Later that evening, with the ploy out of the way, over garlic bread and a calzone, the two discussed Ander's distant girlfriend, D'Misse. Ander said she would be pissed with him for missing their chat appointment that night. He hadn't managed to let her know he couldn't make it.
Lady Zhao, never one to shy away from a probing question, asked if he had ever cheated on D'Misse before, since they spent so much time apart â even while he was in America, they had lived in different States since she took a new job â and he had said no. But then he caveated, to Lady Zhao's surprise, that he didn't consider certain types of hugging, or kissing, as well as other specific acts, as cheating, embellishing these statements with an overly thought out theory that likely involved, under greater scrutiny, tautologies and circuitous logic. He distinguished between Platonic (in the philosophical sense) hugging, and non-Platonic hugging; he outlined how, under certain conditions, a text could be more disloyal than actual penetrative sex.
Intrigued, Lady Zhao proposed they kiss â to prove he believed what he claimed, to get what she came for. Ander followed through. And since they had crossed that line, why not do the other non-cheating things he had listed?
When Ander explained his more-or-less arbitrary characterisation of philandery to Lala and her cohort under interrogation, he only further depressed his social stock. Thus began his expulsion from the dominant social community.
And what also began was a month long affair between Lady Zhao and Ander that Ander resolutely affirmed was not an affair. He continued his regular video calls with D'Misse as if nothing had changed, often minutes after an act of conventional disloyalty; Lady Zhao couldn't quite tell whether he truly believed he wasn't being unfaithful, or if he was conscious of the convenient myth he had created. Either way, it suited Lady Zhao â for a while.
It was a fun friendship with quirky boundaries. Sex involving no movement from Ander; arm linking, but public embracing had to last less than four seconds; no trips to traditionally romantic locations without a genuine non-romantic purpose, so that to justify going to watch the sunset from a nearby hill, Ander waited for a low step-count day on his fitness tracker. Use of the word "love" was allowed (even encouraged) since friends often exchanged messages with the word "love," and to forbid it would imply there was something deeper between them.
It was fun for Lady Zhao until towards the end of August when she realized she might have developed feelings for Ander. Then his detached denial of what was going on took on the hue of being very much the insult it was; and she had spent so much time coaxing Ander out with her, to get him to do anything, even as friends, as mates, he had consumed all her social energy, had by pure laziness eliminated all other rivals.
LadyZhao decided not to despise him for it all, though. It made her reflect, andshe assessed that he had done to her what she often did to others. The summercame to an end, Lady Zhao returned to China to begin her term at ECN as mandatedby her grant, Ander stayed on in the UK doing an unpaid internship at A-And-ZGroup he hoped would develop into a job offer (it did, and then he missed theresponse deadline), and the two promised to keep in contact.