Page 66 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
“All right, I have no idea where this is going, but I’m listening.”
“I wasn’t actually meant to sit next to you on the plane ride to Shanghai,” he says. “My original seat was four rows away, and I had to bribe this extremely disgruntled college student into swapping with me. Also … I was hoping you would be at your cousin’s wedding. I did plan to find Dr. Linda Shen, of course—that letter of recommendation is really important to me. But when I said there was someone I needed to see, I was talking about you.”
I blink, very nearly certain that he’s kidding.
“I’m not kidding,” Cyrus says, and his eyes are serious, tentative even, searching mine for some kind of reaction. “None of it was an accident.”
“You did all that … for me?” I whisper. My heart leans all the way forward, close to toppling right out my chest.
“Of course,” he says.
Maybe, another day, I’ll find the right words in either English or Chinese to tell him everything I’m feeling, how grateful I am that we came here together, how happy I am whenever I’m with him, how close I’d been to losing hope before he found his way to me. But a lump fills my throat, and for now I can only lean against him, squeeze his hand tight as the plane begins slowly backing away from the gate.
I must nod off at some point, because when I open my eyes again, we’re already above the clouds and Cyrus’s fingers are laced firmly through mine. I’m still not sure where I’ll end up a month from now, or a year, or half a life, whether I’ll find something I love as much as I love this moment, and whether it’ll last. But all I have to do is look out at the sky, that deep, lovely, endless blue, and remember that no matter where I end up, joy will never be too far out of reach.
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 entirehourearly. 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 herownwedding.
“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 EastAfternoon Teais 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 bizarreto me, considering how much you hated him before, she’d confessed as the car crawled along the highway,but I cantell 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 …”
