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Unbeknownst to Kiana, Hua kept a small notebook underneath their bed. She often found the time to write in it at least once a week, twice if the occasion called for it, long after Kiana was snoring by her side late into the night.
It was a tradition that she started the first day they started dating. It was a senseless thing for her to have begun doing in the first place, but if there was something that Hua liked to make sure of, it was establishing that she knew how to perceive things correctly.
Though she would never admit it out loud, she had a small sense of pride in herself for being able to read people, most especially Kiana. It was a trait of hers that made Kiana gasp and marvel at her apparent talent.
Most of the things she wrote in her notebook about Kiana were right. She liked to keep track of Kiana’s habits, dislikes, likes, everything that she could learn about the person she loved. More often than not, she would write something down before having it confirmed with Kiana, like the fact he preferred chocolate milk over regular milk, or even that he had the tendency to swallow brussel sprouts whole because he didn’t like to chew on them. Only twice had she ever crossed out something she assumed about him that had been wrong.
The first time was seven months into their relationship. They’d gone out to watch a movie, and Kiana hadn’t done the dishes like he promised he would that morning. She told him, pointed at the dishes, and prepared her tongue for a lecture, but he silently turned off the game on their TV, kissed her on the cheek, and started on the dishes while she got ready for their date.
The second time was only a mere month ago, when it began to rain and Hua was stranded at work. She left her umbrella at their apartment, and Kiana came running to her work with the umbrella in hand and an insistence that he made a promise never to leave her behind, most especially not cold and shivering out in the rain. Perhaps it was an oversight on her part to not realize that Kiana was more attentive than she first thought.
And the third time seemed to blossom at the party they were currently entertaining themselves at.
They were over at a housewarming party, after Bronya and Seele had bought their first house together (upfront, using the money that Bronya made with the royalties of her newest hit). Somehow, word had gotten out that Bronya was hosting a party, and her long list of coworkers and acquaintances showed up looking to gawk and marvel at the extravagance.
And as luck would have it, she was also awfully tired. Kiana had tried to convince her to just stay home with him so he could pamper her, but she insisted that they stay at least for an hour. Hua wasn’t fond of the amassed, sweaty bodies at her every turn, but she was here for her friends.
She could see Kiana playing some sort of drinking game in the corner with a few other girls, and he shot her a big grin and a thumbs up when their gazes connected. He had a tube running into his mouth, full of a pink liquid that she could only assume was a Kiana-patented creation, and she tried not to make her wince too obvious as she smiled back at him and raised her fingers in a wave.
Whispers plagued the corner of her ear. She tried to tune out most of the conversations around her, a practice that was necessary in such a crowded party, but the gaggle of teenaged girls next to her weren’t making it easy for her to do so.
They were pointing and whispering amongst themselves, and she was startled when she realized that they were pointing at her.
One of the girls was pushed forward by her friends, and her yelp of surprise made it clear that she was the unanimous sacrificial lamb. The giggling grew louder, and Hua jerked her head away from the group to inspect the large chandelier on the ceiling.
Her efforts were in vain.
The girl cleared her throat once, and Hua pretended not to hear. She cleared it again, louder and with a small “excuse me” that Hua couldn’t, grievously, ignore.
Hua turned her head, giving the girl a small, polite smile in what she hoped conveyed her patience rather than her discontent. Her group of friends began to giggle and whisper intensely among each other.
“Um…” The poor girl looked as if she wanted to bolt away like a deer at the snap of a twig. “We— we just wanted to tell you that we thought you looked handsome. And pretty— pretty charming.”
Hua blinked. The girl was twirling her hair nervously with a finger and digging her toe into the ground.
This wasn’t the first time it had happened at a party like this, but that was years ago by now. Honestly, she thought St. Freya girls were just conditioned to act the way they did.
Despite her mild confusion, Hua knew she couldn’t be too rude, especially not to some teenager who probably snuck in with her friends. So, she plainly said, “Thank you.”
The reaction was instantaneous. The girls squealed in delight, and she was certain that the person she was talking to looked about two seconds away from losing all the color in her face. They moved as a group, like a herd of gazelles, hurriedly making their way into an adjacent room. Hua watched them leave with a curious tilt of her head.
Out of the corner of her eye, Kiana watched her as he took a sip of his drink.
The look in his eyes was indiscernible.
Hua winced. She wondered if he was trying to decide if he should come over and make a scene, or just wanted to settle for glowering at the girls for the rest of the night.
She watched, almost in slow motion, as he gave his drink to Mei and made his way over to her. Hua opened her mouth, inhaling deeply to prepare to sigh and tell him that teenagers will be teenagers, but Kiana didn’t give her a chance to say anything.
Instead of a scene or a sharp look, he placed a hand on her forearm and kissed her on the cheek— chastely, and it didn’t linger for too long. His hand didn’t squeeze her.
He came forth to greet her, rather than to let the girls see and make a point of it. It surprised her, because she at least expected him to boast about his “very hot, very not available for anyone else and definitely not interested in teenagers girlfriend” in the way that he always did.
“Do you want something to drink?” he asked her casually. “Or any appetizers? We haven’t had dinner yet, and I know you get hungry at exactly 8PM.”
Right on cue, Hua’s stomach rumbled. The big clock in the living room just struck 8PM about four minutes ago.
Kiana laughed, his eyebrows raised as if to say, “See?”
“I’ll eat when we get home,” she said, smiling lightly and pressing a thankful kiss to the underside of his jaw for his concern. “And you? Have you eaten yet?”
Kiana snorted at that. “Do you even know me?” he said with mock offense.
She opened her mouth to retort, but another giggle cut through the air. She glanced over her shoulder to find the same group of girls, floating close to them with ogling looks at her. And occasionally, Kiana too.
Hua was surprised at how relaxed he continued to seem, even as he followed her gaze.
But he did, however, dip his chin back down to look at her, smiled genuinely, and said, “I wanna use the chocolate fountain. Come with me?”
Detecting no second layers to his smile or the way he spoke to her, Hua quickly agreed.
They were alone in the corner of the great hall, with most people cluttered around the meat and champagne tower at the other end of the table. Kiana’s hand never left her forearm, and his fingertips stroked her skin soothingly when they stopped in front of the fountain that he was looking for.
“The girls near us,” Kiana said evenly, and Hua braced. “Do you know them?”
“No. I don’t even know their names,” Hua replied, still suspicious.
Kiana laughed.
Laughed, full and with joy, with no bitterness or any grudges attached to it. It confused her further when he shook his head with a smile, turning to the chocolate fountain and skewering some strawberries. His shoulders were relaxed.
“What’s so funny?” Hua asked him, almost accusingly.
“Nothing, it’s just—” Kiana dipped a strawberry into the fountain and took a swift bite of it. One side of his cheek was full as he spoke. “I know you have fangirls, I mean— duh. I almost joined the Fu Hua fanclub in St. Freya. I just haven’t seen that many in one place since we were in school.”
Hua opened her mouth to respond. She couldn’t find what to say.
“If you ask me, I think it’s ‘cause of that suit you’re wearing,” Kiana declared proudly, smiling at her and letting his eyes roam over the business suit that Hua wore straight out of work. It was nothing special, but his eyes twinkled with a playfulness that promised an even more playful night. It made Hua burn at the tips of her ears. “Who wouldn’t giggle and twirl their hair when they see you walking around like that?”
Kiana fanned himself. Hua rolled her eyes at his antics.
“So then you’ll be okay?” Hua asked him.
Kiana regarded her with slight confusion. “Yeah,” he said, then pointed at the chocolate fountain. “I want more of this, though. You should go find Bronya, and maybe I’ll catch up with you later?” he asked hopefully.
Hua breathed out slowly. She couldn’t understand why she felt so… stiff.
“Okay,” she said, smiling when he shot her a big smile.
She spent the next hour looking for Bronya and mingling among the people that she knew. Unsurprisingly, more instances of what had happened lately began to pop up.
More girls make their way to Hua, clearly interested in a little more than chit chat with her. Hua politely declined each one. The men who come up to her are flatly denied even a conversation.
Kiana was at the scene of the crime with most of the commotion, but the big, lazy grin never left his face. His grip on her arm never tightened. He stepped away from her when she turned her head to talk to someone rather than cling to her closer.
She couldn’t understand why that made the slight tear in her chest grow larger. It was an ugly emotion that reared its head, and she did everything possible to stuff it away.
And the people who sought out Kiana weren’t helping. He entertained his own predicaments while she tried to deal with hers, in a less firm way than she was.
People of all kinds come up to him, drawn by his magnetic charm. Girls giggle for him the way that they do for her, but he talked to them longer, even listened to them. Men challenged him to pie and hot dog eating contests, and Kiana never once declined. Even old ladies come and feel his arms, wowed by his frame and his goofy smile.
It made the pit in Hua’s stomach fester. It shouldn’t have been able to do that, especially when Kiana was always so sure to keep her near and to spin her into the conversation at every chance he got.
A long time ago, her father had told her that such feelings were akin to digging yourself a hole, and most of the time the person digging it had no clue that the hole was for their grave.
It didn’t happen often, but Hua would always try to turn the feeling away after she recognized what it was. She never verbalized it or tried to feed it the kindling that it wanted, but it found ways to grow, like a weed in between the cracks.
It was an ugly, ugly emotion.
Her smile tightened whenever someone playfully asked to take him away. Her grip tensed on his hand by a slight fraction, mistakable for a twitch, whenever a person complimented Kiana for his looks. Her tongue needed to be held steady if someone looked at Kiana just a little bit too long.
Hua couldn’t understand why the attention was affecting her so much. It wasn’t as if Kiana was doing anything wrong, and this definitely was not the first time it had happened.
She passed it off as being tired from a long, painful day at work, her day stained further with an awful morning consisting of charred eggs and a late bus. She just had a bad day, and the feeling would pass. She was just feeling like this because she wanted to lie in bed with Kiana and just Kiana.
It was what she told herself for the rest of the night, even as Bronya and Seele bid them goodbye at the door when it was time to go home, even as Kiana kissed her cheek and held up an entire bag of leftovers that Bronya begrudgingly gave to him, even as Kiana opened the door to their car and let her in first.
Hua was silent for the entire car ride. The soft hum of the radio and the rumble of the engine was all that troubled the air.
She was silent still when they squeezed into their apartment with tipsy and tired feet. Kiana’s questions about heating leftovers and if she’d like to watch a movie were met with concise answers.
When she brushed her teeth, she could hardly look at herself.
Having ugly emotions meant being ugly on the outside, too. She shouldn’t have let it consume her like that, not with someone as good as Kiana.
But like how fire consumed everything that it touched, she couldn’t take back what she felt and what she thought.
“Did I do something wrong?”
Hua snapped out of her thoughts. She looked at him, slightly startled by the question. “Hmm?”
“Did I do something wrong?” Kiana repeated, slower this time. He was frowning at her, and the clear disquiet on his face just made her feel worse.
“No, of course not,” Hua said, a touch quieter than she usually spoke to him. It was all Kiana needed to hear for his brow to furrow.
Kiana closed the fridge and turned his whole body to face her. Hua was sitting on the counter, fidgeting with the remote in her hand. They were supposed to watch a movie before bed, and Hua was patiently waiting for Kiana to pick something to eat. She had hoped that focusing on the movie would disguise the tightness in her face, but she should have known better than to underestimate how easy it was for Kiana to read into her.
“Is it because I left the toothpaste cap on this morning?” Kiana asked her.
Despite herself, Hua’s lips curled into a rueful smile. “No.”
“Is it because I made you burn your eggs?”
“No.”
“Is it because I kept you up all night binging that one trashy reality TV show?”
“No, but I’m still upset they kicked out that one girl.”
“Is it… because you didn’t eat yet? So you’re hangry?” he guessed again, sounding more hopeful this time that he got it right.
Hua pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “I’m not hungry.”
For some reason, that made Kiana frown. “You didn’t eat all day, Hua,” he reminded her, soft and gentle. And concerned.
“I’ll have some plain toast and eggs tomorrow morning,” she promised.
“Yeah, but that’s tomorrow.”
“I did just tell you I’m not hungry now,” Hua rebutted with a touch of annoyance. She hadn’t meant to.
Kiana’s eyebrows jumped up in surprise. “Hua,” he said, and the way he said her name, so gently and lovingly even in the face of her unwarranted irritation, made her want to cry right then and there. “Seriously. What’s wrong? What did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything,” she insisted.
Kiana watched her carefully.
She expected him to drop it. She knew him, and she knew that he couldn’t have possibly known what was going through her head.
But instead of kissing her as an apology and announcing that they should start the movie, he asked, “Is it because of the party with all those people coming up to you? Are you upset I didn’t come rushing at your side to defend you like the knight I should’ve been?”
He said it teasingly, but he looked at her with enough concern to quietly ask her if it had anything to do related to it.
So he did know her.
Hua couldn’t understand why that upset her so much. Or why she snapped and said, “You don’t really find it so hard to do that with anyone else.”
She wanted to take it back as soon as it left her mouth, but the tightness in the middle of her chest prevented her from trying to apologize. She almost can’t breathe.
Kiana searched her face. His face contorted with concern when he realized that there was something truly wrong, just from the way her hand gripped the remote and from the way she couldn’t look him directly in the eye.
And again, Hua got him wrong.
Instead of asking her to clarify, he quietly asked, “Could I come over there and hold you?”
Hua nodded silently. She couldn’t trust her voice, not when she knew it would betray her with the tears that were already beginning to form out of the corner of her eyes.
Kiana strode quickly over, then pulled her to his chest. It didn’t take long for Hua’s tears to come, silent and in long lines down her cheeks. Hua put the remote down on the counter and wrapped her arms around his body, squeezing tight. She buried her face into his chest. It made it harder for her to breathe, but the coil around her chest was impossible to remove at that point.
Kiana squeezed her in response, rubbing her back in smooth circles to remind her to breathe evenly. His presence grounded her to where she sat, and her breathing began to come easier with every shuddering inhale and smoother exhale.
The murkiness of her mind was still present, cloudy and dark, but Kiana was like a lighthouse in the storm. Unmoving and refusing to leave.
She didn’t know how long Kiana held her before she spoke.
“I keep a notebook under our bed,” she professed. “I write down everything I know about you— even the ones I only assume. I’ve crossed out two different entries. Before bed, I have to cross out the part where I thought you’d be more… possessive.”
Kiana pulled her away from his chest to look at her with a half laugh. “Well, I think getting upset about being wrong is a little overkill, don’t you think?” he said jokingly.
Hua frowned. “You’re jealous of everyone else you love,” she said. He sobered up immediately as she said so.
Mei was a shining example of that. He was always down to get catty whenever someone tried to force their way into his best friend’s life. And then there was him complaining for weeks that Bronya had found a new gaming partner because he was apparently too terrible at the game for her to compete in the same rank as him. There was even that time he was jealous that the mailman handed their neighbor their mail first!
Kiana looked at her with a strange look. He pulled his eyebrows together, and then it relaxed just as easily as he scrunched up his face. He looked as if he was realizing something.
“I used to get jealous a lot. With you,” Kiana said slowly. She didn’t know if it was something he wanted to comfort her with, or if it was a revelation that he found.
“I know,” Hua replied quietly. She could remember the times he glared at the girls for staring at her too long when they were in St. Freya. That, or at the start of their relationship, when he would put her hand squarely in between her shoulders in public. He still did, but the warmth of his hand never felt quite as fiery anymore. “And that’s what makes it interesting, doesn’t it?”
The cadence of the way she said “interesting” wasn’t lost on Kiana. They both knew what word she replaced it for. And it hurt, plain and simple.
Because it meant that somewhere, somehow, in between the times of their relationship, Kiana had lost the ability to be jealous. Somehow, there was no need for him to do so anymore.
The implication was terrifying. There could have been a thousand reasons for it, but the most plausible one froze her in place.
“No, no, not that, not that,” Kiana said quickly, and he grabbed her wrist and tightened his hold just enough for her to feel the slight pinch of his fingernails into her skin. His eyes were wild, desperate for her to see something that he was stumbling around to say to her.
“I stopped because I didn’t feel the need to,” Kiana explained. “I trust you. I know you aren’t going anywhere. And I love you more than anything in the world. If you drew attention, who could I blame for looking at you? I mean like, wow, first of all, you’re so beautiful and if anything, I’m glad people look at you with the recognition you deserve.”
He wiped at the corner of her cheek with the pad of his thumb to dry the rest of her tears. His other hand squeezed her wrist again, gentler this time, but with the same fiery passion that she felt with him every day they spent together.
“You’re my girl,” Kiana said. “You’re my everything. Of course I get jealous when other people have your attention, but you come back to me, right? Just like I told you I’d be all yours.”
His confession made Hua’s stomach flip. It was a clumsy attempt at making her feel better at best, but that meant that it was all Kiana. He was sweet, and loving, and a beacon of light that made her wonder why he ever thought that he should be the one to pull her out and look at her the way that he does.
Jealousy was an ugly emotion, but Kiana was never one to deny it. He knew it was part of him as much as it was part of her. In that odd way, it made them fit.
She quietly groaned and thumped her forehead on his chest.
His chest rumbled with laughter. He tightly wrapped his arms back around her and swayed them back and forth with a hum.
“I’m sorry,” Hua said into his baggy shirt. “I get… I just need the reassurance, on some days.”
“I know,” Kiana replied with a light laugh, his hand roaming onto her thigh to rub soothing circles, “I do too. I didn’t just magically stop getting jealous with you, y’know. Mei had to pry me off when you bumped into that one coworker last week. I just hide it better now.” He puffed out his chest at that.
Hua couldn’t help it. She let out a laugh when she remembered how askew his smile looked when she came back to his side. “She’s married, Kiana.”
Kiana wrinkled his nose. “Someone asked me how many hot dogs I could fit in my mouth and your first reaction was to try and rip the sleeve off my arm,” he said matter-of-factly.
Throwing up her arms, Hua exasperatedly grumbled, “It was a weird thing to ask!”
Kiana merely laughed. He bent down and peppered her face with a few kisses, mostly to calm her down from remembering what had transpired only a few hours ago. He even lifted her glasses to kiss her right underneath the eye to relax the tight, twitching muscle underneath.
Hua relaxed into his arms and kisses eventually, even if she still felt a little huffy.
“I think it’s hot when you get jealous though,” he said thoughtfully.
“Kiana.”
“What? I’m serious,” Kiana argued. “You always look like you want to murder someone. It’s hot.”
“And if the person I end up murdering is you?”
“Well, even hotter!”
Hua hit him on the forearm. He let out a yelp.
If Hua managed to get a little jealous of the way Kiana looked at the actress in the movie, Kiana didn’t seem to mind trying to make up for it. He only kissed her on the top of the head, laughing and cooing and making her slap him lightly on the stomach once more.