Ficorpio
Chapter 1
The year I started going on family-arranged dates, Claire Bennett—the woman from my hometown—was doing the same.
We weren’t using the same matchmaker.
Then one day, Martha Reed, the woman arranging introductions for me, stopped by and said, “Why don’t you just marry Claire?”
My jaw dropped.
The possibility had never even crossed my mind.
My parents exchanged a look.
“That wouldn’t be so bad,” they said.
Then they turned to me, waiting for my answer.
“Whose idea was this?” I asked Martha.
“Mine.”
“And what if she says no? Wouldn’t that make things awkward?”
“So what? If you’re interested, I’ll go talk to her family.”
“Let me think about it.”
One of the things I had to think about was Claire’s younger brother, Jack.
I knew him much better than I knew her. Jack and I were the same age. We’d grown up playing together and gone to school together.
He lived in Tibet now, where he’d bought a home and a car. He hardly ever came back, and we hadn’t seen each other in years.
I’d spoken to him on the phone not long ago, but I hadn’t mentioned that I’d started going on arranged dates.
When we were kids, I was always over at the Bennett house looking for him. I couldn’t count how many times I’d run into Claire there.
If Jack found out I was considering marrying his sister…
No. I couldn’t even think about it.
So I flatly rejected Martha’s suggestion.
A few days later, though, I was wandering around town when Margaret Reed stopped me.
“Why wouldn’t you even let the matchmaker talk to Claire’s family?” she asked.
My heart lurched.
How had word gotten out?
I had specifically told Martha never to bring it up again—and especially not to tell anyone else.
Then the thing I’d been dreading happened.
I ran into Claire in town.
She saw me too.
At that point, pretending not to notice her would have been ridiculous. But after everything I’d heard, I couldn’t greet her as naturally as I had before.
While I stood there frozen, Claire walked straight past me.
She acted as if she didn’t know me.
I stared after her, startled.
A terrible suspicion crept into my mind.
She must have heard about Martha’s proposal.
And she must also have heard that I’d rejected it.
Was she angry?
I worried about it all the way home.
Over the next few days, I kept going on arranged dates. According to the town gossip, Claire did too.
Then Jack called me.
“Ethan,” he said, “I hear you’re back home getting set up on dates.”
He’d heard?
From all the way out in Tibet?
Who else could have told him but Claire?
Was this call supposed to be an interrogation?
“Yeah,” I said. “Never thought I’d sink this low. My parents have been riding me nonstop. It’s humiliating.”
“What’s the problem?” Jack demanded. “You think you’re too good for my sister?”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what is it?”
“Who marries someone from the same tiny town? People would never let us hear the end of it.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Mercer did.”
“That was in 1958.”
Chapter 2
“That’s really your reason?”
“There are other reasons.”
“Like what? You don’t have to worry about me. For the record, I approve. I strongly approve.”
I blinked. “What?”
“I’m staying in Tibet, and you know it. If Claire married you, the Bennett family home and land would stay with someone we trust. I’d rather that than see everything go to some outsider.”
“Damn.”
“And I never told my sister about the girl you dated back in school.”
“Wait. Claire actually agreed to this?”
“She’s turned down several other matches over the past few days.”
“In that case, tell me about the guys she dated before.”
There was a beat of silence.
“Damn it, Ethan. You bastard. That’s what you were worried about all along, isn’t it?”
I burst out laughing. “Careful. If I marry your sister, insulting me is basically insulting your own family. Think about it—you won’t be able to curse me out anymore.”
“You son of a—”
He stopped abruptly.
Then, in a sour voice, he said, “Think it over yourself. Looking the way you do, you’re lucky any woman would want you.”
“Didn’t you just say your sister does?”
“Go to hell.”
Jack hung up on me in a fury.
Then her brother sent a flood of messages, tearing into me without mercy.
“You borrowed money from me to take your college girlfriends out.”
“In high school, you couldn’t even walk straight when Xiaoya was around. You used to tug her hair during class.”
“That time I came home and we had dinner together, you went on and on about some girl’s long legs…”
“You were always sending me pictures of pretty women you saw while you were away, then going over to hit on them.”
“You’re a total creep.”
“You’re an asshole.”
…
I sent back one line.
“See? That’s exactly why I can’t marry your sister.”
Jack went silent.
More than ten minutes later, another message appeared.
“That was all in the past. Everybody has a past.”
I replied, “Including your sister?”
He immediately launched into another furious barrage of profanity.
“How about it?” I wrote back. “Come over here and hit me. You’ve been hiding out in Tibet for three or four years without coming home.”
I was deliberately provoking him. This was how we’d always talked to each other.
“If you marry my sister, I’ll come back.”
“Like you wouldn’t come home if she married someone else.”
“You really don’t respond to reason, do you?”
“Thanks for the compliment.”
“You should seriously think about it. Anyway, I have to get back to work.”
Jack had passed the banking exams after graduation and landed a job at a bank. His lunch break was probably over.
That afternoon, Martha Reed showed up at my house again.
“There’s a girl in the next town,” she told me. “She teaches preschool. She’s beautiful, tall, and everything she says she’s looking for sounds exactly like you.”
Chapter 3
Martha talked so enthusiastically that spit practically flew from her mouth. You’d think she was describing some angel sent down from heaven.
She was determined to close this deal. There was a four-thousand-yuan matchmaker’s fee in it for her.
I bought four more cartons of premium cigarettes and gave Martha one.
I kept the rest in the car for emergencies.
Family-arranged matchmaking in our area burned through cigarettes fast. You had to offer them to every man you met, and when you left, you were expected to leave whatever was left of an opened pack on the table.
Apparently, that was an old custom too. Leaving them behind meant you had manners.
Whatever. I’d been forced into having manners.
Want to know who forced me? Ask my parents.
I couldn’t even bring myself to smoke cigarettes that expensive.
I drove Martha over to meet the preschool teacher.
When we walked in, I spotted a tall woman wearing gold-rimmed glasses. She had a poised, elegant air about her.
She did look a little older than I expected.
I assumed she was my date.
She and a middle-aged couple questioned me thoroughly. I answered every question, thinking Martha had finally found me someone decent.
Then, just as I was beginning to believe it, the middle-aged woman turned to the woman in glasses.
“Go get your sister.”
That was when I realized the younger sister was the one I had come to meet.
The woman I’d noticed first was a graduate student, there to vet me for her sister.
Before we left, Martha made me add the younger sister on WeChat and told me to make sure we talked.
On the drive home, Martha asked, “So? What do you think?”
There was no way I could tell her I hadn’t liked the younger sister. I’d liked the older one.
If I said that, they would probably tear the roof off my house.
Jack called again.
“I heard you went on another blind date in the next town?”
“Yeah.”
“How was she?”
“Not bad at all. Fair skin, pretty face, long legs.”
“She didn’t like you, did she?”
“Don’t underestimate your big brother.”
“Quit pretending. Every blind date you go on is just a waste of cigarettes. Be honest. How much have you spent on smokes now?”
I did the math in my head. It really had been several thousand yuan by then.
But I puffed out my chest and said, “I don’t even need to bring cigarettes. The second I show up, they all agree. I’m just picky.”
“Yeah, right.”
Jack still wouldn’t let it go.
The third day after my blind date with the kindergarten teacher was the Summer Love Festival.
That afternoon, she messaged me.
Why hadn’t I asked her out?