“The video angle can sometimes still be awkward, depending on how you’re waving your hand, but you get used to the reasonable range of motion really quickly.”
Our eyes meet. We’re twenty feet away. Still, my chest feels tight. I’m not pretending. If my father is watching the way I’m looking at her now, he will never guess the truth.
Hell. I’m standing in the hall in front of the office that used to belong to Peter, and I’m still smiling.
I’m not sure I can tell that we’re not together, and I’m in on the secret.
TINA
The bridge over the Bay crosses dull, gray water. The sun is low in the sky; Blake’s car is freakishly silent, gliding along with only the whisper of tires against road. I can’t get used to how quiet his car is.
I’m trying to sort myself back into place. No more pretending. No more touching. No more acting. We got what we wanted, right?
I can’t make out anything about him. I had assumed he didn’t get along with his father; instead, they seemed to be genuinely friendly. He said he wanted to get away from Cyclone, but when he put Fernanda on my wrist, his eyes sparkled with real pride.
He told his dad he was planning on marrying me, but we spoke for the first time five days ago. I don’t know who he is or what he’s doing. I do know that today—that flirtation, those tiny touches we exchanged—came a little too easily to me.
“You said you wanted to get away from Cyclone,” I finally say. “It doesn’t look like it to me.”
“I didn’t quite say that.” He speaks so calmly, as if this afternoon—an afternoon where his father offered me a massive sum of money, and where we flirted over legal paperwork—makes sense. “I said I needed to get away.”
“What would you do if you left for good?”
“Run, apparently.” There’s a dry quality to his tone. “When I don’t feel like running anymore, I’ll go back.”
I shake my head. “I swear to God. I am never going to understand people with money.”
His fingers trace the steering wheel up and down. “That’s not money,” he finally says. “Money has nothing to do with it. Haven’t you ever loved something you hated? Or hated something you loved?”
My mind goes instantly to my mother. I love her; I do. She’s a fierce ball of need—always looking after everyone but herself and her own.
“Maybe.” I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to feel more of a connection.
“Then you understand how I feel about Cyclone. I love interface design. If I do it well, a million people will never know how happy I’ve made them, not until they try a competitor’s product. I have to pay attention to things people don’t even know they want. I have a real gift for that.”
He’s stating this as a fact—and having his brainchild on my wrist now, I can’t disagree.
“It’s the other bullshit I can’t handle.”
I think I had a taste of that other bullshit this afternoon.
The rest of the bridge goes by in silence. He turns north, and the last of the sun spills over the windshield.
“I don’t understand what I’m doing here,” I finally say. “Are you really that good a liar, that you can tell your dad that…that thing you did without even blinking?” I still can’t make myself repeat what he said aloud.
“I said what I had to in order to get you Fernanda.” His jaw sets. “You can’t plan the launch without her. It was necessary. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you it was coming, but I didn’t trust your acting skills, and I thought your honest reaction would be more convincing.”
“It’s fine. It’s just that your acting skills are ridiculous.”
“You’ve seen the commercials?” It’s not quite a question, the way he asks it.
I don’t want to admit that I’ve watched the entire YouTube playlist at this point. “Some of them,” I lie.
“Then you know I’ve been acting since I was two. I should be good at it.”
“So that’s all fake? That buddy-buddy thing you have going on with your dad? He really is as big an asshole as he appears?”
“He’s actually not an asshole,” Blake says calmly. “And that buddy-buddy thing, as you call it, is real. My dad is my best friend. The trick to acting is to believe what you’re saying.”
I flinch away from him. “Bullshit. You said—about me—you said—”
“I used to see you in the library last semester,” he says. “You came in at eleven in the morning on Wednesdays before your shift. You would sit at a table on the third floor and work biochemistry problems. What can I say? I have a thing for women who carry heavy books and know how to use them.”
I blink. I did used to do that. But I don’t have any memory of seeing him. None at all. I only have a vague sense of being aware that there were other people around when I worked.
He smiles. “It’s not hard to act when you have good source material to draw on.”
I feel that tug of attraction pulling me in.
“But I don’t know that I’m today’s stand-out performer,” he continues. “You seemed pretty convincing yourself for a while.”
It’s not hard to act when you have good source material to draw on.
Maybe it was a little too easy to let myself get into the spirit of things. That’s the thing about playing the lottery. It lies. When you think it’s going well, it’s just getting ready to slap you down. I glance in his direction. His gaze flicks toward me, and then slides away.
No. This is just an accident. A one-off thing. A little errant chemistry, nothing big.
I shrug. “Well. I can’t let you take all the Oscars.”
“Yeah?” He can’t hold my gaze long; he’s driving. Still, it feels like an eternity before he looks away. An eternity where my pulse picks up, where my hands grow hot.
“About that source material.” His voice is low and it seems to lodge deep inside me, an insistent thrum of sensation running up and down my spine. “I think we should talk about the source material.”
My gaze drops to my knees. I can’t meet his eyes. I can’t. He’ll know.
I wait a little too long to answer. “There is no source material, Blake. We were faking.” And once I’m sure I have myself under control, I look over at his profile. I make myself not want to reach out, to brush his hand that lies on the armrest next to mine. “We did what we had to do,” I tell him. “Now we’re done.”
8.
BLAKE
It takes us another six days to get everything in place: a contract to protect Tina (she insisted on it), a subleasing agreement (my lawyer insisted on that when she found out what we were doing), money transfers, bank accounts, a meeting with her current landlord.
We don’t talk anything but business when we see each other, but the chemistry is still there, crackling between us. Our eyes meet a little too long; she refuses to look my way during the class we share. I know it’s stupid to want her. I have shit to solve.
But hormones—damn, when they really engage, they don’t let up. And mine have gone from interested to riveted.
It feels like the best of all possible worlds the day we switch places. The air is crisp and fresh when I hand Tina and her roommate, Maria, the keys to my place. On the one hand, I feel like I’m handing off all my worries.
Just the act of changing things up has made me feel hopeful. And now that we’re really about to execute this trade, I don’t think she can push me away with mundane details. I feel almost happy when I pack my things into my car and follow Tina’s directions.
I kind of expected Tina to live in a dump, but the address she directs me to is in a tidy residential neighborhood, filled with tiny 1950s homes. I wouldn’t choose to live here willingly, but it could definitely be worse.
Tina directs me to stop by an empty lot, high with growing weeds, with a view onto the backend of a supermarket.
“Which one is it?” I ask.
She nods across the street. A peach-and-white trimmed house, with a clipped la
wn, meets my eyes. Honestly, it doesn’t seem so bad. I stayed in worse when I went backpacking through Eastern Europe.
“Cute.”
Tina and Maria exchange amused glances, like I’ve said something hilarious.
“You’re in the garage,” Tina says.
My eyes travel behind the house to a detached structure in the back yard.
“Cool,” I say again. “A converted garage.”
That amused glance again. It makes me feel like I should watch my back. I sigh. “Let’s go check it out.”
Five minutes later, I’m convinced that my first impression based on Tina’s reaction—“dump”—was more accurate. Calling the garage converted is like calling the empty lot across the street a rose garden. The garage door still works; the gaps that let in cold air have been duct-taped over, but there’s still a persistent draft. The concrete floor has been covered with carpet remnants. At least those look clean, if a little haphazard.
The furniture is sparse—two beds with metal frames, a desk that wobbles when I toss my duffle on top, a dresser, and a bare clothing rod against one wall. The bathroom is a boxy installation of not-quite-straight wallboard.
There’s something like a kitchen. Which is to say, there is a single sink, which I would have called stainless steel in another life, except it is most definitely stained, and a foot-long stretch of Formica countertop. A microwave and a hotplate round out the cooking gear. Cinderblocks and particleboard shelves make up the kitchen cabinets.
Okay, this is pretty crappy. It’s also cold.
“Where’s the thermostat?” I ask.
The women smile at each other again. “No heat,” Maria says.
“What?” I stare at them. “Is that even legal?”
“No.”
I blink. “What the hell? Why haven’t you reported them? Do you just not—”
“Oh, I know,” Maria says, waving a hand in my direction. “My grandmother is a lawyer for the City Attorney of San Francisco. I know how this works way better than you ever will. We’d report them. Then the city would decide that this does not pass inspection on about fifty different counts. And then we would have to find somewhere else to live, and nowhere that actually meets housing code will charge us only eight hundred bucks a month. The whole thing is totally illegal. But on the bright side, it makes breaking leases infinitely easier.”
Fine. If they’ve put up with this, I can, too.
“Besides,” Maria says, “it’s the Bay Area, not Wisconsin. It’s not like it ever really gets that cold.”
“Outside,” Tina says. “Sometimes, in the morning, it’s kind of bad. Try and get out early; it’s better that way.”
“Yeah,” Maria says. “But you don’t need our advice. You’re a big, macho man. You eat cold for breakfast.”
I’m pretty sure she’s making fun of me, so I refuse to rise to the bait. “Nope,” I say. “What kind of idiot doesn’t want advice?”
They exchange glances yet again.
Maria sighs. “Should we tell him about the space heater?”
“Honestly, he’s better off not knowing.”
“Come on,” I say. “No holding out on me.”
“Fine. But remember, you asked for it.” Tina rummages around between one of the beds and the dresser and comes up with a black, plastic thing that looks like a fan. “But, um, maybe… There is something we should mention.”
Maria elbows her, but Tina shakes her head.
While they’re talking, I plug the heater into the power strip, turn the dial all the way up, and flip the power switch. The fan starts to whir; the elements inside turn orange. No heat, yet, but—
“You see, it’s not that easy. If you—”
There’s a loud click and the power shuts off. We’re plunged into darkness.
“As I was saying,” Tina says dryly into the darkness, “the wiring in the garage is ancient. So if you use the heater on anything but the lowest setting, you’re kind of screwed.”
“Yeah,” Maria says. “Don’t use it if you’re running anything that draws power. Like a hair dryer.”
“Or the microwave,” Tina adds in.
“Or if the refrigerator turns on.”
“Pretty much don’t use it with anything on at all. And sometimes even then, it’s too much.”
Their voices are flat, but I can tell they’re trying not to laugh at me.
Fine. Whatever. It’s just a little inconvenience, right? I can take it.
I sigh. “So where’s the fuse box again?”
A minute later, I’ve reset the fuse and we have light—crappy, overhead fluorescent light—again.
“Here’s my computer.” Tina gestures to a laptop on the desk. One hinge has been mended with the same blue duct tape that’s been used to block the drafts.
She hands it over, and I take a look at it.
She must have got this used. As a freshman. It’s an old-model laptop, boxy and heavy. I open it; the lid swings at an odd angle, so I have to stop and coax the poor thing into the semblance of an open position.
I turn it on.
It takes forever to boot.
Okay, the cold is one thing. The fuse box is another. Those things amount to roughing it. But when it comes to computer gadgetry, I am downright spoiled. I haven’t gotten a logon screen after a full minute and a half. And it’s been so long since I’ve used a non-Cyclone computer that I have no idea what to do with this beast.
“Also,” Tina says, “about the bank account. As per our agreement, I’ve deposited a check with my entire net worth as of yesterday into your account.” She hands me a deposit slip. “Congratulations. You have $15.22. There’s also about nine pounds of rice left.” She looks at me. “If you need recipes…”
“That’s what Google is for,” I tell her flatly.
This…sucks. I stand up and look around. No heat. No money. Objectively, it sucks. So why do I feel a sense of excitement, like I’m a kid at Christmas? This is exactly what I’ve wanted.
The laptop finally boots, and then, because that was apparently too much work for it, the fan turns on with a loud whir. Across the room, the fridge starts up with a hum. That thing must be decades old. I can practically smell the Freon leaking from it. And then—I should have known this was coming—the fuse pops with a loud snap and the lights go off again.
“Goddammit,” I swear.
“I’m going to wait in the car,” Maria says.
I don’t blame her. I hear, rather than watch, Tina flip the fuse. Light returns.
“Probably not a good idea to run the fridge and the laptop at the same time,” she tells me.
This is…fucked up. On the other hand, even if I suspected shenanigans, I can’t figure out how they could actually have arranged to make this happen.
“Because I’m nice,” Tina says, “I’ll tell you what it took us two months to figure out. Just don’t use the fridge. Not for anything. You’re a block from a grocery store. If you don’t store perishables, you don’t need the fridge.” She takes a deep breath. “Also, save anything on the laptop before you use the microwave.”
“Don’t tell me.” I eye the blue-hinged beast before me. “The battery doesn’t work.”
“Not really.” She sighs. “It’s like having all the detriments of a laptop with none of the portability.”
I shake my head at her. “Why do I get the impression that you’re enjoying this?”
Her smile is just a little shaky. “You seem to be under the impression that my life is some back-to-nature serenity camp. It’s going to be amusing watching you realize that it’s not simple. It’s not a tourism home stay. You’re going to crash and burn.”
I let out a breath. She stands in place, her hands in fists.
And that’s what it is. I want. For me, it’s simple. For her…she hasn’t had time for bullshit. I know she’s attracted to me, at least a little bit. I also know she doesn’t want to be.
I want her.
But you know what
I want most? I don’t want her to break down and quash her reluctance. I don’t want her to surrender to me. I want her to want to want me, not to want me grudgingly against her will.
“You’re right,” I say. “I’m full of shit. I have no idea what I’m doing. This is going to be hard, and maybe I’m going to fail and fail and fail again.”
Her eyes widen.
“But you know what? There’s one thing I’m not going to do. I promised you when we started that you were important. So I’m not going to call your life a back-to-nature serenity camp or a tourism home stay. I may be clueless. I may be taken aback. It may be that I have no idea what to do with $15.22 because I have never even gone grocery shopping before. But this is your life. It matters.”
She inhales sharply. “Fine.” And then she turns to leave.
“One other thing.”
She turns back to me slowly. She doesn’t say anything.
“It’s okay to like me,” I tell her. “Eventually, just about everyone does.”
TINA
My hands are shaking by the time I go to his car.
It’s okay to like me.
Too late; that seed was planted weeks ago. I’m a shitty enough liar that Blake’s already seen everything I wanted to keep hidden. This isn’t going to work.
A voice in the back of my mind stirs—my mother’s voice, dimly remembered. Xingjuan, you have to be careful.
Ha. As if my mother was ever careful about anything. I yank the door handle—it still freaks me out that the handle comes out of the car for me as I approach—and, once I’m in, slam the door.
Maria is waiting for me in the passenger seat. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t point out that my hands are shaking. She knows I’ll say something about it as soon as I’m ready.
This isn’t some beat-up, decades-old Camry like my parents drive. Blake gave me a brief explanation on the way over. This is a completely electric vehicle, something so new and space-age shiny I wasn’t even aware that it existed. It has a thousand features I didn’t even know cars could have. This car, with its dark leather and sleek electronic displays, probably cost him more than four years of my college tuition.