At this moment, he was just as tongue-tied as she was thousands of words in his mind, yet none of them would come out.
His hand rested on his small black bag, slowly pulling the zipper open.
He said,
"Baby, I have something I want to give you."
Otis had already called Mei that long before they broke up not "Cloud" or "Xi Xi" or anything else, but because of Mei's influence, he called her baby, or darling, or my love, or even my dearest wife.
In short, embarrassingly sweet.
And now, he was being sweet again.
Mei, on the other hand, was used to it. It felt familiar. She instinctively replied,
"What is it? What a coincidence, I also have something to give you."
She started unzipping her small white purse.
Right now, they looked like two people taking part in some kind of courage test.
Or like two competitors in a rooftop gun assembly duel gun parts laid out on a table, someone shouts "Go!", and whoever assembles slower gets shot.
