Part of me wants to pretend I didn’t hear him. Flee out the exit, down the fire escape, let him wonder if he’d hallucinated the whole thing. Except it’s too late.
He’s already pushing his way through the crowd toward me, practically indistinguishable from the other middle-aged men prowling the area to escape the boring comforts of domesticlife and feel young again. His hair has been dyed black—too black, you can tell right away that it’s fake, like a botched nose job. And his button-down shirt is wrinkled around the collar. My mom never would’ve allowed him to leave the house like that. “Let me fix this for you, or else your employees are going to think you’ve been living in the wild,” she’d tut, reaching around his waist to smooth out the fabric while he laughed. Guess his mistress doesn’t have the same concerns. Maybe he even likes that about her.
Bile bubbles in my throat.
I haven’t seen my father in months. The last time we were face-to-face like this, I’d screamed at him and shoved him out our living room door and possibly thrown a purse at the wall. I regret that—not the yelling or the throwing, because he deserved it. I just wish I’d done it with more dignity, in a cooler manner, without the ugly tears and the pathetic little hiccups at the end of my sentences. Since then, I’ve come up with a hundred different, wittier, harsher lines I should’ve said, instead of just “Why? Why did you have to do it?”Over and over again, like a child demanding to know why the sky was blue and the moon was round some days but not others.
“You know him or something?” Ares mutters in my ear. I’m not surprised by his confusion. People tell me I look like my mom all the time—a few have even confused the two of us before. “You gave your daughter all your modeling genes,”they’d joke. But most people can’t see the resemblance between me and my dad, which is generally agreed to be lucky.
“Not very well,” I say.
“Chanel.” My father stops one foot away from me, andpauses, his eyes narrowing as he takes in Ares. I can only imagine what he’s seeing: his only daughter, at a nightclub in a skimpy skirt, her arms around a boy her age who looks like he goes around breaking hearts for the fun of it. A boy who looks dangerous. “You... shouldn’t be out so late,” he says at last, shouting to be heard over the music in some futile attempt at fatherly authority. “It’s a school night.”
A school night.I almost laugh in his face. Like that’s the most pressing problem here. “I was just about to leave,” I tell him coolly and lean closer to Ares, stroking the back of his neck with my fingertips, my lips curving into a smile. “With him,” I add, unable to resist the urge to upset him, this man who ruined our family and now has the audacity to act like he cares if I’m not in bed by curfew.
Ares stiffens, too surprised to push me away. His gaze darts from me to my father, back to my face.Please, just go along with it,I urge silently, letting the desperation show in my expression. I’ll pay for this later, I’m sure. But as far as he knows, I’m drunk out of my mind, so I can’t be entirely blamed for how I’m acting.
“And who is he?” my father demands, frowning at Ares. “Does he go to your school?”
“Maybe,” I say with a shrug. “Maybe he’s my boyfriend. Maybe he’s just some random guy I met at this club ten minutes ago who I really, really like. Who knows?”
My father’s frown deepens, and a blue vein surfaces just above his temple. “Be careful, Chanel. Guys like that... he might take advantage of you—”
“Or Imight take advantage of him.” I wrap both my armsaround Ares’s neck, draping myself over him like a satin cloak, my lips mere inches from the sharp line of his jaw. I can smell his cologne, a scent I’d previously associated with smoke but now reminds me more of burnt caramel. A pleasant scent that briefly masks the sweaty odor of bodies from the dance floor and the bitter tang of booze.
For a second I forget I’m even acting and inhale again without thinking, nuzzling up to him.
“Are youdrunk?” my father chokes out, his complexion visibly pale, even under the flashing lights. But he doesn’t seem as pissed off as I’d hoped. He looks more worried than anything, which sends a new wave of nausea sloshing through my stomach. If he were really worried about me, he could’ve thought twice before ruining our family. “This is not okay. You need to call your mother and go home right now—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I cut in loudly, sliding my hand down the planes of Ares’s chest. “I already told you, I’m leaving. Come on,” I tell Ares, without meeting my father’s eyes. “Let’s head over to your apartment.”
I don’t mean to glance back over my shoulder. But I can’t help it, and in that brief moment of weakness, I see two versions of my father at once, like one image superimposed over another. There’s the man who held my hand on the first day of kindergarten and taught me how to swim, and the man who left my mom sobbing on the kitchen floor, who’s proven that nobody, no matter how much you love them, can be trusted not to hurt you.
The before and the after.
Then I twist around and head out the exit, vowing silently that this was the last time I would ever let myself look back.
It’s a little easier to breathe once we’re outside.
I wrap my coat around myself, drawing the cool air into my lungs while Ares opens his phone to request a DiDi. The moon hangs in the black, wind-whipped sky, and the Yintai Centre Tower rises up on the horizon, glowing like a lighthouse from a cliff peak, guiding late-night stragglers home. If I listen hard, I can still hear the music thumping inside the nightclub.
“What’s your address?” Ares asks.
I’m about to tell him, when I remember I can never let him see my house. My stomach heaves at how close I’d been to ruining my own plans. A split second of carelessness, and my life could be destroyed.
“Number five Xiang Jiao Hua Yuan,” I tell him. It’stechnicallymy house, but it’s one of my mom’s investment properties, located fifteen minutes away from where I actually live.
Ares types the address in. “Should be here in three minutes,” he says, glancing down at his phone, then up the near-empty street.
“Thanks,” I say, remembering to slur my words.
Headlights blaze through the dark as the DiDi approaches. It’s one of those seven-seat, extra-comfort electric cars people usually hail on the company dollar, and even though it’s a small thing, my chest twinges at the thought of Ares taking care to select the most luxurious ride possible for me.
He helps me into the leather back seat, holding one hand upover the doorframe so I don’t bump my head, his other hand steadying my waist. When I’m all settled, he reaches over me, the muscles in his arms flexing as he grabs the seat belt and tugs it across my body, strapping me in. I wasn’t expecting him to be so gentle, so patient. An unexpected shot of emotion blazes down my throat like whiskey. I swallow, overcome by the strange urge to cry. It’s not even sadness, exactly, just a feeling.I feel so much right now that I’m terrified it’ll all leak out of me and there’ll be nothing left.
Which is my excuse for why I seize his wrist when he slides into the seat next to me. He stiffens in surprise, but he doesn’t pull his wrist away. He just lets me hold on to him, like how a child might hold a stuffed toy tighter to their chest after waking from a nightmare.
“So that was your dad,” he says after a moment.
