When we were short of breath, our fight turned even more playful, with Jing-Jing using the fake snow to give us fluffy beards, and us first linking plastic candy canes to see who could make the longest chain, then dueling with them.

It had become real for me. I thought maybe it was real for her, too, especially because her mom (or dad) had likely retreated back into the bedroom two play fights ago. But… not your fucking prerogative, Operative.

You help me the most by getting rid of Hongbo, I repeated in my head, which centered me.

“I think we’re good,” Jing-Jing whispered, and we put down our candy-cane weapons to assess the aftermath. A gorgeous, shining tree stood tall and confident before us. Just kidding. It was a kid’s tantrum come to life in plastic-fir form, a Charlie Brown tree missing half its branches, with only the bottom third decorated haphazardly as if… well, as if it was the casualty of people fighting near it.

“Should we start over?” I asked.

“Nah, it’s late. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

I nodded. Then, feeling awkward (even though I was trained not to), I wiped my hands on my pants. Then scratched my brow.

Jing-Jing was standing there watching me, her eyes taking in every fidget.

When I forced my hands down by my sides, she smiled, threw the last of the tinsel in my hair, said a quick good night, and bounded up the steps two at a time.

“Sleep loose,” I whispered to no one.

That night, every time I tried to focus on pajama-clad sheep, Jing-Jing would appear—playing with the sheep, hopping over the fence with one, dancing with another. Always at a distance.

Chloe

As I lay in bed, I tried—so hard, I swear—to think about anything else. Sheep. Game theory. My parents. Other strategies to finally kick Hongbo out of my life. But no matter what I was trying to force to the front of my mind, Andrew would pop in, a flash of lips or laughter or tousled hair.

The faux flirting—or whatever you want to call our Christmas-tree giggle fest—had been real for me. Not at first, especially because of the big speech I’d just given him, but, well, I’m human. And I knew it had been real for him—the fidgety, not-Andrew side.

Was my solution to the Hongbo problem also going to be my downfall?

Chloe CHAPTER 28 LUMINOUS

December 24

I woke up exhausted after a night of tossing and turning. Determined not to repeat the pretend-but-real flirting of last night, I joined my parents in the kitchen and asked if they wanted to decorate the tree with me.

“Why would we? That’s for kids,” my mother said with a yawn over eggs. We were having them sunny-side up with tiánmiàn paste on the side, a sweet-and-savory breakfast that was far better than a reanimated Frankenbāo.