We didn’t stay in one place for long.
During that first stretch at the Mandarin, I tried to write while he moved between meetings, returning to the room we had taken for the week.
Almost immediately, that plan began to shift.
Follow parts 1-5 of Hong Kong attraction here.
It took only a second to decide: I extended my stay, and we moved to the sleek Kowloon Shangri-La, a stunning waterfront property across the harbor from Central. By then, I was no longer navigating the city alone, but discovering it alongside him.
A week later, I chose to stay on. This time, we moved to the very British-style Park Lane, a deluxe hotel across from the Star Ferry. At check-in, the concierge handed us the key to the Governor’s Suite, the best accommodation in the house. Expansive. Decadent. Very formal. For a moment, it felt as though I had stepped into someone else’s life.
We wandered through our new quarters, taking it all in. So many rooms to discover.
At one point, I found a recessed door that opened into a closet the size of my first New York City apartment.
I showed him the hidden space, and almost without thinking, we settled there to talk. Sitting on the floor, he asked if I wanted to meet his friends. Yes, of course. Together, we decided to host a cocktail party in our extravagant — and very temporary — home. The idea came easily, as if the suite itself had suggested it.
The next evening, preparations unfolded with quiet precision. Hotel staff moved in and out, arranging fresh flowers, setting out lush hors d’oeuvres, and creating a lavish champagne bar.
By the time our guests arrived, the space no longer felt too large. Of course, they came because he asked, but they were curious about me. I noticed it in the slight pause after each introduction, in the questions that followed, in the way conversations subtly recalibrated to include me.
Some were less subtle. The only American in the group said it plainly: “Well, you must be either very rich or very well connected.”
Taken aback, I answered without thinking.
“Both,” I said.
After that, I stepped back and took it all in: the room filled with people, and the quiet sense that something had shifted without my noticing exactly when. Through it all, my steadfast suitor remained by my side. This was his world, and somehow, impossibly, it was becoming mine.
There were smaller moments, too, but no less telling. Even then, I understood how improbable it sounded. The life I had built in Los Angeles was structured, defined, expected to continue along its familiar path. Everything about this was none of those things.
We discovered, almost in passing, that we both loved Cavalier King Charles spaniels, not casually, but in the way that comes from having lived with them. It wasn’t remarkable on its own, but it carried an unexpected familiarity.
And then, one evening, as conversation turned to travel, I mentioned my flights on the Concorde. Those rare crossings, I told him, had been a privilege.
He smiled. “My uncle flew it.”
“British Airways?” I asked.
He nodded.
When he told me his uncle’s name, I didn’t hesitate. I had met him. In that small, rarefied world where certain people stay with you, his uncle had been one of them.
The improbability of it struck us both. Out of all the places, all the people, all the paths that might have crossed and never did, this one had. It would have been easy to dismiss it as coincidence. But it was one of many alignments that resisted explanation.
What had begun as a strong attraction to this Brit living in Southeast Asia was no longer fleeting, no longer situational.
When we talked, time became irrelevant. Conversations carried from one day into the next as if uninterrupted. There was no pretense, no effort to impress or persuade. There was simply recognition.
I felt it before I allowed myself to name it.
This wasn’t infatuation. This wasn’t temporary.
I was falling in love with him.
And he knew.
Even though I didn’t say it when he did, there came a point when words stopped being necessary; when something unspoken became understood. So when I finally said it, it felt less like a confession and more like a confirmation.
Back at the hotel, between writing sessions that fell short, I began sharing information I hadn’t planned to reveal to my staff.
“I’ve put off my return,” I told them from 9,000 miles away.
They misunderstood, assuming I meant I was extending my stay again.
“No,” I said, hearing the certainty in my own voice. “It has to be more than that.”
Even then, I understood how improbable it sounded. The life I had built in Los Angeles was structured, defined, expected to continue along its familiar path. Everything about this was none of those things.
But it didn’t feel impulsive.
It felt recognized.
It existed somewhere among a canceled flight, a series of unlikely coincidences, and a connection that refused to be dismissed.
People would later ask when I made the decision, and I never had a simple answer. If pressed, I would say this: By the time I said it out loud, it was already done.
I was moving to Hong Kong.
