Page 91 of This Time It's Real
“Sorry. I had no idea—” Mingri says, hands half thrown up in bewildered defense. “I didn’t think—”
“What did you tell her?” Caz repeats, his eyes still on me. All the tenderness is gone. In fact, he sounds more pissed off than I’ve ever heard him. Pissed off atMingri.
“I . . .” Mingri brings one hand to the back of his neck, rubs it over flushed skin. “I just told her you weren’t here anymore. That you’d left.To get wateris what I meant, but I can see how shemay havemistakenherefor, ah, the general physical realm of the living, instead of this specific space—and maybe I shouldn’t have used Mandarin . . .”
Caz stares at him for a long, disbelieving beat. Then he punches Mingri’s shoulder. It’s not a particularly aggressive punch—not the kind intended to beat the crap out of someone or start a fight—but judging from the thud it makes and Mingri’s immediate wince, it’s not particularly gentle either.
“How could you say that?” Caz demands.
“I thought she already knew you were okay! And besides, I mean, I didn’t exactly get a chance to clarify before she—”
“You might have considered your word choice better,” Caz cuts him off.
“Well, it’s not like I was lying,” Mingri mumbles.
By now my despair has receded into only confused embarrassment. I brush my cheeks as casually as I can, as if I haven’t just been caught breaking down. Then I look back and forth between the two of them before settling on Mingri.
“But you . . .” I say, remembering. “You looked so out of it, and you were rubbing your eyes . . .”
“Yeah, because I wasyawning. And that look on my face is what happens when you shoot the same scene forty times in a boiling tent without any breaks.” He tosses Caz a not-so-subtle look of irritation. Jerks an accusing thumb toward him. “Thanks to this guy, we’ve been working hard-core for weeks. I mean, he used to be all dedicated and shit, but recently—”
“Mingri.” Caz clears his throat.
Mingri ignores him. “Recently he’s been extra intense. Won’t even stop for lunch. Even thedirectorwas asking him to take it easy. Anyway, we figured it had something to do with you—”
“Mingri.”
“But he was scaring the shit out of us, so we didn’t—”
“I think that’s enough,” Caz says loudly, and Mingri throws a hand up in surrender.
“Okay, okay, I’ll give you two some space.” Then a small, wistful grin flits over his face. “I’m meant to be meeting Kaige outside anyway, so . . .”
“Yes, go, have fun,” Caz tells him with some force.
But Mingri lingers for a beat and winks. “Good to see you again, Eliza. Really. For the sake of the entire cast and crew, please take care of him”—he dodges another punch from Caz—“ and, um, sorry again about the death thing.”
“It’s fine,” I say in a rush, because I kind of really want to speak to Caz alone. Mingri seems to get the message; he waves at both of us and then he’s off.
As his footsteps retreat down the corridor, I turn back to Caz.
“Are you injured or—”
“Just a shallow cut on my arm,” he says, rolling up his sleeve to show me. There’s a bandage stretching from his elbow to his wrist, running almost parallel to his old scar. “We didn’t even need to come to the hospital for this, but they were scared it’d be infected or something.” He shrugs and pushes his sleeve back down before I can look closer. “It’s really fine.”
“And are we—” I swallow. Make myself finish the sentence. He’s already rejected me once. The worst that could happen is he rejects me again, and I lose him, and I spend the rest of my life nursing a broken heart. But if I don’t tell him how I feel, when I feel it? That’s another kind of heartbreak: more fatal, more terrible. “Arewefine? Are you—are you still mad?”
Surprise dances over his features. Then he stuffs his hands in his pockets, leans back, and looks at me with such intensity that for a moment I forget how to breathe. “What do you think?”
“I . . .” I’m forced to trail off when two nurses appear down the corridor carrying dark vials of blood. They smile and nod at us as they pass. We smile back. Everyone’s very polite, and I want to tear my hair out. My heart feels like it’s trying to fight its way free from my ribs.
As soon as they’re out of earshot, I try again. “I was thinking—”
Another group of nurses walk past us, chatting, seemingly in a competition to see who can walk the slowest. We repeat the whole excruciating process again. I smile until my teeth grind into dust, until my jaw physically hurts from my effort to keep from screaming.
“You know what?” I decide, unable to stand it anymore. “Follow me.”
All the hospital rooms are completely occupied, as are the waiting areas and the downstairs lobby, so we end up sneaking into a cleaning closet on the far corner of the second floor.
