Page 106 of The Friend Zone Experiment

He paused, his eyes slipping down to the coffee table where their two mugs of tea sat, side by side.

Renee wasn’t feeling sleepy anymore. She could hear her own heartbeat, a rushing in her ears.

“I hope we will stay friends,” said Ket Siong. “But that’s not what I want from you. My feelings for you haven’t changed. I know you said you weren’t looking for anything serious. But ifyou’ve changed your mind about that—or if you think you might change your mind, sometime—”

“Wait, wait,” said Renee. “What do you mean, your feelings for me? What feelings?”

The colour in Ket Siong’s cheeks deepened.

“You know,” he said.

Renee’s blank stare must have made it evident that she did not, in fact, know.

Ket Siong said, “I—I’m in love with you.”

“Did I know that?” said Renee. “I don’t think I knew. You never said. I would definitely have remembered.”

Ket Siong was very red. “Wasn’t it—I thought it was obvious. Everyone else seemed to know.”

Renee’s head was spinning. “They did? Who’s everyone else?”

“My family. And…” Ket Siong cleared his throat. “Dragan.”

“Dragan?”

“Your concierge,” said Ket Siong, unnecessarily. “We talked when I left your flat last time. After the V&A reception. He remembered me.”

“What do you mean, you talked?” said Renee. “What did you talk about?”

“How he’s been doing, his family. His daughter’s studying engineering at Bristol now,” added Ket Siong. “At the end he said, um, ‘I always thought you were a good match, you two.’”

Renee found herself feeling glad that Dragan hadn’t been on shift that evening.

“But when did this happen?” she said. “I mean, it’s not like it was love at first sight, so…”

Ket Siong scratched his eyebrow with his thumbnail. “Well.”

“Ket Siong.”

“Is this such a surprise?” said Ket Siong—dodging the question, Renee noticed. “I said I wanted to keep seeing you, after the V&A.”

“OK, I’ll buy you were in—” The word “love” stuck in Renee’s throat; it was too big. “I’ll buy you were interested, from that point.” In retrospect, she had to admit the signals he’d been giving since they’d run into each other at the V&A had been pretty clear. “But you can’t have liked me since uni.”

“I did. I told you, back then.”

“No, no. I toldyou,” said Renee. Her recollection of that particular conversation was perfectly distinct. She’d gone over it so many times in subsequent years, trying to figure out where she’d gone wrong—what she could have done differently, to alter the outcome. “And you nodded, because you didn’t feel you could say I’d got it wrong. You told me you were my friend. That’s what you wanted from me.”

Ket Siong raised an eyebrow. “And then I kissed you.”

OK, he had a point there.

“But you changed your mind,” said Renee. “You dumped me.”

“That wasn’t because I didn’t like you,” said Ket Siong. He leaned back, his expression sombre. “I found out your father was the reason my mother lost her job. Her firm was representing Chahaya at the time. She was blocking a deal, so they fired her.”

“Shit, are you serious?” said Renee, before realising how that might come off. “Sorry, it’s not that I don’t believe you. I mean, it sounds like Dad. If somebody was holding up a deal he wanted, he wouldn’t think twice about getting them fired. But why was your mom blocking it?”

Ket Siong hesitated. “My mother found some irregularities when she was working on the transaction. She made an internal report under the firm’s anti–money laundering policy. But it wasn’t a popular move.”