My Exes | Jiang Cheng

Jiang Wanyin

JIANG WANYIN

This took place during the first year after my engagement with Lan Xichen fell through. I was attending therapy and looking for a way to fill in all that free time that I suddenly had. My therapist said that since I like dogs a lot I can start helping out in an animal shelter. I didn’t need much convincing, I agreed right away. The only thing that I had to be careful enough of was not to spend too much time there and give sufficient attention to Fairy.

Aside from attending therapy I decided to sell my apartment. I had had enough of the concrete city, and thought that I needed some greenery in my life. That's why I bought a nice house in the suburbs. It had a nice big garden, which till now, is dearly loved by my sweet furry friend.

Coincidentally, there was a small shelter near my new home that gladly welcomed new volunteers. That’s where I met him.

We were walking the dogs together to the dog park in our neighborhood. Zheng Ai turned out to be an extremely chatty guy, and by the end of our first day of working together I was quite sure that my ears may fall off.  It was so easy to like him, that it made me instantly wary of him.

My heart still hurts because of Lan Huan. I wasn't able to stop my thoughts from dripping off towards him, and it killed me from the inside. I met with him two weeks after I met Zhang Ai. We talked, and he told me that he had also started seeing someone who was supposed to set him on the right track. I was glad to hear that. Being unable to be who you are is one of the worst things in the world. No matter what, I wanted the best for him.

Yet, he still ripped open the scar that he himself helped me heal over the years. In some ways, it was even worse than what Nie Mingjue did to me.

Speaking of the devil, he got married two years ago to that whore of his personal assistant, Meng Yao, or should I call him Jin Guangyao, as he changed his name after his father finally acknowledged his existence. It's still hard to believe that he is now my Jiejie's brother-in-law. Jin Guangshan simply seized the opportunity to have influential in-laws. He couldn't care less about his bastard son, but he needed an heir to the company after Jin Zixuan left it in order to open a hotel by the sea as Yanli always wanted to.

I am immensely happy that, although arranged, her marriage flourished with the passage of time. My brother-in-law was head over heels for her. They lived happily with my nephew, Jin Ling, who was already a teenager, and came back to visit on holidays and other important occasions.

As we were getting to know each other during those walks, I got to know that he was living only two houses down the road from me. He was five years older than me, had been a widower for four, and had a teenage son the age of my nephew. His name was Zheng Jingyi.

I liked Zheng Ai as a person, but I tried really hard not to think of him as someone more for me. It was way too soon for that, even though my psychologist said that there was nothing wrong with it. She told me that there was no such thing as "too soon" and that I shouldn't be afraid of taking a step forward if I felt like I wanted to do it. I shouldn't allow the past to hold me hostage, by being chained to the wall of bad experiences, because I could miss a one in a lifetime chance for a happy ending for myself. But then, I still said ‘no’ when he asked me on a date. I know, I am an idiot, but I needed some time.

While I was taking care of gluing all the pieces of my life together, Zheng Ai was also persistent. He didn't get discouraged by my refusal and kept asking me out each month for five more months. I said "yes" when he asked the sixth time.

It was exactly six months after I walked out of Lan Xichen's apartment. I asked A-Huan to meet me there during the lunch break, and he agreed. We talked a little bit, and I gave him back the engagement ring that he proposed to me with. It belonged to his family, and returning it to him made me feel somehow lighter. And I could see in his eyes that it also lifted some weight off of him. That day, I fully forgave him.

I stopped being scared to some degree, and decided to take what Zheng Ai had to offer. There were many things that happened during that half year. I've met his family, but most importantly, his son. A-Yi was a wonder, the nicest teenager I have ever met. I even helped him when he was studying for his exams. It's quite ironic that even though I constantly denied going on a date with him, Zheng Ai often invited me to their family nights, and I always agreed when the two of them gave me those freaking puppy eyes. During those nights, we basically ate a bunch of unhealthy food and watched some movies.

I won't deny that there were some moments of sexual tension between us, but I always fought the urge to go for it. That is, till the day of our first date, when I initiated our first ever kiss. We were sitting on a bench in the park, the same one that we spent hours talking on, while the dogs were playing and running around, in the place where I realized that opening up to someone was never so easy for me, even with Lan Xichen.

I will never be able to say that my life was perfect, that everything went smoothly and I was utterly happy, but it doesn't matter. I decided to live in the moment, even if the future won’t always be as nice as the present is for me.

I am thirty five right now and two years ago I walked down the aisle towards the man of my dreams, Zheng Ai. His name means ‘loving’, and loving he is. Nie Mingjue inflicted a deep wound on me. Lan Xichen only put a superficial bandage on that wound and then tore it off, reopening it. But Zhang Ai put stitches on it and made sure that there was no infection and that the wound healed properly. He is a true dream come true.

I started reading this story called “Love” seventeen years ago, and although I didn’t like all the chapters in it, I tore some pages in frustration and anger, and then destroyed some with my waterfalls of tears, I can still easily and confidently say that I am looking forward to read more of it.