by Ana Huang
They arrived at their destination. It was a well-known spot, just not amongst the college crowd. He doubted Farrah had heard of it.
The look on her face when the building came into sight proved him right.
“What is this place?” she breathed, her eyes wide with amazement as she took in the architectural marvel in front of her.
Tucked in the northwestern corner of the French Concession, the mansion resembled a Northern European storybook castle with its brown-tiled Gothic and Tudor steeples and spires. There were Chinese touches too, like the two stone lions guarding the front gate and Chinese-style glazed tiling along its roof. It was a radical departure from the colonial architecture that made up most of the French Concession.
Blake grinned at Farrah’s reaction. “It’s called Moller Villa. It belonged to some rich European guy, but it’s a hotel now. Don’t worry—there’s a restaurant inside.”
“How did you find this place? I can’t believe I’ve never heard of it and I’m supposed to be the design student.”
“It’s not in a lot of Shanghai guides. I only know about it because I was hanging out in a cafe nearby, and one of the staff recommended it.”
Farrah slid a glance in his direction. “You met quite a few new people while we were gone.”
She was no doubt referring to Mina. For his own sake, Blake chose not to take the bait.
They didn’t have reservations, but the hostess squeezed them in after Farrah said something to her in Mandarin. He couldn’t understand everything she said, but he picked up on the words “boyfriend” (nan pengyou) and “one year” (yi nian).
“What did you tell her?” he whispered as the hostess led them to their table.
“I told her you’re my boyfriend and it’s our one-year anniversary. This was where we had our first date, but you forgot to make reservations.”
“Throwing me under the bus. Typical girlfriend behavior.”
Her silvery laugh was music to his ears.
Chill, man. Stop acting like you’ve never been on a date—
He caught himself in the nick of time. This wasn’t a date. This was—why were they here again? Right. He was thanking her for the elephant.
It was 100% not a date.
Just a guy and a girl he found wildly attractive, having dinner in a romantic hotel in Shanghai.
Shit.
They took their seats and examined their menus. Blake hadn’t been lying when he said he didn’t know if the food was good. Judging by the way Farrah’s eyes roved the room, examining every detail, it didn’t matter. They both knew what they were here for, and it wasn’t the lamb.
“You really love it.”
Her gaze snapped to his. “What?”
“Design. You haven’t stopped staring at the architecture since we arrived.”
“Sorry. I’m being a bad dinner companion.” Farrah bit her lip. “This design contest is taking over my life.”
“It’s nothing to apologize for.” In fact, her passion fascinated him. What was it like to wake up every day feeling that excited about something? Pretty nice, he’d bet. “How did you get so interested in interior design?”
“You could say it’s been a lifelong dream.” Farrah smiled. “Sounds cheesy but when I was seven, my parents redecorated the house, and I tagged along with them to the furniture and paint stores. Most kids my age would’ve found it boring. I loved it. Turns out I had a knack for matching colors and arranging furniture. My dad even brought me to his office—” A shadow crossed her face. Farrah cleared her throat and sipped her water. “Anyway, the rest is history.”
“A seven-year-old prodigy,” Blake teased. He stabbed a piece of meat with his fork. “Do you think you like design so much because you’re good at it, or you’re good at it because you like it?”
“I never thought about it.” Farrah traced the rim of her glass with her finger. “Both, I guess. I’m good at it and I like it. I love taking a space and helping it fulfill its potential. Like this restaurant is just a room, right? But with the right furniture and colors, it’s a formal dinner spot. Change things up, and it can be a cozy library or a modern minimalist gallery. It can be anything. My job is to mold a space into something that’s perfect for the owner—something that’ll transform it from just a room into an experience, or a home. We spend most of our lives indoors. How incredible is it to shape something that’s such a huge part of people’s lives?”
Blake was so swept up in Farrah’s enthusiasm he could picture everything she was saying—the library, the gallery, the gasps of delight when the owners saw their redecorated homes for the first time.
“I’m rambling.”
“No. I love hearing you talk about it. It’s…captivating.” The word slipped out without thought. Part of Blake wanted to take it back, but it was the perfect word to describe how he felt seeing the sparkle in Farrah’s eyes and hearing the animation in her voice.
Farrah blushed.
Blake’s stomach did a slow roll. He thought he’d gotten over the silly things his body did when he was around her. After all, he’d had enough sex the past three days to get any girl out of his system.
Guess not.
Farrah grabbed water. “Isn’t that how you feel about football?”
The warmth dissipated. Blake leaned back and fiddled with his own glass. “If that were true, I’d still be on the team.”
“You were so good. Or so I heard.” Farrah shrugged. “I don’t follow football.”
A smile touched his lips. “Thank god. I’m the opposite of you—good at what I did, didn’t particularly like it. Not enough to do it for the next ten, twenty years of my life.”
“That’s why you quit?”
Blake swallowed. “It’s part of it.”
Fortunately, Farrah didn’t press him on the issue. Unfortunately, she asked him a harder question. “If not football, then what do you want to do?”
Blake remembered his excitement at The End Zone. He’d thought he could do it—start his own business. After sleeping on it, it seemed ridiculous. Sure, he’d already designed the menu in his mind, and he had a million ideas for marketing and how he wanted the place to look, but dreams don’t require capital. Businesses do.
The only capital he had was a couple thousand bucks in savings. A liquor license alone cost more than that.
Blake forced himself to smile bigger. “I’ll figure it out.”
Chapter Eleven
“He can’t do this to me.” Kris snatched a dress off the rack and tossed it on the growing pile of clothes draped over her arm without glancing at the price tag. “I won’t let him.”
“Be careful!” Olivia winced. “That dress is like a thousand bucks.”
“Good. I’ll get one in every color.” Kris added the red, gold, and blue versions before moving on to the skirt section.
Farrah trailed after her, trying to ignore the fact that the total value of the items in Kris’s arms equaled that of a small country’s GDP.
“She always does this when she’s upset,” Courtney whispered. “She’ll be fine after some retail therapy.”
“Honey, that’s not ‘some.’ That’s a lot of retail therapy,” Olivia said as Kris dumped her haul into a nearby saleswoman’s arms so she could flick through a rack of Maison Margiela skirts. “Besides, I don’t think shopping will cut it this time. Her dad is getting married to someone five years older than her. That’s gotta sting.”
“I can hear you.” Kris yanked a skirt so hard off the hanger the delicate material ripped. Everyone gasped. The saleswoman looked like she was going to have a heart attack. “Calm down. I’ll pay for it.”
“Sweetie, slow down,” Farrah said gently. “We can’t carry all of this back to the dorm.”
“I’ll hire someone to carry it back. Don’t you know? Money can buy anything, including a 26-year-old redheaded bimbo who thinks she can take my mom’s place.” Kris’s lips trembled before she caught herself. She tossed her hair over her shoulder,
her jaw set in defiance.
“Oh, honey.” Courtney’s eyes swam with sympathy. “It’ll be all right.”
“Maybe she isn’t so bad,” Olivia said. “Maybe she really loves your dad.”
“Please.” Kris sniffled. “He’s twice her age, and I love my dad, but he’s not George Clooney. The only thing she loves about him is his bank account.”
“Soo…the strategy is to drain it before they get married?” Farrah joked, trying to lighten the mood.
It didn’t work.
“Hilarious,” Kris said. “I can’t stop the wedding while I’m in Shanghai, but I can strategize. They’re not getting married until next November. In the meantime, I’m going to let Daddy know exactly how upset I am.”
“Oh, I think he knows,” Courtney said. “The entire girls’ hall heard you screaming yesterday.”
Farrah and Olivia nodded in affirmation.
“The only language my dad understands is money, and he has tons of it. What I spend today won’t even make a—” Kris stopped and held up a finger. “Wait.”
They waited.
“Court, your birthday is coming up.”
“Two weeks.” Courtney rubbed her hands in anticipation. “We’re going to rage. Gino’s and 808 will never be the same.”
“Forget Gino’s and 808.” Kris fished her black Amex out of her purse and handed it to the saleswoman, who snatched it up and hurried to the cashier without dropping any of the clothes items on the floor. “I’ve got something better in mind.”
What that something was, no one knew. Kris refused to tell them because she wanted it to be a “surprise.” All she said was not to schedule anything for the entirety of Courtney’s birthday weekend and to let the rest of the group know.
When they returned to the dorm, Kris hightailed it to her room with her purchases. Olivia, who’d made it to the interview round for the CB Lippmann internship, went to prep for her video call tomorrow, while Courtney had a Skype date with her family.
That left Farrah with the rest of the afternoon to herself. She’d finished her homework and didn’t feel like wrestling with YouTube or Netflix. Between her VPN and the dorm’s slow-as-a-snail WiFi, streaming video was a constant struggle.
She wandered down to the boys’ floor to find Sammy. He wasn’t there. Neither was Blake. Farrah wondered whether he was with the brunette she’d seen coming out of his room the other day. Her stomach twisted at the thought.
Were they dating? Where did they meet? If they were dating, Blake and Farrah’s dinner seemed quite intimate for a guy who had a girlfriend, no? Farrah could’ve sworn—
No. Stop it.
Farrah forced herself to stop thinking about Blake and ran through her other options for company. Luke and Leo lived in homestays, and she wasn’t desperate enough to seek out Nardo.
As a last resort, she checked the student lounge, which FEAers never used. Why would they, when they had a whole city to play in?
The quiet lounge carried the musty smell of a place that hasn’t been disturbed for a while. Farrah was about to leave when she noticed the person reading in the armchair in the corner. A faint sliver of sunlight illuminated Leo’s sculpted features.
“Dostoyevsky,” she said, making out the book cover from a distance. “Impressive.”
Leo’s head jerked up. His shoulders eased when he saw who it was. “You should work for the CIA. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I’m guessing it’s less my spy skills and more the Crime and Punishment.” Farrah pulled up the chair opposite Leo. “Not a lot of college students spend their Saturday afternoons reading Russian literature.”
“They’re missing out. What’s more exciting than crime and punishment?”
Farrah’s mouth quirked up. “You have a point.”
This was the first time she’d seen Leo since Thailand. He and Courtney said they made up after their fight, but the air between them remained tense. Leo had begged off every group dinner since they returned, citing schoolwork or homestay obligations.
“You look like you just ran a marathon.”
“Sort of. I went shopping with Kris.”
“Ah, that explains it.”
“I don’t know if Courtney told you, but Kris found out her dad’s getting remarried to some 26-year-old he met at a cocktail bar a few months ago. She’s pissed.” Farrah watched for a reaction to Courtney’s name.
“I wasn’t aware.” Leo’s face was as smooth and blank as marble. “That sucks.”
Time to stop beating around the bush. “What’s going on with you and Courtney?” Whatever it was, they needed to suck it up and make up—for real.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You had that big fight in Thailand, and things haven’t been the same since.”
Leo thumbed through his book. “They’ve been fine.”
“You’ve avoided us—correction, you’ve avoided Courtney—since we got back.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Bullshit.” Farrah slammed her hands on the armrests, causing Leo to jump. “Tell the truth. What’s going on? Are you guys breaking up?”
“We’re not dating.”
“I’m not an idiot. Neither of you has been with anyone else since the year started. In college world, that’s dating.”
“Really?” Leo arched an eyebrow. “Shall I pull out a dictionary?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
He flipped his book open and closed. “Look, Courtney’s a cool girl. She’s fun, and I enjoy hanging out with her. But…” He trailed off. His brows drew together in a deep V. “She can be a little…”
“Bossy?”
Leo shrugged.
“We all know she’s bossy. She knows she’s bossy. That’s part of her charm.”
“I guess.” Leo sighed. “Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to be with someone more chill. Someone like you, for example.”
Farrah choked on her spit. He didn’t say that. Did he just say that?
This was the moment she’d fantasized about since she first laid eyes on Leo.
She expected fireworks.
She expected sweaty palms and jitters in her stomach.
Instead, there was…nothing. The butterflies that used to take flight whenever she saw Leo didn’t so much as stir.
“Um, I—”
“Hypothetically.” Leo’s face crinkled into a smile. “I know I’m not your type.”
“You’re not?” That was news to her. Leo was exactly her type: tall, dark, handsome, sensitive, intelligent. He checked every box on her Ideal Guy checklist.
And yet, nothing.
Maybe she was so used to pining after him she didn’t notice the flutters anymore.
“Nah, you need someone who can challenge you. You’d get bored with me. The two of us would just sit around all day in our thoughts.”
She laughed. “There are worse things in life.”
“True, but it wouldn’t be very exciting.”
“Which is why you and Courtney are perfect. She talks enough for both of you.”
Leo’s laugh joined hers. “That she does.”
In the approaching dusk, Leo looked like a sculpture come to life. But as Farrah sat there across from the boy she’d fantasized about since the beginning of the semester, she felt nothing. No butterflies, no skipped heartbeats, no giddiness from his mere presence.
There was only one person who made her feel that way.
He was blond and cocky and infuriating, everything Farrah thought she didn’t want. But he was also sweet, thoughtful, and made her laugh in a way no one else could.
Oh god.
Farrah slid down in her chair. She ignored Leo’s questioning look and instead wondered how the hell she ended up falling for Blake Ryan.
Chapter Twelve
Blake was going to jump.
70 stories, 764 feet, and nothing but a rope to keep him from sailing into the afterlife at the tender young age of twenty-one.
Courtney’s birthday weekend could very well turn into Blake’s death weekend, but fuck it, what was life without some risks?
Beside him, Farrah clutched the railing with one hand and her necklace with the other, eyes wide and face deathly white. Terror emanated from her in waves.
“I can’t do this.” She tugged at her harness like it was too tight. “Take this off me. I can’t do it. I’m going to die.”
“It’ll be ok,” the bungee jump operator said soothingly. “We’ve done thousands of these jumps; we know what we’re doing. Our safety equipment is top of the line.”
“Pass.” Farrah backed away and tugged at her harness again. Her breath came out in short, panicked puffs.
The operator looked at Blake, the only person in their group who had yet to jump besides Farrah.
“I’ll talk to her,” Blake said. “Give us a minute.”
He walked over to Farrah and placed his hands on her shoulders. She trembled beneath his hold. “Take a deep breath. In one, two, out one, two. That’s it. How are you feeling?”
“Not good. I hate heights.” Farrah gulped in another breath. “I don’t know why I agreed to this. Tell Court I’m sorry, and that I’ll refund Kris her money. Wait, no. I’ll tell them myself when I go down.” She raised her hand to beckon the operator once.
Blake grabbed her wrist and eased it down. “Whoa. Before you leave, hear me out.”
“Don’t waste your time. I’m not changing my mind. Do your jump, and I’ll meet—”
“7,000 miles.”
Farrah’s brow knit in confusion. “Excuse me?”
“That’s how many miles you flew to get from the US to China. 7,000 miles.”
“Um, ok?”
“Did you spend all that time and money to get here so you can stand on the sidelines and watch other people live their lives?”