Outside the car window was an infinite sea.
The rain came down and stopped, the rainbow is not far ahead, the road back to the city is very long, I sat in the passenger seat, want to sit out of the corner of my eye, sneak a look at you.
You are holding the steering wheel in your hands and asking, "Why are you looking at me?"
A phrase "I have not asked you why you went to the beach with me" teasing to the mouth, I stopped, thought before and after, or silent.
"Didn't, didn't look at you." I said
You laughed, shaking your head, freeing your right hand to grab my left and give it a squeeze, leaving the smile at the corners of your mouth a little thicker.
You don't seem to notice my inner ups and downs and struggles.
We only met, oh no, reunited, two weeks ago.
I had taken a year off from school and returned to my home country from Seattle, interning all over the place to find direction for myself as I neared graduation.
In the summer, I temporarily settled in Guangzhou, working on weekdays and lining up on weekends at the Grandma's Beef Stew stall in Fangcun, or looking for Tim Chen's Fish Skin on Baohua Road, at my own leisure.
One day, I came out of the Guangxiao Temple and was stopped by a fortune teller at the entrance.
"Lady monk, you have a light scarlet color in your yintang, it's an auspicious sign."
"Academic great auspiciousness?" I asked smoothly and rhetorically, not raising my eyelids. "
"Oh heh heh, the affair of marriage, the past life has been predestined, congratulations to the female cast member line will be renewed."
"What former destiny, which former destiny?"
In my gleaming eyes full of hope, the fortune-telling is not slow, quietly stretch out five fingers.
"Renewal of the edge in the Wutai Mountain? Or his last name Wu ...... Wu? Or the name with five, the fifth in the family?"
"Five hundred dollars, is the fortune telling just now, add another five hundred, in order to solve the fortune."
"So expensive, a 25% discount!"
The fortune-teller's look was sacred, and his tone was serious: "The fortune-telling is the oracle of the Bodhisattva, and the money is collected for the Bodhisattva, so how can I bargain with the Bodhisattva? If the female monks do not have enough cash you can swipe your card."
I watched him pull out the pos machine without panic, a mess, and got up to leave, but he pulled me back, yelling that I hadn't paid the bill yet.
I was at a loss for words, but suddenly someone squatted down beside me, and slowly and methodically pulled out a check, wrote down the account number and "$500", and then tore it off in style, and lit it with a lighter.
"The Bodhisattva will receive the check within one business day, so I won't trouble you to do it for me."
After the words, this person pulled me up and left.
We walked three blocks together before "Great God, thank you so much," "You're welcome," "I'll go first then," and "Let's Let's go, there's only one way to the station anyway" before saying the first words.
I said, "You look like a person."
"Your friend?"
"Not really a friend." In return for his righteous relief, I told a story about a past that wasn't really a past.
Two winters ago, during my freshman year, a Twitter friend was passing through Seattle and asked me to meet him. He repeatedly stated that he wasn't a bad guy, and that if I didn't feel comfortable with him for a long time, he would bring a friend, and I would pick the time and place for dinner.
So, at 6 p.m. on a Friday, I met the duo at the Crab at the end of downtown.
We wore gloves and made small talk while smashing crabs with small hammers. This one was brought in by a Twitter friend, an elementary school classmate who had been away for more than a decade and happened to be interviewing for a job in Seattle. He was so eloquent that I hardly took my eyes off him as he talked about everything.
I saw him smiling at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were on me from time to time, and every glance could upset my heartbeat.
I hastily looked away, pretending to concentrate on the crabs, and then quietly looked over when I felt his eyes move away, and ate a bowl of crabs in this cat-and-mouse game.
He spoke to me, removing his grease-stained plastic glove to reveal a shiny silver ring on his left ring finger.
As he got up, I heard him ask for contact information, but I shook my head and said softly, "No, I don't think so.
How can you be friends with someone who is so attracted to you at first sight? I said to myself, and in the corner of my eye, I saw him withdraw his cell phone in slight embarrassment.
The first few days always dream of him, days a long time also gradually fade, but and microblogging friends gradually familiar with, something without a matter of each other to comment forward a little, but no longer from him to get the news of elementary school classmates.
"Do you still remember his name?"
"Of course, Justin Xu."
It was a hot afternoon in Guangzhou, and the Shunlu god fumbled with his wallet as slowly as he had fumbled with his check, handing me a business card. Justin Xu, an analyst at a private equity firm.
I turned my face, looked at him for a moment with an expression I didn't know what it was, and said earnestly, "It was an accident, and I really wasn't just confessing."
He said, "Oh," and then, whether intentionally or unintentionally, I saw him reach out and touch the bridge of his nose with his left hand, his ring finger empty.
How many surprising gifts of life are there, that I should meet you and meet you again in a sea of people?
2
The car entered the mountain highway, the vision was suddenly obscured by the dense forest, the hot pan-golden sunlight was cut by the leaves of the trees in strange shapes of light and dark. They hit the windshield window in clusters, and I stared at them for a moment, slightly dizzy and in a trance.
Do I really have to fall in love with you just like that?
How is this going to work.
The turn was a little steep, and you let go of my hand, saying you were going to drive carefully, but couldn't stop turning your face toward me.
"Why don't you say something' What do you want to eat for dinner, but also go to the log cabin barbecue okay*"
The log cabin barbecue, the tip of my heart a sweet.
The second weekend, you asked me to have dinner, art house barbecue. You flipped the beef tongue, grilled it delicately, doused it with lemon and dipped it in sauce, and put it in my bowl.
I told you to eat it too, and you said yes, but you still picked up the grilled meat and put it in my bowl.
Your left elbow is propped up on the tabletop, your body leaning forward slightly, the light outlining your silhouette softly, and you're smiling and not talking cool, so I ask what you're smiling about.
"Nah, just thinking Deja vu:u, now that's a scene."
"And two years ago' you really don't have to tell me you don't remember that dinner in such a cruel way. We had crabs, and you were too busy talking to help me peel them and bake them or anything." I said with a hurt expression.
"For a long time I grilled like this and wondered what it would be like if you were sitting across the table. I didn't even have your contact information, so I didn't think it would ever come true."
I blink, reacting for a moment, "Aren't you afraid of confessing your feelings too quickly for effect7"
You chuck a slice of freshly grilled beef tenderloin into my bowl, "Fine, I'll slow down then, I'll take you to whatever t you want to eat next week. "
I shake my head and plan to go to the beach next weekend." I'll take that as an invitation, I'll go with the body."
Then you ignore my "I don't agree", grill the meat, chuck it to me, laugh, and don't say a word. At night, I don't want to send you a tweet, baking your self-contained my hunger, stopping at your interface hesitant when you wrote, saying, I can't sleep.
Darkness and silence, I sat up at once, dialed your phone, describing my same mood, eyebrows flying.
It seems that, when liking someone, no matter how insignificant the little happenstance, it can be taken as destiny and a spiritual connection.
But we are indeed destined. I remembered for the umpteenth time the words of the fortune teller in front of the Gwangxiao Temple, "We have been destined in our past lives, and we will renew our destiny again", and the joy in my heart dispersed.
3
The toll booth was not far ahead, and there seemed to be only three lanes. Seven or eight cars driving side by side began to jump over each other from front to back and side to side, and the sound of insults and dissatisfaction was kept out of the window, so after a while of slowing down, we got stuck in the middle of a bunch of twisted cars.
I didn't hear what you observed, and stared blankly at you.
"What's on your mind'"
You reached up and cupped my cheek, your voice as gentle as your expression.
"I'm thinking about what she's doing and thinking right now." I reply.
Then all of my repression and worry broke through and I said more and more, faster and faster.
"It's morning on her end, isn't it, and she must be making breakfast and thinking: later she's going to go and remind you not to work too hard, to eat dinner on time, and to get an early night. She must be expecting you to call her, expecting you to say that you miss her, expecting you to go back to the family reunion earlier, expecting you to--"
The sound of a siren interrupts me, "I'm sorry, I was just jumping out of the way," you apologize sincerely and gentlemanly. You're polite even when you're in a hurry.
"These aren't your problems to worry about, let me take care of them."
But what happened last night in the waves doesn't make it any less so.
The moonlight floated on the surface of the sea, and the sparkling waves lapped rhythmically at the beach + I ran along the waves, and within two steps you lifted me back. You took off your jacket and wrapped it around me. It was windy, don't catch cold, you said.
Your bangs looked so good with the wind blowing them over your head that I pulled out my cell phone to take a picture of you, and it went off with a dead battery alarm, so I reached out to you, "Give me your cell phone, stand still, and strike a high-flying pose."
Your cell phone stored too many daytime photos, we watched the sunrise together with the water together with the speedboat to the island together with the scenery when climbing the mountain with my expression, the photos are ugly you also insisted that you feel the beauty of it, can not be deleted, I looked over one by one. Not far away, you have long obeyed the order to comply with, began to yell "and then do not shoot me on the laughing stiff", but in the moment I pressed the "click", the phone rang, is a girl's name, I ran up to hand you a cell phone.
You looked at the screen, muted the phone, and put it in your pocket.
"Why don't you answer it?"
You shook your head, "It's not important."
"What's important'" I ask.
"This." You answer.
The moonlight pours over you, making you look as if you glow, and the center of the light falls into your eyes, and you look deep into me with them, and I try to look away, but the body seems to be magnetic, and all of my faculties are interfered
with, and I don't listen to it.
The sound of fine waves lapping against the sand was all in my ears, everything but you was black, and for a moment I saw the eyes that were the source of the light lowered, not quickly or slowly, and you approached me with the slightest side of your face, and your breath came to me, and was dodged away as I stepped back and spun around.
"You owe me something." I said.
You looked puzzled for a moment and asked me what it was.
"A confession." I replied.
Standing in front of me, you scratched your head, opened your mouth, didn't make a sound, opened it again, and I ran away the moment you made the first syllable.
I ran forward along the waves lit by the white moonlight, the small waves beat and wet my skirt, my face burned a little as I remembered the unreadable expression on your face as you stared at me just now, you must have been surprised by the incoming other dimension, I had to calculate how to go from femme fatale back to softie.
When you took my hand, I hastened to walk obediently at your side, strolling with you in the sparkling white moonlight.
You tell me stories, your stories. Starting with our two years ago.
You say that two years ago you graduated from graduate school and were interviewing around for a job. American companies love to make gifts around the company's culture, and when you left that company in Seattle, you were given a ring with the company's LOCO on it, and comparing the size, you slipped it on your ring finger, went to dinner with your elementary school classmates, and met me.
You couldn't help but look at me, but my eyes were never on you, and you said a lot of interesting things that didn't work. You asked for contact information as a last ditch effort. You're still being rejected.
You think of me from time to time in the process of the complete farewell to the student years and the transition period, into the east of a good private equity firm, meet the conditions of a good girl, and then the company opened the Guangzhou office to send you, your life in the step of a person in the right track at the same time become boring and lack of detail.
You finally keep up with the trend to apply for a microblogging account, you find me on it, every day to see me jumping around with boundless energy, you will be my happy contagious, and then, even if you have always longed to do different people and different things, and now fall in the multitude of people who are working to go to work and so on the checks, and even if you don't want to go home at all, don't want to face your wife don't want to be so ordinary day by day old, you will still feel that Life is hopeful ......
Your sentences are getting more and more complex, I reacted for a while before speaking.
"You're married?"
The moonlight hit your face and you avoided my gaze.
"...... Nine months ago."
4
The tip of my nose soured with pain, and I knew my eyes were red.
I quickly opened the window, skimmed my face to the right, and squeezed my eyes into the sideview mirror.
You glance at me, smile helplessly, and continue driving.
The road is clear again, but it's nearly dark, the streetlights are waking up, and the road signs are reflecting the light, and the CPS is endlessly repeating how many meters ahead of you is such-and-such a place.
"At this rate, I don't think we'll get to the city until after 8:00. Still want to have the Jutsuya BBQ?" You ask.
I don't answer.
You begin to turn into various forks in the road more frequently, and the road is noticeably more complicated than before. There are sporadic home-scented lights around you, and downtown doesn't seem far away.
I'm still staring at the dark-colored landscape that's rapidly playing frame by frame, in a daze.
I congratulate you on your new marriage, you converge your head, do not answer, the next road, I always keep a distance from you, you are no longer close, only from time to time to remind me to wrap my jacket, do not catch cold.
Returning to the road will pass an ancient city, said early to go.
But I've already made up my mind, if you ask me if I'm still going to go, I'm sure I'll answer no
Right.
But you didn't ask.
There was soothing music playing in the car, and you suddenly spoke, "You haven't eaten much this morning, do you want to stop and look for a restaurant,"
I shook my head and said I wasn't hungry. I was really not hungry.
In a flash you had backed the car into a parking space and opened my door, "Get out."
I got up, saw the ancient city gates, and something in my heart moved.
The ancient city is supposed to be a newly developed scenic area, not many attractions, only two pedestrian alleys for tourists to sightsee and shop, and the rest of the place is still inhabited by aborigines who refuse to move.
These old residential alleys are narrow and deep, and my feet stepped on the green stone plate, I was not careful, fell.
You quickly squatted down and dragged me in your arms, asking where I fell and if it hurt.
I didn't hurt, but I hated it, and I said, "You ruined my long-awaited weekend at the beach cabin!"
You gently patted me on the back, "Think of it as bringing a free driver, just play your game."
"This free chauffeur part time job is causing me to cry, it's not cost effective."
"This free chauffeur moonlights to make you cry, and moonlights to make you laugh, so it's a good deal." You reply.
"Who laughed*" I point to my eyes and glare at you.
You laugh, you say, "Crying like a watery little lychee."
"A little lychee that you can only look at but not bite." I add.
"Well, no biting." You said, reaching up and pinching my cheek, tightening your arms and taking me into a hug.
Not like that, what I'm trying to say is stay away from me.
You carried me into a moody little restaurant, and as you were ordering, the waiter interjected, "Little couple newlyweds on their honeymoon, huh?"
You said, "Uh-huh," and your eyes were full of soft, gentle smiles.
In that moment, it was as if we were really newlyweds on our honeymoon.
I watched you sit down across from me, the sunlight from the carved wooden window projected on your silhouette, and I wanted to ask you, "Are you having a honeymoon?" , but you were flipping through the menu for me so gently, telling the clerk that I don't eat cilantro and to leave it out of all the food. I opened my mouth and didn't ask.
5
By the time the car pulled into the city, it was completely dark. Streams of neon were swarming with sound. You gripped the steering wheel with both hands, visibly more serious and nervous.
Malls and plazas stretched one after another, and when I passed one of them, a huge digital billboard on the building lit up my face, and you asked me how I was crying.7
I didn't say a word and I didn't look at you, and you took my left hand in your right hand and shook it gently, "It's become a little watery lychee again, and I'm thinking about what to eat, little lychee 🙂
I didn't speak or look at you, and you gripped my left hand in your right hand, and gently shook it, "It's becoming a watery little lychee again. "
"You drive slower." I replied.
I was thinking about our future.
We may bicker from time to time for different reasons and topics, but it all ends with you taking me into your arms and making my heart flutter at the tip of my toes, unable to remember any irritation or unhappiness.
We would hang on to each other every day, spend our weekends trekking and eating our way through interesting places around Guangzhou, and then come back to the States together. I'd go east for an internship and you'd familiarize me with every inch of it, then I'd graduate, work, and we'd settle down in New York. I'll take care of your life, encourage you to press for your dreams, and hold hands at leisure to watch the sunset by the water.
Once in a while we drove to all sorts of places, you took beautiful pictures of me, I looked for trouble and you solved it, just like yesterday's beach and today's trip to the old city.
Many nights I watched you fall asleep, and then in the silence I wrote down the places we've been and the things we've experienced. There will always be someone to read our stories in the long future when we are old and even dead.
You were in every frame of my fantasies, and they all ended in tragedy.
Yes, at the end of the scenario there is always a girl, holding you intimately, and together you stand against me, and she tells me that you are not mine, that you can never be mine again.
Why didn't you let me know two years ago that it was just a company cultural memento?
Red light, you were about to speak and green light, you simply put the car parked horizontally on the side of the road in front of a small restaurant. Turning to me, with a serious expression, you opened your mouth and threw your voice.
"I believe that things don't happen for nothing, God arranged for us to magically meet again, is suggesting that it's time to make up for everything and fix everything. I've been living in my mistakes for the past two years, but not anymore, you're here again and I'm not going to let you get away again, I'll take care of everything that's come up because of this ......"
You're really good at saying that, I've only just built my walls and admonished myself to accept my fate, with an eternity of two years between us , and you refuted my point, whipping people into shape and tearing down the walls of my heart, word for word.
Why is there so much right and wrong, I just like someone.
But why would a girl want to squeeze into a world where she doesn't have her own place in the world,
They're making it difficult for others, and they're making it difficult for themselves. I'm not sure if you're going to be able to do that, but I'm sure you're going to be able to do it," he said.
I look at you, the heart of the cold hate, just happened to meet your eyes, the body in the chaotic light of the street lamps on my paper, soft soft soft, I have where to melt.
The microblogging on the chicken soup of the soul, are easy to forward, difficult to do.
"You are so eloquent."
You pinch my face, "What a little lychee."
"Shall we be friends?"
The car drove out of the downtown area, the lights and the noise faded away, and in the silence, I suddenly said.
"Yes, let's be friends until I work it out." You reply.
How would you solve the problem.
You would go home and confess my existence to your wife, you would break her heart, you would alarm your parents, your friends, it would be an ordeal every time you go home and see your friends, you would start to have no heart I make, and get caught on the beach by the backwaters of the highly competitive financial industry. You consider the cost of divorce, the loss of property, energy and prestige to deter you; or you simply find that the original is just a raw bracket of harmony and calm, masking your dependence on your wife, you actually can not leave her. In any case, Hugh will forget what he said to me today.
You will not be able to bear to that far away in the United States also called every day to urge you to pay attention to the body, waiting for you to come home to the girl to say cruel words, your false promises to me more and more perfunctory, one day I suddenly realized that everything you say is never just a lie, we argued endlessly, I said you are a liar, you said it is my own shameless. I scolded more ferocious, but also can not return to my consumed in your body of youth and feelings, so I hate you more.
By that time, all of our heartfelt, pleasurable feelings will have deteriorated. We no longer respect each other and see each other as a heavy burden, and you try to get rid of me every day.
"Let's just not contact each other anymore." I said, there is no better moment between us than this one, and the road ahead is full of trouble and lies.
"Other Dimension, listen to me-"
I shove a lychee in your mouth and gag your words. Where do I need to listen to your view. You merely looked at me and I collapsed.
6
The car window is full of restaurants, neon lights tirelessly, blinking, the aroma of dishes into smoke wafting into the air, people coming and going, a happy sad numb face into my sight and then leave. It was past eight and I still wasn't hungry.
"You might as well take me home, I'm really not hungry today." I said.
"Okay, then eat a little something to pad out when you get home and I'll pick you up from work tomorrow to make up for that meal."
You said as you operated the CPS on your phone, changing your destination to my neighborhood and re-entering the traffic of the night city.
"See you later." I said to you, not answering the question.
"See you tomorrow." You note softly.
"Bye." I corrected.
"Uh, bye." You responded, not seeming to pick up on my subtly different phrasing.
Fang, I took one last look at you, deleted your WeChat, cell phone number, and pulled the plug on your Weibo, completely giving up on this two-year-late relationship.
Maybe years from now we'll meet again and playfully talk about my churning, tangled, young heart this evening. But at this time, I must resist your powerful magnetism by disappearing.
At some point in your life, you probably should have been my boy, but that moment has long since passed unnoticed.
You are my lost cause.
The neon dispersed, the tips of the buildings in the neighborhood came into view, and the GPS sounded the alert that there were still 0.5 kilometers to go from the destination.
Dear boy, when I get off the bus, please make sure everything is okay