She asked, "Where did this car come from?"
Chi Cheng tilted slightly to the side where she came up, so that she could get on.
"There was a bunch of motorcycle taxi drivers waiting to pick up passengers at that intersection, so I just rented one for the night."
Shi Ling was somewhat puzzled, "Isn't he afraid you'll run away?"
Chi Cheng said nonchalantly, "I gave him my phone as collateral, otherwise how could I send someone to call you?"
Shi Ling had already grabbed the back of his clothes and sat down.
Chi Cheng looked down and saw her white legs resting next to his. The road at this intersection was in poor condition, all rough gravel, but her fair legs resting on the side of the motorcycle created a strong visual impact.
Chi Cheng spoke up, "Hold on tight?"
Shi Ling knew what he meant, and reached out to touch his waist.
Chi Cheng looks thin, but he actually has broad shoulders and a narrow waist. When she touched his waist through his coat, she could feel his firm, strong body.
Chi Cheng glanced back, then pulled his long legs back, and the car drove off.
This is a newly opened bar, and it hasn't brought much popularity to the surrounding area yet. Soon, we reached a sparsely populated road. The surroundings were quiet, with only the sound of the wind and the roar of motorcycles in our ears.
Shi Ling asked him, "Where are you going?"
After asking her, she shook her head again. She had nowhere to go tonight anyway. Chi Cheng had pulled her out of the bar to vent her frustrations, and she would go wherever he took her.
Chi Cheng smiled. "Don't you think it's too late to ask now?"
Neither of them mentioned what happened next to the bar's restroom.
Chi Cheng slowly spoke, "If you're heartbroken, go for a drive and cry, complain and curse. You can do whatever you want behind my back."
Shi Ling hesitated. After the initial shock wore off, she felt somewhat restrained having left that bar, a place where people could indulge in unrestrained revelry and live a life of debauchery. In that atmosphere, everyone had their own story, and no one cared why she was crying.
She appreciated his kindness, but couldn't bring herself to express it.
Shi Ling suddenly remembered something and asked him, "So how are you going to contact that motorcycle taxi driver later?"
Chi Cheng said casually, "Can I borrow your phone? I've saved his number."
Why bet your phone?
She doesn't talk much usually. Chi Cheng is usually very talkative with others, but when he's with her, there are long pauses between their conversations, which gives him a strange sense of security.
It's rare for her to waste her breath on such a small matter, probably because she's too troubled to express her feelings.
Chi Cheng smiled with a hint of something else in his voice, "Because I don't want to bet on anything else."
After he finished speaking, he changed the subject, "Shi Ling, I'm only giving you this one chance."
Chi Cheng's tone was full of warning, "You said those things in the bar," he sneered, "I remember it."
He glanced back at her and said, "I'll cover for you tonight, you can do whatever you want."
"After today, don't try to make fun of me anymore."
Shi Ling remained silent for a while, then said, "Okay."
Chi Cheng's words still carried a hint of sarcasm, "Tell me, what romantic talk, what vows of eternal love? If you're going to make fun of me, you should at least make fun of yourself first."
Shi Ling smiled and said, "I'm just a joke."
Chi Cheng felt that she was gradually tightening her grip on his waist.
“I’ve known him since my freshman year. I lost my meal card, and he found it and offered to return it to me. I was doing advanced calculus problems in the library, and he recognized me from the photo on my meal card when he came over. But he saw that I was working on the problems for a long time and couldn’t solve them. After returning my card, he taught me how to solve the problems.”
Chi Cheng no longer showed any sarcasm. He asked casually, but was actually guiding her to continue speaking.
"Hmm, what does he study?"
“Civil engineering is a major that requires a lot of math skills, so during that time, he would help me with my problems whenever he had free time. Our workbook didn’t even have answers.”
“He never put pressure on me, he just helped me with my homework and never made any demands. Then one morning, he saw me checking in on the playground. Our school requires students to check in 30 times a semester to get up early for morning exercise, otherwise they will fail physical education. It’s really painful to have to get up at 6 o’clock every day. He took my student card and helped me check in enough times.”
"Later I ran into him, a civil surveyor. The whole major was together, setting up a level to record data. I went over and greeted him. He was tanned dark and red, and his skin was peeling. I gave him the sunscreen I had in my bag. After he went back, someone from his major asked him about me, which made him a little anxious."
Shi Ling smiled, and she realized that as she spoke, her eyes were already filled with tears.
She paused for several seconds before speaking again, her voice nasal, "His confession was really silly; he handed me a love letter."
"Later, before we took the postgraduate entrance exam, he chose to give up. Actually, it's not entirely his fault. He's just an honest person, and so are his parents. They just wanted him to settle down and go back to his hometown to find a job. His father pretended to be sick to trick him into going back. The new woman he found was the one his parents approved of."
Once the conversation started, it wasn't nearly as difficult as I had imagined.
He was speeding along, pedestrians were hurrying by, the night was a world for couples, and couples passing by whispered sweet nothings to each other by the Pearl River.
Shi Ling has gradually lost sight of these things.
She couldn't hear his reply, and it didn't matter anymore.
Her disheveled hair fluttered in the wind, obscuring her vision. Her eyes were already blurry with tears, and her vision slowly turned into a blurry black and white.
The whistling wind still filled her ears, and she was beginning to feel the adrenaline rush. The blurred vision made her other senses even clearer.
His taut leg muscles pressed against hers, his rising and falling breaths, the vibrations of his chest, and the way her hands, which were originally through his coat, had become an embrace as the car sped up and turned, allowing her to feel the firm abdomen beneath his thin clothes.
Chi Cheng knew that she gradually fell silent behind him, leaving only her sobbing against his back.
She's never been one to express her feelings verbally, so for her to burst into tears like this was an emotional outburst.
Shi Ling hadn't cried so uncontrollably in a long time. Since the breakup, she had been preparing for the postgraduate entrance exam, receiving her scores, deciding to study abroad, and learning IELTS. The Lunar New Year holiday had made her even more depressed, and she dared not let her family see it.
On the back of the motorcycle, there was no need to think so much. The streetlights receded one by one, casting shadows on her hair that covered her face, each stroke filled with melancholy, as she wept.
At some point, her crying subsided, and the motorcycle slowed down.
Chi Cheng swerved his long legs, bringing the car to a complete stop.
Chi Cheng let her sit quietly in the back seat for a while to calm down.
Shi Ling took out a tissue and wiped her face haphazardly, only to find that the tissue was covered in all sorts of colors, so she gave up.
Facing the wind all the way, she cried until her voice was hoarse; her throat was congested with blood and she was terribly hoarse.
Shi Ling sat up straighter, regaining some of her aloofness. "Thanks."
Chi Cheng took her bag and hung it on the hood of the car. "Want to get out and walk around?"
Shi Ling looked around, and Chi Cheng spoke up, "By the Pearl River."
After getting off, Chi Cheng propped up the motorcycle and leaned against the side. His bangs had been blown out of shape along the way, but he didn't care this time, giving him a rough, motorcycle-style look.
Chi Cheng raised his hand and lit a cigarette. In the past, Chi Cheng would usually put out his cigarette when he saw her, but now that he was familiar with her, he didn't care about such things.
He opened his leather jacket wider and loosened the collar of his vest, probably because he felt hot without any breeze.
He glanced at her slowly, "Turned the page?"
Shi Ling stood properly, standing next to him, looking out over the tranquil river.
"Um."
Chi Cheng gave a very soft chuckle.
He waited a long time, so long that he had almost finished smoking a cigarette, before he finally spoke.
Does it still count?
"What?"
Shi Ling exchanged a glance with him and knew she had asked a stupid question.
How can there be a man who takes you for a drive and listens to your cries, only to ask for nothing in return?
Shi Ling called out to him steadily, "Chi Cheng."
"Um?"
He turned his face away, patiently waiting for her next sentence.
"I don't like messing around."
Chi Cheng smiled and said, "I know."
It seemed as if the lights and the bright moon reflected on the opposite river had somehow flowed into his eyes.
He answered seriously, "I didn't intend to mess around with you."
Shi Ling thought for a moment. She had seen him going in and out of massage parlors, and she had also seen him loitering outside She Jiaxin's place.
But she also saw him take her to a traditional Chinese medicine clinic, saw him subtly shield her from the medicine in her drink, and saw him refuse the cigarette she offered him.
She didn't understand why she could believe him.
Perhaps a promise itself is not binding; his simple answer is far more powerful than a thousand words.
She maintained her aloof and composed demeanor as she looked at him, "Chi Cheng, you haven't asked me yet."
Chi Cheng lowered his head and focused on blowing a smoke ring.
He casually threw the cigarette butt away.
He hadn't even looked at Shi Ling, seeing him still head down crushing cigarette butts.
The next second, Chi Cheng had already picked her up from the side, put her on the motorcycle, and lowered his head to kiss her.
The motorcycle was tilted, and the seat was quite high. Shi Ling couldn't sit still at all when he was put on it. He could feel the pressure from the weight of the seat, and the motorcycle was swaying slightly.
She could only cling tightly to his neck as her body kept falling, only to be pushed back up by him, which gave him the opportunity to caress her smooth legs.
Chi Cheng's kissing skills were as good as she had imagined. He had come on strong, but once their lips met, he softened his approach and lingered on her lips gently. The scent of tobacco from earlier still lingered on his lips and tongue; men's cigarettes are much stronger, making Shi Ling feel even more dizzy.
She wasn't inexperienced, but Chi Cheng's most provocative tongue kiss made her lips feel like they were being electrocuted. He patiently swept his tongue across her palate and between her teeth, then grabbed her tongue and chased after it.
Shi Ling felt his hard, uncomfortable belt buckle pressing against her lower abdomen, and she reached out to push it away a little.
This prompted Chi Cheng to suck hard on the tip of her tongue. "Don't move around."
While he was telling her not to move, his hands were no longer satisfied with moving on her legs, and he lifted the corner of her white shirt.
Shi Ling understood perfectly well that being with Chi Cheng wouldn't lead to an adult fairy tale.
She pushed him a few times, then let him do as he pleased.
Although this place is remote and sparsely populated, there is a constant flow of vehicles.
Shi Ling held him with her eyes closed, listening to the passing cars that made the motorcycle they were sitting on vibrate. Through her eyelids, she could see the red headlights flashing by.