This Time It’s Real

Even though it’s the last thing I want to do after the ti jianzi game, I show up on time for our first official chemistry training session the next day. And as it turns out, Caz wasn’t kidding about his alternate means of transportation.

“You ride this everywhere?” I demand, staring at the horse-sized motorcycle propped up by the compound gates. It looks like something someone in the Mafia would ride, or something a forty-seven-year-old billionaire might buy to keep up with the times. Most of the vehicle is coated a pure, glossy black, from the wheels to the leather seats, but with fire-red streaks running down the sides. Hardly the kind of transportation I expected to see first thing on a Saturday morning, or that I had in mind when Caz texted me about visiting his favorite jianbing stall.

“Beautiful, don’t you think?” Caz asks—a rhetorical question, clearly. I mean, he’s stroking the seats with more affection than I’ve seen him show anybody, including his costars in super-intimate scenes.

I stare at him, his winning smile, his casual stance. Unlike me, he doesn’t seem to remember the humiliating game at all. Which is just typical of him, really—of us. Him, going about his day without a care in the world, while I get to sit around and overthink my every exchange with him and wonder why things don’t ever come so easily to me.

“Wow,” I say flatly as I take a tentative step closer to the leathery, monstrous thing. It’s somehow even taller than I originally thought.

“What?”

“You’re … not the kind of guy who names his motorcycles, right? And refers to it as she?” When Caz doesn’t reply right away, just laughs and rolls his eyes, I fold my arms across my chest. My horror is exaggerated, but not fake. “You are, aren’t you?”

He climbs swiftly, easily onto the seat, brows raised at me. “Would that be a huge deal breaker for you?”

“Yes, I’m afraid that alone would be solid grounds for me to break up with you. Especially if the name is something like Black Beauty. Or Rebecca.”

“You wouldn’t,” he teases, chucking me one of the two motorcycle helmets dangling from the handlebars. “You like me too much.”

I don’t know what annoys me more: the arrogant assumption of it, or the way my face bursts into flames, to keep my feelings in check. Strictly business, remember? I squeeze on the helmet as fast as my fumbling fingers will allow, if only to avoid his gaze.

I move behind Caz and hoist myself onto the seat in what must be the least graceful way possible, all but kneeing him in the back as I force my legs down on both sides. “Thanks for the tip about wearing pants,” I tell him, my voice coming out slightly muffled through the face shield. “I thought you were just traumatized by the length of my dress last time.”

His head turns a fraction toward me. “Eliza. If it weren’t for the matter of practicality, you could literally come dressed in a trash bag and I wouldn’t care.”

“Are you sure your reputation could withstand that?” I try to play it off as a joke, but an old note of bitterness edges my voice. Already, fans have started sharing photos of us together and analyzing both his dress style and mine. The nicer ones have labeled my outfits “down-to-earth” and “comfortable” and “youth casual.” The not-so-nice ones have urged me to consult Caz Song’s stylist.

Maybe Caz saw those comments too, or maybe he hears the ice in my voice, because instead of answering, he’s quiet for a moment.

Then he starts the engine, and a thousand loud, violent tremors roll through the steel frame, almost bouncing me off.

“Hold tight,” he warns.

I do at once, wrapping my arms in a viselike grip around his stomach and pressing my face between the sharp blades of his shoulders. This close, I can feel the heat of his skin through his T-shirt, the way his muscles contract beneath my fingertips.

He makes a choking sound. “Holy sh—not that tight—”

“I don’t want to fall off,” I protest, but I loosen my hold just a little, enough to let him breathe.

“You won’t fall,” he says, like the notion itself is ridiculous. “I won’t let you.”

Amazingly, he keeps his word.

We start off at a slow, steady crawl across the street, my hands still clasped tight over Caz’s front, our shadows trailing behind us, growing larger, sharper as we leave the shade of the compound gates. Twice, Caz turns around, checking whether or not I’m okay.

When I nod, he shifts gears, and we start speeding up, the landscape rising to greet us—

And it’s beautiful.

All of it.

Since Caz has to shoot this afternoon, the hour is still fairly early, the sky the pale blue of a rough watercolor painting. Beijing looks different at this time. More peaceful, somehow. The clean-paved streets and lanes are empty save for a couple of rusted old rickshaws and a few elderly men swinging birds in bamboo cages, humming into the hazy air.

We fly past them down the road, the green of trees and gleam of cars bleeding all around us, shapes and backlit silhouettes melting together.

So this is what it feels like, I marvel as I tilt my face toward the sun, letting the gold-honey light wash soft over me, and catch sight of my own reflection in the side-view mirror. My face is bright with open-mouthed laughter, my eyes creased, shirt rippling in the wind. I look young. Deliriously happy. I almost don’t recognize myself.

This is how it feels to be an ordinary teenager.

To be unafraid.

Suddenly, my anger from before feels like a small and distant thing.

We’re somewhere deep in the city when Caz slows the vehicle to a stop and lets it rest on the side of a narrow street. He jumps down first, freeing his windswept, movie-star hair from his helmet, then helps me to the ground.

I wobble for a moment, still shaky from leftover adrenaline, knees weak from gripping on to the seat too tightly, before steadying myself against a nearby streetlight. It’s a relief to take the crushing weight of the helmet off, to feel the fresh air fanning my cheeks—

Caz takes one look at me and bursts out laughing.

I freeze, self-conscious and a little stunned, because I can’t recall seeing Caz laugh like this before: head thrown back and dimples so deep they look carved-in.

Then he says, “Eliza. Your hair.”

“What?”

My hands reach instinctively for the top of my head, and I’m horrified to find my hair sticking … up. All the way up, as if I’ve been shocked with electricity.

Perfect. Just perfect.

I scowl to hide my embarrassment and quickly smooth my hair back down in a few vigorous pats, then glare at him. “Don’t say another word.”

“Come on, it didn’t look that bad. It’s actually quite stylish—”

“Don’t.”

He bites down on another laugh and mimes zipping his lips, throwing away the key, the full charade, and starts leading me down the street.

“So,” I say after a moment, all the awe and adrenaline from the motorcycle ride gone, and the words that have been brewing inside me the past twenty-four hours finally bubbling up to my tongue. “We should probably talk about yesterday.”

“What about yesterday?”

He sounds genuinely confused, which only proves my worst suspicions correct. He doesn’t care about these things the way I do. He doesn’t have to worry about getting hurt, about the consequences of his actions, how one careless smile and a few fake nice words from him could bring someone else to total emotional ruin.

“My sister,” I grit out. “You playing with her and her friends. What was that?”

He skids to a halt. “Whoa, hold up. Is that why you’ve been grumpy all morning? Because I was being nice to your little sister?”

The way he phrases it—the judgment in his tone, as if I’m being difficult on purpose—makes my blood boil. “I’m not grumpy,” I snap, walking right past him.

He catches up to me in a heartbeat. “Yeah, no, of course. Because right now your tone and expression are so gentle. Very peaceful. Not at all like you’re fantasizing about strangling me.”

Not strangling, I’m tempted to correct him. Just throwing my fist into your face.

“I just—” I release a loud puff of air through my teeth. “We shouldn’t get our families involved, okay? It’s too messy. I don’t want my own sister to become collateral damage when we break up.”

I wait for some snarky remark, but when he looks at me, his expression is uncharacteristically serious. Even a little sheepish. “Sorry,” he says, surprising me. “I guess I wasn’t thinking about it like that.”

“Of course you weren’t,” I mutter.

“Hey, listen. If it matters that much to you—I won’t do it again, okay?”

My anger weakens slightly, though my distrust toward him holds. “You better not,” I warn, jabbing a finger at him.

He stares down at my outstretched finger, then back up at me, and a much more familiar—and kickable—look of amusement sprawls itself across his features. “Has anyone ever told you that you can be pretty scary sometimes?”

I make a point of walking straight ahead without replying.

The jianbing place is nestled between a local kindergarten, a half-empty parking lot, and what looks like an out-of-business textbook store. Two scrawny, sunburnt men in their late twenties are manning the stall, their foreheads shiny with sweat from some combination of the summer heat, the burning grill, and their uniforms: Both have on aprons and plastic sleeves over their loose white tank tops.

They’re just finishing up with a young mother’s order when we approach from the sidewalk.

“Two jianbings, please,” Caz orders in perfect, local Chinese, then glances over at me and switches to English. “Do you want a drink? Soybean milk? Water? Iced tea?”

I’m still busy trying to get my hair to stay flat. I pause at the question, a little flustered, and reply, “Uh, soybean milk would be good. Thanks.”

“Sure.” Caz turns around and eases smoothly into Chinese again. “Then we’ll just have one medium cup of soybean milk, sweetened.”

The two men shoot us curious looks, but they don’t say anything. They just nod and get to work.

Most of the ingredients have already been laid out over the stand, ready for use at any moment: a carton half filled with eggs; giant jars of black bean sauce and red bean curd and chili oil; a plastic bowl of dough and containers brimming with fresh vegetables.

I watch as one of the chefs spreads the sticky dough over the circular grill in one smooth, rolling motion, until it’s been stretched out paper-thin all the way to the edges. He repeats the process with two cracked eggs, the whites sizzling instantly upon contact with the hot metal, the two yolks sliding to the center like twin suns.

Within seconds, the dough turns a baked, crisp gold. Scallions and cut coriander are scattered onto the surface next, followed by pork floss and a thick bean curd paste and fat, fried dough sticks. The savory scent wafts into the air, mingles with the smoke from the grill.

The other man takes over with the packaging, cutting the cooked jianbing into two and sliding them into a small disposable bag, the steam quickly fogging up the clear plastic. Then, without a word, he extends the bag toward us.

Caz nods at me. “You first.”

If Ma or Ba were here, they’d probably insist that I do the back-and-forth you-first-no-you-first thing until one of us runs out of breath or dies from over-politeness. But since the chef’s still holding out the bag, and the jianbing really does smell insanely good, I just say, “You sure?”

Caz somehow manages to smile and roll his eyes at the same time. “Eliza. Just take it.”

So I do. The bag is so hot it hurts my fingers, and I end up doing that laughable little dance where I pass it between both hands really fast to avoid getting burned.

“Um, xiexie,” I tell the chef, who’s still looking at me funny.

He exchanges a glance with the other chef, and both of them shake their heads and laugh. Then he says something back, but his regional accent is so strong—or, more accurately speaking, my Chinese skills are so limited—that I can’t make out a single word beyond can. Which sounds the exact same as meeting, bribery, clever, and about fifty other words in Chinese.

So basically he could be saying anything.

I turn to Caz for help.

His expression is unreadable, but he translates right away. “He says he’s surprised you know how to say thank you.”

“Oh.” I glance back at the chefs, unsure what to make of the comment. It’s hardly a compliment, but maybe I’m just being oversensitive. Maybe they didn’t mean it in a bad way …

Then the other chef crosses his arms and asks, “Ni haishi zhongguoren ma?”

This time, I understand the full sentence: Are you even Chinese?

My face burns. Suddenly I’m not so hungry anymore.

Caz clears his throat beside me. “He said—”

“Yeah, I—I know what he said.” There’s an embarrassing crack in my voice, the edge of something raw, and I have to look away from everyone. Stare down at a piece of old chewing gum stuck to the road instead. It doesn’t even make sense for me to get so worked up about this one offhand question …

Except I’ve heard it before, so many times. Every possible version of it: Are you American? British? Are you from around here? Are you actually Chinese?

I don’t know. Sometimes it just gets really exhausting having to explain your identity to everyone.

After we’ve picked up both our orders, Caz and I walk in silence for a while, heading to nowhere. I know we’re supposed to be spending this time learning about each other, but neither of us seems to know what to say. Willow trees reach out from one side of the street and a breeze sings its soft song through the dripping leaves. The sun has edged higher up the sky now, and it’s all blue, everywhere, stark blue and the quiet between us.

Caz breaks it first. “I doubt he meant it that way—”

“It’s fine, Caz,” I say, with a sad attempt at a laugh. “We really don’t have to talk about this. I mean, there’s not even anything to talk about.”

“Well, you’re clearly upset.”

“I’m not—”

“You are. You’re making that face again.” And he actually stops halfway down the street, juts his chin out and bites his lower lip in an impression of me that’s as aggravating as it is freakishly accurate.

I hold up a hand to block him from view. “I don’t look like that at all,” I lie. Then, when it becomes apparent he isn’t buying it: “Whatever. You wouldn’t understand anyway.”

“Why not?” he challenges.

I stop in my tracks too. “Why not? Are you serious?”

“Of course,” he says evenly, his dark eyes steady on me.

“Caz. This isn’t— You don’t have these types of problems, okay?” The words come out too quick, too honest, a bitter, breathless rush. “You belong everywhere. You’re welcome anywhere. Whether it’s on the red carpet or in a silly children’s game or in the school cafeteria. You always fit in perfectly, without trying, and—it’s just not like that with me.”

I sense his surprise, and I immediately wish I hadn’t said anything at all. What is it about Caz Song that makes me both want to open up and draw a ten-foot-thick barrier around me?

“Maybe that’s true at school,” he says finally, jaw tight. “But sometimes, in my own home …” And he stops. It’s like that moment in the park again: He seems to be battling himself on something, like a boy teetering on the edge of a vast pool, unsure if it’s safe enough to dive in. All this time, and he still reveals so little of himself willingly. “Sometimes I feel that way too” is what he settles on in the end. A half answer; a compromise; one foot suspended in midair, the other set firm on the ground. A suggestion that there might be more to him than I’ve given him credit for.

The precarious truce stretches between us.

I take a bite of my jianbing and I don’t taste anything at first, just scalding, tongue-numbing heat, but then the savory bean curd flavor fills my mouth and the scent of fried oil brings back some of my appetite. Something in me softens.

“It’s good,” I tell him reluctantly.

“Good,” he says.

We both sit down on the curb and eat our breakfast and watch the city come to life. It is good, I guess, despite everything. Living here. Being here with Caz. Even if Beijing doesn’t fully feel like mine yet, moments like this still give me hope that one day, it could be.

I’m pulled from my thoughts as Caz dissolves into a loud coughing fit.

And the melodramatic part of my brain programmed to assume the worst of everything instantly thinks: Oh god. This is it. He’s going to tell me he’s suffering from some kind of chronic condition and he’s been keeping it a secret this whole time because he doesn’t want anyone to worry but he only has two months left to live. We’re going to end up in a depressing movie montage of his last days with me and there’s going to be a bunch of blood-colored sunsets and slow walks by the beach and one day he’ll just collapse before my eyes and—

“Sorry,” Caz says, wincing slightly. He holds up his jianbing. “It’s—they don’t usually put chili in this—”

My heart slows down, and my panic fades.

“Wait. You can’t eat anything spicy?”

“Of course I can,” he grumbles, but his cheeks are a few shades too red, and he doesn’t make any move to touch his food again.

“Oh my god.” It’s so unexpected that the last of my anger from earlier dissipates, and I laugh. Once I start, I can’t stop. My whole body shakes with ill-suppressed giggles until I’m nearly doubled over on the curb. “Oh my god. This is amazing.”

“How?” he says flatly. “What could possibly be amazing about this?”

“Just—out of all things,” I choke out through my hysteria. “I mean, you were able to complete a bunch of stunts with a broken arm and bear the pain but you can’t handle a bit of spice?”

He scowls at me, though I can tell he doesn’t really mean it. “There was a lot in there, okay? At least two whole chilies—”

“Oh my god, stop—” I clutch at my stomach, laughing harder. “Stop—sorry. I can’t. I seriously can’t.”

“I’m glad you find my sensitive taste buds so hilarious.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll— Let me just get a grip …” I take a deep breath like I’m about to meditate while Caz watches me, unimpressed, but that only sets me off again. I don’t even know what’s so funny about this. Or maybe it’s not that funny—maybe I’m just happy, even though that makes no sense. When I’ve finally calmed down enough to form full sentences, I hold out my own jianbing in offering. “We can swap, if you want. I promise there’s zero chili in mine.”

The weeping willow above our heads sways as I talk, its leaves scratching my cheek.

Caz bats the branches away from me and tilts his head, assessing. “You sure this isn’t some kind of setup? You haven’t poisoned it or anything?”

“I swear. Though, I mean, I’ve already taken a few bites out of it, if you don’t mind …” And suddenly it’s awkward; I can feel it in the air. I’ve made things awkward. Like I always do.

But Caz recovers quickly. He grabs my jianbing from me like it’s no big deal and smiles a little and tells me, “We’ll go somewhere that serves milder food next time.”

“Next time,” I repeat, surprised to find that the idea of these chemistry training sessions doesn’t fill me with quite as much dread as it did before.