The Stand-In(31)

“Really.” I could be wrong, but I don’t think many North American actors are encouraged to go into the industry out of patriotism.

“That’s where I met Sam,” she adds. “We were in the same year at school.”

“Did you ever…” I wriggle my eyebrows with meaning as I test the ground. I’m nosy, okay? She doesn’t have to answer.

“Never.”

“You’re not a couple?” I feel lighter, which is weird because it’s not as if not dating Fangli means Sam’s open to me.

She shudders. “Sam is like my brother, but people find it impossible to believe a man and woman can simply be friends. I could never see him like that. Ever.” She makes a kind of hilarious choking face.

“Really?” I lean forward. “Not even when you met?” Because I imagine even in the blundering teenage years Sam would have stood out.

“At the Academy, there was no time for dating, and in any case, I had a crush on his best friend.”

“A love triangle?”

“We were young and neither Sam nor I are interested in each other, so more of a one-way love line than a triangle.” Fangli laughs. “Poor Chen. He started a technology company and I haven’t seen him in ages. He lives in Vancouver.” She raises her eyebrows. “The detective said you were single.”

“For two years,” I say. “Riley was—I mean, is, he’s not dead—a nice guy.”

“But?”

“I don’t know.” Talking with Fangli is so comfortable, like talking to the sister I always wanted. Or what I imagine sisterhood to be like. “It was never a raging passion but one day I cooked dinner and we ate and when I was doing the dishes, I knew if I had to do that every night for the rest of my life, I would shrivel to a husk.”

“You cooked and did the dishes?” Fangli frowns. “What did he do?”

I blink. “I don’t know. I always did them.”

“I see. Well, how did he take it?” Fangli leans forward, eyes wide.

“That’s the zinger. I agonized for a week before I decided the best way to tell him. I didn’t want to hurt him, so I wanted to avoid a restaurant in case the place would have bad memories for him. We lived together, but it seemed cold to sit him down in the living room. In the end, I asked him to go for a walk.”

“Why that?”

“I thought it would help distract from the message.”

She nods as if filing this away. “The zinger, as you called it?”

“Right. I do all this planning and then I tell him, Hey, it’s not you, it’s me but I think this is over.”

“Did he cry?” She leans further in.

“Nope.”

“Yell?”

“Not at all.”

Her nose scrunches up. “What did he say?”

Even now, I can’t believe it. “He said, ‘Okay, cool.’”

Fangli waits. Then she asks, “That’s it?”

“That’s it. ‘Okay, cool.’ Nothing else. We turned around and went home. I slept in the spare room and we were very genial roommates for three weeks before he found a new place. He shook my hand when he left.”

I hadn’t told Anjali that tidbit, too stunned and almost embarrassed when it happened. Fangli’s eyes are huge with disbelief.

“A handshake?” she repeats.

“Like this.” I give her the single firm and professional shake that Riley gave me before he walked out the door, like I was a new client he was confident was going to sign on because of the solid pitch he’d given.

I can see her try to control it, but Fangli’s lip twitches. The more she presses her lips together, the more I can feel my own starting to edge up.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, covering her mouth with her hand. “It’s not funny. But a handshake?”

I’ll give her this—she makes a valiant attempt to get herself under control. Then I give her a nod, that sharp, imperious, and excessively irritating dip of the head that Riley’d always given me whenever he’d finished explaining in detail why he was right and I was wrong.

That’s all it takes. Fangli snorts inelegantly into her hand, which sets me off. This in turn starts her giggling, which gets me cackling. Within seconds, we’re both doubled up, laughing until we can’t breathe. Riley might have been the trigger, but this is a simple and much-needed stress release.

“How long were you together?” she gasps.

“Two years.” I wipe the tears away, but when she hears that, her giggles start up again.

“Two years,” she finally whispers to herself as I rub my stomach, which hurts from laughing. She stands up. “What sort of a man does that?”

“Good question,” I say, sobering a little.

She looks at me closely. “One that doesn’t deserve you.”

“He’s out of my life,” I say. “It was easy to shake it off.”

That sets Fangli off again and occasional gusts of laughter follow as she waves good night and goes to bed. I can’t help but smile. I’d always had lingering feelings about that breakup, wondering how boring I was that “okay” was all the emotion Riley could summon. I’d felt lacking but Fangli’s contagious glee had shifted something in my mind. The humor plucked out the remaining sting. Did Fangli give me the validation that I didn’t know I craved, or was it simply relief at telling someone? Regardless, I could put it to rest.