1
I’m on the cusp of hooking up with Mark B. when it overcomes me, fast and furious.
It’s more vivid than a recent memory. Crisp and clear as a movie on Dad’s prized ultrahigh-def TV. I see an unrecognizable cityscape, made up of slippery-looking glass skyscrapers extending to a cotton candy–blue sky. My nose is engulfed with a rich espresso-like scent that threatens to clear my airways. Barbs of heat prick my neck, as though I’m getting the brunt of a high-noon sun and not sitting in a darkened basement at Pi Kappa Alpha’s end-of-finals party. The last big bash before summer. A cluster of red cartoon hearts drifts over the skyline like hot-air balloons expanding fast, getting larger and larger until—
“Lo?” Mark B.’s sour beer breath snaps me back to reality, and his glistening wet lips come into sharp focus. They’re hovering dangerously close to mine, and a surge of dread rockets down my spine.
“Sorry, I, uh, I thought I saw . . .”
“You good? You kinda went all bug-eyed. Looked like you were having an allergic reaction or something,” he says with his signature bluntness.
“How attractive of me.” A catatonic state and the flush of anaphylactic shock is the ultimate recipe for seduction, didn’t you know?
I expect him to brush off my self-deprecation, like he usually does. Maybe humor me with a little white lie about how I’m kind of “adorable” or “endearing.” But he doesn’t say anything at all. Not a thing. And while this moment will probably haunt my soul for millennia, there are more pressing matters. Like, what the hell did I just see?
Mark B. senses the mood shift, the hard angles of his bewildered expression glowing orange from the lava lamp on the side table.
I consider explaining, but the words don’t come. There is no way to explain all of that without him thinking I’m a total loon. Besides, what even was “that”? A figment of my alcohol-induced imagination? Can’t be. I only had two red Solo cups’ worth of beer.
Could it be a hallucination from stuffing myself like a sausage into this two-sizes-too-small orange suede skirt? Possibly.
A bizarrely vivid daydream? Marginally more likely. Then again, I’ve never had daydreams thrust upon me like a chemistry lab partner I didn’t choose.
I recall something my grandmother used to say: that visions strike at the most inconvenient times, like a school test in her case, or while on the toilet, like my aunt Mei. Could it really be a vision? I stomp down the hope and kick some dirt over it for good measure. I won’t venture down that tunnel. I did not inherit the Zhao abilities. I’ve already begrudgingly made peace with being the talentless outcast in my family and a smidge below average at, well, everything.
Mark B. clears his throat and gestures at the space between us. “Do you actually wanna hook up or no? Because lately you always seem to have some sort of issue,” he says, making air quotes around issue, as though it’s intentional on my part.
Trust, I wish it were. The past multiple times we’ve hung out, I’ve had some . . . complications, to say the least. One time, I fell asleep ten minutes into our movie and snored like a seventy-year-old man with sleep apnea. He recorded me to prove it. The time after, I tried to make up for it by zealously throwing myself on top of him without notice, only to pull a muscle in my inner thigh and keel over in slow motion. And now this.
“Do you want to hook up?” he repeats impatiently over the pulse of the bass and chanting upstairs. The beer pong tournament is in full swing.
I bite my lip. “Um . . .” Do I? That’s the million-dollar question. Technically, yes. I didn’t wear a matching bra-and-undies set for nothing. It’s not like this would be our first hookup, and it’s not that I don’t enjoy hookups in general. I do, in the moment. But when it’s finished and he rolls over with a single grunt, I can’t help but feel a swell of disappointment. Is this how it’s supposed to be? Hollow? Anticlimactic? Would it be different with someone I really, really like?
Not that I don’t like Mark B.
I liked him instantly when we met at, you guessed it, a frat party. It was an ABC-themed party (anything but clothes) before the holidays. I was standing in the kitchen, trying to cut my duct-tape dress off with right-handed scissors so I could actually sit or pee comfortably. He sauntered over in a toga fashioned out of a wiener dog–print bedsheet and offered to help cut me out of it “in a nonsexual way.”
He had one of those ultraconfident gaits, a swagger about him, always in command, which in hindsight was a massive part of his allure (and the wiener-dog sheets, of course). I was stunned he was even paying attention to me with his bootleg Hemsworth-brother looks.
After he fetched me a spare T-shirt from upstairs, we bonded over the shared trauma of being left-handed in a right-handed world, our love of cherry Jell-O shots, and watching videos of lost dogs being reunited with their owners. The stuff of substance.
For a frat boy, turns out he’s an above-average human who genuinely wants to make sure I’m comfortable. He always pays for my Ubers home and responds with enthusiasm to the baby animal videos I send him. But there’s absolutely no lingering eye contact, no zap of electricity when we touch, not even an ease or comfortability from investing so many hours together over the past few months.
I’ve always wondered what it would feel like with someone who feathers the tips of his fingers across my jaw, stares lovingly into my eyes, and tells me I’ve “bewitched him heart and soul.” Who blesses me with a passionate, toe-curling kiss, altering my body chemistry forevermore. As you can tell, I’ve put a lot of thought into it. Hundreds of hours, actually. But what do you expect when your whole family falls madly in love with their soulmates?
This is nowhere close. So I’m not sure why I’m so fixated on hooking up with Mark B. one last time. Maybe I’m settling, or desperate. Probably both. But it just feels like the right way to mark the end of the semester before flying halfway across the world for a whole month. I must salvage the situation.
“I want to!” I practically yelp, yanking him by the collar of his pilled campus-crested hoodie.
His brow quirks, amused by my sudden enthusiasm and sultry bedroom eyes peeking out from self-cut (okay, hacked) seventies curtain bangs. I’m really selling it here.
His lips are sopping wet when they fuse against mine, like drenched pillows. All my justifications go out the window when he shoves his tongue in my mouth without notice. It’s heavy, like a gigantic slug.
My mind knows I’m in desperate need of mental escape, because the image hits again, exactly the same as before. The city skyline, the espresso scent, and the hearts.
I abruptly pull back, shaking the image (and the moisture) away like a wet dog. “Um, be right back. I need to use the bathroom,” I mumble, bolting for the nearest exit.
The vision fades when I close the door behind me, but only partially. It’s nagging at me, like a scratch that needs to be itched.
I need to talk to my aunts. ASAP. But first, I need to get out of here.
I blink, groping in the darkness for a light switch. There’s a soft knock on the door.
“Lo?” Mark B. says.
I should tell him the truth—that I’m having some strange, intrusive vision that won’t go away. And that even if I weren’t, things between us still don’t feel right and never have. But because I’m incapable of intentionally hurting people’s feelings (a.k.a. a complete and total coward), all that comes out is a painfully cheery, “I’ll be right out! Just finishing up.”
“Finishing up what?” He sounds alarmed. “That’s not a bathroom.”
As soon as my eyes adjust in the darkness, that unfortunate fact becomes clear. I’ve locked myself in a storage room filled with dusty boxes, broken furniture, bikes that have seen better days, and likely a frat-boy ghost or two.
Another, slightly more urgent knock. “Lo? Please tell me you didn’t go to the bathroom in there.”
I slap my hand over my mouth, remaining silent. Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.
And that’s when I spot it. A window. Bless. Sure, it’s barely large enough to squeeze a small toddler through, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Braving the sticky cobwebs, I comb through the junk in desperate search of a ladder, a step stool, any object tall enough to reach the window. My results yield a rickety end table and a dust-caked Crock-Pot box from the nineties. The table is wobbly, but it gives me just enough height to reach the window. Bangs plastered to my forehead, I contort my limbs through the small space and emerge onto the crowded lawn victorious. And by victorious, I mean running-from-a-deranged-chainsaw-wielding-back-country-serial-killer aesthetic.
No one seems to notice, which is both a relief and seriously concerning.
The lawn is a complete zoo. I weave through a group of sorority girls cradling matching bedazzled bottles of strawberry wine like newborns. I narrowly avoid a head-on collision with a very drunk guy in a Cowboys jersey double-fisting two frothy beers.
“Sorry!” I call over my shoulder as I round the front of the house.
My best friend, Bianca Alves, waves me over. She’s leaning against the red brick, chatting with a muscly guy in a backward baseball cap who is absolutely not her type.
She beelines it to me. “Did you guys hook up?” Bianca asks, thick, dark brows raised in anticipation. Tonight, she’s opted for an argyle miniskirt shorter than mine, paired with a white cropped T-shirt that flaunts her bronze competitive-dancer abs.
“No,” I croak. Why did I flee from Mark B. like that? I shamefully avoid all eye contact as she swiftly shuttles me inside and upstairs. I feel like a disgraced pop star being ushered into rehab through a pack of ravenous paparazzi.
We filter into a random fraternity bro’s room littered with bongs, crumpled papers, dirty laundry, and overturned beer cans.
“Did you do anything? At all?” Bianca asks, the disappointment dripping in her voice. She stands in front of the smudged dresser mirror, retying her hair into her iconic Ariana Grande–esque ponytail—styled the same as the first day we met in Intro to English Lit.
At the request of the TA, we went around the room and told everyone our favorite books. All the die-hard English majors shared some variation of depressing literary fiction or Austen classic. As a science major taking the course as an elective, I shouted The Great Gatsby out of panic, despite only having watched the Leonardo DiCaprio film. When it came Bianca’s turn, she declared Twilight with the unshakable confidence of a middle-aged white man. She’s been my hero ever since. So much so that I tried copying her ponytail on multiple occasions, only to more closely resemble a balding US founding father. Hence the curtain bangs.
“I mean . . . he put his tongue in my mouth for about two seconds before I fled through a window,” I admit, omitting the crucial details of my strange vision. I really need to get out of here and talk to my aunts.
“Fled through a window,” she repeats, wholly unsurprised.
I sidestep to avoid dipping my toe in a puddle of mystery fluid and explain how I announced I was going to the bathroom and instead found myself in the storage room.
“Shut up. He probably thinks you drunkenly took a shit in there and passed out,” she says with an aggressive snort.
The thought of Mark B. and his frat bros scouring the storage room in search of human feces has me practically doubled over, gripping the dresser for support. We laugh until we cry, until our abs ache. Once we’ve semi-recovered, she asks, “But seriously, why are you suddenly so against hooking up with him? You were so into it a few months ago.”
I cringe, plunking onto the bed, lamenting the missed opportunity. “Honestly, I ask myself that daily. He’s . . . nice. I just don’t get soulmate vibes from him.” Bianca skewers me with a not this again look, so I add, “And he made me feel like a total dumbass for not knowing what the word perspicacious means.”
Bianca twists her lips. “What does it mean?”
“Exactly. No one knows, except people trying to sound smarter than they actually are. He explained it, but I blacked out and disassociated.”
“Ew, what an asshat. You know, I heard he failed prelaw last semester. I bet he’s trying to overcompensate,” she says.
“That would explain the look on his face when I told him I wanted to drop out of college and be a dog walker,” I say. It was a joke—technically. One of those test-the-water jokes that had an edge of seriousness.
He looked at me like I’d announced I was going to live in the forest, wearing a leaf to cover my privates and trading berries and twigs as currency. “Why would you drop out for a minimum-wage job?” He said minimum wage like it was a dirty word, which was on brand, coming from a family of highly decorated lawyers. His grandfather was a judge whose name was tossed around for the Supreme Court.
“I don’t know if I like my program,” I’d told him truthfully, the weight of it lifting off my chest. I’d been grappling with my total disinterest in the program all year, terrified to tell anyone, especially Dad, who was thrilled I was following in his and Mom’s footsteps as forensic scientists.
“Why don’t you switch majors?” he asked. It was a fair question. But I’d already taken a range of electives, none of which were any more interesting.
Unlike Bianca, who’s known she’s wanted to study fine art since she was thirteen, I’ve always had a mild interest in everything and a passion for nothing. In fact, I’m not entirely sure college is for me, which is why I’ve been tossing around the idea of deferring or dropping out entirely.
Bianca sighs while doing dance stretches on the edge of the dresser. “Okay, so maybe he’s a little bit of an elitist prick. Maybe he’s not your soulmate. But the boy has an eight-pack,” she says, winking suggestively.
I avoid her hawk eyes and start picking the thick, Barbie-pink polish off my nails. “Isn’t it wrong to use Mark B. for his body?” I ask.
She swats my hand to stop me from stripping my nails—a bad habit of mine. “Men use women for their bodies all the time.”
As though the universe is on Bianca’s side, my phone pings with a text.
??Mark: Where’d you go???
I open a follow-up text, only to be assaulted with a dick pic.
Weary, I fall back onto the lumpy mattress. Why are guys so gross and predictable?
“That’s . . . a very unflattering photo.” Bianca grits her teeth, tilting her head to examine it from all angles.
“Is genitalia on its own ever attractive?”
“I’ve seen some striking peen, but this is not one of them.”
“See? Romance is officially dead, Bianca,” I say through a violent shiver, recalling his wandering hands that felt more like octopus tentacles.
“He’s still down to hook up after you ran away like that. I’d say it’s more alive than ever,” she points out.
“It’s on life support. For me, anyways.”
Bianca frowns like I’m hopeless.
“Coming from the girl who blubbers on my shoulder during The Notebook when Noah declares into the rain that it’s still not over. The girl who weeps when celebrities break up because you get so emotionally invested.” She hesitates, peeking over her shoulder to ensure no one is within earshot before whispering, “I think your family’s gift and all the fairy-tale love stories have given you unrealistic expectations.”
I appreciate her guarding my secret, as she has since I invited her to Lunar New Year with my aunts. I don’t normally make a habit of telling people about my family’s abilities; people get weird about it. Some are terrified, some automatically think you’re bonkers, and others are disappointed we can’t foretell their futures on demand. Others want us to help them connect with deceased loved ones, even though we aren’t mediums (there’s a difference). So I hadn’t mentioned anything. Funny enough, Bianca recognized Aunt Mei from a psychic fair she went to a few months earlier. She’s been fascinated by psychics and mediums ever since her grandma died. She even has her own deck of tarot cards and YouTubes how to do readings.
“That’s probably true.” She’s not wrong. In the car, you can find me listening to my romance playlist while gazing longingly out a rain-flecked window, pretending to be in the music video.
She continues, “Like, if a guy doesn’t give you immediate butterflies, you’re over him.”
“But why waste my time if he’s not my soulmate?” I counter. I naively expected college to be a mecca of emotionally mature men with steel-cut bods in search of long-term relationships, maybe an engagement on the horizon. Even my parents paired off young. They met at work, fresh from college, where they bonded over a shared theory about a blood-splatter pattern in a murder investigation. Pure romance, right? On their first date, they watched an episode of CSI for shits and laughed at how inaccurate it was. Of course, I only know this from what my aunts tell me. Mom passed away from a sudden brain aneurysm when I was just four.
Instead, I found a thousand Mark B.’s whose definition of romance is sharing a bong hit—and apparently sending dick pics.
“All I’m saying is it doesn’t always have to be a universe-bending moment, you know. Sometimes sex is just pointless sex. And that’s okay,” Bianca points out.
“You’re right. But I still can’t hook up with Mark B. anymore.” I flex my fingers, stressed at the prospect of having to break it to him—not that he’ll really care.
“Fair,” Bianca says, dark eyes gleaming. “Oh my god. Maybe you’ll meet someone new in Italy?”
I tilt my head in consideration. “Italy would be romantic.” Excitement bubbles in my gut. Not just at the prospect of an Italian romance, but of spending a whole month backpacking through the country with Bianca. This trip couldn’t be coming at a better time. Maybe it’ll even give me some perspective, or inspiration to get my life together. Maybe I’ll come back with a fresh outlook and a renewed love for my program.
We’ve been planning this trip since she saw the background photo on my iPad—of my mom and Aunt Mei on a sisters’ trip to Italy the summer Mom graduated high school thirty years ago.
Mom and Mei look so full of life. They’re linked, arm in arm, on the cobblestoned streets of Florence, gelato in hand. You’d never know they’d battled a nasty bout of food poisoning the night before. Or that they stayed in an endless string of budget, bug-ridden hostels for an entire month. Or that they required months of acupuncture to heal their backs from the weight of their rucksacks. Still, according to Mei, my mom couldn’t wait to go on another trip once she had enough money.
I’ve always known I wanted to follow in Mom’s footsteps (literally) and go to Italy. It just always felt out of reach. Not to mention, Italy isn’t cheap, especially on a student budget. But Bianca convinced me it was realistic, so long as we embrace the backpacker life: staying in hostels, cooking our own meals, joining free group tours, and taking public transportation. Besides, she’s half-Italian and has always wanted to explore her roots.
My phone pings again, and my stomach does a barrel roll. “Oh god. It’s another dick pic, isn’t it? I feel like this one is going to be worse.”
Bianca takes one for the team and checks on my behalf. “It’s . . . a picture of a poodle missing a leg.”
“Doris?” I snatch my phone. As I suspected, the photo is definitely not from Mark B.
It’s from Teller.
A rush of adrenaline floods me.
“Yup. Your best friend,” she hums with an eye roll. I know it bugs her that she has to share that title with someone else. As close as Bianca and I have gotten this year, she knows she can’t compete with years of history.
I examine the photo of Doris, the tripod poodle I’d convinced him to rescue from the local shelter, in a chunky-knit argyle sweater. Despite a strong aversion to dogs (because allergies), he begrudgingly fostered her “temporarily,” until he could find her a good home. A shock to everyone, including me, his family fell in love with her and adopted her.
??Lo: OMG Doris??
??Teller: I’ll give her a hug from you.??
I stare at Doris’s button eyes and tight, old-lady curls, and it finally clicks. If he’s with Doris, he’s home.
??Lo: Wait What???
??Lo: Are You Home For The Summer??????
??Teller: Damn, I missed being screamed at via text.??
??Lo: Are You Home Or Not??
??Lo: ????
??Teller: Yes, I’m home. Got in yesterday. What are you up to???
??Lo: just at a frat party. kind of wanting to leave. When Can I See Doris????
??Lo: and you, too. But Mostly Doris.??
Admittedly, I have zero chill. We haven’t seen each other since he left town last August to go to Northwestern, four whole hours away. Despite promises to reunite during Christmas break, the timing never worked out.
??Teller: I’ll come pick you up. What’s the address???
I giddily send my location, and he texts that he’ll be here in fifteen minutes.
“Teller’s coming to get you?” Bianca asks knowingly, pulling herself from the bed.
“Yeah. I’m getting kinda tired anyway,” I lie, suppressing my massive grin. We leave the relative quiet of the bedroom, and the abrupt chatter of chaos makes my ears ring as we head downstairs. “Want a ride back to your dorm? Teller won’t mind.”
I feel guilty for leaving her, but Bianca isn’t the kind of girl who needs a sidekick. And Teller is also the only person I can talk to about what I saw tonight, aside from my aunts. He’s the calm, logical presence I need right now. And no offense to Bianca, but she can get a little too into this whole psychic thing. While I love how naturally she accepts (loves!) that aspect of my life, she’d want the vision to be true so badly, it would just get my hopes up.
“As much as I’d love to finally meet this guy, I told Chris I’d head back with him,” she yells over the music. Chris is her flavor of the month, a guy she met at the gym with a nipple piercing. He writes his own poetry and makes exaggerated eye contact while reading it, which is a blood-red flag (look, I don’t make the rules). Bianca disagrees. She finds his creativity and way with words a turn-on (shudder). Though to be fair, he seems reasonably nice and offered me the rest of his fries when the three of us went to Five Guys last week.
We promise to text each other when we get home, and I head outside to wait for Teller.
I’m cloaked in darkness, sitting on the front step, when he pulls up in his old Toyota Corolla (champagne color) in exactly fifteen minutes. Teller is nothing if not punctual. Before I can stand, he exits the car. Odd. He’s never been one to head toward a crowd if he can help it.
It hits different this time, seeing Teller Owens in the flesh after almost a whole year.
Teller is not classically hot. You wouldn’t pick him out of a lineup and think, “Wow, that guy should be an Abercrombie model.” He’s just Teller. A bit nerdy, with ears that stick out slightly and a mouth that appears a little too big for his face. He’s the kind of handsome that grows on you once you get to know him better. His contemplative expression (brow quirked and subtly pursed lips) is the same. He always looks deep in thought, lost in the labyrinth of his mind.
But my findings are surprising. First, there’s his jawline. Since when did it become so square? And then there’s the rude angle I have to crank my neck to absorb his towering height. He’s always been tall, but lanky, with limbs too long to be functional. But now, he’s grown into his height. He’s . . . dare I say, muscly? And not in a bulky, imposing way. He’s solidly lean, almost graceful in his movement.
I take in the way his shoulders and biceps fill out his plain T-shirt. The sudden firm broadness of his chest. I blink to ensure I’m not seeing things. It’s like he’s just stumbled upon this brand-new body. I don’t know what to make of him as he sidles up the path, wayward mop of dark hair swaying with each step.
He flicks his caramel eyes, scanning the crowd for me. When our gazes snag, a gentle, earnest smile spreads across his face, lighting him up from the inside out. It reminds me of how much I’ve missed it. Missed him.
He stops short a couple feet in front of me, absorbing me in totality, and says, “Your hair.”
I pat down my tame-resistant hair, which is now both frizzy in some places and flat in others, a result of aggressive layering. It’s one of my biggest beefs with the universe—that I did not inherit silky, straight locks from Mom’s side of the family. The injustice.
A couple weeks ago, I had an existential crisis while memorizing useless formulas for a chemistry exam. My hair kept falling in my eyes, but instead of waltzing to the nearest hairdresser on Google Maps like a normal person, I gave myself the student equivalent of the Mom Chop, a layered bob just above the shoulders. A far cry from the one-length style I’d had since I was ten.
It was a mistake, particularly the bangs. Little did I know, shorter hair actually requires more styling. Otherwise, I look like a feral child who’s joined a pack of wolves. I’ve taken to pulling it into a messy bun, aside from nights (like tonight) where I felt inclined to make an effort.
Instinctively, I tug a few strands of my wavy bangs, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “I know you hate change, but it’ll grow back—”
“I do hate change, but this . . .” He leans back, seeming to appreciate it from another angle. “This is a good change. It suits you. More, actually, than your old hair.”
“Because it’s somehow more unruly?”
He snickers and conveniently doesn’t confirm nor deny. “Get over here.”
I do a dramatic slo-mo run to close the distance between us, practically knocking him over with my bear hug. Usually, when I propel myself into him like this, he coughs and shrugs his way out, affronted because personal space and all that. But tonight is different. And it’s not just that I can no longer touch my fingers together when I wrap my arms around his torso.
He’s actually hugging me back, like he knows how much I need this right now. He pulls me so close, my feet lift off the ground. His familiar scent folds around me, the same as always, laundry hanging on the line of a freshly mowed yard with a dash of existential angst.
It’s only when he sets me back down that I draw back to get a good look at his face. There’s something up. It’s evident in the sag of his shoulders. The droop in his brows. The tenseness in the corners of his mouth. He’s holding something in—something big.
Before I can even ask, he blows the air from his cheeks and says, “Sophie broke up with me.”