Chapter 23 Chanel
Chanel
I don’t expect Ares to find me so fast.
But within ten minutes of hanging up, he’s here, panting, eyes wild and worried. He crosses the grass in three long strides.
The air between us tightens into nothing, our breaths intermingling like ghosts in the darkness. “Are you okay?”
“I saw him,” I say. This was the decision I’d reached as I left the party; I know it’s risky, telling Ares about it, but I
can’t bear not knowing. I’ll offer up the information I have in return for the information he has. It’ll even the playing
field between us, and then—and then it’ll simply be a matter of who can be smarter, crueler, faster. “The man in the vision.
Long Ge.”
Ares stares at me. “How do you know who he is?”
“You tell me first,” I say. “How much do you already know about him?”
He hesitates, and I can see him making the same silent calculations. How much to say, how much to withhold, how much we can
give each other.
Sometimes I feel closer to Ares Yin than I’ve ever felt with anyone in my whole life—closer than I thought two people could possibly be. Times when he’s as intimate and essential as the air in my lungs, the very blood in my veins.
Then there are times, like now, when he’s as distant and cold as the moon. Even when he’s right in front of me, there’s this
impenetrable look in his eyes, an entire universe between us, filled with every question I’m too scared to ask. I want to
shake him, force him to really look at me, tell me what he’s thinking.
Or better yet, I want to crawl inside his brain and rifle through it like a thief in a mansion, ripping through the closets
and turning over the drawers, desperate to find something of value. And it’s startling how I know the exact half-stifled sound
he makes when we’re kissing and he loses control, how I’ve memorized the contours of his chest, all the softest and hardest
places on his body, but I couldn’t begin to guess what he’ll do next.
“The fight club I was in . . . ,” Ares says haltingly. “He’s the one who founded it. He commands a lot of respect and power
there. But from what I’ve gathered, it’s not just the fight club that he owns. He moves between circles, gets up to a bunch
of shady stuff.”
“Right,” I say, a little dizzy, trying to piece everything together.
Reminds me of when I’d sit through entire lectures at school, not understanding a single word the teachers had said, until the night before the exam, when Alice would patiently explain the fundamental concepts to me, and things would only start making sense in hindsight.
Like why Ares had been tracking Long Ge down at the nightclub.
I’d initially feared they might be accomplices, but it doesn’t sound like Ares has even spoken to the man before. “Right, okay.”
“Where did you see him?” Ares asks. Then, more urgently: “Did he hurt you?”
I shake my head. “No, but . . . he was at my mom’s party tonight.”
Surprise flashes over his face. “At her party? Why?”
“They’ve been talking. He reached out to her after hearing about the divorce, but they used to be high school classmates.
Friends. I think . . .” I swallow. My throat feels constricted, like I can’t inhale fully. “No, I know. He’s obsessed with my mom. At the party just now . . . he was trying to convince my mom to sign with this new media agency
of his or whatever, but I feel like that’s all just a ruse to get closer to her.” I watch Ares’s face intently as I speak,
searching for the version of him I’d seen in the lake, the one holding the lighter as my house burned with my mom inside it.
But he only looks confused, if not concerned, his dark brows furrowed. “Did you warn your mom about him?”
Like he actually cares about my mom’s safety. And maybe he really does in the present moment. So what will happen between
now and then to change that? “I tried to warn my mom,” I say. “But I can’t get through to her. She won’t take me seriously.”
“Did Long Ge do anything else? Say anything?”
“I left the party early, so I’m not sure. I didn’t think he’d do anything terrible while there were so many people around.
Not for tonight, at least.”
“No, you’re right. He’s more careful than that,” Ares says. “Or else he wouldn’t have made it this far.” He releases a low breath. “Look, whatever, we can figure that shit out later—I’m just glad you’re safe.”
I glance up at him, and it’s only then that I register the pastel pink box in his hands.
“What is that?”
His fingers shift over it, like he has half a mind to hide the whole box behind his back and pretend it doesn’t exist. He
licks his lips but doesn’t speak. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was nervous.
“Well?” I prompt, when the silence stretches on long enough that I wonder if his plan is actually just to wait for me to get
distracted and forget my own question.
“It’s . . . a birthday cake,” he says at last, as if he’s confessing a grave sin.
“A birthday cake?” I repeat. “Whose birthday is it?”
“Nobody’s.”
“So are we just celebrating random days now? I don’t have anything against the idea, by the way—I’m as much a fan of nonevents
as I am of events.”
“No. Or . . . yes, yours. It’s for you,” he tells me, setting the box down on one of the tables the old Beijing uncles like
to use for their chess games, the surface marked with lines for weiqi pieces. He tugs the ribbon free, then pushes the pink
flaps of the cardboard to the side, revealing the cake within.
My eyes widen.
All of a sudden I’m back in Paris, staring longingly at the birthday cake on display before me.
It could be the exact same cake, transported through time and space.
Everything about it is how I remember: the shiny lychees glistening like gems atop the thick white cream, the delicate strawberry-pink swirls, the chocolate icing spelling out my full name, all the details illuminated by the soft orange glow of the lamppost.
But instead of near-strangers crowding around me in a foreign room, singing “Happy Birthday” like a hired chorus, the rapid-fire
clicks of cameras sounding in the background, there’s only the whisper of the wind through the grass, and Ares. Ares, who’s
watching me intently, waiting for my reaction.
“You got this for me,” I say slowly. “Why?”
I can see him weighing his response. “That story you told me, about your thirteenth birthday party. I couldn’t stop thinking
about it.” The pulse of his throat as he swallows. “You.”
And there it is again, louder than ever, the awful truth slamming up against my better judgment: But I love him.
I love him and it’s killing me.
For now, though, we have cake. I rip into the packet of disposable spoons and he prepares the flimsy paper plates and I cut
the cake into eight wobbly slices just for the two of us. I lick the frosting off the knife and I taste the sweetness of the
icing instead of guilt and regret. The breeze rises, sending the edges of the plates fluttering madly like butterfly wings
and blowing my hair across my face. It’s everywhere, sticking to my lip gloss and my lashes.
Then Ares reaches over and carefully bunches my hair in his fingers, brushing the stray wisps away from my cheeks and holding it back for me at the nape of my neck. “Is that better?”
“Much better,” I say. “Thank you.” I don’t even know if I’m referring to the cake or the makeshift ponytail or him coming
here to meet me tonight or just him, the existence of him, despite the consequences of him. The words feel useless, insignificant
anyway, when really what I want to say is, It’s never been like this with anyone before and It’s not fair of you to keep offering me tenderness when I know it’ll be taken away.
He looks over at my plate. “Do you like the lychees?”
When I nod, he picks all the lychees off his slice and adds them to mine. And I recall the stories my mom would tell me of
the Four Beauties of ancient China. Her favorite has always been the legend of Xishi, the concubine spy sent off to an enemy kingdom to destroy it, this grand, twisting,
epic tale of court intrigue and betrayal that ends with Xishi sailing across Taihu with her one true love.
But the one I remembered most vividly was Yang Guifei, the emperor’s beloved consort. She’d adored lychees, but they were
only grown in the south. The emperor was so obsessed with her, so determined to please her, that he had his couriers ride
out on their fastest horses for thousands of miles to bring the fresh fruit back to the palace. A journey across a whole kingdom,
just for a taste.
I’d thought that kind of fierce devotion was only the stuff of myth, exaggerated with each retelling over the centuries, a
fantasy fed to hopeless romantics. And yet . . .
I pop one of the lychees into my mouth, relishing the cool, sweet burst of it when I bite down. I can’t explain how nice it is, not having to scrape off the buttercream or ration my bites.
Something warm unfurls in my chest, so potent it almost hurts, like brushing your fingers along the edge of a wound. There’s
the moonlight splashing across the grass, and the stars glistening like sugar above his head, and the scent of spring’s first
flowers sweetening the cool, dark air.
“Did you hear? The lunar eclipse is happening in four days,” Ares says, staring up at the moon.
I stiffen. The blood moon. Prom. The vision. The night where everything is destined to change. I can’t afford to wait any
longer, and now seems like the best possible time. Between the cake, and the way he’d rushed over to find me tonight . . .
despite myself, I feel an excruciating surge of hope. Even if he hasn’t brought it up himself, it no longer seems so impossible
that he could care about me, care enough to agree to go to prom with me.
“Ares,” I begin. Just say it. Just ask him. Doesn’t matter that you’ve never had to ask a guy out before; now’s not the time to worry about
embarrassment or prom etiquette. All the chess pieces have been set on the board already—Ares, his brother, Long Ge—and the next few moves are critical. I’ll
beg Ares if I have to. Anything to keep my mom safe and alive.
“Yeah?” His tone is so soft, so gentle, it gives me the courage to keep going.
I set my fork down and take a deep breath.
“Will you . . . will you go to prom with me?” My own voice shocks me with its softness.
Not a weapon at all. No more tricks, no games, but a hand outstretched, praying for peace, my sleeves rolled up to reveal bare wrists, the veins leading up to my heart. Please.
Please, please, please.
Please say yes.
Please don’t hurt me.
His eyes widen a fraction in surprise. “Chanel,” he says, still softly, but the softness feels like a slow death, a sweet
poison. Like he almost pities me for what he’s about to say next, which makes everything so much worse. “I want to. Believe
me, I really, really want to.”
“Then why can’t you?” I whisper, hating how my lips tremble over the words, how the pain is pressing in. How stupid I feel.
“There’s something I have to do that night,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “Something more valuable to me than my own
life. I promise, if it weren’t for that—I’d go to prom with you. I’d go in a heartbeat.”
“That simply means you don’t want to go to prom with me enough,” I say, but we both know what I actually mean, what I can’t
bring myself to say out loud. You don’t want me enough. The truce between us cracks, and the sudden change sends a wave of cold washing over my stomach. How quickly we can go from
sitting side by side, sharing cake and speaking of childhood memories, to standing like soldiers on enemy lines, staring each
other down. How quickly intimacy can vanish.
My mom was right to warn me against love. All love really does is give someone the power to hurt you.
“It’s not that simple,” he tells me, his jaw taut, his eyes inscrutably dark.
“It is that simple.”
“There are too many things out of my control. I can’t . . . I’ll explain everything to you later—”
“So you’re rejecting me?” I cut in. “You’re not going to prom with me? That’s your final answer?”
A moment of silence trickles between us like moonlight.
And in it, I can hear the ending notes of a melody, an old memory of the first time I had my ears pierced, the woman speaking
to me seconds before she stepped forward with the needle, gentle but matter-of-fact. This is going to hurt.
I know it’s going to hurt, but I still can’t help hoping that he’ll prove me wrong. That maybe I can change his mind. That’s
what I’ve been doing this entire time: not trying to change the future, but trying to change him. Making the same mistake thousands upon thousands of girls have made in the past, thinking everything would be different
if only I could make him like me more.
I should’ve known how this would go. Should’ve known it was doomed from the start.
“Chanel,” he says quietly, “I would give you almost anything you asked for. I’d wait in line outside the bakery every morning to buy you the lychee cake you like, whether it’s your birthday or not.
I’d fly to the other end of the world with you if you simply wanted a change of weather.
I’d gladly be your chauffeur, your bodyguard, your confidant, your private chef, your personal photographer, your tour guide in any city.
I’d plant an entire field of your favorite pink lilies and pluck the brightest ones to deliver to your door.
I could build a tower in the middle of the ocean just to give you a better view of the sunset.
I could claw the stars from the sky for you.
I could give you the moon. Anything,” he whispers, “but this.”
I should’ve known how this would go, but the actual blow still knocks the breath out of my lungs. I’ve failed. After everything
I’ve done, all my scheming, all the ways I tried to contort myself into something he wanted, all that I offered, I still haven’t
escaped the age-old curse: He just doesn’t love you enough.
I clench my teeth and let my hand drop, the heat of his skin gone completely. Now there’s only the cold and the ink-black
waters and the distance between us.
Strange, how a few inches can feel like infinity, the turn of an era.
I wait until my voice hardens enough for me to speak. “Okay.” This time, it comes out exactly how I want it to. Curt, sharp,
removed. “Then I should probably go.”
Something ripples across his face, fleeting as a sparrow’s shadow over the surface of a lake, there and then gone. But he
doesn’t ask me to stay.