Chapter 24
MAY
THE TWENTY-SIXTH THURSDAY
May’s eye had been twitching for a full week by the time the next Thursday rolled around and the Gay Angel of Time and Temperance knocked on his door.
The floor was cold on his bare feet. He should have worn a cardigan, only he’d felted his nice one and it would belong to a hypothetical future cat he could own.
Not in this apartment. It would have to live with Cassiel, if Cassiel did not break up with him after meeting his mother, or upon seeing his T-shirt.
The door opened onto Cassiel standing there, not a hair out of place, looking K-drama hot in his expensive Japanese coat and navy scarf, holding a paper bag from Arizmendi.
“I brought breakfast,” Cassiel said. He seemed to be looking at the faces of the men on the Wrestleguy shirt. “You’re not dressed.”
“It is—” May squinted at the bag. Oil was collecting at the bottom of it, which was only ever a fantastic indication, and whatever was inside smelled good. “Not even nine.”
“We’re leaving at five.”
“That’s in eight hours.”
“Hm,” Cassiel said, as if the eight hours was not a valid protest, and walked past him into the apartment.
The 9 a.m. alarm went off while they were eating cheese rolls at the kitchen counter, the phone singing happily from his pocket. May froze with a piece of roll in his cheek.
Cassiel raised an eyebrow, flicked the crumb away with his thumb. May produced the phone from his pocket and set it on the counter, sliding the alarm away to silence it. But he knew Cassiel saw. Gay Angel, every Thursday.
“You’ve had that since August.” It should have been a question but it wasn’t.
“Yep,” May said.
Cassiel ate his cheese roll in halves, like a maniac. The mouth twitch was small. Most people wouldn’t have seen it.
“Since you’re here, eight hours early because you have a fake job… Did you want to do something? What are you up to?”
“I can’t be here without an agenda?” Cassiel asked.
“You don’t do things without an agenda.” May crunched his roll and crumbs exploded down the front of his shirt. He didn’t bother brushing them away. “Do you want the lowdown on the dinner? We can do the whole cover story thing again.”
Cassiel considered this a moment, glanced over at the notebooks on the counter, and May followed his gaze. The yellow notebook for STDY, the green for personal and miscellaneous, the purple that had started as purple, turned into Thursday, and become just Cassiel.
“Do you want a cover story?” he asked.
He could have meant for their relationship, but May couldn’t help thinking he probably also meant Seollal. May shook his head.
“Nah. My mom won’t do the ‘When and how did you meet’ thing. She might suspect a Homosexual Underground. Or Overground. She probably doesn’t want to know.”
“Then… What I do for a living. What school I attended. Where my family is from.”
“Right on the money,” May said. His boyfriend was so smart. He reached over and tried to take a bite of Cassiel’s remaining cheese roll only to have it yanked from him. He bit at the air and had the satisfaction of seeing a proper smile.
Cassiel took the purple notebook from its spot with one hand, undid the elastic and opened it to the index that May had obviously never filled out and never would, then started flipping. May tried not to think too hard about the incriminating things he might have written inside.
What had been the last thing in it? Jaewon’s portrait, probably.
“By the way,” he said, “your nephew wants to come to May Day. It’s an annual film festival held at my apartment where I get blackout drunk and watch b-movies while eating pasta bake. Is that cool?”
“I’ll ask his mother.”
“I’m gonna be a demon at his birthday party. Invite’s going to your place, though, which is gonna be awkward, because you’re—”
Cassiel raised an eyebrow.
“—an angel and you’d be bringing a demon as your plus one. Unless I also get an invite. I do, don’t I? Does your nephew know you’re an angel?”
“He’s aware,” Cassiel said. “Do you want help sorting your mail?”
“Huh?”
“You said the invite would be coming to mine. The invite is mail. You have a pile of mail.”
May stared at him incredulously. Something monumental had just happened. “Did you just pull a May? Did you just shittily associate your way into opening my mail?”
Every time Cassiel had walked into May’s apartment he’d seen the pile and left it alone.
“Do you want help?” he repeated.
“You are a piece of work, Cassiel Lim,” May said. “—Yes. Sure. I want help. Sort my fucking mail.”
While Cassiel sorted, May thumbed a text to Lauren:
May
Friendship test. Come to my birthday party.
Lauren
Ummm not really a test but duh yes?
I’m getting you a moss ball
Tell Cass he can’t get you a fucking moss ball
“She says you can’t get me a moss ball,” May reported. He didn’t know what that meant, but Cassiel clearly did, because he didn’t look up, just murmured a correction that his heart simply wasn’t in: “Marimo.”
Most of the mail was junk, plus the usual handful of bills addressed to his parents’ house that Louis dumped on the counter the last time he came over.
A UCSF envelope surfaced near the bottom.
May took it from him, opened it with his thumb, and looked at the billing summary long enough to know he didn’t want to look at the billing summary.
He folded it back into the envelope and put it on the counter.
“Medi-Cal,” Cassiel said, not looking up from the rest of the pile of mail.
May squeezed his eyes shut for a second, then sighed. “Yeah. I need to do that. I just—” Didn’t. Couldn’t write it down anywhere. No Sign up for health insurance before you get booted off your parents’ quest.
“It can be easier.” The words May had been expecting were I can help. “We’ll look into it.”
The two of them.
May paused for a second, glanced back to see Cassiel standing there, eerily still. Then May turned back to the wall and took down the Dragon calendar. Cassiel finished the pile.
The gold 福 at the center of the calendar had lost its luster, probably due to kitchen steam, but May liked to imagine it had something to do with May having sapped its lucky energy too. He folded it in half and threw it in the vague direction of the trashcan.
The Snake calendar had been where he left it by the toaster, a boss battle he’d been putting off since that first week after Chinese New Year. He sighed, threw it up where the Dragon had been, slightly askew. New year, same him.
May swung up onto the kitchen counter next to the nearly-sorted mail and clapped his hands.
“Right. Dinner. This is gonna be a huge shocker because I’m not like this at all, but Teresa yaps.
She loves to talk. She’s gonna be—okay, eighty percent chance she throws five micro-aggressions at you at once.
She’s going to ask you if you’ve seen Crash Landing On You.
She’s gonna ask if you know any of the guys from BTS. ”
“I know all of BTS.”
May blinked. “What, personally? What does V smell like—”
“May.”
“No, seriously, what—”
“Your dad.”
Right. He had a father.
“He’s quiet.” May shrugged. “He just doesn’t really talk. He cooks. The food’s all him. That’s his thing.”
His dad’s quiet was not the same as Cassiel’s dad’s quiet, but May didn’t know how to say it. It was a quiet that he had grown up around, the thing he and his mother and Louis and sometimes Anna’s loudness flowed around, not inside.
“He’s just gonna be there, probably. I don’t know. He’s just some guy. My mom’s the one who’s going to be insane.”
Cassiel’s bare finger tapped the counter once.
“And there’s Louis. You’ve met. He’s warming up to you.”
“He isn’t.”
“Well, no,” May agreed.
He slid off the counter eventually, and Cassiel followed him over to the couch.
They did nothing for a long time after that.
Cassiel watched something on his phone with his headphones on.
May lay on the other end with his feet tucked under Cassiel’s leg and did not sleep, though he came close twice.
Neither of them mentioned the UCSF envelope on the counter.
It was a later-thing. It would not always be a later-thing.
As the morning became afternoon, they left the apartment. On a normal day, May would be at work at this hour, and so would Cassiel, with only a break for his precious chicken katsu sandwich.
They walked down Balboa to Chino’s for lunch where May spent more red envelope money on a burrito because this was that type of day.
Then back to the apartment. May decided to share the same end of the couch this time, falling asleep for real with his face tucked into Cassiel’s collar halfway through a video about American Psycho: The Musical.
Cassiel nudged him awake at quarter to five. May dragged himself upright, yawned until his jaw cracked, and became aware of Cassiel studying the top of his head. He started to get up.
“Nope,” May said.
“Don’t move,” Cassiel said, stern as anything.
“It’s fine—”
But Cassiel was already in the kitchen. He came back with the scissors—the same ones that had caused the problem—and stood behind the couch. May sat. The cuts were small, efficient, not a haircut so much as a correction. Hair fell on his shoulder. The whole affair took two minutes.
“She would have noticed,” Cassiel said, which was true.
May brushed some hair off his shirt, then grabbed the bomber jacket and his backpack. The paper bag with his dad’s jacket was still by the couch next to the miscellaneous piles of other junk. He picked it up.
“Ready?”
Cassiel’s pocket made a snapclick. He nodded.
* * *
The L-Taraval dropped them three blocks away from the house. May carried the paper bag under one arm. A tiny white cat watched them from a porch railing. May waved at it as Cassiel took a picture.