I Did Something Bad

Fifteen

“Sooo how’s the story going? Got anything juicy for me yet? We’re a little over four weeks away!” Clarissa reminds me, like the little blue entry on my iCal hasn’t been counting down for me every day, murder cover-up be damned.

Snapping to attention, I smile up at my car’s speakers like Clarissa’s is the voice of God, which, in certain circles—mine included—she kind of is. “It’s going great! I’ve got… stuff!”

“Great to hear!” Clarissa replies. “Oh, and as an FYI, we’ve secured Sandra Oh for our April cover. I was chatting with her yesterday, and Sandra mentioned that she’d ideally like an Asian woman writer for the story, and I might have told her that I already have a stellar person lined up.”

An inelegant hacking sound bolts out of me. “Sandra Oh?” I ask up at God-slash-Clarissa. “ The Sandra Oh? Killing Eve Sandra Oh?”

“Yes, Khin.” Clarissa laughs. “This is Vogue, sweetheart. We go big. But of course, this is all contingent on you delivering on this story.”

I nod with such ferocity that the people in the next car start to look at me like they’re wondering if I’m having a seizure and they should call an ambulance. I hold up a palm to reassure them I’m not dying. Not physically, at least. “Clarissa,” I say, straightening my shoulders. “I’m already putting together the outfit I’ll be wearing when I meet Sandra for the first time.”

Clarissa’s laugh rings out through the car once more. “I’ll speak to you soon, Khin. Looking forward to reading this…” There’s a twinkling lilt in her voice. “… stuff .”

I crank Ariana Grande’s “7 rings” on full blast. Sandra Oh. I nail this one story, and I will be months away from sitting down with Dr. Cristina Yang herself. The mental image is enough to make me squeal.

In an unjust, maudlin moment, right as I think, When was the last time you wanted anything this badly? , I pull onto the lot and Tyler’s figure is the first thing my eyes hook onto, like lightning to a metal rod. A tall, handsome rod who’s standing in his usual parking spot, arms folded and leaning against the back of the car while chatting to Yan. Be fair —May’s voice jumps out like she’s a ghost haunting my passenger seat.

I park several spots away so I can take my time collecting my bag and my thoughts. Clarissa wants something juicy? How about the line At one point, even May Diamond confesses to me that she used to be in love with Tyler ? But I can’t print that… can I?

I let out a small groan and drop my forehead against the wheel. This is ridiculous. Why am I feeling guilty? I’m a journalist. Everyone here knows that that is my job. My duty, even. And May and Tyler are both professionals; if they’d wanted something to be off the record, then they know to specify that beforehand, and they know that I don’t necessarily have to agree. I have every right to write that May told me she used to be in love with Tyler. Or about his three morning coffees or—

Rap rap rap. I jump up and a sharp pain grips into the back of my scalp, literally—my claw clip is squished between my head and the headrest, making the claws dig into my skin. Tyler mouths a sorry and steps back so I can open the door.

“You good?” he asks.

“Mm-hmm,” I say, smoothing down my shirt. “Any word from Yasmin today? About the… you know…” Tyler stares at me with a blank expression. Is he being serious? I make sure the coast is clear before I mumble, “M-U-R-D-E-R?”

“Ohhh,” he says, snapping his fingers. “N-O.”

“Are you choosing violence today?” I ask with a scowl that dissolves the second his crow’s-feet wrinkle with laughter.

“Sorry,” he says, his blatantly unapologetic voice speckled with amusement.

For a few moments, we stand there, doing nothing but grinning at each other. But then in my head, I hear Clarissa saying, Sandra Oh, which is an excellent reminder that I have a story that’s due in a little over a month, and so far I have enough information for approximately two paragraphs (and that’s if I am very generous with my employment of adverbs).

“Hey,” I say, thinking up the plan on the spot. “Do you mind if I come over tonight?”

“T-tonight? My place?” he stammers, and briefly, I remember May last night. I’m pretty sure he’s looking to start dating again .

“Yeah. For the story,” I clarify, both for him and myself. Because this is not a date and I am not doing this to, god forbid, flirt with him. This is for work. “We’ve been so busy taking care of my, you know—”

“You mean the M-U-R-D-E-R—”

“Yes,” I respond with a glare. “But I do still need to file a story by the time you leave. I’d like to do a standard sit-down Q and A. If that’s alright with you.”

“You want to come to my place? Tonight?”

“It’ll only be a few hours. And now that everyone knows you’re in town, I can’t think of anywhere else where we’ll have privacy. And we can order in dinner, obviously, since we need to eat.” I’m acutely aware that I’ve started blabbering, but I can’t make it stop. “But it’s strictly work, so it’s not like we’re crossing any ethical lines, even though it’s at your place. Because it’s work.”

Amusement pulling at his features, Tyler nods, and I pretend not to notice the way he rolls his shoulders back, like suddenly there’s an intense buildup of tension. “Sure,” he says. “Let’s get Thai for dinner?”

The second he switches on the lights, I do a double take at how homey Tyler’s apartment is. I’d expected something sleek and minimalistic, with very little furniture, something out of a condo showroom photo—so essentially, my place—but this looks like someone lives here.

The large brown leather L-shaped couch looks soft and worn-in with lots of faint white scratches, like it’s been witness to hundreds, if not thousands, of movie marathons and late-night gaming sessions (if the PS5 beneath it is anything to go by). There’s a stack of books with bookmarks haphazardly sticking out on one side of the coffee table. Over in the kitchen, there is an array of mugs of various sizes and colors and shapes hanging from a mug tower—a far cry from my perfectly identical IKEA yellow four-piece set. A faded cream-colored apron adorned with bright yellow padauk flowers hangs on a hook next to the stove.

“This used to be my cousin Thiri’s place. When she put it up for sale, I was too nostalgic to let a stranger buy it,” Tyler says, removing his shoes. “She’s the oldest cousin, so she was the first of us to get her own apartment. We thought she was so cool, and we couldn’t believe we could hang out here after school without any grown-ups around.”

My smile shows up involuntarily. “Was it hard to leave your family behind? When you left for the States?”

He heads for the kitchen and fills up two mugs with water. “Definitely. It was the most difficult part. And I couldn’t come home until I got a work visa. Man, I missed them so much. But hey—” He turns, startling a bit to find me standing behind him, but recomposes himself as he hands over the mug. “Now I get to fly them out to anywhere in the world, which kind of makes me the cool cousin these days.”

“Oh, so I have to speed-drink my matcha latte before my straw dissolves into papier-maché while you’re picking out which private jet you want to fly your family out on?” I ask, lifting a reprimanding brow.

“They’ve never flown private,” he counters.

“But you do.”

“Is this going into the story?” He makes a horizontal swiping gesture with one palm. “Tyler Tun: THE WORST THING TO HAPPEN TO THE ENVIRONMENT SINCE FAST FASHION .”

I’ve never noticed before how his smile expands whenever he makes me laugh, but it does, and this newfound information melts my insides.

I place the mug down on the nearby island with a smidge too much force.

He tilts over and his eyes widen with genuine worry. “Woah, be careful, that’s my favorite mug.”

I direct my attention to the mug in question. It’s matte black, with an image of a gold Oscar statue, and the words “And the Oscar goes to…” written in gold, curly script on one side. I rotate it and find a photo of kid Tyler in sunglasses on the other side.

A wild laugh vaults out of me at the sight, and when I turn back to him, Tyler’s silently laughing, too. “Jess bought it for me after I landed my first feature role,” he explains. “It’s the one thing I bring with me whenever I travel.”

“Awww,” I say with full sincerity, unable to recall whatever snarky comment I was going to make. I can’t tell what’s more endearing: the story, or his sheepish embarrassment. “And you let me drink from your favorite mug? Even though you’ve seen how lethal I can be with an everyday object?”

It’s a dark joke that could go either way, but Tyler’s shoulders shake with audible laughter this time, and before I can stop myself, I remember what May said and imagine himself laughing like this with a stranger on a plane, loudly and wholeheartedly, no baseball cap, no sunglasses, no lowered voice.

“Shall we place our order?” he asks, taking out his phone.

“Yes,” I say. I pick up the mug again, this time with both hands.

The food arrives and we’ve just laid all the boxes out on the table when my phone buzzes. “It’s my building’s front desk,” I say and pick up, hoping there hasn’t been some freak accident like the ceiling falling in or my fridge glitching and defrosting. Wouldn’t that be my luck, though?

“Hi, a ma,” Yarzar, my doorman, says, his tone already telling me that it’s not great news.

“Hey, Yarzar. Everything okay?”

A slight pause. “I… have two detectives here.”

Despite the warm air in the room, a chill spirals through me. “Detectives?” I look at Tyler, who’s also stiffened.

“Yes.” The wariness in Yarzar’s voice tells me that they’re standing in front of him. “They’re asking me to let you into your apartment, but I told them I needed your explicit permission.”

I feel like I’m going to faint. I try to stroll in order to jolt my brain into working, but only manage one awkward backward step. “Do they have a warrant?”

“No, a ma.”

I shut my eyes and let out a silent sigh of relief. “Then tell them we don’t have to show them anything.”

“I—excuse me?” There’s a muffled conversation and Yarzar returns. “They’re asking to speak to you.”

The hand gripping the phone is shaking, and I grasp my wrist with my other hand. I look at Tyler again, who moves closer and gives me a slow nod. Stay calm, he mouths.

“That’s fine,” I say, keeping my voice nonchalant. “Please put them on.”

“Hi, Khin,” Detective Zeyar says. I hadn’t realized I’d memorized his voice, but I have, and it’s just as revolting over the phone as it is in person.

“Hi, Detective. What’s this about you wanting to search my apartment without a warrant? And without our lawyers knowing? And at this hour?”

“Woah there, sweetheart, slow down.” He laughs like I’m blowing this out of proportion. “We know how hard you always work,” he says, voice coated with condescension that makes me clench my jaw, “so we wanted to make sure you’d be home. Don’t know how late movie shoots run. And this isn’t really a search, more like… a conversation. We kept thinking about that pen—”

“Which was May’s—”

“Right. But just like we missed it the first time around, maybe there’s something you missed from that night, too. Maybe you have seen this man before and forgot? Like I said, we just wanted to have a small chat. Nothing that needs lawyers involved.”

Tyler looks like he wants to reach into the phone and strangle the prick. “Are you going to go to May’s and Tyler’s homes, too? And Yasmin’s?” I ask, hoping the edge in my voice covers up my fear.

His quiet “What?” tells me he wasn’t expecting me to be so confrontational.

“Well, if you’re going to come to my apartment, surely you’re going to go to all of theirs and question them, too. Especially May. It was her pen, after all.”

His hesitant throat clearing gives me a boost of confidence, which I snatch and stretch for the duration of this conversation. “Well… we were…”

“Or are you honing in on me because I’m not American?” I ask, making a point to sound civil so they have no way to accuse me of overreacting or being uncooperative . “You thought you could bully and intimidate me, even though you have no evidence or just cause, because I’m not American and you don’t have to answer to an embassy if you barge into my apartment without a warrant?”

“That’s—”

“I know my rights, Detective.” I pause to see if they’ll throw back any arguments. They don’t. “Didn’t you say you had a daughter? It’s late. Why don’t you go home and tuck her into bed? You guys work so hard, ” I amp up the saccharinity. “You should at least get to go home in time to kiss your children good night.”

After a few silent seconds, all he says is, “Good night, Khin,” and hangs up.

I check the phone to make sure the call is over before I put it down beside my plate. I look over to find Tyler still glaring at it. “Those motherfuckers, trying to corner you when they knew we wouldn’t be around,” he says through gritted teeth. Making sudden eye contact with me, his brown pupils flash and he says, “Tell me if they ever try to pull something like that again, and I will have Legal call—”

“No!” I say quickly. “Don’t tell Legal. Or Yasmin or even May. I don’t want to have to build on the lies.”

“But they—”

“Tyler.” I put a hand on his shoulder. He looks down, but doesn’t react. “I got this.”

He looks at my hand again, then back at me.

“What?” I ask.

“You’re literally trembling,” he says.

At that, I snatch my hand back and interlace my fingers in front of me. “I’ve got—”

“If you say ‘you’ve got this’ one more time…” he says, eyes narrowing before he blows out an impatient puff of air. “How many times do I need to tell you? You can trust me. You don’t have to do this on your own. You’re not doing this on your own. I’ve got you .”

I don’t quite know how the sequence of events unfolds, but the next thing I do know is that I’m sobbing, palms pressed onto Tyler’s chest, face folded into the crook of his neck, while his hands rub small circles on my back. “I’m so scared,” I say, a sob interjected between each word. “I’m so tired and scared and stressed and I don’t know how much longer I can do this. Any of this.”

Despite me bracing for it, he doesn’t try to shush me, or tell me everything will be okay. Instead, he leans down and simply whispers, “I know.”

“I—” Hiccup . “I miss—” Hiccup. “Normal. I miss my old, normal life. Before all of this.”

“I know,” he repeats. “It’s… a lot. And I know you’re exhausted, but I need you to push on for just a little bit longer.” My face sinks deeper into him, wet tears sticking my cheeks to his shirt. “They don’t have anything. They’re just trying to scare us.”

“Well, it’s working!” I cry.

His chest moves with a short snort. “Hey now,” he says, sounding like he’s smiling. “You don’t scare easily, remember?”

I let out an inadvertent snort of my own. “That I absolutely do not. Clearly.”

I sniffle and pull back at last, ignoring the horrid snot stain I’ve left on his shirt. I blink away the tears and look up at him. He is smiling, soft and sweet, and for some reason, that’s what finally prompts me to exhale.

“We can do this,” he repeats. “We’ll see this through together.”

“Together,” I say, realizing that I mean it. In this moment, it feels like he’s carrying the both of us on his back, and I don’t mind it at all. I don’t mind that I just fell apart in his arms, or that he’s seen me at my worst, time and time again. I don’t have to be always-have-it-together Khin around him.

He stays, it dawns on me. He is the kind of person who, once he’s committed to something—a movie, or a secret, or another human being, like May or his family or myself— stays . I might’ve started out (warily) collaborating with him because I had no choice, but right now, I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have by my side, anyone else I’d rather trust with my whole life.

“I’m going to go change,” he says, glancing down at the snot stain. Thankfully, he looks more amused than repulsed. “And then how about we get some food in us and start the interview?”

I pull out a chair, and before he’s even closed his bedroom door, I know: I’m not printing his secret. I can’t be. I still want the Vogue role, of course I do, and maybe (albeit unlikely) it’ll be the case that my article will be good enough that Clarissa will still offer it to me even though I don’t get her her exclusive. I’d like to think that my feelings for him have nothing to do with my decision—although I am self-aware enough to admit that that’s not entirely true—the main reason is that after all that Tyler and I have been through, after all he’s done with and for me, I can’t expose what he did for his sister, or anything else he’s told me as a friend. A friend that he trusts. He deserves better than that. I am better than that.

“What’re you so deep in thought over?” Tyler’s voice startles me, and I look over to see him emerging from his bedroom in sweatpants and a new T-shirt. Filters removed, I wonder if this is what he wears to bed.

You .

You, you, you.

“About how I’m going to find out exactly which convenience store you shoplifted that Snickers bar from,” I say, propping my chin on my fist.

“Do you cut your sandwiches into triangles or rectangles?”

“I’ve been asked a lot of questions in my day,” Tyler says, thinking while he finishes chewing. “But that’s a new one.”

“It separates the sociopaths from the non-sociopaths.”

“Triangles,” he says after a considering pause.

I smile. “Non-sociopath it is. Shame. The other one would’ve made for a better story.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Favorite song.”

“Easy. ‘The Best’ by Tina Turner,” he says.

I swallow my pad Thai and ask, “Why?”

Tyler shrugs. “Reasons.” He reaches out for a spoonful of the vegan green curry from one of the takeaway boxes laid out on the dining table.

“Such as?” I ask.

“It was my parents’ first-dance song,” he says after he swallows. “And they would randomly start singing it to each other all the time. I thought—” He stops himself, head dropping down like he was an inch away from saying something mortifying.

“What?” I prod with a gentle laugh. “You thought what?”

He coughs. “I… used to think that that was how people confessed their love to each other. Cut to me in fourth grade, walking up to Susie, the cutest, smartest girl in my class—”

My hand flings up to my mouth but the gasp still seeps out from between my fingers. “Stop, you didn’t—”

“I sure did,” he says. “I walked right up to her, looked her in the eye, and told her she was simply the best and better than all the rest. Recited the whole thing like it was spoken-word poetry. Which, if I may say so, was pretty impressive. You try being nine and memorizing an entire song.”

“Sounds like you were ready to memorize whole scripts at nine.”

He laughs. “Guess so.”

“Did it… work out?”

“Huh?”

“With Susie.”

“Oh,” he says, before letting out a long exhale. “No, she gave her coveted Valentine to Aung Myo. The prick,” he adds under his breath.

“Tyler!” I exclaim. “You can’t call a nine-year-old a prick.”

“Why? Who’s going to tell?” His gaze jumps to my phone, which is facedown, but still recording. “Oh, right, you, probably.”

“I could probably be bribed into staying quiet if you let me have the last spring roll,” I say, already steadying the container with one hand while spearing my fork into the roll.

“The price I pay to keep my image intact. You journalists just keep getting more and more unreasonable these days,” he mutters through a smile.

“Have you”—I swallow—“serenaded any other girls with the melodies of Ms. Turner lately?”

I meant it as a joke, but the moment his eyes hitch onto mine, nothing seems funny, especially not the way my stomach is threatening to toss everything I’ve consumed back upward. I forget that I’m supposed to wait for an answer. “Hey,” I say, aware my voice has dropped to a pitch that some might label “husky.”

“Hey,” he says in an equally husky timbre.

“I have a question.”

“You have many.”

I ask the question that I can’t stop thinking about, because it feels like time has stopped for us, and whatever his answer is and whatever happens next, it won’t matter anyway outside of this apartment. “Is it true that you wanna start dating again?”

His Adam’s apple bobs, but otherwise, his face remains unmoving. Because of the sheer size of the table, we’d decided to sit adjacent to each other instead of opposite, and I don’t know when his knees first made contact with my thigh but now that I know it, I can’t un -know it. When he speaks, his words are steady, but not in a forced way. “I am going to murder May,” he says. “Any tips?”

He might not be blushing, but I know for a fact that I am. Moreover, this surge of bodily heat is no longer limited to just my cheeks. “So, what, we just go around murdering people now?” I ask, although by the roughness of my voice, I might as well have admitted, I am ten seconds away from jumping you.

“An Asian Bonnie and Clyde. But, you know, with the stakes raised.”

“They’ll make movies about us,” I say, widening my eyes for full dramatic effect.

Tyler’s hand slowly approaches my face until his thumb makes a quick, firm brushing motion on one corner of my mouth. “Sauce, Bonnie,” he says, and, knowing exactly what he’s doing, and not to mention my simultaneous horror and euphoria, sucks off the neon orange blotch on his skin.

“Who,” I run my dry tongue over my lips, “would play me?”

His eyes glint. “Scarlett Johansson, obviously.”

The force of my unanticipated laughter propels me forward. “Stop!” I cry.

Above my keeled head, Tyler’s voice says sagely, “Color-blind casting, baby.”

I lift my head to find that my nose is placed at a precise downward forty-five-degree angle an inch away from his own. The scent of green curry and pine trees on anyone else wouldn’t be even remotely appealing, but on Tyler, it smells warm and delicious, in an excruciatingly alluring way. “You didn’t answer my question,” I say. My voice sounds like it’s been put through a sieve.

When he speaks, his own voice isn’t faring much better. “Can you repeat it? I got distracted for a second. Brain glitch. You know, the usual.”

“Brain glitch? The usual?” I repeat as though I’m teasing him when the reality is that I’m trying to recall what my initial question was myself.

“Well, yeah,” he says, a subtle, confused line appearing between his brows. “I mean, it’s… you. My brain does that a lot around you. Really, Khin, as a journalist, I thought you’d be perceptive enough to notice that.”

You are not real, I think, aware that my mouth is hanging open but unable to regain enough control of my motor cortex to shut my jaw muscles. “You can’t—” I start, but it peters out. He can’t what? But I want him to.

“What if—”

We jump at the sound of a phone buzzing on the table. It’s his. He frowns at the unsaved number.

“Do you… want me to get it?” I ask, realizing that unknown numbers for him are probably way more of a safety hazard than they are for me.

“Oh no, I’m sure it’s—no, you don’t—”

I take his phone and open the speaker. “Hello?”

“Hi,” an elderly woman tentatively answers in Myanmar. “I’m looking for Tyler?”

I look over at Tyler, whose face has transformed, a cold, opaque sheen having dropped across it in the past three seconds. He catches my eye and gives a short shake of his head.

I nod, not needing to know anything else. “You’ve got the wrong number,” I say.

“This isn’t Tyler’s phone? Tyler…” The woman hesitates but ultimately finishes, “Tun?”

I give a loud laugh. “Auntie,” I say. “I would know if this was Tyler Tun’s phone. Sorry, I’m afraid you have the wrong number. Have a good night!” I hang up before she can speak again. “Do you,” I tilt the phone still in my hand, “want me to block her?”

Tyler seems surprised at my suggestion. Still, wordlessly, he nods.

We swivel back around to resume our prior forward-facing positions. I feel like it’d be imposing of me to stay, but also like it’d be wrong to leave. I start counting the seconds in my head. If he doesn’t talk after a minute, I’ll take that as a hint that he wants to be alone.

One, two, three, four, five, six —oh my god, since when did sixty become such a high number to count to— seven, eight, ni —

“What’s your favorite song?”

I keep my eyes trained on my plate. “‘Treacherous.’ By Taylor Swift.”

“Why?”

“Because it… sounds like falling in love.”

“I see.”

“Have you listened to it?”

He shakes his head. “Afraid not.”

“Heathen,” I reply, and he chuckles before falling silent once more.

Just as I’m wondering whether I should reset the counter or pick up where I left off, Tyler clears his throat and says simply, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For… ruining our night. With that call.”

I shift my head to find him staring at the empty spring roll container, eyes blank but glistening.

“Hey,” I say. I adjust my body to face him, one palm settling on his knee.

When, instead of jostling, he places his own palm atop the back of my hand, every single one of my nerves responds to the pull of his touch.

“You didn’t ruin the night. If anything, I’d say my call ruined the night. I think murder investigation trumps random old woman.” His mouth stretches and opens, but no laugh comes out. “But I can go—” I start, already stopping the recording and going to put my phone away.

“That was my grandmother,” he says.

There’s a muffled thud as the phone slips out of my hand and back onto the table. “I thought your grandma was dead,” I reply without thinking.

Wordlessly, he squeezes his eyes shut, and the action pushes the tears over the edge and down his cheeks. He grabs a tissue with the hand that was under his chin, the other still firm on mine, like he needs it to keep himself grounded lest he floats away.

“No, my grandmother is alive,” he says, and blows his nose. “Both of them are, actually. So are both of my grandfathers.”

I frown, because he’s wrong. I know he’s wrong. He doesn’t often mention his grandparents, but he was the one who reminded me at our first meeting that his grandparents were dead. “But you—”

“My dad’s parents were outraged that he was marrying a Myanmar woman. Or, really, someone who wasn’t white. And my mom’s parents were the same about her marrying someone who wasn’t Myanmar. You know—” He chuckles before dabbing his eyes again with the tissue. “Sometimes I think it’s such a shame they never met because I think they would’ve gotten along. Just four bigots meeting up for afternoon tea.”

At my snort, Tyler shifts to face me. “I’m so sorry!” I say, horrified. “That wasn’t funny. Well, no, it was, but the situation isn’t. I don’t think racism is funny. Just for the record.”

“Glad we cleared that up,” he says with a small laugh.

I’m babbling, which I only do when I’m either a) extremely nervous, or b) extremely caught off guard; in this case, it’s the latter. I recall us at that first dinner, me asking if it was his grandparents who had taken his parents to that Chinatown restaurant, Tyler flinching, guard going up. He had been hiding something about his personal life: hurt. The kind of hurt that no amount of time passed can ever quite erase. Hurt over what would’ve been the first, honest answer to jump to his brain: No, because my grandparents wanted nothing to do with our family. An answer that he hadn’t told any journalist until now. Until me.

My embarrassment is replaced with a new heat when his fingers glide into the spaces between mine and his fingertips curl down into my palm.

“Can I… ask you something?” I drop my gaze to our laced hands.

His thumb starts making circles atop the knuckle of my own. “Don’t you always?”

“Why have you been telling people your grandparents are dead?”

“Because as far as I’m concerned, anyone who only wants to have a relationship with me and my parents because I’m now rich and successful is dead to me. You know my mom’s parents kicked her out of the house when they found out she was engaged?”

The confession yanks my jaw downward. “Tyler—”

“And the thing is, my mom knew . She knew they’d react like that, so she only told them after she’d packed two duffel bags. I mean, who knowingly makes their own kid homeless?”

I remember what May said about how he used his first paycheck to buy his parents their dream home. “And your dad’s parents?” I ask. “Did they used to live here?”

He shakes his head. “Florida, I think. My dad called them from here to tell them about his engagement, and that was the last time they ever spoke. Well, until my first Oscar nomination,” he adds with a scornful snort. “Our parents never kept the story a secret from us, but it’s still weird as hell when your agent one day forwards you an email from someone claiming to be your grandfather.”

“I… can’t even imagine,” I say, processing all of it. My grandparents are all dead (actually dead), but I was their only grandchild, and while they were alive, they loved me like nothing I’d ever seen. Each set would literally try to bribe my parents into letting them babysit.

“They do this on and off. Guilt me with ‘blood is thicker than water’ shit,” Tyler says, rolling his eyes. “But truthfully, I feel like it’s only a matter of time before they strike up some deal with a shady tabloid and ‘spill’ stories about my childhood, which they never even saw. Or about how—” His voice starts shaking. I squeeze his hand to remind him that he’s okay, that whatever terrible memories he’s reliving right now can’t hurt him. He returns my squeeze, waits for his breath to stabilize, and continues, “—how I’m a terrible grandson who would turn his back on his own grandparents. How when they tried to instead reach out to my sister, their granddaughter, I told her to block them and had my lawyers threaten to take action for harassing a minor. How I told my parents that if they tried to bring their parents back into our lives, I would never speak to them again.”

“Tyler,” I say, not knowing what else to say. My own eyes start prickling.

“You know what the sad thing is?” he asks, biting down on his trembling lip as two new streams of tears race down his cheeks. I want to wipe them away, but I sense that what he needs—wants—the most right now is for me to just listen . “Sometimes, I still find myself thinking that it’s such a shame that they did what they did because I could’ve, would’ve, really, really loved them.”

And that is what breaks me, the final slash that splits me in half. On an autopilot mode I didn’t even know was programmed into me, I retract my hand from Tyler’s. I get to my feet and he looks up, dazed and eyes glimmering. “Wha—” he starts, then stops when I sit back down sideways on his lap. Taking him into my arms, I place my cheek on top of his head and run my hands up and down his back.

When he shifts, a jolt of embarrassment makes me lift my butt in the air a little. “Shit, am I too heavy? I can—” I begin to stand back up, hoping his tears will blur my mortified expression. Until I feel his arms lock on the small of my back and gently tug me back down.

“No, I just… wasn’t expecting that,” he says, resting his forehead into my collarbone. “You’re perfect. I, on the other hand, am a certified, clinical mess.”

“Oh, come on now,” I say, replacing my cheek on the crown of his head. “Why do you think we’d make the perfect Bonnie and Clyde? No fun having a partner in crime who’s got their shit together.”

“ You do,” he says.

I laugh louder and more harshly than I mean to. “Tyler, I’m a murderer.”

“Self-defense.”

“I am a thirty-year-old divorcée. My marriage didn’t even last a year. Not even close. I went from a house with a green front lawn to a cold, empty apartment. I own precisely four mugs.”

His snort lands as a sharp blast of air on my skin. “Didn’t realize the number of mugs in one’s kitchen was an indication of their general stability.”

“Well, now you do,” I reply. “One of these days, more than three people are going to visit me and ask for a hot beverage at the same time, and I’m going to be utterly screwed. Humiliated. Disgraced. Discredited.”

“Okay, Oxford English Thesaurus . I knew journalism salaries were bad, but I didn’t know they were ‘can only afford four mugs’ bad.” I smile when I hear the teasing undercurrent start to return to his voice. It’s muffled, but it’s there.

Tyler pulls back and his eyes sweep across my face, his jaw flexing as he returns my smile. “Ugh,” I groan. “We have got to stop doing this.”

“Doing what?” he asks with a hesitant laugh.

“This!” I gesture between us with widened eyes. “Spilling our worst secrets and fears to each other! It’s an emotional hazard! I hate crying in front of people, you know. Good lord, you conspire to cover up one murder with someone and then before you know it, you’re—”

“Do you have any idea how much I want to kiss you right now?”

My mouth opens and closes without a sound. “Tyler,” I croak out with the grace of a toddler saying their first word. “You can’t just say shit like that. And to my face ? Do you have no decency?”

His husky laugh makes me want to instantly cross my legs. “But it doesn’t matter, right? Because we’re not allowed to kiss.”

“We’re… not?” I ask, perplexed. The way this conversation is going—not to mention the way my body is spasming all over—I don’t think even the earth splitting apart underneath our feet right now could stop me from shoving my face against his.

“No, we aren’t, because it would be unethical,” he reminds me, each syllable heaving out like he’s being coerced into saying them. The way his hands are pressing into my back also tells me that his body and brain are, not unlike mine, waging World War III right now. “Because you’re a journalist writing a story. On me.”

I swallow as my brain conjures up an image of me on him. “Right,” I say nonetheless. “We can’t. But, just for the record, if we could… ”

He chuckles. His eyes descend down my face, my neck, and start roaming across my upper torso. As though they’ve become sentient, my nipples pinch under my shirt. “If we could…” he repeats and trails off like I did. I can’t stop staring at that mouth: delicious and daring and soft and rogue, even if he’s not aware of it.

I have a vague memory of a whiteboard somewhere, of big block letters that I wrote down for myself specifically to avoid this exact scenario. Another one of May telling me something about all the reasons she refuses to get entangled with Tyler and me silently agreeing, because it all made sense. It did make sense. Back then.

Now, though? Now, the thought of not having him hurts so much I have to do something to alleviate this craving or else I’m going to die.

“Kiss me.”

His fingertips dig into my shirt as though in reflex to what I just said, and I suddenly cannot think of anything other than that I wish they were making contact with my skin, heat on heat. I watch the reactions play across his face as if the latter were an Etch A Sketch. At last, the lines fade, and, I notice, spine already straightening to reach up, he asks, “Are you sure?”

I let out a short, impatient laugh, my own posture bending to meet him halfway. “I swear to god, Tyler, if you don’t kiss me right this s—”

His lips are a few dry ridges rougher than I expected, but as soon as his mouth leans into mine, all I can think is, Finally . He doesn’t take it slow; this is not like a first kiss at the end of a good first date, when you’re both pretty sure the other person wants to kiss you just as much as you want to kiss them, but not sure enough to go for it. Because Tyler fucking goes for it. His tongue licks my bottom lip and I open my mouth and it’s intense and heavy and hot . His touch slides down my spine, roaming until it finds the hem of my shirt. When I drag one hand into his hair so I can gently tug a fistful, he groans into my mouth.

“We have to stop,” he whispers, although our lips are still touching, our torsos still converged across as much surface area as possible.

No, my brain protests immediately. Then, More . I want more. I want all .

“I know,” I say, pulling away but not standing up, not just yet.

Our breathing is labored, like we actually went all the way instead of simply kissing for a minute—or was it twenty?

“You should go,” he says. His eyes have this haziness to them now, and he’s trying to maintain eye contact but failing as he keeps glancing at my lips, which must be as swollen as his are.

“Why?” I ask, and then want to fling myself out the window when I hear how whiny I sound.

“Because—” He shifts in his seat, the movement drawing my attention to the hardness under my thighs. Instinctively, I glance down. When I look back up, he’s smiling. “Well, because of that,” he says through a dark chuckle. “Because you drive me wild, and if you don’t leave right now, if you, god forbid, stay the night—” He swallows, and the unyielding hunger in his voice and on his face makes me want to ignore everything he’s saying and go in for another kiss. “I already know for a fact that nothing short of the apocalypse will get me out of bed come morning.”

I can’t resist. I trace his jaw from the bottom of his chin to his earlobe, lean in, and whisper, “And I already know something else that would’ve made you come in the morning.” He lets out a guttural groan that sounds like it’s barely tethered to his last shred of sensibleness, and I add, “Again.”