Chapter 7. Now
7
Now
Renee woke to the pale light of London shining through the blinds into her bedroom, and the smell of coffee. The bedroom door was shut, but through it came the sounds of someone trying to be quiet in her flat.
She was alone in her bed. When she sat up, pushing the duvet down, a scent rose from the sheets, of Ket Siong, and what they’d done together the night before. Heat flooded her face.
That was a first for her. Not having sex— that she’d done, obviously—but she’d never previously slept with anyone she wasn’t already in a relationship with. It was the kind of thing white people did in movies.
Examining herself, Renee found she didn’t regret it. She felt a little surprised, but also energised, the way one did when trying something new, discovering unsuspected capacities in oneself.
She could see why people had hookups, if it was always like that . Whatever the problem had been between her and Ket Siong, it definitely wasn’t lack of chemistry.
That was “have a one-night stand” ticked off her bucket list. It was a good time to have done it, if she was ever going to. If everything worked out with her dad and Chahaya, Renee might soon have a lot less freedom to have liaisons with guys she fancied. Next time she wanted to feel refreshed, she’d have to go skydiving or something.
She rolled out of bed, pulling on a sweatshirt and shorts. She smelt of Ket Siong. It was both hot and weird.
She should shower, brush her teeth, and do something about her hair. But she was drawn to the living room by that smell of coffee.
Ket Siong was sitting at the Peranakan marble-topped dining table she’d paid way too much for. He was in his suit, limned in morning light, eating something.
The scene was like something out of a magazine shoot. Ket Siong looked like an actual dream, a fantasy boyfriend Renee’s fevered brain had concocted out of lust and loneliness.
Whoa, girl. Renee didn’t want a boyfriend—not right now, anyway. It wasn’t like Jason had been much of an advertisement for the species. She needed to focus on herself for a while, figure out why she was always going for unavailable men.
Which was not what was happening here, she told herself. Sure, Ket Siong had rejected her years ago, but she was long over that. The whole reason she’d invited him in was that she’d known nothing serious would come of it. He’d probably agreed for the same reason.
This sudden longing was no doubt partly chemical—a product of the hormones generated by a night’s admittedly great sex—and partly psychological, proceeding from a retrograde part of her brain, convinced she needed a boyfriend to matter and desperate to find one to replace Jason ASAP.
“You’re up.” Ket Siong looked relieved. She supposed he hadn’t wanted to slip out while she was asleep. That was nice of him.
Renee looked at the table so as not to stare at Ket Siong and his offensively great skin. She’d bet he splashed some water on his face every morning and called it a day. God was so unfair.
Baked goods were spread out on Emma Bridgewater plates on the table. Seeing the plates, with their cheery pattern of wildflowers, gave Renee a little shock. They were Auntie Mindy’s, and Renee hadn’t seen them in years. It was like being thrown back in time.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had friends over to the flat. Ket Siong must have unearthed the plates in the kitchen cabinets.
He’d also presumably acquired the baked goods. There were pastries, buns of various kinds, and…
“Is that coffee for me?” said Renee, brightening.
Ket Siong pushed the cup across the marble surface towards her.
“That’s a cinnamon bun, and that one’s cardamom,” he said. “This one has a custard-and-coconut filling. You should eat them now. They’re freshly baked.”
“You’ve been busy.” The natural thing to do would be to sit down. After a moment’s hesitation, Renee slid into a chair one seat over from Ket Siong, scooping up her coffee. That left a polite amount of space between them—not so distant as to be offensive, but not so close as to be weird.
He’d got her an Americano. Funny that Ket Siong should have remembered her coffee order after all these years.
“Where did you get these from?” she said.
Ket Siong jerked his head at his phone, charging in a corner. “There’s a Scandinavian café nearby. They deliver. I borrowed a charger,” he added. “I hope that’s OK.”
“Of course.” Renee was smiling helplessly. “I love this kind of thing.” She took a bite out of the cardamom bun, closing her eyes briefly in bliss. “Sweet buns, they’re all I’d eat in heaven.”
Ket Siong was watching her. Renee remembered, suddenly, dragging him into a Chinatown bakery once when they were students. She’d insisted on buying one of every bun. They’d sat in Leicester Square and eaten them together, watching the tourists.
She cast her eyes down. “It’s really good. You’re bringing some home for your family, right?”
“You eat first,” said Ket Siong.
Renee cleared her throat. “Got anything planned for the day?” She glanced at the clock. It was quarter to eight, early for a Saturday. She tended to sleep in on the weekend.
“I’ve got a few classes. You?”
“Got some work stuff to catch up on. There’s never enough time during the week.”
Ket Siong would want to get going. He taught kids music; the weekend was probably his busiest time. It had been sweet of him to buy breakfast.
“This has been nice,” said Renee. “I’ve enjoyed… this.” She flicked her hand in a gesture meaning him, the table laden with coffee and pastries, and the night they’d spent together.
She was a little startled, looking up, to catch Ket Siong looking at her. His face was set, like he was bracing himself for something.
He didn’t need to worry. Renee wasn’t going to angle for another meetup, or ask for his number. She knew that, in the nicest way, the only reason he’d slept with her was because they didn’t have a friendship to ruin anymore.
She opened her mouth, intending to make it clear he wasn’t about to hurt her feelings, because she’d never invested any in their encounter in the first place. But Ket Siong spoke first.
“Yes,” he said. “I’d like to see you again.”
Renee blinked. “Oh.”
It was flattering to be asked. There was no reason it should send a thrill of terror down her spine. She took another bite of the cardamom bun to disguise her reaction, trying to ignore the twisting in her stomach.
An enjoyable hookup with someone she could trust to be discreet was one thing. She couldn’t afford anything more complicated. She had too much going on in her life as it was.
The narrative slotted in place in her head, her heart rate slowing. It sounded good. It held together. It was significantly less embarrassing than the conviction running underneath it, that she couldn’t let Ket Siong keep looking at her the way he was doing now, because one day he might decide to stop.
She didn’t want to imagine what that would feel like. It had hurt enough the first time around.
This was getting way too close to memories and feelings Renee did not want to look at. The whole point of last night had been to have something nice and affirming after the shitshow of her morning with Jason. She needed to keep this clean, manageable. Under control.
“The thing is,” said Renee, “I told you what’s going on with my family.”
Ket Siong nodded. “Your father is choosing his successor to run the family business.”
Renee leaned forward, anxious to impress the significance of the opportunity on him. “I really think I’ve got a fighting chance. My brothers are approaching their forties and showing no signs of growing up. Dad’s getting fed up. Meanwhile, my business is doing well… but you know what my family’s like. I can’t give anyone any dirt on me. My family still think I’m with Ja—with my boyfriend.”
Ket Siong’s expression flickered. “Your boyfriend?”
“Ex,” said Renee. Even though it was none of his business, she didn’t want Ket Siong to know how recently it was that Jason had gone from boyfriend to ex.
“I don’t want you to think—it’s not that you aren’t—” Renee felt a flush rise under her skin. She wanted to be careful of Ket Siong’s feelings, but she also didn’t want to give away too much of her own.
“It’s never been easy for me to make friends,” she said finally. “Your friendship meant so much to me, back then. You’re a great guy. I’m just not looking for anything serious right now.”
The silence that followed was awful. Renee wrapped her arms around herself, wishing she hadn’t opted for shorts. Growing up in the tropics meant they were her automatic choice for lounging around in at home, but the underfloor heating wasn’t doing quite enough to set off the morning’s autumnal chill. She felt exposed, in more ways than one.
Though it wasn’t like Ket Siong was staring. He was looking down, toying with his cup of coffee. Renee couldn’t make out his expression.
“I understand,” he said.
Renee sighed.
“Do you think I’m a huge slut?” she said plaintively.
That succeeded in making Ket Siong raise his head. He looked taken aback. “No.”
“Good. Obviously it’s fine if casual sex is your thing,” Renee added conscientiously, thinking of Nathalie, whose amorous adventures prior to marriage Renee had always regarded with respectful admiration. “But I don’t usually—last night was the first time I’ve ever taken a guy home like that.” She smiled. “As you said, you’re not just any guy.”
Ket Siong reflected her smile back at her, but she seemed to have made him more depressed than anything else.
He said, “Back then… it didn’t end well between us.”
Maybe it had been a mistake to refer to their shared past.
“No,” said Renee.
“I’ve always been sorry for that.”
Renee didn’t want to go over that old ground.
“It’s fine,” she said quickly. “Ancient history.”
Ket Siong shook his head. “I didn’t handle it well.” He didn’t seem comfortable talking about how they’d parted, either, but it was clear this was important to him.
“It’s not how I wanted things to go,” he said, with an effort. “I felt I didn’t have a choice.”
“Because you were leaving London,” said Renee, who desperately wanted this part of the conversation to be over.
Ket Siong hesitated. “That was part of it.”
Renee could have asked what the other part was, but she knew the answer. She’d spent enough time brooding on the ill-starred evening that had ended their friendship.
She’d pushed things too far, dragged Ket Siong into something he’d later realised he didn’t want. It would have hurt less if Ket Siong had pretended he wanted to stay friends after. But the fact was, he hadn’t trusted her not to make things weird again.
And he was probably right. Renee had been head over heels for him, and she wasn’t used to being into a boy without him returning her feelings. The guys she’d dated at that age might not have treated her well, or turned up on time for dates, or valued her achievements. But she’d never had any difficulty getting them to date her. She wouldn’t have been great at keeping things platonic with Ket Siong.
He’d had to leave the country anyway. From his point of view, there had been no reason to maintain the connection.
“I get why you did it,” said Renee. “I’m not going to pretend it didn’t upset me at the time. But it was a long time ago, Ket Siong. We were both so young. There’s no need to dwell on the past.”
Ket Siong was turning his cup over and over in his hands. He put it down.
“I understand you’re not interested in… that now’s not the right time for a relationship,” he said. “But I meant what I said. I’d like to keep in touch.”
“Keep in touch,” echoed Renee.
“It was good, when we were friends,” said Ket Siong. “Wasn’t it?”
That, Renee couldn’t deny.
If this was a guy Renee had pulled at a club, or even an old acquaintance from uni, it would have been easy to decline further contact. But Ket Siong was different. She knew he only ever said what he meant. She could trust him to respect the boundaries she’d drawn.
And it wasn’t like Renee had loads of friends. It had been exciting when Nathalie announced she was moving to London, but they hadn’t seen all that much of each other since she’d arrived with her family a few months ago. With a big job, a small child, and a husband, Nathalie was never quite as available for cocktails and gossip as they both would have liked.
Renee was busy, too, of course. Even though Nathalie was the only close friend she had in London—the one person she might ring up in an emergency, or suggest lunch to for no particular reason—she barely noticed her isolation, day to day. It wasn’t like she’d had many friends she could rely on in Singapore, either. She was used to being on her own.
That didn’t mean she didn’t know it was a problem. Her therapist used to suggest it might be an idea for Renee to be less guarded with others, allow people to get close to her. Or rather, she’d listened and asked questions until Renee herself came to that conclusion. But it was one thing to recognise that something might be a good thing in theory, another to execute.
Here was an opportunity.
“It was good,” said Renee. “Is that what you want? To be friends?”
Ket Siong met her eyes. “I’ve missed you.”
Renee’s treacherous heart gave a thump. A small voice at the back of her head said, Maybe this isn’t a good idea.
But it would be a pity to lose touch with Ket Siong again. There was no need to let her baggage get in the way. She wasn’t in love with him anymore. Perhaps that meant they could actually be friends, this time.
“I missed you, too,” she said. “You’re on WhatsApp, right? What’s your number?”
Ket Siong had more concrete ideas. As he saved Renee’s number to his phone, he said, “There’s a retrospective of Rembrandt’s works on at the National Gallery. I was thinking of going. Would you be interested?”
Renee was always forming resolutions to make more of the city’s galleries and theatres, and never doing it. She hadn’t been to a museum in months, other than the reception the night before.
“That sounds good,” she said. She smiled, a little nervous, and was rewarded when Ket Siong smiled back—his rare, sweet smile. It lit up his face, giving it a totally different cast.
Maybe this was going to work.
“Let’s do it,” said Renee.