Page 69 of Angel of Thursdays

“You left without telling anyone.”

“I know.”

“I called you eleven times.”

“I know, I—” May’s hand came out of the pocket. The key was in his palm. He looked at it like he was thinking about giving it back. “I didn’t—I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was—I was going to go inside, and call you, and then I didn’t.”

Cassiel sat down on the step. The concrete was cold through his slacks. Six inches between them—distance they’d held at Sparrow, the measurement that had been narrowing for months into insignificance and tonight needed to be precisely where it was.

The fog moved through the streetlight in slow shifts. Somewhere down the block, a car door slammed shut and a bus rumbled in the distance.

They sat there, listening to traffic. Cassiel’s hands were on his knees. He could feel the questions piling up behind his lips—where, why, how long, what happened, are you okay, why the hell⁠—

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.” May pressed the heel of his hand against his eye. Cassiel wanted to bat it away, pull it away, tell him to stop it, his eyes were already red. “I was playing with Jaewon. Everything was—normal, then I felt… wrong. I went to the bathroom, needed to… splash my face or something. But then I was on BART and I had to go somewhere and I guess I got confused because it’s Chinese New Year.”

There were tears in his eyes but his expression hadn’t changed.

“I went to my mom’s,” he said.

May’s mother. The woman who was ‘not great.’ The house Cassiel couldn’t find. May had gone there. Not here, not first.

“The head injury thing,” May said. “It does this sometimes. I get—I’m there but I’m not there. Like I can see everything fine but none of it’s real. And usually it’s like, a minute or two and it goes away. Tonight was… longer.” He rubbed his face. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Your mom—I’m sorry.”

“You got confused and went to your parents’ house,” Cassiel said, trying to make sense of it. His hands were numb.

“Yeah. I got chicken.” May pressed his hands against his cheeks, smearing the tears. “I—My mom let me in and I had some food and… that’s when I sort of, I came back. And I realized I shouldn’t be there and I thought, I should call you, but what would you say?”

He laughed shakily.

Cassiel gritted his teeth. There were a lot of things he wanted to say and he couldn’t say any of them even though the worry that had been churning inside him since he realized May was gone had now curdled into a blunt rage sitting in his throat and he had no choice but to swallow it down, to control it.

“We need to go inside,” he said.

May followed him through the gate, up the stairs. They went inside. The hallway, the shoes coming off—May’s placed against the wall, Cassiel’s dress shoes beside them. The bedroom lamp came on, and May stood there, and Cassiel did not want to be standing there.

He went to the kitchen and filled the kettle, waiting in the galley for the water to boil. His hands moved through the automatic sequence. Mug, loose leaf, tin on the shelf. May’s Otagiri mug, the Pink Lady. He filled it. The kettle clicked off. He carried the tea through.

May was sitting on the edge of the bed, the borrowed jacket still on, his hands in his lap. He looked at the tea and then at Cassiel and took the mug and wrapped both hands around it and didn’t drink.

“I’m—”

“Stop saying you’re sorry,” Cassiel said, not because it wasn’t owed, not because he thought it was insincere, but he just didn’t want to hear it. “Drink.”

“Okay.” May took a sip, winced at the heat, then set the mug down on the nightstand.

Cassiel rubbed at his ring, thumb grazing hard over each bead, not looking at him, then sat down on the bed.

“You came here instead of your place. Because you wanted to explain.”

“No,” said May. “No. I was scared. I couldn’t call you. I couldn’t go back to Fremont. I didn’t want to go back to my place. That—It felt worse. Fuck. I don’t know, Cassiel, I wanted to see you. I thought… if I was here it’d prove I was still real. Or something.”

“‘Or something,’” Cassiel repeated. “I’m not a tool you use to confirm your reality against, May.”

“I know that, that’s not what I⁠—”

“Drink your tea.”