A few months after our break up, Lin, my ex-girlfriend got my new number. I received her phone call at about nine p.m. just before I sat down on the living room floor to have dinner. On the plate, there was a chunk of boiled pork, soy sauce and some boiled cabbage next to a bowl of rice. I mixed the meat juice and the vegetables together to make the soup. By the time I ate, the fat had risen to the surface of the soup like a thick layer that could be picked up. I turned down the TV’s volume, just enough to have something to focus on in case the talking got uncomfortable. 
“Are you doing something?" Lin asked.
“Cooking. What are you calling me for?”
“Nothing, just want to see how you’ve been.”
“Some other time, okay? I’m a little busy right now,” I held my smartphone tight, hesitating to turn off the phone.
“I miss you.”
I held the phone between my shoulder and my right cheek. Slowly, I pushed the white button to open the microwave, putting the soup bowl in and left it there for two minutes. The yellow light lit up the oven, and the smell of cabbage rose from the two sides of the microwave. On the soup’s surface, a fat bubble popped.
“What’s that sound?" Lin asked.
“Microwave. I’m preparing a meal.”
“Why so late?”
“It doesn’t hurt to do so once in a while. So how have you been?” 
“I’ve been alright. Nothing much.”
“How come there’s nothing much when you are in love?”
“Well, there’s really nothing. We only meet at the tattoo studio for a while then I have to head home first. My shift ends at eight thirty. Customers come pretty late these days ever since a new bar opened near the shop.”
“Did you sleep together yet?” I asked.
“Hey now, don’t ask about that.”
“Why not? I told you about everyone I slept with like you asked me to.”
“I can’t say now.” On her end of the telephone, a cat is being beaten, glass is being broken, or some surface is being scratched. “It's a delicate matter,” she said.
“That means you slept together.”
“Not really, we just made out.”
“What’s delicate about making out?” I took the plate out of the microwave, carefully not letting it touch anything. 
“Yes,” she said.
“You slept with him?”
There was no answer from her.
“Okay. I'm going to have dinner now.” I hung up before she could say anything else. I ate my food. As I do, images of Lin and Tung lying on the bed in her house filled up my mind. I forced myself to think of when should I buy new clothes and what type while tasting the soup. The hot soup burnt my tongue, as I forgot that I just put it in the microwave. A few minutes later, Lin called me.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Why did you hang up?”
“There’s nothing left to say.”
“At least you could have said goodbye, or something.”
“Hey,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Stop saying you miss me. I think it’s unreasonable. You are someone’s girlfriend.”
“Aren’t we still friends?”
“We are. But friends don’t say they miss each other.”
We both didn’t say anything for a minute.
“I still have the small kitchen table. Do you want it?” she asked.
“No thanks.”
“So you’ve been eating on the floor?”
“Not enough space for anything, anyway. And look, I have to go now. Later okay. I won’t ask how you got my number. Bye.”  
I hung up for the second time. This time, Lin did not call back. I also did not bother to eat. In the kitchen, dirty plates piled up in the sink since the day before. I put my dinner away then soaked the dirty dishes in dishwashing foam. I put the apron that Lin and I shared deep in the corner of the wooden cupboard and flipped the light switch. The room was dark. The neon light was broken, so I had to wash the dishes under the street lamps. Around the lampposts, bugs flew in a big swarm, making the light fuzzy.
That night I couldn’t sleep, so I looked for her number on my phone. It seemed so different from all other numbers – almost translucent. I watched and squeezed it for a long time then pressed the call button. After about three rings, she picked up the phone.
"What’s wrong?" She asked. She didn’t sound sleepy or surprised.
"No, it's nothing. I just want talk. I want to clear things up between you and me."
"What things?"
"You know, the reasons why you called me. If you don’t have time to talk, we can do this some other nights. I mean, right now is good for me. I'm not busy. "
"Okay," she said. "Let’s go for a late night snack. Take the Phan Dinh Phung route to my house. Fewer cops.”
“I’ll be there."
I quickly dressed. The shirt and its collar were slightly creased, and that took me a while. I used to see Lin in my flip-flops and tank tops. She didn’t care. But this time I took almost ten minutes just to put down few strands of hair sticking up. After twenty minutes, I left home. The roads were clear. The rows of trees on Phan Dinh Phung drooped, almost collapsed on the pavement. But it seemed that the electric wires tangled in the branches stood them up straight. When I got to her house, she was standing in front of the door, a hand holding her bag, a hand stroking her hair. She dyed her hair purple and she looked thinner. She looked tall and her jaw line was sharp like her new boyfriend, although I only saw his photos on Facebook. On her right forearm was a rose caught in spider webs. She put her hair that was covering her forehead behind her ears, revealing the tattoo of an arrow piercing through a diamond. Both of these tattoos were new. When she approached, I smelled a strong perfume that she normally wouldn’t use. It gave her confidence. When she got on the back seat of my motorcycle, I knew she lost weight.  
We pulled up by a café on a nearby street. It was a small house that used part of the pavement to sell drinks. We sat on plastic chairs on the pavement instead of drinking inside.
"Tung told me not to keep in touch with you anymore. No contact, no nothing. Do not talk or keep a relationship anymore," Lin said. She looked at me, pursing her lips. The purple highlights made her hair brighter than ever. I wanted to hold her wrist and check her heart rate, like I used to do.
"That’s for you and me to decide,” I said.
"But I’m still his girlfriend. I guess he didn’t want me to get in touch with you.”
"I don’t know." I opened the menu then closed it. "Do you have feelings for me?”
"I thought I only loved you. You're about to finish college. You can navigate your boat, while Tung and I can’t, do you understand? I can’t finish my credits as long as I’m working at the tattoo studio with him. It’s too much. He’s going to be an artist. He knows his stuff. I was alone without a direction." She looked at me and put her hand on my hand. “You wouldn’t leave me when I’m lost like this, would you?"
"Well,” I said. "I’m not going anywhere. I can’t go anywhere." I picked her hand up and placed it on her knees.
"It's hard to say that I do not have feelings for you. I must tell the truth because I'm not good at lying. I think being honest about my feelings is good, right?" she asked.
I said nothing. Fortunately, the waitress also brought out the menu. Lin went to the toilet and let me get the drinks. That gave me time to think. I wondered why Lin got so thin. I thought if she didn’t hang on to me, or on to edges of tables, she would float away. I decided to get her a drink that she needed. When she turned around, two cups of water were served.
"This is salted lemon juice," Lin said. She shook the cup to see if there was any residue of the sugar like she always did.
“Try again,” I said. She took another sip.
“It’s true salted lemonade," Lin muttered. “I thought you were kidding. I thought you had sugar somewhere down at the bottom.”
“If you want the sugared lemonade, I think Tung can make it. I can only give you what you need at times like this.”
“Salt is alright, I mean." Lin nodded. “It’s quite good. Tung can’t make lemonade.”
Lin put her lips on the rim of the glass but didn’t drink.
"I think you will have to give him up if you want to get back with me," I said.
 "Can’t we just be like this? There’s always a choice for me.”
 I wanted to say that there isn’t always a choice, that there are rules to things. Then, I realized she was partly right. We could go out to listen to the ice cracking in glasses of water in the middle of the night, to hear the wheezing of sleeping people, and to hear each other’s thoughts when we’re not supposed to meet. I put the cup she was holding down on the table and brushed off the water droplets on her palms. The waitress asked if we were going to stay longer, because her shift was about to end and she needed to close the door until seven. I said maybe for a little while, maybe until five a.m. She said she would leave the plastic stools outside for us. I thanked her then paid her the drinks.
“Where’s the table, really?” I asked.
“Forget about it. I threw it away,” Lin said. “Let’s go get breakfast. I want rice dumplings.”
“Is Tung at home?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Lin yawned. “He’s working.”
“How could he be at home and working at the same time?”
“Are we going to get dumplings or not?” 
Lin wanted to kiss me because she looked at my lower lip. Her breath smelled of tobacco as she moved in closer to me.  She said she hated cigarettes, and that made me think of how she had kissed Tung. I looked away, sucking the water from the glass, chewing the straw.
"Why?" she asked.
"Wait,” I said. 
"For what?"
"I don’t know," I said. "But we can’t do it out here. I think we should go inside. Somewhere comfortable. Your house for example," I said.
“Let’s get a to-go then,” she said.
We got to the dumpling place by six thirty. I had to ride my bike under the shadows of the trees because the sunlight was too strong.
“How about we eat it here? It’s hot outside,” I said.
"No, it’s more convenient to take out. Then we can head back to my house, "Lin said. Her face was calm and she didn’t seem to be sweating. We watched the baker mix the dough and add the eggs. After five minutes, the dumplings were out of the stove and we were ready to go. When Lin got on the bike, she sat closer to me. As soon as I started moving, she told me:
"Seems like you don’t want to go to my place," she said.
"Well, it’s just that you are some one’s girlfriend. "
We said nothing for a while.
"You are doing it."
"Do what?”
"You're avoiding things," she said. “I thought we were back to normal now. Do you understand what it means to go out with me at this moment?”
“It’s just a drink," I said.
“It counts, Minh. This means you are accepting me as your date, or girlfriend, you get it?”
"No, not really,” I said. I gave her a helmet and put on mine. Of the two routes to get to her home, I took the longer one. People poured out on the streets from alleys and lanes. The exhaust fume and the heat coming up from the road made Ha Noi a desert. We got into a traffic jam and took twenty minutes to reach a traffic light. While waiting for the light, I took out the phone in my pocket and gave it to her.
“I haven’t got your exact number. Put it in here.”
"No. I cannot give you my number. "
"Why?"
"Because we're cheating. And it will continue like that. There will be no calling. You have to see me. Do you understand? Sooner or later Tung will learn about all of this, and that's it. It’s going to be you and me.”
“As long as we keep our distance, then you and I will be fine, right? Won’t it be better for you and Tung to stay together?” I asked.
“It’s falling apart,” Lin said. “You already got in between us.”
She hugged me from behind. I didn’t know what to feel.
"It’s alright. I’m here," she said.
"You're here," I said. My voice got lost in the stream of motorcycles. "Where is here?” I asked louder. She didn’t reply.
I crossed the red light and almost hit a car. The driver opened his window and cursed at me, but I didn’t understand what he said. It took me a while to realize that I crossed the red light. I only moved about a minute after the green light was on.