Jaya’s birthday was coming.
And I was not okay. I stood in the middle of my very clean, very beige living room, holding a pink unicorn paper plate with shaking hands and muttering like I’d just been asked to plan the Olympics.
“A party?” I mumbled to myself. “With… balloons? Kids? Games?”
I was sweating like a fugitive in a TSA line.
I had faced global smugglers, buried weapons in dead zones, laundered millions across continents with nothing but a flip phone and a lipstick knife — but this?
This was parental hell. “JHING!” I screamed into my phone like it was on fire. “I NEED HELP.”
She and Mylene arrived at my house in matching green Crocs and clipboards. They looked too serious, like it was about dead dinosaurs or something related to world peace.
“I got this,” Jhing Jhing said wi
