Page 22

We’re the first family to pull up outside the Jiu Yin He front gates.

“You know, we probably didn’t need to leave our house an entire hour early. The GPS said it’d take fifteen minutes with heavy traffic,” I tell my mom as she shuts the car door behind her and struts her way down the empty lane in her brand-new Michael Kors pumps. Most of her outfit is new, from the pearl-studded earrings to the sharp blazer vest, selected just for this occasion. Yesterday, I’d caught her unveiling one of the fancy face masks she’d been saving ever since her colleague brought them back from her business trip to Seoul. She hadn’t even put in that much effort for my cousin’s wedding. She probably hadn’t put in that much effort for her own wedding.

“Well, we couldn’t risk being late, could we? Not when you’re the star of the show,” my mom says, beaming wide at me. From the way she’s been gushing about it, you’d think I’d won the Nobel Peace Prize, not a competition hosted by a Chinese school.

I exchange an amused glance with my dad before we both follow along. A single poster—small enough that you’d miss it if you weren’t paying careful attention—has been pasted onto the school’s brick walls. Welcome, Parents! This Way to the Journey to the East Afternoon Tea is printed out in Chinese block text, with arrows pointing the way forward.

The venue is basically a gym that’s been repurposed for this afternoon’s event. Plastic chairs have been set up in tidy rows along the basketball court, and there are a few scattered tables offering cold chicken-and-avocado sandwiches and plastic cups of orange juice, but my mom’s beaming at the place like it’s a grand concert hall.

“Do you have your speech memorized?” my mom asks me, nodding toward the microphone stand up front.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it,” I assure her. I have the speech so well memorized that although it’d be exaggerating to say I could recite it in my sleep , I’m pretty confident I could recite it first thing upon waking. But then the gym doors swing open again, and I momentarily lose the ability to remember anything when I see Cyrus walk in.

His eyes go right to me, like I’m the only reason he’s here, and I have to contain myself from running straight over and throwing my arms around him.

“That boy again,” my mom mutters under her breath, but she doesn’t stop me from moving to his side, which I’m taking as a good sign. Improvement. She’d been too preoccupied to recognize Cyrus as my childhood enemy at my cousin’s wedding, but she’d definitely noticed him when she’d gone to pick me up at the airport. Likely because he was holding my hand. I’d spent the entire car ride home explaining to her that we were good now, that he was and always had been good, really, I swear, he made me happy. And just when I thought she might accuse me of losing my mind, she’d simply smiled in a resigned sort of way.

It all sounds very bizarre to me, considering how much you hated him before , she’d confessed as the car crawled along the highway, but I can tell you’re happy, which is what matters most. She’d glanced at me again in the rearview mirror. Something’s different about you, baobei—I can feel it. Just like how before you left, I could tell how unhappy you were. You hid it well enough, but your smiles were always forced, your laughter strained. It’s like you were making yourself go through all the motions without feeling anything, and I … I couldn’t bear to see you that way. Now, though , she said softly, when you talk about him, when you talk about Shanghai … Your happiness is real. It’s practically radiating off you.

That was three weeks ago.

Three blissful weeks, and the happiness has stayed, made a home inside my heart. With every day that I’ve spent with Cyrus since, I’ve uncovered something new about him. I learn all the books he keeps on the shelf beside his bed, Chinese and English titles mixed together, his favorites annotated so thoroughly he might as well have written another novel within the novel. I take note of the bag he carries to school these days—cream canvas, sturdy, practical—and the expensive fine-liners he keeps in his pencil case, his only “luxury purchase.” I laugh at his playlist the first time he drives me home ( Cyrus, what kind of retro shit is this? ), but he knows I’m just teasing and he knows exactly how to shut me up, because when he parks two houses down the street, he gazes over at me in the darkness, and his hands find the nape of my neck and he pulls me toward him. Pauses for a few seconds, simply holding me there, until I think my heart might explode and his lips finally find mine with that awful retro song still playing in the background, but it’s sort of grown on me by the time we reach the last chorus.

I experience the rare thrill of discovering what he’s like when he’s in love and it’s no longer a secret. The second we’re alone together anywhere—in an elevator that moves at half the speed of the ones in Shanghai, in the empty corner of the bookstore he frequents on weekends, in the parking lot behind the mall—he’s drawing me to his chest, his fingers sliding over my waist, and it’s so natural, so right, it’s like I’ve loved him my whole life. Everything feels natural with him. Like how he kisses me when we’re waiting at the traffic lights and when we’re halfway through the door, or how he keeps a protective arm around me through every crowd, how I nuzzle against his shoulder while he’s browsing through takeout options for dinner, my legs dangling off the love seat. Xiaolongbao, sushi, or hot pot tonight? he asks. Anything sounds good , I say, but I’m secretly craving xiaolongbao, the crab roe kind, and I can’t conceal my delight when that’s exactly what arrives as if he’s read my mind.

I still wear makeup when I want to, but on nights where I get tired of how heavy the products feel on my skin, or in the mornings when I’m simply too lazy to spend ten minutes blending out my eye shadow, I choose to go without it. In the beginning, my face feels raw and tender and exposed, but Cyrus reassures me, It’s nothing I haven’t seen before , then points to his own face: Look, I’m not wearing any makeup either . He tells me I’m pretty like it’s what everyone else is thinking, and the miracle of it all is I know he means it.

“Miss me?” Cyrus asks, grinning, as I join him at the front of the gym.

“I saw you only, like, sixteen hours ago,” I point out.

“Right,” he says, his grin widening. “Not that you’re keeping count or anything.”

I roll my eyes, but I doubt it’s convincing when the corners of my lips keep twitching upward. “Definitely not.”

“I missed you too,” he tells me, leaning closer, his breath tantalizingly warm against my neck. Then he rights himself again, all serious, the picture of the perfect student as more families and teachers start trickling indoors.

I catch sight of Daisy entering with her parents, who I’ve already met twice now at her house and who refused to let me leave without bringing a full basket of homegrown plums and two containers of frozen pork dumplings with me. I wave at her dramatically, as if I’m stranded on a remote island and trying to capture the attention of a passing helicopter. It’s the kind of thing I’d be too embarrassed to do around Cate and her friends, but Daisy matches my enthusiasm and mouths, Good luck.

Once the seats have all been filled, the gym falls quiet, and Wang Laoshi comes up to the microphone for his opening speech while Cyrus and I wait in the wings behind him.

“… very honored to be partnering with the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford … Please welcome …”

“Nervous about the speech?” Cyrus whispers to me.

No , I’m about to say, and it would be true if my aunt didn’t make her entrance right at that moment. She’s dressed in regal black from head to toe, and she steps forward without haste, barely acknowledging the crowd’s applause for her, as if this is an ordinary part of her daily routine, or possibly even a downgrade from the celebrity treatment she’s accustomed to.

I swallow, my stomach clenching. The Chinese characters from my speech swirl around inside my head. It’s okay, you can do this. You’re prepared. You can redeem yourself.

“… the winners from the competition, Leah Zhang and Cyrus Sui.”

Cyrus squeezes my hand twice, and I let myself focus on the warm, familiar pressure, the scent of his cologne.

Then we’re walking out together, the bright gym lights spilling around us.

I take the microphone first. Hold it too close, my fingers quivering. I can hear my breaths in the static, feel the weight of my aunt’s gaze from the other end of the stage.

“Welcome, parents, students, and teachers,” I begin in slow, careful Chinese, hoping they can’t detect the shakiness in my voice. “I have to be honest—when my mom first signed me up for this trip, I didn’t particularly want to go …”

As I go on, my voice strengthens, my words coming out smoother, clearer, acquiring their own cadence, and I remind myself that this isn’t a completely foreign language. It’s the language of my mother’s hometown, the language spoken by my father and his father before him, the language I breathed in for a fortnight, the melody of my surroundings.

It helps that the audience is generous, welcoming. They laugh at all my bad jokes and listen with rapt attention as I describe parts of the trip they already know—the beauty of Shanghai at night, the long train rides, the bustling markets, the steep, rainy climb up the Yellow Mountain, the serenity of the bamboo forest.

“So I want to thank my parents,” I finish, my eyes finding their proud faces in the front row. “Thank you for sending me on this trip, for everything you’ve done, for being patient with me when I lost my way and waiting with open arms when I found my way back. And thank you to my family at large for tolerating my terrible blunders and for watching me grow. I’ve learned language, in its purest form, is really about understanding each other, seeing the heart of what the other person is trying to say. I hope there’ll be more chances for you to understand me, and for me to understand you better …”

I brace myself as I glance in my aunt’s direction. It strikes me suddenly how much she resembles my own mother; something about the structure of her jaw, the intelligent arch of her brows. The resemblance is stronger than ever when her severe features finally soften, and she offers me a faint, approving smile.

***

Afterward, we stroll through the city together, my hand in his.

At the end of the road, I take out the Polaroid camera we won on the trip with my free hand, and snap a quick photo when he isn’t looking. When the film finishes developing in my hand, half the frame is filled with sunlight. There’s so much sunlight in every photo I take of him. Like the sun is all I can see when he’s with me. It makes his features look softer, burns the strands of his hair gold like alchemy in motion, bathing him in its glow. In this photo, the sun is coming down directly from above him like a halo, the white-purple flare of it flashing just above his head.

“It’s so nice here,” I say, though we’re technically not anywhere in particular. I have no idea what street we’re on, only that it’s beautiful as the sun sinks lower, a soft, dreamy haze washing over the palm trees and high-rise apartments.

It’s the same LA I’ve grown up in, but it feels different, maybe because I am, and these days I find myself falling in love with the city all over again. Through brunches with Daisy at Brent’s Bakery, where their fresh sourdough loaves are so chewy, with the perfect kick of tanginess, that we always end up buying a second loaf and sharing it on the way home, munching happily as we walk; through pottery classes, also with Daisy, even though we’re both horrible at it and we gift each other with the world’s wonkiest mugs when we’re done; through karaoke nights organized in the Journey to the East group chat and entirely paid for by Oliver(’s father), whose off-key belting to classic Chinese ballads is almost as fun as trying to convince Cyrus to sing, which he adamantly refuses to through afternoon teas with my parents at their favorite dim sum restaurant, where I’m a little too pleased to show off the characters I can read on the paper menu. This is how I fill my days now: food and full-body laughter, instead of counting calories and keeping a tally of my mistakes. Doing things because of how they make me feel rather than how they might sound.

Nothing’s perfect, but everything’s wonderful.

We walk for miles, content in each other’s company, stopping to point out a pretty flower or a squirrel in the trees. Soon, the evening chill creeps in. I try my best not to notice it, but my feet feel frozen in my sandals.

Without question or comment, Cyrus shrugs off his jacket and drapes it around my shoulders.

“How did you know I was freezing?” I ask, turning to him in wonder.

“Because I know you,” he says simply.

“You love me,” I say. I can’t pinpoint when it stopped being a question, and when it started to feel like a simple fact. There are 6,479 miles between Shanghai and Los Angeles. The sun will come up tomorrow. You can never go wrong with a well-fitted black dress. And he loves me.

“Of course I do,” he murmurs against my hair.

We keep walking, and I don’t ask him where we’re going, and I don’t even care, as long as I’m with him.