Page 81 of From Beijing, With Love

Daniel’s response was immediate. Remember it??? It literally scarred me for life.

Yang stared at the photo. There was nothing salacious about it. It was almost mundane, yet when he’d first laid eyes on it, he’d felt like that sixteen-year-old, pounding on the door to his best friend’s home to no avail. He’d lost his mom over the span of a long and tortuous year, and he’d lost his first love overnight. He didn’t know which one was worse, but he wanted some damn reprieve. He wasn’t that helpless ten-year-old anymore, and neither was he that ashamed sixteen-year-old.

Meiwen hadn’t replied to him yet. She probably hadn’t even seen the message, despite being perpetually tethered to her phone. Yang clicked on his message—the unrequited ask of that scared sixteen-year-old—and deleted it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVEDaniel

Daniel woke up in the dark, damp with sweat, his head throbbing. The smidge of Xi’an sky peeking out from between the blackout curtains was a shade of indigo. Maybe he should have said no when Poppy uncorked that second bottle of red.

Something faceless gnawed at him. He shook his head. Only he would be filled with dread while on vacation with his best friend and the guy he was falling in love with. But maybe that was the problem.

Because vacations were meant to end and he was leaving. Soon.

The fact filled his stomach with so much angst that he wanted to throw up. He didn’t want this to be how he and Yang ended, but he didn’t know how to ask for more. Was he even allowed to ask for more? He had never been allowed to when he was with Taylor. Everything was on Taylor’s terms. How it started and how it ended.

This is all just a lot. Those cursed words of Taylor’s echoed again. Perhaps they were etched too deep to ever be forgotten.

“Pops? Are you awake?” he asked the Poppy-shaped lump under the white duvet. She’d fallen asleep in his bed after they’d polished off the Merlots (plural).

Poppy let out a groan. “Yes. Deeply.”

“Sorry. Sleep tight.”

The bed shifted under her weight as she turned to face him, followed by a swift kick under the blanket. “Dumb dumb, I’m up. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to wake you up.”

“Then why did you talk to me?” She groaned again, a hand thrown over her face. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Daniel scooched out of her kicking radius. “Pops, am I … a lot?”

“Danny …”

He turned to face her in the darkness. “That’s what Taylor said when we broke up. Just tell me the truth. Not the best-friend answer.”

“First of all, fuck Taylor. I never liked his stupid face. He’s a dirty cheater with a tiny dick, and I hope it falls off from syphilis.”

A full ten minutes of trash talking (and no less than three mentions of different venereal diseases) later, she paused, seemingly formulating a response to Daniel’s actual question. “Danny, the truth is … you are not easy.”

Without warning, she sat up in bed and flicked on the light.

“Oh my god.” Daniel snapped his eyes shut. Flashing halos danced across the backs of his eyelids.

“Look at me.” She shoved him in the shoulder, hard.

“I want to, but you just blinded me.” Daniel rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. When he blinked them open, a grumpy Poppy greeted him. Her hair was haphazardly bunched in a messy ponytail, and her cream camisole was speckled with purple droplets, remnants of their evening.

“Listen.” She smacked him on the shoulder again. “You are not easy, but being easy isn’t everything. You are very particular, and you have a well-defined set of—”

“Rules. Limitations.”

“Boundaries. Everyone has them. Yours are maybe more rigid compared to other people’s, but I’m still here, ten years later. The same goes for the others back home. Don’t you see that you’re loved by people who have zero incentive to stick around if they don’t want to? You said not to give you the best-friend answer, but the thing is … I’ll always give you the best-friend answer because you are my fucking best friend.” She let out a sigh, covering the hint of a quiver in her voice.

“Pops, come here.” Daniel pulled her into a hug. “Thanks for loving me despite—”

She wrenched herself away. “No! You don’t get it. If you keep thinking it’s okay for people to love you despite who you are, then you are never going to get the love you actually deserve. Don’t you see you deserve better than Taylor? Not because he turned out to be a lying, cheating asshole with a tiny dick, but even before all that.”

Daniel chewed on the inside of his cheek. “He chose wrong, then he made a better choice.”