No Waiting(2)

7

I began to deliberately reduce the frequency of replying to Stanley's messages. When he asked me for help, I stopped being available and made excuses for myself. I told him I was busy with homework and activities.

Stanley might have noticed it, or perhaps he was impatient. In short, he gradually stopped contacting me.

Yet, I seemed to have serious withdrawals.

I could not eat, and sometimes I could not sleep.

As soon as my phone chimed, I would take it over reflexively to see if it was him.

I was torn between expectation and disappointment, and I was in a state of constant suffering.

Finally, one day when I rushed out of the door of the dormitory building for class, I bumped into a person. When I fell to the ground, my head was extremely dizzy. I heard a ringing in my ears.

The girl I bumped into took my arm and asked with concern, "Are you okay?"

I looked up at her.

It was Charmaine.

8

Charmaine skipped a grade and was now our senior.

I asked her if she remembered Stanley's secret crush on her. Charmaine smiled and said, "I forgot it."

Then, she suddenly asked me, "How about you? Do you still like him?"

I was surprised and asked Charmaine with a wry smile, "Is it that obvious?"

Charmaine nodded and replied, "I reckon the ones who don't know are just playing dumb."

I looked at the coffee in front of me in a daze and said after a long time, "I have decided to leave him."

"Good." She downed the coffee in one gulp and said, "You should start a new life as soon as possible. By the way, Jessalyn, are you interested in modeling?"

I looked at Charmaine in surprise and thought that she was joking with me.

Modeling? I could not be a model just because I was tall, could I?

Stanley said I had a face that looked like others owed me money. Indeed, I always seemed to look annoyed for no good reason.

Since I was a child, my relatives and elders around me said I looked like a catfish. Although my eyes were not small, the whites of my eyes were bigger than my pupils. Anyone would feel that I looked unpleasant at first glance.

During the holiday season, when the other children laughed, the elders would grab a huge handful of candy for them. I stood aside silently, and the elders gave me two or three pieces of candy in a hurry when the bowl was about to be emptied.

One of my classmates once said to me bluntly, "I look at you and think you have depression. Can't you smile more?"

I pulled on a smiling face, and she covered her face exaggeratedly. "Goodness, no! I'm afraid that even a latte can't soothe my nerves."

Over time, I only had one expression on my face left. I mostly looked impassive.

Like those who used to bully me when I was a child and those relatives who disliked my "catfish face", I did not give any reaction to what they said or did because I remained impassive.

That way, they could ignore me.

However, I could not forget some things that I had heard.

As such, although I studied art for so many years, I seldom dressed up.

I was afraid to look at my face.

9

Charmaine pulled me to her studio without saying a word.

She and her friend jointly opened an online store for women's wear selling only original designs. Now she was a leading new merchant with hundreds of thousands of fans on an app.

Her makeup artist friend was busy working on my face, and Charmaine gave me a new dress she had worked on for this season.

When I came out of the dressing room, I saw the two girls in front of me putting their arms around each other.

Charmaine said to her friend with a raised chin, "What do you think of this person I found?"

Her friend stuffed a lollipop into her mouth and applauded with both hands.

Then I turned around and looked at myself in the mirror.

Charmaine's clothes were not sweet and cute, but all black and Gothic. She had paid careful attention to accentuating the collarbone and waist.

The girl in the mirror was cold and pale. I glanced at myself with my long and narrow eyes. My eyes were full of ice, but I had a charming seductiveness.

I had never seen myself look like that before.

Charmaine defined her original style as "Gothic, Sexy, and World-Weary".

I could not help but roll my eyes.

However, my expression was caught by Charmaine, and she forced me to roll my eyes at her again.

She exaggeratedly called her friend to look at me. "What do you think? Isn't this quite dramatic?"

Her friend had even more exaggerated reactions as she yelled at me. "Jess, hold on. Just roll your eyes like this when the photographer comes."

While they were making a fuss, someone knocked on the door of the studio.

The makeup artist, Leticia, said, "Ah, they're here."

She opened the door and a boy came in.

He had a pair of innocent puppy eyes with fair and soft skin. He appeared clean and gentle. The smile in his eyes made people think of a warm spring breeze in April.

He greeted Charmaine and Leticia obediently, looked around, and finally set his eyes on me. He stretched out his hand to me and said, "Hello, my name is Zachariah Lattimer."

10

Charmaine introduced him to me. "This is my brother Zachariah, today's photographer. You're welcome to say whatever you want. If he makes you tired, you can tell me."

Leticia covered her mouth and laughed. Charmaine did not find any ambiguity in her words.

However, Zachariah blushed, looked at me, and quickly diverted his eyes. He smiled embarrassedly and stopped Charmaine.

I found that he had a visible canine when he smiled.

Zachariah did not look as old as me, but he took photos that could rival those from the photography major in my school, and his style was not like other photographers. Generally, photographers encouraged models and got them to smile a little bit, or directed them to turn their heads to a specific angle and posture.

I was afraid of such encouragement, as I would be afraid that I could not satisfy his expectations.

Stanley had been obsessed with photography for a while. I asked him to help me take some photos for a competition. He took a few photos and left the camera behind. He said to me, "Can you take photos? Who would take a photo with such a stiff expression?"

Finally, I picked out one of these wasted films and put it on my resume.

As expected, I was eliminated.

However, Zachariah let me do what I wanted.

It was really casual.

He did not care what pose I was in.

He did not ask me to make any expressions.

He made me imagine the most comfortable scene or the expression I wanted to show presently.

Yet, when I was a little terrified and hesitant, he would stretch out his head from the back of the camera and look at me, and his pair of dog-like eyes would crinkle as he showed a gentle smile to me.

At that moment, I thought of the Samoyed which I had raised when I was a child, and I relaxed inexplicably.

11

After taking photos, Charmaine began to drive people away.

Zachariah wailed, "Charmaine, donkeys will be fed some water even before they are killed."

Then he looked at me again, revealing his little canine tooth. His eyes seemed to be shining like they had stars in them. "Ma'am, I took photos for you all afternoon. Would you like to buy me something to drink?"

Charmaine hit him. "Jess is just a few months older than you. How dare you talk to her like she is so old?"

Looking at the sweat on his forehead, I felt guilty for taking advantage of the child for free. I quickly ordered a latte.

Before leaving, Charmaine and Leticia were discussing the photos fiercely. They did not have time to care about us. Zachariah suddenly came beside me and said, "Jess, you ordered my favorite caramel latte. I'm so happy. Thank you, Jess."

I almost choked on the latte. I hurriedly pulled a step away and waved my hand to say that he did not need to be so polite, but my face turned red.

12

I thought that Zachariah was just a temporary photographer, but he was the one who took pictures every time.

I asked him why he came every time. Did he not have to attend class? He smiled like a Samoyed and an angel and looked at me. "I can make money working for Charmaine." It seemed that he was satisfied with being a temporary worker.

I was confused. Charmaine did not give him a penny. What did he earn?

Later, I found that Zachariah not only could not make money but also forked out his own money. Every time he came, he would bring a lot of snacks, and there was always something that I liked to eat.

One day during a break from shooting, we hid on the rooftop to enjoy the cool wind. I swallowed a chicken pie. It was so hot that I could not help but open my mouth and exhale.

Zachariah suddenly reached out his hand to me, wiped off the pie crust on the corner of my mouth with a tissue, and smiled at me after withdrawing his hand. "Jess, you are like a child."

I blushed and pretended to be angry. "I'm older than you, okay?"

Zachariah nodded and peeled off the aluminum foil of the chicken pie for me. He echoed, "Okay, okay, Jess is older than me."

Then he blew on the chicken pie and handed it to me. "Ms. Gaffner, can you stop scalding yourself?"

I quickly took the chicken pie away.

Zachariah really knew how to flirt with ladies.

13

A friend of mine once told me that the best stage of a relationship was ambiguity.

Two people would interact sweetly and would sense their good feelings for each other, but would not take the next step.

I could not understand.

Because I had been around Stanley for my limited twenty years, my initial understanding and imagination of love seemed to be based on Stanley's back view.

Furthermore, the way I got along with him was that I kept being nice to him, hoping that one day he would look back at me.

My feelings could not be called love at all. There was only endurance, only injury, and nervousness.

Now, I finally understood what my friend meant.

It was not until I met Zachariah that I knew that a boy's heart could be so caring.

I thought I had been trained to be caring enough by Stanley, but Zachariah could be keenly aware of the change in my temper before I noticed it. When my menstruation came, he prepared heat packs and hot chocolate before I began to feel uncomfortable, and adjusted the shooting plan immediately.

Last month, I was still enduring the discomfort of menstruation. I queued up for Stanley and Sienna for two hours to buy a popular latte for them.

In fact, it was tolerable. I could survive the shooting that afternoon.

However, people were like that. When they had nothing, they could endure everything. After someone showed a little concern, they became fragile.

I stuck my hand to the heat pack prepared by Zachariah and covered myself with a blanket. Just as I was about to start drinking coffee, my phone rang.

It was a call from Stanley.

I pressed the answer button and did not speak. After a few seconds of silence, Stanley's voice sounded, and he asked me, "Why aren't you speaking?"

I did not answer.

He spoke again, and I could imagine his impatient expression on the other end of the phone. "If it is because of what happened during Freshers' Night, I can..."

I interrupted him, "It's in the past, Stanley. You..."

I hated myself for automatically wanting to explain and even apologize to him when I heard his voice.

I took a deep breath and said, "You'd better not contact me again."

The other end of the phone was silent, and he said, "After class in the afternoon, wait for me at the basketball court."

I thought he would hang up directly, but he added, "I have something to tell you."

Before I could react, he hung up the phone.

Zachariah came over, looked at my expression, reached out worriedly, pressed his hand against my forehead, and asked confusedly, "Do you have a fever?"

He seemed to be worried about it. He took off his hand and wanted to put his forehead against mine. I was a little flustered. I took a step back and avoided his gaze. "I don't have a fever. It's okay."

I was so flustered that I missed Zachariah's expression.