Chapter 6 #2
May grinned. He was watching somebody else orbit Cassiel and come back with the same sparkly feeling that had been building in his own chest for weeks, and Lauren had been doing this since college.
She had stories. She had details. May knew now, with a pang of something, that this was Cassiel’s person. The one whose calls he took.
Lauren must have noticed the grin, because she leaned back on her stool and gave May a look that was something like appraisal but more than that. She glanced between him and Cassiel and took the pivot.
“Okay, how did you two meet?” Lauren asked.
May wrinkled his nose.
“Uh, STDY. The app. But I thought you knew that already?” He looked over at Cassiel, who was mid-sip.
“I’m the genius who put him onto the app,” she confirmed. “You’re welcome. But I mean, how did you meet according to whatever you’re telling Miyoung?”
She called Cassiel’s mother by her first name. That felt significant, but he’d wager she didn’t have the same bones-deep terror of calling a mom-generation person anything but the correct word. Miss Mary was Miss Mary in May’s head, but out loud it was only going to be ‘Auntie.’
“Oh,” said May, brightening again. “Oh. The story is, Cassiel found out about this little place in Chinatown called Lau Kee, and he came in one day for lunch, and the handsome dishwasher swept him off his feet. It’s airtight.”
“It’s not airtight,” Cassiel said, reasserting his existence by being negative.
“It held up at Chuseok.”
“My mother was distracted by the songpyeon.”
“Your mother was distracted by me.” May turned back to Lauren. “Which brings us to an important point. I must reiterate: You’re Lauren From Berkeley Who Told Cassiel About Lau Kee.”
Lauren’s face glowed. The delight started in her eyes and spread outward until her whole posture changed, shoulders squaring, chin lifting, as though she’d been cast in a role she’d been born to play. “I am that Lauren.”
“And without you, this love story doesn’t happen!”
“Oh my God, right? What’s my motivation?”
“You eat there all the time,” May said. “You love the siu yuk. You love the… Chinatown vibes. You love the old-ass mounted TV with the janky Chinese music videos.”
“I love all of those things. I’m so fucking cultured.” Her eyes, a terrifying blue, were wide and focused. There was no hesitation in her voice. The conspiracy was building and she loved a scam. “And when did I start going to Lau Kee, my favorite place in Chinatown?”
“You found Lau Kee in 2019 through a coworker, and you’ve been going ever since, and one day you dragged Cassiel along because he only eats two things and you were staging an intervention.”
“That tracks,” Lauren said. “That’s like, reality. I’ve tried to take him places.”
“And the first time he went, I happened to be covering out front. And the rest is history.”
Lauren held up a hand. May high-fived it.
Cassiel looked at the ceiling. “I’d like to note that neither of you have asked me anything.”
“Your character doesn’t get a lot of dialogue in this scene,” May said. “We’re passing the Bechdel test.”
“That’s not what the Bechdel test is about.” The voice carried a beautiful note of resignation.
“Oh, you’re gonna mansplain the Bechdel test to us?” she challenged, jabbing in Cassiel’s direction with a straw.
Cassiel’s eyes went back to the ceiling.
“So this isn’t a date, this is… what, a booked gig?” Lauren asked, shoving them back on the rails, or the rails she wanted to be on.
The word ‘date’ prickled in the back of May’s head. No, it wasn’t a date. Only it kind of was, but a paid one. Cassiel was paying for this. He was paying for the drinks.
“Sort of, yeah, we’re… Cassiel’s mom wants us—specifically me—for dinner next Thursday,” May answered.
“During Fleet Week?” Lauren’s eyebrows rose.
“Oh,” May said. Fleet Week meant the Blue Angels and noise.
He could hear them from his apartment in the Outer Richmond, and he had roughly the auditory sensitivity of a brick wall.
When he lived at home, he’d been the only one in the house who could happily sleep through the sound of his dad’s snoring.
He tried to imagine what the noise of the jets sounded like to Cassiel, who he’d seen flinch at the sound of someone’s ringtone going off in this café on more than one occasion, who grit his teeth every time the espresso machine went grrrnngh.
“He hates it,” Lauren said casually. But Cassiel’s hand had flattened on the table, the same way it had gone flat on his thigh on the BART platform before Chuseok.
“Fremont’s far enough out,” Cassiel said. “You can hear them, but it’s—”
“Tolerable,” Lauren supplied.
“Not going to be an issue.”
“So the mandu dinner doubles as a tactical retreat,” May said. “Smart. I respect that.”
Cassiel’s hand lifted from the table. “It’s a dinner.”
“It’s a dinner that happens to be in the sleepy suburbs during Fleet Week. I’m not judging. I’m endorsing.”
Lauren pointed at May with her coffee cup. “I like him.”
The espresso machine made the grinding sound.
A man at the window table closed his laptop with a thud, and May could have sworn the person at the window table was a lady before, so she must have left at some point, or he remembered wrong—and the café sounds went soft and even, and May was sitting in the warmth and also watching himself sit in the warmth from somewhere slightly above his left shoulder—
“May?”
“Yeah.” He blinked and found his eyes in the right place again. This was happening more frequently lately. “Sorry—what?”
“I said do you want anything? I’m getting another one.” Lauren was already half-standing, wallet out.
“I’m good.” His fingers found his jawbone, pressed. The counter came back. The window came back. Lauren came back, still half-standing, looking at him with an expression that was friendly and also paying attention in a way that itched. “No, seriously. I’m good.”
“Don’t be polite. You’re owed a second drink for the bus fare alone.”
“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” May said, because the alternative was arguing about it and the argument would cost more energy than the drink.
Lauren headed to the counter. The café felt smaller for her absence, the table smaller, the air between May and Cassiel suddenly… air. The barista greeted her by name, so Lauren came here too, which meant Sparrow wasn’t only Cassiel’s.
Cassiel was looking at his mug. The one he liked, which looked like all the others to May, but he was particular about this one, so May remembered its swirl pattern. He watched Cassiel’s thumb trace the rim.
“She’s great,” May said.
“She can be a lot.”
“Exactly, yeah. She’s great.” He leaned his elbows on the table. The wood was warm from the sun through the window. “How long has she known? About the STDY thing.”
“She suggested it.”
“Right, she said that. But I mean—does she know what it’s actually for? Not the app. The—” He circled a hand vaguely. “The whole thing.”