Chapter 13
MAY
THE THURSDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS
The record had two sides. This was not a revelation. May understood how records worked. But Side B of Are We There had been sitting on the turntable since the night before, like a letter he hadn’t opened, which was ironic, given the other letters in his apartment.
Cassiel flipped it on Boxing Day. Cassiel still there, still in May’s apartment, because he’d stayed the night and then he’d stayed the morning and at some point staying had stopped being a decision and started being an active point he was making.
The needle dropped and the intro (one, two, three) filled space, which took about zero seconds because his apartment was the size of a generous parking space.
They were on the couch and Cassiel had his glasses on.
He always looked good but the way he looked good in the morning, in this light, and—it could not be overstated—the glasses, was diabolical.
It made May want to tug on his ears until they fell off.
He was studying the back of the sleeve, which was… something.
Anyway, his thigh was against May’s thigh. Neither of them said anything about why they hadn’t flipped the record until now, and then they continued to not say anything, so after a while it was just pretty, depressing music.
“Cheerful,” May said, around the third track. “You gave me a sad lady album for Christmas and it stopped in the middle of our first fight.”
“Side A ended. It didn’t stop.”
“Yeah? Yeah, and then you didn’t even have the decency to flip it so you could rail me with sad lady music in the background so I could pretend we were on a sexy doctor show. It’s like you don’t even care.”
Outside, the Christmas lights on Balboa blinked through the blinds, and the song was about skies falling and healing and desire, and it was also just a song in a room where two people were sitting on a couch the morning after.
“We weren’t fighting,” Cassiel said, still trying to be correct. “You asked me to be your boyfriend.”
“We were. I told you you were my boyfriend.”
Boyfriend. Boyfriend. Boyfriend. The word kept tipping back and forth like a wobbly doll, tilting between syllables depending on how hard he believed it that second.
“Same result,” came Cassiel’s conclusion. And then Cassiel grabbed his legs and tugged him onto his lap, and they were two people sitting very close on a couch with the morning wrapped around them like a big red bow.
* * *
Sparrow was closed the whole first week of January, a handwritten sign in the window saying See you Jan 8!
with a doodle of its namesake bird. The whole architecture of the year didn’t collapse so much as sprout annexes.
There were still Thursdays, and those were still purple.
But there were also Saturdays now, and a Tuesday phone call that went on half the evening because Cassiel had watched a two hour retrospective on McDonaldsland lore and needed to explain it to a captive audience.
There was a day where May finished at Lau Kee and took the bus to Clement.
He walked to Linden & Pratt and Cassiel was still closing up, bent over the bench in his glasses with the loupe light on.
May sat on the floor by the door and ate a bao and waited, and when Cassiel finally looked up and looked at him, the smile on his lips was unquestionable.
09:00
Gay Angel, every Thursday
The alarm was still in May’s phone for when he previously had to haul his ass out of bed to make it to Sparrow on time, but it was incidental. His body knew Thursdays now.
He had let the alarm stay even when they had nothing planned on a Thursday morning. Stopping it felt like the end of something. That wasn’t the energy he was bringing into 2025.
* * *
The first day of the new year happened to be a Wednesday. Lau Kee was closed, Auntie Tsang and Uncle Lau off to Philly for a week for reasons so unclear May had decided to assume ‘family’ for his own peace of mind.
May worked at home in the morning, which involved a lot of clicking and sighing and breaks to roll around listlessly on the couch before making instant coffee from a half-calcified jar of Nescafé and daydreaming about what a Sparrow New Year’s special would be.
Louis came over at noon, having sent him a single warning text that he didn’t read until around eleven.
He had with him a bag of mandarins, a huge bottle of Kang Shifu Iced Black Tea, takeout from Great Wall, two things of boba from Bobaville, a video game, and a stack of his mail their mom had been holding.
“These are because Mama says you’re low on vitamin C,” Louis said, lobbing the bag of mandarins at May, who just caught them. He then raised the Kang Shifu. “And she said this is your favorite.”
The sweet black tea had been his favorite when he was eight because Teresa had unilaterally banned soft drinks from the house. May sighed, took both, and made space for the bottle in the fridge while Louis made his way to the TV.
“How do you still have no chairs? You’ve been here two years. Go—” His little brother’s annoying voice stopped suddenly. May didn’t have to look over his shoulder to realize it was because he’d noticed the new addition to the room. “Where the hell did you get a record player from?”
“An angel gave it to me for Christmas. For being a good person and a nice brother. Can you sit the fuck down? Couch. Floor. Pick.”
Louis picked the floor. He had brought Untitled Goose Game for the Switch, which was his Christmas gift. To himself. And because his Switch officially lived at May’s place, he had to come over.
He docked it to May’s TV and handed him the red Joy-Con. They were two geese in a quiet English village. An ideal existence.
The game was simple. You were a goose—or in this case, two geese—and you caused problems. There was a list of objectives and you completed them by stealing things, trapping people, and honking. Louis wanted to complete the objectives. May wanted to honk.
“Stop honking. We need the rake.”
“I’m distracting him.” May honked.
“You’re honking at a wall. He can’t even see you. You suck.”
May honked at the wall. Louis rolled his eyes and dug into the mapo tofu.
May ate most of the green beans and inhaled the boba.
After a brief intermission, they got the rake.
They stole the groundskeeper’s keys. They chased a kid into a phone booth.
May felt remorse for a second, then honked at him through the glass.
The afternoon was lazy and familiar, passed in a haze of sugar. Louis’s replica hypebeast hoodie was pilling at the elbows, his hair was getting long and sweeping over his eyes. He looked like a little kid again, and May felt like his big brother.
Then he kicked Louis out at six.
“Okay, go party. You’re twenty. Venture forth. Be young and dumb and full of—”
“Ugh. Fuck you, I know you’re seeing your—” Louis made a vague gesture that encompassed the concept of Cassiel without specifying anything about him, because Louis had been given zero details and was basing everything on lock screen evidence and a suspicious turntable manifestation.
“Yep. Hot date,” May said cheerfully. “Hence you get out. Go tell Kevin how you feel. He talks about you. Not in words, but a brother knows.”
“I hope your hair falls out and your brain leaks out through the follicles.” He pulled on his shoes. “Tell your stock photo boyfriend I said ‘watch yourself.’”
The door closed as Louis disappeared onto the street.
May took his meds early and FaceTimed Anna. Doodoodoodoodoo. When it connected, she was in her kitchen in Sacramento, an influencer-nice kitchen, bright white everything, a nightmare of minimalism. Her husband’s big head obstructed the view of whatever was to the right of her.
Anna’s husband’s parents had named him Willie. May called him William, because grown men weren’t called Willie. The man himself wanted to be called Will. But he wasn’t a Will. He was a William.
“We’re going to be in town in February,” Anna said. ‘In town,’ not ‘home.’ ‘February,’ not ‘after New Year’s.’
“That’s great!” May said, just a touch too brightly. “We should get dinner. You, me, Loulou.”
“And—”
“And William, yeah.”
They talked about the usual stuff. Anna asked about the podcast, even though he’d probably forgotten to tell her in the first place and she’d had to find out via Louis.
She asked if he’d talked to their parents lately.
He hadn’t since Thanksgiving, and he knew she knew that, because Louis was a blabbermouth.
She mentioned something fantastical about a family trip back to their laojia—some place an hour out of Quanzhou where their father’s family came from.
Anna had been there once. May, too, technically, though he’d been a baby.
There was a cute picture of Anna being chased by a duck on a muddy road out in the country.
“So… I’m seeing someone,” May said. “It’s good.”
Anna narrowed her eyes and pushed her face closer to the camera. “Since when?”
“Since—technically September? But officially Christmas, so actually not that long ago and you can’t be mad at me!”
“May.”
“What! I’m telling you now!”
“What’s his name?”
“Cassiel.”
Anna squinted. “Like Supernatural?”
“No, Cass-ee-el. With an ass.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” She grinned. Behind her, Will existed, annoyingly. “I want to meet him. Bring him to dinner.”
“He’s—” What? Precise. Quiet. Likes cats. K-drama hot. A huge nerd. “He’s great.”
“I hope so,” she said.
His mom had sent a message on WeChat, early in the morning. He didn’t find it until the day was almost over.
It wasn’t a voice snippet this time, just Happy New Year, Son in Chinese and a photo of Dad’s niangao, golden-brown on a plate.
Her hands were visible at the edge of the frame.
May had opened it, looked at it, closed it.
It was too late to reply now anyway, so the message sat in his phone, unanswered, and the unanswered-ness was sticking like the niangao.
THE THURSDAY AFTER NEW YEAR