If We Ever Meet Again - Ana Huang Page 0,2

or something. Anything that proved the crazy head-over-heels love you found in books and movies existed in real life.

After a disappointing freshman year filled with mediocre dates and fumbling stops at third base, Farrah was ready to give up on reality and live in fantasyland full time.

“I’ll take these.” She set her drinks on the ground so she could pick up Pride & Prejudice (her personal favorite), The Notebook, and Me Before You. She’d read all of them already, but what the heck, a reread never hurt anybody.

Farrah paid the vendor, who beamed and gushed her thanks before turning her attention to the next passerby.

“Mei nu!” The vendor flagged down a young woman in a cobalt dress. “Come, come.”

Farrah looped her shopping bag around her wrist and picked up her drinks while the young woman fended off the vendor’s aggressive sales pitch. She speed-walked back to campus, taking care not to make eye contact with any more vendors lest she got suckered into buying something else she didn’t need.

Farrah stopped at the crosswalk. Instead of crossing when the pedestrian light flashed green, she waited until a group of teenagers stepped off the curb before following them into the jungle that was Shanghai traffic.

Rule #1 of surviving in China: cross when locals cross. There’s safety in numbers.

By the time Farrah arrived at Shanghai Foreign Studies University, her study abroad program’s host campus, she’d already finished her drink. She tossed the empty container into a nearby trash can and pushed open the door to FEA’s lobby.

FEA, aka Foreign Education Academy, occupied one of the oldest buildings at SFSU. Not only did the four-story building lack an elevator, but the interior design left much to be desired. The lobby had potential—marble floors, tons of natural light streaming in through large windows facing the courtyard—but the furniture was straight out of the 80s (and not in the cool retro kind of way).

A cracked brown leather couch lined the wall beneath the windows alongside mismatched chairs and tables. A spindly magazine stand sagged beneath the weight of dozens of back issues of Time Out Shanghai. Faded Chinese landscape paintings hung on the wall, adding to the musty feel.

As usual, Farrah couldn’t help mentally redecorating the space. As she took the stairs to the third floor, she swapped out the current furniture for a cushioned wicker set with glass-topped tables, which would visually expand the lobby. Out went the old watercolors and in came the panels of Asian-inspired art—perhaps some up-close representations of the lotus flower or plum blossoms with modern Chinese calligraphy. There could be a wall of bookshelves for—

“Ow!” Farrah had been so absorbed in her design daydream she slammed into the wall. Her hand shot to her forehead as pain ricocheted through her brain. Fortunately, she couldn’t feel a bump.

Olivia’s bubble tea also remained intact, thank god. She was scary when she didn’t get her sugar fix.

The wall moved. “Are you ok?” it asked.

A walking, talking wall. She must’ve hit her head harder than she thought.

Farrah peeked out from beneath her hand and found herself staring into a pair of crystal blue eyes. She recognized those eyes. They’d stared back at her from the cover of Sports Illustrated last year, along with the accompanying high cheekbones and cocky grin.

Now, they examined her with a mix of amusement and concern.

“You’re not a wall,” she blurted.

“No, I’m not.” The not-a-wall cocked an eyebrow. A hint of a smile played over his lips. “I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but that’s a new one.”

Farrah fought the flush of embarrassment spreading across her face. Of all the people she could’ve run into, she had to run into Blake Ryan.

Even though she wasn’t a sports fan, she knew who he was. Everyone did. A hotshot football player from Texas who caused a national uproar when he quit the team at the beginning of the year. Besides the Sports Illustrated cover, Farrah remembered Blake from an ESPN documentary about the most talented college athletes in the country. Farrah’s roommate last year forced her to watch it because she was obsessed with the point guard on CCU’s basketball team, and she needed someone she could gush to.

It’d been the most boring seventy-five minutes of Farrah’s life, but at least there’d been plenty of eye candy, none of whom were dishier than the Texan standing in front of her.

Six feet two inches of tanned skin and chiseled muscle, topped with golden hair, glacial blue eyes, and cheekbones