After work, I went to a nearby military supplies store and bought a military watch as a gift for Tiehan. Next to the store was a model shop, and in the display window, I saw a completed EA-6A Wild Weasel fighter jet. Had Gao Hai Ming already finished building his?
On Saturday evening, Meng Meng, Tiehan, Yu De Ren, Xiao Jue, and I had dinner by the hotel pool.
“This is from Xiao Jue and me. Do you like it?” I handed the watch to Tiehan.
“I love it.” Meng Meng snatched it from his hands and wore it herself. “Let’s take turns wearing it—one day each,” she said to him.
“Let’s cut the cake!” Yu De Ren suggested. “It’s to celebrate Tiehan officially becoming a police officer.”
As Tiehan cut the cake, I passed a slice to Xiao Jue. Just then, Meng Meng accidentally bumped my elbow, and I spilled the cake onto Xiao Jue’s pants.
“Shit! You’re so clumsy!” he shouted, brushing the cake off his pants angrily.
He had never spoken to me like that before, let alone in front of so many people. I was mortified. To save face, I forced myself to respond calmly, “Why are you so angry? It’s not that big of a deal.”
“It was my fault,” Meng Meng said.
He didn’t say another word for the rest of the evening.
The atmosphere was painfully tense and silent—something we had never experienced before.
“I’m sorry,” I said on the way home.
“You don’t need to apologize to me. You supported me through school,” he replied.
“I never meant to hold that over you,” I explained.
“Maybe we’ve been apart for too long. Don’t you think we’ve both changed?” he said.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Have you fallen in love with someone else?” I asked.
“Does it look like I have?” he shot back.
“You’ve changed,” I said.
“So have you,” he replied. “That day at the restaurant, when I saw you serving people like that—don’t you think it was demeaning?”
I hadn’t expected such words to come from him. They hurt more than him calling me clumsy earlier. He was my boyfriend—how could he criticize me like that? It turned out he had been harboring those thoughts all along.
“I’m doing it for the money,” I said.
“The money you spent on my education—I’ll pay it all back,” he said.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, tears welling up. “When I said I’m doing it for the money, I didn’t mean I want you to pay me back.”
“But I owe you.”
“Xiao Jue, what do you mean?” I couldn’t hold back my tears anymore.
“Maybe we’re just out of sync,” he said.
“Out of sync?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“The past three years, we’ve lived in completely different worlds—”
“But we wrote to each other!” I interjected.
“How much do you really know about the hardships I endured in the UK?” he countered. “In the winter, when the heating in my place broke, I wore all the clothes I had and still shivered through the night, unable to sleep. Do you know how many times I slipped on the icy ground?”
I was speechless. For three years, I thought he understood the hardships I had endured for him. I thought we were enduring them together. But he believed he had been struggling alone.
“Let’s take some time to cool off,” he said.
That night, I cried silently in my room.
“What’s wrong?” asked Le’er, who was sleeping next to me.
“Nothing,” I replied.
She turned her back to me and went back to sleep.
After ten years together, I couldn’t believe Xiao Jue would leave me. He wasn’t that kind of person. He wouldn’t leave me.
The next day at the office, I couldn’t focus on work. Fang Yuan cheerfully told me that the bottle of 1982 PETRUS wine I had bought for him had appreciated in value.
Standing in front of the mirror in the restroom, I looked at myself. Did I really seem as lowly as Xiao Jue had said? Did I look so desperate while trying to earn money that no man could ever love me?
Wang Zhen emerged from one of the stalls, wearing a tank top and shorts. Once frail-looking, her arms were now toned, her shoulders broader, and her belly flat.
“You—” I was stunned at how much she had changed.
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