Page 96 of Angel of Thursdays

They made it back to the platform, saying nothing else. Once there, the sign above counted down from eight minutes. The tunnel air made Cassiel clear his throat and wish he’d packed a mask. May sat on the bench as they waited, staring out onto the tracks.

“I was thinking about the—” May began, then sighed, running one hand through his hair. It just about obscured the choppiness—the uneven patch where he’d attacked it with scissors because Cassiel had told him two too many times that it was too long. “—The doctor thing. I should go see someone before May.”

May, named for the month he was born in. Twenty-six in less than three months. Cassiel held what he wanted to say in his throat—you could make an appointment now—and swallowed it down.

“Good idea.”

May opened his mouth as if to say something back and then didn’t. There had been a lot of that today, between the two of them.

Cassiel glanced up. Four minutes to go. The wind rushed through the tunnel first—air displaced, ahead of the train—and May closed his eyes until the train arrived. Cassiel stayed standing.

Once on the train, they found two seats facing forward. May took the window seat this time, opening his phone. Cassiel saw a familiar teal icon and UI from the corner of his eye. STDY. He was aware that May still took gigs—not doing so would be ridiculous, and May often talked about what he called ‘side quests’—but this was the first time in months that Cassiel had seen the app itself.

Then the phone was locked, put away. Back to silence.

Cassiel retrieved his notebook from his bag, unscrewed the cap on the pen, and wrote.

Elizabeth “Betty” Wong Suet Ying. Cassette, ~1985, mono. Possible Sacramento source.

May glanced over. His eyes moved past the notes to the opposite column where Positions on Amplitude, Vol. 2 sat with three song titles beneath it and more crossed out. He’d made no progress on it.

“Is that a playlist?”

“It’s not done,” Cassiel told him, but he didn’t move the page away. He had shown him already on the ride in and received ‘Nice.’

“Yeah,” May hummed. “Three tracks would be a pretty short mix.”

“I may not finish it.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s too late.” May leaned in, breaching the gap, and circled the air around “No Ordinary Love” with one finger. “I already found you out. You like me.”

The words didn’t match but Cassiel wasn’t going to say it. He closed the notebook and set it between them while out of the corner of his eye he saw May’s mouth twitch into a self-satisfied smirk.

Through the tunnel, the train car rocking over the underwater stretch, Cassiel felt the pressure change in his jaw. Then the bay opened up through the glass beyond May’s head—an expanse of familiar grey, San Francisco a low shape in the distance that didn’t look like home from this angle. May leaned his shoulder against the window, breath fogging on the glass. He dragged that same finger through the condensation. Cassiel leaned half an inch forward to see.

A love heart, or a blob that resembled one.

“I need to take my dad’s jacket back to him,” May said, finger sliding down the glass. “My mom’s—ugh, concerned. It’s gonna turn into something. Probably dinner. Would you…”

Go with him to his parents’ house. Cassiel’s thumbnail dug into his index finger.

“Are you hiring me to be your date?” he asked.

May exhaled a laugh. “Depends on the rate.”

“No rate,” he said.

“Then… yeah. You wanna come to my parents’ house for dinner next week?”

A house he couldn’t find when it mattered. The parents at the table. The brother who had no love for Cassiel and wanted answers to questions May only wanted to avoid. None of it sounded good. But May was not hiding now. May was in the seat next to him and warm, tangible, exhausted.

“I don’t.” This was at least honest. “But I will.”

May turned from the window, his eyes soft from exhaustion, the all-nighter showing on his face.

“Cool,” he said. “Should be awful.”

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