This Time It’s Real

The day before school begins again, my life unravels.

Well, it doesn’t so much unravel as completely implode: starting with the notification that pops up on my phone first thing in the morning.

I kNew You were Lying.

I stare at it for a long time, my heart beating out of control. It’s unnerving as hell, and not just because of the arbitrary capitalization.

If I’m being accused of lying, there’s only thing I could be lying about …

A sick feeling digs into my gut. I sit up fast and unlock my phone, heading straight over to Twitter. And that’s when all the other comments come flooding in, so similar to the first. Just as hostile. Just as ominous.

@blondie22: Liar.

@abigailsmithh: Lmao I guess ppl will do ANYTHING for clout these days. Girl bye.

@user1127: Caz Song deserves better.

@MayIsADog: talk about pathetic??? and here i was thinking we actually had a cute wholesome couple to root for … guess not.

@chengxiaoshi: I KNEW IT. i TOLD Y’ALL this was a publicity stunt!! I fucking CALLED IT.

@wenkexing520: This is why we can’t have nice things.

And it’s … I mean, I’ve received hate messages before. It’s inevitable for anyone who’s ever gone at least a little viral. So-called fans telling me I’m too ugly for Caz, or that I’m holding him back in his career. Random trolls going on about how I’m untalented and overrated. Anonymous users claiming it’s anti-feminist of me to fall in love. Racist assholes making the usual stereotypical jokes in the comments.

They’ve always stung, of course, and hit a little too close to home for comfort, but the obvious strategy was simply to ignore them.

But this. This is different.

My whole body is trembling as I search my own name on Google, and there’s a moment when nothing has loaded yet that I can feel my heartbeat thudding furiously in my ears, and I think I might throw up. Or maybe start crying. Then the results appear, and I’m too busy reading about why a bunch of strangers on the internet hate me to even muster the energy for tears.

The source of the problem quickly becomes evident.

Around midnight yesterday, while I was sound asleep, someone posted a long article speculating that my relationship with Caz was only a publicity stunt cooked up by his manager. The article noted some “discrepancies” between my personal essay and Caz’s schedule. Like how, on the day we supposedly went out for hot pot, Caz was busy doing promotional activities for his campus drama and couldn’t have possibly met up with me then. Or how, in one paragraph, I mentioned the stray cat hair clinging to his sweater, despite the fact that he’s allergic to cats. It’s what everyone in the entertainment industry does these days. Has anyone even seen them really kiss, apart from that one peck-on-a-cheek selfie the girl posted?

Maybe it would’ve been fine if, by the same strange, unpredictable alchemy of the internet that made my essay go viral in the first place, the article hadn’t shot up to number one on trending searches.

And it all fell apart from there.

“Oh my god,” I whisper, throwing my phone onto my bed, where it lands with a light, unsatisfying flop. I turn around. Squeeze my eyes shut. “Oh my god.”

The worst part of all this is that I should’ve anticipated it. Because it feels like a total end-of-the-world disaster, yes, but it also feels like an inevitability.

Zoe’s words from the other day float back to me: It just seems like the kind of thing destined to blow up in your face …

And suddenly, with an ache so acute it feels like a cavity, I find myself missing Zoe. How I’d walk into a crowded classroom knowing she had saved a seat for me. How she’d always wait for me by the lockers in the morning and after school, an anchor to my day. More than that, I miss the person I always became around her: someone braver and better and stronger, someone who wasn’t afraid to crack dumb jokes and embarrass themselves a little and go after what they wanted.

If she were here, she wouldn’t know how to fix this either. But she’d know exactly what to say to calm me down, to make me feel okay.

Behind me, my phone chimes again.

No doubt more hate comments. And I know I shouldn’t read them, that there’s no point torturing myself any further, but it’s like telling yourself not to scratch an itch, or press an old bruise: As masochistic as it is, you can’t help doing it anyway.

So I grab my phone and brace myself for some variation of fraud or liar or I hate your fucking guts, but instead I see only a name flashing over my screen.

Sarah Diaz.

•    •    •

Weeks from now, when I look back on this particular morning, it’ll likely be nothing more a white-noise blur of panic, a gaping black hole in my memory.

I’m barely conscious of the day’s events even as they’re unfolding. One second I’m on the phone with Sarah, reassuring her that everything’s just a misunderstanding and I totally have a plan, when I in fact totally do not have a plan, and the next I’m texting Caz, who’s only just landed in Beijing and isn’t aware of this complete shitstorm yet, but soon will be.

And in between all this, I’m lying facedown on the couch, cursing myself and trying not to pull my hair out.

Still, by lunchtime, I’ve calmed down enough to start thinking. Hard. Ma has seen PR crises far worse than this—like the rat-in-the-coffee incident, and the toxic-masculinity incident, and the many Kevin-induced accidents—and she’s managed to smooth them all over. Sometimes her company’s reputation has even improved as a result.

So what would she do?

Issue an apology? A formal statement? No. That’s not her style; she never confesses to anything if she can help it. In fact, she’d probably do the opposite. Cover up one major event with another …

I close my eyes and think and think and finally, miraculously, like that day I saw Caz Song on my TV screen, an idea comes to me.

If the main issue is that people don’t believe Caz Song and I are really together, then I have just the thing to prove them wrong.

My phone lights up.

I flinch by instinct, dreading what I might see, but it’s a message from Caz. He’s caught up to everything.

What do we do? he asks.

I think I have a solution, I text back. but you’re probably not going to like it. oh, also—what’s your manager’s number? let me know asap.

•    •    •

I spend the next day making phone calls and writing frantic emails.

First, I get in touch with Caz’s publicity team. This part goes more smoothly than I could dare hope: We track down the IP address of the original poster who wrote up the article, only to find that it’s a sisheng fan, a stalker essentially, who’s already been given two warnings for lurking around Caz’s hotel room. It’s perfect. After all, the best way to get rid of an unwanted story is to attack it at its source, erode the credibility of the author. From there, all we have to do is spread the information online and wait for the narrative to write itself. Jealous fan makes up lies about Caz and his girlfriend. Fan comes up with wild conspiracy theories about her favorite star.

At the same time, the manager pulls a few strings behind the scenes and accidentally-deliberately leaks some photos from god knows where of a married actor from a rival company leading a brothel worker into his hotel room at night. Within hours, the news blows up and squeezes out the old article on me and Caz from the trending searches, until it’s all anyone can talk about.

Then it just comes down to Caz and me, and how well we can pull off the ultimate performance.

•    •    •

“You ready?”

I nod as I move to join Caz on the roof of one of our school buildings. This is my first time seeing him up close since before the holidays, and I’d forgotten how overwhelming it felt just to be in his presence, scandal or not. The buzzing in my stomach, the rush of blood in my veins, every nerve end on edge. His hair is a little longer now, his skin tanner, the lean muscles in his arms flexing as he leans over the glass railings.

He looks good.

Maybe too good, in a distracting way. I can’t look at him without thinking about those nights with his voice pressed to my ear. It feels like my heart has missed a step.

“Are you?” I ask, quickly stuffing all unnecessary thoughts away. I need to focus. We only get this one chance to fix everything, and it has to be perfectly executed.

“When am I not?” He’s making this expression like, I got it, relax. I have no idea how he’s so chill about this. It’s almost irritating. “Let’s do this.”

I nod again. Exhale slowly and stare past the railings, stamping my feet to keep warm. As expected, the courtyard below and surrounding footpaths are already starting to fill up with students. The roof is the one spot everyone has a clear view of, no matter where they are in the school. The saying goes that people only believe what they see with their own eyes. So I’m just praying that if they see us together, really together together, they’ll be sufficiently convinced of our relationship.

Okay, it’s not the most foolproof plan, and I have no idea if it’ll work or not—but it’s the best we can do for now.

When enough people have gathered to form a crowd, I twist around and pat Caz’s shoulder. “Okay. Start.”

He arches a brow, his lips twitching. “You’re not even going to let me get into the moment a bit?”

Is he kidding? “You’re an actor,” I hiss. I can feel everyone’s eyes on us, watching our exchange. “Be serious.”

“Fine,” he says, and though I’ve witnessed it more than a few times by now, it still startles me when he snaps easily into his role, the humor wiped clean from his face, his eyes deepening to black. The color of a moonless sky, charcoal ready to ignite, the earth after a storm. “Like this?”

“Y-yeah,” I manage. Swallow. “Yeah, like that.” One small step, and I’ve closed the distance between us. I lift my lips to his ear and whisper, for only him to hear, “Now hurry up and kiss me before people start leaving.”

I brace myself. Try to empty my mind. It’s supposed to be a professional kiss, if such a thing exists. Neither of us should feel anything other than grim determination to do this well, and maybe a hint of annoyance, impatience at having to do this in the first place.

But this is what happens instead:

Caz cups my face with one steady, slender hand and traces a gentle line down my cheek, and my mind—my mind teeters toward oblivion. My breathing betrays me. His ink-black eyes lock on mine, and I am staring up at him, half in shock and maybe awe. He’s unreasonably beautiful and he’s so close it makes me ache and I want him closer still. I want him even though I shouldn’t. I want him to want me too.

I can’t even remember what we were supposed to do.

Then, slowly, he brings his other hand up to my face. His fingers tremble slightly, and the air between us changes. Solidifies. Overheats. My mouth parts of its own accord, and he sees.

He makes a soft, barely audible sound that could be a sigh or the edge of a laugh or something else, a surrender, and then he leans all the way in, presses his lips to mine like he can’t help himself, like he’s been waiting forever just to kiss me—

And I kiss him back.

I kiss him with an intensity that shocks me.

Because somehow, I realize I’ve been yearning for this: the softness of his lips moving against my own, the firmness of his grip, the small, hungry fires spreading from every single point of contact.

Then, just as quick as it started, it’s over.

I don’t know who pulls away first, but we’re suddenly scrambling backward, standing apart, nothing but our uneven breaths touching the space between us. For a split second, Caz looks stunned. Almost drunk.

But in the next second, he is himself again. Confident. Assured. He straightens, runs a bored hand through his hair, and looks out at the students on the school oval.

My blood is pounding so loud in my ears I’d nearly forgotten they were there, but I gaze down too, assessing their expressions. Some are staring at us with open envy and shock. Others … Others are frowning, like they’re not entirely sure what it is they’ve just witnessed.

“Do you—do you think it worked?” I ask Caz, my voice way too high to be normal.

“Honestly?” I hear him swallow. “No.”

“Wait—what?” I demand, twisting around. But before I can even continue, he grabs my wrist and pulls me out of sight, leading me away until we’re concealed by jade bamboos and mandarin trees, hidden in a mini garden of our own, soft shadows dancing around us, light bleeding through the gaps in the leaves. “What?” I repeat in a hiss. He still hasn’t let go. I’m intimately aware of the warm press of his fingers against my skin, the precise shape and sound of his every breath.

“Yeah, no, these scandals are rarely resolved in a day—or with a single performance. You need to give it a lot more time.”

“Then why—” I shake my head. My head is still spinning. I manage to produce exactly one coherent thought—Caz Song and I just kissed—before my brain runs into a wall and crashes. Caz and I kissed, and for a long moment, from when our lips met, Caz had kissed me like … like he really meant it. No. Stop. Not the point here. “If you didn’t think it would work, why did you agree to the plan?”

Something flickers over his face, but he merely shrugs. “You just seemed like you really wanted to kiss me. And who am I to deny you the pleasure?”

My face bursts into flame. He says it like he’s teasing. No, like he’s mocking me. But of course he is. Of course he hadn’t actually meant it—that’s how he kisses everyone, all his beautiful costars on set. Who am I kidding? A kiss is just a kiss to him.

“Wow,” I say, shifting back, mortification burning through my body like hot oil. “Okay. Well, clearly this was a mistake—and for the record, I absolutely did not want to kiss you. At all. It was only for a bigger cause—dire times, and all that—”

“Really?” He moves forward. Cocks his head. “Then what are you thinking right now?”

“I— What?” I flush harder. Through my humiliation, I’m thinking, unforgivably, about what it’d be like to kiss him again, to kiss him and really savor it, even knowing that it’d be more real for me than it could ever be for him.

But it’s like the kiss has unlocked every suppressed fear and feeling inside me. Because I’m also thinking about how tens of thousands of people across the world are somehow invested in Caz and me, but only in the fantasy version of our story. I’m thinking about how it would feel to have Caz only to lose him, the way I lose everyone when I leave, the kind of bone-deep, inconsolable pain I would have to suffer as a consequence of my wanting. How easy it would be to revert to that old, familiar loneliness, except this time, the loneliness would hurt more than it ever has before, a loneliness shaped entirely by his absence.

I’m thinking that if I tell him what I really feel, just lay it all out there, there will truly be no going back from this. That it’s been hard enough just to get to where we are—from strangers to begrudging allies to actual friends—to demolish every painstaking brick of trust built between us by asking for something more. That I’ll have broken every rule I’ve laid down for myself, just to give Caz—beautiful, unpredictable, guarded Caz—all the ammunition he needs to break my heart.

“I’m … not sure what to think,” I say.

He takes another step closer. I step back automatically, the bamboo stalks rising up around me, brushing my cheek. He stops. Releases his grip on my wrist, only to bring his hand up to the curve of my jaw, and it’s all I can do not to dissolve right there or utter something incredibly dangerous and sincere.

“So you don’t have any real feelings for me?” he asks, his voice dipping into a low register I’ve never heard before. “Not even a little?” He keeps his gaze steady on me, but his fingers trail down to a soft, vulnerable spot at the base of my neck, and I flinch, like an idiot.

I can’t speak; I shake my head.

“Really?” he says, one brow raised, looking exactly the way he did that first day I spoke to him, when I claimed to not have overheard his call and he didn’t believe me at all.

I hear myself swallow. Try to ignore the sensation of his hands still on my skin. “N-no. None.”

Caz responds by leaning in, and for one wild, beautiful, terrifying second, I think he’s going to press his lips to mine, and I can’t help it—I lean in too. But instead he merely smiles, as if he’s just proven something to both of us, and lowers his curved mouth to my ear.

“Liar,” he whispers.

And I don’t know what to do, how to react, how to process that I’ve been caught. So I revert to my old habits, my ingrained methods of self-defense: I wrench myself free from his grip. I spin on my heels, twisting away from him. And I run. My feet pound all the way down the stairs, and I shove the door open, bursting into the blinding sunlight. I don’t go to class and I don’t stop until I’m far enough away and alone in a remote corner of campus. Until it’s just me, my racing thoughts, and my violently pounding heartbeat.