Page 53 of Angel of Thursdays

Cassiel lay on his back. May was against his side, one arm across his chest, his breathing slow and settling. May was warm, lighter than he should be, quieter than he should be. Cassiel’s hand drifted, found May’s wrist. The pulse was there—steady, decelerating. He held it there and counted.

“Your heart rate’s dropping,” Cassiel said.

May laughed. Quiet, pressed against his ribs. “You’re counting?”

“Seventy-one.”

“Sixty-nine.”

“That’s not accurate.”

“No, but it’s funny.”

The sheets were disordered. The single pillow had migrated, would need retrieving. Outside, a bus passed on Balboa and the building shook faintly.

Three notes surfaced from Cassiel’s throat, hummed into the quiet above May’s head. May’s arm tightened across his chest, fractionally, and then relaxed.

Quiet. Almost. The turntable was in the other room, the platter still turning, the needle riding the groove it had been riding since the last song on Side A ended.

May’s hand moved. Slowly—up from Cassiel’s chest, along the side of his neck, and then two fingers rested against his cheek. The pressure was gentle, light, just tracing the bone. It felt familiar, though May had never touched him like this. With nothing more to do, say, control but this, his hand covered May’s. Thumb pressed against pinky finger, palm held against his face.

And May’s pulse was in his fingertips but the count was irrelevant. What was relevant was the hand on his cheekbone, the body beside him, in the apartment that was not his apartment, where the light was not his light. The only thing he recognized was the person next to him, the person whose hands were warm and teeth were sharp.

“Where’d you get to?”

Cassiel couldn’t answer. He’d lost track of the count.

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.

* * *