Try Again chapter 42

 I Miss You Too

The place Deng Feng chose to drink was a bar they had frequented before. Ji Minglun parked in the underground garage, took the elevator to the 42nd floor, and pushed open the door of a bar with a very ruin-style design.

This bar has a unique design, but the owner’s positioning was that of a clean bar. The music was suitable for conversation, and the entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows opposite the bar offered a view of the sea, making it Deng Feng’s favorite bar. When Ji Minglun agreed to partner with him to open “Chaka,” it was here that they finalized the agreement.

Seeing Deng Feng’s back from their usual spot, Ji Minglun walked to the bar counter, had the bartender open a bottle of chilled white wine, and took two slender stem glasses to sit across from Deng Feng.

Deng Feng had a bottle of gold label tequila beside him, which was already partially empty. Seeing him open a bottle of sweet and sour ice wine, he teased, “What are you doing? Ordering a drink for women?”

Ji Minglun ignored the tequila placed in front of him, poured wine into the two glasses, and pushed one in front of Deng Feng. “I don’t want to get drunk tonight, let’s change things up a bit,” he said.

Deng Feng picked up the glass, looked at the golden liquid in the transparent glass, smiled helplessly, and downed it in one gulp.

Ji Minglun gently swirled his glass, took a sip, and savored the unique fragrance of the ice-cold white wine as it spread across his taste buds. His gaze drifted downwards toward the floor-to-ceiling glass beside him.

The vast, tranquil sea stretched into the distance. There was no moonlight that night, and the thick clouds covered the sky. They had heard a radio broadcast earlier saying a typhoon would make landfall in a couple of days.

“Did you find any new hires for the café?” Ji Minglun asked as he stared at the blinking buoys on the horizon.

Taking a sip of tequila, Deng Feng replied, “Zhu Zhu recommended a friend. We’re fully staffed.”

Ji Minglun nodded. Just as he finished saying, “That’s good,” Deng Feng tossed a pack of cigarettes his way. He was about to refuse, but then he noticed the pack was Bohem Mojito.

Deng Feng usually disapproved of the cigarettes Ji Minglun smoked, thinking they were too mild, but this pack of Bohem Mojito was already opened, and more than half was gone.

Ji Minglun pinched the pack and asked, “Why the change in taste?”

“It’s Deng Yi’s,” Deng Feng said, propping his chin on the back of his hand, his eyes glancing at Ji Minglun. “I found it in her room. I asked her why she started smoking, and she said she quit and was planning to throw them away.”

Ji Minglun finished the remaining wine in his glass, took out a brand-new pack of Bohem Mojito from his pocket, opened it, and lit a cigarette.

As he exhaled smoke, Deng Feng lit one as well. After one puff, he still found it uncomfortable and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “What’s going on with you and my sister? Have you sorted it out?”

Staring at the seascape outside the window, Ji Minglun absently replied, “I told her if she doesn’t learn some self-restraint, you and I won’t be friends anymore.”

“What exactly happened? What did she do?”

Ji Minglun had left Deng Yi’s birthday party early that day, and later, Deng Feng hadn’t been able to attend either due to other matters. Deng Yi must have instructed Shi Xiaomin and the others not to say anything, which is why Deng Feng was still in the dark.

Since Ji Minglun had come out tonight intending to lay everything on the table, he no longer held back. Flicking some ash into the metal ashtray, he said, “Deng Yi found out that I’m with Jiang Lin, but she misunderstood, thinking Jiang Lin was stringing both you and me along. That day, Jiang Lin came to her birthday party to find me, and she accidentally pushed him into the water.”

Ji Minglun spoke calmly, summarizing the events in a few short sentences, but the information was so overwhelming that Deng Feng froze for a moment. A few seconds later, he grasped the key point, looking at Ji Minglun in disbelief.

“You and Jiang Lin… you’re together?!”

Ji Minglun knew this would be hard for Deng Feng to accept. After all, he was at fault too. At the beginning, due to the awkwardness between him and Jiang Lin, they had kept their previous acquaintance a secret. As time passed, it became even harder to come clean. If Deng Feng had known about their past earlier, the later troubles might have been avoided.

“Yes,” Ji Minglun said in a low voice, his expression tinged with guilt. “Actually, I’ve known him since kindergarten. We were good friends all the way through college. But before he went abroad, I confessed to him, and he didn’t accept it. We had a falling out then, so when he came back this summer, I never expected he’d end up working at our café.”

Deng Feng still looked incredulous. “So when he rejected me and said he already had someone he liked, that person is you?”

Ji Minglun picked up the tequila Deng Feng had poured earlier, downed it in one gulp, and only then looked at Deng Feng. “Yes.”

Deng Feng was silent for a moment before suddenly laughing. His shoulders shook slightly with the movement. Ji Minglun watched as Deng Feng raised his left hand, resting his chin on his fist, then burst into a second round of laughter before leaning back heavily into his metal chair.

His exaggerated movements made Ji Minglun frown. Just as he was about to say something, he heard Deng Feng sigh self-deprecatingly, “No wonder.”

“No wonder Jiang Lin came to the café so often, no wonder you’ve been there so frequently this past month, no wonder he immediately agreed when I asked him to travel with me.”

“And last time, when I offered to drive him home, he looked at you instead,” Deng Feng slapped the marble table with a dull thud. “He wanted to ride with you, didn’t he?”

Ji Minglun didn’t know what to say anymore.

Deng Feng’s expression shifted between mockery and despair. One moment he was sarcastically laughing, and the next, his shoulders slumped. Then he straightened up, glaring at Ji Minglun as he pieced together his earlier suspicions.

“That mess you were in a year ago was because of Jiang Lin, wasn’t it? When did you two get together?”

Not waiting for Ji Minglun’s response, Deng Feng continued, “Was it in Xi’an?”

“No,” Ji Minglun denied, “In Xi’an, I even asked if you were pursuing Jiang Lin. I didn’t know his true feelings at that time.”

Ji Minglun’s left hand rested casually beside his glass. Deng Feng noticed the silver bracelet on his wrist and pointed at it from a distance, asking, “That bracelet is from him, too, isn’t it?”

Deng Feng, who had spent the most time with Ji Minglun over the past year, recognized the bracelet that he never took off. He also knew it had recently been sent for repair. Now that he saw Ji Minglun wearing it again, Deng Feng recalled seeing Jiang Lin eagerly picking out a bracelet at the luxury store. Back then, he thought Jiang Lin had deemed it too expensive and didn’t buy it. Now it seemed he hadn’t bought it because he had been caught by Ji Minglun, which explained everything.

Remembering the blunder he made later, Deng Feng felt embarrassed and downed three consecutive glasses of wine, until Ji Minglun pressed his hand down to stop him.

“If you’re mad, we can go outside and fight. I’ll let you hit me.” Ji Minglun took the wine bottle from his hand and said earnestly.

Ji Minglun wasn’t the type to start a fight, but this situation had clearly hurt Deng Feng. He didn’t want Deng Feng to blame Jiang Lin, so the best way was to let Deng Feng take his anger out on him instead.

Deng Feng’s gaze shifted over, his emotionless pupils reflecting the cold light from a row of ambient lights nearby, giving off a strange sense of unfamiliarity. Ji Minglun didn’t avoid his stare, and the two locked eyes for quite a while. Suddenly, loud laughter erupted from the next table, breaking Deng Feng’s attention. He turned and glanced at the group of men and women before looking back. “Come on, hitting you would hurt my hand too,” he said.

Back then, Ji Minglun had asked him if he was interested in Jiang Lin, but Deng Feng hadn’t admitted it. If he had confessed then, things might have taken a more complicated turn, but the outcome probably wouldn’t have changed.

That day, Jiang Lin didn’t say over the phone who he liked. Now that Deng Feng knew it was Ji Minglun, he realized the effort Jiang Lin had put into getting close to Ji Minglun during this time.

From the start, Jiang Lin had a clear goal, and Ji Minglun hadn’t forgotten Jiang Lin either. There was no room for anyone else between these two.

The hardest thing is when someone is fixated on something they can’t figure out. But once the truth is understood, it’s not as hard to accept anymore. Besides, these past days, although Deng Feng still wanted to keep Jiang Lin, deep down he knew that once Jiang Lin returned to Los Angeles, the next year would be spent in a long-distance relationship. The difficulty of that was obvious.

He raised his hands and rubbed his face with his palms, then let out a quiet sigh.

The bar’s music was loud, so Ji Minglun didn’t hear the sigh. He only saw Deng Feng quickly lower his hands, and when their eyes met again, his gaze had become calm.

“Alright, let’s not bring this up anymore.”

Deng Feng had always been a straightforward person, but when it came to emotions, things were less predictable. Before coming here, Ji Minglun wasn’t sure what to expect, but seeing Deng Feng not stubbornly hold on to the issue with Jiang Lin finally put him at ease. However, the next moment, Deng Feng asked, “But have you thought about what you’re going to do for the next year?”

As Ji Minglun left the bar, he went up to the rooftop terrace in the back and stood by the railing, gazing at the scenery for a while.

The sky and the coastline stretched out far in the distance. The night had sunk into the deep sea, and on the left, the neon lights of a charming cluster of buildings appeared like bright strokes of paint on a dark canvas, dividing the world into two. Nearby, a girl was live-streaming a video, her voice almost drowning out the sound of the fierce wind at that height. After standing there for a while, Ji Minglun left. Before he left, he glanced at the bar again. Deng Feng was still sitting in his spot, talking on the phone with someone.

Back in his car, Ji Minglun called Jiang Lin.

The phone rang for a while before Jiang Lin picked up. Before he spoke, Ji Minglun heard the sound of running water, and an image formed in his mind of Jiang Lin in a steamy scene.

“Are you showering?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Jiang Lin’s voice was a little hoarse. “Did you finish talking with Deng Feng?”

“Yeah,” Ji Minglun said, pulling a cigarette from his pocket, lowering the car window, and lighting it. “I explained everything, and he understands.”

“Really?” Jiang Lin sounded surprised, clearly not expecting things to go so smoothly. Ji Minglun chuckled as white smoke from his cigarette swirled before him. “What would I gain from lying to you?”

Jiang Lin was momentarily at a loss for words. After a pause, Ji Minglun asked, “I’m heading back now. Are you hungry? Do you want anything to eat?”

“I’m not hungry,” Jiang Lin said. “Just come back soon.”

Ji Minglun, cigarette in hand, pulled the seatbelt over and buckled it before starting the car. “Do you miss me?”

Jiang Lin didn’t reply. The sound of running water continued in the background. Imagining Jiang Lin, dripping wet, standing naked in his bathroom, Ji Minglun’s throat tightened, as if he could smell the familiar scent of sandalwood and cedar on Jiang Lin’s hair, along with the milky white foam sliding down his smooth skin.

Gripping the steering wheel tighter, Ji Minglun lowered his voice. “Jiang Lin, I miss you.”

There was still no response, but he heard a soft, almost imperceptible sound, like a sharp intake of breath.

Jiang Lin, with his eyes downcast and small beads of water clinging to his lashes, felt his heart race as Ji Minglun’s words stirred something deep inside him, filling him with an overwhelming desire.

Hugging his arms tightly, he closed his eyes and whispered, “I miss you too. Hurry back.”