Six years ago
"Good morning, my kitty cat! How was your day today?" asked a sleepy Tang on skype.
"A very good evening to you too, grumpy bear! My day was good and nearly uneventful", replied Jia Li cheekily.
Upon his enquiring look at her comment, she described her meeting with Cheng Fu, the man from the British High Commission.
"Damn it, you do know that he was trying to flirt with you", he rumbled.
She laughed and murmured huskily, "I love it when you get jealous even at the slightest provocation."
Before he could berate her further, she assured him that it had been a harmless conversation and she couldn't refuse giving her email id without sounding rude to the guy.
"He was very helpful and gave a lot of relevant information during his interaction with us" she tried to explain to him.
"I don't care how good he was. You are just too goddamn beautiful and guys are perpetually hovering around you. It is a good thing that Li Jie is gay else I wouldn't have been able to handle his closeness with you", he thundered.
It had been three years since their first kiss at the wedding in Moganshan. Their respective parents had grounded all four of them post the drunken fiasco at that function. Tang had been whisked away to Shanghai for the remainder of his vacation. He had barely managed to meet Jia Li for a few minutes the next morning before leaving town.
He had eventually been shipped away to America for his undergrad and now was finishing his master's in Business Administration along with a string of short courses related to the consumer goods industry. In the meanwhile, Jia Li had got admission in a Beijing university for a course of foreign languages.
But the distance and time difference did not deter them from finding time and means to interact with each other on a daily basis. Nor did it affect their feelings for each other. In fact the distance had given them the breathing space to focus on their individual goals yet had kept the 'need' burning hot.
"You need to control the caveman attitude here and show some faith in my abilities to handle 'men'. The guy seems nice and can be a good guide from my career perspective", she said.
Conceding, he said softly, "you know I trust you more than myself. Anyways, it's a matter of just a couple of months. Once I finish my post grad, I will come back no matter what Dad says. I have started applying in some FMCG companies in China already".
She was surprised by the news and asked if he had mentioned this to his parents yet.
"No, I am planning to do it on this coming weekend. Dad is flying down to meet some potential investors and will spend a couple of days with me", he explained.
"I want to come speak with your father as soon as I confront mine. And if I have a job in hand independent of my father's purview, it makes our ground stronger", he finished on a serious note.
Jia Li worried her lower lip like always, every time they spoke about their future. She knew that Uncle Xie would not be very happy about this alliance and was fervently hoping that Tang would be able to convince him.