Chapter 17 Do you have a goodnight kiss today?
03
When Di Ling returned to the venue, nothing important was happening on the stage. The award ceremony had not started yet, and only the host was talking nonsense.
She slid over to Pan Zheng like a loach and whispered in his ear, "Hey, where's the speech by that important figure you mentioned? Has he given it yet?"
Pan Zheng turned his head and gave her a sidelong glance, his eyes filled with disdain. He said sarcastically, "That important figure is probably just like you. I don't know where he went to hook up with someone, and he simply canceled his opening."
"Look at what you said," Di Ling winked at him, "it's so true."
"...You really have a date with someone?!" Pan Zheng tried hard to maintain his composure and control himself from strangling her to death on the spot.
She smiled like a little fox. "My little wolf dog happened to come here to help. It was a coincidence. It's really a coincidence. You reap what you sow."
He was dizzy with her, frowning and thinking for two seconds, "Are you saying that the person you've been hooking up with lately is also here today?"
"Yeah, but he's not here for the party, he's just here to help with the wine tasting."
After she finished speaking, she completely put the matter behind her and went to the side to find the waiter to get some snacks. Pan Zheng looked at her back, but his frown never relaxed.
According to common sense, such top hotels have professional wine tasting teams and usually do not outsource help. Besides, how could it be such a coincidence that they called up this person who was just an "ordinary bartender and bar owner" in Di Ling's words as their one-night stand?
Before the dinner was over, Di Ling was already bored and wanted to go home. Pan Zheng was annoyed by her and also planned to leave. When they were about to leave, a man in a neat black suit respectfully stopped them and said that someone named Lucas wanted to talk to Pan Zheng.
"Who is Lucas?" she asked Pan Zheng with a raised eyebrow.
"That's the big shot who canceled his opening speech," Pan Zheng whispered to her. "Go back to the car and wait for me."
"Oh," Di Ling walked out of the door without any reluctance.
She browsed Weibo, read a novel, and took a nap in the car before Pan Zheng appeared outside the car window.
"What have you two been talking about for so long? Are you talking about love?" She yawned, sat a little closer, and let Pan Zheng sit in.
Pan Zheng took off his coat and stretched his shoulders. "Let's talk about business."
"Who is this person?"
"The hidden richest man in P City has been looking to expand his business to T City in recent years and is planning to open a branch here. He's been here for over a month to investigate," Pan Zheng rubbed his brow. "He's an extremely intelligent person."
Pan Zheng comes from a privileged family and has high emotional intelligence and EQ. No matter how humble he is, he still has a bit of arrogance in his bones. He usually speaks quite harshly to people close to him. She has known him until now, and she has rarely heard him praise anyone for being smart. Basically, no one can catch his eye.
"And," he paused and shook his head in confusion, "he asked me a very strange question at the end."
"ah?"
"He asked me why I wanted to get married."
Di Ling was startled when she heard this. After a while, she raised her eyebrows and smiled at him, "Pan Zheng, he must have taken a fancy to you!"
"……roll."
"This is really bad!" She exaggeratedly widened her eyes and whispered in his ear in a sly voice, "I'm going to send a WeChat message to Xiaoyi right now! Someone's trying to steal his girl!"
Pan Zheng was too lazy to pay attention to her. He simply closed his eyes and rested before going home. Di Ling could only play with her mobile phone beside him in boredom.
After getting off the car, they walked towards the elevator. Halfway there, Pan Zheng suddenly stopped and turned around to look at her.
She was startled by him and almost bumped into him, "What are you doing?"
He stared at her motionlessly, his tone calm, yet with a hint of indescribable loneliness, "Di Ling, do you think that what we are doing is really good for ourselves?"
She was startled when she heard it, and her expression froze for a moment.
The two of them sat in silence for a moment. She quickly concealed the awkwardness on her face and said with a chuckle, "I told you to change your career and become a relationship expert, and you still scolded me. Why are you being so sentimental so late at night? Isn't this already a done deal? What's there to discuss?"
Pan Zheng's eyes flashed slightly. After a few seconds, he said nothing more, turned around and continued walking forward.
...
After returning home, Pan Zheng seemed a little tired. He took a shower and went to sleep. She wanted to sleep too, but just as she reached the bedroom door, she stopped.
After hesitating for a while, she ran to the window with her cell phone and dialed a number.
It was already late at night, almost dawn, but the other party answered the phone quickly.
"Tonight," the man's voice was as hoarse and seductive as ever, and there was a hint of laughter in everything he said.
Miraculously, as soon as she heard his voice, her originally hard heart softened unconsciously, and even felt a little bitter, "Jiang Xingran."
"Well, are you unhappy?"
She was startled. "How did you know?"
"Feel."
"Can you tell just by me calling your name? Are you the worm in my stomach?"
"Can I choose a place to live besides my belly?"
"...How can you be so vulgar?"
"Are you qualified to say that about me?"
Both of them laughed when they talked about this. Di Ling raised her hand to stroke her freshly dried hair, looked up at the night sky and let out a long breath.
"I'm done here. I'm going back now and will wait for you at home, okay?"
The next second, she suddenly heard him say this.
She opened her mouth, but her mouth reacted faster than her brain, "Okay."
After hanging up the phone, she casually put on a coat over her home clothes, grabbed her car keys and cell phone and rushed downstairs. The moment she started the car and drove out of the garage, she suddenly realized a fact with great surprise.
All those tiny feelings of bitterness, swelling, sadness, hopelessness... and even the unspeakable self-esteem that had accumulated deep in her heart for a long time and no one knew about were easily shattered by such a simple sentence.
She looked ahead and for a moment spoke to herself.
Di Ling, I'm afraid you're finished.
**
She arrived at his house quickly, and almost as soon as she rang the doorbell, he came to open the door.
Jiang Xingran in the room had taken off the suit jacket he had worn at the cocktail party, and was only wearing the shirt underneath with his collar loosened, looking a little dusty and tired.
But still very handsome.
Before she could think of anything evil, he had already pulled her into his arms and kissed her a few times lingeringly.
"Although I really want to do something bad in the dark and windy night, I think this shouldn't be the theme of tonight," he pulled her to the sofa after kissing her and asked her to sit down, then went to the side to get some wine and two wine glasses.
Di Ling took off her coat, lay back on the sofa, and raised her chin at him, "Don't be too smart."
He smiled and poured her some wine.
Before she came, she was full of impulse, as if she had a ton of heavy things to tell him, but when she really got to him, she actually didn't know how to start.
Jiang Xingran sat beside her, admiring the changing expressions on her usually shrewd face, and couldn't help but ask, "As a professional actor, you actually have times when you don't know how to be eloquent?"
"I'm sorry to have embarrassed you," she said, clasping her fists towards him. "I'm not feeling well today and it's not suitable for me to go on stage."
He narrowed his eyes, "How about I help you get started?"
She was stunned.
"You mean to say that you're hiding a lot of things from me, right?"
Di Ling's heart skipped a beat, and after a while, she nodded.
"For example, your real name isn't Pan Jinxiao?"
…
She raised her hand and stroked her forehead. "...That's not the point, but you're right."
"Your stage name is quite nice," he rubbed her head playfully. "Let's drink and enjoy the moment, one night of passion is not too much."
Di Ling clapped her hands.
"What else? You're not actually a half-widow who was cheated on? You're the butterfly that plants the prairie on your husband's head?"
She looked at him with complicated eyes, "... Tell me clearly, did you steal my script?!"
Jiang Xingran placed one hand leisurely on his knee, supported his chin with the other hand, and smiled at her with a smile in his eyes.
"Well," she stretched, "that's pretty much what I mean. But I'm not actually cheating on my husband. We're cheating on each other... Pah, actually, we're in a marriage of convenience."
When he heard the last two words, Jiang Xingran's eyes moved, as if he was a little surprised, but he did not show it obviously and quickly concealed it.
"The reason for the sham marriage is actually quite unreliable. It's just that his identity is too eye-catching, but he likes men, not women. If this happened abroad, it wouldn't be a big deal, but here it would cause a huge uproar. No matter how it affects us, it would be unpleasant. His parents would probably jump off the building if they knew... Then, we are childhood friends. I am actually a complete non-marriage advocate, but my parents are really pushing me too hard, and they even started to cry, make a fuss, and even threaten to commit suicide. So I discussed with him that we should have a sham marriage and then cover up our real life situation. Anyway, our relationship is really good, like family, and it's not inconvenient to live together."
She threw out her backstory in one breath, ignoring his words and downing the wine in her glass.
Only after she finished drinking did she have the courage to look at his face, but she found that there was no shock or condemnation on his face as she had expected, but instead a trace of indescribable...heartache?
"Can I ask you a question?" After pondering for a moment, he slowly spoke.
"Isn't one a little too little?"
He shook his head. "I only care about one question: why don't you want to get married?"
Her eyes trembled, as if she remembered something, but she quickly laughed again, "Ah, because I don't trust men. I think every man will cheat in the end, even if they're married, and will betray me. I can't trust them, it's that simple."
"So, before others cheat on you, cheat on them first," he said calmly.
"Well," she admitted readily, "I don't want to fall in love with just any man."
So they are treated as playthings, and they are thrown away after playing with them once, without any feelings, no nostalgia, and no surprises.
Without these, there would be no harm.
Then, the room fell into silence for a long time.
She didn't say anything else, and he didn't ask any more questions.
After an unknown amount of time, she heard Jiang Xingran's hoarse voice ringing in her ears.
"I also lied to you about something."
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