Page 37 of From Beijing, With Love

He was still smiling when he kissed Yang’s sharp jawline with that hint of stubble, then down to Yang’s neck, feeling every frantic beat of Yang’s heart against his lips.

Ring.

Daniel registered being shoved away at the same time he registered the doorbell. Yang scooched away from Daniel and straightened the collar of his shirt. Daniel sank into the sofa and ran a hand through his hair, where Yang’s fingers had been seconds ago, feeling drunk in more ways than one. He tried to meet Yang’s eyes, but Yang was staring at the door like a horde of zombies were about to burst through it.

When the hostess came in to ask if they wanted to extend the time, Yang shook his head. Daniel tamped down his disappointment. He wanted … needed more of this—more of Yang—but he didn’t know how to ask for it.

“What now?” Daniel asked as they walked out of the building to a golden-hour sky. Without the heavy edge of humidity, the air was crisp and sweet.

“We should probably call it a day.” Yang looked at his wristwatch. “I’ll walk you back to the hotel.”

“I can find my own way back if you need to run,” Daniel said with feigned nonchalance.

“I’m parked there anyway. And somehow I don’t believe that you can find your own way back,” Yang said with a lopsided smile. “A thousand yuan if you can prove me wrong.”

“Make it euros and we have a deal.” Daniel held out his hand.

After a pause, Yang took it. Something passed wordlessly between them as their handshake lingered, neither letting go. The teasing edge of Yang’s smile softened, and for a second, Daniel saw a glimpse of that same open vulnerability he had witnessed before.

“Lead the way,” Yang said.

Daniel felt all the possibilities behind those three little words.

Daniel followed Yang down the tree-lined street, not recognizing a single thing they walked past. They had wisely abandoned their bet after Daniel led them down the wrong street three times. Their current surroundings looked familiar in the sense that they were just as new and foreign as the rest of Beijing. The lingering effects of the cocktails dulled his edges, making the chaos of the Beijing traffic tolerable. He stole a glance at Yang and wished he could read his thoughts.

Now that his brain had gotten over the shock of the kiss, it was back to its regular programming of overthinking. Their kiss, tasting of Aperol Spritz and underscored by the piano melody, had felt like a necessity. An overdue inevitability. For him, at least. But what did it all mean to Yang?

He was using all the self-restraint he had not to dump a thousand questions onto the man he’d just kissed. For that Herculean feat, he deserved an award, or at least a few solid pats on the back.

“Does any of this look familiar to you?” Yang gestured around them while leading Daniel through a parking lot sandwiched between two buildings. They had just turned a corner on another one of those massive intersections where two congested eight-lane roads bisected one another. Daniel still found it hard to reconcile these two sides of Beijing—the concrete jungle and congested junctions versus the maze of alleyways and courtyard houses.

“I don’t know?” Daniel swiveled his head side to side. Blocky buildings, bumper-to-bumper traffic, trees so manicured they looked fake. After far too long, his eyes landed on a familiar perfume ad on the side of a shopping complex. “Oh.”

“Oh?” As always, Yang managed to make smug look good as he stopped to lean against a silver Prius that looked a lot like the car they’d driven to the Great Wall in. They’d been steps away from the hotel, and Daniel had no idea.

“Well, good thing I have a tour guide.”

“About that. Maybe I shouldn’t be your tour guide anymore,” Yang said sheepishly.

Daniel’s heart sank. Was this it?

The logical part of his brain (yes, it existed) knew that whatever this was, it had a fast-approaching expiration date. He was leaving the country in less than two weeks, at which point this would become nothing more than a memory. A story he’d tell years later, of the gorgeous guy he’d kissed in the dark karaoke room. But no part of his brain was prepared to say goodbye to Yang now.

“I know we had an arrangement, but I just can’t take your money, given …” Yang’s sentence trailed off. “But …”

Hope fluttered in Daniel’s chest. But was good.

“If you still want to, I’m happy to show you Beijing,” Yang said, a blush rising from his collars as he met Daniel’s eyes. “As friends.”

“As friends,” Daniel echoed. He would have succeeded at playing it cool if he weren’t nodding like a happy idiot. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Okay,” Yang answered after a pause, long enough to make Daniel sweat. “Tomorrow,” he said, almost to himself. He smiled, a little crooked, as he unlocked the car with a click of the fob.

“Uh, you—” Daniel said as Yang reached for the door. He knew he should probably shut up, but he couldn’t let Yang drive after all those drinks—on the Beijing roads, no less. “You’re not driving, right? You had, like, a thousand drinks.”

“Of course not,” Yang said, half surprised and half indignant. “And I do still have a basic grasp on counting. It wasn’t a thousand.”

“Sorry.” Heat flushed Daniel’s cheeks. Way to go on ruining the moment, if there even was a moment. Then he did the one thing that always helped in situations like this—overexplain. “You were reaching for the door, and I just thought—”