“Are you impressed?” I asked, my head feeling hot and full from the blood rushing into it.
“By your poor life choices?” she replied. “No.”
“Not even a little?”
She crossed her arms across her chest. “Not even a little.”
“Well, damn.” I grinned. Her face looked pale in the early afternoon light.
“Come down, Jason. Please.” Her dark brows were drawn together. She actually looked . . . angry with me.
Great second impression, I thought. You’ve got her now. She’d love to take a foolish new guy into her confidence.
I dropped down from the bar by my arms, then swung from one horizontal bar to the next across the ceiling, until I reached the other side of the rock wall. From there, I chose the easiest path downward, jumping when I was five feet from the ground. The belaybot whirled over and offered me a towel. I swore its digital face looked accusingly at me. I wiped my face with the soft cotton cloth before turning toward Daiyu.
“Hey,” I said. The belaybot offered me a cold bottle of water before spinning off. I took it and offered the bottle to Daiyu, but she shook her head.
“Mocha, please,” I ordered. “With whipped cream for Miss Jin.”
The espresso machine hummed to life, and I gulped down half the bottle of water, then smiled sheepishly.
Her arms were still crossed, but one hand had risen to cover her mouth, hiding a frown or a smile, I couldn’t tell by her expression. She wasn’t shy about taking me in with those brown eyes either. Shirtless in front of her again like that first morning we “met” after her kidnapping, I scanned the few pieces of furniture I had for a discarded shirt. A towel. Anything.
She dropped her hand. “Do you do that often? Climb without a harness?”
“No. Never, actually. That was my first time. Not thinking straight after last night’s party.”
I started to cross the large chamber, where a black T-shirt (designer) was draped over one of the brocade chairs, when she held up a hand, then stepped closer and pointed at my bare chest. I felt my face flush—but she wasn’t looking at my face.
“Is that real?”
It was the tattoo I had gotten in memory of my mom—a single calla lily—on the left side of my chest, above my heart. It had been her favorite flower. She’d take me to the calla lily festival every spring on Yangmingshan, to admire the sea of white flowers surrounded by dark green leaves. That tradition, and the farmlands harvesting the blooms, were lost after the earthquake and fires on the mountain.
Something else that could not stay.
I had gotten the tattoo a few months ago, in a rare drunken haze, after finding out that Daiyu would be my target to befriend. Arun had accompanied me to the best tattoo parlor in Taipei at two a.m. and was drunk enough himself that he never protested my subject of choice. He hadn’t even asked why.
I touched the tattoo with my fingers, still tinged in white powder from the climb. “It’s real.” This tattoo, at least, would live as long as I did. However long that might be. “It’s . . . my mom’s favorite flower.”
She nodded, then met my eyes. My blush had already faded, thank gods.
“I don’t know anyone with a real tattoo,” she said. “None of my friends would commit to an alteration that was permanent.”
“Well, I was drunk.” I crossed the room and grabbed the shirt, pulling it over my head before running a hand through my short hair. I had paid for the tattoo with my cut from the kidnapping. Her kidnapping. “It’s my first and probably my last.”
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured. “I think it’s sweet how close you are to your mom. Is she in Taiwan?”
I went to the kitchen just as the espresso machine beeped three times. The mocha was waiting inside the glass vestibule, with shaved chocolate on top of the whipped cream. The rich aroma of espresso and chocolate filled my senses for a moment as I drew the large ceramic cup out. “No. She’s still back in California. It’s only me here in Taipei.” The lie came easily enough. I hated lying.
And all of this was a lie.
“I don’t see my mom often—she lives in Hong Kong,” Daiyu said. “She hates my father.”
“That’s too bad,” I said from the kitchen. “Do you miss her?”
“I miss the idea of her. We’re not close.”
But her mother had been the one to accept Daiyu’s call during the kidnapping while her father was unreachable. How close was she to her dad, then?
I set the mocha down on the dining table, closing my MacFold; the thirty-two-inch laptop neatly folded itself into quarters. I still couldn’t get enough of that trick. It made my old MacPlus look like something dredged up from an archaeological dig. I picked up the laptop, now just eight inches long and half an inch thick, and set it on the marble kitchen counter. “Sit.”
She reached the table in a few purposeful strides, and I couldn’t help staring at the long lines of her body, the litheness with which her hips swayed. Sitting down on the dining chair, she raised the large mug to me when I joined her. “Happy New Year,” she said before taking a sip. “This is delicious.”
Daiyu cradled the cup and took in her surroundings as unabashedly as she had stared at my bare chest. As if she owned all of it. An absolutely proprietary glance, one that I had never seen from a mei before—a confidence I had never felt but now must feign. It was too easy for me to forget that Daiyu was a you girl when not in her suit. She exuded a confidence coupled with a genuineness I was drawn to. But if anyone was the epitome of all that the yous stood for, it would be the daughter of Jin.
I could never forget that.
“Nice place,” she said, her gaze returning to the dramatic views of Taipei below.
Taipei was a city located within a basin, surrounded by mountains. This meant that the pollution was especially bad here, more easily trapped. The thick haze that hung over our city was a daily sight, unless storm clouds blew through to drench us in acid rain. I’d never seen the mountains that I knew were in the far distance in my three weeks of living in this apartment, a view that I knew existed from my research on the undernet of the 101 building.
“The view’s the best part,” I said.
She nodded, then took another sip of mocha, before turning her face toward me. “It is. Except for the brown haze that sits over us.” She pointed into the distance, and then, as if she could read my mind, said, “There are mountains out there. But I’ve never seen a mountain before in my entire life.”