Page 10 of I Did Something Bad
His features pull as though this is brand-new information to him. “The truth is,” he says through a short chuckle, “you have my publicist to thank for that.”
I don’t buy it. “You agreed to let a stranger follow you around for two months because your publicist bullied you into it?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘bullied,’” he counters. “But Bolu can be very persuasive.”
“Why this movie? Compared to all the other ones.”
“This one is important to me. It’s… different. Special.”
I perk up. “Special how?”
“Come on, Khin, we’re both Myanmar. Don’t make me go through therepresentationspiel. You’re too astute of a writer to need me to explicitly lay out what’s riding on this movie.” And then, ping-pong serve landing in front of me out of nowhere, he continues, “Tell me a secret.”
“What?”
He goes quiet although we both know I heard him correctly. It’s not the fact that he’s surveying me in silence that’s getting under my skin, but it’s how he’s doing it. I don’t know how to describe it, but the steadiness in the way his eyes are tracing my face makes me feel like he’s just discovered something about myself that evenIdon’t know.
He’s not trying tobe friends. This man is trying to even the playing field.
“A secret. Tell me a secret,” he repeats. “And not something likeI once shoplifted a Snickers bar—”
“Haveyouever shoplifted a Snickers bar?” His expression droops for a second and I gasp. “Tyler Tun! Do the authorities know?”
This time, his laugh is unrestrained, deep but joyous, just like in the movies. “Damn, I should’ve worked on my poker face. I gotta be honest, I didn’t come to this dinner thinking I’d be questioned about my sordid past.”
“I’mreallygood at my job,” I say with a proud, knowing smile.
“I can tell,” he says, still grinning. “But now you know a secret of mine. So it’s your turn. Tell me one. Tell me something that you would rather sell your soul to the devil than have someone find out.”
“Okay, now we’re just—”
“Khin.”
I don’t know why I stop breathing at the sound of him saying my name, voice all low and anchored. What am I, a lusty teenager? “Why?” I ask, buying myself time.
“Because I need to know that I can trust you.”
“So you can blackmail me if you don’t like the profile?”
He shakes his head. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t actually read the stories. Never do.”
“Why not?”
“Khin,” he repeats, and there goes my breath again, hitching on an invisible jagged edge. “You’re stalling. Tell me a secret. I need to know that I can trust you.”
Vogue. That’s what’s on the line here. If I give him this one thing, and he feels like he can trust me, and he lets his guard down, and I find out something that makes Clarissa happy, I will get a full-time position atVogue. “I’m recently divorced.”
His eyes jump from my face to my finger and back to my eyes. “Not a secret.”
I feel like an animal caught in a snare that only gets tighter the more I squirm.
Vogue. Singapore.
And then I realize—hecan’t fact-checkmylife. Interviewing 101: be relatable.
“It’s… making it hard for me to be happy about my sister’s engagement,” I say, trying my best to sound like I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt for ever saying this out loud; picturing Nay’s and Thidar’s faces kind of helps because hey, I dotechnicallyhave sisters—we’re just not related by blood. “I keep telling myself that it’s ninety-five percent happiness and five percent bitterness, but if I’m being honest, it’s probably more seventy–thirty.”
“You have a sister?” he asks, taken aback by this information. “You didn’t mention it earlier.”
