◎ A Taste ◎

Luo Peiyin’s hands cradled Gu Qiao’s face. Her eyes had been lowered, but in an instant her lashes swept open.

Luo Peiyin looked steadily at that face, imagining what expression she must have worn all those years ago when she called him to break up. This woman was an incurable optimist — incurably convinced that tomorrow would be better than today — yet when she made that call, perhaps she had doubted the very thing she had always so firmly believed.

And she had said nothing to him. He had been completely unaware of everything she was going through at that time.

Gu Qiao’s breath carried a faint trace of alcohol, brushing against his palm. Luo Peiyin held her gaze: “If I didn’t know you as well as I do, I’d almost suspect you had a grudge against me. You were suffering in this place while I sat there like an idiot knowing absolutely nothing, living the easy life you’d described. Gu Qiao — don’t you think what you did was too much? It’s not as though I had done anything to wrong you before all this.”

Cupping her face like this, he could feel her lashes fluttering continuously against his fingers. Luo Peiyin spoke to Gu Qiao one word at a time: “If you don’t actively hate me, then don’t ever do that again.” He cursed her in his heart — and yet this person had been through so much, and he hadn’t fared any better either.

Gu Qiao didn’t answer. She pressed her mouth against Luo Peiyin’s lips — the way she had at the very beginning, when she still believed a kiss was simply two pairs of lips pressed together. When she had first fallen in love, she had kept various flavors of candy in her pockets, as a defense against unexpected kisses. In those few short minutes, they seemed to retrace the entire history of their kisses — from the simple press of lips, to him coaxing her tongue out, to him catching it between his teeth. Back then, she would always have been chewing fruit-flavored bubble gum beforehand, and her tongue, whether she led or was led, would stir softly in his mouth, filling it with the taste of bubblegum.

Gu Qiao had just bitten through a hard apple candy. She wasn’t sure now whether what he was tasting was more the alcohol or more the apple flavor. The corner of her mouth was being bitten to the point of pain, but she didn’t make a single sound.

Like an old version of herself returning to inhabit her body, Gu Qiao held Luo Peiyin tightly on behalf of her former self. When she had hung up the phone after that breakup call, afraid she would lose her resolve and regret it, she had unplugged the telephone line. She’d had no one to hold onto then — so she had decided to hold herself, her arms wrapped around her own shoulders, telling herself to stay strong. But now this person was right here beside her. She held on tight, as though if she loosened her grip for even a moment, he would retreat back along the phone line, and she would never see him again.

Gu Qiao’s hands moved from Luo Peiyin’s waist to his back, repositioning again and again, trying to get closer to him — but no matter what she tried, it never felt close enough. Gu Qiao kissed Luo Peiyin back while freeing one hand to tug at his tie. Her heart, flesh, and bones — separated from him by her underclothes and shirt — yearned to scatter every last button and press themselves against him.

The first time the doorbell rang, she didn’t hear it at all — her fingers were still pulling at his tie. When the second and third rings sounded, she was abruptly pushed back to a distance.

Luo Peiyin touched Gu Qiao’s hair, which had come loose, then with one hand pulled off the half-loosened tie and refastened the button she had undone, and went to answer the door. Gu Qiao turned away from the door, listening to her own quickened breathing. Luo Peiyin’s body formed a barrier between the room and the hallway. Accompanied by a murmured thank-you, Gu Qiao heard the sound of the door closing. She turned back around and saw the hot milk in his hand.

The cup of milk was brought to Gu Qiao’s lips. She took it in both hands — her entire palm was warmer than before. A person who had eaten barely anything and drunk a great deal of alcohol really did need a cup of warm milk. Gu Qiao lowered her head and sipped the hot milk slowly. Her body temperature continued to climb. Before she had come back to the room, he had already called downstairs to arrange for the milk to be brought up — it had only arrived at this inconvenient moment.

Gu Qiao’s lips were softened by the warm milk. Her gaze too seemed to become something liquid, flowing toward Luo Peiyin’s face with each sip. She had no intention to be provocative — she simply wanted to look at him. She liked his sharp nose, his reddening ears, and the movement of his throat as he swallowed.

When she finished the cup of warm milk, Luo Peiyin used his finger to wipe away the white foam left at the corner of Gu Qiao’s mouth, pressing gently on her lower lip, still damp from the milk. “Just how much did you drink tonight?”

Gu Qiao suddenly looked up, looped both hands around Luo Peiyin’s neck, and smiled at him. “How much I drank — why don’t you taste and find out for yourself.” She kissed Luo Peiyin again, her whole body suspended from him, more forward than she had ever been before. She was pressed back against the table, uncontrollably arching backward — and behind her was the telephone, the very telephone on which she had said those words about breaking up, the same telephone he had used to call down and arrange the milk for her.

The hands hooked around his neck pulled tighter. Her whole body was wound around his, as if not holding on this firmly meant she would topple backward.

Gu Qiao’s mouth communicating the taste of alcohol to him had done nothing to reduce her own intoxication. A rush of blood flooded her face, displacing reason entirely — in that moment, she wanted only to follow the most primitive instinct, to press herself even closer to him. She brought her mouth to Luo Peiyin’s ear and said, “Let’s go to bed.”

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Luo Peiyin deftly helped her out of her outer clothes. Gu Qiao, in turn, wanted to look at him in the lamplight — she reached out to undo Luo Peiyin’s belt and tug at the hem of his shirt. Luo Peiyin held her hands still, then pulled the blanket over and wrapped it around her.

Gu Qiao reached out and tried to pull Luo Peiyin’s arm toward her. Her lashes fluttered open. Her eyes looked as though a pool of water had suddenly gathered beneath them. She bit her lower lip and looked sideways at Luo Peiyin, without saying a single word.

Luo Peiyin’s other hand settled in her hair, pulling loose the knot at the nape of her neck. Her hair tumbled down in a wide cascade, the loose strands tickling her skin and making it prickle in waves. He used his fingers to brush the strands that had fallen across her forehead back behind her ear, and gently traced the curve of her earlobe. “You’re drunk. I don’t do this with someone who’s drunk.”

Gu Qiao didn’t release Luo Peiyin’s arm. She looked at him with something that was almost a challenge in her eyes. “But didn’t you just tell me you wanted to have every possible kind of relationship with me?”

She slipped free of the blanket and wrapped her arms around Luo Peiyin. Her fine teeth went to nip at the buttons of his shirt. Her lips were full and soft, pressing against his shirt. Gu Qiao used her teeth and worked open his first button, then looked up at him with a smile. “Do you remember the little bird brooch you gave me as your first gift? I loved it dearly. But unfortunately, I didn’t have any clothes that suited it. So privately, I would take the brooch out and look at it, then use the little bird’s beak to peck at my own fingers. Do you know what a bird’s beak feels like when it pecks at human skin?”

Gu Qiao lowered her head and gave one soft peck at the edge of his shirt, then looked up at him again. “Something like this. Do you want the little bird’s beak to peck at you a few more times?”

Luo Peiyin’s fingers slid into her hair. Gu Qiao used her fine teeth to nip delicately at his shirt hem, slowly working at his second button. Gu Qiao was an excellent student in this regard. She reached out to tug his shirt hem free, slipping her fingers inside his shirt to slowly stroke his back muscles and shoulder blades. She had no intention of goading him — she simply, purely, wanted to be closer to him.

Gu Qiao worked open Luo Peiyin’s second shirt button. When she looked up at him, she called his name softly — nothing like the easy familiarity of “cousin,” those two syllables — his full name, three characters linked together, sounded almost like strangers meeting for the first time. She drew out the name slowly, as though it was something to be savored. She looked at him sideways. “Cousin — which do you prefer, and how do you like me to call you?”

Luo Peiyin didn’t answer. He tilted up her face and pecked at her mouth. The sensation was different from the little bird brooch pecking at fingers after all — his mouth had warmth. His fingers slid from her jaw down her neck to her shoulder, traveling slowly, as though meeting her for the very first time, relearning the shape and temperature of her body.

Although Luo Peiyin was not without experience, the only woman’s undergarments he had ever laid eyes on were hers. From previous experience, the clasp was always at the back — yet the one Gu Qiao was wearing today had the clasp at the front. His usually nimble fingers found themselves unexpectedly clumsy with this clasp.

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“Your body seems more reluctant to let me go than you are.” Luo Peiyin murmured against Gu Qiao’s ear. “During the winters we were apart — were you cold?”

When they had broken up, she had told him over the phone that the reason she had been with him in the first place was because winter was so cold, and he had made her feel warm. And when she ended things, the temperature of the city was not below twenty degrees — which in retrospect sounded rather like using someone and discarding them once they’d served their purpose. He had cursed her in his heart at the time.

“My apartment got central heating. Warmer than before.”

Luo Peiyin seemed unsatisfied with this answer. His fingers knew exactly how to torment her. Gu Qiao’s voice came in broken fragments. She said to him, “When I was… mm… mm… in the apartment with central heating… I kept thinking how good it would be… if you were here beside me.”

When Luo Peiyin’s fingers finally paused their torment, Gu Qiao was at last able to speak in complete sentences: “I always used to be afraid of making you worry. But the moment I thought about you never worrying about me again, you and I having nothing to do with each other ever again — I couldn’t help thinking of the past.”

“In winter, I always thought of you more often than in other seasons. Later, I heard from the fourth young master that you had gone to Singapore. I thought about how winter in Singapore is never cold — and somehow, I felt as though the two of us had been separated by a great chasm, as if we were in completely different worlds.”

Those words had a somewhat inauspicious ring to them. Gu Qiao stopped herself and said no more. In the glow of the overhead and wall lamps, she held Luo Peiyin close and looked straight into his eyes. Her fingers went to his belt buckle. “Now I want you. You’ve been on a plane for over ten hours — can you still manage?”