This Time It’s Real

I’d planned to start writing out my blog post the instant I got home, but instead I end up collapsing onto my bed, my pillow hugged to my chest, reliving every embarrassing second of my little speech at the bubble tea shop.

What had I been thinking? This is why I should never be left to improvise anything, ever. I’d basically confessed my feelings to Caz straight to his face. And the way he’d looked at me after, like he was trying to figure out the gentlest way to let me down … Sure, he’d still insisted on giving me a ride back, but we’d barely even talked on the way home. At the time, I’d attributed it to my own weird feelings, but now that I really think about it, he’d been quieter than usual too. Distant. Withdrawn. He didn’t even smile at me when I got off—

I groan and kick out so hard my blankets tumble to the floor.

Just as I’m debating whether to ruin the dramatic moment by picking them back up, or risk a lecture from Ma by leaving them there, my phone buzzes. One new message from Caz. I swallow, my heart galloping in my chest. Oh my god, what if he wants to talk about that Moment today? What if he asks me straight up how I really feel about him? What if he’s texting to reject me?

But when I unlock my phone, there’s only the sentence:

My parents want to meet you.

Wait, legit? I type, then delete it. It sounds too eager. Like I actually want to meet them too. I pause, thinking hard, and try out: Is this a joke? Then delete that as well. But by now a significant amount of time has lapsed since I’ve read his message, and he’s probably watching me type and delete over and over again, which is worse than anything I could write. Panicking, I go with: And what did I do to deserve this great honor? And hit send. Then instantly regret it. I should’ve just gone with the first option. That was shorter, at least, and short is casual. Casual is good.

It’s possible that I’m overthinking this.

They’ve wanted to meet you for some time now, he texts back moments later. Just haven’t had the chance to because of work. But they should be home this Saturday, if you’re free.

I frown at the words. He makes it sound like his parents are rarely home at all. And that there’s a chance they might cancel even now.

Before I can reply, he adds: I know we said we wouldn’t get our families involved, but mine can be persistent. I promise it’s just a quick dinner to get them off my back about this.

I’ll owe you one.

He’s right. We shouldn’t be getting our families involved. It’s already bad enough that he and Emily know each other. But then I remember how he’d looked today, the sun in his hair, his lower lip chewed red … The terrible thing is that even though I keep embarrassing myself around him, keep putting myself at risk of getting hurt—part of me still wants to see him again.

Fine, I type, feeling like I’ve failed a self-assigned test. But only this once.

Of course, he replies quickly, and I can just imagine his triumphant little grin. You’re the best.

whatever.

“It’ll be okay,” I reassure myself out loud, chucking my phone on the bed. I just need to charm my fake boyfriend’s parents enough that they approve of me but not so much that they’ll actually care when we break up. Easy. Simple. What could possibly go wrong?

•    •    •

So on Saturday, I wait outside Caz Song’s door with a box of edible bird’s nest in one hand and my heart in my throat.

After checking my warped reflection in the shiny doorknob and confirming that there’s nothing embarrassing on my face, other than my face, I draw in a shaky breath and knock.

“Coming.”

Footsteps, firm and swift. Then the door creaks opens, and I find myself staring up at Caz. He’s in a light gray shirt that hugs his shoulders and Levi’s jeans, and he’s barefoot. Relaxed. A striped shower towel hangs around his neck, darker in the places where his wet hair has dripped water onto it.

He stares back for a moment, and there’s surprise in his eyes and something else.

“Hey,” he says. “You’re early.”

“Oh—sorry.” I shift awkwardly between my feet. “I was scared of getting here late. Is it a bad time or—”

He laughs at me. “Why are you being so formal?”

“I’m not,” I lie, though I don’t dare relax. I’ll never forget that pitying look in his eyes back at the bubble tea shop, and I pray to god I’ll never have to see it again. If he can act like everything is normal between us, I can too. I won’t slip up a second time. I can’t.

His gaze goes to the bird’s nest. The packaging is bright red, Spring Festival red, with fancy golden edges and an engraving of flying sparrows on the front. I’d bought it only after consulting about twenty different articles along the lines of “The Ten Best Herbal Gift Packages to Win Over Your Boyfriend’s Mother.” “This is nice,” he says.

“Thanks. It’s what the article rec—” I cut myself off. Clear my throat. “Thanks,” I repeat awkwardly.

Smiling a little, he takes the box from me, and I do my best to ignore the light brush of his knuckles against mine, and the way he seems to notice it too, his body tensing for the briefest fraction of a second before he turns around.

I can’t help but stare as I follow Caz into his apartment.

The whole setup reminds me of a museum, or one of those celebrity home tours where you know the celebrity doesn’t actually live there half the time. It’s too polished. Too extravagant.

The walls of the wide corridor are lined with framed black-and-white photos and abstract art—the kind that look like someone accidentally spilled a paint bucket onto white canvas but probably sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars and represent the inherent unknowability of the human condition or something—and these gorgeous traditional Chinese landscape paintings, with red-crowned cranes and sloping mountains captured in rich, sweeping ink.

Then there are all the antiques on display: shiny bronzeware raised on tables and slender porcelain vases covered in these lovely floral patterns. There’s even a replica—at least I think it’s a replica—of a life-size terra-cotta warrior just propped up casually in one corner, like this is a totally normal choice of interior decoration.

I have a sudden, horrifying vision of myself tripping on my own feet and knocking over the vases one by one like dominoes, and I instinctively move closer to Caz’s side.

“So my father isn’t here today,” he tells me as we turn the corner, his voice impassive. “The hospital called this morning and said they needed him there for an emergency operation. He wanted to pass along his apologies.”

“Of—of course. That’s totally understandable,” I say quickly. “And I mean, if he really wants to meet me, we could always just reschedule …”

Caz shakes his head. “He gets, like, two days off a year.”

Soon the corridor opens up into a bright, high-ceilinged living room with huge windows, and a middle-aged woman waiting by the sofas.

Caz’s mom pretty much looks exactly how I imagined she would, only more stylish. Her straight, shoulder-length bob is dark against the dewy white of her skin, her thin eyebrows tattooed on. And even though she’s standing in the middle of her own living room, she’s wearing the kind of satin blouse and ironed pencil skirt that would suit an extravagant company brunch.

I glance down at my own plain white shirt, suddenly afraid I’ve underdressed. Not that it matters. I shouldn’t want to impress Caz’s mother, who I’ll only be seeing this one time in my life. But still. It’s the principle of the thing.

“Oh, you must be Eliza!” she greets me, walking up to us.

“Ayi hao,” I say politely, and for some reason, I decide to bow. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

Her pink-painted lips stretch into a wide smile. She has deep dimples, I notice, just like her son.

“Wa, I like your hair,” she tells me with an envious kind of sigh. “It’s so black and straight. Beautiful.”

“Oh. Thank you.” I realize it’s my turn to pay her a compliment now. An even better compliment than the one she just gave me. “I really like your …” Quick. Think of something, or else it’ll sound fake. My eyes roam over the house, a thousand frantic, half-formed thoughts firing through my brain at once. Do I compliment the decor? Is that a thing mothers like to hear? Or her makeup? Or would it be rude to draw attention to the fact that she’s wearing makeup in the first place? Crap. I’m taking too long. Just say something. Anything. “I love your … nose.”

I wince, almost certain she’s going to start admonishing Caz for bringing home a weirdo, but she looks genuinely delighted.

“You do?” Her fingers flutter to her nose. “I always worry that my nose bridge isn’t high enough—”

“No, no, it’s perfect,” I reassure her. Then, in a sudden burst of inspiration, I add, “I can really see where your son got his good looks from.”

And I didn’t think it was possible, but her smile grows even wider, into an expression of such pure motherly affection that I feel a brief pang behind my ribs. Before coming here, part of me had wished she would turn out to be mean and judgmental, one of those evil mothers-in-law from the C-dramas I always watch, someone I could stay wholly indifferent to and forget about the second I left the building.

But now I can’t help basking in her approval. Wanting more of it. How am I supposed to hide my feelings from Caz and convince his mom I care about him at the same time?

“You’re very sweet,” she says, then pats Caz’s hair down with one hand (he immediately winces and ruffles it back into his usual messy style), and adds in a stage whisper, “I don’t think we should feed his ego anymore, though. He has enough people telling him how handsome he is every day. It’s probably why he spends so long in front of the mirror before school—”

Caz claps his hands together. Raises his voice. “How about we start preparing for dinner, hmm?”

But Caz’s mother goes on like he hasn’t spoken. “You know what, I think he’s grown even more image-conscious in recent months. All that styling with his hair and the expensive skin cream—my god, I swear he uses more than I do—”

“Mom,” Caz says, louder, clearly trying and failing to keep his cool. “Mom, that’s really not—you’re exaggerating—”

“Well, this is very interesting to me,” I tell her, ignoring him too. “Skin cream, you say?”

She nods. “And face masks. I’ve never seen a boy his age care so much about his appearance; did you know, just last Tuesday, he insisted on missing a whole day of classes because he had a tiny blemish on his forehead.”

My eyebrows shoot up as I process this, then glance over at Caz’s flushed face. He had told me he was busy shooting that day. “Did he really.”

“So ridiculous, right? Sometimes I worry people at school tease him for it.”

“Oh, I don’t think anyone at school knows this side of him,” I say, marveling at how quickly Caz Song’s carefree actor image is unraveling right before my eyes—and how panicked he looks because of it. It’s so rare for him to be the one discomposed, self-conscious, that I can’t help enjoying myself a little. Or a lot.

“Look, I’m starving,” Caz tries again, making a sharp turn toward the living room. “Can we start now? Please?”

I bite back a smile and walk after him. “Your house is really tidy,” I muse aloud as we pass the hall.

“It’s always like this,” Caz says hastily, at the same time that his mother says:

“Oh, yes, Caz spent ages cleaning up before you arrived. Wanted to make sure everything was nice and spotless. He’s so thoughtful, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” I say despite myself, an unwanted rush of warmth filling my chest. “He is.” Caz doesn’t look at me, but I notice the color creeping up the back of his neck, all the way to his ears. And I realize I’m in far greater trouble than I’d prepared myself for.

We enter the next room together, where Caz’s mother has single-handedly set out a restaurant-standard feast. There are two plates of fish—pan-fried and braised—and shredded pork and crisp lotus and sweet yams dipped in melted sugar, and it’s all so much that I offer to help right away.

Still, while I set down the plates, I can’t stop sneaking curious glances at Caz, watching him as he straightens the chairs, grabs a few spoons to share the main dishes, and wipes his hands fastidiously on a clean kitchen towel.

By the time I’m seated, I’ve noted a dozen tiny new details, like how Caz helps his mother lift the heavier pots and pans, or how he’s the only one in the household with his own designated mug, or how he tries to sneak all the vegetable dishes to the opposite end of the table, as far away from him as possible.

•    •    •

The dinner goes far more smoothly than I expected. In my desperation, I’d prepared a few inoffensive conversation starters to help pass the hours, but Caz’s mother ends up doing most of the talking—bragging and complaining about her son in turns, or bragging in the tones of making a complaint.

The latter is a very refined, subtle art, one that most Asian parents seem to perfect by the time their children enter kindergarten.

“It’s just so difficult for me,” she laments as she sucks the meat off the fish tail. “All these parents keep asking me, How is your son so brilliant? What’s your secret? And I honestly don’t know what to tell them, you know? He’s always busy doing his own thing, and he just happens to be very good at it. How do I explain that?”

“That does sound quite difficult,” I say cooperatively, while Caz avoids my gaze, his shoulders stiff.

“It’s a shame, though,” she continues, jabbing her chopsticks at Caz. “It’d be even better if he had the same talent in actually important subjects, like math or English, no? I always tell him—I always say, Erzi ya, you can’t expect to make a living off your looks and acting forever. You should prioritize your studies instead. But he never listens.”

Caz rubs his neck with ill-concealed agitation, the color in his cheeks spreading. Everything about him is unusually tense, though I seem to be the only one who notices.

“Well, he works very hard,” I say slowly, unable to press down the surge of defensiveness inside me. “And there are a lot of people who expect different things from him. I mean, I’m just impressed he’s managed to juggle everything in the first place.”

Caz’s mother looks at me with surprise. But just when she’s about to say something, Caz leans forward hurriedly. “Mom, were you going to eat the fish head? Because I think we should throw it away—”

“What?” In a flash, Caz’s mother has scraped all the remains of the braised fish onto her plate, guarding it protectively with both chopsticks. “Has water gotten into your brain? You baijiazi,” she says. I recognize the term only because it’s one of my mother’s favorite insults too whenever she catches me wasting food or spending money on anything she deems unnecessary. “The fish head is where the good stuff is—it is the essence.”

Caz breathes a small sigh of relief, and his diversion tactic does seem to work for a good ten minutes. But when his mother has finished spitting out the fish bones, all of which are scarily clean, she dives right back into the topic.

“Erzi, how are those college essays coming along, by the way? You know how important they are. Have you finished them all? I could ask a colleague to read—”

“They’re good,” he says, his expression working too hard to remain neutral. He’s fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “They’re done, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I managed to find … help.”

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?”

“It is silly,” 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, you want to 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, really nice 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 thing is that 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. “Everything is nice. But …”

But that’s the problem.

If this goes on, I might just die of guilt. But if this ends, I already have too much to grieve. Somehow, despite all my rules and reservations, I’m already in too deep, so far lost in the waves that sinking feels easier than swimming.

“Hey,” Caz says softly, lowering himself onto a stone bench and pulling me to his side. “Is this … ?” He pauses. I watch him inhale, exhale. “Is this too much for you? Do you want to stop?”

My heart drops, and the night seems to freeze around us.

Do I want to stop?

I should. The smart thing—the selfless thing—to do would be to call it off while I still can, while most of my heart is still intact. There are already too many people involved in this: Emily, his mother, all my readers and his fans. And of course he wouldn’t have a problem calling it off; for him, it really is just another job, no different from any drama project he’s taken up before.

But as I gaze over at his face in the dark, the thought of letting him go now sends a spasm of physical pain through me. Because I know all too well how things will turn out after our arrangement is over: We’ll go back to being strangers, and I’ll be alone again, like I always am. I’ll never get to talk to him, to be this close to him, even if it’s just pretend.

Because I’m selfish, and I want to live in this dream for as long as I can.

And I know exactly how to ensure it happens.

“We can’t stop,” I hear myself say, the lie rising fully formed to my lips. How many lies have I told by now? Too many to count. But the only way I managed to rope Caz into this whole arrangement in the first place was by making it about his career; now it’s also the only way to keep him here. “Because … because we still need to do an interview together.”

Caz draws back. “An interview? I don’t remember you mentioning it.”

“I must’ve forgotten,” I tell him, hoping he can’t hear the waver in my breath. “But it’s with this huge media company, and I already promised Sarah Diaz we’d be available. It’s not scheduled for until after the Spring Festival holidays, though, so if we can keep this up until then …”

“I’m willing if you are,” he says slowly. It’s too dark to make out his expression, but I can feel his gaze on me. As if he’s looking for something. “But there’s no other reason, beside the interview?”

I tense. The words are there, crowded in the back of my throat. I could tell him. Be honest for once in my life. Be brave. My heart starts drumming louder, so loud I’m certain he’ll hear it. I breathe in. Tell him. But all that comes out is: “Of course not.”

“Of course not,” he repeats. For some reason, his voice is strained.