My closest friend in high school, Genevieve, was a friend of circumstance, in that we started hanging out because my parents approved of her. That girl could give Rent for Your ’Rents operatives a run for their money. In front of my parents, she was shy, obedient, and studious, one of my only classmates to win them over. But when they weren’t around, she was do-any-dare, seek-all-thrills wild. Sometimes I wondered what she saw in me, but based on her taste in romantic relationships, I think she liked the challenge my parents posed. A different kind of chase. When she went to UCLA and I went to Chicago, we fell out of touch, though knowing her, she would be happy to hear from me. But she wasn’t really a tell-me-your-feelings, ride-or-die kind of friend. And she would not have understood—her parents were the opposite of mine.

I threw my luggage in the corner of my dorm room, telling myself I’d unpack when I didn’t feel like death. Then I took the fastest shower in history and flopped on my twin bed like a dead fish. Even though I felt like I’d just pulled an all-nighter, even though my single felt like home and every poster, knickknack, and crack held both comfort and a story, I tossed and turned most of the night.

Now that I was alone, now that the mission and navigating my parents weren’t at the forefront of my mind, dangerous questions started to form. Had Andrew meant it when he said he liked my organization, my passion, the real me? I like the version of you from the application, he’d said.

I repeated that sentence in my mind several times. I’d always been too scared to show my true, bright-red, fiery colors to anyone, since my previous environment punished me for them, but… he’d seen Chloe on his own and had even figured out that Jing-Jing existed as the shiny front that other people wanted, not me. And apparently not him. The same guy who was somehow more in tune with my feelings than maybe I was. Who had laughed over my mooncake points, Frankenbāo, and tile-eating jokes—which, for the record, had felt real. And he’d seen the puke green of Hongbo immediately, defending me while also somehow recognizing that I could defend myself, too.

You’re just attracted to the attentiveness you paid for, the part he’s playing, the rational part of my brain told me. It’s the same as being attracted to a character in a movie—a.k.a. not real, not pursuable. He’s trained to be whoever he needs to be, lies flowing from his lips like honey, lies told so well everyone devours them easily.

Yet sometimes I’d felt like I could see the real him underneath, the one with tics and good vision and a love for banh mis.