Going the Distance (8 page)

“Yes, everything is fine. Do you want to have dinner together tonight?”

Olivia’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly, like a startled fish. “Yes,” she said finally. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Let’s go.”

She trailed the four girls out of the school and down the busy road, turning down one narrow street and then another before emerging in a crowded alley. “Is here okay?” Honor asked, as though Olivia might have a clue one way or the other.

“We’ll see,” she said.

They went inside what turned out to be a bustling hot pot restaurant. Olivia had had hot pot once before in Lazhou, at another, somewhat nicer place. During her first week at the school she learned that different teachers had been instructed to hang out with her in the evenings and show her around, and they’d half-heartedly done so, though Honor hadn’t been among them. She’d eaten strange foods, been taken to McDonald’s and KFC—twice—and guided around the large supermarket. Almost immediately after her initiation week, she’d been completely and unceremoniously abandoned. If she wasn’t mistaken, this was the first time anyone from the school had opted to hang out with her when they weren’t being ordered to do so.

The restaurant was large and crowded with tables and people and carts full of raw food. The basic premise was that each table came with its own pot of boiling broth and a sprawling order form with every possible kind of food listed—in Chinese, of course. Diners checked off which food they would like, it arrived at the table raw—beef; quail eggs; mushrooms; potatoes; pig brains; stomach lining; meatballs; live, crawling shrimp—absolutely everything—and patrons cooked it at their leisure, fishing out various items when they decided they were ready.

Olivia hadn’t known what the hell was happening the first time she’d come, and though she wasn’t a picky eater, she really hadn’t enjoyed herself. Things went into the broth looking one way, and came out completely unidentifiable. She didn’t recognize seventy percent of the food she’d put in her mouth. Diners at another table had tipped over their covered container of live shrimp, squealing with laughter when they scrambled over the table, trying to escape. Tonight, at least, Honor and Sunny, one of the other teachers, made an effort to help her find things she might like, and spoke English even though it appeared to pain them to do so.

A tray of small puffed pastries arrived, filled with an unrecognizable purplish-gray paste. They urged her to take one, then took one themselves, biting in. The pastry was light and flaky, the filling a strange texture, both sweet and salty. “Do you like it?” Sunny asked.

Olivia nodded around a mouthful. “It’s different. What is it?”

“A snack,” Sunny answered.

“Snack?” Honor echoed, frowning. “Or snake?”

“Hmm,” Sunny mused thoughtfully.

Olivia stopped chewing, horrified. “
Which is it?
” Tiny bits of pastry stuck to her lip and she wiggled her arm like a serpent. “Snake?”

“Oh,” Honor said. “No. Not a snake. A snack.”

Olivia finished the pastry but declined a second one, and eventually they were eating a variety of boiled foods and Olivia was spending her first night in the company of someone who wasn’t Jarek, and having a pretty decent time. What she couldn’t figure out was why, until the teachers exchanged sly looks and asked her how well she knew Ritchie.

“I think I may have to pimp him out,” she told Jarek the next evening on their run. “If it makes me friends at school, I’m going to do it.”

“He could use a bit of pimping,” Jarek agreed, running a circle around her. “He’s kind of twitchy.”

“I know. And Honor’s so cute. They’ll make a good couple.”

“That important to you?”

“That Ritchie and Honor get together?” She laughed and tightened her ponytail. It was warm enough now that she could run in shorts and a long sleeve top and not freeze her ass off. “Not really. But today four people talked to me—four. That’s…four more than normal.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?” She looked at him and he jogged ahead so he could turn around and run backward, watching her as they talked. They’d been running for close to an hour and his cheeks were flushed and his hairline was damp with sweat, his blue T-shirt sticking to his chest. She’d thought he was intimidating when they’d met, with his perma-scowl and fixed stares, but now she just thought he was hot. Moody. Closed off. But still hot. Hotter for trying to be a decent guy when they were together.

“You were popular in high school, right?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?” He mock-punched her in the shoulder, some weird boxing thing.

“Okay, fine. I was popular.”

“Beauty pageants?”

“God, no.” She’d begged, but her mother said she’d rather die than see her smart, athletic daughter parade around in a bathing suit.

“Homecoming queen?”

“Maybe.”

“Student council president?”

“Treasurer.”

“Valedictorian?”

“So?”

“So you’ve never been a normal person. Not everybody gets fawned over every day.”

“I know that.” She certainly did know that. She’d spent the first twenty-five years of her life in a bubble, and then it had burst. “Were you a loner?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think you had any friends at all.”

He laughed. “I had friends.”

“Your brother doesn’t count.” She’d gotten that much out of him, at least. One sibling.

“Okay, fine. I had
friend
.”

She laughed, too. “What was his name?”

“Stacey.”

“Girl Stacey or boy Stacey?”

“There’s such a thing as boy Stacey?”

“Was she your girlfriend?” Olivia wasn’t jealous; she was intrigued. A second detail about Jarek’s deeply mysterious life? Color her invested.

“Yes. That’s enough. I’m the one who asks questions.”

“So if you weren’t a cop and you weren’t a journalist or a private investigator or a psychologist…”

“I was…”

“You were…”

He arched a brow and waited for her next guess.

“Just tell me.”

He lifted his knees and jogged in place, the action strangely familiar.

“You were in the army?”

He nodded and turned to face forward, running beside her again.

“Why didn’t I guess that before?”

“Because you’re obsessed with being popular. You’re obsessed with yourself.”

She tossed back her head and laughed. “Am not.”

He was looking down at her, smiling slightly. “Nah. You’re not.”

“What’d you do in the army?”

“Whatever they told me to do.”

“Did it involve asking questions?”

A muscle in his jaw ticked, and she knew, without him confirming it. The scary face, the questions. How they’d felt like interrogations.

“When did you get out?”

“A long time ago.”

“What’d you do after?”

“The same thing, but with a private contractor.”

“Did you like it?”

He met her eyes. “Yes.”

She flinched inwardly, but knew she wasn’t wrong. She’d seen movies where men with exactly Jarek’s countenance had strung up other men, tortured them until they got the answers they were looking for. And then.

“When’d you stop?”

“Two years ago.”

“Why?”

“Time for a change. Why’d you come to China?”

“Because I wasn’t popular anymore.”

“Come on, Olivia. The truth.”

She looked at him now, eyes serious. “That is the truth.”

Jarek dropped it, but he didn’t want to. They grabbed dinner at McDonald’s and took it back to her place where he ate his burger while she took a shower, and then she ate hers while he washed up. They’d developed a bit of a routine, which didn’t bother him. It had only been a few weeks, but everything intensified when you were in a foreign environment, the strangeness of things throwing people together in ways they wouldn’t normally be. That’s what he attributed it to, anyway. This…relationship he was falling into. The pattern.

Even as he’d told her about the interrogation work, he’d lied to himself, saying he didn’t know why the words were coming out as cryptic as they’d been. Except he did know why. He told her because she’d started looking at him like he was a good guy, a decent guy, and he wanted to remind her that he wasn’t. That he wasn’t her boyfriend and he wasn’t going to be, that if she got too close she’d get hurt in the end because he hadn’t loved anybody outside of his family in a really long time, and that wasn’t going to change.

She was lying in that damn twin bed, reading one of the
Chicken Soup for the Soul
books she’d found at the bookstore—this one for the Pet Lover’s Soul—when he came out of the bathroom. The books were half English and half Chinese, and always made her cry, which he hated, because he was the one who inflicted pain, not the one who cleaned up afterward. And then, as though she recognized his discomfort, she’d put the books away and laugh and wipe her eyes, calling herself stupid when she was the furthest thing from it.

“C’mere,” he murmured, taking the book from her hands and tossing it to the floor. She was wearing a different pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and he tugged off her shorts and crawled between her legs and went down on her until she came. Then he continued until she begged him to stop, and he told her he’d stop when he felt like it. Eventually she pulled on his hair so hard he had to climb up her body and kiss her, making her taste herself. He pushed her hair away from her face and worked himself inside her swollen folds, looking into her eyes. They were shiny with arousal, cheeks pink, lips swollen, and something in her face told him that this time was different. He wanted to fuck her really hard, but held back like he always did, not wanting to scare her. Instead he let it build, and when she came again she made a strangled, pleased sound, eyes fluttering.

After a minute he realized she was pushing against his chest, pushing him off, and he rolled to the side and watched as she slid down his body and pulled off the condom and took him in her mouth. It was different when she did this, different from all the other nameless, faceless women who had gone down on him. It was the way she looked up at him from time to time, the way she didn’t have a game plan, the way she just wanted to make him feel good.

It didn’t take long. He came in her mouth and she swallowed everything, stroking his thighs, making it last. She eventually straightened so she was kneeling between his calves and he opened his eyes to look at her. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Maybe I should kiss you now, so you know how it feels.”

He ran a hand across his mouth absently. “You taste good; there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Oh yeah?” She clambered up and made like she was going to kiss him, and he held her back, laughing.

“Get away, barracuda.”

She bit his fingers and flopped down beside him. “Did the new people show up today?”

“Yeah. It’s a long way to come for five days.”

“No kidding.”

The guy commissioning the work wanted his own people to do the inspection, in addition to the Chinese workers who would make sure the building was up to country code. He’d flown six people over for the week, and they were all going out for drinks tomorrow night once they’d had time to rest.

Jarek reached down to stroke his fingers through her wetness, and she covered his hand. “Don’t. I’m done.”

“That second one was better, right?”

“They’re all good. But yeah. That was…different.”

“Good different?”

“Come on, don’t obsess.”

“Just tell me.”

“Yes. Good different. Stronger. Okay?”

“How’d you come with Chris?”

She sat up straight and slapped his hands away when he tried to push her back down. “Don’t ask me about him.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t have any pants on. Because it’s none of your business.”

“Is there something wrong with trying to knock your socks off?”

She kicked him in the shin with her bare foot. “I’m not wearing any socks. Mission accomplished.”

She got off the bed and put her clothes back on, disappearing into the other room where he heard the fridge door opening, saw the light spill across the dark floor. He sighed and got dressed, then went after her. “Hey,” he began, but never got to finish.

Lightning flashed outside and her head whipped around to the kitchen window that looked over the city. It was streaky with rain, and outside the streets and rooftops were gleaming. Her hand covered her mouth. “No!”

“What’s wrong?”

She put on her sneakers and grabbed her jacket and keys from the dining room table, unlocking the door.

“Fuck, Olivia. What’s wrong?” He hopped on one foot as he put on his shoe and tried to keep up with her.

“My tree!” she called, dashing down the stairs.

“Your what?”

Ten minutes later they stood in the dark courtyard outside Olivia’s classroom, the melted, soggy mass of her tree now puddled around the metal post it had once covered. She had keys to the room and went inside to turn on the lights, then returned to pick up the sodden pile of green algae—feathers, apparently—that sat on the ground, cradling it like a sick child.

She got a big black garbage bag from her desk and he helped her scoop up the slimy newspaper, her face streaked with water, hair plastered to her skull. Her bare legs were shiny and he felt bad for not being able to keep his eyes off them when she was obviously distraught. “I know it’s stupid,” she kept muttering as she cleaned, her hands stained brown from the wet paint. “But I liked this tree, even if only one other person knew what it was supposed to be.”

“Yeah? Who’s that?” He followed her into the room, away from the metal post sitting on the metal dolly, and closed the door.

“Davy.”

“He your friend?”

“My student.” She tapped a seat next to a table at the front of the class. “He sits right here. He drew that picture.” She waved in the general direction of an abstract drawing stuck to the wall, then wiped her hands on her yellow shorts, staining the fabric. “Shit.”

Jarek leaned against her desk and looked at the classroom, the walls covered in various bits of artwork and streamers, the whiteboard holding the remnants of a game of Snakes & Ladders she’d drawn and only partially wiped off. “What was the tree for?”