Glee Postsecret Challenge: Part 6
Characters: Tina and Mike
Rice
“Welcome to Asian couples’ therapy,” the decidedly-not Asian therapist said.
Tina frowned and blinked once or twice but didn’t reply, choosing instead to stare blankly forward.
“So tell me why you two are here.”
Mike spoke up first. “I love Tina, I really do. But she’s completely stopped embracing her Asian heritage!”
“How so?” the therapist replied, nonchalantly scribbling something on the notepad in his lap. Tina found herself leaning forward on the squeaky leather couch to try and catch a glance. He subtly raised it up a few inches higher so she couldn’t see anything. She lifted her eyes to his face and squinted dangerously in his direction.
“I can’t… I can’t even bring myself to say it out loud,” Mike admitted, shaking his head and looking down at his hands where they lay clenched together in his lap.
“You should feel free to say anything. This is a safe zone.” The man - Mr. Not-Asian-Asian-Couples-Therapist - said as he gestured with his free hand in a circle around the air in Mike and Tina’s general direction. Tina exhaled loudly through her nose, crossing her arms.
“We went out for dinner with my mom the other night, and Tina…” Mike trailed off. His adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed thickly.
“…Yes?” the therapist prodded.
“Tina…wouldn’t… She wouldn’t…”
Tina sighed. “Just spit it out already, Mike.”
He hesitantly glanced at his girlfriend with shifty eyes before locking eyes with Mr. Safe-Zone before leaning forward and whispering the words, “She wouldn’t eat her rice.”
Tina continued to sit very still and straight in her seat with a frown on her face and with her eyes glaring sharply in the therapist’s direction. And she found her irritation inexplicably growing as his jaw literally dropped.
“She wouldn’t… She wouldn’t eat her rice?” he questioned.
Mike shook his head back and forth at a rapid pace.
“But… But why would she exhibit such behavior?” Mr. Getting-On-Tina’s-Nerves-Now asked with a head tilt and arched eyebrows. He leaned forward in his seat, and Tina got a glance of his notepad - on which he had drawn a very detailed cartoon cat.
This was when she lost it.
Standing abruptly and waving her arms around in circles, Tina yelled, “I didn’t eat the rice because I am sick of eating rice! I refuse to eat another grain of rice so long as I live! I may be a strong, proud Asian woman, but I am so much more than that! And you,” she said, shoving her finger in Mr. Cartoonist’s face, “are the biggest joke of a therapist I have ever heard of in my life!” She turned on her heel and marched towards the door, flinging it open. Before she stepped outside, she turned back towards the two guys in the room - who were looking at her as if she had three heads - and said, “And my seven-year old sister could draw a better cartoon with her hands tied behind her back!”
She slammed the door, and Mike’s eyes immediately snapped back to Mr. Easy-to-Insult. The therapist cleared his throat. “Uhh… Same time next week?”
Mike’s eyes widened. “No,” he said. “I don’t think that’ll be happening.”
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