The Donut Trap

by Julie Tieu

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Multicultural & Interracial Romance; Romantic Comedy; Young Adult

Synopsis

Julie Tieu sparkles in this debut romantic comedy, which is charmingly reminiscent of the TV show Kim’s Convenience and Frankly in Love by David Yoon, about a young woman who feels caught in the life her parents have made for her until she falls in love and finds a way out of the donut trap.

Jasmine Tran has landed herself behind bars—maple bars that is. With no boyfriend or job prospects, Jasmine returns home to work at her parents’ donut shop. Jasmine quickly loses herself in a cyclical routine of donuts, Netflix, and sleep. She wants to break free from her daily grind, but when a hike in rent threatens the survival of their shop, her parents rely on her more than ever.

Help comes in the form of an old college crush, Alex Lai. Not only is he successful and easy on the eyes, to her parents’ delight, he’s also Chinese. He’s everything she should wish for, until a disastrous dinner reveals Alex isn’t as perfect as she thinks. Worse, he doesn’t think she’s perfect either.

With both sets of parents against their relationship, a family legacy about to shut down, and the reappearance of an old high school flame, Jasmine must scheme to find a solution that satisfies her family’s expectations and can get her out of the donut trap once and for all.

 

Release date: November 2, 2021

Publisher: Avon

Print pages: 368

Sample

Chapter 1

All of my customers have told me at one point or another that Sunshine Donuts is their happy place. Who can blame them? There are colorful sprinkled donuts. The smell of coffee mixed with the cloying saccharine aroma of glaze is intoxicating. Friendly customer service is the utmost priority. It is a great place to visit. To live and breathe it every day—that’s a different story.

I slammed a stack of pink card stock on the stainless-steel front counter. Folding donut boxes every day was the bane of my existence. In order for the box to close properly, every edge had to be precisely creased at a 90-degree angle. There was no shortcut to creating these boxes. Just mindless, tedious manual labor.

After I tucked in the lid on the last box, I rubbed off the bits of pink card stock that clung to the palms of my sweaty hands. Normally, folding a day’s worth of pink boxes dried my hands. Except today, the air conditioning wasn’t working and the hot air coming from the commercial refrigerators made it unbearably muggy. It was so hot that I forgot to say mm-hmmm to give my mom the impression that I was listening to her as I tuned out her nagging.

“So, what do you think, Jas?” my mom asked, looking at me over her glasses with eyes that begged me to agree. Gray hairs have invaded the center part of her hair. She was going to ask me to help her dye her hair soon. My mom rolled up the sleeves on her lavender oxford shirt and dusted a patch of powdered sugar off her jeans. She looked just like the moms in the laundry detergent commercials, except she didn’t pat herself on the back when a chore was completed. She would simply find another thing to do.

“What?” I lowered my head to my shoulder and dabbed my forehead with my T-shirt sleeve. I was sweating like a pig. If the A/C didn’t get fixed soon, customers were going to start complaining about their coffee tasting salty.

My mom grumbled, annoyed that she had to repeat herself. “Auntie Helen’s nephew’s visa is expiring soon.” She stopped to muster some enthusiasm before continuing her pitch. “Since you’re not dating anyone, why don’t you marry him so he can stay? You can find your own boyfriend later.” She said it as if it was a no-brainer, win-win situation.

My jaw dropped. Auntie Helen was not my aunt by any definition, but rather my mom’s best friend, who called every afternoon to dish on the daily gossip. I was grateful that I didn’t inadvertently agree to marry a stranger.

“Ma! No! That’s crazy!” I shouted. What the hell? Did being single at twenty-two make me a spinster already? The warbled sound of the door chime stopped me from yelling further.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Tran!” said Carlos Solis, who owned the liquor store next door. Our donut shop and the liquor store have operated side by side for the last twenty years in an otherwise empty strip mall. The vacant stores at the opposite ends of the lot and the overall outdated beige stucco exterior did not help attract business for us outside of our regular clientele.

My mother, Lily, quickly plastered a smile on her face.

“Carlos! Glaze donut today?” she asked extra sweetly. She always knew how to ramp up her personality when it benefited her. That’s why everyone liked her. It was one of the many characteristics that I did not inherit from her.

“You know me so well, Mrs. Tran. How’s business?” he asked, fanning himself with an orphaned section of the newspaper that was left on our counter. With his salt-and-pepper beard and low-hanging gut, Carlos was beginning to resemble a Mexican Santa Claus.

I quickly scanned the shop. All ten seats in the eat-in area were empty. A heat wave in July does not make for peak donut eating season.

“Business is fine. I’m sure you’ll be busy on the Fourth of July,” my mom deflected. My mom never liked commenting about the shop to anyone outside of the family, whether it was good or bad. She wanted us to be like that unadorned donut she held in her tongs. Plain, not like a sprinkled donut that drew everyone’s attention. What was so special about sprinkles, anyway? They were just artificially colored rice-grain-shaped crunchy pieces of chalk.

“Yes, very busy. We always run out of ice,” he said in all earnestness. My mom and Carlos continued to exchange boring pleasantries as she handed over his donut. Carlos pinched his fingers around an inch of napkins before turning around. The second he exited the shop, my mom’s smile relaxed into a scowl.

“Always takes so many napkins,” she muttered. My mom knew the cost of everything in that store and saw every extra item that customers took as a loss in her profit margin. I imagined my mom’s brain just saw dollar signs wherever she went, kind of like this:

Extra napkins? Cost: fifteen cents. Profit margin: down to 10 percent.

Raising Jasmine? Cost: gazillions of dollars. Return on investment: 0 percent.

“So, what do you think? Do you want to marry Auntie Helen’s nephew?” my mom asked eagerly with her hands clasped tightly. It never failed to impress me how quickly my mom could switch gears. She had a smile on her face, wanting to keep the conversation positive, but her white knuckles displayed her desperation for the answer to her prayers.

“Ma,” I said gently, “I already said no. It’s so gross. And immigration doesn’t work that way.”

“Gross shì shénme?” my mom asked, scrunching her nose.

I explained to her what gross meant in Mandarin, cobbling basic synonyms together. Her eyebrows furrowed as she nodded, filing away this new word.

Even though Auntie Helen is not technically my aunt, it still felt like this nephew of hers was my cousin. Who wants to marry their own cousin? Also, what if a real boyfriend came along? Dating while being married to your cousin could really kill the romance. My mom had previously attempted to play matchmaker with me and her friends’ sons, but this was her Hail Mary pass.

“Ma, all through high school, you kept telling me, ‘No boys! Focus on studying!’ And then, in college, all you asked me about is why I haven’t found a boyfriend yet. It’s not that easy,” I said, even though I explained this to her every other day.

And this supposed boyfriend couldn’t be any random guy. If it were up to my mother, this perfect boyfriend for me would be Asian, have decent (read: high earning) career prospects, and be pretty much perfect in every other way. As if those were a dime a dozen.

“I told you to take Chinese classes. I bet you there were plenty of boys in Chinese class,” my mom accused.

“I wasn’t going to take a Chinese class just to meet boys,” I hissed.

I totally took Chinese classes at UCLA to meet guys.

I never told my mom about it because it was a major fail. The class was held in an auditorium, so it was hard to check out guys if I saw only the back of their heads. Even during conversation practice, I could tell none of the guys were interested in me. Was it too lame to hope that I would find love while we were learning how to give directions to the museum? Three terms of Chinese classes, and all I took away was a wonky Beijinger accent that came out only when a hostess or a 99 Ranch employee greeted me in Mandarin. My parents never questioned where it came from, but found it incredibly pretentious, preferring the Southeast Asian–inflected Mandarin that nobody outside of my family understood.

“And how am I supposed to find a boyfriend if I’m always here at the shop?” I countered. The shop opened at 4:30 A.M. and closed at 10:00 P.M. every day. There wasn’t any time to date. What were the chances that the boyfriend of my parents’ dreams would walk into the shop? While Hacienda Heights had a fairly equal mix of Asian, white, and Latino residents, very few of our customers were Asian. There were too many Asian bakeries in the city to compete with. If we ever encountered a new customer, they were usually disappointed that the shop didn’t have a croissant/donut love child or donuts shaped like a unicorn that pooped Froot Loops.

“If you find a nice boy, you can leave early.” My mom’s encouraging me to get out more caught me by surprise. “But . . .”—my mom paused and looked up and down at my outfit—“make sure you try to look nice, though.”

I looked down to see what she was looking at—a faded Black Keys T-shirt, leggings, and a pair of black low-top Vans that unfortunately had a glob of chocolate icing on them. I thought it was perfectly suitable for working at your actual mom and pop’s donut shop.

“What’s wrong with how I look?” I immediately regretted asking the question.

“Con,” she said, sighing. My parents never spoke to me in Vietnamese, preferring that I learn Mandarin. They felt it was the practical thing to do. However, they reserved that term of endearment when they wanted to appeal to me. “Just put on some makeup,” she said as she flitted her hand across my face. Then, she pinched the tender skin under my arm. “And stop eating croissants every morning. It has a lot of butter!”

“Ow!” I jerked my arm away from my mom. I happened to be very comfortable being a size medium, even though it seemed like extra-large by her standards. “Well, you think it’s good enough for Auntie Helen’s nephew, whoever he is,” I grumbled under my breath.

Ignoring my comment, my mom picked up her phone to break the news to Auntie Helen. I started to stack the pink donut boxes in the corner as my mother talked about me in front of my face. At least my mom had the courtesy—if we could call it that—to talk about me in different languages so that I wouldn’t completely understand. I picked up on the Mandarin parts.

“. . . if only she took Chinese class . . . She needs to cut her hair. It’s getting too long . . .”

My parents always switched between the languages they knew—Mandarin, Khmer, and Vietnamese—creating an odd pidgin language. This meant that—instead of becoming proficient in Mandarin like they hoped—I learned the most random words and phrases in all these languages and was fluent in none.

Most of the time, I didn’t think too much about it. I knew enough to get by, except there were moments when I wished I could say more than the simple version of how I really felt. To explain the why and not just the what. I suppose language fluency didn’t really matter these days when it was the same old conversation every day with my mom. My dad usually stayed out of it, not because he disagreed. He was just as tired of this topic as I was. After I finished stacking the pink boxes by our coffee machine, I began to wipe down the counters, trying to tune out my mom’s conversation.

“No more boyfriend talk,” my dad interjected as he emerged, limping from the back of the store. Years of baking took their toll on his body. He thought the air conditioning had tripped a fuse and it would be an easy fix, but no such luck. “But when are you going to find a job, Jasmine? You graduated last year.”

Great. If it wasn’t the boyfriend talk, it was the getting-a-job talk, as if those were the only two measures of success for my life.

“I’m still figuring things out, Ba. It’s not that easy.”

“What do you mean? You went to UCLA. How hard is it supposed to be? Pat has a job and he’s still in school! You should have majored in computers.”

“It’s just an internship!”

“Same thing!”

It wasn’t the same thing, but I was too annoyed to bother explaining the difference.

My shoulders slumped as I plopped down on a stool behind the front counter. My parents were so proud when they found out that my little brother, Patrick, landed a summer internship at “Gugo.” They were eager to show him off to customers when he came home after the Fourth of July.

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, Ba.”

My dad didn’t press further. I’ve repeatedly tried to explain to my parents that I wasn’t interested or smart enough to do computer science or be premed. I remembered the day my parents saw the C I got for trig during high school. Whenever report cards arrived, I knew my dad would leave me a Post-it with a happy face on it when he saw my straight A’s. I always liked the way he drew his happy faces, with two little dots for nostrils. Because of that stupid trig class, it was the first time I received a sad face Post-it. How do you say sine and cosine in Mandarin to someone who didn’t have more than a middle school education?

I stood up and walked to the bathroom in the back of the shop. The heat intensified the stench of the industrial cleaning solution stored in the bathroom. As I washed my hands, I caught my reflection in the mirror. My round face was pink and sweaty. The outgrown highlights in my hair had lost their luster. I never wore makeup to the donut shop, but if I had, it would have melted right off today. My mom was right. I looked like crap.

I glanced at my phone. It was only 2:30 P.M. Shit. Seven and a half hours to go before closing time. This was my life, seven days a week, including most holidays. As crappy as it was, I couldn’t complain when my parents had been doing this for over twenty years.

Like many refugees new to the United States, several of my aunts and uncles had already established their own donut shops. It wasn’t as if my family planned to create a donut empire. Hometown acquaintances who arrived before them figured out that a donut shop was a viable business model to make some sort of living without an advanced education or proficiency in English. All they needed was some capital. Without any credit, my parents were able to turn to my aunts and uncles for money to start Sunshine Donuts. They crowdfunded before it became a thing.

Eager to pay off the loans and to start earning their own income, my parents worked nearly around the clock. They never spent money on things that they considered to be frivolous. They rarely bought new clothes for themselves. They would never consider taking a vacation because it would mean closing the shop and losing business. While my classmates were whining about going to Kumon after school, I couldn’t convince my parents to spend money on tutoring or extracurricular activities. “Just work harder,” they would say. Money would always be tight, according to my parents.

To minimize overhead costs, they never hired anyone to help them run the shop. Why hire someone when they had their own children, who were fluent in English, to deal with suppliers? By the time I was ten, I had already negotiated down the price of apple filling with our vendor. It was a delicate task, with my mom complaining to me in Mandarin while I was interpreting on the phone.

I swiped my phone screen. Without thinking, my fingers hovered over the Instagram app, but I stopped myself from tapping it. Like the mirror in Beauty and the Beast, my phone was my only gateway to the outside world. Did I really want to see how everyone from college was living their best life, floating in a pool on an inflated flamingo in Palm Springs or eating questionable things on a stick in some faraway place like Bangkok or the OC Fair?

Meanwhile I’d been stuck here, serving donuts and coffee, with chocolate icing on my shoes. I grabbed a paper towel and wiped it off, leaving a brown smear. It looked like shit. Literally.

Fuck this. I locked my phone and stuffed it in my back pocket.

AFTER CLOSING THE shop, my mom and I had a late dinner. We ate quietly at the dining table with only the clink of our chopsticks scraping our porcelain rice bowls breaking the silence. There wasn’t much to say when we spent nearly every minute together. My dad just left for the shop to bake donuts for the next day. My mom and dad worked opposite shifts, overlapping a few hours when the shop opened. My parents knew I would never be able to get my ass up at four A.M., so they let me start my shift at six. I didn’t know how my parents kept up this routine all these years. I had worked at the shop full time for only the past year and it had already drained my spirit. I rested my chopsticks on top of my bowl of rice.

“Full already? There’s still a lot of food.” My mom gestured at the food with her chopsticks. “You love eating thịt kho.”

“Aren’t you afraid the pork belly is going to make me fat?” I asked sarcastically. Thịt kho was actually my favorite of all the dishes my mom made. It was worth waiting for the pork belly to braise. I eyed a hard-boiled egg, but I knew my mom would give me crap for eating another one.

“A little bit is okay! There’s not that much fat left,” my mom said, trying to sound convincing. I raised my eyebrow as I examined the thick, gelatinous stripes of fat still very much left in the pork belly. I popped a piece in my mouth before shoveling in some rice. The fat coated my mouth. My chopsticks reached for some much-needed sweet and vinegary pickled vegetables when my mom blurted out, “Baba and I are worried about you.”

My chopsticks hung in midair, holding on to a flower-shaped carrot slice.

I glanced at my mom. “About what, Ma?” I asked warily, my mouth still full of rice. As I swallowed, it became clear that my mom made my favorite meal so that I would be more receptive to this conversation. I should have seen this coming. It was just like the time she made spring rolls when she tried to talk to me about the birds and the bees.

My mom let out a heavy sigh and put down her bowl on the table. “You have been very unhappy. After last year, we thought things would get better.”

“Things are better, Ma,” I said, quietly, unsure where all of this was coming from. I looked down at the table. “I’ve been at the shop almost every day since moving back. I’m always at home after work. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“You come home and watch TV alone every night. It’s not normal.” She shook her head in disapproval. “You should be going out more. I saw that Linh is in Las Vegas with her boyfriend.”

Linh was my best friend and former college roommate. My mom loved Linh the moment they met during my dorm move-in day freshman year because she felt like she was looking at a much younger version of herself.

I gaped at her. “How do you know about that?”

“I saw on Facebook,” my mom said casually, like it was no big deal.

“You’re Facebook friends with Linh?! Since when?” We kept our Facebook accounts only because our parents started to use it to communicate with our extended family. Free access to our cousins’ lives was like catnip to my parents.

My mom waved her hand, dismissing my question.

“What’s the big deal . . .” I started to say, when it came to me. Why was my mom so eager to get me paired up? “Is this because of the wedding tomorrow?”

The bride was the daughter of an acquaintance they knew from their hometown in Cambodia. There had been festivities all week in preparation for the big day, but my parents decided to attend the morning ceremony, come back in the afternoon to help me, and then attend the reception in the evening. I assured them that I could handle working at the shop alone, but they didn’t like the idea of leaving me alone all day.

My mom willfully ignored my accusation. “Finish eating before the food gets cold.”

“You’re afraid of what your friends are going to say when they ask about me.” I could already hear their shady questions. They weren’t much different from my own parents’ questions, except for a minor adjustment.

Jasmine still doesn’t have a job?

Jasmine still has no boyfriend?

“Your aunties can say whatever they want. I want you to be happy.”

Sure, that’s what this was about. My happiness. If that was the case, I wouldn’t be back at square one, living with my parents and helping out at the shop, as if college never happened.

“Fine. Whatever,” I said, hoping it would placate my mom.

She didn’t respond. Instead, she watched me as I stabbed my chopsticks through a hard-boiled egg. I expected her to tell me that it was rude or bad luck to stab my food like that, but she remained silent.

“Fine,” I finally relented. I mustered some sincerity. “I will try to go out more.” It was the best I could offer short of a guarantee. I kept my face down as I dropped the egg in my bowl and basted it with the fat-laden dark soy braise.

When she didn’t respond again, I looked up to find that she had resumed eating. She got what she wanted. Therefore the conversation was over.

Chapter 2

I was settling into bed with my laptop when my phone rang. Just who I wanted to see: Linh, right on time for our standing FaceTime call. Linh and I quickly became best friends when we met during our freshman year of college. She was the ultimate boss babe with the blunt personality to match. It was hard not to be in awe of her sometimes. She worked hard, she played hard, and she was the only person I knew who could do a smoky eye without watching a YouTube tutorial. After college, Linh moved back home with her parents in Garden Grove. So we tried to FaceTime weekly to really catch up in between our daily texts, which mainly consisted of our trying to outdo each other with gifs and memes.

A familiar shriek came through my phone. “Jaaaas! Uh-oh. What’s wrong?” Linh pointed across the screen at the sheet mask that clung to my face.

“Nothing,” I said dejectedly.

“Don’t be so emo. It must be bad if you’re having a treat-yo-self night. Lemme guess. You’re watching Chris Hemsworth videos on YouTube and eating a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.” Linh looked expectantly across the screen.

I pursed my lips, reached under my comforter, and held up my unopened bag of Cheetos. “No Chris Hemsworth tonight, though. My date tonight is with the King of the North,” I said, adding a quick wink.

“You’re still catching up on Game of Thrones? You’re way behind.”

“Whatever,” I said. “That Talisa is a lucky bitch.”

“You obviously haven’t watched the Red Wedding,” Linh deadpanned. “Come on. What’s going on?”

“You know. Same old, same old. My mom asked me to marry my cousin. She thinks I’m going to die alone. That’s all.” I peeled off the mask and rubbed in the remaining layer of slick, clear serum on my face. I slipped on my huge thick-framed reading glasses that my optometrist insisted that I wear because of all the screen time I inflicted on my eyes.

“What the fuuuuuuuuuuuuu—”

“I know! ...