At thirty, Xie Muchuan felt as if his life had been put on pause: unemployed, divorced, and unable to remember whether his daughter’s birthday fell on the lunar or solar calendar. He curled up in his cramped rental apartment, staring blankly at payment reminders and unopened exercise equipment. When his cigarette pack ran out, he would run his fingers over the lighter in his palm, as if he could wring enough strength to keep going from its warmth.
Then a message popped up on a local social app, from a British boy named Emir. Twenty years old, with blond hair, standing six-foot-three, and blue eyes that seemed to hold sunshine when he smiled, he said he liked “the stories that come with mature men.” He remembered the whiskey with three ice cubes in Xie Muchuan’s social media post, knew his daughter loved strawberry cake, and even when Xie Muchuan got so drunk he threw up all over him, he could still laugh and say, “That was more graceful than hugging a lamppost.”
One drunken lapse brought two people ten years apart crashing into each other’s lives. Xie Muchuan thought he was nothing but an expired can of food, but this citrus-scented young man picked him up and said he wanted to taste the story hidden inside.
“Same-sex couples can’t get married in China, but we can try dating first.”
“I found your daughter’s cake recipe.”
When a down-and-out office worker meets a younger man full of passion, it feels as if an unexpected beam of light has suddenly fallen into his expired life.
