The Steps to Love You

Chapter 4. Alone.

***

After getting home at almost 2 a.m. Long Wei was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. This was just a part of his routine... until some weeks ago, when he met her. However, now he supposed it was time to get used to it again.

When he was still incapable of sleeping thirty minutes later, he understood more the reasons Bai Lu gave him that afternoon when she... broke up with him? He wasn't sure it could be called that, seeing that they didn't really have a relationship, but certainly they got to a point in which he was used to having her around every day.

Actually, he wasn't really surprised by her decision, her attitude all that time suggested it would happen someday, but he was a bit disappointed.

" I'm sorry. I really like you, but I'm not ready for a relationship right now. I also can't continue this thing of just sleeping together."

It was just the way things were.

The following days and weeks, she stopped frequenting Loko's, in the future it would be hard for their paths to cross again. He knew very well about that.

Once, to put some distance between him and Thalia, he abandoned the architecture firm where he'd just been promoted to designer, his sister had called him stupid more than once for that move. However, seeing he had some success with his pub now, he didn't consider himself a failure. Who knew, maybe in the future he went back to school for a master's degree, but Long Wei no longer felt the pressure of being on the top of his career field to feel satisfied. The same could be said about the way he saw relationships. Whatever happened, he'd just take it and be fine with it.

At the end of March, however, he received a call from his sister, Mei Li, and he couldn't just be fine with the news she had to tell him.

***

As expected, Bai Lu had gone just with her parents to Meng Meng's wedding, and her cousin couldn't help but make some comments about it. Couldn't she just be happy that she was marrying that 'very successful' boyfriend of hers? It wasn't that Meng Meng's new husband was bad, not, by her parents' standards he was probably perfect. Bai Lu, however, couldn't imagine why a woman who was doing so well in her career as her cousin would just quit her job because her in-laws wanted her to be a housewife.

Having to do something just because the husband's family wanted it so, she could never imagine herself doing that. Perhaps that was one of the reasons that attracted her to Peter in the first place. She was fooling herself to think that if they were not around, they wouldn't influence his decisions so much, but he still went home and never came back to her...

" Bai Lu, it's been a while since we saw you around town." Yi Zhen had sat at the same table as them, and Bai Lu didn't think it was a coincidence. Probably her parents had arranged that.

" I am busy with work, senior." She smiled " How are you doing?"

" I'm fine. Things in the restaurant are going well as usual. You should stop by before you leave."

" I'm afraid I just came for Sister Meng Meng today, but I have to be back at school on Monday."

To Yi Zhen's credit, he seemed somewhat disappointed.

" That's a pity. We would really like to have you here more often."

" Thank you, Senior. You are always so nice."

Once they were really close and Bai Lu didn't limit herself to saying only courtesies to him, but things were too different. She was too different.

She thought off Long Wei again. It had been two weeks since she saw him, and part of her missed him, but that was exactly why they had to cut off their affair. Bai Lu had needed great courage just to say the things she told him the last time they saw each other, but even more courage to stop herself from going back to Loko's and sneak a peek at him.