“Let’s think of it this way, we both got what we wanted,” I told him.

“You got what you wanted,” He screamed. “But, I ended up being the one who was left in the dirt to fend for myself. You know what?”

“What?”

“I’m glad you did this because… I could never have justified trying this hard for someone who actually cared about me. They wouldn’t treat me this way in the first place.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Jackson. You’re saying those words?”

“Yes, I’m saying these words and I mean each and every one of them.”

“Fine, that’s fine. I don’t care about you and you care too much, isn’t that what it is? I’m okay with that assertion,” I said, grabbing my bag off the counter and walking out of the already ajar door.

I was glad it was over. I had never been so glad in my life to have a relationship end. I was glad that everything I had done had been misconstrued and had made me look bad, I was glad that he couldn’t stop defending her till the end and I was glad that I finally met her so I could put a face to my deduction.

I hadn’t questioned that he loved her more than me and everything I did was equated to what she did and her past had become mine. Yes, he saw me as her, well… at least my actions and being nice for her meant that she wanted something. It wasn’t all that surprising when I realized that he thought I was nice only to get something from him. He’d always looked at me in a suspicious way when I did something even as simple as picking him up from work.

I groaned as I felt the pit in my stomach grow as I continually told myself that this was a good thing. I felt the lump in my throat and suddenly, I was very sure that I was going to start bawling standing in front of the slowest goddamn elevator in the world. I pressed the button again and again, but the elevator refused to show which left me the only option of taking the stairs. And, even though I didn’t quite enjoy the notion of it, I decided to do it.

I walked down the stairs, well mostly fumbled my way down them since I was all palms and tears and choked moans and unheard complaints. But, that was alright, I was finally going to move one with my life and let go of someone who didn’t want me in theirs and even though it was going to hurt like hell, I would be strong. Or, at least try.

The days passed me by and I tried not to feel what I was feeling but when numbness didn’t help either, I began feeling again. I felt nauseous about the fact that I fell for someone so absolutely damaged, someone who refused to come out of the place that they’d been pigeonholed into. I wanted to go back there and shake it out of him but I didn’t have the courage to do it.

“BiYu?” I heard someone say. I looked up to see my colleague standing at the intersection of our cubicles, staring down at me in a worried manner.

“Yes?”

“Let’s have lunch together,” she said, with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Uh… that’s alright. I’ll eat here and…”

“It’s my treat,” she said.

“LanFen…”

“No, buts… come on,” she said, taking my hand and dragging me out of my chair.

It wasn’t easy for me to argue with her and she didn’t lose, in the end. I was dragged out of my seat and she forced me to walk with her to a restaurant of her choice nearby. The problem was that she loved eating food that didn’t quite match my tastes. It was spicy and sometimes, too out of the norm for my taste. I liked sour and bitter food and maybe, I was slowly starting to embody their qualities.

“This is atrocious,” I whispered to her.

“I know, I hate it too but just eat it. Out of respect,” she said, poking me.

“Fine,” I said, with a shrug.

“Did you want to go somewhere after this?” She asked me.

“I didn’t want to go anywhere to begin with,” I told her.

“Well, let’s go somewhere.”

“You’re not going to let me go to work, are you?”

“You’ve been working overtime for three months now and I don’t even know why. You always check in an hour early or even earlier. It’s worrisome.”

“I’m just trying to make some extra money so that I can take a long vacation and see the beautiful Caribbean islands and meet those beautiful men out there.”

“You always liked the muscular, tanned ones,” she teased and nudged me.

“Okay, you got me,” I said.

When we left the restaurant, she started to talk about how she hated dating because of how unlucky she was and I wanted to laugh at her because she wanted to denounce dating and become a nun and believe me, it was very ironic that she was saying those words. She was one of the few women I knew who had the courage to be outspoken and flirty and completely comfortable with themselves.

“LanFen, don’t say things that don’t make sense. You have to be completely yourself and just forget about things that people have said because everyone will gab on about bull but you only have yourself to rely on, isn’t that right? And, if ever, a guy hurts you again, you call me and I will make sure that he’s sitting outside your house at three am and singing love songs so you will accept him back into your life. OK?”

Her eyes widened with every sentence, eventually ending up as giant saucers after which she just said, “XieXie, BiYu” and patted my back softly.

She took me into a small “gathering bar” or in other words, a hookup club. I was distressed but she said that we were just here for the Moutai and Divine Lychee Wine and Rio beer. I was way more interested in getting out of this disgusting place that smelled like a mix of sweat, cheap cologne and vodka.

“I don’t think I’m made for places like these, jie,” I told her softly.

“Shut up, you’re made for any place that you’re at. Now, try and mingle, ok? You’re more single than I was when I was scared that I was pregnant but it turned out to be indigestion. You look like you haven’t had…”

“Okay, stop,” I muttered, interrupting a very familiar dialogue of hers.

Soon, I was sitting at the bar with a purple Rio beer in my hand and a prominent, unchanging frown on my face that made the bartender warn me that I wouldn’t want lines to set in. I couldn’t help but down a few beers and after that, I moved onto harder alcohol and before I knew it, it was 3AM and she was dragging me out of the club and trying to hail a cab.

“You’re a drinker,” she said, with a laugh that rang in my ear like I was standing right beside an Ambulance that had its siren on.

“Thank you, jie. I was just trying to be fun but I think I’ve got alcoholism in my blood.”

“I’ll make sure that you don’t turn into an alcoholic.”

I grinned and leaned against the side of the bus stop, closing my eyes. I pictured Jackson’s face in front of mine. I remembered his expression when he saw me drunk for the first time, his laugh and his sweet lips. I remembered how he found it incredibly funny and then the night we’d spent together. I remembered how his voice sounded and him calling my name repeatedly until he held my face, trying to wake me up. I just couldn’t get over him and I didn’t want to give myself anymore time to do so. I wanted to wake up one morning and not love him.

The one thing that I loved about sleeping was that unlike most others, my fears never manifested themselves in my dreams and I never woke up in cold sweat because of realistic dreams. They were mostly the “Doves” chasing me. But, my true, human fears never surfaced in my dreams… or at least the ones that I could remember. So, I never dreamed about my problems with Jackson and never did I dream of the times when we fought or hated each other or when we broke up.

So, the months that followed that drunk night that had caused me to think continuously of Wang while I was awake were ones where I overworked myself, ate way below what I should, spent a lot of time at the little animal shelter near my house or slept. Anything to keep my mind off of Jackson Wang. It didn’t help at all because while I did the numbers at work, I thought of him and while I petted the cute little puppies, or kittens, or farrows or even the little birds that kept chirping and making me want to tap their heads to shut them up. When asleep, I dreamt of the happier times with Jackson, the ones that made me smile and want to keep reliving them.

I felt even worse than I had before and that was magnified times a hundred once the Christmas breaks was on and my boss refused to let me work even when I offered to do it for free because he thought I was just trying to get sick and die. Well, he was joking but it sound like too bad an idea. That evening, I wanted desperately to drink but I knew that alcohol just made my memories of Wang even clearer and that was horrible.

On Christmas Eve, I walked to the shelter and hoped that they were open. I wasn’t ready to spend this evening alone because, I clearly remembered what had happened a year ago on this day and those happy memories seemed like a torture technique that my brain was using to convince me to go back to him. I was way too tired from running on the tracks at the park and then working out at home. I hated making meals and/or eating because it reminded me of all the times that I had made meals for and/or with Jackson. Basically, I was getting weaker and even though I had a horrible ache in my body, I refused to let that make me go back to someone as destructive as him.

The shelter was closed to volunteers and I could only peer at the little puppies that whined and cooed when they saw me. I smiled at them, only wishing that I could enter. I would have to spend the evening at home and that would be the thing that made me puke and fall sick, again.

I started to walk back home, trying not to think about my stomach that growled uncontrollably, complaining about the fact that I hadn’t fed it. I wasn’t sure how many days it had been since I’d eaten but my stomach was complaining way too much and that made me sure that it could have been more than two days. I felt my legs slowing down and I put as much strength as I had into moving forward. I couldn’t bring myself to walk any further and suddenly, the pavement was closer to my face than I would’ve liked in this cold weather and everything then started to black out.

I felt a lot of things all at once and heard a lot of things but they were all unfamiliar. The bed was too hard to be mine and the room smelt too much like bleach and Betadine to be my house. I heard soft beeping and another louder one along with the clatter of metal and felt a soft pinch in my arm and a heavy weight around me. Once I managed to slowly open my eyes to a softly lit room, I realized that I was in a hospital room and that was probably why it took me so long to draw that conclusion. It was dark outside and I felt severely parched. I didn’t know why I was here but I was in no mood to have doctors coming to bother me and so, I reached out and grabbed the bottle on the table next to me.

But, I froze midway when I saw the dark figure slumped on the chair next to my bed, leaning its head on the rail. He looked tired enough to warrant a bed for himself and his hair was disheveled and dirty like he had recently been in a fight. Jackson Wang. I frowned at the hallucination and grabbed the bottle, hoping that the meds that made me see him would wear out soon. About four and a half gulps later, my tongue stopped feeling like it had been rubbed with sandpaper and I leaned back against the already raised bed. I turned to look at the clock which read 2AM and 28th Dec. What?

Jackson seemed to get more and more real and so, I reached out to touch him, just to reassure myself. But… it only made it worse, because it was him and he stirred because of the disturbance. He glanced up at me lazily but then his eyes widened and so did mine and we stared at each other for a good 3.65 minutes until he looked away, only to look back at me.

“I… You’re so stupid,” he muttered, after a short pause.

“What?”

“You haven’t been eating for weeks, BiYu. You’ve been living on water and tea and you… what were you trying to do? Die?”

“What?”

“Zhou BiYu, if you don’t want to die just answer the question.”

“What question?”

“Why weren’t you eating? Why were you overworking yourself? What were you doing out so late when you know how cold it is?”

“I… I went to the animal shelter but they weren’t taking volunteers and I was headed home. I’ve been… forgetting to eat since I was working early and working late and… well, I’ve been trying to save up to uh… visit a few relatives out of town.”

“You stop lying to me right this second, BiYu. I feel like… oh god, BiYu, you scared me half to death. They couldn’t get to LanFen or Tai and finally, they called me because that was your “previous safety contact”.

“You didn’t have to come,” I told him.

“What?”

“Just… it was Christmas… you should’ve been at home with… whoever you were with,” I muttered, having no idea of what was