Chapter 10 #3
May’s lips were cold from the deck air and then warm.
The gap in his front teeth was a thing Cassiel could feel—a tiny asymmetry against his own mouth.
The kiss was not smooth. It was slightly off-center, the angle corrected after the first half-second, May’s nose bumping his, and the correction—the small physical recalibration as their faces found the right arrangement—was better than precision.
Precision he understood. This was better.
The CD case pressed sharply against his breastbone. Cassiel shifted it to one hand. His other hand came up, just a second delayed—and found the front of May’s too-thin button-down, the fabric bunched at his side. He held on because the ground beneath him was shifting.
Three seconds. Four. The party was still audible through the kitchen door.
A single drop of rainwater dripped down from somewhere.
The cold air was on the back of his neck and May’s mouth was warm and the December sky was black above the rooflines for a moment longer, before he remembered to close his eyes.
May pulled back first, just an inch, his hand still on Cassiel’s jaw, still cold.
“Sorry,” May said. “You were talking about a laser.”
“A swing-arm laser assembly.”
“Right. Please continue.”
“No.”
May’s breath clouded between them. “No?”
“I don’t want to continue about the laser.”
“Oh.” He exhaled. “Oh, okay. Good. Because I was about to have a—”
Heart Attack.
The ring had not moved and it had not moved since May’s hand touched his face. There were no rules to how his hands moved in this regard, but there had been a pattern, one where the lack of the stim meant he’d reached a wall. This wasn’t that.
Cassiel kissed him back. This one was his and his alone.
He set the CD case on the railing, freed his right hand, and put it on the back of May’s neck where the hair was short and cold from the night air, tipping his face up.
He’d thought about this more than he’d wanted to, and the thinking had still not prepared him.
May made a sound against his mouth. Small, surprised, swallowed. His other hand found Cassiel’s waist.
When they separated, the cold was still forty-four degrees and dropping, and the party was still humming. The CD case sat on the railing, the liner notes facing up toward the sky, twelve songs in May’s handwriting, and neither of them had moved more than an inch apart.
The kitchen door opened. Lauren’s head appeared.
She looked at Cassiel. She looked at May. Her mouth opened.
Cassiel looked at her.
Lauren closed her mouth. She picked up a glass from the counter behind her, took a sip, and walked back into the parlor.
“You’re freezing,” Cassiel said to May. “Let’s go back inside.”
* * *
May had to leave at eleven. Minju offered to drive him.
She and David were heading back to the East Bay and May’s place in the Outer Richmond was on the way to the bridge if you were generous with the definition of ‘on the way,’ which Minju frequently was.
May protested. Minju told him to get in the car, and so May followed her out.
At the door, the hallway light falling across both of them, May turned.
“Happy birthday, Cassiel.”
“Thank you for the secret,” said Cassiel.
“Thank you for the laser arm swing disc story. It was super interesting.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“I’ll let you finish next time.” His eyes dropped to the CD case in Cassiel’s hand. “Volume one, by the way.”
The grin again. The gap, the canines, the mouth he’d kissed twice. Then Minju honked from the car and May went down the steps and into the car and the door closed. Cassiel stood in Lauren’s hallway with the stained glass dark above him and the CD case in his hand.
Lauren appeared behind him. She put her chin on his shoulder, which required her to stoop slightly.
“Good birthday?”
“Yes.”
She squeezed his arm once and released him and went to collect glasses from the parlor.
* * *
He made it back to his own apartment at midnight. Shoes at the door. Messenger bag on the hook, presents in an expansive tote bag Lauren had acquired somewhere. He placed it on his desk chair and stood in his space for a while in a stupor.
Then Cassiel retrieved Positions on Amplitude and put the disc in the Marantz. The CDM-12.1 transport hummed, the swing-arm laser finding the first track, the mechanism he’d been describing when his mouth was repurposed.
The first track opened with a flute, then strings—first bowed, then plucked—before a woman’s voice came in. Mandarin, clear and high and warm, closer to the microphone than the instruments were. He didn’t understand the words, could only guess at the feeling.
Cassiel sat on the couch with his coat still on and the liner notes open on his knee.
May’s handwriting in Sharpie, the ink slightly raised where the pen had pressed hard.
The downstrokes thicker, the letters crowding each other at the margins.
May had written this at a table somewhere, probably his kitchen counter, probably late, probably with the purple notebook open beside him, or the yellow one. Probably smiling.
The disc turned.
Track one ended and track two began with an alarm ticking. Cassiel read the liner notes again from the top.