Mei agreed to come on this trip because Candace and Ezra asked; they were the only people who could convince her to willingly spend days with the man who’d shredded her heart into confetti. But she also said yes because she missed Miles. In all their years apart, Mei had only managed to shove her feelings for him down deep, but they never disappeared. After all this time, she still felt the same way about Miles Jefferson as she had at nineteen and twenty-two and thirty.
She loved him the way only young girls who’d never known heartbreak could love — wild and free and totally unafraid. She’d loved him so completely that the end of their relationship had only seemed like a speed bump because how could something so beautiful end so ugly? It couldn’t, she’d thought three years ago and still today.
They’d spent a decade and a half together, and Mei still knew Miles’s body like the back of her hand. She stared at the back of his head, recognizing its shape, the light brown of his skin, and the soft, wavy pillow of his hair. He needed a haircut, but when they’d been together, she used to love pressing her face into his small afro before he went to the barber shop, enjoying the way his soft hair felt against her skin. The way he held her against his body until she’d had her fill of him. The way she never could get enough of him. The way that embrace always led to his lips moving over her breast and sucking her nipple and her clothes hungrily into his mouth. The fact that it had been years since she’d smelled his hair, but she could close her eyes and still bring that scent to mind in a heartbeat.
She wasn’t ready. She needed to harden her heart to Miles and the way he made her feel, but she was far from prepared for that, so she turned to her left and rushed away in the general direction of her gate. Running away didn’t solve anything, but if it gave her more time to get her galloping heartbeat in check, then it was worth it.
International gates were set at the far end of the terminal, and thankfully, it was busy. Six gates were practically crushed together in the area, with boarding lanes winding through pedestrian traffic and passenger seating. There was a snack kiosk set right in the middle of the circular boarding area that only made the mess of human traffic exponentially worse. It was a terrible setup, but it gave Mei the opportunity to get lost in the crowd. To feel anonymous and unseen in a way she never had when she’d been with Miles.
She found a seat in the middle of a long row of those ugly, hard, always unclean chairs, squished between two large groups traveling together, and sat heavily on the hard plastic. She set her backpack on her lap and hugged it to her chest, feeling lost and unmoored in a way she’d unfortunately become accustomed to.
“Mei, right?” someone said.
Mei looked around until she locked eyes with a man staring at her with a smile on his face, although once they made eye contact, it faltered.
“Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” he said hastily and then frowned. “Some other Asian woman. I realize how racist that sounds, but I swear…never mind. I feel like I’m digging a hole. I’m absolutely going to talk to my therapist about this.”
“Do I know you?”
“Obviously not. I just thought you were a friend of a friend. I swear she looks just like you in the pictures I’ve seen.”
“Who’s your friend?” Mei asked.
“Is your name Mei?” he shot back.
Mei raised her eyebrows. “Depends on who your friend is.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re definitely Candace’s friend. No one else could be so obstinate for no reason.”
“There could be a reason. You don’t even know me.”
“Is it in the water? What the fuck is wrong with the East Bay?”
“Chronic de-investment in poor communities and over-policing,” Mei said, since this was technically something she knew a lot about.
“Yep. You’re Candace’s people,” he said with a confident purse in his lips. But then he uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “Right?”
She laughed. “Yeah, I am. And you are…”
“Jorge,” he said, offering her his hand.
Mei shook it. “Who?”
“Damn, and I thought we were friends. Maybe I was wrong. Or maybe just work frien—”
“Oh, you’re that Jorge,” she said, remembering bits and pieces of stories Candace had told her about him over the years. But what she remembered most was that Candace had once tried to set him up with one of Mei’s cousins. “Did you go on a date with David Chu?”
His eyes widened. “Depends on who’s asking.”
“He’s my cousin. Well, technically cousin-in-law, but you know.”
“I know. No offense, but after that date, I had to stop dating baby twinks. It was a wild night. Good, but never again. You know?”
Mei nodded, even though she didn’t actually know. She’d only been on a handful of dates before she met Miles, and most of them were in large groups of mutual friends with people she’d known practically since birth. And since Miles… Well, it took a long time to tape a broken heart back together, not that she’d tried.
“Are you going to Paris?” Mei asked, putting the pieces together with a shocked smile.
“I am!”
“I didn’t know anyone else was invited. How great.” Mei sighed in relief. She wanted to see Miles again, but the thought of being with Candace and Ezra together with her and Miles not together had tied her stomach into knots. But now that Jorge would be there as a buffer, she found herself relaxing for the first time in weeks.
“They better had invited me,” Jorge said with an affronted gasp. “I was there when they got back together. Lowkey, I’m the reason they finally got their shit together.”
“I believe you,” she said. “Nothing I’ve been telling them since college worked.”
“My god,” he breathed, shaking his head slowly. “I really can’t believe they’ve been a mess all this time.”
Mei shrugged and smiled. “I don’t know if I’d say they were a mess, I just…” She averted her eyes as she tried to find the words for how to explain the uniquely beautiful trainwreck that had always been Candace and Ezra.
She shifted her gaze toward the snack kiosk just as Miles was paying for something. He and the cashier were talking to one another, and as she watched, Miles nodded excitedly at what she said. She hadn’t seen that smile in ages, but knowing Miles, there were few things that could get him excited in this particular way — the A’s, the Raiders, or the Warriors.
Miles could talk to anyone, especially about sports. When they were in college, he was the person they sent as their emissary — the person they asked to make a way out of no way. Candace would take the lead if someone needed to flirt, Mei jumped in as a hype woman, while Ezra hung back for tactical support. Right from the beginning, the four of them had been a well-oiled machine, and watching Miles from across the terminal made her heart ache, not just for him but a time in her life when everything had been simpler and her friends had been her home.
“Love is all about timing,” Mei said, her gaze still on Miles. “It just wasn’t their time yet.”
And her and Miles’s time was over.
“That’s depressing,” Jorge said. “Maybe I should stay single.”
Mei tore her eyes from Miles and cringed at Jorge. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
He shook his head casually. “Don’t worry about it. If you knew what the dating pool was like for me, you’d understand that I was already depressed.” He sighed and sat back in his chair. “Oh, I didn’t mean—”
Mei laughed at the horror on his face. “It’s fine. David’s my cousin. I don’t have to date him.”
“Hallelujah,” he whispered.
Mei laughed again.
It took a considerable amount of effort, but Mei kept her eyes on Jorge, chatting with him rather than watching Miles like a stalker. It wasn’t the easy companionship of being with Miles or their friends, but she could see why Candace liked Jorge — and why he and David had not lasted more than a night.
“Welcome, passengers, to EuroJet flight number 1615 from Oakland to Charles de Gaulle. We are ready to begin boarding…”
“What seat are you in?” Jorge asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t look.”
Jorge frowned at her. “Oh, girl,” he sighed.
“What?” Mei asked, reaching into her fanny pack for her phone. “Did they give us middle seats?”
Jorge scoffed. “I realize you don’t know me,” he said, leaning forward again and placing his hand gently on Mei’s knee. “I don’t fly in the middle seat.”
Mei chuckled lightly. “Noted.” She opened her phone and had to search for the confirmation email. “Is this first class?” she shrieked.
“It sure is,” Jorge said triumphantly. “I could get used to having a billionaire for a friend.”
“Ezra’s not a billionaire,” Mei said dismissively.
Jorge cocked his eyebrow at her. “Yeah, he is.”
“He’s… He is?”
“How do you not know this?”
“How would I know this? He still likes to sit in the bleachers at A’s games. And last time I saw Ezra, we met up for tacos at a dodgy food truck that just follows all the construction crews around town and they knew him by name. That’s the Ezra I know.”
“Hmm, interesting,” he said. “I already have broke friends, though, so this is nice. What seat are you?”
“4A,” she said.
He frowned. “I’m 3C. I’ll wave back at you.”
Mei laughed.
“Now boarding first class,” the gate attendant called.
“Welp, girl, come on,” Jorge said, jumping up from his seat with a flick of his imaginary hair.