【Her · The Barista】
As Lin Wan wiped down the espresso machine for the seventh time, the glass door swung open and the bell chimed. She looked up: a young guy buying an iced Americano, staring straight at her, holding the gaze two seconds too long, deliberately brushing her palm with his fingertips as he took his change. She withdrew her hand without a flicker, smiling politely and distantly. “Take care.” The moment the door shut, the smile drained clean off her face.
She was twenty-nine this year, three years into running this café. The pitch sat right across the road, and come evening the men in athletic shorts would come off the field, walk in dripping with sweat to order, and chat her up across the counter. She had seen it all far too often. The men chasing her stretched in a line all the way back from college; her WeChat was littered with unanswered flirtations she left, without exception, politely on ice. Everyone in the trade said she was picky, cold, hard to deal with—hard to reach was everyone’s first impression of her, and the only one.
Nobody knew what lay beneath the face she wore in public.
She switched off the shop lights, pulled down the roller shutter, and took the little path along the edge of the pitch home. The night wind carried the smell of sweat and cut grass together, and she suddenly thought of that morning—the morning again, waking before her alarm, her body lit up as if by something, sliding her hand under the covers, biting the corner of her pillow, quietly and expertly sending herself over the edge. How many times that had been this month she did not dare count.
She had a boyfriend. They had been together for years—refined, respectable, both families pleased. But the last time they had made love was thirty-seven days ago—she remembered it with perfect clarity, because afterward she had counted on her fingers, waiting, and by the fifth day she gave up waiting and started relying on herself. Her boyfriend was not incapable, he just did not want to: tired, busy, an early start tomorrow, once a month already too much. She was beautiful, she knew she was beautiful, yet this body was like a fine dress locked in a wardrobe, gathering dust.
Desire—that word she used to find shameful. Now she only felt hunger.
【Him · The Foreign Coach】
Mike had been in this city three months, working as a foreign coach at the youth training center beside the pitch, drilling a pack of half-grown kids on the ball. He was very tall, always a head above the crowd, with golden-brown hair and the sun-carved lines of his arms drawn clean by the team kit. He noticed, soon enough, the café across from the pitch, and the proprietress who never once spared him a second look.
Back home, the girls smiled straight at you; if they liked you, they came over. This woman here was different, cold as the iced Americano she sold, politely holding everyone at arm’s length—two meters, even. Every time Mike went to order he found a new way to tease her, and she returned only a standard, professional smile. The more she did it, the more he wanted to know what lay beneath that layer of ice. He had been to many places, seen far too many women who wrote “not interested” across their faces while their bodies were honest. He had patience.
【Her · The Barista】
The dinner was on a Friday. It was thrown by a few girls she got along with, all of them running shops or businesses nearby, meeting up every so often for a meal, a bit of drink, and some filthy talk their husbands and boyfriends were never meant to hear, just to blow off steam. This time someone had, for whatever reason, dragged along that foreign coach from the training center—“So you lot can broaden your horizons.” Ah-May, who put the gathering together, sent that line in the group chat with a wicked little grin emoji.
Lin Wan hadn’t wanted to go. But that day her boyfriend messaged again to say he was away on business for the next few days, back next week; she stared at the message for a long while, seized by an inexplicable irritation, replied “Sure,” and then changed into a dark dress before heading out. The dress was a little tight, tracing the line of her waist; she looked herself over twice in the mirror and touched up her lipstick a shade darker. She refused to admit she was dressing up—she just, well, hadn’t dressed up for anyone in a long time.
The private room was already ringed with people. Mike sat directly across from her, standing up the moment she walked in, saying in less-than-fluent Chinese, “Boss lady, what luck.” When he smiled there were fine lines at the corners of his eyes, and his teeth were very white. Lin Wan nodded politely, sat down, and across one table took her first close look at this man who was forever loitering at her doorway—shoulders broad, shirt unbuttoned to the second button, a firm chest below the collarbone. Her gaze rested only half a second before flicking away, but the hunger inside her suddenly rolled over.
【Him · The Foreign Coach】
Mike hadn’t expected her to come. Today she was different: the dark dress cinched at the waist, her hair let down, knees pressed together as she sat, still holding that composed posture—but he could plainly see, in that single glance she gave upon entering, something he knew well: something shut away too long, looking for a way out. He poured her a drink; she said no need; he insisted; she took a small sip. He filed it away—when she drank, her throat moved once, and it was a very lovely thing to watch.
【Her · The Barista】
By the third round of drinks the topic had veered off. The girls were flushed, all their nerve out now, and started ribbing Mike. Ah-May opened it up: “Mike, you foreign men—is it true you’re… especially good in that department?” The whole table roared with laughter. Another chimed in: “I hear the size is always shocking—true or false?” Mike wasn’t bothered, spreading his hands with a grin and saying in stumbling Chinese, “You can imagine for yourselves,” which only egged the table on into shrieks.
Lin Wan sat across from him, holding her wine glass, saying not a word, that same faint, spectator’s look on her face—in public she was always the most restrained of them all. But under the table, her legs pressed together without her meaning to. Listening to the filthy talk, watching the utterly unbothered, masculine ease of Mike under the teasing, her throat went a little dry. She lowered her head to drink, covering for herself.
“So here in China, have you ever, with a Chinese girl…” Ah-May lowered her voice, eyes bright. “Have you or haven’t you?”
Mike shrugged, wearing the look of someone smiling without answering, which amounted to admitting it. The girls broke into a chorus of jeering boos and shrill laughter. Someone egged him on: “Don’t believe it! Go on, produce some proof!”
【Him · The Foreign Coach】
Mike had had a good deal of wine poured into him, and it had gone to his head. He had only meant to show his face and get a laugh out of these women, but the whole time his side-eye had been drifting to that quiet woman across the way. The more she said nothing, the more composed she held herself, the more he wanted to pry her open. He pulled out his phone, scrolled through, and turned the screen toward the two girls nearest him—a shot he had taken himself, in the bathroom mirror, only the lower half of his body, no face. He just wanted to see whether he could make that table blow up once.
【Her · The Barista】
The phone made its way around the table. The girls it reached reacted in every different way—one “whoa”-ed and clapped a hand over her mouth, one shrieked and shoved it away, one blushed and yet couldn’t help sneaking a second look. “Oh my God, is that real,” “That’s just too…”—the buzz couldn’t be tamped down. When the phone reached the seat beside Lin Wan, Ah-May shoved the screen right up to her face: “Wan-wan, look! Have you ever seen one like this or not!”
Lin Wan had meant to turn her face away. But the screen was right there before her eyes, and her gaze swept across it against her will—just one glance. In the mirror, no face, only a length of firm, veined thing, thick, long, alarming in its weight even hanging soft, making the very hand gripping the phone look small. She had never in her life seen one like it. Her boyfriend’s she could picture with her eyes shut—refined, standard, enough to get by. But this one on the screen…
She looked only once and turned her face away, lifting her glass for a long swallow, cheeks scorching. She told herself it was the wine. But the most honest patch of her heart knew it was not. Deep in her lower belly a string had been plucked by that one glance, clenching in a sour, tingling ache. She pressed her legs together, drove her nails into her palm, and worked to hold on her face that composed, faintly-frowning look of nothing-much-here. In public, she was forever that Lin Wan, the hardest to reach, the one who gave nothing away.
“Tch, why the prude act,” Ah-May teased. “Who hasn’t looked.” Lin Wan gave a faint smile and let it drop. Nobody knew that at that moment her underwear had already quietly soaked through a small patch, clinging uncomfortably.
【Him · The Foreign Coach】
Mike put the phone away. The other girls were all still carrying on—only he had seen it: the cold proprietress across the table had blushed, and in that instant she turned her head to drink, the flush ran all the way up her neck to the roots of her ears. She thought she had covered it well. That scrap of patience in him suddenly found its direction. This woman didn’t not want it—she had it pressed down far too hard.
The party broke up at half past eleven. The girls hung off each other calling cabs, and a drunken Ah-May grabbed Lin Wan: “You two go the same way, don’t you—Wan-wan, you take him back… no, wait, Mike, you take Wan-wan home! Your side, by the pitch!” Mike grinned and agreed. Lin Wan wanted to refuse but couldn’t find a reason on the spot—she really did live near the pitch, and he lived in the dormitory inside it, so it truly was on the way. In the second she hesitated, Mike had already, quite naturally, stepped up beside her, caught the toppling wine bottle for her, and looked down at her, laughter in those blue eyes: “I’ll walk you.”
One gust of night wind, and the drink surged up in her instead. Lin Wan’s head swam a little as she walked out of the restaurant shoulder to shoulder with him. She did not realize that, from the moment she stepped through that door, some things could no longer be stopped.