Faith in Me

Chapter 9 - All the Reasons Why

I kissed him back.

Yue gingerly placed a finger on her lower lip. She could still feel the heat of him there and the knowledge of how he branded her with his touch scared her. He made her want things... impossible things... did he even know the havoc he was wreaking on her? She closed her eyes to push out the unwanted thoughts, but all she could see were a pair of darkened jet black eyes locked onto hers and warm, gentle lips that kissed her so restlessly, she forgot where she was, who she was, and what she was supposed to be doing. She had wantonly kissed him back, for goodness sake, in front of all those people.

She should have known this was coming. She should have known. From the moment she met him, his energy had drawn her in like a magnet, and it made absolutely no sense because they were as different as the sun and the moon. He was loud, boisterous and childish. She was quiet, introspective and practical. He was a natural athlete, an avid gamer, big into rap music and flashy things. She had zero athletic skills, enjoyed thrift shopping and preferred to spend her time locked indoors with her sketchpad and books. Yet somehow, they had immediately found a common ground in their shared passion for acting and music and everything else just fell easily into place. The constant laughter. The late night talks. The shared meals. The prolific meme wars. The never-ending games. The playful bickering. The magical chemistry. The way they never had to actually speak words to know what the other person was thinking. The way they naturally gravitated towards each other despite all the other people in the room. The way all of her senses came alive when he was near - her smile brighter, her laughter louder, her happiness more evident.

Seriously, what the hell had she been thinking?

Stupid, stupid, S – T – U – P – I – D, stupid!

Her eyes stung with frustrated tears. She had warned herself not to think about him this way. She had consistently talked herself down from the ever-present precipice. The fall down was infinitely long and she had absolutely no need to experience it. She had sternly reminded herself that they were too different, that he was too much, that he was the last thing she needed now that her career was starting to take off. In fact, she told herself that he didn't like her that way anyway so she was worried for nothing! She took note that the growing number of his fangirls corresponded with the growing number of hate comments she received online. It didn't matter whether the two were related; she made that correlation because it suited her narrative that she needed to keep a distance between them. For all these reasons, and many more that she didn't even want to think about, she had ignored the damn chicken wing and all that it made her feel. Until today, when Dylan with his stupid eyes and his stupid smile and his stupid impromptu words and his stupid lips –

Ding dong!

For one disconcerting moment, Yue wondered if Dylan somehow knew she was insulting him and had magically teleported here to take revenge. She almost wished it was so she could smack him with the throw pillow and kick him in the shins for making her feel this way.

"She-ennn Yue-ehhh!"

She looked at the door in surprise. The tone was definitely whiney enough to sound like Dylan when he wanted something he knew she didn't want to give, but the voice was decidedly female and she recognized it right away. Yue opened the door and in swept her oldest friend who gave her a speculative once-over before demanding answers to questions Yue didn't even know existed.

"What happened? Yangjin-jie messaged me and said you needed to talk to a friend. Then she made sure to emphasize that it needed to be someone who doesn't work in the film industry." Xiaowen gave her a sly look. "One can only guess at why she made such a request."

Yue almost groaned out loud at the knowing smile on the other girl's face. Weng Xiaowen had the tenacious instinct of a bloodhound – she never failed to know when something big was happening and she had an uncanny ability to guess what that thing was without anyone having to tell her. Not only that, the two of them had been nearly inseparable for more than a decade and it was damn near impossible for Yue to hide anything from Xiaowen and Yangjin-jie knew it. Yue was still trying to figure out how to politely kick her out when Xiaowen got right to the point.