Chapter 3
For the record, the boyfriend was real.
I did not love He Fang anymore. What was wrong with dating someone else?
Not only had I dated, I had had several boyfriends.
He Fang knew about every one of them.
My best friend kept him informed.
He Fang never stopped hating me.
He had spent twenty years looking down from above, only to be “humiliated” by a little follower he had never wanted. I would have hated me too.
I heard he even rushed to our county town.
Unfortunately, my father was receiving treatment in Beijing that year, so I had not gone home.
He caught no one and looked like an abandoned, resentful wife.
Our chase went on for three years.
Today, it would finally end.
Because from now on, I would be spending New Year at He Fang’s home.
My father had died the previous winter. I no longer had a home of my own.
He Fang stood close behind me now.
His fingertips tapped the melon again and again.
“Turn around and I’ll buy it for you.”
I did not move a muscle.
He soon lost interest.
“Forget it. It was a joke. I’m leaving.”
That was He Fang. Nothing held his attention for more than three minutes.
This time, he really left.
Even though ten minutes later, we would meet again at his home.
Even though we had once been as intimate as two people could be.
Even though he hated me to the bone now.
We still had to sit down and share New Year’s dinner.
I carried my pile of fruit to the register.
The owner studied me twice.
“Miss, you look familiar.”
“I have an ordinary face.”
“Oh, with looks like yours? Nothing ordinary about you.” She clicked her tongue and said with certainty, “I’ve definitely seen you somewhere, especially those dimples.”
It was no surprise she did not recognize me.
I had changed a great deal.
After puberty, I lost a lot of weight, and years in the city had lightened my skin.
I was no longer that dark, chubby country girl.
In a recent campus-beauty poll, I had even won the title of “Sweetest Girl in the School of Communication.”
Oh, right.
He Fang had appeared in the comments on that poll.
He wrote, “Sweetest girl, my ass. Are all you Communication students blind??”
I knew it was him because his username was “ProudAndDamnRight.”
After paying, I carried the fruit outside.
The moment I pushed open the door, an icy gaze landed on my back.
“All that fruit. Where are you going?”
He Fang had not left.
He was leaning against the wall and seemed to have been waiting a while.
I ignored him and walked faster.
He quickly caught up. One stride of those long legs put him directly in my path.
He snatched off my baseball cap.
“Was playing with me fun, Wen Zhi?”