Page 20 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
On that uplifting note, he walks off to another table, his hands behind his back.
“You should consider yourself lucky,” Cyrus tells me.
“Why?”
“I mean, I’m obviously your best bet at winning,” he says, arms folded across his chest, the wind tousling his hair.
He might actually be right, I conclude as I look around the ferry at the other teams: Oliver, who’s eagerly waving Daisy over to take photos of him pinching the Oriental Pearl Tower as if he’s a city-sized monster; Lydia, who can be heard very clearly saying, “Make sure we complete these fifty practice papers every day, and memorize this map of Shanghai…”to her teammate, who’s taking slow steps away from her the way you would from a bear in the wild; Sean, who’s dozed off so close to the edge of the ferry I’m concerned he’s about to fall into the river.
With Cyrus there to help, my odds of winning the competition will increase exponentially. If wedowin, I’ll finally be able to prove to my aunt—and to myself—that I’m more than just her uncultured niece who ruined her daughter’s wedding. For a few seconds, I let myself imagine the shock on her stern, ageless face when she sees me delivering a speech in Chinese at the afternoon tea event.
And being on Cyrus’s team means I’ll have more opportunities to uncover and exploit his weaknesses. Better to have your enemies closer and all that, especially if you want to steal their heart in order to break it.
“All right,” I say. “Let’s do this.”
He simply nods, expressionless, then leans his head against the window, his back turned to me. But in the reflection spilling over the dark glass, I think I see the faintest of smiles tug at his lips.
“Wow, I can tell you’ve got a lot on your plate, Leah.”
Oliver doubles over laughing at his own joke, almost knocking into the elderly woman trying to squeeze her way through to the bamboo steamers behind him. Even though it’s only been open for half an hour, the breakfast buffet is already swarming with people. Tourists and smart-looking businesswomen and students from our own group wander between all the different counters, opening and shutting the large metal lids, reaching awkwardly around one another for the tongs while balancing their half-filled plates.
I give Oliver an unimpressed look as I follow him over to our table for four by the floor-to-ceiling windows. There are more diners seated on the outdoor patio under the pale, sleepy sunlight. One man in the corner is alternating between long puffs of his cigarette and bites of his cucumber salad. “That’s hilarious,” I tell Oliver. “You’re hilarious.”
“I know,” he crows, setting his plate down across from me. It’s stacked with bacon and hash browns and scrambled eggs, which he scoops onto his toast. While everyone else took some time finding their way around the cold meats and porridge sections, I saw him make a beeline for the right counter in the back with the familiarity of someone who frequently eats at five-star hotels. “Hey, no judgment or anything. The food here is pretty great—not Michelin star level, of course, but, like, decent.”
I roll my eyes, but I honestly don’t care if heisjudging. I’m too eager to sink my teeth into everything: the sautéed beans with minced beef; the silky tofu pudding piled with chili and coriander and chopped mushrooms; the blueberry pastries; the slices of scallion pancakes; the fried pork buns sprinkled with sesame and wobbling soup dumplings.
Back when I was traveling for my modeling gigs, I was always too scared to eat what I wanted. At breakfast, I would spend ages eyeing the cinnamon swirls and crisp strips of bacon, my mouth watering, and then settle for a few cubes of watermelon.
It was strange, because nobody had ever explicitly told me that I needed to watch my diet. But so much of the pressure I felt was silent, unspoken, like being trapped inside a submarine thousands of miles underwater and feeling the oxygen slowly run out. I hadn’t even realized how hungry I was—how hunger had become my usual state—until the day after I parted ways with my modeling agency, when I walked to the closest In-N-Out and wolfed down two whole cheeseburgers. That was one of the most immediate, tangible joys of quitting modeling: the realization that food wasn’t meant to be an enemy or a rare treat or some kind of twisted test. And with every full meal I’ve had since, I can feel my body replenishing itself. My hair is so much shinier, and walking long distances is so much easier, and now, at a buffet like this, I don’t have to think about anything except how rich the food tastes.
“So. How’s your first night with the roommate?” Oliver asks, already moving on to his second slice of toast. “You’re with Daisy, right? She’s pretty quiet, isn’t she? I was, like, kind of concerned she just wasn’t going to talk to me at all, but she’s actually been chill. She even helped take photos of me yesterday—but you should’ve seen her face when I started singing on our way back to the hotel. She literally turned red and ducked behind a wall because a few people were staring at me in admiration …”
I let him talk until he’s physically forced to take a breath. “Be nice to her,” I warn him, jabbing my chopsticks in his direction like they’re a weapon. It’s hard not to feel a little protective of my new roommate, who’s currently waiting in line for the congee. Every time someone shows up, she steps aside and smiles to let them go first. I think she’s been in the same spot for the past ten minutes; she might have actually moved farther back in the line.
Oliver follows my gaze and snorts. “Well,she’sdefinitely nice. A bit too nice, I would even say—a problem that my roommate doesn’t have.”
I bite carefully into the top of my soup dumpling, sipping the hot, savory juice until only the minced meat filling is left. “How’s that going, by the way?”
“Amazing. Spectacular,” Oliver replies, flicking his dark brown hair out of his eyes. “He told me his whole life story and we cried over a movie about a dog together and woke up early to watch the sunrise. We’re practically best friends now.”
“Please don’t spread such appalling lies.”
We both glance up to see Cyrus standing there, brows faintly furrowed, a glass of water in one hand, his plate in the other. His breakfast is as healthy as I would’ve expected: fresh fruit, shredded lettuce, whole wheat bread, sliced chicken and ham in perfect proportions. It could literally be used as a model of the food pyramid.
“Ah. There he is,” Oliver says with a wide, exaggerated grin, and yanks back the chair next to him. “My best friend. Please, come join us.”
Cyrus eyes the chair warily, like he thinks it might be pulled out from under him at any second, but then he catches me staring and sits, rolling up the long sleeves of his white hoodie. “Good morning,” he tells me, his voice quiet and still slightly thick with sleep.
Oliver’s eyebrows shoot up. “He didn’t say good morning tome, and I greeted him, like, twenty times.”
“You woke me up by jumping on my bed like it was a trampoline,” Cyrus says without looking at him. He spears his fork through a single piece of spinach. “That immediately disqualified the morning from being a good one.”
“Okay, bro, in my defense, you werecompletelystill. Like, I’ve never seen someone sleep in such an uncomfortable position before without moving an inch. I was starting to think you were dead.”
“In the event that I do die in the middle of the night, I beg of you to not react by jumping up and down around my corpse,” Cyrus says flatly.
Oliver heaves a long sigh. “See what I have to put up with?” he asks me, pointing at Cyrus with a piece of bacon. “I don’t know how you hooked up with him. He doesn’t even seem like he’d be open to a high five, much less a fling.”
