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Our itinerary doesn’t really plan for private conversations after you dramatically run off into the night.
I’m forced to chew on my words all the way from the final scene of the performance to the bus ride back to the hotel. But instead of heading back to my room, I follow Cyrus to his.
“Yeah, I just remembered I needed to go … buy another winery,” Oliver says when he sees me enter, and he promptly disappears, leaving the two of us alone.
Cyrus stares at me in the silence, and I have no idea what he’s thinking, where or how this will end, so I speak first. “I made a snap assumption back there,” I begin, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. “The wrong assumption. I—I didn’t even give you a chance to explain, and I should have.”
“Leah,” he says, so tenderly I think I might burst into tears again. “You’ve considered me your enemy for years, and I’ll never be able to make up for what happened. You thought what any person would have thought. I wouldn’t expect you to go from hating me to trusting me completely right away—I would want the chance to win your trust slowly, bit by bit, if I had the honor. I’m honestly …” He releases a shaky breath, and for the first time tonight, I see the rush of emotions in his eyes. “I’m honestly shocked that you came back. Shocked, and very, very glad. I didn’t think you ever would.”
It feels like someone’s grabbed hold of my heart and pulled.
Cyrus, who blamed himself for not recognizing a bad situation when he was in the thick of it, and then trained himself to assume the worst of every situation. Cyrus, who thinks that everything he touches will burn and fade to embers, who thinks that everyone is destined to leave him in the end. Cyrus, who always rejects people before they have the chance to reject him, who’s afraid to be happy for fear of the day the happiness is taken away from him, who doesn’t think he deserves happiness to begin with.
“Who else would I go to?” I say, smiling.
There’s a loud rumbling noise outside, followed by a hiss and sharp whistling. We both whirl toward it at the same time, and Cyrus yanks back the curtains right as a brilliant array of colors explode across the night.
Fireworks.
“Look,” Cyrus says, leading me forward by the wrist.
A breath of pure delighted laughter escapes my lips, and we almost trip over ourselves as we fumble with the lock on the balcony door, my hotel slippers shuffling against the carpet, and then we’re rushing out into the crisp, cold air, leaning over the railings to stare in wonder as another boom fills the sky with sound and bright, dazzling gold. More colors shower over the horizon: the most vivid pops of green and blazes of red and stars of silver, lighting up the city.
All around the hotel, for six floors down and as far as I can see, other travelers have hurried out onto their balconies to watch the fireworks too. Fathers balance their toddlers high up on their shoulders for a better view, happy couples wrap their arms around each other, mothers usher their children over from the bedroom. A gray-haired woman shakily retrieves her phone to start recording, maybe to send to her partner or her grandchildren. I don’t know any of them, and they might be traveling for a family holiday or a honeymoon or a business trip, and they could be from the neighboring town or halfway across the world, but we’re all standing here right now. And my heart swells at the silly, simple, human fact that when we stumble upon something beautiful, our first instinct is to show it to the people we love. It’s what we do with pretty seashells on a beach, a radiant sunset, a rare bird flitting through the trees, a herd of wild horses grazing in the countryside. Look , we say, saving these little pieces of beauty for each other. Do you see it too ? Isn’t the world such a strange, lovely, breathtaking place?
“I think the fireworks are for a wedding happening nearby,” Cyrus says.
“Well, good for them, and great for us,” I say.
Cyrus gives me a sidelong smile. “Let’s just hope nobody accidentally curses the bride and the groom.”
I raise the hand he isn’t holding to make a threatening motion at him. “Oh my god, if you bring that up again, I swear—”
But he grabs it too and easily locks both my wrists in his grip, tugging me forward until I’m inches away from him, close enough to watch the yellow light of the fireworks through the reflection in his eyes.
And suddenly I remember the note from the Yellow Mountain, written by a steady, careful hand. You remind me of the greatest sculptors, who can turn marble into the impression of billowing silk, the coldest stone into something soft. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that everything you touch turns beautiful. The world becomes beautiful, as long as there’s you.
It really is beautiful , I think to myself as I lean in to kiss him.
***
Before the sun has even risen, I slide out of bed, the mattress creaking behind me. Then I shrug off my pajamas and zip up my sundress, fumbling around in the dim light as quietly as possible to avoid waking Daisy. I can already feel the anticipation building beneath my bones as I brush my hair and teeth and spritz perfume just behind my ear. It’s the same eager flutter I would get on the morning of Christmas or my birthday, when I had everything in the world to look forward to, even if I didn’t know what was going to happen yet.
A cool breeze fans my skin as I step outside, ruffling the hem of my dress.
Dew glistens on the wild grass around me, and the clouds burn gold and pink on the horizon, the early mist softening all that it touches: the wind chimes tinkling from the hotel’s overhanging eaves, the cobbled path leading into town, the sloping, layered lines of the rice terraces. Guilin at dawn looks like something out of a dream. It’s so beautiful that my breath catches, that my throat aches a little from it.
And then I see him.
He’s waiting on a stone bridge, the canal flowing beneath him. His dark hair is wind-rumpled, his shirt loosely buttoned, and the surreal, dreamlike sensation intensifies. When our eyes meet, a small, surprised smile comes to life on his face, like he can’t believe I’m joining him.
“Where do you want to go?” he asks as he makes his way toward me.
“Here is perfect,” I say. Right now, I can’t think of a single place on earth I would prefer to this.
We both stop at the foot of the bridge, and for a few moments we’re silent, the kind of silence that’s as natural and seamless as breathing. It’s enough to simply be standing together, just the two of us, staring at the clear waters and the jade mountains.
“I don’t think I’m ready to leave,” I admit.
“I’m not either,” he tells me. “But you can always come back. We can always come back.”
“Seriously?” I grin, pushing my hair back. “You’re ready to take another trip with me so soon?”
“Who else is going to haggle over lettuce for me?”
“I can show you how,” I say, pretending to deliberate over the serious matter. “Though it might depend on the person you’re bargaining with. It just works a lot better if they’re attracted to you. That way, all you have to do is look at them like this …” I spin around and angle my face so I’m gazing up at him under my lashes. “And lower your voice. Lean over and pout a bit … Trust me, it’s very persuasive.”
He stares back at me, his eyes wide and almost dazed.
“Don’t you agree?” I add, leaning close, the words whispered against the shell of his ear.
I hear his sharp inhale.
I’m laughing as I pull away, delighted and nearly lightheaded to know the effect I have on him, to see the blush rubbing off his complexion like smeared lipstick.
He still looks half-drunk when he catches my wrist and tugs me close to him again. Some of my laughter dissolves at the heated, intense look in his gaze. “You know, I’ve had fantasies about this,” he murmurs.
“About being taught how to flirt your way into getting cheaper vegetables?” I ask. I’m fighting with every muscle in my body to maintain my composure, but I sound breathless, even to myself. I sound like I’m asking him to kiss me without speaking the words aloud. “You should’ve told me earlier. I’d be happy to teach you in more depth.”
“About you,” he says, swallowing. “About being next to you.”
“And? Do I live up to your fantasy?” I say it teasingly, yet my heart thuds as I wait for his answer. I never have in the past. For every guy who’s claimed to like me, I was just something nice for them to think about, my eyes and my hips and my legs, prettier on posters and in magazines than in real life. Of course they all noticed me. Of course they all left in the end.
Cyrus shakes his head. “No fantasy could ever live up to you,” he whispers. “Nothing can compare to how it feels to look up and see you there. Even though I thought of you every day after you left, my imagination has proven to be painfully inadequate when it comes to the sound of your laughter, or how your brows furrow when you’re focused, or the way you steady yourself before entering a room. And you’re going to make fun of me for saying it, but part of me is worried,” he says, dropping his gaze to the white glimmer of water, “that this is just a spell. This whole trip has been so strange and wonderful and unexpected … It’s like there’s magic here, and I can’t stop myself from worrying that when we leave this place, the magic will disappear for you, and none of it will be real anymore.”
It does feel like there’s magic here, in the whispers of the Osmanthus trees and the rose light curving over the tiled roofs. But there’s no way to separate it from the boy standing at the end of the bridge with me as the sun climbs up, who’s now watching me with a tenderness I wouldn’t have believed existed before him. I could love him anywhere, in any city, any season , I think to myself. I can easily envision us coming back together, maybe a year or two from now, strolling down the Bund at night, lost in Shanghai’s brilliant array of lights, or taking photos in the ancient water towns, his hand intertwined with mine. Just as I can envision us in LA, riding our bikes along the coast, packing strawberries and croissants into picnic baskets, lounging on the couch at his house.
The only thing I can’t envision is no longer wanting him.
“How could this not be real anymore?” I ask, mapping out the line of his jaw with my fingertips.
He shivers at my touch, then—like he can’t bear the remaining distance between us anymore, can’t quite control himself—he pulls me in, his body bracketing mine, until I can feel how fast his heart is beating, how shaky his breathing is.
“I agree with you,” he says hoarsely, his hand warm and gentle over the back of my head, and everything in me turns into molten gold, as if I’ve drunk the dawn air. I let him hold me as tight as I’m holding on to this moment and all the moments that have come before it, leading up to us. I have no intention of moving for years.
“You agree with me?” I barely remember to ask. “On what?”
“Here is perfect.”