“Except you’re not,” she said, a little frantic. “If you leave, then my parents will think you’re back in Chicago, and you won’t be able to pop back in. I mean, yeah, we could talk on the phone, but…” She trailed off.

I wasn’t sure if she was thinking about how we’d never done that before or how it wasn’t enough. Regardless, I was too many steps ahead of her. “Forget what I said. What do you need right now?”

She grabbed my right hand with her left, and we sat in silence, sipping our tea and chewing our honey-soaked tapioca pearls.

Thirty minutes later she said, “Okay.”

Okay… you’re ready to go home? You want to tell your parents you know? You want me to hug you and never let go?

I waited patiently.

She sucked up the last dregs of tea noisily, the purple liquid sputtering and flailing at the bottom of the cup. “You’re right, I think. I need some time with my parents.”

Even though her sentence had started with “you’re right,” even though I was proud of her for figuring out what she needed, even though it was what I already knew, my heart sank.

But now was not the time to be selfish. “Okay,” I said, giving her my trained you’ve got this smile.

I grabbed her now-empty cup and was about to stand and track down a trash can, but she stopped me by grabbing my free hand. My knees bent and lowered me back to my seat.

“I hope you know what you mean to me,” she said, slightly shy, her eyes darting away periodically. “I… I really don’t want you to leave, but…” I nodded at her to show I understood. “I don’t know where your head’s at with us, now and going forward, but for me, I want to see where it can go. I know it’s messy with all the history, not to mention the distance, but—”

“I feel the same way,” I interrupted. Then, with a genuine, untrained, Drew smile, I said, “I think we owe it to Cháng’é.”

She laughed. “The sheep or the goddess?”

“I don’t care, as long as it means this doesn’t end.”

Her lips tasted like taro and sunshine—three suns’ worth.

Chloe CHAPTER 47 FALLING FALLING FALLING

“I’m so sorry to hear your grandmother’s sick,” my mother told Drew over dinner. We’d just informed my parents he was leaving tomorrow. “Please give us your address so we can send a care package.”

“I got it, Mā,” I said quickly. “I’ll give her something from all of us.”

“How lucky you are to have grown up with your grandma,” my mother said. “Cherish her while you can.”