Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It happens when Wei Ying comes back from the bathroom. The bar is at its blurry-edged peak of the night, and she has some beers in her, just enough so everything is lovely and light. From across a crowd of heads she sees Mianmian join their group—hug everyone, kiss some cheeks. Wei Ying shoulders her way past tall bodies and sweaty backs saying, ah excuse me, sorry excuse me, and gets to the table to catch the tail end of a conversation where Mianmian says, “No Lan Zhan tonight?”, and Huaisang answers, “Lan Huan weekend,” to which Mianmian says: “Ah, yes, the Lans’ heartbreak retreat.”

Wei Ying says hello with a hand to Mianmian’s shoulder.  Mianmian looks up, and her mouth does a little stuttering thing. Wei Ying sits down and says: “Heartbreak retreat?”

Lan Zhan is with her brother. She goes once a month, visits him up in his mountain lodge. Lan Huan had moved there some years ago, ‘to get out of the city’ went the story, though everyone knew some kind of breakup was involved. Wei Ying never quite understood the finer details of it, only that there were a handful of people involved, and someone walking in on someone, and that everyone had made very bad decisions. Lan Zhan often said something along the lines of, He doesn’t get to see a lot of people these days, he appreciates my visits, all while packing her weekend bag: a big black shoulder-strap thing, open-mouthed on her wide bed. She’d fold her clothes with excruciating slowness, would re-do when unsatisfied. Her hands were big and her fingers long and she looked utterly at peace, stacking a t-shirt on top of another. Wei Ying could watch her at it for hours.

“Um,” Mianmian says, and looks to Huaisang, quick and worried.

“What?” Wei Ying says. She feels slow, not catching up. “What did you say? What did I say? What’s a—” The word slots with a tick to the back of her brain. She is stuck on a breath. Then, “Lan Zhan . . . has heartbreak?” Her pulse picks up. She jokes sometimes, over dinner, mouth full and funny and rambling of off a, So when are you gonna leave me huh, get snatched up by some hot babe and leave me forever? When, when?

It is only a joke because Lan Zhan never does go with anyone—not for longer than a date, two. Never brings anyone home, never gets flustered at the mention of a name, never stays away for longer than a single night. And at Wei Ying’s teasing, Lan Zhan would only ever answer, Not yet. Wei Ying would tsk at her and snap her chopsticks at her and then imitate some mother’s speech about not being picky, about having to find a good wife to take care of her.

And later, at night in her own room, a wall away from Lan Zhan’s, she’d think: not yet. Not yet not yet not—

“I mean . . .” says Hauisang, raising his eyebrows at his drink and not at her. Everyone else looks down or away, too.

The first thought that comes to Wei Ying is: but I live with her. She thinks, but I know everything. But the table is so quiet, and there’s the atmosphere of a held breath, of the words, oh no!, materialising between them in curling neon.

It’s Wen Qing’s new girlfriend who speaks up. Very tall, bleached hair, always wears a little pendant of a sun. She’s eager and a little mean. Wei Ying doesn’t like her much, and can never remember her name.  She says, “Oh come on. You know. You know you know. Everyone knows, come on, like . . .”

“Amina.” Wen Qing gives her girl a wide-eyed look. She puts a hand on the table like that might put a stop to the conversation.  

“What?” Amina says. “Seriously, like, what? Are we all pretending, what? Everyone knows, she knows, it’s dumb, and I don’t think—”

Nie Huaisang cuts in with a, “Girl I swear—” And Mianmian gives a panicked, high-pitched giggle, and A-Ning exhales the longest breath and says, “Oooooh boy.”

“What?” Wei Ying says. She feels faint. She sees the shape of something terrible coming and she feels faint. Two bus lines and a five minute walk away is her home, her life: the heat held under the low roof of their apartment, hers and Lan Zhan’s; the buzz of the hallway lamp, the badly painted walls, the narrow dollhouse of a kitchen; the smell of Lan Zhan’s bedroom, soap and linen and jasmine. The clean stack of towels in the bathroom cupboard, folded along ruler-tight lines; the dinner Lan Zhan has left in the fridge, the post-it on the fridge door which was the first post-it that Wei Ying had left to Lan Zhan after moving in: a lemon with a human face and hearts for eyes, dancing on stick-figure legs, and the words—went out for lemons, brb, xxxxxx!

That was three years ago. The post-it has been left there, a memory.

“What?” Wei Ying says, again. “What?” And, “What? What—do you, what do you mean? Know what? What do I know? What—”

“I’m sooooo sorry,” says Mianmian, and puts two fists up by her face, a weird cartoon version of dismay. Wen Qing says, “Thanks, Amina,” and Amina says, “Oh this is not on me, I mean—!” and Huaisang turns to Wei Ying and puts a hand on her arm and says:

“Honey, okay. Honey finish your drink. Honey—listen. Honey the thing is that—”

* * *

Wei Ying had just been sent off to a new home when they met, her third since the Jiangs kicked her out, and it was a bad home in a boring way: the rules were boring, the punishments boring, the fact that she knew she’d be out of there before the year’s end—boring.

She wouldn’t stay at this school, she knew. She wouldn’t see any of them again: not the teachers, not the kids. Not the bathroom graffiti, Fuck you Lisa you SNITCH!!!

Lan Zhan was just some chick in her science class. Too tall for her age, oddly bulky, thickly framed glasses before anyone was supposed to have them—her hair pulled back so tightly that it tugged at her skin, shiny forehead, eyebrows straight. A tender smattering of a breakout along the hairline. She looked like she might be pretty but it was hard to see through the strangeness of her: straight-tapered jeans, a belt, tucked-in blank t-shirts. She never talked to anyone, never smiled. Wei Ying had only been at the school a second and she’d already heard the rumours: she was a robot, she was a government-installed spy, she was a freak who collected people’s socks. The popular girls liked Wei Ying, and the popular girls liked to talk about Lan Zhan. Oh my god, they would say. Oh my god did you see how she—

It was 2007. They were paired for a project. They met up in an empty lab room to work on it. Lan Zhan had her lab coat buttoned up all the way, had her protective glasses on over her own. Wei Ying wore her coat like it was a house robe and she a lazy widow, sleeve slipping off her shoulders. She let Lan Zhan do the work, and sat back in a chair and swung back and forth, back and forth. Yanli had given her Uggs for her last birthday, in secret, a package sent made to look like it was school books so her parents wouldn’t ask. Jiang Cheng, when she last saw him, tossed her his old flip-phone and said, “This one’s rank, I got a new one whatever don’t make a deal of it.”

Wei Ying chewed her gum and played Snake for an hour while Lan Zhan poured something from the one container into the other. She wrote down formulas. Sometimes Wei Ying would look up and consider her, for a while. The straight line of her back, the soft part of her lips. Her hands were very big, her fingers long.

“Hey,” Wei Ying said, once. “Hey you should let me give you a makeover.”

Lan Zhan went very still. She said, “No.” Then, “You should participate in the project. You’re not doing anything.”

Wei Ying cackled, said, “Uuuuuhhhh how about no? No thanks,” and went back to her phone.

At the end of the hour, when Lan Zhan was packing her bag, she told Wei Ying: “I will tell Mrs Zahir that you did not do anything.”

“Fuck you, no,” Wei Ying said, and stood up quickly. The chair teetered. Her new foster parents were all about the grades. Phone privileges hinged on grades.

“Wei Ying should have done her part,” Lan Zhan said, flat and direct, and made to leave. Wei Ying grabbed her arm, wanting to make her case, but Lan Zhan’s eyes went very wide—a terrifying dark, staring at the spot where Wei Ying was holding her.

Wei Ying let her go. She swallowed. She said, “Don’t. Like, please?”

Lan Zhan looked up at her. Her nostrils were flared. Her glasses reflected the windows, all that daylight. It made her unreadable. She said, voice low: “Too late.” She left.

Wei Ying failed that class. Phone privileges retracted for two weeks. She missed Yanli’s birthday, couldn’t call her, had to send her an email from the school computer. She missed the bus home and had to walk all the way back, and was late for dinner, too, and being late for dinner meant you didn’t get dinner, and so Wei Ying didn’t have dinner that evening.

She got her girls to round up on Lan Zhan over lunch. There was no plan, only anger. Wei Ying hopped onto the table right where Lan Zhan was eating—she shoved her food aside. She said, “Hiiiii,” in a nasal tone of voice that made sure everyone knew: this was going to be a fight. “Remember me?”

The other girls coalesced. Sat down on the bench, lingered close, hips cocked, arms crossed. Lan Zhan looked up at Wei Ying, body locked: her shoulders, her jaw. She clearly knew what was coming. Wei Ying had a moment to think, oh, she’s been here before, and then didn’t think anything at all. “Hey Lan Zhan,” she said. “Are you like, a virgin or are you like, a total sex freak? Because some people are saying you’re a sex freak and like, best to ask, you know?”

Lan Zhan’s long ponytail was collected over her shoulder. She was wearing a powder blue button-down, looked like a guidance counselor.  She made to get up, and Wei Ying gave a mean, “No staaaay,” held her down with a gentle press of her shoe to Lan Zhan’s chest—pushed her back into the bench. Lan Zhan reacted immediately: grabbed her ankle and shoved it away, stood up and loomed—still holding on to Wei Ying’s leg, fingers dug tight. The movement tumbled Wei Ying back to her elbows, legs wide in her skirt, and the hot lick of embarrassment ran down, pooled. Shot back up.

Wei Ying yelled. She yelled to be let go, yelled at Lan Zhan to get her hands off her, kicked out, yelled more. Lan Zhan had let her go, quickly, too, but Wei Ying had been startled into fury and had already sunk her teeth in. She could not let up. She’d never learned to let up. She was on her feet again, a big step between her and Lan Zhan, and she was babbling aloud for the whole school to hear, saying— “Oh my god you’re such a freak,” saying, “Did you see how she grabbed me? Did you see how she grabbed me?”, saying, “If you put your hands on me one more time I swear I’ll—!”

Lan Zhan took a threatening step forward, like she would. Like she would put her hands on Wei Ying, one more time, just to see what—

Wei Ying took the same step backwards, knocked into someone, said, “What the fuck.” Said, “Are you like obsessed with me?” And then— “Are you like a lesbian?”

The word hung, breathless, a second. Sometimes words did that: thrown at the right moment, the right angle—they stuck to the wall, they stayed there. Every school was full of them, words uttered once by one person and then echoed and echoed and echoed. Shitstain Farra, Blowjob Niamh, the easy one, the virgin one, the ugly one, Jason you-know-that-guy-who-cried-during-the-sex-ed-class.

Wei Ying had a penchant for knowing which words would stick, once spoken. She knew, the moment she said it, that this one would stay. She could hear it in the hush that fell over the cafeteria, could hear it in the intake of a giggle, the whispered, Ew, from someone, somewhere. Most of all she knew it by the way Lan Zhan’s eyes went wild, a fraction—a caught animal of a look. Her shoulders went up. She looked like she might be sick.

Wei Ying held her mouth tightly shut. Chin up.

Lan Zhan marched off. Someone called after her, Lesbiaaaaan!

Wei Ying had been right on two accounts: the word stuck, and she herself was off to a new home before the end of the term. She’d barely been at the school for three months, would attend several more after that—before dropping out, before running away, before—before—but she’d remember those three months more clearly and sharply than most of her teens. Her neon-drenched mean-girl phase, the way she walked down the hallways in a shuffling way without lifting her feet off the ground, the smell of the hair-gel she used to make two strands stiff enough to frame her face. The names of the girls she hung out with had disappeared, their faces had disappeared, but one hot core of a shame remained: Lan Zhan in her blue shirt, Wei Ying’s shoe pressed to her collar, pushing. The dusty print her sole had left behind. The words she had said. Freak. Lesbian.

Wei Ying would roll the memory around in her palm in the hope to wear the jagged edges smooth. She would confess her history to new friends, wielding the story as an out, a proffered red flag: this is who I was, possibly still am, just so you know. You can leave now if you want. You can leave now.

And then, one grey-bright day in November, Lan Zhan walked into the apothecary. It’d been ten years since Wei Ying had seen her. She had wondered, at times, if she’d be able to recognise Lan Zhan if she saw her on the street, all grown up, busy, on her way to somewhere. Probably not, she decided, and had been very wrong. Recognition lit up in an instant, a horror. Lan Zhan was just as tall as she’d ever been, and the meaning of her bulk was clear now that she’d grown into it: wide shoulders, strength. Her hair was short and floppy, a 90s heartthrob cut, early Leonardo. The day’s drizzle had given it a wave. Wei Ying had been so gone on Leonardo. The panels of Lan Zhan’s glasses fogged up the moment the door closed behind her, and she took them off to clean them with the edge of her shirt—peeking out from under her jumper. Loose jeans, a grey Adidas jumper, a baseball jacket.

She hadn’t seen Wei Ying yet. Her eyes were blurry, glasses in hand. Her mouth was a crushed plum, the wet inside a bottom lip. Wei Ying’s heart went wide, wide, then shrunk all at once.

The apothecary was an old one. Tall wooden shelves, a ladder to get to the highest ones. A wall of glass jars full of candy, full of dried herbs, roots, powders. Random things hanging from the lazy-Susan rack—socks, hair bands, earrings, condoms. There was not much space to move, and Wei Ying had to flatten herself sideways to flee to the back. She told Wen Ning, “Oh you gotta, you gotta go take the register I can’t I can’t I can’t—”

Wen Ning was doing the online orders. The sticker machine ticked and buzzed next to him. He said, “Uh? I—” and didn’t get the chance to finish, because the little bell on desk rang out. Lan Zhan leaned the counter over to see if anyone was around to help her, and just like that—saw Wei Ying. Their gazes held, a blank second. Wei Ying did not breathe.

Lan Zhan recognised her, too.

Then Lan Zhan leaned away again, and Wei Ying said, “Oh god oh god,” and the door to the apothecary opened with a chime—closed with a chime.

Wei Ying rushed back to the counter. Wen Ning came with her. They both watched Lan Zhan through the big windows. She stood outside, right outside, unmoving. Her back was to them. At some point she lifted her hands to cover her face.

“Who’s that?” A-Ning asked. “Do you? Know them, what’s—”

“It’s that girl,” Wei Ying said. She turned away from the windows. “You know, the—oh  god. Oh god. The one, from school, who I—when I was mean, who I called, who—”

“Ah oh she’s coming back!” Wen Ning said, quickly, and Wei Ying could only manage a single high-pitched sound and then the chime rang: door open, door closed. Lan Zhan stood inside. She brought with her the smell of rain, of cold air. Her face was impassive, her neck red.

Wei Ying reached out to straighten a basket of mints, and knocked over a stand of lip balm, and said, “Shit, ah, sorry—”

Lan Zhan said, “Can you help me?” Her voice was very deep. It was ice fucking cold.

Wei Ying, mid-gathering, stilled. She had two handfuls of balm tubes. She put them into the mint basket. She nodded, gave a breathless, “Yeah. Yes. Ah—” A smile. “Of course! Of course. What can I . . .”

Lan Zhan was there to get some vague steeping root. Wei Ying had never heard of it. Wen Ning had, and went to the back to check their inventory, and the two of them stood in silence—Wei Ying behind the counter, Lan Zhan standing lost in the middle of the store, hands in her pockets. She stared blankly at the floor. Her glasses were thin-rimmed, gold metal. Wei Ying remembered wondering if Lan Zhan might be pretty, when they were young—vaguely so, uncertainly so. She looked at her now and could see with shocking clarity: Lan Zhan was stunning. The kind of beauty that announced itself with a spotlight, the main character in a movie. Wei Ying recalled asking Lan Zhan if she could give her a makeover, that day at the lab, and felt the embarrassment of the memory flash hot all over. Her heart was beating fast and heavy in her ears.

She hadn’t washed her hair that week, had pulled it into a greasy short tail. The big bottle of almond oil spilled on her, earlier that day, and she had a stain right above her boob. She was wearing three t-shirts on top of the other, short sleeved over long sleeved. She had no make up on, looked a smudge-eyed mess, tired and exactly her age.

She tried to fix her hair with two hands, smoothing the grain of it. It didn’t help.

Wen Ning came back with the news: not in stock, but they could order? Lan Zhan gave a nod, a hm. Wei Ying stared numbly at the computer screen as she punched in Lan Zhan’s email address into the order form. Lan Zhan directed her thanks of goodbye at Wen Ning, and only let her eyes slide over Wei Ying—a cold pass, uncaring.

Wei Ying got very drunk that night, cried into A-Qing’s lap, threw up into the toilet and a little bit next to it, and fell asleep on the couch. She half-talked to her therapist about it. Slumped deep in her chair, fiddling with the laces of her hoodie. She said, So I ran into that girl, and her therapist said, Do you think you might want to reach out to her?, and Wei Ying shrugged and stayed quiet for about 10 minutes of the 30-minute session.

The steeping root came in. Wei Ying clicked send on the generic pick-up message: your order has arrived! She highlighted Lan Zhan’s email address just to see it show up in blue: [email protected]. She copied it, didn’t paste it anywhere. Every time the door opened that day she thought she was going to throw up, but none of them were Lan Zhan, and so she rang up strangers’ toothpaste and make-up remover pads and cold medicine, all with shaking hands.

Lan Zhan came by the next day, midday. Men’s cologne and a showered look, a leather jacket over a crew-neck shirt. Thin silver chain for a necklace. She said, “Hi. I’m here to pick up my order.”

“Right,” Wei Ying said. “Hi, yes. Of course. You’re—”

Wei Ying was shuffling through order papers. Lan Zhan said, “Don’t you need a name?”

Wei Ying looked up. She tried to smile, faltered. “No,” she said. “No I know your . . . who you, ah . . .”

Lan Zhan stared, unmoved. She could be angry and she could be indifferent and she could also not recall Wei Ying at all—there was no telling. Wei Ying went to get her order. In the back, she leaned her face against the wall for a second, breathed. And then in a quick decision, a non-thinking decision: tore a corner off a notebook, wrote a few lines, stuffed it in the paper bag together with the root.

Lan Zhan accepted the package. She made to pay, and Wei Ying said, “Oh no, it’s fine,” though she wasn’t allowed to do that; that’s not how the apothecary worked. Lan Zhan, one hand on her wallet, said, “What?” And Wei Ying said, “It’s fine, it’s fine, you don’t have to--” And Lan Zhan said, “Why?” And Wei Ying said, “Because, because you . . .”

She didn’t have a reason to give. Lan Zhan insisted on paying. She did. She left.

Wei Ying watched her leave.

The call came that evening. Lan Zhan didn’t even say hello, jumped right in when Wei Ying picked up: “What do you want?”

“I . . . Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying had been unpacking her groceries. She had to put down a grapefruit. Her stomach turned over, terrified.  

“You said you wanted to talk,” Lan Zhan said. She meant Wei Ying’s note, a frantic scribble with a phone number. “Talk about what?”

“Oh I,” Wei Ying started. She sat down. “I just. I thought, maybe we can—look can I maybe buy you a coffee? I don’t think I can do this on the phone.”

A silence. A shuffling sound. “I don’t drink coffee.”

Wei Ying huffed a nervous laugh. “Tea, then? Water? You don’t have to drink anything. I mean fuck compulsory consumption as a way of participating in public life, am I right, hah, like . . .” She ran out of breath. She sighed.

“Tea,” Lan Zhan said. It was her only response.

They met up on a Saturday, a crowded cafe. It didn’t go well. Lan Zhan didn’t take off her jacket once inside. She was in grey sweats, that same silver chain. Powder soap, jasmine. She kept her hands in her pockets and didn’t drink her tea. Wei Ying rambled, face hot, staring at the table, not looking up once: about how she wanted to apologise, she wanted Lan Zhan to know that she had always regretted her behavior, that she thought about it often, but she was happy to see Lan Zhan had turned out ok, because look at her, she looked good, she looked healthy, she looked like--

“They kept it up after you left,” Lan Zhan said. It was the first thing she said. Wei Ying looked up. Lan Zhan had an eyebrow up, her expression still unforgiving—not a crack in the armour. The moment stretched taut between them. Lan Zhan continued, “They wouldn’t let me change in the changing room with them. Petitioned with the principal about it. So I’d change with the boys.” She was still lounged back in the chair, coat open. The shape of the bone of her hip was visible in her joggers. “One time they stuck dildo to my locker.”

“Shit,” Wei Ying said.

“Thank you for the apology,” Lan Zhan said, flat, and put some money on the table. She got up to leave. Wei Ying hurried after her, followed her out into the street—no coat. The city had frozen over in the night, and frost still hung in the air. Her breath came out in puffs, and she caught Lan Zhan by her arm with a, “Wait wait—! Wait, fuck, please just—”

Lan Zhan turned, and now a crack was showing: jaw tight, eyes dark. Wei Ying let go, stepped away, said, “I know--! I know I was a shit. I was such a shit. I didn’t know, I didn’t know anything, and—” Lan Zhan was about to walk away again, and Wei Ying added a frantic: “What can I do!”

Lan Zhan looked at her. “I don’t know. What is it that you want from me?”

“I want,” she started. Faltered. She was shivering in the cold. “I don’t know! Can I, can I see you again?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay,” she said, and laughed, something of a sob. “That’s fair. Okay.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I guess, then. I guess then thank you for agreeing to . . . yeah. For today.”

“Goodbye,” Lan Zhan said, and turned. Her stride was steady and unbroken. Wei Ying watched her until she disappeared in the crowd.

She had thought: that’s that. She’d thought—I’ll never see her again. On the phone, that evening, Yanli said, “You offered her all you could offer, you did your best, you admitted your mistakes. If she doesn’t want it, then that’s her prerogative, but you said your piece, and that’s all that matters, that’s all that—”

“I wish . . .” Wei Ying said, and didn’t finish her sentence.

“You wish?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and she didn’t. She didn’t know what she wished. What is it that you want from me, Lan Zhan had asked, sincerely, and the baritone of the question stayed with Wei Ying. She didn’t know what she wanted, only that she didn’t get it. Only that it whined in her belly, an absence, a question posed and left unanswered.

* * *

When Huaisang tells her she thinks she’s going to cry. Her throat closes up, her belly. But the tears don’t come: not then, not later in the bus home, not when she enters their apartment and sees Lan Zhan’s running shoes, stacked neatly next to hers.

She’s sober and drunk all at once. Her body bumps off furniture, walls. She woozily heats up the food Lan Zhan has left for her. She drinks the beer Lan Zhan has bought for her. She sits alone at the dining table, in silence, and eats—scoops it out of the container with a fork. Her throat barely lets anything through.

She opens her phone to the last text she’d sent Lan Zhan’s. Earlier this afternoon: text me when you arrive!!! good luck w a-Huan!!! and then a series of kissy cat emojis. She stares and stares, heart a sad droop behind her ribs. A feeling like an emptiness, like having eaten and still being hungry.

Then Lan Zhan starts typing on her end. Wei Ying quickly locks her screen thinking—she knows. She knows I know. Someone told her and now she knows I know.

The hunger turns to nausea. She can’t eat, puts down her fork. She unlocks her phone. Lan Zhan is still typing. She types and types—it goes on. Wei Ying times it over the thudding of her pulse: five minutes. An essay. It must be an essay.

When the message comes through, it’s a single line.

Arrived safely. Greetings from Lan Huan. Don’t forget to eat. X

Wei Ying swallows, closes her eyes. Aches, a little.

She’s in love with you, had been Huaisang’s words, back at the bar. He had a way of turning strict with his language when necessary. It’s a . . . thing.

What do you mean, she’d asked, what do you mean a thing? And Hauisang had explained: a thing as in, a lot of people know. A thing as in, it’s been going on for a while. A thing as in: no one was allowed to tell Wei Ying. The tragedy of it all, was the thing. You’re her straight best friend, you know, Huaisang said, sympathetic, a hand on Wei Ying’s arm. It’s not a great look, you know? D’you understand, sweetie? It’s not a great look.

She hears him again, now, looking at Lan Zhan’s text. Her stomach like two shoes in a dryer, tumbling round and round. She’s in love with you. It’s not a great look. She’s in love with you. It’s not a great look. She’s—

Wei Ying goes to Lan Zhan’s room and sits on the edge of her empty bed. She sits there, and sits there, and sits there. Then she takes one of Lan Zhan’s pillows and screams into it. Lowers it, keeps it in her lap.

Her mouth leaves behind a round wet circle. She flushes at it, in the dark, and rubs it until the glint of her spit sinks into the fabric. When she puts it back, she makes sure to turn it, good side up.

* * *

And of course it wasn’t the last time she saw Lan Zhan. The dam of fate had broken, it seemed, and the stream would only try to push them together. She ran into her: twice at the market, once at the cinema when they were both on a date—Lan Zhan’s girl was reedy and wide-mouthed—and once at the library: Wei Ying returning a book, Lan Zhan taking out one. They didn’t speak on any occasion. Wei Ying only nodded, gave a stiff smile.

Sometimes, Lan Zhan nodded in return. Sometimes she didn’t.

And then, Wen Qing’s birthday. At a bar, no presents allowed, a small string of flags hung overhead with the barman’s permission. A crowd of people that kept on growing. The music got louder, a happy loud, and then Mianmian showed up late but with a plus one—an old friend, someone from back home, she hoped it was okay, that A-Qing didn’t mind, that she didn’t—

It was Lan Zhan. Stepping into view easily, taller than everyone. She still had that flat sour look on her face, that distaste for everything that touched her. Introductions were made. Wei Ying kept looking down, up at Lan Zhan. Down, up at Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan, on her turn, was staring back, unrepentant. When Mianmian got to Wei Ying’s name, Wei Ying cut her off with what felt like a brave--

“Yes. Yes we know each other.”

“You do?” Mianmian asked, then looked hesitant.

“Hm,” Lan Zhan said. The subject was left at that. But then, a little later, a little darker in the evening, a little drunker too, Wei Ying turned to Lan Zhan and said in the privacy of the din: “I know you said we shouldn’t meet again, but like, I don’t feel like we have much of a choice in the matter.” And then, when Lan Zhan didn’t reply or indicate she’d heard it at all: “We keep on running into each other.”

The answer, when it came, was unexpected: “You know this is a gay bar.” Lan Zhan didn’t bend down to say this. She remained very straight-backed, staring ahead.

“I—yeah. It’s A-Qing’s birthday, she’s . . . gay? And so is Huaisang,” she gestured. “And so is . . . basically everyone, like . . .”

“And Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan did turn to her now—a slow look, a tilt of the head. Her voice was a burr under the white noise of the bar. “What is Wei Ying?”

Wei Ying’s mouth went a little dry. She had to tilt up to meet Lan Zhan’s eye. “I’m,” she said. “I’m an ally.”

They both seemed to think the same thing at the same time: Wei Ying, sixteen, calling Lan Zhan a freak. Calling her a lesbian. Someone saying, ew.

In a bubble of emotion, Wei Ying stepped closer and grabbed Lan Zhan’s hand and lifted it up between them and held it to the bone of her breast and said, “I want to get to know you. I really want to get to know you, as a friend, properly, I think you could be great and I want you to get to know me, and I did bad things as a kid but I promise you, I promise I’m so much better now and please just let me, just let me prove that—that . . .”

She ran out of steam. Lan Zhan hadn’t pulled away, yet. Her face got a knot like a frown—a trace of it, a line between her brows. She considered Wei Ying. She considered her in full: her face, her body. The spot where Lan Zhan’s cold hand was pressed to Wei Ying’s chest. She would be able to feel the frenzied beat of Wei Ying’s heart, the sweat on her skin.

Lan Zhan licked her lips. Wei Ying’s belly hollowed out.

Where her hand was held, Lan Zhan ran the pad of her thumb over Wei Ying’s knuckles. It was a slow touch, a thoughtful one.

“Okay,” Lan Zhan said. “Prove it.”

The hunger ticked up a notch. Wei Ying smiled, broad, felt a little wild. She didn’t let go of Lan Zhan’s hand right away. The rest of the night they stayed huddled by the bar, leaned close, talking—running through the narrative of the last ten years. When the dancing started, they had to speak more closely to be heard over the noise—mouths close to ears, to necks. Lan Zhan’s breath on her throat. When Wei Ying told her about the homes, talking around it, making fun to hide how bad it was, Lan Zhan only said: “I didn’t know.”

“No,” Wei Ying said. “No, I know.”

They were quiet for a while. Wei Ying was blushing. Then Lan Zhan said, “Did you get in trouble? Over the missing grade?”

Wei Ying didn’t want to answer. Instead she fiddled with a beer coaster. Lan Zhan put her hand on Wei Ying’s hip, making her look up. Big hands, and her palm warm. Lan Zhan’s eyes had turned kind, somewhere along the night; softer, restless on Wei Ying’s face whenever Wei Ying spoke. She said, “I’m sorry.”

Wei Ying could only shake her head no. No, no, no, no.

At the end of the night, after Lan Zhan left, after most everyone left, Wen Qing leaned into the bar next to Wei Ying and said: “So what was that?” And Wei Ying said, “What was what?”, and Wen Qing said, “You and the hot butch,” like there was something more, like there was a secret to be told. Wen Qing knew who Lan Zhan was, to Wei Ying. She’d heard it all, she’d seen Wei Ying cry over it. Now she said: “I thought you two were making out at some point, you were so close. But you were just talking, huh.”

Wei Ying laughed too loud for it to be a natural reaction. She cleared her throat, sobered. She said, “We were catching up.” And, “I asked her if we could be friends.”

“Oh? And she said?”

“Okay,” Wei Ying said. “She said okay.”

“Okay,” Wen Qing said, and pushed her shoulder into Wei Ying’s. “Okay is okay.”

Like an exhale following an inhale, that’s how it went from there: inevitable, pushed out. And so quickly, too—they went for a walk, they went for lunch. Lan Zhan came by the apothecary once a week, just for the oddest smallest things: ear plugs, sport tape, camomile tea. Wei Ying’s new joke became: “That’ll be three million euros thank yoooou!” and punch three million into the card reader for Lan Zhan to pay. Lan Zhan would pretend to be willing to pay. Wei Ying would shout at her and quickly terminate the payment.

Wei Ying got a bad cold and Lan Zhan came by. She brought Wei Ying soup. They watched a movie in Wei Ying’s bed, Lan Zhan’s legs a mile long over the sheets. Wei Ying got better. They went to a concert, and Lan Zhan got someone’s elbow to her forehead, and Wei Ying patched her up in the bathroom, tutting. The blood wasn’t too bad, but Wei Ying still cried at some point, drunk and emotional, and Lan Zhan said: “Why are you crying?” And Wei Ying said, “Why would someone hurt you! That’s so mean! That’s so mean!” And Lan Zhan held her gently by the elbows. They both heard it, in Wei Ying’s words. They both knew what she was crying about.

That night Wei Ying slept on Lan Zhan’s couch. She stared at the ceiling and the thought came to her crystal clear and fully formed: If I hurt her again, she’ll be gone forever. She promised to herself, right there, an oath that tasted of watered-down beer and concert sweat: I won’t. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t, I—

The apartment happened in a blink. Wei Ying’s landlord wanting to renovate the place so she had to leave, and Lan Zhan’s brother moving out, and they were friends, close friends even, that fresh obsessive phase where every oddly-shaped fruit needed to be shared—every ladybug found on a window sill, every thought, every good morning and good night.

She hadn’t had that kind of friendship since childhood. Since the Jiang siblings. Since forever.

On her first night in Lan Zhan’s—their—apartment, she made Lan Zhan lie on the living room carpet and take it in. Lan Zhan complied, in the way she complied with most of Wei Ying’s requests: a little stiffly but without complaint. Wei Ying turned on her side, shuffled close to that the tip of her nose almost touched Lan Zhan’s cheek, and waited her out—how long could Lan Zhan lie there without acknowledging Wei Ying’s nearness?

Wei Ying broke first, a giggle, then turned to look at the ceiling. She was still close, shoulder overlapping Lan Zhan’s. “It’s like having a sleepover,” she said. “Like when you’re kids and you have a sleepover and you don’t even want to go to sleep because then it’ll be over.” She put a hand over her belly. She could see Lan Zhan’s eyes dart to it. “But it doesn’t have to be over now. We can just . . . keep on.”

Lan Zhan looked at her, then. “Hm,” she agreed.

Wei Ying turned. Their noses brushed. A moment, a beat. Their breaths, close.

Lan Zhan got back up. She reached out a hand to Wei Ying to help her up. Their fingers tangled, briefly, and then the touch was gone.

They had dinner together, they cleared the dishes together. Wei Ying slept better than she ever had. Wei Ying dated some guy, broke up with some guy. Had a massive crush on a dude in a band, who had a deep voice and a sneer, who she brought over for dinner and who insulted Lan Zhan’s cooking and who was then never invited back again. It had doused her crush quickly, immediately, a hiss of ambers under ice. Lan Zhan went out, sometimes. Stayed out until late, sometimes. She always slept at home. The next mornings she’d be out on the balcony, joggers and sports bra, leaned over the railing. The summer sun would draw a triangle of light on her brown back, the dip of her spine, and Wei Ying would watch her from the kitchen door and feel only gratitude. And below that gratitude: a distant whine of a thing, a hollow, that same possessive hunger. She’d push her thumb at it. You can’t own people like that, she knew. You couldn’t tell them to be only yours, only your friend, never to go out without you, never to look at anyone but you.

That’s not what a good friendship was, Wei Ying reminded herself, again and again.

That wasn’t a friendship at all.

* * *

She expects everything to be different when Lan Zhan comes back from her weekend away—heartbreak retreat, shit, shit—but nothing is different, at first. Everything is a terrible same. Lan Zhan’s keys in the bowl, the sound of the door opening and closing, Lan Zhan giving a single: “Hello,” into the house, before she’s even seen Wei Ying’s there, waiting.

Wei Ying dances around her at a distance. She’s nervous, she realises. She’s nervous to talk to Lan Zhan. She hasn’t been nervous about Lan Zhan in so long.

Lan Zhan doesn’t seem to notice. She tells Wei Ying there was a farmer’s market on the way down from Lan Huan’s cabin, and that she got some jams, some fruit. Wei Ying says, “Ah that’s so! That’s so good! Haha that’s—!” and sucks in a breath that breaks in her throat.

Lan Zhan gives her a look. They’re in the kitchen, and Lan Zhan is putting things in the fridge. She’s in her white socks, the ones that have embroidered into them: the L for left side, the R for right side. She’s clear-eyed, looks rested. Huaisang had said: she just needs a break sometimes, and Wei Ying had said, voice pitched, She needs a break from me? And Mianmian had given her a one-armed hug and said: No no no baby not from you. From—you know. From . . .

Lan Zhan reaches out, suddenly, and Wei Ying thinks she’s going to reach for her and she leans back into the counter with a jerk—but no. Lan Zhan was going to put two apples in the fruit bowl. Wei Ying’s flinch has made her still in her movement. She takes in Wei Ying: face, body.

Wei Ying shivers.

Lan Zhan says, “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nooo, wrong? Nothing.”

Lan Zhan considers her a beat longer. She’s not buying it, but she’s letting it go. Wei Ying thinks: Huaisang was wrong. Thinks, She’s not in love with me. She’s annoyed, she’s bored. She’s not, there’s been a mistake, she’s not—

“Here,” Lan Zhan says, and gives her one of the apples. Wei Ying accepts. “Wash it first,” Lan Zhan tells her.

Wei Ying does, throat tight-tight.

Lan Zhan goes to unpack her weekend bag. Wei Ying follows, lounges against the doorframe. There’s a wrinkle in the otherwise tightly-pulled sheets—where Wei Ying had sat. Where she had screamed into one of Lan Zhan’s pillows. Wei Ying thinks of Lan Zhan putting her face to it, at night, and blushes at her apple.

“Tonight’s Mianmian’s gallery thing,” she says, inspects the shape of the bite she took. “You’re coming, right?”

“Hm,” Lan Zhan says, in a way that means maybe. She’s taking a stack of folded clothes from her bag. “Have a date with Chelsea.”

The name rings some kind of bell. Lan Zhan had met her at the store? They met up once, twice? Wei Ying hadn’t been nice about it. She sounds basic Zhanzhan—she’d pushed a finger into Lan Zhan’s cheek, ground it in—you need a superstar, you need a diva!!

Lan Zhan had taken Wei Ying’s hand from her face with a squeeze to her wrist. No thank you, had been her answer, not looking up from her book.

She’s not in love with Wei Ying. There has been a mistake, a misunderstanding. Lan Zhan is dating Chelsea, Lan Zhan isn’t even looking at Wei Ying right now, Lan Zhan is clearly somewhere else with her mind.

“Oh bring her!” Wei Ying says, louder than before. “Bring her, why not, don’t you want her meeting your friends, are you ashamed Lan Zhan? Aaha I see I see you don’t want your Chelsea meeting you—”

“It’s a second date,” Lan Zhan says. “It seemed. Premature.”

“Noooo!” Wei Ying isn’t sure what she’s doing, only that she’s doing it, and that she’s doing it with force. “Nooo bring her, aiyah please, it’ll be fun!! Fun date no? Art and free snacks and, aaah, you know . . .”

Lan Zhan pauses, staring at her bag. A strand of hair has fallen over eye, caught in her lashes. “Maybe,” she says.

Wei Ying nods. She wants to ask more. Wants to ask about Chelsea: who asked for the second date? Did Lan Zhan? Did she want it? Has she been thinking about this girl, has she been on her mind, has it been driving her to distraction, is that why she had to go up to Lan Huan’s—and not because—what Huaisang said, about needing a break, about Wei Ying, about—

“How was a-Huan’s?” she asks. She doesn’t realise how thick the silence has grown until her voice rings out loudly.

“Good. Quiet.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Wei Ying says.

Lan Zhan blinks in a way that means, yes. Wei Ying doesn’t know what else to say. She lingers by the doorway for a long time, until Lan Zhan has unpacked the rest of her things, until there’s no reason for her to stay. Even then, she stays a few minutes longer, the skeleton of her apple tacky in her hand.

“Okay, then . . .” she makes to leave, and Lan Zhan looks at her like something might follow that thought: an announcement, a question. Wei Ying has neither. She stares back, and everything is off. Flayed, missing a layer of skin. Lan Zhan could sneeze and Wei Ying would keel over. Lan Zhan could breathe and Wei Ying might be knocked to her knees.

She goes to her room and paces until evening, tries to read and can’t focus, starting emails and not finishing them.  She plays tetris for a lost hour and a half.

She’s known unrequited love before, is the thing. It’s happened before, messily and awkwardly and for the most part during her early twenties: a housemate who’d get her weed, a colleague she’d joked around with. She’d hated it, always, being on the confused end of someone’s love, being handed this lump of desire in the shape of a request and not knowing what to do with it. She would listen to them explain herself to her—you’re just so, so good, Wei Ying, and kind, and I think if we were just to give it a chance we could really—and think: oh, you don’t know me at all.

That was worse, she always thought. Worse than loving unrequited—being the object who didn’t want in the same way they were wanted.

But now, with the hum of Lan Zhan’s presence next door, moving and living and apparently in love with her, Wei Ying comes to the conclusion that she knew nothing. She was a fool, she hadn’t known a single thing, and that there is nothing worse than having lived with a love so close and having been oblivious of it. Nothing worse than loving the person who’s in love with you—loving them more than anyone else, than anything else, just not like that. Nothing worse than wanting to give them what they want, knowing that you can’t. That you can’t, that you’re—that you don’t—have never been—

“Hello,” Lan Zhan says, from Wei Ying’s doorway. She’s in her pea coat, her date outfit: wet-looking hair, high-waisted jeans. The keys are in her hand. “I’m leaving,” she says. “I will ask Chelsea about the gallery. I will let you know what we decide.”

Wei Ying has taken off her headphones, smiles, says, “Yeah! Yes. We’ll be in touch, cool cool cool.”

Lan Zhan knocks on the doorframe once to announce her departure. There’s a tight lilt to the corner of her mouth—not a smile, an imitation of a smile. She looks like she’s suspicious of Wei Ying’s mood, and still doesn’t ask about it: leaves, quietly, front door opening, front door closing.

Wei Ying loves her. Wei Ying has no business feeling hurt over it. She wants Lan Zhan to stay, to hang out with her, to make fun of her; she wants a girls’ night on the couch, she wants Lan Zhan to do her hair, touch her, push her around, and Lan Zhan—Lan Zhan wants to make out with some girl in her car. Lan Zhan wants to put her hands to some girl’s waist and pull. She probably wants to fuck. It’s fair. Wei Ying can’t give her that. Wei Ying hates that she can’t give her that. It’s—it’s all so—

She wonders if it would be different if Lan Zhan were a guy and immediately recoils from the thought—feeling weird about it, unclean. Her brain knots itself in some formation, spits up ideas, ones where it’s Wei Ying who’s the different one—with a different desire, a different identity, and the whole thing twists and several images flash, quick-fire: how they’d look together, how tall Lan Zhan is, her hands, her mouth, teeth, bending Wei Ying back over the—

She has to get off the bed and hold her neck with both hands and breathe. She goes to wash her face, cold water, and stays there, leaned into the sink. She watches a drop roll down the tip of her nose; watches it collect, suspended; she watches it fall.

Chapter Text

The gallery opening has been going on for a while when Lan Zhan and her girl show up. The space is crowded, party tables with bowls of nuts, someone’s JBL thumping faintly in a corner—jacked into the wall for battery.

It’s mostly Mianmian’s art-school friends, family, some lost tourists who walk off the street and into the gallery. Lan Zhan and Chelsea stand out when they walk in, a couple in high definition where everyone else is faded, blurry. Lan Zhan tall and expensive looking, her coat draped over her shoulders only—arms free, guiding her girl with a hand to the small of her back. Chelsea is reedy, hair down to her butt, both ears full of piercings—a nose ring, a septum. Wei Ying had called her basic just for something to say. She looks like she works in fashion, looks like she might be famous on the internet.

Wei Ying is wearing a dress she bought when she was eighteen. It has two missing buttons and a stain on the sleeve and the mixed fabric has pilled from the wash—shrunk a little too, the hem too high up her thigh, now. Last time she’d worn it she’d decided to throw it away, and then forgot to. There’s a hole in her tights, right under her ass; she’s dabbed at its edges with nail polish.

Wei Ying turns on her spot, now, drink in hand, and stares at the wall for a second.

Lan Zhan finds Wei Ying. She introduces Chelsea: “Wei Ying, this is Chelsea. Chelsea, this is—”

“Hi,” Wei Ying says, and Chelsea smiles nicely and tells her that she’s heard so much about Wei Ying, that she feels like she knows her already. Wei Ying says, “I’ve heard literally nothing about you,” and then laughs as if it was a joke. Chelsea takes a moment, then joins the laughter awkwardly. Lan Zhan stares in warning.

“Sorry sorry sorry,” Wei Ying says, and touches Chelsea’s arm. “I’m sure you’re super nice, sorry.”

“Ah,” Chelsea says, and casts a question of a frown at Lan Zhan, who in turn says: “We’re going to get a drink. Wei Ying, can we get you anything?”

We, she says. She still has one hand on Chelsea’s waist. It’s a small waist, at a good height. Chelsea’s wearing platforms.

“I’m—” Wei Ying holds up her drink: half-empty glass of red wine. “I’m good I’m set thanks, I’m good.”

Lan Zhan guides Chelsea back into the crowd. Chelsea leans into her a little, weaving through the people. Wei Ying finds Wen Qing by the door and says: “That’s so awkward. Like isn’t that awkward?”

Wen Qing has no idea what Wei Ying is talking about. Wei Ying says, “Like, the—” And gestures in the general direction of Lan Zhan, the girl. Chelsea is pouring Lan Zhan a drink. Lan Zhan stands half behind her, still that connective touch. Her face is tilted down to watch Chelsea’s hands, a soft smile. “I mean, for a second date? Aren’t they being? Very, uh, close? I mean sorta possessive to like—”

“Dude,” Wen Qing says. She looks serious now. Her eyeliner is strict, her lipstick is strict.

“What?”

“No,” Wen Qing says.

“No? No what?” It comes out with a breathless giggle. She knows, she knows.

“No,” Wen Qing says, again.

“I’m not—”

“You’re going to.” Wen Qing glances away from her like she’s realised something, and is already tired of it. “Don’t,” she says. “It’s Lan Zhan. Don’t go there if you don’t mean it. If you can’t be serious.”

Wei Ying laughs and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about? I’m just, I was just . . .” From across the room Lan Zhan casts a look over her shoulder. It’s a familiar one: where is Wei Ying? Ah, there is Wei Ying.

Wei Ying’s mouth goes dry. She drinks the rest of her wine. She says, “I’m going home.”

She’s wrangling into her jacket in a corner and Lan Zhan has noticed, comes to her, says, “You’re going?” And Wei Ying says, “Yeah, yeah,” and Lan Zhan says, “We just got here,” and we, we, she says, so Wei Ying answers: “Then you can stay. I’m going home.”

Lan Zhan inches her face back like she’s hurt. Wei Ying huffs about it, doesn’t think about it. “Okay,” she says, a finality, and wants to leave, but Lan Zhan holds her back—a hand to her wrist.

“Then we will leave too. Wait.”

Wei Ying grinds her teeth at the crowd, not Lan Zhan. Then, “Ahah Lan Zhan, stay, you should stay!! Show your girl around, talk, I don’t know, it’s fine, I’ll just—”

“I came with the car,” Lan Zhan says. “We will drive you home. Wait.”

We, we. Was Lan Zhan going to go home with Chelsea? Was she going to drop Wei Ying off,  leave her on the doorstep, a child at the end of a playdate? Lan Zhan goes to find Chelsea, and Wei Ying waits outside, fuming without having a clear reason to fume: no one has been bad to her, no one has been unfair, or mean. No lines have been crossed, no promises broken. It’s only her, here. Only her and her turned-over jealousy, a gooey thing she can’t shake off, can’t quite comprehend.

Friends get jealous, she thinks, and smokes a cigarette at a seagull on top of a trash can. She got jealous when Wen Qing went to that concert with a girlfriend, once. She got jealous when Huaisang booked a holiday without asking her if she wanted to come along. It’s happened before, it’s normal, it’s—

“Let’s go,” Lan Zhan says. She’s put on her coat properly. Chelsea is draping her scarf to sit nicely, taking her long hair out from under it.

Wei Ying had Mianmian chop at her hair last month: an uneven mess above her shoulders. When she gathers it up in a tail it sticks straight out in spiky ends. She thought it looked punk at the time, fun, and now has a moment of regret. Chelsea is very pretty, very clean. Wei Ying wonders if that’s what Lan Zhan likes: clean girls—long hair, smelling like shampoo.

Lan Zhan holds the car door open for Chelsea to get in: passenger seat. Wei Ying has to take the back, brooding about it, tossing her bag in, puffing into her jacket.

Lan Zhan backs out of the parking spot by putting a hand on Chelsea’s headrest, turned, looking out the rear window. When she’s done, she leaves her hand there, and then moves it—the back of Chelsea’s neck.

Wei Ying’s stomach turns on its axis. She looks away sharply.

“Calling it an early night, Wei Ying?” Chelsea asks. She’s looking at her through the mirror. She’s trying to be friendly.

“Noooo,” Wei Ying says, not looking back. “No I’m going partying.”

Chelsea wavers. She says, “Oh?” And Wei Ying says, “How about you, Chelsea? Are you going to party tonight?” And Lan Zhan says, “Wei Ying,” a warning, even though all Wei Ying did was ask a question.

But she’s chastened for a second. Says, “I have to work tomorrow. Opening shift.” That’s her answer. She has her arms crossed, staring out the window.

Chelsea accepts it. “Where do you work?”

“An apothecary,” Wei Ying says, and Chelsea goes, “Oh?”, again, an annoying habit, and Wei Ying doesn’t reply to that. Doesn’t ask her any questions in response.

Lan Zhan drops Chelsea off first. She lives just outside the inner city, a quiet street with tall brick houses. Lan Zhan walks her to her doorway, and then the two of them stand in the overlapping light of two streetlamps, leans close, talking. Wei Ying watches them, breathing through her nose.

Lan Zhan says something, and Chelsea nods. Her hair ripples at the movement. Lan Zhan places her hands on Chelsea’s hips, and Chelsea goes hazy-eyed at her, leaning into it. Holding Lan Zhan’s arms. They’re beautiful together. Lan Zhan bends, and Wei Ying thinks they’re going to kiss, but Lan Zhan only presses her lips to Chelsea’s cheek—departs with that.

Wei Ying is nauseous. Before they drive back, she gets out of the back seat, aggressively sits herself down in front. They’re silent. Lan Zhan edges at the speed limit, hands tight on the wheel. She’s upset with Wei Ying, and Wei Ying won’t acknowledge it, doesn’t want to talk about it.

They manage until the moment they’re back home. The apartment is dowsed, greyscales and blues, exactly as they’d left it: their things by the door, their things on the table, books and plants and borrowed sweaters. Their lives, intertwined.

Lan Zhan takes off her coat and her shoes in the slow way she does when she’s angry. Wei Ying mumbles, “Fuck this,” and marches to the kitchen—drapes her coat over a chair, toes off her shoes mid-walk. Kicks them out. She gets herself a glass of water, drinks it leaned back against the counter, heart high in her throat.

Lan Zhan follows. She stays at the entryway, face in the shadow. Her expression is unreadable beyond the way she holds herself, her shoulders—tight.

“The way you behaved tonight—” she starts, but Wei Ying cuts her off with a,

“Oh spare me.”

“You wanted us to come.”

“Us! What’s this us, now! We this, us that, like—I thought this was a second date, not a three-year anniversary, like—!”

“It is a plural pronoun,” Lan Zhan says. Her voice is tense. “What would you suggest I use?”

“I just don’t get,” Wei Ying says, putting the glass down, “I just don’t get why you’d—go with this girl, if you’re like supposedly—if you’re . . .” She trails off. She pushes her teeth together, pinches her lips closed.

Lan Zhan steps out of the shadow. Her eyes are wide, danger. Nostrils flared. She says, “If I’m what?”

Wei Ying looks down.

“Wei Ying. If I’m what?”

Wei Ying lets out a trill of a breath. Don’t, Wen Qing had said. Don’t do it.

“Huaisang said . . .” She stops. She knows: she can pause, here, redirect, make up a lie. She can also not go there.

“What,” Lan Zhan says, “did Huaisang say?”

Wei Ying looks up at her. No glasses, today—lenses, for the date. One earring in, right lobe, a golden ring. It catches the light that comes in through the window, someone else’s living room lamp. Wei Ying remembers Lan Zhan leaning in to kiss Chelsea’s cheek. She remembers the first night after moving in, lying on the living room floor. Their noses brushed, their mouths were close.

“That you’re in love with me,” Wei Ying says, a tumbling of words—six small stones dropped into the still surface of a lake.

Lan Zhan freezes. One muscle twitches in her cheek, but other than that—unmoving. She doesn’t even breathe. Wei Ying regrets it immediately, immediately, opens her mouth to take it back somehow and then Lan Zhan starts with a,

“I’m—” Followed by nothing. A word choked off.

“But I don’t think you are,” Wei Ying says, rushed. Says, “I think he’s wrong and that you’re not at all and maybe it’s the—you know the, the living together, you get confused because I’m around all the time but—you’re not into me, I don’t think, not really, I—you know how much of a mess I am, Lan Zhan you hate that mess, the—leaving things around the house, remember how much that pisses you off? And—God, you know, if you knew, I’m not a good at that stuff at all, like—intimacy and stuff. I’m a terrible lay, I swear one peck and you’ll snap right out of it, it’ll . . .” She gives a weak laugh. She’d meant to veer into something funny, make it light, undo what she has done. It doesn’t work. Lan Zhan’s expression has gone from blank terror to something heartbreaking: the tilt of her brows, the tightness of her jaw. She’s panicking. She’s miserable.

“Maybe you should get me out of your system,” Wei Ying blurts. “Maybe that’ll help.”

“Get you,” Lan Zhan starts, stops. Again: “Out of my system.”

Wei Ying’s breath leaves her, an audible whoosh. This, she understands now, was where she was heading. She took them here. She did this, all by herself. She says, barely a voice, “Yeah.”

“What do you—” Lan Zhan swallows, and the movement of her throat is thrown into focus by the fall of the light, the shadows. “What do you mean?”

“Kiss me.” Her heart flips as she says it. She’s staring at Lan Zhan’s mouth. It’s too honest, too serious, so she adds, “I’ll be a bad kisser, it’ll totally help, you’ll never—”

Lan Zhan comes at her. It happens in a beat, a punch of a sound and Lan Zhan is there, looming. Hands against the counter, caging, her forehead to Wei Ying’s, a hard push and Wei Ying tilts up instinctively. Lan Zhan doesn’t kiss Wei Ying. She stays there, nodding her face close, in—away. Indecisive. Wei Ying opens her lips to it, waits.

Lan Zhan growls and pushes off, takes her body heat with her. She paces along the length of the kitchen, runs her hands through her hair, and Wei Ying slumps back as if Lan Zhan was holding her up. She’s thinking—she doesn’t—she won’t—but then all at once Lan Zhan is back, crowding close-close, taking Wei Ying’s face in her big hands and pulling her up and slotting a leg between Wei Ying’s and saying: “Yeah?”

Wei Ying receives her, opening. She says: “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” The words brush hot on Wei Ying’s lips.

“Uh-huh,” she says, dazed, and that’s how it happens: cheeks cupped in Lan Zhan’s hands, the wet sound of two mouths parting at once. Wei Ying holds on to the counter, a bend to her back. Lan Zhan tastes like the ginger beer she had at the gallery, tastes like heat and home and she kisses Wei Ying like she wants to get in, wants to push the door further than the hinges allow. Wei Ying’s belly pools. She pants into the kiss, opens up further. Lan Zhan makes a sound, makes it wetter. It speeds up quickly, so quickly, frantic and slippery. Wei Ying keens with a little ngh!--Lan Zhan sucking on her bottom lip. Lan Zhan raking her teeth over it, Lan Zhan licking in like a sin, like a crime, like she’d been thinking about this, like she’d been hot for this, like she’d been staring at Wei Ying’s mouth all along, imagining how—

“Fuck,” Wei Ying says, a puff, and Lan Zhan grabs at her now: one hand to her waist, her ass, hoisting Wei Ying up her thigh, grip hard on Wei Ying’s tights. The fabric tears, the sound a loud rip in the room—and something about it hollows her out, pushes her hips forward. They roll together, and roll together; Lan Zhan’s hold is now on bare skin, the fold under Wei Ying’s ass, the elastic of her underwear.

Wei Ying has never been kissed like this before. Has never been pulled at like this, has never been drunk from like this—a cup, a chalice. She has a hand in Lan Zhan’s hair, one behind her for balance. Lan Zhan finds Wei Ying’s chin and bites it. She finds the spot behind her ear and bites it. Sucks, nuzzles. Wei Ying pushes her body up against her and Lan Zhan’s grip slips. She’s breathing hard into Wei Ying’s neck—breathing hard, shaking. It’s slowed, it’s stopped. The frenzy has stopped.

They’re both winded. For a moment they’re leaned together, twisted in a hold, limbs around limbs. Then Lan Zhan reemerges, lifts her head. Her eyes are dark, pupils blown. Her mouth is a mess, swollen, skin rubbed red all around it. There’s a sheen of slick, of spit.

The world is different. Wei Ying is not who she used to be. She looks at Lan Zhan and wants—a kick to her cunt. Hunger, an old one. She tries to lean back in, but Lan Zhan stops her—pulls away. She’s scanning Wei Ying’s face.

Wei Ying is a fish on land. She inhales shortly, she opens her mouth. She wants Lan Zhan back, but Lan Zhan steps away. She puts distance between them. She says, voice wrecked: “Okay.”

The air is cool on Wei Ying’s skin where her tights are torn. “Okay—what?”

“Out of my system,” she says.

Wei Ying only makes a sound. Her lungs hurt.

Lan Zhan says, “Right? That’s what you wanted.” Her eyes are still quick on Wei Ying’s face, waiting for something. “Right?”

“I,” Wei Ying says, and swallows the rest. Her oath had been a warning, once: If I hurt her again, she’ll be gone forever. And Wei Ying’s solemn promise: I won’t. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t, I—

“Right,” Lan Zhan says, and leaves. Wei Ying is too late to movement. By the time she catches up with what’s happening, by the time she thinks, no, wait, the front door opens—shuts loudly.

Wei Ying stands light-headed in the hallway. Lan Zhan’s shoes are gone, Lan Zhan’s coat is gone. Her hands had been on Wei Ying only minutes ago, on her hips, on her waist. Big hands, warm palms. Fingers dragging against her skin like she was trying to scoop her up, collect her. It had been so hot where their bodies rubbed, and hazy, and her mind had given only a train-whistle sound and nothing else.

Noise floods in, now. In the silent apartment, noise flood in.

* * *

Lan Zhan comes back at half past two in the morning.

Wei Ying is in her own bedroom, wide awake in bed, heart beating fast. She listens to the sounds: the door, the shuffling, the running of the sink. The closing of the sink. Lan Zhan’s footsteps in the living room.

Wei Ying has spent the night running through scenarios: Lan Zhan going to Chelsea’s, upset, telling her everything; comfort, a true kiss. Lan Zhan would stay the night. Lan Zhan would not come back. Another scenario—Wei Ying wakes up and all of Lan Zhan’s stuff is gone. Another scenario—Wei Ying wakes up and Lan Zhan is in her bed, next to her, saying, I want you. Another scenario: Wei Ying wakes up and Lan Zhan is in her room, right there, saying: I don’t want you.

None of that happens. Wei Ying has a moment where she thinks Lan Zhan will knock on her door. She’s worked up, hot and wet between her legs, miserable about it. Her world has shifted and she’s all alone in this bed, shivering. Waiting.

A silence, in the apartment. Lan Zhan doesn’t knock on her door. She goes into her own bedroom—the click of the handle, the lever.

Wei Ying turns to face the wall. She knows: Lan Zhan is on the other side of it, in love with Wei Ying, upset with her, undressing.

* * *

She’s had plenty of opportunities to think about it, is the thing. She’s had plenty of opportunities to ask herself: what am I, who am I, what do I want? Being taken into the wing’s fold of the Wens, finding Huaisang again, finding Mianmian—finding Lan Zhan—she’s grown into adulthood in the belly of queerness. In bars and living rooms and clubs where every night the question was asked: who are you, and what would you like? Girls kissing girls, boys kissing boys, girls who weren’t girls and weren’t boys, either; the question of touch, of arousal, of what you liked and didn’t like, what your body liked that your mind didn’t, vice versa.

Wei Ying has had plenty of opportunities to question herself, and each time she reached into the depths of herself in query the answer had always been: plain, just plain old straight. The breadth of men’s shoulders, the rasp of their stubble, their wide-handed hold on her waist. There was never anything new about her desire, never anything that had grown unexpectedly crooked. She sometimes poked, just to make sure. She made out with Mianmian once, stoned at a party, and it had been nice, and it had done nothing—no reveal, no confetti-sound in the background. It was just a kiss, and Wei Ying had been a little disappointed, and all the same reaffirmed: she was who she was. She knew who she was. There was comfort in that, too.

Perhaps relief, too. Sometimes she’d watch Lan Zhan cook, clear-eyed over the pan, humming to herself, and her own teenage voice would ring back at her: Are you like obsessed with me? Are you like a lesbian? And she’d hurt over it all over again. She would bound over just to touch Lan Zhan, push at her, hug her, remind herself: I love her now. I love her, I love her, I—

One time Huaisang said, “Baby maybe you’re queer in like, a kinky way.” And Wei Ying had shook her head sadly and said, “Ah, unfortunately also no,” and Wen Qing had said, “Wait, kink doesn’t make you queer,” and Huaisang made a sound like, mmmmmm, like he disagreed, and a discussion veered off from there and Wei Ying tuned it all out. They were at someone’s party. Lan Zhan was at the drinks table, talking to some girl. She held the girl’s chin in hand. She put her thumb to the girl’s bottom lip, pushed in.

The girl went slack-jawed, then sucked Lan Zhan’s finger into her mouth.

Wei Ying’s belly swooped, uneasy, and she looked away. Was relieved when Lan Zhan and the girl disappeared soon after, and then felt ashamed for it—ashamed for the fact that she was still like this. That Lan Zhan’s sexuality was fine in theory and so unsettling in practice, that Wei Ying still reacted to it, still recoiled from it.

“Did you have fun?” she asked the next morning, trying to make up for it. It was summer. She brought Lan Zhan her tea out on the balcony. Lan Zhan was in t-shirt only, underwear. Her legs went on forever; there was a line of bruises down her neck. Her hair was uncharacteristically tousled.

“Mm,” Lan Zhan said, accepting the tea.

“So glad for you,” was Wei Ying’s answer, which came out oddly, so she laughed over it. Said, “Will you see her again?”

“No,” said Lan Zhan, and Wei Ying asked, “Why not?” And Lan Zhan cast her a quick look, glasses glinting, and shrugged.

“Don’t want to,” she said.

“Ah.” Wei Ying leaned into the railing. “Such a bachelor. So cold. I’m glad I’m not your one-time fling, Lan Zhan, you’d have me leave me heartbroken, huh?”

Lan Zhan drank her tea. Two swallows warbled overhead, twirled up, down. It was going to be a hot day. They napped in Lan Zhan’s bed together, that afternoon, curled away from each other. At one point Wei Ying woke up, and found that her wrist was in Lan Zhan’s grip, like she’d reached out in her sleep and grabbed her.

* * *

Wei Ying’s opening shift pushes her out of bed early. The house is quiet and Lan Zhan’s door is closed. She’s numb as she goes through the ritual of waking up: shower, coffee, food. Every now and then a memory of last night threatens to rise to the surface—yeah? And teeth, and hands—and she pushes it down with a force.

It’s a slow morning at the store. No one comes in for an hour. Wen Qing joins her, brings her coffee from around the corner, casts one look at her and says, “Oh god what happened.”

Wei Ying leans up from where she’s been slumped into the counter and says, “What? Nothing happened, what?”

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Wen Qing says, sets the coffee down, “and I’ll come back and then you’ll tell me what you did.”

“I did nothing!” Wei Ying calls after, and thinks: I did something. But when Wen Qing comes back she doesn’t even have to say it—Wen Qing grabs the receipts folder off the table and smacks her arm with it and Wei Ying goes, “Jesus, what—!” And Wen Qing digs her finger to a spot in Wei Ying’s throat. It throbs like there’s a bruise there.

There is. Lan Zhan had put it there.

She slaps Wen Qing away and covers her neck with her hand. Her other hand over that hand.

“I told you,” Wen Qing says.

“I know!”

“I told you!”

“I know! I’m—I know! I . . .”

Wen Qing doesn’t look angry. She looks concerned—face tense, eyes big. Wei Ying remembers that Lan Zhan is also her friend. That she’s known about Lan Zhan’s love before Wei Ying did, has been worried about it, perhaps. That she’s known Wei Ying for a long time, too.

Wei Ying sits down on the high stool. She’s tired, she’s barely slept at all. “God,” she says. It comes out like a sob. “I don’t—”

Wen Qing puts down the folder.

Wei Ying says, “I don’t know what’s happening.”

A customer comes in. Wen Qing tells her, “Go to the back, you look like you’re going to be sick.”

Wei Ying goes. She sits at Wen Ning’s desk, nestles between the lamination machine and an old scarf and an order catalogue. She folds her arms over the top and rests there, a moment. She dozes. She wakes up and her body’s locked up, her arms asleep. Someone’s draped a throw over her shoulders. She finds her phone, hands all pins and needles, and sees it’s been nearly two hours. “Fuck,” she says. “Fuck.”

She unlocks to see if Lan Zhan has texted her. She doesn’t expect it, and is still disappointed when the only notification is an email about a Netflix show she clicked on, watched only halfway. Don’t forget to finish—

Hey, she texts Lan Zhan. It’s like being sixteen. It’s like texting a boy she likes for the first time. She wants to throw up, she wants to lie down. She wonders if this is what Lan Zhan feels like, each time she texts Wei Ying. She hates it, hates it, follows it up with: will u be home for dinner? Hoping to snap herself back to normalcy.

It doesn’t work. She’s sweating little. She shrugs off the quilt, cracks her back. The phone chimes, she fumbles for it, heart beating hard.

Lan Zhan has replied: no

Wei Ying puts the phone face-down and covers her eyes. Wen Qing joins her after a while. Another proffered beverage: tea. She drinks it in slurping little sips. She apologises for having slept away her shift. They talk a little, but Wei Ying can’t produce much more than aborted sentences: “She—I said I—and she—”

Wen Qing says, “You two need to talk, dude,” and Wei Ying says, “I know,” and Wen Qing says, “Talk, like actually talk, not, not—” and she gestures at Wei Ying’s neck.

Wei Ying still has it in her to blush. She tries to hide in her sleeves. Wen Qing says, “Go home, you big baby. I’ll man the till.”

“Nooo,” Wei Ying says into her elbows.

“Go,” Wen Qing says. “Go, go.”

Wei Ying goes. Home is empty. She takes a long shower, relaxes by inches. Then remembers Lan Zhan and tenses up again. She dries and dresses confusedly, forgetting the order of clothes, wanting only comfort. Basketball shorts and socks and a capped-sleeved workout sweater. It’s Lan Zhan’s, has the words fight run sewn across the chest—nonsensically. Last time Lan Zhan had worn it Wei Ying had not let it go: baby are you supposed to fight the run, or run the fight?

Lan Zhan had said, It is clothing. It’s not a message.

Super incorrect on all accounts, Wei Ying had said, had taken Lan Zhan’s face in one hand and squished her cheeks and shaken her a little, had put on a voice: But baby’s still my baby!

She sleeps for a while. Has twisted dreams: a body over her, fingers inside of her, voices raised in the other room. She wakes up every so often, checks her phone. When the light outside curls into a dove’s grey, she orders pizza and sits in front of the door, cross-legged, until it arrives. She eats it with the tv on mute. She makes ultimatums: Lan Zhan will have to come home within the next hour. And then the hour passes, and no Lan Zhan in sight, and she extends: in the next thirty minutes. The next fifteen. The next ten.

She rolls herself a joint in the kitchen. Grinds the weed in a numb sort of silence, rolls the cigarette. Her clothes all smell like Lan Zhan. “Fuck,” she says, at nothing and no one, pushes the heels of her hands to her eyes, and stays like that for a minute.

She’s smoking at the dining table, at the end of it that’s jammed up against the window—cracked open so that she can blow the smoke out that way, can hold the joint out in the evening’s misty drizzle.

It’s already dark when Lan Zhan comes home. Wei Ying isn’t stoned yet. The cigarette keeps going out, and she keeps on forgetting to light it again, lost in thought.

Lan Zhan stands, lost, somewhere between the couch and the table. She’s been rained on, but lightly: drop on the shoulders of her jacket, in her hair, on her glasses. She reminds Wei Ying of the first time she’d had seen her at the apothecary, handsome and self-possessed and her eyeglasses all fogged up.

“Hi,” Wei Ying says, and kicks out the chair next to her. Motions to Lan Zhan: sit.

Lan Zhan sits. Wei Ying lights the cigarette, passes it to Lan Zhan, who accepts it and does nothing with it, just holds it between two fingers. She’s still in her outside shoes. She’s never inside the house in her outside shoes.

“Where did you eat?” Wei Ying asks.

“Out,” is the answer she gets. The skin around her eyes has a reddish rub to it.

“Alone?”

“No.”

“With Chelsea?” She says the name like it’s a bad word.

“No,” Lan Zhan says. And adds, “Don’t do that.”

“Did you tell her?”

Lan Zhan puts the joint down in the ashtray. The tip has died, anyway. “Tell her what.” She doesn’t even make it into a question—just a sentence, a flat line.

“That you kissed me,” Wei Ying says. The words are thick in her throat. “That we kissed.”

Lan Zhan is staring at the plastic table cloth. “I’ve only seen her twice. We are not—” She’s choosing a word. “Exclusive.”

“God,” Wei Ying laughs a breath around the sound. “So casual, Lan Zhan. So modern.”

“Wei Ying.”

Wei Ying rolls her neck. There’s a kink there still, and she’s annoyed with it, with herself, tetchy and itchy and— “Sorry. Fuck, sorry.” She fiddles with the cigarette again. Lights it, takes a drag. Leans back to blow the smoke out the window. It rucks up the hem of her sweater—a breath of air against a sliver of bare skin. She can see the rain only where it passes through the orb of street lights.

Lan Zhan says, “I can go. I can stay with my brother for a while.”

Wei Ying leans away from the window. She ashes the joint—it dies immediately. She shoves it away, licks her lips, twice, asks, “Do you want to go?”

“No. I do not. I want—” She looks up, and Wei Ying is there to meet her gaze. Lan Zhan looks unhappy, tired. She says, “I’ve confused you. I’ve upset you. I believe you need space, to think.”

Wei Ying licks her lips again, a nervous gesture. She puts a nail to scratch a dried grain of rice from the plastic cloth. “Think about what?”

Lan Zhan stares at her. Her only response is the flaring of her nostrils.

Wei Ying hisses in a breath. “You haven’t upset me,” she says. “Not—not like that.”

It’s a warped thing to say—purposefully vague, an off-center way of putting something into words. But it lands, somehow. Lan Zhan’s posture tightens. The air turns tense, thickens. Wei Ying has a hiss in her underbelly.

“But I have upset you,” Lan Zhan says, voice low, “in a different way?”

Wei Ying scratches a hand through her hair. She doesn’t answer. She deflects: “Was Huaisang right? Are you really in—” She can’t say it out loud. “With me?”

Lan Zhan swallows. She’s breathing rapidly through her nose. The nod she gives comes out stiffly, rusted joints.

Wei Ying takes a long breath. “I didn’t know.”

“I have not—advertised it. I have tried to be respectful. I have tried—” Her voice breaks. “I know you’re straight. I know there is no attraction. I know this. I harbour no hopes, Wei Ying, I haven not misinterpreted your intentions, please know that—”

“How long?” Wei Ying asks. She wants to scream, she wants something to hold her down. “Since when?”

The interruption has tripped up Lan Zhan. There’s a desperate furl between her eyebrows, mouth a line. She’s breathing. Then she reaches into her pocket, takes out her wallet, opens it. Takes out a piece of paper, puts it on the table. Slides it toward Wei Ying.

Wei Ying doesn’t know what it is, and then she knows. And then she knows. A corner torn from a notebook, a hasty scribble, her own handwriting: I would love to get to talk to you if that’s ok, her phone number, her initials. An X.

Four years ago, now. That day at the store. Lan Zhan coming to pick up her steeping root.

It hurts worse than she knew it could, this knowledge. She puts her arm on the table and hides in it. There’s tears, now, the spill-over kind, and she doesn’t want Lan Zhan to see them. It feels dumb, crying over someone else’s heartache. Lan Zhan should be crying, not her.

“Wei Ying.”

“No,” Wei Ying says, muffled. She says, “That’s—so long.”

Lan Zhan goes softer, at this. Tells Wei Ying, “It has not been so bad.”

Wei Ying comes out from hiding. The room is blurry, Lan Zhan’s face is blurry. “Have I been hurting you? Have I been hurting you without—”

“No, Wei Ying—” And she’s suddenly close, chair scraping over the floor. Her hands are on Wei Ying’s face, wiping under her eyes. Wei Ying shudders at the touch, a sound leaving her, and she’s leaning in and hungry, so hungry, and Lan Zhan kisses her eyes. She says, “Wei Ying,” and kisses her cheek, the corner of her mouth. Her mouth. It’s a peck, nothing more, but Wei Ying tries to hold on, grabs Lan Zhan by the front of her shirt, pulling her in.

Lan Zhan looks down. She unpeels Wei Ying’s hands from her, sits back again. She’s panting, she rubs her hands over her face. Her legs are wide in her chair. “This is why I should leave,” she says.

“Don’t,” Wei Ying asks. Her voice is gravelly. “Don’t leave me.”

Lan Zhan looks up at the ceiling and says fuck, and Lan Zhan has never said fuck, not ever. The moment stretches, stretches. Wei Ying wants it over, wants it snapped. She says, “Have you. Do you think about me like that?”

Lan Zhan looks at her again. It’s a dark look, a warning look. A don’t do it, look.

Wei Ying ploughs on. “Do you have—” She takes a breath. “Do you fantasize about me?”

“Wei Ying. Do not.”

She chews her lip. Her skin is too tight. Lan Zhan’s brief press of a mouth has left behind a brand. “What do you think about?”

“Please. Wei Ying.” She was stern before, but now she sounds fraying. Wei Ying should stop. Wei Ying should listen.

Wei Ying says, “Tell me. I want to know, tell me.”

There’s a two-finger span between her knee and Lan Zhan’s knee. She moves her leg, barely, connects them. Lan Zhan’s eyes snap to the spot: Wei Ying’s bare knee against the inner seam of Lan Zhan’s jeans. She sees the pull of muscle in Wei Ying’s thigh. She sees the goose bumps rising under her gaze. Wei Ying watches her watch it happen. She starts breathing through her mouth.

“Fucking you,” Lan Zhan says, and looks up at her. It’s a challenge. Her pupils are blown. She’s dangerous, she’s a dangerous person, and Wei Ying wants to bend back to it. Bare her neck to it. Lan Zhan says, “I think about fucking you hard. I think you’ll like that.” She puts her big hand over Wei Ying’s knee. Her fingers circle round, the tender skin at the back of it. “I think you need it.”

Wei Ying makes a broken sound. Her tongue unlatches from the roof of her mouth with a wet click, and an instinct has her opening her legs. Lan Zhan’s eyes flare, her hand sliding up—under the fall of Wei Ying’s shorts, a possessive hold up her thigh. The skin is hotter, there. Damp.

“Eating you out,” she continues. There’s a grain to her voice. “Having you ride my dick. Getting you on your knees.” She squeezes. “Keeping you there.”

The world has gone foggy, honey slow. There is only one purpose, and the purpose is to keep Lan Zhan touching her, keep Lan Zhan talking. She tilts her hips, wanting the hand closer, higher, toward the wet pulse of her pussy and Lan Zhan takes her hand away and Wei Ying does the only thing her body tells her to do: she slides out of the chair. She settles between Lan Zhan’s legs. She wants Lan Zhan to make good on her promise—keeping you there.

It’s unclear to her what happens exactly, only that the floor is hard under her knees, and that Lan Zhan’s voice grumbles above her, and Lan Zhan’s hand is tight in her hair. She’s put her face to Lan Zhan’s thigh, stays there. She breathes hot into the denim until it’s damp. It’s safe, and it’s good, and she noses in deeper, and Lan Zhan’s grip tightens. It’s good. She whines, opens her mouth over Lan Zhan’s crotch, and Lan Zhan hold her by her hair—grinds into her face with a stuttered groan. It happens in a flash, a second, and then Lan Zhan pulls her away again—tilts her face up. Scans it, searching, looking for something, something that Wei Ying wants to give and doesn’t know what it is and—

Lan Zhan lets her go, chair pushed back, and she’s up. She’s walking. It’s the same wild pacing as yesterday: hands in her hair, eyes closed.

Wei Ying is shaky, cold where she was overheating, a second ago. The fog clears. She clambers up to her feet, tries to stand as dignified as possible. As accepting in the face of whatever comes next: rejection or refusal or anger, too.

Lan Zhan comes to a stop by the wall. She leans back against it, as close to a slump as Lan Zhan can get. The paint’s popcorn structure catches at her hair. She lets her arms down, keeps them at her sides. She says, “This can’t be a game. I can’t do this as a game, Wei Ying.”

Wei Ying’s teeth want to chatter and she won’t let them. The rest of her shivers like it’s winter, like it’s the middle of the night. She faces Lan Zhan, a bad attempt at proud, says, “I don’t want it as a game.”

“What do you want?” Lan Zhan’s throat bobs. “What do you want from me?”

She’s been asked this before. Specifically by Lan Zhan, specifically about her intentions. But it’s a different question, now, thrown into the no-man’s-land between their table and their wall. Their, theirs. Their life, their apartment. The two of them, the things they own together, the home they built.

Wei Ying goes to her. Lan Zhan traces the movement with only a sharp gaze, until Wei Ying stands right in front of her—until Wei Ying is a breath away. She touches Lan Zhan. It’s tentative, feather light, her hands unsteady: Lan Zhan’s jaw, her neck. Her small breasts, her sharp hips. She’s warm, so warm. Wei Ying leans her forehead to Lan Zhan’s chin. She wants to kiss her and isn’t sure she can—if she’s allowed to. So she stares at her mouth and says, “I want,” and Lan Zhan holds her by her hips. She goes foggy again, needs a moment. She says, all in a whisper: “I want you to not go on dates. Not with Chelsea, not with anyone. I want you here. I want you home, I want you—with me, to only touch me, I want—”

Lan Zhan flips them, pushes Wei Ying against the wall. It happens so quickly, and Wei Ying doesn’t think—opens up to it, a leg around Lan Zhan’s, a hand in the shorn hair at Lan Zhan’s back of a neck. Lan Zhan is panting into her cheek. Then she bites her, bites the rise of her cheekbone, growls: “Do you know what you’re asking for? When you say you want me to touch you, do you know what you’re asking for?”

“Uh-huh,” Wei Ying breathes, tries to move her hips.

Lan Zhan holds her still. “Do you?”

“I—I do.” She swallows. “I think I do.”

Lan Zhan slides a hand—up her thigh, over her hip, around. Down to her ass. She squeezes hard. It punches a startled moan from Wei Ying, and she rolls into Lan Zhan, who again holds her still. “And what if you don’t?” Her voice is so low, angry and full and right on the edge. “What if you don’t like it?”

“Then I’ll, ah—I’ll t—tell you?”

“And then what?” she still wants to know. “What’s left of us, if we stop? If you don’t like it?”

Wei Ying thinks she’s going to lose it. Lan Zhan’s hand is kneading, her big thigh pushed right up against Wei Ying’s cunt, through cloth and cloth and barely rubbing, and the shape of Lan Zhan’s head is the perfect cup to Wei Ying’s palm: warm skin, soft hair. Wei Ying shakes under her, says, “I don’t know, Lan Zhan, I—” She starts to squirm, wants them to move already. “I want—I want to try, Lan Zhan, I—I think we should try, please, please, I want, I want you to—”

Lan Zhan takes her to her bedroom. It’s dark and they leave the lights off. Lan Zhan holds her face and kisses her stood in middle distance, a lost spot between the bed and the cabinet. It’s soft, close-mouthed, restrained. Wei Ying has to stand on her toes, has to hold Lan Zhan by the collar of her shirt, whining softly. She tries to open up, tries for more. Lan Zhan pulls away like she’s shy about it, and her mouth is wet. She helps Wei Ying take off her sweater, her basketball shorts, her socks. She’s just in underwear and a big shirt, now, shivering.

“Get in bed,” Lan Zhan tells her.

She goes. She’s half surprised to find that she’s terrified. She’s aroused and half out of her mind and so, so scared.

Lan Zhan gets out of her clothes. Wei Ying’s stomach swoops watching her, thinking, that’s for me, that’s for me. Her jacket, her shirt, her shoes. She’s in her sports bra, her briefs, and then just skin—scars, nicks. Her appendix had to come out when she was thirteen. She got into a car accident at twenty-two. She broke up a bad fight outside a bar, once, and has a pale slash of a knife up her arm to show for it. She keeps her golden chains: four of them, swinging against her chest as she crawls up the bed.

Wei Ying has a moment where she doesn’t think she can do this. Too much, all of it is too much—the want and the fear and the stakes. She’s on her back, Lan Zhan is looming over her, between her legs, pushing her hand up Wei Ying’s shirt and Wei Ying blurts a sudden: “Ah go easy on me okay?”

Lan Zhan’s hand stills. She nods, a halting movement, then retreats her hand. She comes to lie down beside Wei Ying, scoops her close. “Slow?” she asks, and Wei Ying says, “Ah, uh, um,” and nods. They take it slow. Lan Zhan kisses her neck, slow. Lan Zhan fingers her, slow. Wei Ying is drenched—Lan Zhan barely moves her hand and the sounds are filthy, squelching. She holds on to Lan Zhan’s shoulders. She tries not to make a sound, tries not to move too much. She holds herself rigid, hips tilting in aborted movements. Lan Zhan pants, mouth open to the skin behind Wei Ying’s ear. Her arm digs into Wei Ying’s belly, her legs kept away at an angle.

It’s not enough. It’s too much. Wei Ying holds a sound behind her teeth, and Lan Zhan stops. Takes her hand away, places it—wet—over Wei Ying’s thigh.

She says, “Wei Ying.” She says, “I don’t think—I don’t think this is—” And she makes to move away.

Wei Ying says, “Ah no no no no come—!”  and grabs at her with two hard hands. Lan Zhan’s reaction is immediate—snatching Wei Ying’s wrists and pushing them into the mattress above her head. She’s rolled on top of Wei Ying, and Wei Ying arches, tries to pull her in and finds her hands firmly held. The fog thickens. Her eyes close, she clamps her thighs around Lan Zhan and Lan Zhan spreads her own knees on the bed—forces Wei Ying’s legs apart.

“Ah—!” Wei Ying keeps her lips over her teeth. “Mmmm fuck.”

“Hm,” Lan Zhan says. When Wei Ying opens her eyes, Lan Zhan is watching her, hair a mess, eyes black, jaw cocked. “Take it easy on you, hm?”

“I,” Wei Ying tries, falters. She wants to move against something, can’t. She’s held, she’s spread.

Lan Zhan leans down. She goes for Wei Ying’s throat, runs her teeth over it, finds her pulse. Bites, a clamping of teeth—pulls at the skin. It jolts through Wei Ying, gets a sob out of her, a plea, and Lan Zhan’s been unleashed, now: sucks, and sucks, bruises up Wei Ying’s jaw. She bites Wei Ying’s lip, sucks at it, and then they’re kissing open wide: Lan Zhan’s sliding her tongue in, fucking her mouth, and Wei Ying nods along to the rhythm of it; pushes up against Lan Zhan, keens and keens until Lan Zhan covers her: the pressure of her chest, her breasts, her pelvic bone grinding hard into Wei Ying.

“Yeah?” Lan Zhan asks, mouth wet against Wei Ying’s ear.

“Y-yeeeaah—shit, Lan Zhan, ah—”

Lan Zhan noses at her. Asks, “Does Wei Ying like having her pussy eaten?”

“Fuck,” Wei Ying says. “Fuck, fuck, yeah, yeah—”

Lan Zhan makes her hold on to the slats of the headboard. She pushes up her shirt, finds one breast, sucks at it, bites at it. Bites her ribs, kisses her navel, tongue into belly button. She sucks at Wei Ying through her underwear, thumbs at her cllit. And Wei Ying hasn’t always liked this, hasn’t always liked mouths on her pussy—hasn’t always liked the hot and cold of it, the slippery not-enoughness of it, the confused direction of men she’s been with, up or down or in—but then Lan Zhan tongues in, underwear pushed aside, pushes two fingers deep, and Wei Ying is a convert. Is a devotee, ready to prostrate herself at the foot of this temple, the holy hell that is Lan Zhan’s mouth.

She must voice it, must shout it out somehow, because Lan Zhan bruises a thumb into her hip. Says, “You like that?” straight into her pussy. Wei Ying sobs. “So wet,” Lan Zhan tells her, spreads it out. “Bitch in heat.”

Wei Ying bucks. Lan Zhan gets Wei Ying’s underwear off, gets her legs over her shoulders, lifts her ass up with a digging hand and buries herself. Wei Ying pulls on the headboard, and the bed creaks, bangs against the wall. Lan Zhan doesn’t slow down, only speeds up, mouth and hands and a relentless pace that hurtles Wei Ying face-first into a climax: one hand on the slats, one hand in Lan Zhan’s hair, crying. Lan Zhan fingers her through it, kisses her clit, her belly. “There you go,” she says, as Wei Ying shudders and shudders, rolling, hips moving. “Good girl, shh. There you go. There you go.”

“Oh my god,” Wei Ying says. Lan Zhan pushes her shirt up, sucks on her breast, soft pulls of her tongue. It zips down Wei Ying’s spine, to her pussy, her weak legs. “God, oh my god.”

“Mmm,” Lan Zhan says, and Wei Ying sobs some more, pulls Lan Zhan up to her. A lazy, messy kiss, and then she tucks herself in Lan Zhan’s neck. Pulls, pulls, a hug that’s also her fist in Lan Zhan’s hair, a fist in the elastic of Lan Zhan’s bra. She’s wrapped her legs around her. She’s kissing her skin, her collar, her throat, everything, everything she can reach.

“Shhh,” Lan Zhan says, pets her. Holds her back. “Come here,” she says, and manoeuvres them: Wei Ying’s arms around Lan Zhan’s neck, her thigh between Lan Zhan’s legs. Lan Zhan holds herself up on her elbows, grinds down in a slow circle. There’s barely any friction—she’s soaked through her underwear.

“Lan Zhan.” It’s a whisper—it doesn’t need to be much more. Their mouths are close, faces close. “Was that good, Lan Zhan? Was it good?”

Lan Zhan rides her faster. “So good,” she says. Her face is a mess, wet and red and mouth swollen. “You taste so good. You came so well.”

Wei Ying bucks up at that. Her skin is humming, she’s still aroused, wants more—to come more, to touch more, to hear more. She says, “Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan when you said you’d fuck me. When you said I’d ride your dick, what did you, what did you—”

Lan Zhan bites her jaw, her ear. Her hips are snapping fast, and she squeezes Wei Ying’s breast, hard, and then slows. Slows, slows. “Wei Ying,” she says. Her voice is ruined.

“Yes,” is Wei Ying’s answer, restless again, pulling, squirming. “Yeah, yes, you—Lan Zhan, please, you can, whatever you want, you can—”

Lan Zhan clambers off her. The sight that follows is one Wei Ying knows will haunt her, will stay with her, high definition and unchanged for the rest of her life: Lan Zhan getting her strap-on from her drawer, tossing it on the bed. Taking off the rest of her clothes: her bra, her underwear. Putting on the harness, a dark blue thing that makes her look like rogue soldier—all straps and buckles and the hard cut of it over her hips, her thighs. She has one pierced nipple, a small silver ring.

“Fuck,” Wei Ying says, and watches Lan Zhan fasten the dildo through the eye of the strap. It’s black, curves up. It should look silly, somehow, the artifice of it, the costume; but it—it doesn’t. It looks deliberate, and menacing. It look like the height of Wei Ying’s erotic life, the absolute peak of it, circling around the thought—she’s going to fuck that inside of me—and she cups herself, finds that she’s still so tender wet, so swollen.

Lan Zhan tsks at her—at her hand, at her touching herself. And that, too, should not be as hot as it is. Wei Ying swallows hard, removes her hand. She grabs the sheets, grinds into nothing.

“Poor baby,” Lan Zhan says, and knee-walks into the bed. “I’ve got you,” she tells Wei Ying, pulls her in by her thigh. “I’ve got you.”

She makes good on her promise and has Wei Ying ride her dick. Lan Zhan sitting back on her heels on the bed, knees wide and Wei Ying naked in her lap, writhing, bouncing. There’s the slapping sound of skin on skin, of the slick that’s dripped down to Lan Zhan’s thighs, the embarrassment of being had like this—hard and fast and being grabbed at, being fuck up into, being moved around the way Lan Zhan wants her. There’s the embarrassment of liking it. Wei Ying has never had sex like this. She’s had long sex, and short sex, and perfunctory sex, and has rarely talked about sex to her friends because the sex she had was straight—and didn’t belong in the conversation, she felt. Like coming to a party in the wrong outfit, underdressed, like bringing the wrong food, the snacks that no one liked. And so she had sex, the close and the rubbing kind, and often orgasmed, and didn’t talk about it, and thought to herself: it’s good, it’s good sex. And it was, in the sense that it was fun, and did the job.

She hadn’t known. She hadn’t known this was an option. She hadn’t known how Lan Zhan’s bruising hands would feel on her ass, spreading her; hadn’t known how Lan Zhan’s mouth would feel, put to places that she’d oddly thought of as private—her armpit, the sensitive side of her ribs. She hadn’t known what it was, to have her body shared—cracked open, the spine of a new book—and Lan Zhan pumping in and twisting and pulling her hair until her head is tilted all the way back and Lan Zhan saying, “Are you going to come again?” And when Wei Ying can’t even answer, can barely coordinate her limbs to stay up, mind gone static—the rushing of a river, fast rain on a plastic tarp—Lan Zhan nips her throat and huffs what might be a laugh and clicks her tongue, disapproving, says, “We barely even started.”

And she’s right: they haven’t. Lan Zhan takes her to the edge and then pulls out. She has her crying, then has her on her knees, face down in the sheets, stance slipping wide on the bed. They find out Wei Ying goes quiet with a hand to the back of her neck. They find out Wei Ying can suck Lan Zhan’s fingers all the way to the back of her throat. They find out she can come when Lan Zhan tells her to.

Somewhere in the mess of it all, Wei Ying remembers a young Lan Zhan looming over her at the school cafeteria—holding Wei Ying’s ankle, pushing Wei Ying back into the table, Wei Ying’s legs wide. She remembers saying, If you put your hands on me one more time I swear I’ll—and has an image of what if Lan Zhan had: had put her hands on her, had fucked it out of her at sixteen. Wei Ying would’ve struggled, would’ve pushed back, would’ve bent, in the end. Would’ve taken it. Her insides go shock-tight at the thought, a whining lick of arousal, of guilt. She’s on her back, and Lan Zhan’s holding her legs open, rolling her hips in. She’s sweaty, fringe sticking to her forehead, mouth puffed and bright red and open. She’s staring at where her dick is sliding in and out of Wei Ying.

Wei Ying says, “Baby,” says, “Baby come here, come here, I want you please come here I—”

Lan Zhan goes to her. Wei Ying kisses her face, her mouth, tangles her hands in the straps of the harness—holds Lan Zhan where it digs into her skin under the line of her ass, the top of her thighs. She uses it as a lever to fuck herself up, faster. She starts babbling, talking nonsense, saying, “God so good,” and, “it feels so good,” and, “you fuck me so good,” and, “you should fuck me forever, always, you should stay inside me and fuck me and—”

One of her hands slips from its hold, slip down, finds Lan Zhan soaking between the dig of two straps. The fabric is wet, her thighs are sopping, and Wei Ying gasps at the same time Lan Zhan does. “Fuck fuck fuck,” she says, and runs her fingers through Lan Zhan’s folds, finds her clit under the rub of the dildo—then finds her where she’s open. She pushes in two fingers.

Lan Zhan collapses on top of her. Their coordination is lost, and the last stretch is a writhing dance, cresting in overlaps, in moans, hands and hands and teeth.

It takes them a long time to recover, after that. Dozing, skin abuzz, waking up. Wei Ying cups her pussy, shudders. She whispers into Lan Zhan’s shoulder, “Fuck, you’ve ruined me.” She helps a quiet and slow Lan Zhan out of her harness: loosens the buckles, slides it down her thighs. She kisses the bruised dents they’ve left behind on Lan Zhan’s hips, and Lan Zhan’s stomach twitches under her, skin raised in bumps.

Lan Zhan takes her to the bathroom to pee. She makes Wei Ying sit down, holds Wei Ying by her hair, makes her look up at her, eyes hard and possessive. Wei Ying laughs a little and says she can’t, she can’t go if Lan Zhan’s staring at her, but she manages, in the end. It’s both humiliating and good. Her body is hot all over, blushing, and she thinks she’s still horny and doesn’t know how: she can’t come anymore, can’t move anymore. She puts her face to Lan Zhan’s belly. Kisses her there.

In bed again, Lan Zhan speaks to her in a quiet voice: is she all right? Is she hurting? How does this feel? How does this?

Wei Ying can’t quite answer yet, nothing beyond, mmmm, and she only wants to kiss Lan Zhan and so she does: soft kisses, back and forth. Her mouth is sore. Lan Zhan has bitten her a lot, tonight. Lan Zhan brings her water, brings her leftover pizza on a plate. Wei Ying drinks, eats, says, “I can’t believe you’re letting me eat in your bed,” and Lan Zhan says, “I’ll let you anything, in my bed.” And Wei Ying has to hide her face in Lan Zhan’s neck, shudder through several breaths.

They sleep. Wei Ying wakes up at some point, has to pee again. When she comes out of the bathroom, she’s struck, for a moment, by the house at night: the open arms of the empty couch, the glint of the plastic table cloth, the kitchen around the doorway hidden like a secret, like an invitation. They picked out the chairs together. Wei Ying had got the lamp shade from her sister. Lan Zhan had sent Wei Ying seven pictures of seven rugs and told her to choose. The ashtray on the table, the joint still in it, the open window—traces.

Wei Ying stands there, bare legs, in Lan Zhan’s t-shirt, and aches a little. She isn’t sure if she’s happy or if she’s sad, only that it hurts. Her own bedroom door has been left open, and she won’t look at it, won’t think of that space as hers, and what it means, and what next. She goes back to Lan Zhan and wakes her up, and kisses her shoulder, her collar, the pointy peaks of her small breasts. Wei Ying takes Lan Zhan’s pierced nipple in her mouth, plays with it and tongues at it while Lan Zhan hisses, holds her head in place. She takes Wei Ying’s hand and guides it between her legs, shows Wei Ying how she wants it: the crook of her fingers, the press of her thumb. Wei Ying is a fast learner. It should be harder to get her there, what with how tired they both are, how wrung out, but it happens in no time at all: Lan Zhan hot and clenching around Wei Ying’s fingers, a low sound of a grunt, pulling Wei Ying’s face up to hers, kissing open and filthy as she comes.

She has Wei Ying sit on her face. Wei Ying is shy about it, at first, breath catching, but starts to move properly soon enough, and Lan Zhan hums into her thigh in approval and says, “Good,” says, “that’s right,” and Wei Ying’s mind quiets, wide-wide, a buzzing open field in spring.

Wei Ying wakes up, at some point, and Lan Zhan is asleep on her chest, a knee up over Wei Ying’s leg, a hand wrapped around Wei Ying’s wrist. Wei Ying wakes up, another time, and she’s the little spoon in Lan Zhan’s hold, and Lan Zhan is soft and half awake: kissing the back of her neck, soothing a hand over her belly.

She falls back asleep.

* * *

Lan Zhan is showering when Wei Ying wakes up. She comes out with a towel over her shoulders, sweats and a bra. Wei Ying is waiting outside, waiting her turn, and they brush together on passing Wei Ying startles, jerks away with a, “Ah! Haha,” and Lan Zhan stills. Her hair is wet. She smells like soap, like warm skin. There’s marks on her, there’s the trail of nails up her arms.

Wei Ying clears her throat and slinks into the bathroom. It’s still foggy with Lan Zhan’s shower, and the knowledge gnaws at her, anxious in her belly. Lan Zhan’s bare feet on the floor tiles, Lan Zhan’s naked back against the wall.

They’re at the table having breakfast and Lan Zhan peels her egg for her: rolls it over the table, uses her long fingers to tease off the shell.

Wei Ying remembers those fingers. Sucking on them, shameless. How deep Lan Zhan had pushed them inside her, how Wei Ying begged for them.

She flushes. A frost has wedged itself into her limbs, somewhere at dawn, and now she no longer doesn’t know who she was last night—asking for things, taking them. Acting like she knew herself, when she doesn’t. She’s flipping back through pages, now, archives of touch, of moments—hanging off Lan Zhan, flirting with Lan Zhan, calling her babe, baby, whining at her, pulling at her and—

She’s embarrassed now, sitting across from Lan Zhan. Embarrassed by last night, embarrassed by her past self, how foolish both versions of her seem, now. No self-awareness, no shame. She’s always been like that. She thought she’d grown past it, in adulthood. It seems she hasn’t.

She stiffens—shoulders tight, looking at her plate. Lan Zhan notices. Lan Zhan hands her the egg. Wei Ying accepts it with a quick snatching movement, a vague hum of thanks. She doesn’t look at Lan Zhan, and then gives a nervous laugh, and scrabbles for familiar ground—babbles: has Lan Zhan seen the link Huaisang sent in the group app? And what does she think of the movie, does she want to go see it with the rest, even though Lan Zhan doesn’t like movie theaters, Wei Ying knows, remembers the time with the sticky floor, when that guy was coughing and the—

Lan Zhan pushes back from the table, chair noisy, and takes her plate to the kitchen. Wei Ying was mid-sentence. She holds the breath of it, closes her eyes. She hears Lan Zhan wash her plate, hears her empty the drying rack.

She follows her. Lan Zhan is drying her hands, tea towel in hand, hip against the counter. She’s tall enough that when she cooks she has to bend down a little to cut the food. The drizzle has pulled through the night and is still pushing on, blown sideways by the wind, ticking against the windows. The light is miserly, pale. Lan Zhan still looks painfully gorgeous in it, lit from the side—the tousled fall of her hair, her sharp jaw, her full mouth.

She notes Wei Ying without looking up at her. She says, “So we’ve got two options.”

Wei Ying’s throat works around nothing, for a moment. Then she manages, “Yeah?”

“Option number one,” Lan Zhan says, and puts the towel aside. “This doesn’t work. I move out. I give you space. We recover—eventually. Or try to. I will respect your boundaries. If you want to see me, or not. Talk to me, or not.”

Wei Ying nods. She blinks rapidly, and the room goes wet-bleary for a second, but then she takes a big solid breath and says: “Right.” And then, clearing her throat, “And option number two?”

Lan Zhan pushes off the counter. “Option number two,” she says, and steps up to Wei Ying. She leaves a distance between them, testing. Wei Ying sways into it, automatically, and Lan Zhan catches her with a hand to her hip. Lan Zhan says: “Option number two: I don’t move out. I stay here, at home, with you.”

Wei Ying reaches up for her, holds her by the nape of her neck: shorn hair, soft skin. She brings her down, forehead to forehead. Lan Zhan continues: “We eat together. We sleep together. I fuck you, I make you come.”

Wei Ying whines, tries for a kiss, Lan Zhan holds her at bay: “We go places. Lunch, museums. I hold your hand on the street.”

Wei Ying’s breath puffs out like she’s about to cry. Lan Zhan holds her by her ribs, nudges her closer. Their noses brush. She says, lips against Wei Ying’s cheek, “At parties, when people ask who you’re with, you will point to me. You will say: her.”

“I’m—” Wei Ying chokes it off. Lan Zhan presses to her ear, her jaw. “God,” she says. “I’m so,” they kiss, briefly, wet lips sliding together and away, “I love you,” she says.

Lan Zhan hauls her in by the small of her back. “Yeah you do,” she says, a growl, and the morning is lost; lost to Lan Zhan’s mouth, lost to fucking up against the doorpost, lost until Wei Ying is a half hour late to her shift and Lan Zhan has to drive her to work. They make out hard and heavy in the car, Wei Ying saying, “Come with me,” and Lan Zhan saying, “To your work?” And Wei Ying panting against her mouth: “Yeah. Yeah, you can fuck me in the break room, come on, just—”

“No,” Lan Zhan says, pinches her under her ass, hard. “Be good. Go.”

“Okay,” Wei Ying says, and stays a minute longer.

“Go,” Lan Zhan tells her.

“I love you,” Wei Ying says, twists closer. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“I don’t know,” Wei Ying says, and means it. For all of it, for none of it, for all that it brought her here. She’s sorry it couldn’t have been sooner. She’s sorry it took so long. Sorry that she might still fuck it up, somehow. “Just,” she says. “Just—yeah. You’re hot. You’re so hot. Bye.”

Over lunch, that day, Wen Qing asks: “So?” And a-Ning is there too, trying to look like he’s not eavesdropping, and Wei Ying shrugs and says, “So.”

“That’s it? That’s all I get?”

“Whatever,” Wei Ying says, “it’s fine, it’s whatever, aiyah leave me alone,” and a-Qing says, “I saw you two making out through the window, dude,” and Wei Ying blushes for the next two hours, non-stop.

* * *

It’s been a month when Lan Zhan makes arrangements to go see her brother. Wei Ying says, “What, without me?” And Lan Zhan says, “You want to come?” And Wei Ying says, “Of course I want to come, why would I want to come?”, and Lan Zhan tells her, “You’ve never wanted, in the past.”

“We agreed,” she says, “that past Wei Ying is not to be trusted.” They’re on the couch, Lan Zhan’s hand drawing lazy circles under Wei Ying’s shirt, over her belly, her side. Wei Ying pushes Lan Zhan's hand up further, further. They were watching a movie. They’re no longer watching a movie.

After, Lan Zhan says: “Past Wei Ying is just as important as present Wei Ying.”

“Noooo,” Wei Ying says, loose-limbed in Lan Zhan’s lap, recovering in the sweaty nook of Lan Zhan’s neck. “No that girl was whack, you can’t listen to her.”

In the car on the way up to the cabin Lan Zhan puts her hand on Wei Ying’s knee and says, “I have no doubts, you know.”

“Hm?” Wei Ying says. It’s snowing, and the wipers are going fast over the windshield. The trees are holding clumps of white like baskets, like handfuls of gifts. Wei Ying is nervous, chewing at the side of her thumb.

“About you,” Lan Zhan says, eyes straight ahead, one hand on the wheel. She’s holding on to Wei Ying like she’s an extension of herself—loose, natural. “About how you feel about me.”

Wei Ying inspects her spit-covered thumb. She wants to say, you shouldn’t. She wants to say: I’m inconsistent, I could be a whole new person tomorrow, I could hurt you tomorrow, I could leave you tomorrow, you should leave before I do, you should run, you should—

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, and squeezes her knee.

Wei Ying looks up at her. She’s still watching the road. Her face is sharp, and so familiar it burns. She tells Wei Ying, “I’m keeping you. Do you understand? I’m keeping you.”

Wei Ying thinks of how Lan Zhan held her down, last night. She thinks of the way Lan Zhan hugs her close in her sleep, a crushing hold. She thinks of how Lan Zhan stands next to her, these days, at bars or events or even in line at the baker’s: close, one hand to the small of Wei Ying’s back, an anchor.

She takes Lan Zhan’s hand and kisses her palm, her wrist, presses it to her cheek. She nods, she swallows. She nods.

Lan Huan’s home is a cut-out of a sad cottage core magazine. There’s a sheep’s skin over the minimal-design rocking chair. The fireplace is on. He has made risotto. The wine rises to Wei Ying’s cheeks, and when Lan Zhan makes her laugh, she has to hold on to Lan Zhan’s arm for balance.

That night, in Lan Huan’s spare bedroom, Lan Zhan wants to take off Wei Ying’s shirt for her. She steps up behind her, lifts the hem—not all the way, just up over the wings of her shoulders. She traces the line of Wei Ying’s back, the breadth of her. Her body is a line of heat, so near. She leans: kisses the top knob of Wei Ying’s spine, a dot on her shoulder, a dot over the curve of her ribs.

Wei Ying shivers. Most days she understands that Lan Zhan loves her in a vague and distant way, and then sometimes the knowledge lands, touches ground. Crushes her. The sheer luck of it, the privilege of it. When Lan Zhan comes up to press the cold tip of her nose behind Wei Ying’s ear, one hand spread wide over her spine, Wei Ying tilts toward her.

The breast of the chimney runs through their room, and a faint heat lingers. There’s a quilt on the bed. Wei Ying says, a small whisper to Lan Zhan’s chin: “Baby.” Says, “Baby, are you happy?”

“Mm,” Lan Zhan says, as good as a grin, a honeyed indulgence of a hum. She crowds in closer. She wraps her arms around Wei Ying. “You?”

“God,” Wei Ying says, a laugh, like the answer should be obvious. But she gives it all the same, heart a bubble in her throat: “I get to have you,” she says, and so concludes, “Yes. Yes.” The words into Lan Zhan’s mouth. “Yes.”