Nine
“You seem jumpy,” Tyler says. I’d noticed that he’d been observing me since we wrapped up, but he hasn’t made a comment until we’re near my place. “Everything okay?”
I couldn’t go to the park on the night we had dinner at Thidar’s, or again the next night (last night) because shooting ran late, but by my calculations, today, I can get home, change, and arrive at the park right around golden hour. Which is perfect, because the place will be flooded with couples and families who have come to watch the sunset, and if anyone asks why I’m combing through every random object that’s washed up in the dirt by the water, I can just say I lost an earring (again, apparently).
“Excited to get home before sunset,” I chirp.
He chuckles. “I hear that.”
I say my usual quick “Thank you, see you tomorrow!” and try not to be so obvious about my hurry as I stride to the elevator. Sprinting into my bedroom, I change into a more plain-looking, blend-right-in outfit of denim shorts and black cropped T-shirt, a pair of round black oversized sunglasses, and my least favorite black sneakers that I don’t mind getting dirty, and take the elevator back down. I don’t want to drive in case the police are still scanning the park’s security cameras and notice my plate, but, of course, because as is the law of the land whenever you are in a hurry (or, perhaps, because it is rush hour), none of the apps can find me a ride. I cancel my current request and try one more time, but before it goes through, a text appears at the top.
Nay
Drinks tonight? I have had A WEEK so far
Followed by:
Thidar
Can do!
How about you, big-time vogue girl?
And, because they have best-friend telepathy and can sense what I’m about to text even before I start typing:
Nay
Please please??? We really miss you!
Dying for updates!!
For a second, the stinging pierces me as I realize how much I miss them, too—this is the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing them in person while living in the same city—but it only lasts for a second, because my ride app suddenly displays a pop-up confirming that, yep, still no rides.
Sorry, busy tonight! Will catch up soon, promise!!! I reply with three kissing-face emojis.
Cursing, I do things the Neanderthal way and sprint out onto the main road, and stick out my arm and neck to aggressively locate a free cab.
Attention laser-focused on spotting an empty backseat, I yelp when someone says my name a few millimeters away from my ear. I hadn’t heard his footsteps on account of the usual rush-hour ruckus, and I do a double take when I wheel around and find Tyler standing very, very close to me, head bent down, a cap just shielding his face. Anyone who walks by us and looks over for more than two seconds will recognize him.
“What the fuck!” I whisper.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, retreating.
Without thinking, I grab his shoulder and pull him back toward me. Under my grip, his biceps tighten and push back against my hand. “That, and what the fuck are you doing standing on the side of the road in the daytime? Do you want to cause a pileup?” I ask, gesturing at the multiple rows of cars that are at a standstill, bored drivers and passengers alternating between scrolling on their phone and gazing out the window.
“What are you doing hailing a taxi? Where are you going?”
His tone makes me roll my eyes, which in turn makes him narrow his gaze. “Sorry, did I forget to fill in the sign-out sheet?” I ask.
His eyes drop, clocking my outfit change. “You changed,” he says.
“I sweated through my clothes. They were disgusting.”
“You looked good to me,” he says, and, stupidly, frustratingly, I feel my face redden like I’m a teenager and my biggest crush has just tossed an unexpected compliment in my direction.
“Why are you still here?” I demand.
“Flat tire,” he says, jerking a thumb behind him but holding my gaze. “Yan was just finishing changing it.”
“Then you should go back and get home so he can go home, too.”
“Where are you going?”
I purse my lips. “None of your business.”
He studies me in silence. “You’re right,” he finally says, except instead of walking away, his mouth loops upward with an air of righteousness. A dare. “But let me give you a free ride. Save the cab fare.”
I blow out a sharp blast of air through my nostrils and promise myself that I will not let him get under my skin, at least not more so than he’s already burrowed. “I can afford a taxi. Have a good evening. See you tomorrow.”
He steps in closer, so close that the brim of his cap brushes against my forehead and tilts marginally upward so that it’s shielding both of our faces. I’m a champion at staring contests, but I’ve never had one this up close with somebody. I can see every faint line and acne scar on his face, the spots he missed with his makeup wipes, every single hair that makes up his thick brows. That scent, still a tender crispness that simultaneously contradicts its own tough woodsiness.
“Khin,” he says, voice gravelly. Does he somehow know that that’s how he keeps making my brain glitch? “Where are you going?”
“A date,” I lie, and am surprised when his face muscles twitch. For the first time, he looks away.
But then he looks back at me, recomposed, smirk as vengefully arrogant as ever. “You’re lying.” His eyes motion down at my outfit. “You’d be dressed considerably better for a date. Scuffed black sneakers? Come on, this isn’t even you trying.”
I glare, angry that he’s spoiled my lie so quickly, and also startled by how spot-on he is. “Has anyone told you you’re insufferable?” I ask, moving back and out of the shadow of his cap.
“Just this absolutely antagonistic journalist I recently met,” he says, readjusting it downward.
Despite myself, my mouth twitches with a smile that I don’t pull back in time. Tyler’s face softens, and he scans my outfit once more. When his eyes draw back up to mine, he sighs and shakes his head, jaw clenching. “Park?”
I bite my bottom lip, neither confirming nor denying.
“You are aware that it’s a commonly known fact that perpetrators can’t help but return to the scene of the crime. You’re smarter than to become a walking cliché, aren’t you?”
“Only if you get caught, and look at me”—I motion at myself from head to toe—“I’m as inconspicuous as they come. Besides, it’s the city’s biggest park. It’s not illegal to go hang out in the park. Maybe I wanted to clear my head after a long day at work.”
“Huh, now that you mention it, that does sound like a good idea. Come on, I’ll join you,” he says, tilting his head back at the car where Yan is waiting on the sidewalk, and with the air of a parent giving in to the demands of an unrelenting child.
I want to laugh in his face. “You can’t go to the park at sunset,” I say, because someone needs to state the obvious here. “You’ll be mobbed. Remember what I just said about not getting caught as long as I remain inconspicuous?”
He contemplates it for a beat. “I’ll wait in the car.”
“Yan will know something’s up. I have to go alone. I don’t need a handler.”
“That’d be a little bit more convincing if the last time I left you to stray alone in a park, it hadn’t ended in murder,” he huffs. “You’re not going alone. It’s about the pen, isn’t it? What is it about this pen that’s got you so worried anyway?”
The full truth is that the pen is monogrammed with my initials, which, while not exactly as damning as DNA evidence—thank God my initials aren’t as idiosyncratic as, say, XXZ— is still pretty damning. But Tyler’s already in macho protective mode, and I have the sense that if he finds out that piece of information, he’s going to go into overdrive and probably insist he come help me find it himself, which is something I do not have the patience to contend with right now.
“You’re not coming. I’m not taking any risks,” I say. “This isn’t up for debate.”
He folds his arms. “You’re right. It’s not.” Our sixth-grade staring contest resumes. After many seconds of this, he says, still unblinking, “What if we told Yan to go home? We can still take the car.”
I chew my lip as I think. “What if they run the license plate on the security cameras?”
“Then I simply wanted to unwind in the park tonight. You know, clear my head after a long day at work. That’s not a crime.”
“What if Yan tells someone we took the car? Surely he’ll suspect something’s up.”
Tyler hitches a shoulder. “But he won’t know what . Chances are, he’ll think we’re secretly fucking.”
“Why would he think that?” I ask, surprised by the statement as well as the blasé manner in which he says it, because I personally am having a physical reaction to hearing him say that last word. Fucking. Heat ziplines down my spine as I hear it again in my head. Tyler Tun’s front teeth grazing his bottom lip right before he says the word “fucking” to my face—
“Because that’s what anyone thinks when I go off alone with a woman,” he states plainly. “It’s why everyone’s convinced May and I are dating. It’s why People once printed a photo of me with a ‘mystery woman’ who was my cousin.”
“You don’t mind that he’ll think we’re secretly fucking?” I ask, keeping a close eye on his reaction, my ears simultaneously straining to catch his reply over the sound of my heart, which has leapfrogged into my throat and is thudding at ten times its usual rate.
The fact that his cap is obscuring half of his face makes it difficult for me to read him, but his mouth presses into a tight line, as though he doesn’t want to accidentally say the first thing he’s just thought. “Better that than him thinking we’re hiding a murder. Come on, Khin, it’s the best plan we’ve got. The windows are tinted so no one will see me while I wait inside. Afterward, we’ll take the car back to mine and leave it in the parking garage there, and you can get a cab home. And I’m sure Yan can be… persuaded to be discreet.”
Hell of a lot more work than if I just got a cab there and back, I think with indignation. “Only if I drive,” I say in a final attempt to maintain a morsel of control over the situation.
“Antagonistic,” he mumbles, and, not giving me a chance to reply, adds, “Forgot to pack my license anyway. It’s still sitting in a drawer back at my LA house.”
I don’t like this. At all. Seized with displeasure bordering on anger, I stand there, meaning to glare furiously at the back of his head—but then my eyes drop and involuntarily note how hot his back muscles look when they flex under the fabric of this lavender cotton tee that’s sticking to his skin thanks to the heat, and then proceed to drop even lower, tracing the curvature of his spine downward until I am, as they say, checking him out . I sheepishly look around to see if anyone just caught me staring intently at Tyler Tun’s ass, but it’s still just him and Yan, and if Yan saw, well, he’s a master at being discreet.
As I adjust the rearview mirrors and driver’s seat to my height, I see Tyler and Yan talking on the sidewalk. Tyler reaches into his pocket for his wallet, takes out what looks like all of the cash he carries, and discreetly slides it into Yan’s pocket with one hand while clapping him on the shoulder with the other. So that’s how Tyler Tun “persuades” people to do what he wants.
In my defense, I don’t bring it up lest I further cement my antagonistic reputation.
A few minutes into the so-far silent drive, though, Tyler asks—without a shred of self-consciousness, mind you—“Is that going into the article?”
“What?”
“That Tyler Tun regularly bribes people into doing his bidding.”
My grip on the wheel tightens on reflex, as if my body is jumping into defense mode. “I—”
“If it makes a difference, I was going to give him a bonus tomorrow night once he dropped me off and signed off for the week anyway. That’s why I had that much cash on me already. His kid broke his foot last week, and they’re swamped with hospital bills.”
“Oh,” I say, snarky remark catching on a jagged shard of guilt. On the one hand, that is, obviously, an unequivocally compassionate gesture. On the other, what are the chances he’s telling me this to protect his image? America’s altruistic sweetheart. “I… wasn’t even really paying that much attention,” I say.
I catch his smirk out of the side of my eye. “Liar. Then how come you were watching me? I saw you.” He always sounds like he’s taunting me, like he knows me well enough that he can see through everything I do and say.
“How would you know I was watching you unless you were watching me ?” I shoot back.
We’re at a red light so I can look over. His face twitches, and he works his jaw before replying, “Guess we’re just always watching each other.” Suddenly, the air thrums with an immediate and intangible metaphysical energy.
I can’t think of a single witty reply, so I say nothing.
Two hours later, I jump back into the driver’s seat, knees and palms specked with dirt, neck and forehead and armpits and underboobs smothered in sweat.
“What?” I snap when I discover Tyler trying to suppress a grin. I reach over and direct the air con shutters to my face.
“Was it a good date?”
I give him a cordial smile. “Obviously. All of my good dates end with me panting and covered in sweat.”
My comment catches him off guard. He hacks a cough into the water bottle he was drinking from, and I smile for real this time.
He opens his mouth, but his phone vibrating on his lap catches our attention. Before I can do the polite thing and look away, I see May’s name.
“Everything okay?” I ask. He nods and immediately texts back, his pinched brows telling me he’s lying, or at least not being entirely honest. “Want me to drive you to hers?”
He looks up in a half daze. “Who?”
“May,” I say, gesturing at his phone.
“Oh. Nah, she tried to round me up for drinks again, but I’m exhausted. Took a rain check.”
His phone vibrates again. And again. And once more.
“You sure?” I ask, not needing to look anymore.
He chuckles as he reads her replies. “Yes,” he tells me as he types. “She’s just annoyed because this is my fourth rain check. Excluding that first time on set when we both turned her down. Apparently, she’s been keeping track. Anyway.” He slides his phone into his pocket. “Did you find the pen?”
I shake my head, wiping my face with multiple tissues. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad news. I was thorough, though.”
“I can see that,” he says, peeping down at my shorts and sneakers, which have brought in a small sandbox’s worth of sand and pebbles into the immaculate SUV. I make a mental note to profusely apologize to Yan.
After leaving, we ride without talking for a few more minutes before, with no preamble, Tyler shifts his body to face mine. “Why did you do that?” he asks.
I fidget in my seat, not expecting the serious alteration in his tone. “Do what? Run that yellow light?”
“Try to sneak around my back. Why didn’t you tell me you were planning on going to the park?”
For the first time since we met, he sounds angry—what, is he pissed off that I might’ve found something without his knowledge and the ball might be in my court for once? “Because I knew you couldn’t join me in the park,” I reply, keeping my own cool. “Besides, it’s not like I was going to poke around a sketchy alley on the city outskirts. It’s a public park. I was fine.”
“Why are you so deathly allergic to asking for help?” I don’t have to look at him to know that he’s tempering his irritation. “Or is it just my help you detest for some reason?”
“I wanted to keep you out of trouble,” I say, focusing on the road. “Let you have plausible deniability.” It’s not entirely a lie.
My peripheral vision catches his half smile making an appearance, if only for a second. When he speaks, he sounds calmer. Still frustrated, but as though he’s working on it. “You can’t go do things like this on your own, Khin. What would we have done if the police had caught you on the park cameras tonight, and I hadn’t known where you actually were, and when they asked me, I tried to give you an alibi and said you’d come over to mine or that we’d gone out to dinner? We would’ve been caught red-handed.”
“I hadn’t considered that,” I admit. “I just… I work better on my own, okay? I’m a freelancer.”
He palms his face. “Well, you’re not on your own anymore. Not as long as I’m around. We can’t have secrets, not between you and me. How many times do I need to tell you that you can trust me before you actually believe it?”
I scrunch up my nose. “How does eight hundred and three sound?”
His laughter rumbles through his chest. “And I’m the insufferable one,” he mutters before turning away from me, but not before I catch the shadow of a full smile; that itself is enough to make me cognizant of a gooey feeling in my chest, like someone accidentally knocked over and shattered a jar of honey.
His words replay in my head as I sit in the backseat of the taxi taking me home. We can’t have secrets, not between you and me.
Not between you and me.
You and me.
You. Me.
Before I know it’s happening, I’m smiling at the idea that there is a “you and me” here. Not just a “him” and a “me”—as in, two entities who often come into each other’s orbits but nonetheless remain wholly distinct—but that we’re bound now. Together.
You and me.
Tyler and me.