“I have a confession,” he murmurs between kisses. “That first day, sitting beside you in the van, I wanted to kiss you then.”
“Was that why you were such a jerk?”
“Was I?”
“Definitely. Where?”
“Where what?”
“Where did you want to kiss me?”
His voice is husky. “Everywhere.”
“Then do it,” I breathe, and his breathe quickens with an answering hitch. His lips graze my collarbone, presses to the tops of each shoulder. My hands curl in his hair as he lowers his head to my breasts. A laugh escapes my lips.
“Shh.” He rises with a soft splash. His lips brush my ear, “Unless you want counselors joining us?”
“No and don’t stop,” I say, and he dips me gently until I’m lying flat on the stones, gazing past the eaves at the stars, legs still in the water. Bracing his hands on either side of my elbows, he kisses my lips again, a single, chaste point of contact that makes the rest of me burn with jealousy.
“Wait here,” he breathes.
“Wait here for what?”
His mouth burns a line down to my belly button. It makes my body quiver like a tightly strung instrument. The splash of water echoes as he slips back into the pool.
And his mouth keeps descending.
Dear God. Is he—?
My stomach dips as his hands part my knees. He slides his shoulders between them, and his hands tuck under my thighs and take hold of my hips. He kisses a trail along the inside of each thigh, his breath warm on my skin, so near and intimate. My palms press the stones, all my body throbbing, unbelieving, as he asks permission to continue, and my whisper yes blends with the gurgle of the hot waters.
He takes his time. A slow burn that builds and builds, until I am clawing at the stones and my back arches and my toes splash and my body ripens under his grip.
Until the stars above explode into a billion supernovas of light.
33
When I come down for breakfast in the morning, Rick rises from a table for two by a window overlooking a rock garden. The hard body I explored last night is now safely clad in a green T-shirt and sports shorts. He pulls out my chair, and the mischief in his warm eyes, the quirk of those lips that did glorious things to me, makes me blush.
“You’re up early,” he teases. And when I simply drop into the chair, he feigns surprise. “Someone’s in a good morning mood.”
“I had a nice night.” I open my all-Chinese menu. “You know, the Dragon would be proud. I can read which dishes are soups, meats, vegetables—”
“Nice? Your night was nice?” Rick grabs my waist, angling for a kiss. My menu drops. “When we get to Sun Moon Lake tonight, I’ll show you nice.”
He kisses me and I tuck my hand into his hair that I am seriously crazy for. Our tablecloth is slipping and we’re drawing attention from an older couple the table over, but I don’t care. I want to see Rick no longer in control, but laid bare, drunk on pleasure. On me.
“Who knew Boy Wonder was so good with his tongue?” I murmur.
He smirks. “I won a speech contest junior year.”
“Such a waste of talent.”
“Hey, guys.” Sophie swings a third chair up to our table, glowing in her orange-striped dress. “I got us a spot! I heard the typhoon was jamming up flights so I called the National Theater again and I was right! An acrobatic troop from Singapore had to cancel and now the theater’s scrambling. Friday night when we get back to Taipei—it’s ours! My aunt and uncle will be there and Li-Han’s already agreed to move the whole talent show and open it to the public—now I just need to get the Dragon’s okay.”
“Wow, Sophie.” I pull free from Rick to give myself space to breathe. So many good things are tumbling into my life. “I can’t believe it. Yes, I can. The National Theater. You did it.”
She swings her black hair over her shoulder. “They’ll put posters in their box office windows and send an email to their list. They said we can even charge admissions.”
“Seriously?” I scoot my chair forward. “Let’s donate the proceeds to Mei-Hwa’s family. To all the families in her village impacted by the typhoon.”
“A benefit concert,” Rick says. “Perfect.”
“I should have thought of it sooner.” I hug him, then Sophie. “It’ll be a small way to give back to her.”
“And what about adding an auction?” Rick says. “It’ll raise more money. Then anyone can contribute, even if they can’t be onstage.”
“Sophie, you can pull it together, I know you can. We could ask everyone to donate stuff. Even Xavier—” I wrinkle the hem of our tablecloth. “Maybe he’d be willing to give us some paintings.”
Sophie’s hand moves to her ear, involuntarily searching for his opal earring. A small cloud passes over her face.
Then she leaps to her feet. “There’s the Dragon. Ever, come on.”
The Dragon scoops salted egg halves onto her rice porridge as Sophie explains. I shift my weight from foot to foot and at one point, the Dragon sets a finger on her nose and a thumb on her chin, listening like Mom does.
“Hǎo ba,” she says at last.
“We’re on!” Sophie starts to drag me away.
“Ai-Mei,” says the Dragon.
I turn back cautiously. “Wei?”
Her hawk-eyed gaze pierces. “This is a fine thing you girls are doing.”
Picking up her plate, she continues down the breakfast bar.
“She won’t think it’s so fine when I walk onstage,” I murmur as Sophie and I head back toward Rick. “Especially if our costumes are as sexy as you say.”
“By then, it will be too late,” Sophie sings.
“Ai-Mei.” Li-Han hands me a green hotel slip as I reach Rick. “Nǐ bàba dǎ diànhuà lái le.”
“My dad called?” I fight down a stab of panic. I still haven’t spoken with him since the nude-photo call.
Li-Han hands a second slip to Rick, who frowns. “Jenna? I thought she didn’t want to talk to me.”
I resist the urge to tear both slips into confetti.
Aloud, I say, “Looks like we both have calls to make.”
This resort has no fourth floor—the Chinese equivalent of unlucky thirteen because four sounds like death in Mandarin. My room is on the fifth floor, which means it’s really on the fourth, and I’m feeling the weight of all that unluckiness as I press my door open.
He’s not interfering with the talent show. No. Freaking. Way.
Not even if I have to eat a plane ticket home.
I check email first, to see if Pearl’s sent warning. She has, my faithful sister. Dad’s trying to reach you. Not sure what about. They’re speaking Chinese. Mom’s worried.
Dad picks up on the first ring.
“Hi, Ever.” I picture him on the other end, under his Cleveland Indians cap. His voice has calmed an order of magnitude since the nude-photos call, but that doesn’t mean bad news isn’t coming. “I asked the hospital to move my flight up a few days. I’m flying out tonight and will pick you up tomorrow afternoon, and we will fly out Sunday together.”
It’s better than threatening to fly me home, but not by much. He’s come to supervise me in person for my last days.
“I won’t be back on campus until late Saturday.” By the time he figures out I’m at the National Theater, as Sophie said, it will be too late.
“Oh, okay.” Dad sounds disappointed. “I’ll pick you up on campus Sunday morning. Keep your cell phone on, okay? I’ll text you on WeChat.” I’d expected anger, but his voice is kind. Almost pleading.
Have I dodged a bullet? “Sounds good, Dad.”
I hang up, but my hand stays on the phone. He’s about to board a plane, and I’d forgotten to wish him safe travels. That family ritual, a pinch of salt over my shoulder, without which misfortune might ensue. My absentminded dad, dreaming his doctor dreams as he walks through life. He’ll forget his luggage at the airport or walk into a wall without Mom to keep him focused
on where his feet are taking him.
“Safe travels,” I whisper. I hope it counts.
A knock sounds, and I open the door to admit Rick. He’s slung his backpack on his shoulder, ready to go.
“She didn’t pick up so I left a message. Everything okay?”
So we’re both off the hook. I should embrace it. Chalk my paranoia up to that lifetime of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
His hand lingers on my waist and I rise on my toes to kiss him. “Everything’s okay.”
By the time we disembark our buses onto the white-sand shores of Sun Moon Lake, our last stop, word of the benefit concert has spread. Debra and Laura offer to invite the Taiwanese officials they met as Presidential Scholars. More talent comes out of the woodwork, including an a cappella group and Spencer’s Martin Luther King Jr. rendition, which Sophie adds to our growing performance list.
“Put me and the boys down for a seven-minute block.” Marc winks, and refuses to say more. A warm breeze wraps its arms around us as the Gang of Five poses on the shoreline for another Take-Back-the-Trope photo: arms and legs raised for crane kicks, dragon fists doubled and cocked, teeth bared—Magical Martial Arts Gurus who have our entire bus roaring with laughter.
I laugh, too, and add their names to the list.
“You might have another calling as a talent scout.” Rick kisses my hair.
I smile. “Maybe we can be a lot of different things.”
Sophie and I find Xavier sitting against a palm tree under low-hanging fronds, sketching on a pad on his lap. White waves surge up the sand to lap at his feet.
He flinches when he meets my eyes and his hand moves to cover his sketch.
“What do you want?” His tone is edged.
Sophie, clipboard in hand, bravely drops down beside him on the sand, unconcerned about her orange dress. I sit on her other side, letting her explain the auction, the goal to help the flooded village. Xavier doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t tell us to leave him alone either.
“I bet your stuff would go for a lot,” Sophie finishes. “And it’s for a good cause.”
Xavier sets his pad on the sand. “My grandmother was Aborigine. Hence the curly hair.” He flicks a curl with his pencil. Glances at me, then at his sandals. “I might have a few paintings.”
“Okay, let me know.” Sophie’s all business, a front for those deeper things she can’t say or show. “I’m inviting all the local families, plus my aunt’s art collectors. I’ll make sure your work gets seen by the right people. If you do it, I won’t let you down.”
His eyes flicker with surprise. A small smile. “I’ve never doubted that.”
Mei-Hwa cries when I call her from Li-Han’s phone. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Lots of people want to help. They just need to know how.”
“My parents won’t believe it. My mom is nursing my new sister now—I will wait to tell her so she doesn’t drop her! Please thank everyone. For all my village.”
“I will,” I promise. “You should be dancing with us, too.”
“I have two left feet! But thank you, Ai-, I mean, Ever.”
“It’s okay to call me Ai-Mei. I like them both.”
“Hǎo de.” She laughs. “Xièxiè, Ai-Mei.”
I search the crowds for Rick, finally spotting him in his green T-shirt by the bus’s luggage compartment. His back is to me, body bent at an odd angle. He holds his phone to his ear. His body is webbed with stress lines I haven’t seen since he returned from Hong Kong. His thumb digs at the insides of his fingers in a familiar, fidgety gesture.
Fear lances my heart.
I sprint over the sand toward him.
“Please, I can barely understand you,” he’s saying. “You’re here? But how? Where?”
“What’s wrong?” I catch his arm, slipping on sand. “Who’s here?”
Rick lowers his phone to his chest, shoulders tensed like rocks buckling at a fault line. With a jolt, I see his fingertips are red with blood—from digging at those scars.
“She’s here,” he says, dazed. “She said she’s been trying to reach me for days.”
“What are you talking about?”
His eyes swing toward the road as a silver Porsche pulls onto the beach. A beautiful girl leaps from the back, stylishly cut black hair swinging at her jawline. Her crumpled black dress speaks of hours of travel.
“Rick!” Kicking off her sandals, she races over the sand toward us.
With a shock, I recognize her.
In person, she’s even more beautiful than her photo: all clean lines with a perfect brow, a narrow nose, rosebud lips. Large, movie-star eyes.
In my mind, I’d built her up into a huge presence. But in real life, she’s narrow-shouldered, tiny and fragile as gossamer. I’m horrified at the desperation she must be feeling, to have faced down her fear of flying and traveled so far.
“Rick, we need to talk.” She stops before him, with eyes only for him. At her throat glitters the sapphire class ring on its chain. She’s slightly out of breath, but her expression is composed, even lofty, like a princess—no wonder no one suspects how much she’s buried deep inside.
But then her face crumples like a stage curtain crashing down.
Flinging her arms around him, she presses her face to his, and bursts into tears.
34
“Let’s move people! Guests arriving in two hours!”
Sophie pushes through a slit in the backdrop curtain and onto the stage of the National Theater, her clipboard in hand. She’s dressed for work in slacks and a white, short-sleeved blouse.
The theater itself is alive with sounds: the rattle of wheels as Spencer and Benji cart in their dragon drums, the clop of shoes as my dancers whirl in their flirty gem-color dresses: emerald, sapphire, topaz—every last stitch in place.
A fresh coat of wax on stage covers the scuffs and scars of prior acts and from my spot in the center, the left and right wings feel miles away. Six spotlights blend double halos over me as, from the technician’s box at the back, a stage manager dressed all in black yells instructions. Sophie’s arranged for the theater to film the entire show.
I’m standing before three tiers with 1,498 velvet seats, where the Mariinsky Ballet danced and Broadway shows have performed and Yo-Yo Ma played his cello. This should inspire cartwheels. It’s the greatest night of my dancing career—and yet all of me aches as if I’ve been crushed under a collapsed bridge.
Sophie grips my arm on her way to a mic check. “He’ll be here.” She runs her hand through her hair and sighs. “I feel so terrible I never knew. None of us did . . .”
Rick left Sun Moon Lake with Jenna yesterday afternoon, afraid to leave her to make the trip back to Taipei alone. He called her grandparents in Hong Kong and is waiting for them to arrive.
The selfish part of me wanted to hang on as tightly as she did: Don’t go. I need you, too. To demand that Rick draw hard lines, the way Megan’s always pushed me to draw hard lines with my parents. But I couldn’t. Not with Jenna where she is.
What did they talk about in those long hours on the ride back to Taipei? They stayed last night at the Grand Hotel. He would have carried her bag into the plush lobby of red carpet and columns. Did their years together come slamming back? Did he find there’s no letting go of someone for whom you are breath and life?
And if she can’t let go, will his lifetime of subverting what he wants to his roles as the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son, as a big brother and a boyfriend, allow him to let go himself?
I have to believe there’s an order to this universe, even if we can’t see it, and that its fundamental design is good. One human was never intended to carry another. Rick and this summer gave me the courage to take charge of my own future.
I can only hope that I’ve done the same for him.
And if he decides it’s her, then this summer was about their destiny, not ours.
“Is Rick coming?” Debra asks, when I execute the solo
instead of the stick fight for our dress rehearsal.
“He’ll be here,” I say.
The girls exchange glances. Maybe Debra was right, and I shouldn’t have asked Rick to dance with us to begin with, or built our performance around the stick fight.
But I love it. Love dancing it with Rick. And if we don’t go after what we love, then what’s the point?
“He’ll be here,” I repeat. “And if not, I’ll do the solo. Come on. We have the blocking down. Let’s see if the auction people need help.”
In the sunlit atrium of the theater, girls from Lena’s Bible study are draping white cloths over rectangular tables and unfolding two dozen easels dropped off by Sophie’s aunt. Other kids are setting out saran-wrapped platters of mochi, niángāo, and other offerings from Chien Tan’s food electives on a dessert table.
Sophie snags three easels for Xavier. She sets out his painting of a pair of dragon boats on the Keelung River, angling it to best catch the light.
“He’s so talented.” She chokes. “I was so stupid, Ever.”
A lump solidifies in my throat. “We all were.”
“Hey, girls.” Xavier arrives in a silky black shirt, tucking a long roll of paper deeper under his arm. “I brought the mural.” His wavy hair is slicked back behind his ears. He spots his paintings and a muscle works in his jaw—I’m afraid he’ll ask us to take it down. Or bolt.
Then he straightens the three old men in black hats, which Sophie’s taken the liberty of labeling, simply, Three Old Men.
“When you put them up like that, it almost looks like a real artist did them.”
“A real artist did.” I move beside him. “But you haven’t signed them.”
His eyes meet mine, unreadable. “If anyone actually buys them, I will.”
Xavier and Sophie hoist his mural onto the stage’s backdrop. A lean green Chinese dragon flies through a collage of Chien Tan memories: the five interlocked gates to the National Palace Museum. A golden urn smoking with incense sticks. Dancers under strobe lights. Sun Moon Lake, the Chinese characters cleverly imbedded in its sun-and-moon-shaped body. A Y-shaped confluence of blue water flowing into gray water at the Taroko Gorge, the blue peopled by Asian American kids, the gray teeming with black-haired families of all ages.
Loveboat, Taipei Page 27