Page 61 of This Time It's Real
We share a small, quiet look over the table, the moment burning inside me like a secret.
“Oh, that’s great,” his mother says earnestly, and turns to smile at me. “He’s always been so stubborn about letting others help him. It’s kind of silly, really; why make things unnecessarily hard for yourself?”
“Itissilly,” I agree.
Caz clears his throat, his expression strained with discomfort. “I just—don’t like inconveniencing people.”
His mother jabs her chopsticks at him again, but it’s a gesture performed with exasperated affection. “Sha erzi, what do you know? When you care about someone, youwantto be inconvenienced—you wouldn’t mind being inconvenienced by them every day for the rest of your life. That’s what love is. That’s all love really is.”
When everything’s over, Caz and his mother both walk me down to the bottom of the apartment, despite my insistence that I can walk alone. There’s a chill in the air but a crispness too, the sweet scent of grass and pine and night-blooming flowers. Of melted snow.
“It was really,reallynice to meet you, Eliza,” Caz’s mother tells me, patting the back of my hand, her hair burning orange-brown under the compound’s streetlights. “You should come over more often.”
“I’ll try to,” I say vaguely, avoiding any promises I can’t keep.
She beams. Pats my hand one last time. “Oh, you must.”
After she’s instructed Caz to walk me home “like a proper gentleman,” she waves at the both of us and disappears back into the building.
And then it’s just Caz and me.
“So,” I say, all my awkwardness returning. “Um, you don’t actually have to walk with me—”
“I want to,” Caz says—then, maybe catching the surprise on my face, pauses. “I mean, I should.”
We walk in silence for a while through the dark, empty compound, our hands close but never touching, and I can tell that there’s as much on his mind as there is on mine. Because the thing is. . . the thingisthat I should be happy right now, relieved it’s all over, eager to drop the act and go home and never entertain another thought about his family again.
But throughout the whole evening, I keep being reminded that these feelings simply aren’t going away. Because this isn’t just a silly, superficial crush anymore. It’s more. It’s worse. It’s the realization that no matter how hard I try to protect myself, no matter how many barriers I build up and lines I draw between us, I am doomed to get my heart broken by Caz Song. It’s only a matter of when and how badly.
And maybe it’s already happening. Ever since that moment in the bubble tea shop, he’s been acting so—distant.So different from his usual self. Maybe this is just his way of rejecting me.
I don’t even notice the pressure building in my throat, behind my eyes, until I sniff, and Caz freezes.
“Whoa. Wait.” His gaze cuts to mine, black on brown, concern dancing over his features like light over water. “Are you . . . crying?”
“No,” I sniff, tilting my head back and blinking furiously at the empty, starless sky, trying to will the wetness in my eyes away. But something warm trickles down my cheek anyway, tracing a trail down to my jaw.
Caz hesitates a second, opens his mouth and closes it again, then reaches out and brushes the tear aside with one gentle thumb.
I snap my head down, stare at him, the tenderness of the gesture breaking open something inside me. I can’t remember the last time I felt like this—thawed and vulnerable and exposed and wanting too much, my heart straining at maximum capacity. I can’t remember the last time I cried like this either. Not out of anger, or humiliation, or frustration, but because of an unidentifiable ache deep in my chest.
“Sorry,” I mumble, voice hoarse and stuffy with emotion. Now that I’m crying, I can’t seem to stop. Caz doesn’t say anything; he simply wipes away my tears as they fall. “God, I can’t believe I’m actually—This is so gross.”
Now he laughs, a soft sound that dissolves in the air between us.
“It’s not funny,” I say, even though I’m laughing a little too, my cheeks damp and my nose running, the sound rattling in my throat. I’m basically the definition of an emotional mess right now.
“Of course it isn’t,” Caz agrees. He wipes my cheeks again, then brings his other hand gently to the back of my head, consoling me as if I’m still just a kid. “So what’s wrong? Was being in my house really that awful?” He says it like a joke, but I can see a trace of genuine worry in his features.
“No, no, no,” I rush to say. “No, your house was great—I mean, the terra-cotta warrior was a questionable choice of decoration—”
“My father’s choice. My mother and I hate it too. We keep trying to dispose of it when he’s not around, but he always finds a way to bring it back.”
“Your mother was also very nice,” I tell him tearily.
He raises his brows. “You should’ve seen her stuffing the statue into an actual body bag.”
I snort out a laugh despite myself, then continue. “Everythingis nice. But . . .”
