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“Maybe you can help Shang out with dinner,” Auntie Jiayi says. She straightens up and smiles at me with eyebrows raised.
“Uh.”Do I have to?But Auntie Jiayi has been the only member of the Li family who’s been consistently kind toward me, and I find it impossible to say no to her. “Sure.”
“Oh, good. I feel guilty because he didn’t let me help him, you know. You go to the backyard, he is prepping the meats there.”
My stomach turns. Oh no. Does that mean he’s butchering them? With renewed dread, I make my way down the stairs and out of the farmhouse. I follow the sounds of the cleaver thwacking into wood and find Shang bent over the chopping block. Sure enough, he’s descaling a large fish. Next to him is a box with two other fish, still alive.
I open my mouth to say, Need any help? but instead what comes out is:
“What is with your family and killing your food?”
Shang barely glances up, but he smiles and says, “What do you think?”
“Some kind of alpha male thing? To prove that you’re the alpha-est of the alphas?”
Shang chuckles. “Why are you obsessed with this alpha male thing?”
“Ask James that question,” I mutter, at which Shang laughs out loud.
Then he pauses and finally looks at me, wiping his brow with his arm. It’s a move that is way hotter than I would ever admit. “Did you just come here to judge me, or did you want to help? I mean, I’d be happy either way.”
My mouth stretches into a thin, flat line. “Aside from a sudden, and very brief, interest in making sourdough bread, the most elaborate meal I’ve made is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and it was a failure.”
“How does one mess up PB and J?”
“I didn’t have grape jelly, so I used leftover cranberry jelly from Thanksgiving.”
“That sounds like it would be a nice combination, actu—”
“And what I thought was peanut butter turned out to be leftover gravy.”
For a moment, Shang falls quiet. Then he opens his mouth, throws his head back, and laughs. It’s the best laugh that I have heard, pure and filled with so much unadulterated joy, I can easily picture him as a little kid. I drink in the way his eyes turn into crescent moons, his entire face going soft and tender when he laughs, and the way he places one large hand on his chest. My god, I am in so much trouble.
When Shang next meets my eye, I get the sense that something has changed between us. Just a small shift, but I can feel it. He’s looking at me in a new way, like he’s seeing me properly for the first time.
“Slide some leftover turkey in there and you’ve got yourself a great sandwich,” he says finally.
“Agreed, but I’d been expecting a PB and J, and when I bit into it and my brain registered thatHey, this isn’t peanut butter, it was so disconcerting. Ruined the entire thing.”
“Tell you what,” Shang says, “I’ll make sure to guide you every step of the way.”
“Ah!” I squeal, clapping both hands to my cheeks. “You mean,” I say breathlessly, “you’re going to mansplain everything to me? I can’t wait!”
Shang levels a flat gaze at me. “I sense sarcasm.”
“Good, because I meant to be sarcastic.”
Shang flips the cleaver in his hand and holds it out to me, handle first. “Here you go. Start with something simple—finish descaling this carp.”
I take the cleaver, then look with open distaste at the fish on the chopping block. I place my fingertips on it, resisting the full-body shudder that threatens to run through my entire being.
“Hold the blade at an angle, like this,” Shang says, putting a hand over mine for just a second before letting go. “Now hold the fish firmly—”
Nothing to it. I grip the fish, biting back my grimace, and hold it fast.
“Now slide the blade down—”
I do so, and a shower of silvery scales flies up, spattering across my face. I sputter and drop the fish. I look at Shang and he, too, is covered in scales. Wordlessly, Shang reaches out and his thumb and forefinger graze my cheek, leaving a fiery trail where they touched. My mouth parts, but when Shang pulls his hand back, there is a scale caught between his thumb and forefinger.