Love in the Wintertime

I trailed behind her, leafing through books without really paying attention to any of them. The two of us wandered halfheartedly from aisle to aisle like two kids swimming through a green pond.

“I’m going to do the Follow-Up,” B said. We were about to enter the bookstore when she pulled me to a halt. “Can I do the Follow-Up?”

The Follow-Up was a system B and I made up to announce something that was bothering us without having to elaborate. We would throw out the news, then follow it with an irrelevant question that the other person must answer. I’m pregnant, how’s the sandwich? Mom’s having an affair, where’d you get that cardigan? And the like.

I nodded. B drew out three long breaths.

“Tommy’s having dinner with Fay tonight,” words spat out of her mouth like skipping pebbles, “do you remember the marketplace across from here?”

I turned my head around. The lot across the street was surrounded by white hoarding fences, two cranes jutted into the air like two Brachiosauruses. Few years ago, when B and I were still in school, the city sodded the place with synthetic turf and drove in food-trucks that sold overpriced burgers and fries. The marketplace brought in young customers, as intended, and, for a while, it was where everyone we knew would meet up on the weekends. I stared at the construction site. Snow angels were spray painted onto the fences for Christmas. I had forgotten about the marketplace.

Questions shot through my head like a bag of kernels in the microwave. I was pissed that B pulled the Follow-Up on me. Who cared about the marketplace? What in the world was Tommy having dinner with Fay for? I looked at B. She stared at me grinding her teeth, her fingers fraying the hem of her blue blouse. Wind blew in our direction, and loose strands of hair stuck to her wet lips. She was a wreck.

“Of course I remember,” I said to her softly, “they’re building the new Hyatt there.” B’s face relaxed, shooting me a small, grateful smile. She linked my arm, and we walked into the bookstore.

After the drummer whipped her across the face with a brush mallet, B dated a string of nice guys who followed her around like lost puppies. Well-trained puppies. Food appeared in front of her when she frowned. Jackets fell onto her shoulders when she held out her arms.

“I’m too vain to date men with violent tendencies,” she said to me while she patted foundation over the scratches on her face in our parents’ bathroom. They bought her story about the bike accident, thank God, and they told her to buy a helmet.

Then, she met Tommy. Lanky-Tommy. Hooded-t-shirt-Tommy. Smiled-with-a-crook-Tommy. He was in her Urban Anthropology class, and he brought her a cup of Chai latte every morning until finally mustering enough courage to slip in a note with his number scratched on it.

“Do I have to remember his name?” I joked the first time she brought Tommy home.

“Be nice,” she hissed, whacking the back of my head.

I liked Tommy, but it took a while. He was sort of a gump at first, asking stupid questions like “so how’s high school” and coughing uncontrollably whenever he laughed too hard. I took my time being the baby-sibling, sneering at his obscure pop-culture references and never saying goodbye when he left. B kicked my shins under the table so much that they were bruised for months.

One summer, I accidentally left my hand on my baby cousin’s head for too long and my fingers sunk into his scalp. Tommy picked up when I called B, and I confessed in between sobs. It’ll grow back, he reassured calmly. The baby started to cry, which made me cry even harder. It’ll grow back, it’ll grow back, Tommy repeated on the other line. He told me back where he was from, every baby’s head was dented. Like flat basketballs, he said. Puddles formed on their heads when it rained. I laughed, and Tommy laughed. The baby didn’t laugh, but whatever. I asked Tommy if he played the drums, and he promised me that he didn’t. He barely knew how to clap. That was the day I decided that he was a good guy.

You hear about how couples morphed into each other over time — how tangential similarities quickly grew into mirroring habits, wardrobes, personalities, and the like — then soon enough, you got your John and Yoko. Your Sid and Nancy. The Addams Family. But if that was how you made soulmates, then Tommy and B were never meant to be.

“Opposites attract, complement, or whatever, right?” B used to ask — command — for my reassurance, and I’d nodded overzealously knowing that they were beyond just opposites. Chalk and cheese. Violin and socks. In fact, the longer they’d been together, the more they seemed to differ, and you wondered how they could be together at all. B spent her days scrolling through Who What Wear, Tommy knew an awful lot about D&D. B liked hyper-pop and drag shows, Tommy marathons and figurine painting. B’s life was a long list of pros-and-cons, Tommy made every decision with a coin flip.

But, despite their differences, they worked. They stuffed the gap between their personalities with shared routines, inside-jokes, and secret glances nobody really understood but themselves, and, when you saw them together, you’d get the same feeling as you do seeing those pictures of an oxpecker nestled on a rhino — odd, but sweet. Couple of times when I’d pop over to their apartment, I would leave the bathroom and see the two of them standing in the living room, heads on each other’s shoulders, swaying to the soft tunes playing in the back. He would whisper something to her, and she would laugh, throwing her head behind her shoulders, and he would giggle along. In those moments, I’d understand why they were a perfect pair.

Ten minutes in and I already knew B wasn’t really looking for our parents’ Christmas presents. We were standing in the Travel section, and she kept dipping in and out of focus. Her eyes would glaze over and she’d stay motionless with her lips parted slightly, then, like a student falling asleep on an open textbook, she would jolt back into consciousness and look for where she had left off in the Top 10 of Istanbul.

The bookstore was really pushing it with the festivities. “Mr. Sandman” played in the background. String lights, red ribbons, toy reindeers and fake wreathes bedazzled with plastic ornaments. It felt like I was trapped in a cheap snow globe. Cheap, but cozy. Adults in big coats and colorful scarves lugged around gift bags and wrapped boxes. Children chased after each other near Literature & Fiction, dangerously close to the ceiling-high Christmas tree made of stacked-books. I flicked at the green stockings hung above the preparatory books. B was staring at nothing in deep contemplation, a faint line creased in between her eyebrows.

“This would be great for Mom and Dad,” I joked, pointing at SAT Math. No reaction. Few seconds later, she looked up and gave me a distracted smile.

I wanted to ask her what was on her mind, but I already knew all the things she could be mulling over. I checked my phone. Four o’clock. In two hours, Tommy would leave his office to meet Fay at a restaurant, probably at some cheap Thai place in Dongqu, and the two of them would talk about God knows what. I thought about all the other times Fay had reached out to him, to which he always politely declined. “I guess it’s always hard to forget about your first love,” B would say sympathetically, pursing her lips to hide her smug smile. What was it about this time that made Tommy agree to meet Fay?

A young employee wearing a sagging Santa hat and a vest covered in cartoon snowmen walked over to a group of undisciplined children. He said a few words, to which they nodded shyly at, then walked away. One kid punched another on the shoulder, the other shoved back, and the romping continued. B and I wandered into self-help.

“She’s told him she’s moving to America,” she said, flipping through Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, “getting married there.” B sighed, plopped the book back onto its shelf and pulled out The Power of Habits.

“What does she want?” I asked, trying my best to stay mellow.

B shrugged. We fell back into silence.

B had told me that she’d seen Fay a couple of times on campus, hand-in-hand with a different guy every time. It was difficult to picture Tommy with anyone other than B, but I knew that his connection with Fay ran deep. His mother became a mute when he was eight or so, after finding the checks her husband was sending to his second family. Fay’s mother learned about this and took Tommy and his mother in. Every night, they had supper together, and, after supper, Fay’s father showed the kids Kurosawa movies in the living room while their mothers washed dishes in the kitchen. Tommy never could get his mother to talk again, but, sometimes, late at night when they were walking home, he’d catch glimpses of her under the hazy streetlight, her hair tucked behind her ears and a hint of a smile across her face.

Tommy used to hate it when people referred to him as Fay’s younger brother since he’d always had a crush on her. He thought Fay couldn’t care less about him, but, when they turned fourteen, he heard from a friend of a friend that Fay liked him back. So they fell in love. Pure and sweet the way love was at that age. Held hands in dark classrooms. Gave name to the cat they fed with cornbread, then raised all seven of her kittens in Fay’s shed. They talked about leaving Pingtung, and they did. Eventually, when they turned eighteen, they moved up to Taipei and attended the same college. The rest is history.

There was a sudden commotion from the Philosophy section. B and I made our way over. A small crowd of people were gathered around a man on one knee and a woman with her hands over her mouth. They were under a plastic mistletoe wrapped in blinking fairy lights. After a short pause, the woman nodded eagerly, and the crowd cheered. The couple shared a kiss and people quickly disbanded. I looked at B, who was looking at the hugging couple.

“Tommy’s asked me to marry him many times,” she said to me. He did — I was there for a few of them — and B would always laugh hideously while slapping him on the arm. The woman blushed at the ring on her finger. Her eyes glistened under her thick bangs. I turned to B, and I could see the gears in her brain turning at the speed of light.

“Did you ever say yes?” I asked. We left with the crowd, walking past Parenting and Religion. Of course she didn’t, I thought, what a dumb question. If she had, she would have told me. But B didn’t reply. Mariah Carey sang through the stereos. I realized that we were heading towards the elevator.

We stepped in and descended. I asked her about our parents’ gifts, but she answered with more silence. Her jaw shifted from left to right in the mirror, and I could see an announcement forming word by word in her head.

“What if I proposed tonight?” she finally said. It was my turn to be quiet. I stared at her blankly. It would be a surprise, she added, he would never have expected it. The elevator door opened and a man walked in with his young daughter. B and I took a few steps back.

“I hope you’re not serious,” I said to her, and she shot me a hurtful look. She argued that she’d been thinking about it for a while now so why not tonight. The elevator opened again. Four more people walked in and we backed up against the wall. B was usually self-assured and level-headed, but her brain turns into chewed-gum whenever her confidence faltered. I told her that. B didn’t look at me. Her eyes were fixed on the pink ribbon clipped on the young girl’s head. I felt bad for curbing her, but who was going to stop her from acting like a fool if I didn’t?

The elevator door opened, and we filed out with the crowd. B stomped out of the bookstore angrily, and I shuffled behind. C’mon, don’t do this, I tugged on her sleeve. She spun around, her eyes wet. You don’t know jack shit about me and Tommy, she said, so don’t come if you’re just going to judge me.

I looked at B. She was picking at the dead skin on her lip, which was a nervous tic she’s had since we were kids.

“You’re right,” I said to her, “I’m don’t. I’m sorry.”

Jackhammers drilled holes into the concrete in the construction site across the street. I took B into my arms, and she wiped her face on my shoulder.

The whole time we were at Golden Moments Jewelry, I was waiting for B to snap. Call it sibling’s intuition, but I just knew that she would.

We were greeted by classical piano tunes that muffled through speakers covered in thick dust. The shop was dimly lit, with waist-high glass counters lined against the peeling walls, each filled with velvet padded trays of gold and silver shimmering brightly under display lights. It reminded me of one of those treasure caves you’d read about in children’s books. Quite tacky, honestly, but it was the most B could afford.

A woman who was as old and fat as Yubaba from Spirited Away hunched behind the counter at the end of the cave, gaping at B and me with her large, froggy eyes as if we had walked in on her suckling on dead children’s fingers. I stood by the entrance with a bouquet of red roses in one arm and two clanking plastic bags in the other. Scented candles, birthday kazoos, balloons that spelled out “MARRY ME” in chunky bubble letters, the list went on. B walked up to the counter in small, timid steps.

“How can I help you today?” words fell out of the old lady’s mouth like crumpled paper balls.

B explained with as little words as possible. Yubaba stared, her face washed of expression. Jesus Christ, I thought, coming here must be every couple’s ultimate testament of love. Then she doddered around the corner and pulled out a tray of silvers, thunking it onto the countertop. B walked over, making eye-contact with me as she went. It’s not too late, I pleaded with my eyes, I will not judge you if you bailed.

B didn’t, and my heart flopped. Diamond or band? She said she’s flexible. The groom’s size? B paused, then gave a number that sounded like a guess. Yubaba squinted her eyes, then nudged at the bottom four rows on the tray. They sparkled like night stars on a reflective pond. Try ’em on if it helps, Yubaba said, scrunching her long nose. B looked down at them without muttering a word. Right now, I thought, right now she’s going to snap. B picked up a ring that had a prong-set diamond, slid it onto her ring finger then immediately slipping it off as if the metal had just been cooked over fire.

“The band on that one might be a little too thin for your taste, try the one next to it,” Yubaba muttered. B looked up at her, then back down at the tray. She tried on the emerald pavé. No good. She tried on the v-band and the satin finish, even dabbling with the Celtic love-knot, her fingers lingering on its patterned surface. Not the love-knot, I begged with all my might, the bouquet of roses suffocating in my tight clench.

Eventually, B settled on a platinum band with a round diamond in the center. Simple and clean. No regrets. Fuck it. Maybe Tommy won’t even say yes. I walked with her to the cash register.

“You sure about this?” The last whiff of romance in the room evaporated with my skeptical tone.

“Yep.”

“Alright.”

Yubaba took her time wrapping up the ring, leaving B and I standing side by side with a million thoughts running through our heads. I snuck a look at her, who seemed to be in a deep trance, her face sleepy and clear as if freshly awaken from a long nap. What a fool, I thought, then immediately felt guilty for my apathy. Part of me was mad at her — not just for spoiling a supposedly sacred moment of her life but also for letting her insecurity take rein. Told ya it was not a big deal, I practiced the speech I would give her later that night, when Tommy comes home more smittened than ever. Proposals should never come from a place of fear, Future Me would conclude, graciously, on my high horse.

“Your card’s been declined,” Yubaba said, jabbing the card back at B from across the counter.

This couldn’t be good.

“Is it? Let me just — ” B scuffled through her bag, her voice tinged with panic, “try this one.”

There was a pause. I could feel the two bags of B’s proposal props squeezing my fingers to a deep shade of purple.

The beeping sound of another decline.

“You need me to pay first?” I offered, craning my neck to make eye contact.

B shook her head and rummaged for a third card.

The card reader flatlined.

“You can also pay in installments,” Yubaba said lazily, “if paying upfront is too much to handle at once.”

“C’mon, let me, I can cover it,” I couldn’t, but it felt like the right thing to say in the moment. I took my card out and nudged it at B.

“No, stop it,” she said, pushing my card back with a force that felt personal, “you can’t.”

We shoved my card back and forth at each other, the plastic bags around my wrist swinging and hitting her thigh. I was reminded of when our mother and her friends would tussle for the dinner bill, which was ridiculous, considering that B and I were fighting to pay for a ring neither of us could afford, for an engagement nobody was sure about. I guess it was the gesture that counted.

I pictured the times our mother would sneakily slide a couple of hundreds into Auntie Sannie’s purse when she’d “gone for a wash-up”, only to find Sannie at the counter, paying. Our mother would then race over to snatch the bill, while Sannie hurried back to slip the hundreds back into our mother’s purse. The thought of two petite women chasing each other around a dingy Chinese restaurant made me snort out a laugh, which I instantly regretted. B stared at me blankly. Then, all at once, she bursted into tears.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

There was no stopping B at this point. Like a deflated balloon, she slowly sunk to the floor. I knelt down next to her, sending the bags and flowers clanking onto the floor.

“Tommy loves you,” I said, cupping her tear-drenched face with my hands, “you know that, right?” Her cheeks were pink and warm, as if she’d been holding in her breath for the entire day.

“I know,” she said, then sighed, the weight of her entire head sinking into my palms, “I just feel so defeated.”

I looked at her. With the judgment I had casted onto her earlier dissipated, B suddenly seemed reverted to her girlhood self, the musty jewelry shop old pillow forts we’d set up in the living room.

Before B got with Tommy, our father used to joke about how she had enough past lovers to make up a baseball team, something in which B took pride of. “You try getting that many people to fall in love with you,” she’d clap back whenever we’d poke fun at her. But now, stacked against Tommy and Fay, a seemingly unbreakable bond woven together by a lifetime of shared memories, so nostalgic yet timeless it almost felt larger-than-life, B’s romantic past suddenly felt like a scatterplot void of meaning. No trend nor correlations. No use.

I thought back to the only time I had ever talked to Tommy about Fay. We were watching some old movie at my place, and B had fallen asleep on his lap ten minutes in.

“Do you ever miss her?” I asked, then added, “Fay.”

Taken aback by my question, Tommy stared at the TV screen with his face illuminated by its glow.

“Honestly? Sometimes,” he said after gathering his thoughts, his tone unchanged by my sudden inquiry, “it’s hard to just forget someone you’ve cared about for so long, you know?”

It was my turn to stay silent.

“But she’s my life now,” he said, looking down at B while gently stroking her hair, “and, even when I do think about Fay, I don’t try to fend those thoughts off — not anymore, anyway — I guess that was how I knew I really got over her.”

You don’t know jack shit about me and Tommy, B’s angry accusation from earlier rang in my head. I thought about what I knew. I knew that Tommy cried after B made fun of his restaurant idea at a dinner party, so she wrote a French cookbook for him from scratch. I knew that when B got turned down by design school Tommy emptied his savings account and they spent a month in Paris. I knew that after a nasty fight two years ago they took a break and B stayed over at mine. We fought about how long she could spend in the shower, and in less than a week they got back together. I knew that B and Tommy kept an on-going list of signals they would use to find each other in the next life. Clap twice, pause, then clap again.

“Alright,” I said to B back at the jewelry shop, “I’m going to do the Follow-Up.”

B looked at me with round, teary eyes.

“I’m sorry I hadn’t been supportive of you. Earlier today, I thought you were crazy for feeling threatened by Tommy and Fay, but I understand now where you’re coming from.”

B winced. I continued on.

“Tommy is always going to have a soft spot for Fay. Somewhere deep in his heart, she’ll be there, because that’s where he’s from. She’s his childhood, his coming of age, his first love — and there’s no way of parting the Tommy you love from the Tommy that was once with Fay.”

There was a pause.

“We all go into relationships with a past we cannot change. Bit of a scam, yes, but I don’t think those who are entrapped in their pasts are able to build a future with someone new, not the way Tommy has with you. You just have to trust me on this.” I concluded, then stood up, offering B my hand. Behind the counter, Yubaba sighed loudly.

“Now, you think if we just took the ring and ran she’d be able to catch us?”

B giggled.

The bells on the glass door jingled, and in walked a couple bundled in matching peach-colored puffer jackets. They looked at B down on the floor, then up at me, then walked out. Yubaba shook her head and clicked her tongue. Damn it, said her old, wrinkly face, there goes another pair.

Eight o’clock, B and I were sitting in my living room. It was No-Lights Saturday since I splurged earlier this month signing up for the Good Evening Half Marathon. It was supposed to breakeven, but I had misread the prizes and ended up in eighth place with a neon orange t-shirt and a plastic water bottle that caved inwards when I filled it with hot tea. So the place was pitch black. B and I lit up a circle of tealight candles and cracked open the window. It was chilly out, and the soft December breeze wandered in with the smell of my neighbor’s dinner. Rosemary chicken and buttered potatoes. My stomach grumbled. B popped open the bottle of champagne and poured some for the both of us in the plastic flute glasses we bought. She snorted out a laugh, and I shook my head.

“To No-Lights Saturday,” she held up her glass, her eyes twinkling behind the bubbling champagne.

“To No-Lights Saturday,” I replied. Our glasses made a plasticky clink. We drank quietly.

“You know, I would have married him,” B said to me, breaking the silence.

“I know.”

There was another pause.

“Promise me you will never tell Tommy about this,” she said. The ring of candlelight behind her wavered and flickered.

“I promise,” I said, then added, “I’ll tell him on the day of your actual proposal.” She smiled a sad smile.

Her phone rang. We looked at each other for a few seconds, long and hard, listening to the ringing echo in my small apartment. She carefully stepped out of our circle and disappeared into the darkness. I sat alone and sipped on my drink. The champagne tasted like how I imagined aged urine would taste.

After a few minutes, B reappeared, her drink in one hand and her phone in the other. Her face was flushed faintly from the alcohol. “That was Tommy,” she said, “I better get going.”

I couldn’t tell from her tone how the conversation went, but I had a sense that she didn’t want me to ask, so I nodded.

She looked down at me ruefully. “I had a good day.”

“I had a good day, too,” I said, smiling back at her.

B scanned her eyes across the room, the plastic bags full of her earlier lunacy laid in the corner, spilling party-hats and confetti poppers onto my cold marble floor. I told her I’d clean it up later, and she returned with a grateful nod. She downed her champagne, slowly set the empty glass onto the floor, and left, disappearing once again.

I sat alone in my No-Lights apartment. Evening news muffled through the thin walls. With B gone, the room suddenly felt lighter, the weight of Tommy’s past lifted. Poor girl, I thought, she must have felt so frustrated, so excluded. I poured myself another glass of cheap champagne.

When we still lived together, back when we were kids, B and I would serve our parents red wine after supper. Dirty dishes still on the table, we made sure they stayed seated while the two of us locked ourselves in the bathroom uncorking the bottle with a pair of safety scissors. Then we’d walk out with our backs straight and our heads cocked. B would pour holding the bottle by the punt and the whole thing would shake like a fish swiveling upstream.

It was nearly impossible now to imagine B and I as kids. We still were, I thought, but so much had changed since, and it would make my head spin to articulate. I blew out the candles around me, one by one, smoke rose and disappeared into the darkness. Does B remember pouring red wine to our parents? Mop towels draped around our arms, wine glasses criss-crossed between our fingers. I hope so. I suddenly felt aged, exhausted, really, the distance between then and now stretched out in front of me, endlessly, like a long wintry road.