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All things considered, Wei Ying has to concede — tipsy and alone in a dark closet with a cut-off sleeve tied around her face, cheap beer spilled down the front of her camisole — this probably hadn’t been one of her better ideas.

In her defense, after four shots of bottom-shelf vodka in a row, it had seemed a lot smarter at the outset. Wei Ying had issued the challenge to anyone at the party brave enough to pick up the gauntlet: If someone wanted to kiss her, even just a little bit, she would wait for them in Mianmian’s coat closet. She’d generously offered to be blindfolded, for anyone too embarrassed about the association with kissing her. It had seemed like a fair enough proposition. 

Her true motivations are not so cavalier. The embarrassing fact of the matter is that Wei Ying has never kissed anyone. Ever. At this point in her life, halfway to graduating university, she doesn’t even care who does it or how it happens, hence the blindfold challenge. She’s just desperate to check it off the list, and being brazen and buzzed around a group of mostly strangers seems like the most painless way to get it over with.

But it’s been probably about a half an hour now, and there’s no sign that anyone is going to take her up on it. 

The sour curdle of rejection hasn’t fully settled in yet, but it’s threatening to as the liquor high fades. Wei Ying sighs and picks at a rip in her jeans, bored out of her skull. It had been a stupid idea to begin with, and now she’ll probably have to slink out of here with her tail between her legs, unkissed and unkissable, and hope no one notices either way. 

She’s about to call it a wash. The temptation to slip out of Mianmian’s house without saying goodbye to anyone, cook some cheap ramen on her dying stove, and pass the fuck out while she still has a buzz on is more appealing by the second. She’s contemplating the best method to get home when the closet door opens, followed by a swell of sugary pop music from the party. A cool rush of AC pours into the small space, as well as the overlapping chatter and laughter of drunken twenty-somethings.

“Here for your coat?” Wei Ying asks, a little glumly.

A pause with no answer. And then the door shuts. There’s the sound of someone breathing near Wei Ying, quick and shallow. She’s not alone anymore.

Wei Ying perks up with renewed interest. “Or . . . are you here for me?”

The person still doesn’t say a word. Footsteps move toward Wei Ying until someone stops directly in front of her. Wei Ying can still hear the person breathing. She takes a moment to wonder which boy here had heard about her silly prank and debased himself enough to come in here.

Wei Ying wets her lips. Her tongue feels too big for her mouth. Her heart is already beating faster with adrenaline, and the longer the silence stretches, the more Wei Ying is excruciatingly aware of how vulnerable she’s made herself in this situation. Sudden nerves bunch up tight in her stomach. 

“You don’t have to be nervous,” Wei Ying tells the stranger with blatant projection. She speaks much more confidently than she feels. “I’ve kissed lots of people! I don’t bite, unless you’re into —” 

The person moves against her then, so swiftly that Wei Ying gasps. The mystery stranger grabs her wrists in one big hand, and Wei Ying experiences a spike of alarm before another mouth captures hers in a shock of heat. 

The novelty of the sensation is a little strange. Kissing is apparently kind of wet. Breath-hot; surprisingly soft. These observations slide sideways when the kiss deepens with an unexpected note of urgency. Wei Ying’s wrists are held so tight they’re already aching. Her heart is still racing — less so with nerves, more with excitement now as the kiss opens into tongue, because it’s good. It’s so dreamy and nice that Wei Ying tilts forward into it on her tiptoes, wanting more. The stranger pulls away for a moment, his breathing all funny, and for the first time, Wei Ying tries to call up an image of who it might be. She tries to slot a boy’s face into her mind’s eye, but no one she can come up with makes any sense. She ends up with a mental image of a male-shaped, bland-featured figure that fills her with unexpected disappointment. 

Wei Ying’s also breathing hard from the kiss. The sound of their mingled breath fills the closet, intimate and close over the throb of the music through the walls, the muted babble of strangers talking and laughing. 

“Hey,” Wei Ying says hoarsely, when the stranger still doesn’t move or speak. She licks her lips. “I think you should do that again.”

A hitched breath. A tiny exhale, unreadable. The first kiss had been nearly bruising in force, a frenzied pace. Wei Ying isn’t expecting the gentleness of the second one, a thumb tilting her chin up to kiss her like something out of a romantic movie. She’s blindfolded, but Wei Ying still closes her eyes into it, trying again to conjure up the mental image of a handsome man from one of the shows she likes — a celebrity crush, anything. She comes away from the effort even more frustrated and confused. 

At least the kiss itself is nice. The stranger pulls lightly at her lower lip with his teeth, the gentlest bite, and then detaches from Wei Ying with a small, dewy sound. Wei Ying can feel that her face is flushed, so much so that it feels like a halo of heat radiating off her skin.

“Hi again. Wow. I’m Wei Ying,” Wei Ying says, smoothing over how flustered she feels with a small grin she hopes is charming. “What’s your name?”

A brick wall of silence from the stranger again. 

“Hey, you’re really good at that,” Wei Ying continues, then reaches up to pull off her makeshift blindfold. The game is over now, and she’s curious and impatient to put a face to getting kissed within an inch of her life. “Have we met be — ”

She pulls off the blindfold just as the closet door slams shut. She blinks at the empty space in front of her in astonishment, her hands falling by her sides. The sting of rejection she feels is secondary to her confusion. Had whoever it was really been so embarrassed to be caught dead kissing her?

Or, Wei Ying thinks, with a little thrill. Maybe she has a secret admirer. Someone who’s so shy about liking Wei Ying that he can’t bear to have his identity known.

This option is much more appealing than being someone’s shame-crush, so she sticks to that firmly as she slips out of the closet. She looks around the packed room with a frown, but everyone around her is tied up in various conversations. No one pays her a whit of attention. No one has even noticed she’s left the closet.

“Hey,” she asks the group nearest to her, raising her voice to be heard over the music. Their conversation trails off as the three boys turn to look at her in part-confusion, part-annoyance. “Did you see anyone leave this closet just now?”

“Uhhh, no,” one of the boys says, his tone telegraphing very clearly how irritating he finds her. They ignore her again and return to talking.

Wei Ying makes rounds throughout the room, derailing several drunken yell-conversations to play detective, but the consensus remains the same from everyone she talks to: No one had seen, or been paying close enough attention to notice, anyone exiting a coat closet. 

Wei Ying sees a few people she knows as she continues her investigation through the house. Mianmian, obviously; Huaisang, Wen Qing. They’re all wrapped up in their own conversation in the hallway near the front door. They each look way too embedded in the discussion — and way too sober, with the exception of Huaisang — to have just sneaked back from kissing their friend stupid in a closet. There’s also the not-insignificant fact that they’re all gay, and there’s no way Mianmian and Wen Qing would cheat on each other. They all know Wei Ying doesn’t swing that way, anyway.

Wei Ying only feels her confusion deepen as she finishes her first lap around the house. She moves through the party as invisibly as a ghost. No one seems to be aware of her existence, let alone sending her any shy or meaningful looks that might signal the identity of a mystery admirer.

She starts to catalog the various attendants that she recognizes as she makes her second round through the house: There’s the guy from her lab classes whose name she can’t remember, and another guy she sees around her apartment complex a lot with a guitar strapped to his back. There’s the girl she’d gotten into it with in debate class her first year and wholly eviscerated. There’s the campus weed guy, there’s Lan Zhan —

Wei Ying’s double-take is cartoonish. At first she’s certain that she’s seen wrong; either that or she’s way more blasted than she’d thought, and it’s impairing her cognitive abilities. 

But Lan Zhan cuts a figure that’s unmistakable: tall for a girl, hard-shouldered, a dark crop of hair tidily styled, and drop-kick pretty. She’s ensconced in one of the more isolated corners behind a tattered armchair, scrolling through something on her phone with one earbud in. Leave it to Lan Zhan to come to a party with headphones.

Wei Ying experiences a familiar burst of delight at the sight of her. Seeing Lan Zhan in any context always has that effect on her, for reasons she doesn’t care to question. It’s mostly that Lan Zhan is so funny. She’s fun to tease, and even more fun to get a rise out of, and she’s beautiful enough to stop a heart. Beautiful enough that it would be impossible for anyone not to want her attention.

Wei Ying bounds over to Lan Zhan and reaches out for her arm to catch her attention. Lan Zhan does not give her the satisfaction of startling, but retracts her arm from the touch with a frown. Her eyes rise from her phone and land on Wei Ying. 

Lan Zhan blinks. The earbud comes out. 

“Lan Zhan!! What the hell are you doing here?” Wei Ying asks, unable to keep the glee from her voice. “No offense, but I wouldn’t have guessed parties like this were your scene.”

Lan Zhan’s attention had dropped to Wei Ying’s mouth the moment she’d opened it, and Wei Ying takes a rare self-aware moment to feel a little self-conscious. She probably looks every inch like she’s been mauled in a closet. Her mouth is still stinging from how hard the first kiss had been, and she’s still blushing from the alcohol and the heat of the kiss.

“Socializing,” Lan Zhan says in response to Wei Ying’s first question, so deadpan that Wei Ying can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or if self-isolating in a corner with other people nearby is genuinely Lan Zhan’s understanding of the concept.

Wei Ying laughs either way. Her hand finds Lan Zhan’s arm again, and this time, Lan Zhan doesn’t move away.

“Lan Zhan, you’ll never believe what just happened to me,” Wei Ying says. She’s suddenly thrilled at the concept of getting to tell Lan Zhan this, and to watch her scandalized reaction. Either way, Lan Zhan will have to picture Wei Ying kissing someone, which in itself is satisfying in a way Wei Ying can’t explain. 

“What?” Lan Zhan says, playing along with a surprising lack of resistance. Usually Lan Zhan tells her to fuck off with microexpressions or outright ignores her. Everything is coming up Wei Ying tonight.

“I just got kissed,” Wei Ying says with relish, pausing for dramatic effect, “by a secret admirer,” then scans eagerly for Lan Zhan’s reaction. She isn’t all that disappointed when she isn’t met with one; other than a small blink, this news is received with Lan Zhan’s usual indifference. 

“Is that so,” Lan Zhan says, returning her attention to her phone. She looks a little stiff and uncomfortable in a way Wei Ying can’t put her thumb on, but kissing and things of that nature aren’t really Lan Zhan’s wheelhouse, putting it lightly, so it makes sense. 

“Yeah,” Wei Ying says. “I’ve interrogated all the boys around here, but everyone’s acting totally normal toward me! I’m kind of wondering if he might have already left?”

This, for some reason, gets more of a reaction out of Lan Zhan than anything yet. Lan Zhan glares at Wei Ying, like she’s all of a sudden found this conversation deeply irritating.

“Best of luck in your search,” Lan Zhan says coolly, then shoulders off the wall and snaps off her phone.

“Hey, no, wait, don’t go anywhere!” Wei Ying protests, reaching out to grab her arm again. “We don’t have to talk about the kissing thing if you don’t want to, just — don’t leave yet.”

Lan Zhan sighs with a world-weary air, like Wei Ying is the mother of all thorns in her side, then resumes her position against the wall.

“Hey, Lan Zhan, I like your lip-stain,” Wei Ying says, striking out for a subject change that will make good on her word. Lan Zhan looks at her with a strange sharpness, like she thinks she’s being teased or something, then seems to relax at the apparent sincerity of the praise. Wei Ying had meant it, after all. Lan Zhan almost never wears makeup — she doesn’t have to, being the most naturally beautiful person on the planet — but she’d added a bit of color to her mouth tonight, a slightly darker shade than usual.

She looks at Lan Zhan — really looks at her. It’s been long enough since Wei Ying has seen her that as she stares, a faint, time-faded memory floods back to her: them in class at fifteen, Wei Ying slapping one of those dollar-store calendars of muscular, shirtless men on Lan Zhan’s desk and asking Lan Zhan, which one do you like? Which one’s your type? This one? How about this one? Orrr this one? with increasing glee until Lan Zhan had finally snapped the pencil she was holding, crack, clean in two, her jaw red.

Another dart of memory, softer and recent: Wei Ying pulling herself out of a muddled sleep at a library desk, a mug of hot sweet tea at one elbow that hadn’t been there before; Lan Zhan at the other, sweater-clad and embedded in a book.

Wei Ying shakes the thoughts away like rainwater off a tarp. The Lan Zhan of the present is still looking at her, appearing more stiff and awkward by the second. For the first time, Wei Ying notices a star-shaped hole in the plaster of the wall behind Lan Zhan, like someone had accidentally put an elbow through it.

Wei Ying opens her mouth to say something else, but Lan Zhan beats her to it.

“I should go,” Lan Zhan says. Even though they don’t see each other all that much, Wei Ying feels her heart sink with disappointment. “Have a good rest of your night.”

Lan Zhan moves past her and toward the front door. Wei Ying turns after her, almost says, Wait, but — what would she even say to her? Sorry about the calendar that one time? Sorry about that guy you hated, or maybe I was the one you didn’t like — let’s try again?

No, that would be ridiculous. And totally fruitless. 

Wei Ying leans her back against the wall, her shoulder settling next to the hole. The remaining puffiness in her mouth pulls her thoughts away from Lan Zhan, at least for the moment. 

She’d had her first kiss. Her first kiss. She feels triumphant, to have it finally done and over with. 

And yet it’s the second kiss she keeps revisiting in her head; chewing on the little details of it like sugar gum, chewing until the sweet runs out. It had caught her by the throat. The more she replays it, the more certain she is that her secret admirer is a romantic. That kiss had been dreamy, sweet. Intent. It had been the furthest thing from a random, sloppy tongue-fuck at a party from a drunken stranger, which is what Wei Ying now realizes she’d resigned herself to accept. It’s like whoever it is had —  known her, and wanted her. Specifically her.

It’s not what she expected. No, she can’t stop thinking about it at all.

◈ ◈ ◈

She and Lan Zhan had been friends once. 

Well. Almost friends. Only briefly. 

They’d obviously known each other in high school, but Lan Zhan tended to avoid her like the plague, even though Wei Ying was a very persistent plague. They’d shared a few classes together early in college; had fallen into the same social orbit, most of their group being from the same hometown except for Mianmian, who’d gotten folded into the mix once Wen Qing started dating her. Anyway, Wei Ying and Lan Zhan had passed each other a lot on campus. Wei Ying considered it a good day when she got a small head dip from Lan Zhan acknowledging her existence. That was the extent of their interactions with each other.

And then there’d been the speed-dating match.

It was a stupid event, and Wei Ying had only gone in the first place as a big joke. Well, that’s what she told her friends; all like ha ha, wouldn’t it be sooo funny if I did this for the bit, and so on. Unfortunately for her, Wei Ying was a terminal romantic — still is — and she’d never quite extinguished the hope that her soulmate would tumble out of the blue and into her life with slow-motion framing and an acoustic music swell like something out of the K-dramas she secretly feasted on. It was all extremely embarrassing and cringe for her, but that was her damage to deal with. 

Anyway, the speed-dating match. 

She’d gone through four rounds of absolutely uninspiring conversations with a few boys, all average-looking and offensively boring. Each one had spent his entire five-minute time slot talking about himself. Wei Ying, who loved to talk, found herself all but physically asleep through each one. She’d retained, at most, two facts about each of them, which, given her short-term memory was concerningly poor, was a feat in and of itself: The first guy liked to work out and his mom did all his laundry; he was looking for a girl who was traditional. The second guy fancied himself a movie buff and spent their entire five minutes explaining the plot of Citizen Kane. The third guy asked her if she’d ever read Infinite Jest. The fourth guy spent their time talking about his ex-girlfriend who had dumped him three years ago, and he still was still pretty torn up about it.

After the last guy, Wei Ying was about to get up and walk out. All of her silly little romantic hopes for the evening had been dashed by the sour reminder of why, as a general rule, she did not date. 

And then, just like that, it was Lan Zhan across the table from her, both of them blinking at each other in surprise.

“Oh —” Wei Ying said, then laughed. “Clearly there was a mix-up, yeah?” The speed-dating match was open to all gender preferences, but obviously neither she or Lan Zhan had marked on their form that they were interested in women. “I’ll call over the — ”

“Please,” Lan Zhan had said, “don’t,” in such a quiet, strained voice that it had given Wei Ying pause. 

Lan Zhan had leaned forward and spoken so softly and quickly that Wei Ying had to lean in to catch it all: A man had been following Lan Zhan around campus for a few weeks and wouldn’t leave her alone, although she’d rejected his advances multiple times and eventually threatened legal action. He’d come to the event tonight to try to get a shot with her.

“Where is he,” Wei Ying said, rolling up one of her sleeves. 

“Don’t cause a scene,” Lan Zhan said, so knowingly that Wei Ying rolled her sleeve back down. “Do not make eye contact with him. He’s a few tables over, talking to Qin Su.”

Very subtly, Wei Ying followed her instructions. She almost shot up from the table.

“Su She, that rat,” Wei Ying spat. “I should’ve known — ”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, and her hand had reached out for Wei Ying’s wrist. In their entire length of knowing each other, Lan Zhan had never initiated physical contact with her. Ever. It shocked Wei Ying into silence.

“Please. Just,” Lan Zhan said, “talk to me.”

Wei Ying could do that. Wei Ying could do that all night. Finally, the first one of these horrible mini-dates in which she didn’t have to shut her mouth and give glassy-eyed nods. 

But she actually wanted to talk to Lan Zhan, not at her. She picked up one of the question prompt cards, which she hadn’t even gotten a chance to look at due to the previous four soliloquies she’d endured.

“How’s this,” Wei Ying said. “I’ll ask you some of these questions, and you answer. Deal?”

Lan Zhan had already relaxed somewhat, her shoulders untensing. Her eyes had stopped darting over to surveil Su She, which was a positive sign.

“Fine,” Lan Zhan said.

“Question number one,” Wei Ying read off. “What are you looking for at this event?” Her eyes flicked up to Lan Zhan, suddenly curious to hear her answer. Why was Lan Zhan, of all people, at this stupid thing anyway?

Lan Zhan pursed her lips. “Pass.”

“You don’t get to pass.”

“Pass.”

“You get one pass,” Wei Ying amended. “Would you like to use it now?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan said.

Wei Ying sighed and moved onto the next card. “Ooh, okay. Next question: What’s your ideal type?”

Wei Ying was expecting another flat pass. It didn’t come. Lan Zhan went quieter than her usual quiet, like she was genuinely considering her response.

“Funny,” she said eventually, which was such a shocking first answer from Lan Zhan that Wei Ying nearly fell out of her chair. “Intelligent. Kind.”

Wei Ying stared at her. Hmmm. It would seem that Lan Zhan had unplumbed depths. If her saying that was enough to get Wei Ying’s pulse up, she couldn’t imagine how Lan Zhan in a romantic context affected boys.

“Very nice, very nice,” Wei Ying said, with a round of fake applause. “Unfortunately, no man on earth possesses all three of those qualities at once.”

Lan Zhan’s nostrils flared, her eyes cutting to Wei Ying with a sudden sharpness. “You seem to dislike men much, for someone so keen on dating them.”

Wei Ying laughed, surprised but tickled by the callout. “True! But that’s the curse we as straight women must bear.”

“Hm,” Lan Zhan said.

“Okay, third question. What do you like to do for fun?” Again, Wei Ying found herself invested in the answer. Lan Zhan was by far the most interesting person at this event, although she was probably dead boring by any normal person’s estimation. 

“Read,” Lan Zhan said, which was such a predictably boring answer that Wei Ying was charmed. “Study. Practice qin.”

Wei Ying couldn’t resist teasing her, interrupting to say, “No, the card says what do you like to do for fun, not what you do when held at gunpoint.”

“I read for fun,” Lan Zhan said stubbornly, which was even more charming. “Studying is fun.”

Wei Ying shook her head with a mock sadness. “I think you lack the common understanding of the term.”

Lan Zhan gave an irritable huff, then reached over to snatch the card out of Wei Ying’s hand. The proctor called time, instructing people to move on to their next date. Wei Ying and Lan Zhan ignored her. Another young man came up to Wei Ying’s table, and she absently shooed him off to the next table.

“Question four,” Lan Zhan read. “If you won the lottery tomorrow, what would you do with the money?”

Wei Ying didn’t have to think much on her answer.

“Pay off my jie’s loans and for her house,” she said promptly. “Pay for my brother’s education. I’d give a big chunk of it to my friends, so they could do whatever they wanted with it — you know, travel, buy themselves a house, cover their bills. Mmm, then I’d start up a big housing commune where a bunch of people could live there for free. If I still had some left over after that, I’d give it to other charities and stuff.”

Lan Zhan stared at her in silence for a moment.  

“What about for yourself?” she asked eventually.

“Oh.” Wei Ying considered this. “Pay off my medical bills so debt collectors stop calling me every day.”

Lan Zhan gave the tiniest shake of her head. Wei Ying foisted the card back from her.

“Question five,” Wei Ying said, “what’s your favorite thing about me? ” She cheesed an obnoxious smile at Lan Zhan and winked, playing up the dimple in her left cheek.

Lan Zhan just looked at her for another silent beat, then shook her head again like she was disappointed. Wei Ying laughed. Somewhere in the back of her mind, it occurred to her that she was actually having fun.

“Just kidding,” Wei Ying said, returning her attention to the card. “I know your answer is my irresistible wit and charm. Oh, I like this one: What are you seeking in a relationship?”

Wei Ying glanced up again just as Lan Zhan opened her mouth, then shut it again. Wei Ying leaned forward in her seat, hanging on her answer.

“And that’s time!” the proctor called with a clap of her hands together. Lan Zhan turned away from Wei Ying, the conversation clearly closed. Wei Ying felt her shoulders slouch with disappointment.

“Thank you for coming to our event,” the proctor was saying, “we hope you sparked some instant connections —”

Across the room, Su She was staring at Lan Zhan with open yearning, but it was an ugly yearning. Rapt, possessive. Wei Ying felt her lip curl, a surge of protectiveness flaring up white-hot on Lan Zhan’s behalf.

“Hey, Lan Zhan, walk with me,” Wei Ying said. She got up from the table and slunk her arm through Lan Zhan’s. Lan Zhan looked just stunned enough to allow it. When Lan Zhan was looking the other way, Wei Ying glanced over her shoulder to mean-mug Su She so hard that he shrank back, then started to glare at her. Wei Ying silently snapped her teeth at him, and Su She so clearly had no idea what to do with this that it was with great satisfaction Wei Ying left him there, towing Lan Zhan behind her.

“Thank you,” Lan Zhan said the moment they were outside. A wave of fresh summer air washed over them; no less sticky than earlier, but cooler with the sun down. Lan Zhan’s arm was still hooked through Wei Ying’s. She hadn’t pulled away yet, even though Su She was far behind them. It was warm and much more muscular than it looked.

“No need to thank me,” Wei Ying said cheerfully, still hugging Lan Zhan’s arm tight. “You could easily take him in a fight.”

“I know,” Lan Zhan said, with such simple confidence that Wei Ying felt something warm up in her chest. “But I would prefer to not have to.”

A lightness took hold of Wei Ying as they continued to walk, like she was floating on air. Lan Zhan always kept herself so tightly buttoned up. Tonight had felt like prying open a clamshell the tiniest amount; a slight give, an easing, a peek into some softer inside. 

“Hey,” Wei Ying blurted, once they were close to where her bike was chained. “I, uh. Was going to leave earlier because I was having such a shit time, but I had a lot of fun with you tonight.”

“Fun,” Lan Zhan echoed.

“Yeah,” Wei Ying said, meaning it.

“I think you lack the common understanding of the term,” Lan Zhan said, perfectly droll. 

Wei Ying paused in shock, then doubled over with laughter.

“Wow, wow, okay,” Wei Ying said once she recovered. “She’s pretty and funny! A double threat, as they say.” Lan Zhan opened her mouth as if to reply to this, then snapped it shut again. The ear that was poking out of her hair was flushed under the streetlights. Wei Ying continued, “Hey, give me your phone.”

It was perhaps the most astonishing part of this astonishing evening that Lan Zhan allowed it with no resistance. Wei Ying opened up her contacts, punched in her number, then titled her contact wei ying ;) .

She handed the phone back, then let go of Lan Zhan’s arm to clamber onto her bike. “Text me some time. Let’s hang out?”

Lan Zhan clutched her phone to her chest, looking a little windswept.

“Okay,” she said.

“Byeeee,” Wei Ying called, pushing off the sidewalk with her foot, and then she pedaled away into the night. By the time she got home, her face was aching, and she realized it was because she’d been smiling the entire way.

Lan Zhan had texted her the next day. They had hung out a few times; sometimes to watch shows together, or to grab lunch on campus, or to study at the library. 

A few weeks later, there was that fleeting moment, a blink and miss: Wei Ying had been cramming hard for exams and wasn’t sleeping, so she’d passed out in the middle of the afternoon, drooling into the spine of one of her textbooks. When she’d woken up, she’d found a cup of tea from the nearby shop with her name scrawled on it, still fresh and steaming. It was sugary enough to induce tooth rot, just how Wei Ying liked it. Dazed and still half-asleep, she’d glanced over at Lan Zhan, silent and buried in one of her books, and felt the curious sense of what it was to be known without words. She’d watched the thick dust motes drifting through a fat beam of sunlight, streaming through the library windows, and had felt exactly like that: alight and spun adrift.

So, yeah, Wei Ying had been platonically enamored with Lan Zhan. 

And then Wei Ying had started dating a boy. 

They weren’t really dating. They’d never had sex, obviously — or even kissed. Anytime Wei Ying thought about kissing him, it had filled her with a skittish anxiety that she wrote off as her own inexperience. When he’d actually tried it once during a movie showing, Wei Ying had physically dodged and said “Ahhhh want some popcorn?!” in such a shrill and insane voice that he had never tried it again.

She’d only brought him around her place a few times, but Lan Zhan apparently disliked him enough that soon after, she silently slipped out of Wei Ying’s life. Even after Wei Ying ditched the guy — okay, fine, he’d ditched her for not putting out, semantics — Lan Zhan hadn’t come back. 

It had stung at the time. It was confusing. Even if Lan Zhan thought the guy was kind of a drip, he wasn’t in the picture anymore. Yeah, Wei Ying had told Lan Zhan this and that about her fake sexscapades to save face for her own inexperience, but surely that wasn’t the reason either? Lan Zhan might be a prude, but everyone their age was having a furious amount of sex, all of the time. It would be crazy of her to end friendships over it. If friendship wasn’t too generous a term, for what they’d had.

So Wei Ying had taken the freeze-out for what it was, and she’d never tried to initiate anything one-on-one again. They still saw each other sometimes in group settings, mostly with the usual suspects and sometimes Wen Qing’s brother, Wen Ning. Wei Ying still said hello to Lan Zhan when their paths crossed, or chatted with her at gatherings like this one. It was fine. It was friendly.

The tea incident had been about a year ago. Meaning it’s been a year since Wei Ying has even tried to date someone. 

It’s now been a month since her first kiss. 

Wei Ying had thought about the kiss furiously for the first week; daydreaming about it in class, conjuring up faces and names and backstories for the mouth and hands that had touched her. And then it had faded into a backdrop of noise as she’d gotten swept up in school, her social life, all of the usual bullshit with her adopted family dynamics.

So for a while, she doesn’t think about it again. 

And then Mianmian texts her one Thursday that she’s having another party over the weekend, and would Wei Ying like to come?

◈ ◈ ◈

Wei Ying spends her entire Saturday evening jittering with nerves. During her makeup routine, she opts for a slutty look, then decides it’s too slutty — what if harlotry is a turnoff to her mystery admirer? — and settles instead on dark-wash skinny jeans, some white chunky sneakers, and a cropped, ribbed tank top that makes her tits look bigger than they actually are. She goes light on the makeup, a sheen of glittery lip gloss and mascara; it’s not like that part really matters, given she’s planning on being blindfolded in a dark closet. But in the chance that her admirer sees her hanging around the party outside of their rendezvous, she wants to at least look decent.

That’s assuming, of course, that he even shows up in the first place. Mianmian had claimed she invited the same crowd as last time, but that doesn’t guarantee the same people will be there.

After the party starts, Wei Ying waits about an hour, that way most of the guests can arrive, before she slips away into the same closet. She’d asked Mianmian to circulate the word about the challenge, that way if the stranger caught wind of it again, he’d show up like before, but there’s no telling how successful word-of-mouth is, in situations like this.

Wei Ying leans against the closet wall, blindfolded, and waits with her heart in her throat.

This time, she doesn’t have to wait for nearly as long. After only about five minutes, she hears the door open. She straightens up with anticipation when she hears it shut just as fast. She’s gone a month without answers, wondering and wondering — imagining this next encounter a hundred ways.

“Back for more, huh?” Wei Ying says. Her pulse picks up as she hears the stranger move closer to her. 

This time there’s no hesitation. Only footsteps on the wood, a hand on her face, a familiar mouth crushing against hers in a deep, wet slide. Wei Ying gives a tiny moan of satisfaction as she’s shoved back against the wall of the closet with a dull thud. Like before, the person grabs her wrists, keeping them pinned together with one hand. The other hand finds Wei Ying’s waist, running up her side from her hip to her ribs. Wei Ying shivers. Whoever it is, his hand is big. It feels good to be touched like this, in ways she never has before. Each nerve feels new and awake.

Wei Ying pulls back from the kiss to whisper, “Both hands,” as a request, and the stranger hesitates before Wei Ying’s wrists are freed. Then he has both hands on her, gripping her waist in a tight squeeze, his mouth laying ruin to her neck. Wei Ying’s head tips back, pleasure spindling through her. She’d had no idea she was so sensitive where the stranger kisses up the column of her throat; nipping small bites into the thin skin, sucking bruises hard enough to ache. Their bodies start to move against each other in an artless grind, jeans against jeans, their panting loud and ragged. Wei Ying had been too distracted during the first kiss to process much of anything, but this time, she catches a scent she hadn’t before. It’s strong enough to taste, something familiar that she can’t place — fresh and almost woodsy, something herbal. 

The stranger’s hands move up her ribs to cup against her sternum, clearly hesitating even though the destination is clear. Wei Ying whispers yeah touch me and the stranger does, palming over her breasts and squeezing. Oh. Wei Ying arches onto tiptoe, bending closer into the touch as her head spins. The blindfold heightens each physical sensation, with her sight taken away, and it suddenly occurs to her that she should be touching back. That she could be, and that she wants to.

Wei Ying reaches out to put her hands on the person’s waist. She finds a soft curve of hip, warm to the touch. It is not the straight-edged abdomen of a boy. 

Wei Ying freezes, blood rushing to her head. 

The stranger goes still too, then moves back and knocks Wei Ying’s hand away. 

“Oh,” Wei Ying says stupidly, “you’re. . . “

The strange, jittery feeling building up inside of her at this revelation is not disgust. It’s not even discomfort. It’s more just — a strange tilt of alignment that she wasn’t expecting. It suddenly makes a lot of sense, that she hadn’t been able to picture a boy kissing her that first time, because. Well. It hadn’t been.

The person is breathing rough and hard, not in a good way. They sound upset. Wei Ying opens her mouth to say something, but there’s a displacement of air, and then she hears the closet door slam shut. 

Wei Ying rips off her blindfold, squinting into the darkness of the closet and reeling. 

She stands there for an unmeasured span of time, processing the last several minutes with blank shock. Then, wonderingly, she touches her fingers to her tender mouth. She can still feel the invisible handprints on her breasts, and she lightly echoes the touch with her own hands. Those hadn’t been the fumbling, inept hands of a boy, unfamiliar with such terrain. Whoever had kissed her, Wei Ying could have also reached out and touched their chest like this, filled her palms with soft curves; could have moved her thumb and felt, hard through the fabric —

Wei Ying leans back against the wall again, dazed. This development poses an entirely new question relating to the person’s identity; a new stickiness factor. It’s very possible that whoever it is can’t reveal who they are for reasons more serious than shyness. It’s never something Wei Ying has had to consider for herself. 

Once she’s got a grip again, Wei Ying musters up the nerve to leave the closet. Her departure is once again unnoticed by her peers. She glances around the low-lit room, hazy with vape and cigarette smoke, and she scans the face of every woman in vicinity, but none of them seem right at all. If her admirer had fled the closet, she’d probably already left the party too. 

Wei Ying finds herself bizarrely disappointed. Whoever it was had seemed upset, bolting before Wei Ying could have a true reaction beyond her initial surprise. She doesn’t want her admirer to feel bad about kissing her. Especially because — and here’s her own slow-mounting revelation — Wei Ying hadn’t minded it. It had still felt good to be touched, no matter what. Actually, there’s a secret comfort in knowing it had been a girl touching her like that; a belated relief. There had been something about the thought of a boy sneaking in and touching her, in that scenario, that had made Wei Ying skittish in a way she didn’t want to admit to herself, or perhaps is only just now realizing.

Wei Ying locates the nearest couch, sits down, and stares at an oil painting of a gingko tree for a very long time.

Wei Ying had thought a lot about boobs growing up. She’d always assumed that every girl had. For a long time, she’d lagged behind other girls when it came to horrid puberty developments, so she’d always chalked this interest up to a burning curiosity about what other girls’ bodies looked like under their clothes, compared to hers. She’d found herself staring all the time at the different shapes of girls’ chests in their starchy uniform shirts, envious and a little transfixed. It had just been teenage curiosity. Hadn’t it? Wei Ying had thought most girls felt similarly about boobs, a private and common understanding among their sex that breasts had universal appeal, sexuality notwithstanding.

She is currently realizing, at breakneck pace, that might not be the case.

Abruptly, Wei Ying needs to be outside. The party, its noise and its heat and its stagnant, ashy air, closes in on her from all sides. She launches herself off the couch and toward Mianmian’s tiny back porch, where some of the rain-wrecked boards sag and pouch inward. Mianmian has been saying for ages she’s going to get it fixed, but she and Wen Qing are usually too busy for repairs, with Wen Qing working in the surgical ward at the hospital and Mianmian in law school. Also recently added to the list of pending repairs is the hole in the wall Wei Ying had noticed at the last party; Mianmian had been complaining at length about whichever house-guest had been discourteous enough to put their fist through it. 

Wei Ying pauses at the screen door when she realizes she’ll have company. 

Lan Zhan’s back is immediately recognizable in its flawless lines, her shoulders upright and her posture perfectly straight. Wei Ying had used to tease her about that, about secretly sporting a back brace or some other nonsense. Wei Ying had teased her about everything, really. It feels a little mean in hindsight, even though it had only been for attention, not out of malice. 

For a moment, through the grimy glass door, Wei Ying watches Lan Zhan as though she’s a stranger, curious as to what Lan Zhan will do when she’s unaware she’s being observed. Not much, predictably. Lan Zhan holds herself very still and stares off into nothing, her hands rubbing together ever so often. Boring, Wei Ying thinks, with an unexpected swell of fondness, then she shakes her head and laughs quietly to herself. 

She moves onto the porch, then slides the door shut behind her loud enough to signal her arrival. She picks her way around the sunken deck boards.

“This is becoming something of a habit,” Wei Ying teases, and Lan Zhan turns to stare at her. Wei Ying settles down next to Lan Zhan on the single bench and continues, “I had no idea you were such a regular partygoer.”

“I am not,” says Lan Zhan, looking at the ground. “Mianmian is a friend.”

“You shouldn’t feel like you have to come, if you hate these things,” Wei Ying says. “You always seem like you’d prefer to be alone, or — I don’t know. On a desert island with your favorite book.”

Lan Zhan looks at her like she might want to say something. Then she looks away again. It’s a moment before she responds. “Did you find that boy you were looking for?” 

The inflection of the sentence is odd. A slight emphasis on boy that calls up derision. It gives Wei Ying pause; it’s surely not possible that someone as gorgeous as Lan Zhan could actually be jealous of her. Maybe she resents the fact that she herself hasn’t kissed anyone, and Wei Ying is such a hot commodity?

“Ohhh, nothing yet,” Wei Ying says. For whatever reason, she thinks it’s probably for the best she doesn’t mention she’d been kissed again tonight. There’s something about this particular experience she wants to keep private and close to her chest. 

Lan Zhan glances off down the rain-slick street, mist catching in the streetlights. Wei Ying studies the perfect cut of her jawline, the familiar slope of her nose. Her eyes drop to Lan Zhan’s chest, and an old, buried memory resurfaces, dredged up from her preceding line of thought. 

Wei Ying had seen Lan Zhan’s breasts once, when they were still in high school together. Not the full thing, of course. They’d been changing next to each other after gym class. At that point, Wei Ying was still as flat as a surfboard. She’d only started wearing tiny sports bras in the first place because she had to change next to other girls, and it seemed more decent than flashing her bare tits around, or lack thereof. Wei Ying had glanced over mid-change and caught sight of Lan Zhan topless, her skin flushed and dewy from running laps. She’d been wearing a plain, dusk-blue bra, but her breasts overflowed the cups a little, pale crescents of skin spilling over the tops. Wei Ying had stared, halfway out of her shirt and unable to look away. It suddenly occurred to her the sheer difference between them; underneath her several layers of clothing and permafrost, Lan Zhan was much nearer to a woman than Wei Ying was, who in this moment felt very much like a girl. 

Lan Zhan had glanced up and caught Wei Ying staring. A splotchy flush spread up her chest and neck. She’d huffed and thrown her uniformed shirt on and stormed out of the changing room with the air of a scandalized maiden. Some time ago, around when they’d entered university, Lan Zhan had started wearing sports bras or some other compression material that made her chest appear much flatter, but Wei Ying had never forgotten that image, the true and hidden curves of her.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying hears herself say before she can sign off on the thought. “You haven’t been kissed before, right?”

Lan Zhan cuts a narrow glance her way, her lips pursing. It makes her look angry, maybe a little defensive. She doesn’t answer that, which to Wei Ying is an answer in and of itself.

“You haven’t,” she confirms with a sympathetic nod. “Lan Zhan, you should really try it. It’s nice.”

Lan Zhan blinks, some of the ice in her expression melting.

“Nice,” she echoes, with a tone of faint disbelief.

“Yeah.” Wei Ying is suddenly, inexplicably desperate for Lan Zhan to have this experience for herself. Wei Ying has always been the sort of person who’s eager to indoctrinate people into new experiences, usually for their own benefit. She’s invested in her friends’ quality of life, after all — if that’s what Lan Zhan even is to her. It seems impossible that Lan Zhan can remain unkissed, with a face as beautiful as hers, with a mouth like that. It seems, actually, egregious.

Lan Zhan is still staring at Wei Ying. Wei Ying takes a moment to bask in the rareness of it, of holding Lan Zhan’s regard.

“You . . . liked being kissed,” Lan Zhan says, almost a question.

Wei Ying nods, encouraged by the fact, surprising as it is, that Lan Zhan is at least somewhat interested in this topic of conversation. “Oh, yeah. I mean, I know it makes you uncomfortable, so I won’t go into details or anything. But it’s the best. I wish I was still getting kissed right now.”

This admission might be too shameless for Lan Zhan, because her jaw clenches and she turns away again. Wei Ying finds herself staring at the back of Lan Zhan’s head, where the curling tips of her hair brush against the collar of her shirt. Lan Zhan used to wear her hair long, bone-straight and uncut, almost to her waist. She’d usually kept it pinned in a bun so tight that her dark hair looked painted on. Then, out of the blue in their early college days, Lan Zhan had cut all her hair off. It had been a visual shock that took Wei Ying a couple days to process. In one of their shared classes, almost a whole year before the speed-dating event, she’d found herself staring at Lan Zhan for several uninterrupted minutes, observing the way the new style changed the angles of her face. It highlighted the high, perfect arches of her cheeks, her full pink lips. It made her boyish-looking, but still unfairly pretty. The longer Wei Ying had stared, the more she found herself imagining it, what Lan Zhan would look like as a boy. Probably equally pretty. 

The realization had clicked in her like the last twist of a Rubik’s cube slotting into full color. She would definitely have a crush on Lan Zhan if she were a boy. No doubt about it. 

Finally, Lan Zhan had caught her staring across the classroom. She’d started to glare, a flush creeping into her ears and cheeks. Wei Ying had grinned and waved back. Lan Zhan had huffed and swung her head away, back toward the whiteboard where —

“I think I’ll go,” the present Lan Zhan is saying, “it’s getting late,” and Wei Ying blinks, pulled out of the reverie. Lan Zhan is looking at her again, superimposed onto the younger version of her in Wei Ying’s memory. She looks much the same, but her hair is longer now, closer to a shag that needs cropping. Lan Zhan is still looking at her, and instead of the usual rush of mischievous delight Wei Ying would feel at that fact, she feels her heart start racing instead, knocking uncomfortably hard against her ribs.

What’s happening to me, she thinks, just she hears her mouth go, “Oh, okay.”

Lan Zhan wishes her a good night, then stands up.

“Be safe,” Wei Ying blurts out, then twists her hands together in her lap.

Lan Zhan blinks at her from above. Maybe it’s a trick of the streetlight, but her face seems to soften. She echoes the sentiment in a quiet voice, and then leaves the porch.

Wei Ying buries her face in her hands, squeezing her eyes shut against an impending migraine. 

What’s happening to me, she thinks again. Her heart won’t slow down. She gets up and paces around the uneven porch to walk it off, even as the mist solidifies into a steady drizzle. She’s out there for so long that eventually Mianmian comes to find her and says, “ There you are,” with a haggard and maternal concern, like Wei Ying’s a toddler who’d wandered off at the beach.

“Everyone’s already headed out,” Mianmian continues, frowning as she peers through the rain. “Are you okay?”

“Soooo okay,” Wei Ying says, in her most un-normal sounding voice. 

Mianmian raises an eyebrow. Wei Ying sighs and shuffles her way over to the door, heeding the warning of watch your step. When Wei Ying steps inside, Wen Qing’s already got the kettle on in the kitchen, most of the dirty glasses from the party forming crooked lines along the counter.

“You must be soaked,” Mianmian says, rubbing a hand on Wei Ying’s shoulder. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Wei Ying says. “I think I just need to sleep for two days?”

“The couch is yours,” Mianmian says. She visibly assesses Wei Ying’s state again and appears concerned by her findings. “Are you sure you don’t want some tea? I don’t want you to get sick.”

“I’m really fine,” Wei Ying insists. She gets prickly about care when she’s in moods like this, even if someone is genuinely trying to help. “Just need to sleep.”

Mianmian and Wen Qing finally let her go without questioning, although Wei Ying can hear them talking in low murmurs from the kitchen. It’s oddly comforting. She lives alone, and hearing other people like this, commiserating over a boiling kettle and a bubbling pot, feels like the simulation of having a family. She should have offered to help them clean up; that’s what guest etiquette would dictate. And she would, if she could imagine being on her feet a moment longer.

Wei Ying peels off her damp clothes until she’s left in her sports bra and underwear. She doesn’t bother to fold them, just leaves them in a wet heap on the floor. She crawls onto the couch and curls up under the blanket. 

She stares, unblinking, at the glitter of the streetlights through the back door’s glass. She thinks about being kissed, hands on her hips, hands on her chest. She imagines being touched by a boy like that, as she has for a month, and feels nothing aside from an empirical curiosity. Kissing a guy would be fine. Like, she probably wouldn’t hate it. She’d spent a lifetime preparing herself to enjoy kissing boys. Experimentally, she switches out the face in her imagination for a woman’s and feels — something, but she shies away from the novelty of it just as fast. Then she takes a deep breath, and makes herself imagine it again. Some wires must get crossed, some sense-memory from staring out at the porch, because suddenly, she imagines Lan Zhan’s face; Lan Zhan’s hands on her tits, Lan Zhan’s mouth on her neck, and before she can stop herself, Wei Ying drops a hand between her legs and clamps her thighs around it. It wrings a shocked sound out of her, muffled into the couch cushion, and she freezes. 

That had been — she hadn’t meant to — 

Wei Ying’s head swims. Surely she doesn’t — on Lan Zhan? Wouldn’t she have known by now if she did?! 

With the increasing feeling that she’s plummeting off a tall cliff, she thinks about the speed-dating match, shooing other boys away to twirl her hair at Lan Zhan; she thinks about staring at Lan Zhan in their classes, a cup of tea in the library, feeling like dust in the sun; wanting to see Lan Zhan snap pencils with those strong hands, wanting to know Lan Zhan’s type, watching Lan Zhan on the porch with her perfect mouth and thinking Someone should kiss her —

Wei Ying flips over and buries her face into the couch cushions. It’s the alcohol. Obviously it’s the alcohol. She’ll sleep on it, and if she doesn’t still feel this way when she’s sober, then she’ll dismiss it out of hand. Case closed.

The next morning, Wei Ying wakes up feeling very sober and still very much some kind of way about Lan Zhan. 

Wen Qing and Mianmian are angelic hosts, folding her into their morning conversations even as Wei Ying stays quiet and downs her coffee without a word. For breakfast, they’d prepared some congee and jianbing, and Wei Ying thanks them profusely as she picks at her food. Her appetite is mostly gone.

Halfway through breakfast, Wen Qing and Mianmian start rehashing the various dramas of the previous evening. There was some girl they both know at the party who has a crush on Lan Zhan, because of course anyone would, haha, yeah I know, she’s a total babe, right? It’s only a matter of time before and it makes Wei Ying so nauseous that she moves out to the couch and continues to sip darkly at her coffee, staring off into the void.

Not so long after, Wen Qing and Mianmian join her in the living room, taking up seats on the opposite couch. Their deliberate silence and synchronized movements feel suspiciously like an impending intervention.

“Hiiii, meimei,” Mianmian says, in what sounds like a camp counselor voice. It confirms the suspicion. “Is there anything you want to talk about?”

Wei Ying huddles deeper under her blanket. “No.”

Wen Qing sighs and gives one eye a tired rub. “It’s obvious you’re upset about something. You don’t have to talk about whatever it is, but we’re . . . a little worried about you.”

Wei Ying refocuses on her two very dear friends, and she finds only genuine concern reflected back at her. She has the dismaying realization, when she pulls her head out of her little quagmire of despair, that she’s actually being an asshole to two people who very kindly housed her and made her breakfast.

“Okay,” Wei Ying says, sitting up straighter. “Yeah, we can talk.” 

These two, if anyone, could probably help her understand what’s going on. She sets her coffee mug down on the table.

Mianmian and Wen Qing wait in patient silence as Wei Ying gathers her thoughts.

“What if,” Wei Ying says, then swallows. She doesn’t usually have any trouble voicing her mind. This feels so different, somehow. “Just asking for a friend here. What if, in theory, you were what you heretofore considered to be a straight woman, and you suddenly find yourself thinking about boobs a lot.”

The answering silence is a little damning.

“Well,” Wen Qing says at the same time Mianmian goes, “Errrrr.”

Wen Qing seems fiercely determined to have mercy on her. She sounds almost gentle when she asks, “What kind of thoughts about boobs?”

“I don’t know. Just. Boobs,” Wei Ying says bleakly.

“Hmmm,” Wen Qing says at a diagnostic pitch.

Wei Ying buries her face in her hands and continues, muffled. “What if you — I mean, in theory — what if you were what you considered to be straight, and you find out you’ve actually been thinking about boobs for a really long time.”

“I’ve never not been thinking about boobs,” Mianmian says reflectively. “I mean, your first thought as a baby is about wanting boobs in your mouth, right? I just don’t think I ever grew out of it.”

“Not helpful,” Wen Qing tells Mianmian.

“When did you start thinking about boobs?” Wei Ying demands of Wen Qing through a slat in her fingers.

“Well, always,” Wen Qing says without batting an eye. “But it’s different for everyone.”

Wei Ying doesn’t say anything else for a few minutes. She squirms on the couch while Wen Qing and Mianmian wait her out with obvious curiosity. She hadn’t planned to divulge this information — it had felt too damning, somehow, but this feels like a safe space, and the conversation so far is much more comforting than she’d imagined. Still, the words stick in her throat. She has to mentally run up to it a few times before she can say it.

“Okay,” Wei Ying says, closing her eyes. “What if. In theory. A girl kissed you and. You didn’t hate it.” Her voice drops a notch softer, her eyes still shut. “What if a girl kissed you and . . . you liked it?”

She doesn’t open her eyes, but she gets the sense that Wen Qing and Mianmian trade significant looks.

“Wei Ying,” Wen Qing says. Her tone has changed to one she uses on shifts with concussed patients. “Have you ever thought you might . . .”

“Don’t,” Wei Ying objects to the use of the tone. “Don’t diagnose me.”

Wen Qing raises a perfectly sculpted brow. “Diagnose you with what? Homosexual thoughts?” 

“Yes, that.”

“Who kissed you?” Mianmian jumps in, who has visibly been bursting to ask the question since Wei Ying mentioned it. Her eyes widen in some kind of realization. “Oh my god, was it —”

Wen Qing pinches Mianmian gently on the thigh. Mianmian quiets down, slotting a hand over her mouth.

“I don’t know who it was,” Wei Ying says. “It was definitely a girl though.” She swallows, then adds, “Twice.”

“Well,” Mianmian says cheerfully, removing her hand to talk again. “I’m not gonna lie — selfishly, it would be kind of great for the vibe if you were gay. Or bi, you know, whatever you prefer to call it! Because then that would mean the circle is complete.”

Wei Ying frowns, not following. “What do you mean?”

“She just means all five of us would be queer,” Wen Qing clarifies.

“All five of us?” Wei Ying echoes.

“Yeah, our friend group from school,” Mianmian says. “Us, Huaisang, you, Lan Zhan.”

Wei Ying’s hands find the couch cushions and clench like she’s bracing her body against impact. 

“What do you mean,” she says, “Lan Zhan?”

Wen Qing and Mianmian stare at her with unveiled surprise. They exchange a quick, uncertain look, then look at Wei Ying again.

“You . . . didn’t know.” Wen Qing says this with an air of doubt, like she’s expecting Wei Ying to contradict her.

“No,” Wei Ying says. A four-alarm fire drill is ringing somewhere distantly in her brain. “I did not. Know that.”

A brief and very awkward silence ensues.

“I mean,” Mianmian says slowly, “I’d apologize for outing her, but she was never exactly, uh . . . hiding it?”

“You mean,” Wei Ying says, still somewhat faint, “everyone is aware of this information except for me.”

“Most people know,” Wen Qing says, ever unsparing in frankness. “But they usually don’t even have to ask, given it’s kind of. Well.” She fixes Wei Ying with a slightly exasperated look, almost like she’s disappointed. “It’s pretty obvious, Wei Ying.”

“Obvious how?” Wei Ying shrills. “I’ve known Lan Zhan since we were 14, and she’s never mentioned it even once!”

“Well, maybe there’s a reason for that,” Mianmian begins, then clamps her mouth shut and widens her eyes as Wen Qing flares a sharp look at her.

Wei Ying furrows her brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Wen Qing and Mianmian fall as silent as chastised children, exchanging cryptic eye contact again and doing something weird with their mouths.

“Don’t do the silent-girlfriend-conversation thing,” Wei Ying complains. “What do you mean, there’s a reason for it?”

“Forget I said anything,” Mianmian says, shaking her head. “Really, Wei Ying, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Something acidic clenches in Wei Ying’s chest. Surely they don’t all think . . .

“I’m not,” she says, then starts again. She suddenly feels horrible and small. “I mean — I hope you all know that . . . surely Lan Zhan knows that . . . . that kind of thing doesn’t matter to me?”

“Noooo, that’s not what I meant at all,” Mianmian says, more flustered by the second. “Really, please forget I said anything.”

“Lan Zhan probably hasn’t brought it up because you never asked,” Wen Qing intercedes, sparing her girlfriend. “She’s not exactly the most forthcoming with personal information, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Wei Ying is still reeling. Wei Ying is having an outsized reaction to something that 1) has absolutely nothing to do with her and 2) has apparently long been publicly available information. It shouldn’t affect her either way that Lan Zhan likes girls. This is something she rationally knows. And yet her body won’t stop reacting to it, her palms clammy and her mouth dry and her face way too hot. 

The revelation recolors a lot of their interactions, especially from their earlier days. If this was common knowledge, had Lan Zhan always thought she knew, and assumed Wei Ying was mocking her, making fun of her? How cruel does Wei Ying’s flirting and teasing seem now, knowing what she does? 

And if Wei Ying had been teasing her as much as she had, for no reason other than wanting Lan Zhan’s eyes on her, always Lan Zhan’s eyes on her, then —

She rakes her hands down her face and takes a deep breath. “Okay. Oooookay.”

“Wei Ying,” Wen Qing says. “You’re reacting to this, like. A lot. What is this really about?”

“Nothing, I just!!” Wei Ying says. “Have been processing a lot of information in the last 24 hours! First a girl kisses me, I find out I might like the fact that a girl kissed me, I find out Lan Zhan likes girls, I have to potentially now reject a complete stranger who’s been showing up to kiss me in closets because it’s suddenly critical to me that Lan Zhan likes girls, I . . . ohhh god, I . . .”

“Calm down,” Wen Qing says, with the concussed-patients tone again. “Breathe.”

Wei Ying does some square breathing like the campus counselor had once instructed her, four four four four. It gives her bad vibes. She instinctively switches to threes.

“This only seems big and messy right now because it’s a lot at once,” Wen Qing says. “But it’s not all that messy. It’s actually pretty straightforward. Take a couple days, sort your shit out, then go from there.”

“So — wait. Does this mean you like Lan Zhan?” Mianmian asks, which earns a beleaguered we were making such progress sigh from Wen Qing.

The question sends Wei Ying into a helpless fit of laughter. She’s apparently hysterical enough-sounding to draw more concerned looks from her friends.

“I?” Wei Ying says. “I have no idea how to answer that question. I don’t even know what liking a girl feels like. I don’t even — ”

“Let’s do a quick thought experiment,” Wen Qing says, with the aura of one rapidly losing her patience. “You said you’ve been thinking about boobs a lot.”

“Yeah,” Wei Ying agrees, “perpetually.”

“Close your eyes,” Wen Qing says. Wei Ying does, wondering if she should lie back on the couch to really cement the Freudian vibes of this whole situation. “Picture in your mind that Lan Zhan shows up in front of you.”

It’s all too easy to do. Of everyone she knows, Lan Zhan’s face is always the clearest image in her thoughts, from how much Wei Ying has stared at her over the years. Even in Wei Ying’s imagination, Lan Zhan is frowning at her with slight disapproval, her pretty features stern. Wei Ying almost smiles at the thought of it.

“Now imagine she’s naked,” Wen Qing continues in the same flat, psychiatric voice, and the unexpected mental image causes Wei Ying to flare about a hundred shades of red.

“Ohhhh my god ?” Mianmian says when she sees it, just as Wei Ying yells, “That’s not fair, anyone would — !!” just as Wen Qing is saying, “Quiet, both of you,” to the two of them.

“Is that test clinically proven in trials?” Wei Ying says snippily once the pandemonium settles, just to be a bit of a bitch.

“Yes,” Wen Qing says, unflinching, “I also have a doctorate in lesbianism.”

“It’s true,” Mianmian says.

Wei Ying says, “This has been so utterly unhelpful, thanks.”

“Jokes aside, your body can be a powerful truth-teller in situations like this,” Wen Qing says. “Especially around sex and desire. You got embarrassed when you imagined it, of course, but how did it make you feel?”

Wei Ying thinks deeper on this, revisiting her own reaction. The rush of heat that had filled her, the strange throb between her legs that had knocked her a little sideways. Imagining Lan Zhan that way, she had felt . . . it had made her . . .

“Horny,” Wei Ying says in a small, defeated voice.

“My work here is done,” Wen Qing says, and she leaves to top off Wei Ying’s coffee.

◈ ◈ ◈

All in all, it doesn’t take too much convincing Mianmian to host another party a week from now. Wen Qing is against it, which causes something of a tiff over their afternoon boba run. Mianmian and Wen Qing debate with academic efficiency in the front seat as Wen Qing drives, weaving around other cars with terrifying speed. Wei Ying scrunches up in the backseat, slurps all the leftover tapioca goop out of the bottom of her cup, and pretends this has nothing to do with her. 

“It’s romantic,” Mianmian argues, twisted sideways to face Wen Qing.

“It’s unnecessary,” Wen Qing says, clinical and detached. “Throw another huge party, spend another two days of prepping and cleaning the entire house, invite a bunch of people over — all that pretense just so Wei Ying can continue to not have a conversation with someone? It’s ridiculous.”

Mianmian pouts at her. “Wouldn’t you want to do the same for me if it were us, baby?”

“This would never happen to us. Even hypothetically,” Wen Qing says dryly. “No offense, Wei Ying.”

“None taken,” Wei Ying pipes up from the backseat. “Not all of us can have romance novel origin stories.”

“We used a dating app to miscommunicate for six months like normal lesbians.” Wen Qing switches lanes, blinker clicking, to cut someone off. “And don’t ‘baby’ me to win an argument.”

“Even if you like it?” Mianmian walks her fingers up Wen Qing’s arm in a slow tease. 

Wen Qing grumbles something under her breath, then sighs and flips her hand up. Mianmian takes it and squeezes, their fingers lacing together on the middle console. 

Wei Ying watches them like a spectator through partition glass. The boba churns in her stomach; too sugary, a press of nausea at the base of her throat. 

Wei Ying has obviously spent a lot of time with Wen Qing and Mianmian. They’ve done far more lovey and couple-y stuff than this in front of her. On one notable occasion, Wei Ying had walked in on them having half-clothed sex on the kitchen counter. She hadn’t batted an eye over it; had only opened the fridge, grabbed a coke, closed it, and left the room. 

But Wei Ying has never had reason to imagine herself in either of their shoes. She can see it so clearly for a second: teasing Lan Zhan as she drives, walking her fingers up her arm, Lan Zhan taking her hand. 

She has to plant her cheek to the window, the glass cool against her face as blurry cars whip by in her line of sight. A dull pulse of want aches in the middle of her chest. 

“I always thought I wanted a family,” Wei Ying says to no one in particular, still staring off into the middle-distance.

Wen Qing’s eyes cut to her in the rearview mirror. “Who says you can’t have one?”

“I — I don’t know,” Wei Ying says. “I don’t think I actually want it. I thought I did. Everything I pictured for myself growing up — wedding, husband, house, kids in sequential order — it’s like . . . what if I don’t want it at all? What if I never did?”

Mianmian turns in the passenger seat to give Wei Ying the kindest look in the world. “Qingqing and I are going to adopt, once we’ve been working for a few years and we’re married.” She reaches out with the hand that’s not holding Wen Qing’s to squeeze Wei Ying’s knee. “It’s okay if you don’t want that. But it’s an option, if you find out that you do.”

Wei Ying is still processing wanting to hold Lan Zhan’s hand; the concept of adopting kids with her is so far beyond crazy that a tiny laugh of disbelief bubbles up in her. She pats Mianmian’s hand and goes back to staring out the window.

After another moment of silence, Wen Qing gives a gusty sigh from the driver’s seat, radiating defeat. “Fine. Do the stupid party.”

“Yesssss!” Mianmian says, then leans all the way over the console to kiss Wen Qing on the cheek. “Thank you, honey.”

“I am driving.”

“Oh, like we haven’t done worse in a moving car.”

◈ ◈ ◈

Because Mianmian is perfect, everything goes exactly to plan during the setup. 

When the evening actually arrives and the house is in pristine order, they discuss logistics as a trio. Wei Ying had wanted to meet in the closet again, but Wen Qing and Mianmian firmly nix that idea, suggesting instead a more private and intimate setting like their guest bedroom.

It feels like — a lot. It feels maybe too suggestive for someone she’s about to thanks but no thanks to. Wei Ying slugs down a beer, paces, and frets.

“What if she doesn’t even show up?” Wei Ying says, wearing a hole in the carpet. “How is she going to know where to even find me?”

“She’ll be here, and we’ll make sure she knows where you are,” Wen Qing says with an eerie conviction. 

Wei Ying frowns at her, opening her mouth to ask how she can be so certain of that, but Wen Qing is already whisking away to refill the snack bar.

Wei Ying rakes anxious fingers through her ponytail, then turns to Mianmian. “Do you know if Lan Zhan is coming tonight?”

Mianmian makes some complicated kind of face, then says, in a funny voice, “Um, I think so, yeah.”

“Great,” Wei Ying mutters. “Just what I need.” 

She’s not ready to see Lan Zhan right now, in the wake of her recent revelation. She has no idea what to do with herself. She hasn’t had a true crush in so long that it’s making her stupid and weird. She’s never had a crush with anywhere near the gravity of this. She had started four separate text drafts to Lan Zhan this week, had gotten as far as hi!!! or hey there!! and then deleted each attempt in a fit of despair.

“Chin up, love,” Mianmian says, then rubs Wei Ying’s shoulder. “It’ll all work out.”

“Sure,” Wei Ying says, feeling rather pessimistic. “I’m just caught up in the weirdest ménage-à-trois of the decade.”

Mianmian makes a weird face again. “I’m not sure you know what that means.”

People start showing up soon after this, so Wei Ying bolts down another drink and flees to the guest bedroom before Lan Zhan can make an appearance and make the whole situation messier. One thing at a time. Bites of an elephant? Or something? She’s tipsy. It feels ridiculous to be blindfolded again, after all of this, but she has the sneaking suspicion that her mystery stranger won’t engage with her otherwise. While she’s curious to know who it is, she’s more desperate to have a conversation and to clear up the whole — nightmare crush situation. It feels wrong to kiss a person and lead them on when she has feelings for someone else.

Wei Ying settles on the bed, decides it looks too lascivious, then sits up to perch on the edge of the mattress. After about ten minutes, her back starts to hurt, so she lies back down again. The beer had made her overfull, too carbonated; it sloshes around uncomfortably in her belly. She looks up at the ceiling through her blindfold and wonders if she could fall asleep like this.

Someone opens the door, and Wei Ying sits up, her heart in her throat. 

There’s a pause, and Wei Ying opens her mouth to speak. Then a man says, in an audibly weirded-out voice, “Uhhhh, sorry? I thought this was the bathroom?” and shuts the door.

Wei Ying sinks back onto the bed and sighs, and waits, and waits. A film reel of theories starts to unspool in her head the longer she lies there in the dark. 

Wen Qing must have been wrong about the mystery stranger being here tonight. Who’s to say the person who had kissed her even lives in town? Maybe she’d only been here as a friend of a friend, and it was a chance one-off thing. Maybe it had been two different people on two separate occasions — no, there’s no way. The stranger had kissed the same, had known exactly where to find her that second time; had bitten her the same, had fled the same way both times. There’s every possibility that whoever it is simply didn’t feel up to going out tonight. Maybe the person is here, but doesn’t want to see Wei Ying anymore. Maybe the person is here, but doesn’t know where to find her; maybe she’s waiting for Wei Ying in the closet, wondering if Wei Ying will show. Any one of those things could be the reason that Wei Ying has been in this room for what feels like hours, blindfolded and alone. She desperately wants another drink.

The sound of the bedroom door creaks open, the sounds of the party flowing in. Another bathroom seeker?

“Occupied,” Wei Ying says from the bed. 

The door shuts. A floorboard squeaks. 

Oh.

Wei Ying wriggles into a sitting position on the bed, fighting the desperate urge to remove the blindfold. She doesn’t want to make her admirer flee again.

“Hi,” Wei Ying says, straining to make out any shapes through the blindfold. “Is it you again?”

The silence seems to be its own answer.

Wei Ying’s heart pounds and pounds. This is the third time this has happened, and she’s still as nervous as the first. The exchange feels especially loaded now, knowing what she does.

“You don’t have to stand all the way over there,” Wei Ying says, when the stranger doesn’t approach her. “I just want to talk.”

The stranger hesitates, then moves forward across the room. She stops in front of Wei Ying, a faceless hovering.

“I’m sorry I thought you were a boy at first,” Wei Ying says, sort of awkwardly. It feels strange to say such things and to be unable to see the reaction. A belated realization occurs to her. “Or I mean, maybe you are a boy, or neither, I don’t know how you identify! I shouldn’t assume anything, sorry. And I’m sorry if I freaked you out the last time. I was just surprised, that’s all.”

The stranger still doesn’t say anything. Maybe she — or they — is thinking about leaving again. 

“The truth is, I liked it,” Wei Ying says. “I’ve done a lot of thinking over the last few days, and, um. I’m actually pretty glad you’re a girl. If you are one.”

She hears the stranger inhale like they’ve taken a sudden blow.

Wei Ying opens her mouth to continue this rambling little confession —  I like that you’re a girl, but actually, I think I like someone else, I’m really sorry, thank you for your service — but she doesn’t get a chance, because the stranger is kissing her again, with the same scorching eagerness from the first two times. Wei Ying’s prepared speech dissolves into mist and floats up somewhere toward the ceiling. Each time, she’s shocked by how good it feels, how much her body wakes up and turns alight, new desperations making themselves known. Wei Ying distantly has the conscience to feel a little bad about the fact that she’s about to reject this person who has so kindly given her an educational course in being kissed and also learning how to want things. 

Before she can think about broaching the topic again, she’s pressed down into the bed so hard that her head goes hazy, and the person keeps kissing her and kissing her. Their tongue is in Wei Ying’s mouth now, deeper than it’s gone before, hitting most of her back teeth. Something in Wei Ying’s brain makes the sound of an old computer powering down, and it does not repair itself. During the first kiss, she’d tried to imagine other boys and it hadn’t worked, but now, it’s all too easy to imagine it’s Lan Zhan that’s —

The image is so powerful that Wei Ying feels a sharp zing of pleasure between her legs. She moans, her hands frantically gripping the stranger’s waist. If there had been any doubt about how she felt going into this, this reaction wipes any trace of it clear. If she could get Lan Zhan’s mouth on her like this, she’d never recover. It should make her feel more guilty, that she’s kissing someone and thinking about another person, but she’s so pleasure-drunk on it that she’ll have to forgive herself later. 

Her admirer is leaning over her, both of Wei Ying’s wrists tacked to the mattress above her head. All Wei Ying can do to reciprocate, blind and pinned, is move her thigh around until it slots between the person’s legs. Then she pushes up so that her leg connects with the crotch of their jeans.

The stranger exhales, almost pained-sounding, and says, so quiet it has to be involuntary, “Wei Ying — ” and they both freeze.

Wei Ying’s heart nearly stops in her chest. Then it starts pounding at triple-speed. She would recognize that voice anywhere, from the tallest mountain on the moon or the bottom of the ocean.

“— Lan Zhan?!” She sounds so shrill. Wei Ying scrambles to sit up, now that her wrists have been freed. She reaches up to rip off her blindfold, and no one tries to stop her.

Lan Zhan has already moved to the foot of the bed like she’s been kicked there, sitting back on her folded knees. She’s red from her neck to her ears, and she’s looking anywhere but Wei Ying. Her chest heaves, up-down and up-down.

“Oh my god,” Wei Ying says faintly. A buoyant, giddy joy fills her like hot air. “Lan Zhan — ”

As she speaks, she realizes how mismatched her tone is with Lan Zhan’s reaction. It lands all wrong. Her delight is so dissonant with the embarrassed hunch in Lan Zhan’s shoulders. A nauseated dread radiates off of her that wipes the smile right off Wei Ying’s face.

“Lan Zhan,” she ventures again, still hardly daring to believe it. “It was . . . it really was you? All those times?”

Lan Zhan tries to bolt; subtly, but Wei Ying sees the retreat for what it is, and she reaches out to grab Lan Zhan’s wrist before she can move off the bed.

“Wait,” Wei Ying pleads, “stay, please.”

Lan Zhan clenches her jaw and settles again, but she still won’t look at her. She looks like she’s going to absolute pieces, in the sort of stoic way only Lan Zhan is capable of. She looks miserable. It makes something in Wei Ying’s chest hurt. This isn’t how it should go.

“Lan Zhan,” she says, grabbing for Lan Zhan’s other wrist. “Hey hey, look at me.”

Lan Zhan briefly shuts her eyes, like she’s steeling herself for something. And then does, wariness still coiled tight in the line of her shoulders.

“I really wanted it to be you,” Wei Ying says, in the sincerest tone she can muster.

Lan Zhan glares at her, like she thinks Wei Ying might be making some kind of sick joke.

“I mean it,” Wei Ying insists. “I’m not teasing like before. Lan Zhan, I wanted it to be you so bad. I only brought you in here tonight to tell you I had to stop seeing you because I’ve got this big stupid crush on — well, the actual you.”

Lan Zhan blinks, visibly digesting this. She says, “You . . .”

“Yes!” Wei Ying says. She squeezes Lan Zhan’s wrists for emphasis. “Lan Zhan, I like you so much that it’s crazy. Wen Qing and Mianmian had to stage an intervention.”

Whatever horrible emotions Lan Zhan had previously worn on her face have cleared into a soft, disbelieving astonishment. 

“You . . .” Lan Zhan seems as though she’s struggling to speak. Her lips move soundlessly, her throat working. “You really . . .”



“Yeah,” Wei Ying says. “I hope that’s okay with you, otherwise I can put the blindfold back on —”

Lan Zhan moves so quickly that she blurs, and for a wild, heart-stopping moment, Wei Ying thinks she’s going to get kissed in a fit of blind passion. Instead, Lan Zhan folds her up in her arms and holds her, which is nearly just as good.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says into her neck. Her voice sounds smaller than Wei Ying has ever heard it. 

Wei Ying buries her nose into Lan Zhan’s shoulder, wrapping her arms around her tight. Lan Zhan is shaking a little, which is so fucking endearing in a way that Wei Ying can’t put into words. Wei Ying has been trying to get the dial on Lan Zhan for years, but this is all it had taken to unravel her, in the end. Just the simple truth.

Lan Zhan’s shoulders are strong under the fabric of her clothes. It’s a distracting thought to have, while tenderly embracing her. Pressed so close to her, Wei Ying is overwhelmed by the fresh, cool scent of her, the one she’d recognized in the closet but couldn’t place. How could she have not realized? It’s so stupid hot. 

Lan Zhan sighs and puts her nose into the crook of Wei Ying’s neck.

“Were you ever gonna tell me it was you?” Wei Ying asks softly, because she really wants to know. She pulls away to observe Lan Zhan more closely, who appears to have self-stabilized from a few minutes ago. She looks far more like her usual self, calm and removed.

“Not sure,” Lan Zhan admits. Her mouth is as flushed as it had been at the first party, a dark stain. This is what Lan Zhan looks like when Wei Ying has been kissing her. Wei Ying’s heart gives a faint thump like something falling off a shelf.

“I thought that you wouldn’t . . .” Lan Zhan continues, then wets her bottom lip. Her lashes drop. “I’m sorry.”

Wei Ying is baffled by this. “Sorry for what? Are you going to kiss me again?”

Lan Zhan gives a startled little huff, and her eyes land soft on Wei Ying. Something about that look emboldens Wei Ying, inebriates her; it’s more potent than any liquor she’s had this evening.

“I mean it,” Wei Ying says with fake haughtiness, then walks forward on her knees so that she’s nearly in Lan Zhan’s lap. From her slight height advantage on her knees, she grabs Lan Zhan’s face and tilts it up so that their noses are touching. She smiles. Lan Zhan’s hands find the back of her thighs and squeeze. “Look how shameless you’ve made me, jiejie.”

This gets her the reaction she wants. She’s pulled down sharply into Lan Zhan’s lap, and finally, Lan Zhan kisses her again, but for the first time, Wei Ying can see, and this time it’s Lan Zhan kissing her as she is, not as a faceless stranger or a fantasy. She moans into Lan Zhan’s mouth with feeling, and Lan Zhan’s hands move up to grip her ass through her jeans. 

They should probably talk more, about this and everything that had preceded it. A small voice Wei Ying recognizes as her conscience helpfully chimes in to remind her of this. It would probably be good — ideal, in fact — to have a real conversation before feeling each other up in their friends’ guest bedroom. Wei Ying doesn’t care. She’s got Lan Zhan underneath her, gorgeous and hot and bothered, so nothing else could possibly matter at the moment. Wei Ying is already wet enough that her underwear is sticky, but she hadn’t realized it until just now, at the moment when Lan Zhan shifts her on her lap just so. Wei Ying’s back arches, pushing back into Lan Zhan’s hands as she grinds down on Lan Zhan’s lap. The friction sends up sparks behind her eyes.

Fuck, she thinks. She might say it. Whatever the reason, Lan Zhan makes a sound into her mouth, and moves them both back so that Wei Ying is pinned to the bed again, Lan Zhan’s body flat on top of hers. From this vantage point, it’s easy to run her hands up and down the lines of Lan Zhan’s body, mapping out how it feels. Lan Zhan presents as fairly masculine, wears it almost like armor, so there’s something about the intimacy of feeling the various softness of her through her clothes that makes Wei Ying crazy with tenderness. Her mouth already feels wrecked from where Lan Zhan is taking it apart. Her neck is stinging from how hard Lan Zhan bites, and how much.

Time curves and slips aside. For an uninterrupted session of kissing, Wei Ying counts five song changes from downstairs, and with each one she sinks deeper into a sensory net: Lan Zhan’s open, earnest mouth, the strength of her arms, her scent in the back of Wei Ying’s throat; Lan Zhan’s shirt sweat-damp along her back, under Wei Ying’s hands. Their hands are fast, Lan Zhan’s palms on her bare hips; Lan Zhan being thorough, Lan Zhan taking her time, Lan Zhan touching her not like she’s fragile glassware but like she’s wood in need of whittling, precious and shaped by careful hands. There is a difference, Wei Ying realizes, between being touched carefully and being touched with care.

Somewhere during the sixth song, Lan Zhan’s hands find the hem of Wei Ying’s top, a silent question. Wei Ying doesn’t hesitate, only reaches down to help peel it off over her head. Each of their movements is frenzied and clumsy now, almost drunken, their limbs bumping and knocking. The second her shirt is gone, Lan Zhan rocks her body down against Wei Ying’s, gripping her waist tight enough to hurt. Wei Ying rolls her hips up, trying desperately to get friction by clenching her legs around Lan Zhan. She’s desperate enough that she can’t stop gasping, making needy little sounds until Lan Zhan finally murmurs, “I know,” with such promise that Wei Ying feels herself get even wetter, a hot pulse of want.

Lan Zhan is apparently distracted by Wei Ying being topless, because she diverts her attention from Wei Ying’s mouth to focus on her tits, even half-concealed as they are by a boring black bra. Lan Zhan glances up at Wei Ying, her red mouth shiny and parted, her hair halfway to wrecked. She’s seeking permission for something. Seeing her like this is so brain-melting that Wei Ying momentarily loses speech functions — she only nods, very fast, three times. 

Lan Zhan pulls one cup of her bra down to squeeze Wei Ying’s bare breast, and with her still in hand, her mouth descends again, sucking Wei Ying’s nipple into her mouth. Wei Ying’s hips snap up, the back of her head nearly connecting with the headboard.

“Ohhhh fuck,” she says, lightheaded. Lan Zhan simply says “mm” and continues what she’s doing, applying a bit of teeth as she goes. This is — another part of her that Wei Ying hadn’t realized was so sensitive, until Lan Zhan’s mouth had made it so. She shakes. Lan Zhan pulls off for a second to observe the view, Wei Ying’s breast spit-slick and bitten pink in her hand. She seems satisfied enough with her handiwork that she moves to the other side to repeat the motion. Wei Ying’s fingers dig into Lan Zhan’s hair and twist, still rocking her hips into Lan Zhan in small thrusts. She feels dizzy, out of her body.

“You’re sssooo,” Wei Ying mumbles, but doesn’t finish the thought because Lan Zhan’s mouth is working one nipple now while her thumb works the other, circling around and around until both buds are hard. Wei Ying is leaking like a faucet. “Lan Zhan, hah, please —”

Lan Zhan seems to have had enough of the bra’s limitations. She undoes the front clasp with a quick twist of her fingers, and it splits open. They get distracted by kissing again; Lan Zhan surging up, Wei Ying craning down to meet her. Wei Ying’s hands cup either side of Lan Zhan’s face, tonguing into Lan Zhan’s mouth. Her bra is still hanging by its straps off her shoulders. Lan Zhan’s shirt is scratchy against her nipples, a drag of friction. It goes on like this, for a bit — Wei Ying going mm or ah! when she gets too sensitive under Lan Zhan’s pinching and biting. Then somehow her bra is gone completely, thrown off the side of the bed, and it leaves Wei Ying in just her jeans and a necklace of hickeys.

Lan Zhan glances down the length of their bodies, then hums against Wei Ying’s cheek. She kisses her there, then drags her mouth down Wei Ying’s neck. She presses her face into the hollow of Wei Ying’s shoulder. Lan Zhan’s hand glides down her front, slow enough that Wei Ying could stop her if she chose. 

Wei Ying doesn’t stop her. Not even when Lan Zhan hesitates at the button of Wei Ying’s jeans. Wei Ying gives a whiny huff of impatience, pushing her hips up into Lan Zhan’s hand. That, at least, seems to make Lan Zhan’s mind up. She snaps the button open, pulls down the tab of the zipper. 

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, the first words she’s spoken in some time. She sounds unsteady. She sounds unmoored. 

Wei Ying turns her head into Lan Zhan’s; catches her hot, flushed cheek with her mouth in a wet smear.

“C’mon, please,” Wei Ying breathes, and Lan Zhan’s hand slides into her jeans, beneath the band of her underwear. Wei Ying takes a fleeting moment to feel embarrassed; she’s pretty prickly now that swimsuit season is over, and she hasn’t showered since this morning. Lan Zhan’s hand slips further inside her underwear, and Wei Ying loses the thought altogether as two probing fingers feel out the shape of her cunt, cupping and pressing. Wei Ying is wet enough for the fact to be humiliating, but Lan Zhan just groans into the side of Wei Ying’s neck like she’s getting her mind rocked, so Wei Ying guesses that she’s into it. 

Lan Zhan moves her fingers more, spreading the wetness over her clit, and the ripple of pleasure is such a relief that Wei Ying gasps, her hips bucking, and immediately gets wetter.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says again, sounding like the shell of a woman.

“Yeah, what, you’re hot, so what,” Wei Ying mumbles, not past sounding a bit petulant about the situation. “I told you I liked you.”

For whatever reason, this is what makes Lan Zhan bury her face in Wei Ying’s neck for a long time, her hand still down Wei Ying’s pants. The heel of her palm presses into bone, a grounding pressure. Her fingers nearly breach her entrance in the barest tease, and Wei Ying finds herself trying to clench around them, to get them deeper. Then Lan Zhan is moving lightning-fast, resuming her bites and kisses down the length of Wei Ying’s body with refreshed fervor. Her hand slips out of Wei Ying’s jeans, and Wei Ying is about to pitch a fit about it before Lan Zhan says, “Up,” referring to her hips, and Wei Ying realizes that she’s about to lose the last of her clothes. 

“Oh fuck,” Wei Ying says, suddenly afraid for her own sanity, “what are you gonna do.”

She knows the basics of lesbian sex, in sort of an abstract way, but she’s obviously still green about all of this. She has no clue what any of it looks like in practice. Lan Zhan doesn’t answer her, only helps peel her sweaty jeans down the length of her legs until Wei Ying can kick them off. Wei Ying thinks Lan Zhan might surge up and kiss her again, but Lan Zhan apparently has other ideas, settling instead between Wei Ying’s bare thighs.

“Stop me if you don’t like it,” Lan Zhan says. 

Before Wei Ying can question it, she drops her face between Wei Ying’s legs and puts her mouth on her pussy, hot and wet, through the damp fabric of her underwear. Wei Ying shouts, her hips canting up into Lan Zhan’s face.

“Ohhh, you don’t have to — ” Wei Ying says, her face on fire, “I probably don’t taste great —”

These words have absolutely no bearing on anything. Now that Wei Ying’s pants are off, Lan Zhan can spread her legs as wide as she wants, and she dives back in with an eagerness that’s almost rough. There’s still a layer of fabric in the way, but the suckling pressure and the motion of Lan Zhan’s mouth against her clit is heady enough for Wei Ying to feel the first, distant tremblings of orgasm, like the foreshocks of an earthquake. Already. Oh, she’s going to come, like. So easily. She really likes girls. She likes Lan Zhan possibly more than every girl put together.

“Can I,” Lan Zhan says. She’s toying at the waistband of her underwear with her thumb.

Wei Ying says, a little mortified but mostly turned on, “ Yeah, but I already warned you about the —”

Lan Zhan peels Wei Ying’s panties down her legs — Wei Ying dutifully lifts her hips to help — and once they’re gone, Lan Zhan grips her by the backs of her thighs and spreads her apart to stare for a few seconds. Then she digs her forehead into the inside of Wei Ying’s thigh, like she needs to collect herself.

“You’re so,” Lan Zhan mumbles incoherently. Wei Ying feels a liquid heat move through her, magma in her belly. Then Lan Zhan inclines her head to kiss her bare clit, inhaling deep as she does, and Wei Ying loses her mind completely. The first stroke of Lan Zhan’s tongue against her is more alien than pleasurable; a wet swipe in not quite the right place that still makes her twitch, inhale, jerk. But then Lan Zhan’s got it right, flicking her tongue at an exact tempo that puts Wei Ying painfully on the edge painfully fast. How does she know how to, Wei Ying thinks, then doesn’t think anything coherent for several more minutes. She’s loose and wet enough that she doesn’t even realize Lan Zhan has two fingers inside of her until Lan Zhan starts to move them in time with her mouth, hooked into her deep enough that Wei Ying feels the pressure of them against her pubic bone. Wei Ying cannot say with any certainty how long they’ve been there. 

Contrary to her expectation, she doesn’t come right away, even though she can feel how much her body is trying to. It takes longer than that, a steady build to a dizzying height and then a steep drop. Repeat, and repeat. It bullies her between poles of pleasure and pain. Wei Ying is new enough to this that it takes her a little while to realize Lan Zhan isn’t missing the mark from inexperience, but edging her on purpose, drawing it out to get more noise out of her; drawing it out so that Wei Ying will fuck herself harder against Lan Zhan’s mouth in frantic drives of her hips. So — so much for Lan Zhan being a prude, after all. Lan Zhan is fucking dirty. Her mouth is absolutely filthy. 

Lan Zhan does that twice, then three times; edges her to the brink and back. Wei Ying feels turned inside-out, puddled and spooling into two cupped hands. 

“Please,” Wei Ying begs, when it seems like Lan Zhan is going to tease her away from the crest again, “I-I need to — ” and Lan Zhan relents, licking Wei Ying open in broad, strong strokes of her tongue and her fingers that’s nearly too much, given all the teasing. Wei Ying comes hard enough that her vision stains bright along the edges; comes a second time when Lan Zhan’s tongue keeps working her clit in light, swirling flicks, the barest pressure. She hears herself making noise that’s too loud for the room, little ah ah ah sounds as she tries to wrangle her body back under control. She shakes and shakes, her clit still fluttering. 

When she finally recovers, Lan Zhan’s cheek is resting against her inner thigh, sweat-stuck. She’s gazing up at Wei Ying’s naked body with such drowsy self-satisfaction that Wei Ying laughs. It makes the soft skin of her belly tremble.

“What? What’s that look for?” Wei Ying says, embarrassingly hoarse.

“You’re beautiful,” Lan Zhan says. It’s spoken with such plain sincerity that Wei Ying feels a hazy flush spread through her. Warm like sun through a library window.

“Ahhhhah,” she says, covering her red face with both hands. “Says the most beautiful person on earth!! Lan Zhan, are you kidding me.”

Lan Zhan moves up her body, hands first — to her hips, then her sides. Wei Ying squirms, ticklish, and then Lan Zhan kisses her again, hot and eager and her mouth brackish with the taste of her.

Wei Ying returns the kiss, then pulls back and wrinkles her nose in an anxious grimace. “Did it taste bad?”

Lan Zhan hums and shakes her head, her nose skimming against Wei Ying’s cheek.

“I like how you taste,” she murmurs into Wei Ying’s jaw. 

Wei Ying helplessly fists the bedsheets.

“Would’ve kept going,” Lan Zhan continues, her voice half in her throat. A kiss to her neck. “Could have, for hours.”

“Ahhhhhh,” Wei Ying says, hot down to her fingertips. “Fuck.”

She’s sweaty and sensitive all over, with Lan Zhan’s clothes pressing into so many places of her naked skin. She’s still swollen and tender, her cunt throbbing with the loss of Lan Zhan’s mouth. She could probably come again. She could probably come a lot. The realization shouldn’t feel as startling as it does. 

Lan Zhan kisses her after that for a long time. Long enough that eventually, her mouth tastes like Lan Zhan again. Lan Zhan considerately moves one thigh between Wei Ying’s to let her grind up against it, even though she’s still wet enough to soak the fabric of Lan Zhan’s jeans. Which reminds Wei Ying —

“You’re still dressed,” Wei Ying says, almost a question. Lan Zhan hums, drawing a fingernail up the soft curve of her breast. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s — hot. But . . . don’t you want to . . .”

Wei Ying’s hand drifts to Lan Zhan’s belt buckle. Gently, Lan Zhan catches her wrist. It doesn’t feel quite like a rejection, but Wei Ying’s face still burns as if it is.

“There’s no need,” Lan Zhan murmurs.

Wei Ying frowns. She repeats, “Don’t you want to?”

Lan Zhan hesitates, then says, “Do you?”

“Uhhh, yeah,” Wei Ying says, an implicit duh. “Otherwise how selfish would that make me?”

“There’s no obligation,” Lan Zhan says. Her thumb moves against the tendon of Wei Ying’s wrist. “This is more than enough.”

“I said I want to,” Wei Ying says softly, a little confused. She echoes Lan Zhan’s question: “Do you?”

Lan Zhan studies her for a moment. Short, dark strands of hair curl into her eyes. Her mouth is still cherry-red, from eating Wei Ying out for so long. From Wei Ying biting it so much.

Wei Ying senses her wavering resolve; presses the softest point of it. “Do you want me to?” she murmurs, kissing the hand that still holds her wrist. “It’s good if you want me to. I want to.”

Lan Zhan breathes out, long and slow. It manages to sound tremulous still. “Wei Ying.”

“At least take your clothes off,” Wei Ying says with a pronounced pout. “Or else where’s the fairness in that?”

“You are — new, to this,” Lan Zhan says, a little suddenly, like she’s just found her words. “I don’t want to . . .”

Wei Ying frowns again. “Aren’t you, too?” She had always assumed there was no doubt Lan Zhan was a virgin, even though she had certainly seemed experienced a few minutes ago.

“Not to — wanting women,” Lan Zhan says, stilted but gentle enough that it doesn’t sting. It isn’t meant to. Finally, Wei Ying catches on.

Wei Ying pulls herself up into a sitting position, unsticking their sweaty limbs. She catches red-handed how Lan Zhan stares at her nakedness; with open hunger, her eyes scoring over Wei Ying’s bitten breasts, the fold of her belly, the wet between her thighs. Then quickly, guiltily, back up to Wei Ying’s face. Wei Ying leans forward and kisses Lan Zhan’s cheek, cupping her other cheek in her hand.

“You’re not gonna freak me out.” Her voice is soft, the words shaped around a kiss on Lan Zhan’s jaw. “You’re not gonna scare me off. You’re stuck with me now.”

Lan Zhan inhales, then turns her mouth toward Wei Ying’s. Their noses bump.

“Wei Ying,” she murmurs, still sounding hesitant.

“Look, if it helps, I’ve been thinking about your tits since we were fourteen,” Wei Ying says shortly, then nips Lan Zhan’s mouth. “It would be super rude if you didn’t let me feel them up at least a little bit.”

It gets one of those soundless little laughs out of Lan Zhan again that Wei Ying’s come to adore — part-surprise, part-humor. Wei Ying feels it when Lan Zhan relaxes; she’d gone so tense without Wei Ying even realizing it. Then she disentangles from Wei Ying to pull her shirt off over her head, her short hair getting caught and staticked as she does. It leaves her in a plain white tank top, the swell of her breasts pushing out the top, even with whatever compression material she’s wearing for a bra. 

Whatever Lan Zhan sees in Wei Ying’s expression must encourage her to keep going. The tank top comes off next, exposing the pale, smooth muscles of her shoulders and abdomen.

“You’re so hot,” Wei Ying blurts with her whole heart. “Lan Zhan. Please tell me you know how hot you are.”

Lan Zhan’s mouth tilts up in the faintest trace of something wry or self-assured — something like I’m aware that delights Wei Ying to no end. 

“I always thought you were,” Wei Ying continues, and she can’t help herself from twirling a strand of her ponytail around her finger. “I always thought you could have anyone in the world you wanted.”

“Don’t want the world,” Lan Zhan returns, so smoothly that it startles a laugh out of Wei Ying.

“Just me?” Wei Ying guesses, with no dearth of disbelief. That part of this exchange still feels the most surreal.

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees, then brings Wei Ying’s hand to her chest. She can feel the swell of Lan Zhan’s left breast rising and falling under her hand; the crazed pounding of her heart beneath. Wei Ying’s hand slips out from under Lan Zhan’s. She moves it lower to cup the full shape of Lan Zhan’s breast, like she’d wanted to do the last time in the closet. Lan Zhan’s nostrils flare in a tiny inhale, but she doesn’t resist.

“Can I — ?” Wei Ying asks, in an echo of Lan Zhan from earlier. 

Lan Zhan, pink-cheeked, nods. 

Wei Ying slips one strap of the sports bra down her shoulder, then peels the front down so that one of Lan Zhan’s breasts spills out with a satisfying bounce. It’s bigger than Wei Ying had even imagined, fuller than her palm, bell-shaped and perfect. Soft and easy to hold, her nipple round and only a shade darker than her skin tone, currently peaked at attention.

“Yes,” Wei Ying says dreamily, then puts her face into it, breathing in soap and the light musk of sweat. Lan Zhan’s hand finds her bare shoulder, just — gripping. 

Wei Ying takes as much of it as she can in her mouth, sucking hard and determined even when Lan Zhan curves up and gasps under her. Wei Ying pulls the other side of the bra down, just as Lan Zhan had to her, so she can squeeze one breast with her full hand while her mouth ravages the other. She feels absolutely crazy. She feels like some kind of deranged tit vampire, like she can’t stop until she has her fill. 

“Wei —  Ying,” Lan Zhan says with difficulty above her. 

Wei Ying pulls off with a pop and says, “Sorry, too much?” and Lan Zhan surprises her by hauling her up by the jaw and kissing the breath out of her. It brings their bare chests together, and Wei Ying makes a sound at the feeling of it, how heady it is.

“If you still — “ Lan Zhan says when they part. She sounds discomposed, still halting. She’s still very pink, even along the tips of her eyes and her temples. 

Wei Ying catches her meaning and breathes, “Yeah yeah yeah,” so that Lan Zhan brings her hand down to her waistband.

Wei Ying fights for a minute with the belt buckle, which finally pops free with a jangle, and then snicks the button open and undoes the zipper. Her hands are shaking a little, with either nerves or excitement. She glances up at Lan Zhan, who watches her back with a slightly helpless expression. Her breasts are still out of her sports bra, big enough that they flatten against her ribs when she lies back. Wei Ying is already wet again, but that’s mostly irrelevant.

Wei Ying moves up to lie nearly flat on top of Lan Zhan, resting her cheek against her shoulder as her hand skates down her belly. Something tells her this will be easier for Lan Zhan if she doesn’t have to look at Wei Ying’s face, as much as Wei Ying wants to see hers when she comes. Her hand slips into Lan Zhan’s underwear inside her jeans, into a pocket of unbearable heat. Lan Zhan is entirely unshaven here, Wei Ying notices first, and then, further down — she inhales with surprise when she feels it. Lan Zhan is so wet. So much so that Wei Ying’s fingers can hardly find traction on her skin as she feels out her pussy. 

Lan Zhan turns her face into Wei Ying’s hair with a low gasp, her hips tilting into Wei Ying’s touch. She’s hotter here than anywhere else, more honest. Wei Ying feels like her head is about to catch fire. She holds her breath like it’ll make her more careful; like she could breathe too loudly and ruin this. 

Experimentally, she moves her fingers in an echo of what Lan Zhan did to her, rubbing over her clit. Lan Zhan shakes and jerks away from her hand like it hurts.

“Bad?” Wei Ying says, already forming an apology. She wants to make this good, as good as Lan Zhan had made it for her, and she’s already doing it wrong.

“No,” Lan Zhan whispers, then slips her hand inside her open jeans to align over Wei Ying’s. She guides Wei Ying’s fingers further back toward her entrance, away from her swollen clit. “It’s too — t-too much there.”

Oh. Hot. Noted. Okay. Wei Ying presses an open-mouthed kiss to Lan Zhan’s collarbone and starts to move her fingers, dipping them inside the hot channel of her cunt to collect more slick. Lan Zhan’s hips punch down to meet her, like she’s trying to stop herself from moving but can’t. She’s puffing soft, bewildered breaths into Wei Ying’s hair.

“Does it feel good,” Wei Ying murmurs into the sweat of Lan Zhan’s neck. “When I touch you like this?”

Lan Zhan’s short nails dig into Wei Ying’s forearm, hard enough to leave red lines behind. Wei Ying moves her hand faster; Lan Zhan seems to prefer that to slow, but it’s something Wei Ying has to interpret for herself, through the little noises Lan Zhan makes and how honestly her body responds. After about a minute of repeated motion, Wei Ying’s hand starts to cramp, the hard seam of Lan Zhan’s jeans digging painfully into her knuckles as she moves her fingers at this angle.

“Can we — “ Wei Ying says. “Sorry, my hand —” and maybe it’s testament to how far gone Lan Zhan is already that she allows it. Her black jeans come off, but her underwear stays on. The gray fabric of it is soaked through, dark wiry hair peeking out the top and sides of it. Wei Ying’s mouth waters. Her hand slips back under Lan Zhan’s waistband again, into the heat of her, and she resumes where she’d left off, freer to move with more force now. It’s all fairly intuitive, easier than she would have imagined — not unlike how she touches herself, just a different angle. She uses her forearm to press her fingers into Lan Zhan with deeper thrusts, breathing with her teeth set into Lan Zhan’s jaw, “Yeah? Like that? Right there?” as Lan Zhan clutches onto Wei Ying’s shoulders and gasps her name and slowly, all but silently, falls apart. Wei Ying feels it again, that crash of affection for her, too big for her body.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, are you close?” Wei Ying keeps going, even though she knows she won’t get a verbal answer. “I want you to come, I want to make you come just like this, ah — ”

Lan Zhan does. Wei Ying feels it more than she hears it; Lan Zhan is quiet even in this, but she does make a choked sound regardless, her hips snapping down and her head falling back and her cunt clenching around Wei Ying’s fingers, again and again and again. Whoa, Wei Ying thinks, amazed by the whole thing — that she’d made it happen with her own hand, that she gets to see Lan Zhan like this, the way no one else does.

Lan Zhan is breathing ragged and open-mouthed into Wei Ying’s hair, clearly trying to control herself even as she shakes, still pulsing around Wei Ying’s fingers. 

Wei Ying feels, with the weight of her entire life, a sense of responsibility settle onto her shoulders. I can’t ever hurt her, she thinks, as Lan Zhan’s nails finally ungrip from her skin. This is precious cargo.

“Hey,” Wei Ying says, tilting her head back to catch Lan Zhan’s eye once she sounds calmer. “Everything feel good?”

Lan Zhan just stares at her as though in a deep daze. She’s still flushed from her forehead to her chest. Wei Ying respectfully removes her hand from Lan Zhan’s underwear, in case she needs to calm down a bit. Her fingertips are pruned and sticky.

“It was okay, right?” Wei Ying presses, more anxious as Lan Zhan’s silence stretches on. “Lan Zhan?”

In lieu of an answer, Lan Zhan does that same thing as before — just wraps Wei Ying up in her arms, big and rough, and says her name. 

The party is still going downstairs. The music hums through the floors, interspersed with chatter and laughter or an occasional shriek. A pop song is playing that Wei Ying knows the words to but can’t name. She still feels floaty, trying to catch up to the last hour, how surreal it feels. 

They’re both quiet for a long time, breathing together and lost in their thoughts. Wei Ying is thinking about clamshells again. How she’d finally prised Lan Zhan all the way open to the pearl, hidden and glowing. 

“Do you remember,” Lan Zhan murmurs, very sudden. 

Wei Ying pokes her head up. It’s unlike Lan Zhan to break a silence.

Lan Zhan wets her mouth like she’s nervous. Then says, “The speed-dating match.”

“Yeah, of course,” Wei Ying says, not so secretly delighted that Lan Zhan clearly has thought about that night as much as she has.

“You asked,” Lan Zhan says. “My favorite thing about you.”

Wei Ying colors at the shamelessness of the memory. “Ohh, I was kidding. I didn’t really think you — “

“Your laugh,” Lan Zhan says softly, and Wei Ying falls silent. “That was my answer.”

It suddenly feels like Wei Ying’s mouth is full of static. Her lips hum with it.

“Oh,” she says. 

The tenderness of the ensuing silence is a little fraught. Delicate like blown glass.

On reflex, Wei Ying resorts to levity. Her voice lilts. “And what else did you like about me, jiejie?”

Lan Zhan observes her for a moment, so impassive that Wei Ying almost opens her mouth to awkwardly deflect again. Then Lan Zhan’s hand moves down the sweaty slope of her back. It finds the softest curve of her and squeezes so hard that Wei Ying gives a shocked little yelp.

“This,” Lan Zhan says, and bites Wei Ying’s cheek. Wei Ying gasps, then lapses into a fit of giggles, trying to squirm out of Lan Zhan’s ironclad grip as it squeezes harder. 

“Your mind,” Lan Zhan continues, biting for each one. “Your mouth. Your voice.”

“Stop stop stop!!” Wei Ying shouts, overcome with a flustered embarrassment at this kind of affection. “I didn’t really mean — I was only — ”

“You asked,” Lan Zhan says simply.

Wei Ying hmphs and plants her cheek against Lan Zhan’s breast. It makes for an excellent pillow, soft and just the right amount of plush. Wei Ying already wants to bite it again. Lan Zhan starts to rub circles on her bare back, and Wei Ying sighs and relaxes into the touch.

“Well, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says into the boob. “You certainly showed me up on experience tonight. Mmm, aha, it was all very . . . educational.”

“I did study,” Lan Zhan says, wry.

Wei Ying laughs. “Right, you said that was one of the things you did for fun. I guess I didn’t realize how raunchy the subject material was!”

Lan Zhan pauses in the back rub, as though surprised. “You remembered.”

Wei Ying gives an indignant sniff. “Of course I did. My memory isn’t all bad.”

“Not all,” Lan Zhan allows, in a way that still feels like a roast.

“You can’t be mean to me,” Wei Ying warns, puffing out her cheek in a pout against the boob. “Lan Zhan, how cruel is it to take my first kiss and then bully me?”

It’s only because Wei Ying is lying on top of her that she feels Lan Zhan stiffen underneath her. There’s another pause, and then Lan Zhan’s hand finds Wei Ying’s shoulder. Lan Zhan unpeels her with a small push, guiding her back so that she can see Wei Ying’s face. She’s staring at Wei Ying with the same bewilderment of someone woken up by a smoke alarm at 3 am.

“Your first kiss,” Lan Zhan says blankly. 

Wei Ying sighs and wriggles a bit with discomfort. “Well, yeah. All that stuff I said in the closet about kissing other people and stuff was bullshit.”

Lan Zhan still looks like she’s in the middle of having her worldview shattered. “But . . .  your boyfriend.”

“We never — hang on, wait a minute,” Wei Ying says, propping herself up on an elbow indignantly. “First of all, he was not my boyfriend.” She scoffs; it’s not like she’d liked him that way, but she’s still pissed about the principle of getting dumped regardless. “As if. Second of all, we never actually did anything. We just went on a few dates or whatever.”

“You said,” Lan Zhan says, apparently still having some kind of internalized meltdown. “You told me . . .”

“I know! I lied, Lan Zhan! Like a liar! I’m a huge liar who lies!” Wei Ying casts herself down into Lan Zhan’s chest again to hide her face. “I just didn’t want to seem like I was still — I don’t know, some innocent virgin. I wanted to impress you.” Her voice goes quiet. That old hurt creeps into it. “But you left.”

Lan Zhan’s chest sinks under her cheek in a long sigh. Her voice is apologetic when she says, “I liked you too much.”

Wei Ying almost knocks into her chin when she looks up again. “You — what?”

Lan Zhan swallows. In her expression, some of the clamshell inches shut. 

“I realized that seeing you with someone else would be too difficult to bear.” Her voice is measured, each word deliberate. “I left before it got worse.”

Lan Zhan maintains a patient quiet as Wei Ying tries to process this information.

“I would have dumped that fuckface in a heartbeat if I knew,” Wei Ying says at last. “I don’t even remember his name — ”

“Peter,” says Lan Zhan darkly.

“— and I — ” Wei Ying pauses in her tirade. She squints, evaluating this information. “Really? That doesn’t sound right.”

“It’s right.”

“Fine, whatever,” Wei Ying says. “That doesn’t change the fact that I would have way rather had you around than him! He barely lasted a few weeks, anyway.”

It’s actually pretty upsetting to think about. A whole year of missed time with Lan Zhan unspools in her mind — coffee dates and road trips and kisses outside of closets and having her close, just like this — down the drain, all because Wei Ying hadn’t realized . . .

“I was wrong,” Lan Zhan says softly, interrupting Wei Ying’s thoughts. “Selfish. I could have remained your friend.” She swallows. “Stayed with you.”

“No, don’t be ridiculous,” Wei Ying says. “Not if it was hurting you.”

Lan Zhan sighs. Her finger treads light up Wei Ying’s spine, leaving a trail of goosebumps behind.

“We could have . . . ” Wei Ying says. She’s still snared on this image that she can’t shake, that happy vanished year. “If I had just . . .”

“There was no hurry,” Lan Zhan says. Her voice is gentle. Her hand moves to Wei Ying’s hair as if to soothe her; Wei Ying must look as upset as she feels. “You deserved to take your time. And I am patient.”

“Patience has limits! Super finite ones!”

“I am very patient,” Lan Zhan amends. “I didn’t mind waiting.”

Wei Ying hunkers down into Lan Zhan’s chest again and makes a sad sound.

It’s another moment of silence before Lan Zhan speaks again.

“Even so,” she says, stroking a hand along the top of Wei Ying’s head. “I missed you.”

Wei Ying gives a wet-sounding little laugh, then tightens her arms around Lan Zhan’s waist. “Mm, yeah. Me too.” Before the somber silence can stretch and settle, Wei Ying pokes her head up and adds, “But it doesn’t matter. Because now we have all the time in the world to do what we want to each other. Right?”

“Mm,” Lan Zhan agrees, her gaze softening on Wei Ying. Wei Ying’s heart does a quick patter. 

Somewhere downstairs, a glass shatters, followed by a yell.

Wei Ying sighs. “We should go back down. Shouldn’t we? We can’t stay up here all night.”

“Mm,” Lan Zhan says again, in a tone like she disagrees.

Returning to the party, their circle of friends, the moving world outside of Mianmian’s guest bedroom — it seems surreal to imagine it all now, even though they’ve spent barely an hour together. Wei Ying will walk out of this cocoon and step back into her regular life with the knowledge of how Lan Zhan tastes, of how her naked skin feels against her own. Wei Ying glances up at her, gripped suddenly by uncertainty, and she finds Lan Zhan already looking back at her. Given her subdued expression, she’s possibly having similar thoughts.

“Lan Zhan, we’ll . . .” Wei Ying says, then swallows. “We’ll do this again, right?”

Something in Lan Zhan thaws, the line of her shoulders loosening. Wei Ying lifts herself at the same time Lan Zhan inclines her head, and it results in a chaste, somewhat clumsy peck of their lips. Wei Ying kisses her mouth again, just as quick, just because she wants to and she can.

“I have no other plans this evening,” Lan Zhan says, and Wei Ying gawks and then laughs at the implications.

“Lan Zhan-jiejie, so shameless,” Wei Ying teases as she rolls off the bed. She scrabbles around for her clothes, strewn in various places across the floor, as Lan Zhan strips down the sheets and leaves them in a heap at the foot of the bed. She continues, almost thoughtlessly, “You’re so sure you can have your way with me, ah? You might just have to come over and take —”

She's gotten as far as hobbling into her jeans before Lan Zhan has her by the hips, and Wei Ying barely has time to turn in her arms before Lan Zhan pins her to the nearest wall and kisses her. Wei Ying makes a muffled, surprised sound into it, her bra still dangling from her fingers. Lan Zhan’s mouth parts from hers with a wet sound; she inhales along Wei Ying’s jaw like she’s hunting for something, kissing down the tendon of her neck to her sternum. Wei Ying’s head tips back into the wall, blood rising to her face again as Lan Zhan’s mouth finds one sensitive nipple and sucks.

“L-Lan Zhan,” she says, already winded. Her arms twine around Lan Zhan’s bent neck. The core of her throbs in time with Lan Zhan’s mouth, little pulses of wet. Parts of her apparently already have a Pavlovian response to Lan Zhan's mouth. “Ah, aha, if you don’t stop, we’re never gonna. . .”

“Sorry,” Lan Zhan says, just as breathless. She finds her way back up to Wei Ying’s mouth and explains, “Your back.” She kisses Wei Ying again with an urgency like the building is coming down around them.

“My back . . .?” Wei Ying mutters, distracted by whatever Lan Zhan is doing with her tongue.

“It’s cute,” Lan Zhan says, then keeps kissing her. The sounds are panting and slick, louder even than the music beating through the wall against Wei Ying’s spine, and it’s a long time before Wei Ying remembers to stop and breathe. 

“Hey,” she says when she pulls away, and Lan Zhan stays attached to her, hands still splayed over her waist. “Let’s — let’s just make an appearance for civility, yeah? And then we can . . . ” She trails off, suddenly too tongue-tied to continue that proposition.

“And then we can,” Lan Zhan echoes. If Wei Ying didn’t know better, she’d think she was being teased.

“You know.” Wei Ying puffs out a breath, staring fixedly at Lan Zhan’s kiss-bitten mouth. “Leave.”

“Leave where?” Lan Zhan asks, then nips her ear. It sends goosebumps rippling down Wei Ying’s neck.

“Lan Zhannn,” she whines, and Lan Zhan eases up; she steps back, still without removing her hands, so Wei Ying can struggle into her bra, where the straps are all twisted into curlicues. She fights with the front clasp once it’s on, still muddled from getting kissed senseless, and eventually Lan Zhan’s long, pale fingers replace hers to fasten it.

Wei Ying huffs a laugh at the sight of it. “Next time you do this, you'll be taking it off, hmm?”

“I have no plans this evening,” Lan Zhan says again. Her expression is neutral as she straightens out the straps of Wei Ying’s bra, radiating perfect calm. How can she say such things and not blush even a little bit? It’s criminal.

“You’re a flirt,” Wei Ying says, more in astonished realization than accusation, and Lan Zhan does not deign to confirm or deny the charge.

Lan Zhan dresses quickly, tucking herself into her usual neat, pressed lines. Wei Ying watches wistfully as the curves of her chest flatten out again, hidden cruelly under three layers, and thinks with a private satisfaction that she knows the full truth now, of what Lan Zhan looks like beneath all her outer shells.

Wei Ying bounces over to Lan Zhan and extends her hand. “Shall we?”

Lan Zhan takes it and nods.

They descend the stairs into the sea of partygoers, their hands clasped together. Wei Ying isn’t the same person as when she walked up them earlier this evening. Euphoria makes her steps lighter; she moves more fluidly in her own body through the throngs of her peers, flushed and triumphant and yeah, a little smug, desperately ready to tell anyone around her, Look at her, look at her, look at her, she’s mine. Surely anyone who looks at them will know what they did to each other — how they feel about each other, how they’ve both changed since the party started. And that’s how Wei Ying wants it. She feels like she’s carrying it on her chest like a neon billboard, shouting it from starlit rooftops.

Wen Qing and Mianmian are chatting by the snack table, and when Wei Ying and Lan Zhan approach, their conversation stops dead. At the sight of their hands, Mianmian widens her eyes and claps a hand to her beaming mouth. Wen Qing’s expression is unchanging other than a slight arch of her brow.

“Hi,” Wei Ying announces when she stops in front of them, pretending not to notice Mianmian’s reaction. She holds up Lan Zhan’s hand like it’s an Olympic medal. “We’re a thing now.”

“Well, I, for one, am astonished by this turn of events,” Wen Qing deadpans.

“Absolutely reeling,” says Mianmian.

Wei Ying narrows her eyes at the two of them, who are both either very bad at playing innocent or not even trying. “You two knew.”

Mianmian’s smile widens with a flash of dimple. “I, ahhh, had an educated guess?”

“This has been ridiculous from start to finish,” Wen Qing admonishes them both, with the air of someone who’s been biting back a lecture for weeks. “Look at what nonsense you’ve put your jiejie through.”

“Sorry, da-jie,” Wei Ying says very seriously just as Huaisang appears, four plastic cups pinched in either hand.  

“Hey guys, what’s uhhh —” He stops in his tracks when he zeroes in on Wei Ying and Lan Zhan’s joined hands. “Uhhhh. What the hell did I miss.”

Wei Ying turns to grin up at Lan Zhan as Wen Qing catches Huaisang up on current events — (Wei Ying hears Huaisang say, “Since when is she — you know —” then he gestures at her and limps his wrist; “it’s new,” Wen Qing replies) —

Lan Zhan looks back down at her. She doesn’t quite smile, but the corner of her mouth softens, her eyes warm.

“We are a thing now, right?” Wei Ying asks, seized by sudden doubt. They hadn’t tacitly agreed on anything prior to this conversation; Wei Ying had leaped headlong into assumption.

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says, her tone non-negotiable. Then her hand slips to the small of Wei Ying’s back to pull her in. It’s so much different to kiss Lan Zhan like this, flushed with exuberance and surrounded by throngs of people, than to do it holed up in a dark closet reeking of mothballs. 

This display receives a chorus of booing from their friends. Still, when Wei Ying resurfaces from the kiss, she finds all three are all grinning at them, even Wen Qing.

“Absolutely disgusting,” Huaisang says, with an intolerable amount of glee. “Get a room.”

Wei Ying raises her eyebrows, playing up obsequiousness. “The one upstairs was perfectly suitable. We could — ?”

This receives more negative clamor, a series of groans and please tell me you at least stripped the sheets and other griping.

“Fine, horndogs,” Huaisang revises, smiling too hard to sell haughtiness. “Go home.”

And suddenly, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t. Wei Ying looks up at Lan Zhan again, who since they left the bedroom has been emanating the aura of a cat high on catnip; slow blinks and a hazy contentment. If Wei Ying didn’t know better, she’d say Lan Zhan is giddy.

Lan Zhan is already watching her in return. Her eyes haven’t left Wei Ying for the entire conversation, even through their friends’ ribbing. Wei Ying realizes this with a low rush of heat, a self-awareness that for the first time feels heady rather than uncomfortable.

Wei Ying leans up on her tiptoes, teasing low enough into Lan Zhan’s ear that their friends won’t overhear. “Just what are you looking at, jiejie?”

Lan Zhan turns, her nose brushing against Wei Ying’s cheek. Her voice is a low murmur. “You already know.”

Wei Ying feigns innocence even as her smiling lips catch on Lan Zhan’s cheek. “All innocent thoughts?”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees, straight-faced. Where their friends can’t see it, she pinches Wei Ying’s ass.

Fuck. Well. Wei Ying is only human, after all. She could technically do unspeakable things to Lan Zhan here, in front of everyone she knows, but the alternative sounds better.

All of a sudden, looking at Lan Zhan, that lost year rematerializes into something new, unfolding before Wei Ying like a tapestry splayed out in full color. It goes on and on as far as she can see. 

For the first time in her life, she doesn’t have to imagine where it might end.

“Hey, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says softly. “Take me home?” and Lan Zhan does.

◈ ◈ ◈