those years between us

[22] I WANT HIM BACK

  "JESUS CHRIST," EILEEN huffed, shaking her head in disbelief. "So much shit in the span of a month?"

  Camille stirred her lemonade, looking rather bored. "Don't tell me you didn't get into anything exciting in the past while."

  Eileen pouted. "I actually didn't. All the boys in Shanghai are lame. As usual."

  "Rejecting them so easily?" I laughed. "Just like that, Eileen Zhou, you've insulted an entire city's worth of boys."

  Eileen shook her head. "Well, the ones in my circle are boring. The international school boys, you know what they're like. Some of them are studying in England too now. I thought it would make them better, but clearly it hasn't."

  Amused, Camille asked, "Why is studying in the UK supposed to make them better?"

  Eileen sent her a look. "Because it made me better."

  Sometimes I wondered what would have happened if I'd never come to England in the first place. Most of my coming-of-age had happened here. The first time I ever did makeup was here. The first time I ever went out to a party. My first boyfriend, first kiss. Hell, the first time I'd ever been away from my parents. If I'd stayed in Hong Kong all those years ago, what would I be like now?

  Maybe I wouldn't be all that different, actually. The friends of mine who had stayed in Hong Kong had changed right alongside me. Different starting points, but the destination was all the same.

  It made me wonder sometimes, did all of this matter in the end? Was it worth it? My parents spending so much money to send me to a foreign country to study? Me being here alone most of the year, having to deal with all my own problems by myself in an age when most of my peers had their parents right next to them to help me out? I'd gone through my first heartbreaks by myself, my first blunders in life. I'd moved from dorm to dorm to apartment. I bought my own groceries, I cooked my own meals. Would this all be worth it in the end?

  My initial reasons for coming out to study, at that tender age of fourteen, was half because I wanted to be around Orion and half because I wanted to pursue a better education. It had started leaning far more to the latter as the years went by, and Orion had become an afterthought in my years of foreign education, though that didn't mean he'd become an afterthought in my life. I'd simply learnt to appreciate studying abroad past him.

   "Ugh," Eileen huffed, leaning back. "Both of you getting the cute boys and me still here by myself."

  "None of us are getting anyone," I remarked dryly.

  "I still don't get why you said no."

  "Because it wasn't right."

  I didn't think anyone else would understand. What I felt in that moment. When he'd offered that to me. The thing I'd always wanted for all these years, right within my reach. I could have just said yes and everything would work out, right? But it wouldn't. Me saying yes didn't mean everything would work out. It simply meant things would work out for a while before falling even more spectacularly apart.

  My life was inexplicably tied with Orion Ip's, whether I liked it or not. We were neighbours. Our parents were friends. We lived across from each other at university. We studied at the same university. We had more mutual friends than I could count.

  It was far, far safer keeping him at an arm's length. Never having him, but still having him around as a friend, someone I could talk to without being awkward, than to have him and lose him completely.

  Thirteen years and he hadn't reciprocated my feelings. It seemed hardly likely that he genuinely did now. It was a mixture of guilt, physical attraction and brotherly care towards me. That's what it was.