Page 55 of Worth Fighting For

“No, I’m fine,” I say, quickly buttoning up my shirt.

I come out carrying my wet clothes and Auntie Lulu grabs them out of my hands. “I will dry these for you,” she says.

“Oh, um, thank you.”

“Come,” Auntie Jiayi says, putting her arm around my shoulders. “You sit by the fire. Oh, poor girl, you are so cold you’re shaking.”

Shang is outside setting up his tent next to the others. As we walk past, Auntie Jiayi reaches out to Shang and yanks his ear.

“Ow! Ma, what?”

“You let this poor girl freeze!” Auntie Jiayi snaps. “What kind of gentleman are you? Very bad, I am very disappointed.”

Shang’s mouth opens, but no words come out. I bite down on my lip to keep from laughing at his half-lost, half-affronted expression. I settle down in front of the fire with a long sigh of relief. It’s so warm and cozy here, to be right in front of a crackling fire. I hold out my hands and revel in the heat coursing through my freezing palms.

Shaking his head, Shang goes back to setting up his tent.

“Shang, because you lost Zhou’s tent, she will use yours tonight,” Auntie Jiayi says.

Shang pauses, looking like he’s about to protest, then shrugs. “Okay. I guess I’ll share yours, James.”

“Nope. Thomas and I are sharing.”

“Okay.” Shang turns to Christopher. “Can I share yours?”

“We’re sharing,” Ryan says, pointing to Christopher with his thumb.

Shang looks around, obviously making a calculation in his head. The rest of the group are already paired up—the uncles and the aunties—leaving Mushu and Auntie Jiayi.

“Sorry, my tent is too small,” Auntie Jiayi says. “And I am disappointed in you, Shang. I think you should sleep outside.”

“Yeah,” Mushu says, “my tent’s a one-woman tent, sorry.”

Shang sighs and says, “Okay.” He turns back to finish setting up the tent for me, and I feel a twinge of guilt. Even though Shang blames himself for what happened at the river, I can’t bring myself to completely place the blame on him. I get up and walk over to him.

“Need any help?” I say.

Shang glances at me. “Sure. You can get the thingy.”

“The thingy,” I say flatly.

“You know, the thing that goes inside this thing.”

“Haven’t you done this a million times before?”

Shang pauses and looks up from screwing in one of the tent poles. “Yes? What’s your point?”

“Well, I would’ve thought that by now you’d have learned the proper names of all these parts.”

“Or I would’ve learned that there’s no need to learn the proper names of the parts as long as you can put them together.” He smirks at me and gets back to work.

“Okay, well, I will get your thingy.” I reach over, grab a random pole, and hand it to him. “Here’s your thingy.”

“That just doesn’t sound right,” Shang says. His eyes light up. “Hey, you actually grabbed the right thing!”

“Really?”

“No.”

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