I Did Something Bad

Twenty-three

“I didn’t think you’d pick up,” I say, startled.

A beat. “I almost didn’t.”

“How are you?” I get up from the couch and power walk over to the window, then make a U-turn and head for the dining table. “How’s LA?” I ask. In retrospect, I should’ve prepared for what to do if she did answer.

“What do you want, Khin?” May’s tired sigh makes it clear that there’s a timer on this conversation, and I’m guessing it’s not very long.

“I need to talk to him,” I say in a breathless rush.

She barks out a laugh. “Why? Because you need more gossip for your article?” I don’t have a response. “Why are you calling me anyway?”

“Oh come on, that’s the oldest test in the book. Thou shalt not reach out for reconciliation without first getting best friend approval.”

There’s another pause during which I want to say I can hear her smile, but that could very well be wishful thinking. “This isn’t up to me.”

“But you know him better than anyone. If you don’t think I’m good for him, then I’m not.”

“How do you expect me to respond to that?” May scoffs. “That I’m still rooting for you two? That I’ve been waiting around for you to call me and ask me exactly this so I can orchestrate some big romantic reunion for you? You used him.”

I watch my reflection blink back tears. “I know I messed up. When I took this assignment, when he met me, when you met me, I was in a bad place, although I didn’t want to acknowledge it. And I’m not making excuses for myself. I kept telling myself that Tyler would understand because he was an actor, a celebrity, that this was his job. And I was a journalist, and this was my job.”

“He’s not just an actor, Khin,” May snaps. “You think it was bad to have your friends and family judge you for your divorce? Try having the whole world judge you anytime you mess up, even just a little bit. And try doing that with the weight of representation on your shoulders. Actors like me and Tyler aren’t allowed to say the wrong thing, or make one drunken mistake. Even on our worst day, we have to act like we’re the happiest, most resilient people in the world. Every. Day,” she says, sounding like she’s talking through gritted teeth. “We have to act like we’re so grateful for what these white producers and casting directors and magazine editors have given us.”

“May—”

“He trusted you,” she says with a quiet rage that gives me chills. “He’d tell me, No, May, she’s different. She understands. Which I guess you did, right? You understood exactly what you needed to do to get a shiny magazine job. He risked everything he had and helped you cover up a murder —” She hisses out the last word. “—because he believed you were a good person. And even after that, you still kept up that cruel board of yours, still kept trying to find a malicious scoop so you’d get ahead in your career. So excuse me if I don’t care that you felt like your job was all you had left. You’re not some fresh-faced intern looking to break into the industry. If you were actually good at your job, you’d know that a good story doesn’t come at the cost of exploiting someone’s trust.”

She sounds like she’s started crying. I know I deserve every word that she’s said, but that doesn’t make the pain easier to bear. “You’re right,” I say. “Everything you just said is all true. I fucked up, okay? No one has fucked up harder in the history of fuck-ups. But all I’m begging for is a second chance. I’d decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to publish any of his secrets, way before he found that stupid whiteboard that I’d completely forgotten about. I’m telling the truth, I swear. I’m only asking for one more chance, please.”

There’s another long pause. Finally, she speaks one word: “Why?”

“Because,” I say, dropping my forehead to the windowpane. “I have seen him at his best and his worst, and I can tell you right now that nobody will love him the way I do, as much as I do. I want him, May. I want him right now while he’s at the top of his game and he’s turning down Bond.” May’s scoff makes me flinch, but I continue, “And I would still want him if the whole world turned against him tomorrow, and I’ll still want him when nobody remembers his name. I don’t want Tyler Tun . I want just him .”

I hold my breath. I don’t have anything else left to say, no pleas left in me. And I meant what I’d said: I’m not calling Tyler until— unless —May forgives me first. If I really know him, if I truly care about him, then I should care about what May thinks, too.

“He’s there.”

I straighten so quickly that I lose my balance and stumble a few steps. “What do you mean he’s… there? Or here? Here here?”

“He flew back a few days ago. Surprised Jess for her birthday.” After a beat, she says, having checked, “It’s today, actually. Her birthday. They’re having a party at his apartment.”

“What? He’s been here this whole time?” I feel like someone pushed me onto a merry-go-round that’s going a hundred miles an hour.

“Like I said, he wanted to surprise his sister for her birthday. But if I’m being honest.” She hesitates for a few seconds. “I think it was also because he missed you.” Another pause. “He showed me the draft.”

I can’t tell if my heart rate has accelerated or flatlined. “He… did? Wait… what? How? How did you—”

“Clarissa forwarded it.”

“She… did?” I ask, unable to remember any words that contain more than one syllable. “Why?”

“Beats me. She just wrote something like, Thought you should see this. ” Of course that’s all Clarissa wrote. “You didn’t include it. His retirement, I mean,” May states as though she’s testing my response to see if this is yet another one of my tricks.

“No.” I swallow. “I couldn’t. Even if I never saw him again, I needed him to know that I didn’t print any of the things he told me in confidence. That he didn’t mean nothing to me. Almost the complete opposite, really.”

She lets out a frustrated sigh, the sound of someone accepting a reality they’ve tried to change at every point possible, but has chosen defeat. “He misses you. He’s like a teenager who’s fallen in love for the first time. Hard, fast, can’t-eat, can’t-sleep shit. It’s honestly verging on pathetic. I’ve caught him staring at your name in his contacts list for several solid minutes. He listens to this one Taylor Swift song on repeat. That one you guys danced to,” she clarifies, but she doesn’t need to, because I already knew which one. My mouth stretches into a grin. “You know how I said Tyler doesn’t know what he wants?”

I nod. Realizing she can’t see me, I mumble a soft “Mm-hmm?”

“Well, he wants you, Khin. I’ve never been surer of anything when it comes to him. But I need to make sure that this idea of you, this idea of a relationship with you that he wants? It’s actually who you are and what you can give him, and not just an idealistic dream that you’ve planted in his head so that he’ll put his guard down.”

“It’s not,” I promise. “I do love him. Please, I need to talk to him. I reread my own draft last night, and, well, it turns out it’s pretty obvious that I’m kind of pathetically in love when it comes to him, too.”

May chuckles. “Well, last time I checked, you had a car and his address.”

“Should I… wait until the party’s over?”

“If I know Tyler as well as I think I do,” May says, and I know that she’s smiling this time. “He’s not going to want to wait another second to see you.”

Tyler’s doorman instantly recognizes me and gives me a wave.

“Here for the party?” he asks as I wait for the elevator.

“Yep,” I respond with my biggest party-ready smile.

Even if I hadn’t already known it was the last apartment on the left, the muffled sound of people and music would’ve given it away. I stride over, ring the doorbell once, and wait. And wait. I ring it again, twice this time. More waiting. Still no one. Finally, I press down on it for four seconds and, to make sure, knock on the door once, twice, thr—

It opens.

It’s not Tyler at the door, but I place the face immediately. She’s more muscular, and she’s grown out her hair and has a full face of (stunning) makeup, but it’s her. “Jess! Happy birthday!” I say, clocking the white-and-gold BIRTHDAY GIRL sash slung across her. “I don’t know if you remem—”

“Oh my god, Khin!” Jess throws her arms around me. “It’s been ages . What are—”

“Hey, who’s at—” comes a voice from beside her, and the door opens slightly more.

And there he is. Blue jeans and a white polo shirt. Simple. Clean. Unadorned. So him.

Tyler’s face cycles through joy to surprise to confusion before ending on an expression that’s more serious than I’m comfortable with. The grin that he’d been approaching Jess with is gone. His brows are knitted, caution threading into his every vein.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi,” Tyler says.

“I… heard you were in town.”

The sight of his half smile makes my heart soar. “You are a good journalist,” he says, then motions back behind him with his eyes. “I’m a little busy right now. If this is about the story, can you email—”

“It’s not about the story,” I blurt out.

“Oh.”

“Can we please talk?”

“Yes,” Jess cuts in. Before either of us knows what’s happening, she takes Tyler’s hand and drags him out into the hallway, closing the door with her other hand.

“Jess—” Tyler warns, but she waves him off.

“Thank god you’re here,” she says to me. “He has been absolutely miserable to be around, you have no idea. All he does is fucking mope. Between you and me, we’ve been saying that if this is how he’s going to be all the time, then maybe he shouldn’t move back home after retiring.”

Tyler scoffs but, like me, a smile slips through. “Jess, I don’t think this is the right time to be—”

“Jesus Christ, Ty!” She spins on her feet and snaps her fingers as though trying to snap him out of a trance. “I get it, Khin messed up. But good god, have you never made a single mistake ever in your whole entire life? Besides, you saw the draft. Khin didn’t even mention your secrets! Any of them! Now can you please get off of your mopey high horse and listen to what she has to say?”

“I—”

“It’s my birthday!”

Tyler cocks an eyebrow, but his demeanor makes it clear that he’s going to give in because she has always had him wrapped around her finger. “You’re pulling the birthday card right now?”

Jess points at the rectangular piece of white-and-gold satin draped across her. “I’m the one wearing the BIRTHDAY GIRL sash, aren’t I? Now—” She points at the apartment door. “I’m going to go back in there, and we are cutting the cake in approximately half an hour, and you are going to stop being such a doofus.” With a wave at me, she adds, “Hope you like red velvet, Khin!” before marching back toward the apartment and muttering under her breath, “Do I really have to do everything around here, even on my birthday?”

And then she’s gone, and it’s just the two of us in the middle of the long hall.

“So,” I say, trying my hardest not to grin at what just transpired. “I see Jess is as… independent as always.”

“Clearly,” he says through a chuckle. He slides one hand inside the pocket of his trousers and the other through his hair, and, as embarrassing as it sounds, I’m not prepared for how my heart tries to thud its way out of my rib cage the second he looks up from the floor and locks eyes with me. “Hi” is all he says, except it’s him, so it’s enough to make me forget to breathe.

“Hey.” He opens his mouth to respond, but I keep talking before I lose the nerve. “No, I need to speak first. I need to… say everything I have to say, and then you say what you have to say, okay?”

He nods, eyes burning with something I can’t describe.

“When we first met, I was in… not a good place. Some might even say the worst place I’ve ever been in my life. My husband had left me, and it was like dominos—I lost my marriage, then my house, and then our mutual friends who would alternate between acting weird and being nosy and asking me how I was, and all I wanted to do was leave all of it behind. That’s what Singapore was for me. It was a way out. A lifeline. And then right when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I went and killed someone. Everything was falling apart. Everything had fallen apart. When that thing at the park happened, I thought that that was it, that everything was done. But you—” I attempt a smile, shaky as it may be. “—kept me going. When I was down on my knees, you picked me up and carried the both of us on your back. And even though I was so scared—because what did I know about you apart from what I’d read in magazines?—I had no choice but to trust you. And the truth is, I kept waiting for you to let me down. I kept waiting for you to turn me in, or at the very least, wash your hands of me. I kept waiting for you to be just another thing in my life that didn’t work out. Another domino that fell. But you weren’t. You stayed and even when I tried to push you away, you still stayed. You never let me down.”

“Of course I stayed, Khin,” he says, voice just as ragged as mine. “We were on the same team. At least, I thought we were.”

“We were, Tyler. I am on your team. I’m, like, the head cheerleader!”

His laugh is a dazzling electrical storm. “I read your draft.”

“And?”

“Why didn’t you include the story? I gave you permission. That job would change your life. It would’ve been—” He swallows hard. “—your lifeline.”

“If I can’t write a good article without including a secret that you told me in confidence, then I’m not a good writer. I’m a journalist, not a paparazzo. Turns out, Clarissa agrees, and she offered me the job.”

The smile that had been growing on his mouth halts. Then, remembering social protocol, he lets out a “Congratulations!”

The forced nature of his expression sparks something in me. I shake my head. “I’m not taking it.”

“You’re not taking the job?” he echoes, face raging with warring emotions.

“No.”

“The Vogue job? Khin, if this is because of me, I don’t—”

I take a step toward him. “I became a journalist because I wanted to write stories that matter. Don’t get me wrong, they cover a lot of important stories. I’m not saying that fashion magazines like Vogue don’t matter because we both know that’s just misogynistic bullshit merely based on the fact that they have a primarily female fanbase.”

“Of course,” he agrees, smile returning.

“But they don’t write the kind of stories that I want to write. I want to continue writing stuff like that abortion piece. You know, more stories about people that most mainstream media overlook but that readers need to know about. I don’t want a career of hanging out with celebrities or backstage at fashion shows or, and no offense, more movie sets. Those things are so boring! God help me if I ever have to watch you run through a park one more fucking time. And there’s so much waiting! My feet hurt and you don’t have enough bathrooms and I don’t get to drive my own car. And I have to watch each scene, like, fifteen times! I practically have the whole script memorized by this point!”

Tyler laughs at my pained expression. “So what’re you going to do now?” he asks. “What do you want to do… next?”

I grimace. “Will it ruin the moment if I say, ideally, you ?”

He lets out another unfettered laugh, and my god, if that isn’t my favorite sound in the world. “It’s the truth, you know,” I say. “I want to make out with you and drive around with you and be with you. I want to cook with you and I want to take out the trash and pay taxes and slow dance to Taylor Swift songs with you. I love you, Tyler. I love you so much it’s embarrassing for someone as hot and successful as myself.”

He startles at my saying the word, but I don’t; it’s the easiest, most natural thing I’ve ever done. “You… love me,” he says, voice petering out, like he can’t quite believe it, which I can’t believe. How could anyone not love him? Wonderful, brilliant, generous him.

“I love you,” I repeat. “You are my favorite person in the whole world, and not just because you helped me try to get away with murder, although that did put you ahead of the pack.”

He smiles faintly, but I can tell that he’s distracted. He’s turning over my words, coming at them from all angles. “I want to believe everything you’re saying, Khin, I really do,” he finally says, face torqued with anguish. “But I—” He takes a deep breath. “You hurt me. It hurt to know that every minute we’d spent together turned out to be just an opportunity for you to get something from me. Out of everyone who’s ever turned their backs on me or used me, none of them hurt me like you did.”

“I know,” I say, because I do, because I can see it in every single line and dimple and scar on his face. “I meant every word of that article. You are the best person I’ve ever met, and you have this big, golden heart, and I know you trusted me and I’m sorry I broke that trust. I am so, so sorry. I can’t go back in time and undo that, but I’m trying my best to show you that it’s not going to happen again.

“Because here’s the thing,” I say, moving closer so that there’s nothing separating us. I take it as a good sign that he doesn’t move away. In fact, I observe his body start to relax like he’s come home after a long trip, and realize that mine is doing the same, too. “I could tell you every single day just how much I love you, but ultimately, it won’t matter if you don’t trust me. And I know what it’s like to love someone and still not have it work out in the end, but you know what, I have a really good gut feeling about us, and I want us to at least give it our all. This doesn’t work if we don’t trust that we will be right there by each other’s side from morning to night and then all over again when we wake up the next day—which I will. Every. Single. Day. Through your highest highs and your shittiest lows. I love you, Tyler, and I will never, ever lie to you again.” I raise a finger. “Well, unless if it’s about, say, your birthday present. Then I’ll probably lie my ass off, but only because I want to surprise you, because making you smile is one of my favorite things to do.”

He grins, and in retrospect, my heart never stood a chance. Slowly, tenderly, he comes closer, his palms mold around my cheeks, thumb brushing away my tears before he leans down to press a kiss to my forehead. “You cannot imagine how much I’ve missed you,” he says, and I am acutely aware that this scene feels like something you only get in the movies. He tilts my head upward so he can look me straight in the eye. “I love you, too. I wanted to call you so many times, but it seemed like you’d made up your mind about us, and that was that.”

“You should’ve called. I would’ve answered,” I whisper. “I’ll always answer.”

“I have spent the last few months searching for the back of your head in every crowd,” he says before tipping farther down and closing his lips onto mine.

He tastes exactly how I remember, and when his hands slide down my shoulders and along my back before settling at the base of my spine, it sets off a thousand tiny explosions all through my body. It seems impossible that we’ve only ever kissed twice before because this feels so comfortable, like I’ve been doing it for years and years, like what else would we have been doing ever since we met?

“I love you,” I say when we pull apart for air, and already, I want to repeat it to him over and over again, so that he never forgets. So that he never, not even for a second, has a reason to believe otherwise.

“I love you so much, you have no idea,” he murmurs. “Even if you guilt-tripped me into selling my private jet.”

I gasp. “You what?”

He rolls his eyes. “Apparently it is dreadful for the environment.”

“Tyler Tun,” I say, jutting out my bottom lip. “And here I thought I possibly couldn’t love you any more.”

“There I go, wrecking your plans again, huh?”

I snake my fingers through his hair and give him a soft tug closer. “That’s my man,” I whisper into his mouth.

It was nearing 1 A.M. when all the parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins had left and we were completely, finally, alone.

“Dishes?” I ask, making for the kitchen.

“They can wait until the morning,” Tyler says. I yelp in surprise at the feel of his arm snaking around my waist and pulling me back into his rib cage, although it only takes half a second for my body to fully settle into him. “I have a small surprise.”

I shift my face to look up at his. “A surprise?”

He nods, and, moving his hand to the small of my back, directs both of us to his bedroom.

I do as I’m instructed, which is to sit in the middle of the bed and close my eyes. Right as my brain is about to have a Fuck me, I’m in Tyler’s bed meltdown, I hear rustling, followed by slight grunting, followed by Tyler hurriedly reassuring me, “Don’t worry, I’m fine, just keep those eyes closed,” followed by a soft yet heavy thud on the spot on the duvet right in front of me.

“Okay, you can open them,” he says, and when I do, he’s standing at the foot of the bed, a giant cardboard box separating the two of us.

“Wha—” I begin, but he hands me a pair of scissors.

“It’s all compostable, don’t worry,” he says. At my confused look, he motions at me to cut through the tape. I oblige as he keeps talking. “Obviously I didn’t want them to break, but my now ex-jet and I both know how important sustainability is to you, so I made sure everything was recyclable, down to the tape.”

“Didn’t want what to break?” I ask. His playful half smirk is the only answer I receive. I lift open the top flaps, and am stunned—less in an Awwww manner and more in an Uhhhh manner—as a jumble of brown crinkled packing paper awaits me. “Tyler, you… got me packing paper?” I widen my eyes and jut my bottom lip out at him. “You shouldn’t have!”

He rolls his eyes, but that delightful mouth of his has unfurled into something sincere and warm and uncontrollable, and I want to reach out and kiss it. “Take one out.”

Upon closer inspection, the box is filled with an assortment of several items that have been neatly and very tightly wrapped in the paper. “Let me guess,” I say, reaching for one in the middle and unraveling the wrapping. “You got me a selection of the finest vibrators money can buy.”

He snorts in what is the most un-Hollywood gesture I’ve ever seen or heard him make. All he says, though, with a shake of his head is, “Woman.”

“It’s… a mug.” A mug that is white and speckled with tiny natural black clay dots, and features large carved cherry blossoms and floating green leaves all around.

I grab another random tangle of packing paper and undo it to reveal another mug, this one black and glossy with a shiny navy sheen circling the rim. The next one is a speckled matte pistachio color with a ridged exterior. The fourth, another white one, has the words SEE YOU AT HOME carved into three lines.

“Tyler,” I say as I trace the sand-colored words. I don’t realize I’m crying until a gray spot lands on the U and trickles down. “What is this?” I ask, half laughing. “You… got me mugs?”

He crawls around to sit beside me. “It’s cheesy, I know, but… you said you wanted mugs.”

“So you… got me mugs?”

“Khin—” His thumb gently wipes away the wet trail on one of my cheeks, then the next. “That’s how this works. You said you wanted mugs,” he repeats simply.

“So you got me mugs.” I state it this time, because I understand now.

“It would appear that way.”

I will love you forever, I think.

“What if we’d never run into each other again?” I ask. “What would you have done with this, frankly, obscene number of mugs?” There must be at least fifteen here. At least.

“I would’ve still gotten them to you somehow,” he says with a shrug. “They weren’t about me anyway. They were about you. Then again, Khin, everything”—the sound of my name on his tongue reverberates through every corner of my brain, my lungs, my heart. He tucks my hair behind both my ears, and I close my eyes when he leans forward and kisses my forehead, and it’s no longer that I can’t believe that Tyler Tun is kissing me, but that I can’t believe that Tyler, my absolute favorite person, is kissing me—“was always about you.”

I grab his face in both hands and bring his mouth down to mine.

“It was always about you, too,” I murmur, our lips still grazing, eyes mapping out our new homes in the other’s. “You shook my hand in that wonton restaurant in Chinatown, and I was never the same.”

“I don’t think this was in the script.”

I give his bottom lip a gentle tug before shooting him a conspiratorial smile. “Fuck the script.”