Never Thought I'd End Up Here

by Ann Liang

“I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen,” he says, somehow without an ounce of sarcasm. “You’ve always been beautiful—beautiful like the stars are, like Shanghai is. I could never get sick of looking at you. But back then I just … I didn’t know what I could possibly do to make you so much as look my way, and again, it’s awful, but I thought—I thought that was simply how it worked.

“I tried to tell you in other ways,” he says, a pleading edge to his words. “I wanted to leave flowers in your locker for Valentine’s Day, but I was so allergic to them that I never got to properly place them inside, and all I’d managed to achieve was attracting bees. I would make up these ridiculous excuses just to talk to you, and I’d deliberately leave my homework unfinished so I could ask to look at yours. I would join in on your games, thinking I could impress you if I won them all. But I kept messing up, like always. Everything I did to pull you closer only ended up pushing you further away. And then you were gone—”

“I swear, I begged the teachers to change their minds. I did everything I could to convince them that it had been a huge mistake, but they thought I was only lying to cover for you because I felt bad. And everybody else was so certain they had seen you push me

“Letter?” The ground seems to wobble beneath my feet, my mind racing faster and faster like a bullet train, threatening to throw me right off its tracks. “What letter?” “I wrote you a letter,” he says. “You did what? It’s the twenty-first century, Cyrus. The human race is alarmingly close to developing literal mind-reading technology. You couldn’t have just gotten out your phone and texted me?” “You blocked my number,” he points out.

“I was deeply, truly sorry then, and I’m sorry now,” he says, and I can see it written like a confession in his eyes, their darkness as lucid as a cloudless night, clear enough for you to map out every constellation. “I know I won’t ever be able to make it up to you, no matter what I do, but I needed to tell you. I needed you to understand how I felt. How I feel.”

“Do you know how nervous I was that day? It was all I could do to look you in the eye, Leah. I was so scared—scared you’d simply take one glance at me and leave before I had the chance to talk to you. Scared that if I came across as too nice all of a sudden, you’d assume I had some kind of evil plan or that I was playing another prank. I mean, at that point, we hadn’t seen each other in two whole years. Imagine if I confessed to you then what I’m confessing to you now. You wouldn’t have believed me for a second and I’d have ruined any hopes of ever being your friend or—or something more.”

together. “No,” I snap. “Not at all.” “You very clearly are,” he says. “I’m not. There’s nothing to be mad about.” “Leah—” “Look, you can’t just say things like that, Cyrus.” The words burst out of my mouth before I can stop them. I wave my hands about in the air, my composure shattering. “You can’t, unless you’re absolutely certain you want to be with someone and you’re in love with them—” “I am.” The world freezes. My heart, the willow trees, the green waters in the canals, the sparrows perched on the tiled roofs. All of it stops right there and then, and the only thing that restarts is the fierce, uneven pulse in my ears, thudding harder and harder, building into a deafening roar. “You’re in love with me?” I whisper. “Since when?” His smile is wry. “Only the past seven years.”

“I … This whole time?” I ask him, almost afraid to believe it. “Of course,” he says, watching me intently, his dark eyes serious, his hair tousled and soft around the sharp lines of his face. “There’s never been anybody else for me. There never will be.”

“I can stop talking about it if that’s what you want,” he goes on. “I can promise to never bring this up again. But I meant it when I said that I can be whatever you want me to be: whether that’s an enemy for you to curse and hold a grudge against for the rest of your life; a friend you can trust to accompany you anywhere and drive you safely back home, the one you can call at any hour of the night and tell all your secrets to; or the person you fall for, who will always wear a jacket so you don’t have to bring yours, who will be the first to find you when you’re lost and alone, who will remind you how heart-wrenchingly, unfathomably beautiful you are even on days when you don’t feel it.

The only thing I ask is that we don’t ever become strangers, because I really—” He breaks off. Clenches his jaw, fighting against some ineffable emotion. “I don’t think I could bear it, Leah. I don’t think my heart would be able to survive it.”

“Qin ai de.” I recognize the words. “Did you just call me your worst enemy?”

He smiles against my lips. “I was lying.” “What?” “Qin ai de doesn’t mean my worst enemy,” he says. “It means my love.”

“Do you want me to do your makeup for you? Just for fun?” She flushes. “Oh, I was just curious. You don’t have to— I mean, it’s probably a lot of trouble, and your products look pretty expensive—” “I literally dream of doing my sister’s makeup,” I assure her, pulling her closer to the mirror and angling her face toward the vanity lights with my free hand. “You have a sister?” she says. “Not at all. Which is why this is a dream come true for me,” I say as I examine her features up close. They’re softer than mine, doll-like and sweet, so I go for a more natural look, dipping my brush into the warm browns and baby pinks in my palette.

“When I first saw you, I thought you would hate me,” she admits. “I get that a lot,” I say with a snort. “It’s just my face, unfortunately.” “No, no,” she says quickly. “It’s my problem; I tend to assume that everyone hates me. There might be some deep-seated childhood trauma there, but what I’m getting at is, you have this … this cold, unapproachable aura—”

wtf

don’t think I even realized I liked you until later. I just knew that I noticed you a lot from the beginning. Like how you would wear a different scrunchie every day of the week, or how you’d always pick out the tomatoes from your sandwiches, or how you were far from a teacher’s pet, but you still made sure to thank the teachers at the end of the lesson. I found it fascinating, because you had this very intimidating face, but then you would laugh,” he says softly, “and it was like you were glowing.”

She nods discreetly to the girls in the crowd as they pass Cyrus, many of them doing double takes or elbowing their friends when their eyes land on his face. “You often see girls who are much prettier than their boyfriends, but he’s the perfect fit for you.”

“I think you’ve left him speechless,” Pei Jie says to me, laughing. Cyrus flushes, and takes a tentative step closer. “You’re incredible,” he breathes.

A small part of me had expected Cyrus to grow bored of the photo shoot too, but he’s waiting right there by the door, patient as ever, my purse hanging around his shoulder. Tenderness blazes through me, warming the empty space between my ribs. “Thanks for holding my bag,” I tell him, reaching over to take it from him. “It’s an honor to hold your bag,” he says. “And it’s so light I barely felt it.”

They’d whisper things like, You’re the first Asian girl I’ve ever been with, or, You’re so gorgeous—I can’t believe you’re Chinese, as if I was meant to feel special or grateful to be some kind of exception,

unfortunately I relate

“And? Do I live up to your fantasy?” I say it teasingly, yet my heart thuds as I wait for his answer. I never have in the past. For every guy who’s claimed to like me, I was just something nice for them to think about, my eyes and my hips and my legs, prettier on posters and in magazines than in real life. Of course they all noticed me. Of course they all left in the end. Cyrus shakes his head. “No fantasy could ever live up to you,” he whispers. “Nothing can compare to how it feels to look up and see you there.

“Leah and Cyrus,” Wang Laoshi says, smiling over at us. My heart soars. The rest of the group bursts into applause that’s definitely too loud for an indoor setting, and I throw my arms around Cyrus’s neck without thinking. “We won,” I squeal. “We won.” “We did,” he says, laughing, his hand coming up to rest over the small of my back like there’s nobody else around. “I told you we would, didn’t I?” “You know what we should do to celebrate?” I ask him. He pulls back just slightly to tilt his head, his eyes gleaming. “Are you asking me out?” “Maybe,” I tease. “There is a nice restaurant I’ve always wanted to try down the street from my house …” “Let’s go there,” he says instantly. “Cyrus, you don’t even know what restaurant it is—” “Doesn’t matter,” he tells me, “as long as I’m going with you.”

Without question or comment, Cyrus shrugs off his jacket and drapes it around my shoulders. “How did you know I was freezing?” I ask, turning to him in wonder. “Because I know you,” he says simply. “You love me,” I say. I can’t pinpoint when it stopped being a question, and when it started to feel like a simple fact. There are 6,479 miles between Shanghai and Los Angeles. The sun will come up tomorrow. You can never go wrong with a well-fitted black dress. And he loves me. “Of course I do,” he murmurs against my hair.