And there it is again, louder than ever, the awful truth slamming up against my better judgment:But I love him.
I love him and it’s killing me.
For now, though, we have cake. I rip into the packet of disposable spoons and he prepares the flimsy paper plates and I cut the cake into eight wobbly slices just for the two of us. I lick the frosting off the knife and I taste the sweetness of the icing instead of guilt and regret. The breeze rises, sending the edges of the plates fluttering madly like butterfly wings and blowing my hair across my face. It’s everywhere, sticking to my lip gloss and my lashes.
Then Ares reaches over and carefully bunches my hair in his fingers, brushing the stray wisps away from my cheeksand holding it back for me at the nape of my neck. “Is that better?”
“Much better,” I say. “Thank you.” I don’t even know if I’m referring to the cake or the makeshift ponytail or him coming here to meet me tonight or just him, the existence of him, despite the consequences of him. The words feel useless, insignificant anyway, when really what I want to say is,It’s never been like this with anyone beforeandIt’s not fair of you to keep offering me tenderness when I know it’ll be taken away.
He looks over at my plate. “Do you like the lychees?”
When I nod, he picks all the lychees off his slice and adds them to mine. And I recall the stories my mom would tell me of the Four Beauties of ancient China. Herfavorite has always been the legend of Xishi, the concubine spy sent off to an enemy kingdom to destroy it, this grand, twisting, epic tale of court intrigue and betrayal that ends with Xishi sailing across Taihu with her one true love.
But the one I remembered most vividly was Yang Guifei, the emperor’s beloved consort. She’d adored lychees, but they were only grown in the south. The emperor was so obsessed with her, so determined to please her, that he had his couriers ride out on their fastest horses for thousands of miles to bring the fresh fruit back to the palace. A journey across a whole kingdom, just for a taste.
I’d thought that kind of fierce devotion was only the stuff of myth, exaggerated with each retelling over the centuries, a fantasy fed to hopeless romantics. And yet...
I pop one of the lychees into my mouth, relishing the cool,sweet burst of it when I bite down. I can’t explain how nice it is, not having to scrape off the buttercream or ration my bites.
Something warm unfurls in my chest, so potent it almost hurts, like brushing your fingers along the edge of a wound. There’s the moonlight splashing across the grass, and the stars glistening like sugar above his head, and the scent of spring’s first flowers sweetening the cool, dark air.
“Did you hear? The lunar eclipse is happening in four days,” Ares says, staring up at the moon.
I stiffen. The blood moon. Prom. The vision. The night where everything is destined to change. I can’t afford to wait any longer, and now seems like the best possible time. Between the cake, and the way he’d rushed over to find me tonight... despite myself, I feel an excruciating surge of hope. Even if he hasn’t brought it up himself, it no longer seems so impossible that he could care about me, care enough to agree to go to prom with me.
“Ares,” I begin.Just say it. Just ask him. Doesn’t matter that you’ve never had to ask a guy out before; now’s not the time to worry about embarrassment or prom etiquette.All the chess pieces have been set on the board already—Ares, his brother, Long Ge—and the next few moves are critical. I’ll beg Ares if I have to. Anything to keep my mom safe and alive.
“Yeah?” His tone is so soft, so gentle, it gives me the courage to keep going.
I set my fork down and take a deep breath. “Will you... will you go to prom with me?” My own voice shocks me with its softness. Not a weapon at all. No more tricks, no games, buta hand outstretched, praying for peace, my sleeves rolled up to reveal bare wrists, the veins leading up to my heart.Please.
Please, please, please.
Please say yes.
Please don’t hurt me.
His eyes widen a fraction in surprise. “Chanel,” he says, still softly, but the softness feels like a slow death, a sweet poison. Like he almost pities me for what he’s about to say next, which makes everything so much worse. “I want to. Believe me, I really, really want to.”
“Then why can’t you?” I whisper, hating how my lips tremble over the words, how the pain is pressing in. How stupid I feel.
“There’s something I have to do that night,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “Something more valuable to me than my own life. I promise, if it weren’t for that—I’d go to prom with you. I’d go in a heartbeat.”
“That simply means you don’t want to go to prom with me enough,” I say, but we both know what I actually mean, what I can’t bring myself to say out loud.You don’t want me enough.The truce between us cracks, and the sudden change sends a wave of cold washing over my stomach. How quickly we can go from sitting side by side, sharing cake and speaking of childhood memories, to standing like soldiers on enemy lines, staring each other down. How quickly intimacy can vanish.
My mom was right to warn me against love. All love really does is give someone the power to hurt you.
“It’s not that simple,” he tells me, his jaw taut, his eyes inscrutably dark.
“Itisthat simple.”
“There are too many things out of my control. I can’t... I’ll explain everything to you later—”
“So you’re rejecting me?” I cut in. “You’re not going to prom with me? That’s your final answer?”
A moment of silence trickles between us like moonlight.
And in it, I can hear the ending notes of a melody, an old memory of the first time I had my ears pierced, the woman speaking to me seconds before she stepped forward with the needle, gentle but matter-of-fact.This is going to hurt.
