Eight
“I told you!” Thidar squeaks at her fiancé, Patrick, once I open the car door and before one foot has even hit the asphalt. Then, in what I’m assuming is meant to be a whisper, she asks, “Is he inside?” Unfortunately, her voice is still in squeak territory, so it absolutely is not a whisper.
“I—” I begin.
I hear the other door behind me open. When I turn, I just catch it closing. I turn back to Thidar and Patrick, who are standing outside their front door in pajamas—with their dog, Pizza, watching through one of the living room windows—right as Thidar’s jaw drops.
“I thought it’d be rude if I didn’t say hi. Hi, I’m Tyler.” Tyler strides over and offers his hand. Patrick takes it because, thankfully, he still remembers how to function like a normal human being.
Thidar, on the other hand, is clawing at her chest like the alien from Alien is trying to burst out from her ribs. “Hi,” she squeaks out. “Oh my god, hi.”
Tyler chuckles. “Hi,” he says.
“I’m Patrick,” Patrick says, and nods over at my friend, who looks so stricken it’s like her soul has left this corporeal plane. “This is my fiancée, Thidar.”
“Hi,” Thidar says with a smile so wide I can see every single one of her teeth. “I’m Thidar.”
“Wonderful, we all know each other’s names now,” I say, hopping out of the car. “Tyler needs to get home. I’m leaving after dinner. And you, ” I grip both of Thidar’s shoulders, “are going back inside and not embarrassing me any more than you already have.” Thidar digs in her heels, refusing to budge. “T,” I groan. “Please don’t—”
“Do you like lasagna?” she asks.
“You know I do.”
Patrick coughs. “I… don’t think she’s talking to you,” he says with a dry laugh.
At that, I look up and find my best friend grinning at Tyler. Tyler looks at me, then back at Thidar, then, hesitantly, nods. “I love lasagna.”
“Do you wanna come have some?” she asks, not missing a beat. “We make the pasta from scratch.”
“I—”
“We use seven cheeses.”
“Wow,” Tyler says, impressed. “Most people stick to four.”
“Pfft.” Thidar whacks an invisible fly. “Amateur hour. Unless you have dinner plans,” she adds quickly. “I heard you want to visit family while you’re here?” Great. I love having friends who have zero clue what an NDA means, or at the very least, have zero respect for them and their potential legal consequences. “If your parents are waiting at home to eat with you, then we understand.”
“I… I’m not living at home,” Tyler says, smile flickering. “Just in case paparazzi got out of hand. I have my own place.”
Thidar frowns. “You were going to eat alone tonight? Absolutely not! That’s a sad image.”
“You know,” I sputter, a little offended. “It can be freeing to eat alone. Empowering, even. Who wants to do extra dishes?” I say, but Thidar’s not listening.
Instead, she struts over to the driver’s seat and knocks on the glass. “Yes?” Yan asks, lowering the window.
“Hi, Uncle,” she says with a wave. “Tyler’s going to stay for dinner. We’ll drive him home.”
Yan stretches his neck out to look at Tyler. Patrick and I both also look at Tyler. Tyler looks at me with an expression that even an infant could decipher as What do I do? The idea of Tyler having dinner with my friends is far too close and chummy for my liking, but what am I going to do? Knowingly let the man have dinner alone after a nine-hour shoot? Not to mention the wrath that I’ll have to face from Thidar.
At my shrug, Tyler shoots Yan a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Seven?”
Yan nods. “Of course, sir. Have a good night, you two.”
And then he’s driving off and the gate is closing behind the car. And now I’m standing in front of my best friend’s house. With Tyler Tun by my side.
“You know you’re dead to me,” I mutter as we enter the house. Patrick leads Tyler upstairs so he can get a full tour before they bring out the food.
“My, my,” Thidar says as she arranges another place setting. “What’s got you so hostile? I simply invited my best friend and her new friend to dinner. Sharing is caring!”
“You know if I don’t kill you, then Nay surely will.”
Thidar waves a fork in the air. “Nay’s out at that new karaoke bar. I saw her Insta stories.” Lowering her voice, she squeaks out, “I cannot believe we’re having dinner with Tyler Tun! Can we take photos? Pleeease let me ask for a selfie. Or is that too cheesy? Oh, who cares! How many chances are we going to get to have dinner with Tyler Tun ? Also, is he somehow even more handsome in person?”
“He just came back from set,” I say with an indifferent shrug. “You should see him in the morning when his voice is still weird and gravelly. Celebrities, they’re just like us! See if you still think the same when he’s bare-faced and he’s got coffee breath which he hides with these mints that he always carries in his pockets and—” I look up to find Thidar smiling. It’s not her earlier grin, but a smile like she’s holding in a secret. “What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“ What? ” I insist.
“ Nothing, ” she repeats.
I round the table and am about to shake her by the shoulders when she grabs a nearby knife and points it at me. “Don’t you—” She starts to laugh, but cuts herself off when she sees my reaction. My head is rotated sideways, my shoulders hunched, both my hands protecting my face as I squeeze my eyes shut. “Hey, I wasn’t actually going to stab you,” she says. When I turn back, she’s lowering the knife, her expression marked with concern.
“Sorry,” I say, and try to laugh at myself. “I’m… really tired.”
I can tell she wants to buy it, but doesn’t entirely. “You sure? You okay?” I nod. “Like, in general?” she presses.
No, I say in my head. No, I murdered a man in the middle of the night and I might go to jail and I can’t remember how it feels to be able to sleep for more than three consecutive hours.
The three of us have been best friends since we were five, and I have never kept a secret from them. More than one of our exes has accused us of being codependent, but we prefer to refer to it as Collective Only Child Syndrome. They are my emergency contacts, my first in any scenario—the first people I text for an outfit check, the first people I called when I got engaged, the first people I saw after Ben left me, the first names that pop to mind whenever I need a plus-one for an event. But currently, standing here in Thidar’s dining room, it feels like I’m staring at her from across a chasm that only I can see; from her vantage point, I’m a little preoccupied, but no more than usual when I’m on a big assignment.
“Please, don’t act like I’d actually be scared of you. I know you can’t take me,” I say, and throw in a light punch to her arm.
Her giggle is sweet and gentle, just like her whole personality, and the sound both makes me smile and reaffirms my decision that I can’t drag her into my mess. I know she’d go to the ends of the earth and back for me, but I also know the toll it would take on her big, soft heart.
“Watch out, hot lasagna coming through!” Patrick announces just then.
He enters with a wine bottle in one hand and an opener in the other. Behind him is Tyler, wearing the pale pink oven mitts to carry the matching pink Le Creuset baking dish that I’d bought for their engagement gift. When he places the dish down in the middle of the table, it smells so good that I can’t help but bend over and take a deep sniff. The cheese is still slightly boiling on the surface, but the edges are already nice and crispy.
“I admit, this looks delicious, ” I practically moan. I push the curtain of hair that’s fallen over my face behind my ear, and give a small start when I find Tyler looking at me with an indecipherable expression, lips parted and eyes soft at the edges where some makeup has wiped away—probably his own doing—and those deep grooves are starting to show.
“What?” I ask, a little embarrassed when it comes out breathy.
“Nothing,” he says, and shifts his gaze downward while he removes the oven mitts.
“Why’d you only bring three glasses?” Thidar asks as Patrick pours the red.
“I have an early start time,” Tyler answers for him. “I’ll stick to water. Thank you, though.”
I groan and swipe the last glass before Patrick can pour into it. “That means I have an early start time, too,” I say. “Water it is for me, then.”
Thidar cuts out a piece of lasagna for herself before passing the utensils to me. While I focus on removing a nice large corner piece, she asks, “So Tyler, what’s next on the agenda for you? After this movie.”
From the corner of my eye, I can see him smiling politely. Thinking before he answers. I stay quiet. Maybe he’ll be less guarded if his brain forgets that I’m in the room. “I’m weighing my options,” he says.
“But you must have an idea, ” Thidar presses on my behalf. “Is it the Bond movie? Or the new season of Bridgerton ? You can tell us. We won’t tell anyone. Your secret will be safe with us. And Pizza,” she adds, nodding toward the living room where Pizza is sleeping in his crate.
Tyler laughs. “I wish I could tell you. But I’m trying to do this new thing where I don’t plan too far ahead. You never know what life might throw at you, right? What’s the point of stressing yourself out with all these plans when you could, say, slip getting out of the bathtub and die?”
Thidar nods with a contemplative look. “Or choke on a piece of lasagna.”
Tyler tilts his glass at her. “Exactly.”
The sound of Pizza playing with a squeaky toy catches our collective attention, and, uncomfortable with all this talk about death, I casually call out, “You okay in there, Piz?”
For a second, Pizza stops playing with his toy to let out a quick but loud affirmative bark, and we all laugh. “How long have you had him?” Tyler asks.
“A little over a year,” Patrick answers. “He was a stray on this street. We moved in and he immediately zeroed in on Thidar—”
“I’m a vet—” Thidar offers.
“—and she was feeding him twice a day and giving him all his shots. One day, she brought him home to give him a bath—”
“—he’d jumped into a giant mud puddle!”
Patrick chuckles. “I know, sweetheart. And she asked him if he’d like to stay for dinner —”
“It was dinnertime!” Thidar says defensively.
When Patrick leans over and kisses her cheek, my heart feels like that scene in The Grinch where it grows three times larger. I peek over at Tyler, who’s also smiling at them, and I have a hunch he’s feeling the same thing I’m feeling. “I know, sweetheart,” Patrick repeats. “And then he just… never left,” he says, shooting a smile in the vicinity of the living room.
“Was it hard? To adopt a stray? Did he have trouble adjusting?” Tyler asks.
Thidar shakes her head. “Not really. Maybe a bit at first, but it helped that we have a large yard. Why, are you thinking of adopting?”
“I’m—” Tyler begins, but doesn’t finish. Instantly, my journalist senses start to tingle. “ May, actually, is thinking of adopting,” he says after a short beat, which only makes me more suspicious. “Bringing them back to California with her when we go back.” Why did he catch himself there? What’s the big deal with May adopting a dog? Unless… He tries to cover himself—literally—with his glass, but before he can hide it, I see the mouth quirk. Unless he and May are thinking of adopting a dog? Together?
Thidar nods and continues, “You definitely need to put in more work at the beginning, so I’d recommend making sure you really have the time before you commit to it. And the patience. But once you do, it’s the best thing in the world. I’ll give you my number! Pass it on to May, and tell her to call me if she ever wants to really do this.”
“Thanks, she’ll appreciate that,” Tyler replies. Unbeknownst to the other two, I could almost swear that his gaze shifts over to me for a nanosecond, that his spine straightens against the back of the chair before he grins down at his lasagna and says, “This is probably the best lasagna I’ve ever had, by the way. Mind sharing your recipe?”
Thidar lifts her glass at Patrick. “Your time to shine, babe.”
Patrick clears his throat and wiggles his shoulders like he’s been preparing for this moment his whole life. “Well, the secret is in the sauce.…”
At the end of dinner, Tyler insists that he’ll clear the table, load the dishwasher, and hand-wash the baking dish.
“He’s perfect, ” Thidar whispers. Patrick has popped over to the living room to answer some last-minute work emails. I give a shrug that neither confirms nor denies the statement. “Khin, come on, ” she insists. “This is major Take Me Home to Mom vibes.”
I snort. “He’s polite.”
“He’s handling the dishwasher and he knew you have to wash a Le Creuset by hand. Could he be any hotter?” she asks, to which I respond with a drawn-out eye roll. “What’s it like?” she continues. “Being on a movie set. Is it as exciting as you envisioned?”
“Honestly? It’s kind of… boring.”
“Boring?” Thidar’s voice deflates with disbelief. “You’re on the set of Tyler Tun and May Diamond’s latest movie and it’s boring?”
“Well, for instance, they were shooting this night market scene, and I watched them order the same strawberry smoothie ten times . I can literally recite their lines word for word. Watch: May goes, ‘Hmm, I’m thirsty. Do I want a smoothie?’ And Tyler goes, ‘Drinking on the job? My, my, I wonder what HQ will have to say about that,’ and May says, ‘I wonder what HQ will have to say about my fist—’” I catch myself at Thidar’s bemused expression. “You get the point,” I explain. “It’s either boring or tiring. Usually both. There’s no time for us to have any substantial conversations. I’m either waiting or rushing. He’s constantly running lines or shooting scenes or talking to the writers or getting an outfit refitted or any of the million other things that leave me exhausted by the end of the day, and all I have to do is watch him.” I have to give Tyler and May credit—acting is a thousand times harder than I could’ve imagined.
“Huh, who would’ve thunk,” Thidar says.
After both men have finished their respective tasks, Patrick and Thidar take Pizza out on his night walk. “We need to finish our earlier conversation,” Tyler says. We’re in the living room and facing one another on the armchairs that bracket the large sofa at a slight angle.
“What conversation?” I ask, rearranging my curled-up legs.
“About how the guy knew your name.”
I stiffen as it comes rushing back. “It doesn’t matter,” I say, aware it’s a lie. Of course it matters.
I’m conscious how scheming this sounds and how big of a lying hypocrite it makes me, but, as with my park plan, I want to hold on to a piece of information that Tyler doesn’t have, just in case he tries to turn the tables on me. I don’t have the same resources as him, but it won’t hurt to have an extra trick in my back pocket.
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” He puts his glass down on the coffee table and leans in, forearms resting on his thighs. “This guy knew who you were. He could’ve been targeting you.”
“Or,” I speak slowly, buying time to assemble a story, “he was hanging around on the set, heard some people mention my name and the word ‘journalist,’ and realized that the only woman running around and watching you while writing in a notebook must be the aforementioned journalist named Khin.”
“No,” he says, not even pausing. “You know that’s too simple of a story. It wasn’t merely as opportunistic as that—”
“Tyler,” I cut him off brusquely. “Has it occurred to you that I don’t want to relive the most traumatic night of my life? He’s dead,” I say, shushing my voice even though we’re still the only ones in the house. “Why does it matter who he was? What am I going to do, see if he has children? Track them down and apologize for leaving them fatherless?”
The back door opens, and Thidar’s laughter travels through the corridor. “Drop it. I don’t want to think about this anymore,” I hiss in one breath. Despite his frown, Tyler raises his hands in acceptance.
Patrick drives us both back, Thidar staying behind because she had two exhausting surgeries today and she wants an early night. We drop Tyler off first just in case somebody catches a glimpse of him in the car when I hop out at my place.
“I’ll pick you up at seven thirty?” Tyler asks, hand on the door handle.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say. “I know where the lot is now. I can get a taxi.”
His forehead creases. “I’ll see you at seven thirty,” he says. Before I can respond, he opens the passenger door and ends the conversation. “Thanks again, man,” he says, clapping a hand on Patrick’s shoulder.
“Anytime,” Patrick replies from the driver’s seat.
We sit in silence as he makes a U-turn and heads toward my place. I check the time, even though I knew hours ago that it was far too late for my park plan. “Nice guy,” Patrick says, breaking the quiet. “Like, an actually nice guy. My agency works with a lot of celebrities and he would be a dream client.”
I catch his eye in the rearview mirror. “Guess so.”
“You don’t like him.”
I startle in my seat. “What? Why would I bring someone I didn’t like to my best friend’s house?”
“Okay.” He tilts his head with a thoughtful air. “But you don’t… trust him?”
I consider it, then sigh. “He’s an actor,” I admit, deciding that it’s not like Patrick’s going to go and relay this information back to Tyler. “I… don’t trust actors. They act for a living. And he knows I’m writing a story on him. Of course he’s going to be on his best golden-boy behavior.”
He gives a short chuckle. “Guess I can’t argue with that.”
Back at mine, I change out of my clothes, go through my skincare routine, and put on a pair of fresh pajamas, but I don’t head for bed. Instead, I march into the guest room that doubles as my home office, pull down the whiteboard that’s hanging above my desk, and wipe clean the notes from my past few assignments.
I’m about to write TYLER TUN in all caps at the top, but decide against it on the off chance that someone wanders in here at some point—I don’t know how or when. It’s not like I’m throwing a rager anytime soon—and sees this. Instead, I write GOLDEN BOY .
In one spot, in a smaller font, I write ABORTION STORY, remembering his obsession with my article at our first dinner.
In another spot, I write POSSIBLY ADOPTING DOG???
In a third, BOND? followed by FUN ROLES .
In a fourth, brIDGERTON?
In a fifth, NOT MAKING ANY PLANS .
And, just so I have all my bases covered, RELATIONSHIP WITH MAY? because at this point, I’m taking everything he’s told me with a grain of salt. MOVIE PREMIERE REVEAL? I scrawl.
I hang the board back on the wall and step back so I can take it all in at once. There is something here. Tyler is hiding something, and it has to do with at least one of these things. Maybe all of them? I don’t know.
My mind races back to that night in the park, when I’d asked him why he trusted me so blindly, and he was going to give me an answer—the real answer—and then he didn’t.
My concentration shifts back to the board in front of me.
Tyler Tun, what were you going to let slip?
I don’t immediately go to sleep once I’m under the covers either; I know I should, but I can’t help it. Ben used to joke that he needed a seat belt to keep up with the speed of my mind. On my laptop, I open Yangon’s unofficial yellow pages—Facebook, obviously—and start looking into the guy I murdered (my murderee?).
Or I try to.
Methodically, I first go through all of my immediate friends and make sure that he’s not in any of their profile photos. Once that’s been checked off, I browse all the variations of the public “Australian expats in Myanmar” and “New Zealand expats in Myanmar,” as well as the wider “expats living in Myanmar” and “Yangon expats” Facebook groups (what is it with white people who insist on calling themselves “expats”?) I can find and zoom in on the member photos, but at one point, all the middle-aged white men start to look the same.
I’m aware that this is a “careful what you go Facebook-trawling for” situation, but I want to know if I can find him. After all, this is why I became a journalist in the first place—because as dark and disturbing as the things I find at the bottom of the well might be, I still want to dive in and hit that bottom. And while I understand that finding out who this man was and how he knew my name won’t undo his murder, I still want to know. Because he knew my name and job. Additionally, if there is some connection between us that I’ve overlooked and that the police discover, that’s a pretty damning way to link this all back to me.
I turn to plan B: my friend Kira, who is Australian, and more specifically, who works at the Australian Embassy as their head of public relations. Given the overlap in our jobs, we’ve gotten to know each other well; I was even the one who encouraged her to go up and talk to her now-boyfriend Charlie at the bar a few years ago.
On her profile, I open her friends list of—I gulp—1,062 people, zoom my browser screen up to 200 percent, start scrolling very, very slowly, and open up any middle-aged white man’s profile in a new tab. Half an hour later, I have… nothing.
I shut my laptop and put it away on my console. My brain hurts, my eyes are stinging, my fingers are stiff, the ache in my feet has returned with full force. And before I can stop myself, a desperate and worn-out voice in my head murmurs, I don’t know what to do. And then, I wish I had help.
Because I do. I really, really, really do.