father-in-law, the man who started this winery.” She sighed. “His father—my husband’s grandfather—didn’t approve. Wanted him to raise cows. The old pasture land is down thataways.” She gestured toward the rolling foothills south of them.

    “He didn’t want him to make wine?”

    “He didn’t want him to be a farmer, working with crops, vulnerable to the weather—an iffy business, in his mind. He wanted him to make money, and at the time, it was in the meat industry. He had his own ideas of what he wanted his son to be.”

    “Like my family.” It slipped out before she could stop herself, but Mrs. Castillo seemed perceptive to the meaning behind her soft words.

    “Your family doesn’t approve of your new business?”

    “That’s an understatement. The only ones happy about it are my cousins.”

    Mrs. Castillo’s eyes caught and held hers with gentle firmness. “And is