“What the hell are you trying to do?”
Xu Anping asked with a gleeful grin.
“Old Xu, and you can still laugh!”
Chen Luo looked at the expression on Xu Anping’s face, like someone who loved watching other people’s trouble, and said very seriously, “Believe it or not, I’ll report you for writing smut!”
“No, no, no!”
Xu Anping immediately backed down and said with an apologetic smile, “I was wrong!”
Chen Luo did not answer.
He wore a sullen expression.
One ex-girlfriend, who had been his first love, he could still handle. Two ex-girlfriends was already giving him a headache. Although Meng Yue’s danger level was not high either.
But with one on the left and one on the right, he was stuck in the middle.
That was not a good sign!
After thinking for a moment, Chen Luo opened the passenger door and got out of the car. He looked toward the plaza across the street and remembered that when they had lunch today, there had been a barbecue place next to the stir-fry restaurant. He suddenly felt like eating barbecue.
“Old Xu, let’s go eat barbecue,” Chen Luo said.
He started walking across the street first. Xu Anping froze for a moment, then quickly got out of the car and hurried after Chen Luo.
The two of them arrived at 『Kungfu BBQ』.
Then they started picking out food.
“Brother Luo, dinner tonight is on me. Eat your fill!” Xu Anping said.
“Then I’ll have to bleed you dry,” Chen Luo replied with a smile.
He grabbed all kinds of meat skewers and put them in the basket. After taking more than twenty skewers of meat, he moved on to the vegetable section: cabbage, chives, mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, eggplant, peppers, and so on. Chen Luo filled an entire basket with food.
When it came time to pay, the total came to 216 yuan.
After they sat down at a table near the restaurant entrance, Xu Anping said with a pained expression, “One barbecue meal… and I’m bankrupt!”
“Broke my ass!”
Chen Luo pried open a bottle of beer, took a few gulps, and said with a disdainful smile, “When you spend your damn money on those women, I don’t see you hurting over it!”
“What do you know?”
Xu Anping put on a look that said he was completely justified and said, “A gambling-addicted dad, a sick mom, a younger brother still in school, and a broken her! I’m supporting the country’s poverty relief efforts and helping out a poor little sister!”
“Am I wrong?”
“Save that little rhyme for the police.”
Chen Luo said with a laugh.
“Now…”
“Let’s raise our glasses and have a drink!”
“Cheers!”
Xu Anping raised his glass and clinked it with Chen Luo’s, then gulped down the whole cup. Just then, the server brought over the skewers as well.
The two of them started eating like crazy.
They ate with great satisfaction.
Of course.
When Xu Anping drank, the topic was absolutely never far from beauties.
For example, right now.
Xu Anping was sitting in a chair with a backrest, holding a skewer of grilled chives, and looking at a beauty walking toward them from a distance. With a sleazy look in his eyes, he said in a low voice, “Brother Luo, look over there, there’s a beauty. Guess how big her chest is?”
Chen Luo followed Xu Anping’s gaze. A beauty about 170 centimeters tall was walking toward them, wearing a black hip-hugging skirt and a white work shirt, with long black hair hanging all the way down to her waist.
She was wearing high heels.
She was striding toward their table on her smooth, shapely long legs.
“Very big…”
Chen Luo glanced at her and said with a smile.
“I think…”
Xu Anping examined the approaching beauty. Just as he was about to say his guess, his gaze moved from her chest up to her face.
Then his pupils trembled.
He lowered his voice and said, “Brother Luo, isn’t that our counselor, Meng Yue?”
“What did you say?”
Chen Luo had just tilted his head back and taken a gulp of beer. Hearing that, he choked and sprayed it right back out. By the time he caught his breath and looked up again, she was already standing in front of their table.
Now he could see clearly.
The beauty Xu Anping had been talking about was indeed their college counselor, Meng Yue.
“Chen Luo… what a coincidence!”
Meng Yue looked at Chen Luo and spoke in a tone with not a trace of emotion.
At that moment, Meng Yue stood before their table, holding a black handbag in one hand and her black blazer in the other, wearing high heels.
Looking up from her legs, it gave off a feeling of looking up from below. Especially those big eyes of hers, carrying an indescribable air of authority.
Chen Luo gave a bitter smile.
This was too fast!
He had thought they would run into each other back at the courtyard, where he could at least immediately retreat to his room. Instead, he ran into Meng Yue just from eating barbecue.
Where was Chen Luo supposed to hide now?
“What a coincidence, Teacher Meng.”
Chen Luo replied with a smile.
Meng Yue did not answer.
Instead, she pulled out the chair in front of the table, sat right down next to Chen Luo, and asked calmly, “You don’t mind sharing a table, do you?”
“Not at all.”
Chen Luo shook his head and replied.
The way she asked that.
You’re already sitting down. What else could I say?
After he said that, Xu Anping slowly stood up beside them and said, “Uh, I just remembered, I haven’t written my novel today. Missing an update is a novelist’s cardinal sin. I’m going back to write my novel first!”
“Teacher Meng, you two enjoy your meal!”
After saying that, Xu Anping slipped away without a trace, while Chen Luo just sat there in silence. After all, they were neighbors now.
Since he couldn’t avoid it.
He might as well face it calmly.
“These past three years…”
After pouring herself a glass of beer, Meng Yue asked, “Where did you go?”
“I went to teach in a mountain village,” Chen Luo replied.
“Teach in a mountain village?”
A flash of surprise crossed Meng Yue’s face. “You actually went to teach in a mountain village?”
As she spoke, Meng Yue filled her glass again and downed it in one go. When she spoke again, her tone carried a bit more resentment.
“So that’s why you deleted me? Back when we broke up, didn’t we agree? We’d part on good terms and still be friends, but you deleted me without saying a word!”
Meng Yue looked up at Chen Luo.
Her face had turned a little red.
“I had my reasons,” Chen Luo said calmly.
“What reasons?” Meng Yue pressed.
Chen Luo did not answer.
He just kept eating barbecue.
It’s not like he could tell her that he had a psycho ex-girlfriend who wanted to set him on fire, right?
Meng Yue didn’t ask Chen Luo again either. She just kept her head down and drank nonstop. In just a few minutes, she had gone through two or three bottles, and then she was drunk and slumped over the table.
She muttered, “Chen Luo! Back then you said we could still be friends after we broke up! But you just deleted me and didn’t contact me for three whole years!”
“Three years…”
“Do you know how I got through these three years?”
Hearing Meng Yue’s half-drunk, half-awake complaint, Chen Luo didn’t know what to say for a moment. Back then the situation had been urgent, and he had no way to tell her.
“Teacher Meng, you’re drunk. Let me take you back,” Chen Luo said softly.
“Scumbag… don’t touch me!”
Meng Yue said drunkenly as she lay in the chair, gently brushing Chen Luo’s hand away as she spoke.
Chen Luo gave a bitter smile.
He had no choice but to sit to the side and continue eating the remaining barbecue.
After a while, Meng Yue leaned over again, still drunk, and said, “Luoluo, can you take me back?”
“…”
Chen Luo was speechless.
He thought to himself that women really were fickle!