when i talk to you (cupid walks right through)

The low hum of the television greeted Lingling as she stepped into her house and hung her keys behind the door. A soft smile traced her features as she traced the Shinchan sticker Nim had insisted on adding to the otherwise plain fixture.

Behind her, the rustling of papers caught her attention. “You’re back,” Apichai glanced up from the table where he was sorting out his documents — his passport, a folder that was practically bursting at the seams.

Lingling let the door close behind her, the soft click resonating a pitch higher than it should have in her mind — the innoccous sound only got louder every time she shut the door, like she was sealing herself in. And with each day, she imagined, the edges of the door hardened, locking her more firmly in place to the life she had built around her.

“You packed everything?” Lingling circled around to where Apichai was still hunched over scraps of paper, absentmindedly straightening his collar and propping his suitcase up on the chair.

He hummed in agreement before leaning up and brushing his lips against her cheek in a reflex they’d perfected over the years. Lingling shut her eyes a second, trying to let the moment of affection settle in her chest but the sensation was as fleeting as it had always been. A rough frustration lingered at the edges of her mind; her body’s inability to let affection be etched into it a constant reminder of how everything felt superficial; hollow even when it wasn’t.

Lingling exhaled before brushing her fingers through his hair — the gesture born more out of habitual domesticity than endearment.

This is what love looked like to Lingling — comfort, habits, and a lingering sense of stagnancy. This is what love is, isn’t it?

Api’s voice cut through her thoughts, “I’ve kept dinner for you in the fridge.” The first feeling Lingling registered was gratitude — this is the Apichai she had known for years, thoughtfulness birthed from years of sharing. A soft blush crept up her neck, warm and relaxing, before she made her way to the refrigerator to set the food out.

Are you interested in me? The soft voice echoed through her mind without warning and before she could rein it in, she felt a faint buzz, like electric current pass through the space between her fingers. She stumbled back from the fridge, almost dropping the container in her hand like it had burned her.

She glanced over her shoulder, checking if Apichai had noticed, her heart hammering in her chest like she’d been caught. Api, ever oblivious, had now shifted to the floor-length mirror at the far corner and was fussing over a barely-visible crease on his pants. Lingling exhaled slowly, letting the familiarity of the routine calm her nerves. But she couldn’t shake it off — the faint buzz in her hands.

For a second, she just watched Apichai move through the house accompanied with the click of the suitcase, the hum from the television and the refrigerator just a couple hertz apart. She wrapped her fingers tighter around the container in her hand, letting the freeze travel up her arm turning her fingers numb.

She barely noticed Apichai step up behind her as she finally placed the food on the kitchen counter, his eyes soft and seeking something Lingling wasn’t sure she had ever held in hers. “Two days and I’ll be back home to my beautiful wife,” his smile reached his eyes a split second after it spread across his lips. Comfortable, safe.

Ling saw Api reach for her hand and for some inexplicable reason, she shifted away impercetibly so, keeping the hand she had numbed to forget the sensation of Orm’s fingers in hers away from him. She felt his fingers intertwine into her other hand. She didn’t move to cover his fingers with hers. He didn’t notice.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and the restlessness it came with almost knocked her off her feet — her hands twitched in place, an impatience to check the message clawing through her. And right under the surface was the same unsettling feeling from the cafe — the feeling that she was doing something wrong, something amoral. She wanted to ignore the obvious signs, convincing herself that she simply didn’t like leaving her texts unanswered but there it was again, the same voice — heftier now, the echo waning off. Are you interested in me?

The next time Lingling’s eyes sought Apichai, he had moved to the door, his lips moving like he was saying something. His voice came to her like it had been filtered through a porous barrier, “….didn’t have the time.”

“Sorry?” Lingling moved to close the distance between them, pausing to grab a bottle of water to hand over.

“Nim wanted me to read her to sleep. I really didn’t have the time,” he repeated.

Lingling knew he was right, he was probably busy preparing for his work, but it still stung. Not because he had made a mistake but because of the way he said it - like he was updating her on a work trip, not about a moment he was upset to miss with his daughter. But he was busy, Lingling understood. Nim understood.

So Ling smiled, the edges of her lips forcing themselves through her skin, “I’ll check on her.”

But Api was already half out the door, a faint smile lingering on his face, “I’ll miss you.”

“Miss you too,” Lingling said, too quick for it to be an actual thought. A habit.

And just like that, the door clicked shut again, the sound lighter than Lingling remembered.

She pretended not to notice the way her hand immediately reached for her phone. Pretended not to notice the way her heart fluttered when she opened the text: I realised I never gave you my number. You must be wondering why I haven’t texted you yet; besides yourself with worry I’m sure. So, hello — Orm.

Ling stared at the message, her fingers hovering over the keypad even as a soft chuckle echoed in the room. She could almost hear the message, almost see Orm typing it out with a self-assured smirk. But Lingling knew, if she could look into her eyes, she would see it — the doubt, the way the edges of her eyes crinkled when she worried if she had taken something too far.

Ling let the smile linger on her lips for a few more seconds before shaking her head, mentally chiding herself for getting carried away. She kept the phone down on the counter and rubbed her fingers up the bridge of her nose down to the bottom of her eyes.

And then she heard it, the muffled padding of feet and the faint sound of someone sinking into the couch. Lingling watched her daughter settle in before turning to her, short arms outstretched wordlessly in front of her. The sight tugged at Lingling’s heart — a feeling that exploded and filled her chest with stardust.

Nim had always been the light of her life — from the day they’d brought her home to the first hesitant ‘mom’ she had murmured one night, Nim had become Lingling’s locus, that singular point where all her affections, all her worries and their solutions had bunched together. And so she moved, towards the outstretched arms, her locus.

Ling settled into the couch and Nim wrapped her arms around her waist, her fingers barely touching behind Ling’s back. She rested her head against Ling’s chest as Ling ran her fingers through her hair. She shouldn’t be up this late on a school night but Ling couldn’t bring herself to be responsible right now.

For a little while, she just wanted to be a mother — not a responsible mother, not a strict mother, not the careful parent. Just a mother with her daughter in her arms after a long day.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Nim muttered against her and Ling’s chest tightened at the way her daughter’s voice stalled at the brink of breaking. She knew, instinctively, what this was about. Apichai and the bedtime story he hadn’t read.

“You want to sit up with me while I finish dinner? We can read Cerulean Sea together till we fall asleep?”

Nim’s eyes lit up at the suggestion as she shot up in her seat, the hesitant, nervous energy from before replaced with the side of her Lingling loved the most — inquisitive, excited to claim the space in Ling’s life and time that she was so willing to offer.

“You started reading it?” Nim called out as Lingling moved to the kitchen again to heat up her dinner.

“Yes,” Lingling said, glancing over the shoulder to smile at Nim. A beat passed, a split-second decision Ling took as her eyes brushed over her phone still on the counter and she added, “I met someone today who quoted it from memory.”

And if Lingling’s heart raced at the memory, it was just from the thought of sharing something that would make her daughter happy. Nothing else.

“It’s good to know you’re surrounding yourself with people with taste,” Nim teased while flipping through the channels, finally settling on their hundredth rerun of Encanto.

Ling cracked the lid open while periodically glancing at Nim on the couch, repeating the dialogues with a goofy grin. Ling smiled to herself, the warmth in her chest doubling up in spools spilling over one another, till she glanced back at the food in her hands.

The scent hint her first — unmistakable and oppressive — the venison and the faint hint of rosemary. Lingling exhaled, trying to keep her irritation at bay. She tried to remember that the food was a gesture of kindness; tried to remember that Api had been busy and had still remembered to keep food aside for her.

But her mind latched on to what he had forgotten — she didn’t like venison; she absolutely hated rosemary. Her throat felt tight, her fingers tense on the edges of the container. The smell of rosemary was still in the air and getting stronger by the second, churning her stomach into a mix between nausea and resignation.

Something shifted in the air as Lingling plated the food and placed it in the microwave harder than she intended, the dish clattering on the glass. The sound only grated on Lingling’s nerves. The heat made it worse — the air expanded to accommodate the smell of food and Lingling felt herself shrinking. As she dipped the ladle into the food, the curry clung to its sides, sliding off the cool metal surface in a way that made Ling’s skin crawl.

A part of her knew this wasn’t about the food — it was food, after all. Even in its most inedible, Lingling had been taught to respect food, for the privilege that it was. But the rest of her didn’t feel ready to address where the discomfort was coming from.

For some reason, beyond her control and might, Lingling found her thoughts going back to Orm — before she could change her mind, she picked up her phone and flicked it on. The message from Orm stared back at her.

Ling glanced up at Nim again, catching her wiping her tears with the edge of her shirt. Just the mere sight of her daughter in their house — their shared sanctuary — eased some of the tension coiled in her gut, making it easier for her to breathe lighter.

I’ve barely thought about you since I’ve been home. Ling sent the message before she could rethink it, hoping against hope that the medium wouldn’t twist her lighthearted tone into something unpleasant. But she knew Orm would get it — the woman she’d only met a few hours ago would get it.

The reply was instant and Ling’s breath caught on a giggle. Ling let the ping from the microwave fade into the background, the scent of rosemary not nearly as suffocating as it had been as she re-read Orm’s message, So you have been thinking about me.

Lingling should’ve shut it down. She should’ve called Orm out on a bluff, drawn that invisible boundary between them. Orm had made no secret of her intentions and Lingling had no intention of following her down that path.

Only barely, Ling typed back.

The reply was instant. Well, there hasn’t been a single second where I haven’t thought of you. Lingling found herself struggling to form words around the way her mind seemed to still at the message; at the raw confession.

“Mom, you’re going to miss our favourite song!” Nim’s voice found Lingling again in the haze she’d unwillingly and unwittingly entered.

Orm’s message hung in her consciousness, settling in a lump in her throat. It felt wrong; just the thought of replying to the message but every part of her body itched to reach out and respond. Should Ling tell her she’s been thinking about her? Ask her what it means?

Her eyes flickered to the door — the door her husband had walked out of just short of an hour ago — and then to the warm plate of food now in her hands — the food she would barely keep down. Apichai’s kindness felt like a reflex, a performance for a marriage but Orm…Orm was new.

Orm was brave, reckless, and relentless, simultanously soothing the ache in her chest and twisting it into something murkier. Lingling moved through the house on autopilot, seeking the comfort of her daughter’s company even as her mind kicked up a storm.

Nim settled against her arm the second she sat down, humming the words to ‘Dos Oruguitas’ with her eyes locked into Lingling — seeking, expectant. Ling finally relented, letting her fingers trail through Nim’s hair before joining her, humming the song with her even as Nim tried to keep up in broken Spanish.

Lingling felt Nim relax against her, her body slumped against her with one arm wrapped around her waist. Twisting her body just so, Ling placed her plate of food, still untouched, on the side table before wrapping her arms around Nim and lifting her off the couch. Ling’s eyes found her phone for a split second, the heavy weight of the unanswered message hanging in the air, before she flicked the lights off and walked towards Nim’s room.

Nim mumbled something about a school project against Ling’s shoulder as she tucked her daughter into bed, pressing a tender kiss to her forehead before brushing her hair off her face. Ling let her palm rest against Nim’s cheek, watching with a smile as her daughter slowly blinked her eyes open to smile at Ling before surrendering to sleep again.

It made everything worth it, that one look. That one look from Nim that said, ‘I feel safe here’. Safety, that’s all Lingling had ever wanted for Nim. But a part of her couldn’t help but think of the way Nim’s voice had cracked earlier; there was a part of her that hoped for more for her daughter. A family where she didn’t have to look for slivers of time to share — a family where she could barge into a room and take up all the space with that bright smile and lively voice.

Lingling tried to be that family for her, every single day. Today, like many days that had passed between the day they’d brought her home and the present, Ling wondered if that was enough. Nim nuzzled into her hand and Ling couldn’t bring herself to move. She slipped down to the floor, her back against Nim’s bed and let her eyes wander around her room.

At first Nim’s room had been like the rest of the house — all sleek lines and grey and glass — but one day Lingling came home to a painting on the wall. At her teacher’s suggestion, Ling bought Nim a rudimentary art kit when she turned seven — an easel, a few stray sheets, and some crayons. But Lingling had an ulterior motive — an artist herself, she found a kinship with Nim in her love for art.

They spent countless evenings on the floor, sketching and drawing, paint smeared across their arms, charcoal smudged across one cheek. Lingling loved everything Nim created but the latter was never satisfied — until that one day. The day she put up a painting on the wall — two figures, a woman and a kid, hunched over with their fingers dipped in paint.

Ling gushed about it for hours — the shadow work, the way she captured light and skin — till Nim threw a pillow at her, her face buried into her own arm. Ling wondered if she’d pushed too far but then a week later, a second painting joined the first and then another. A few months in and the walls became a testament to the life Nim was building — unfinished sketches with young kids who seemed like her friends, an oil painting of the view outside the window.

And paintings of Lingling — cooking, painting with Nim, hunched over an easel, a side-view of her watching a film. Always captured in vivid detail. Then the mess followed, art books sprawled across the desk, pencils under pillows, and way too many smudges of paint on the otherwise plain white wall — it should’ve bothered Ling. But she found herself spending more and more time there — the one part of their house that felt lived in.

When Nim finally stirred again before turning away from Ling, she pushed herself off the door and carefully exited the room, leaving just a crack open in the door in case Nim called out to her at night, and walked back into the hall.

Lingling stood frozen in the hall watching the neon lights from the television mark shadows on her skin. She took a steady breath in, wiping her hands down the front of her dress, suddenly realising she had forgotten to change out of her outside clothes. The second she stepped into the house she had somehow floated from one task to another but the day’s grime scratched against her skin — a phantom itch, almost like her mind was giving her something to fixate on other that the cold, stillness of her house.

She slumped on to the couch, one hand reaching for the food, now lukewarm bordering on cold, and the other instinctively clicking her phone on.

Do you like venison? A weird query for a stranger but enough to keep the conversation going without addressing Orm’s last message, without having to deal with the way it reduced Ling’s entire vocabulary down to a sigh and a smile.

Ling looked at the time — a quarted past midnight — Orm was probably asleep but her phone buzzed again before she could complete the thought.

She’s great. Nice ribs.

A snort and a laugh and Ling’s entire body froze — she rarely heard herself laugh like that. She was almost thankful nobody was around to hear it. She tried to formulate a response but Orm was a step ahead. A second message chimed in — Do you like venison?

A simple question; identical to the one she’d asked but Lingling doubted if it caused the same visceral reaction in Orm. The plate in her hands suddenly felt too cold, too odd. She sighed and took her first bite of the food, holding her breath to keep the aromatics away. The meat felt wrong against her tongue, the reheating and cooling on the table making it tougher in a way she didn’t enjoy.

I don’t like the texture. Lingling typed and her mind drifted back to the way Orm listened to her when she talked — curious, attentive — and she added, I’m just more of a seafood person I guess.

Sometime in the night Ling’s fingers stopped hesitating as her phone continued to buzz and she continued to reply, her free hand scooping mouthfuls of food that she could barely taste, her attention zeroed in on the seconds that passed between Orm’s replies.

A few minutes in and Lingling was curled up into the couch, the neon from the television and the night vision muted yellow light from her screen lighting up the corners of her smile. The plate of food, littered with scraps, lay abandoned on the floor next to her.

Another message, no low buzz from her phone, now that she had the chat open, her eyes tired but glued to the screen.

If I don’t sleep now I’ll never make it to work on time. Though I am seriously considering quitting considering what it’s costing me.

Lingling bit her lip to hold back from smiling wider, if it was even possible. She typed out a response, It’s not that late, hoping to hold on this moment, suspended in time, just a second longer. But she felt the way her eyes burned in protest, a yawn following right behind, making tears spring to her eyes.

Reluctantly, she dragged herself off the couch to deposit her plate in the sink, taking just a second to wonder when she’d managed to finish it all. A bitter taste still lingered in her mouth as she stumbled through the hall, her eyes landing on her daughter’s room for a second — maternal, protective — before padding upstairs to her room.

She clicked her phone open again, the light harsher in the pitch black of her bedroom, and typed in a quick reply — Goodnight Orm. It was nice meeting you.

Goodnight Lingling. The pleasure was all mine.

With nothing left to say, Lingling finally stood up with a sigh like a switch had flipped inside her, pushing her back into her routine. Her limbs ached from the exhaustion but the prickling feeling had returned, all across her skin, or maybe she just hadn’t noticed it all this while. She peeled her dress off and let it pool by her ankles, going through the motions of her nightime routine — a shower, some skin care.

But there was one additional step tonight — brought on by her husband’s absence. With a last burst of energy, she extracted a pale blue sheet out from a trunk under the bed. It was one of the few things she’d packed from her childhood bedroom — an old bedsheet that smelled familiar but like nothing in specific. It was too small for a double bed and Apichai insisted on sharing a blanket so Lingling had stuffed it into a trunk.

On nights like this, when the bed would be empty next to her, she pulled it out and lay it across her chest. The simple feeling of the fabric, rendered almost wisp-like from use, dragged her into a dreamless sleep.

The bedsheet was safe, comfortable. And comfort. That’s all Ling had ever wanted from life.

Hadn’t she?