Page 99 of Angel of Thursdays

When had he last been on a road trip? College, definitely, had to be…

“You think water grows on trees?” came Ah-Keung’s voice. May looked up, shaken out of his daydream. Ah-Keung pointed at the problem.

“Doesn’t even make sense,” May grumbled, turning off the tap that he had just let run.

He refocused on the job, on the next five seconds and the five after that. That was one of his tricks—thirty percent success rate—for staying on task, made easier because there was something he was actively trying to not think about. The dinner. It was always some dinner.

May had to stop having dinner.

His phone said 3:58 when Auntie Tsang stuck her head into the kitchen and waved him out. May dried his hands on the apron, hung it on the hook, pushed through the strip curtain into the front of the shop as he had done hundreds of times before, and almost tripped and fell on his ass.

Cassiel was standing inside the restaurant.

Cassiel. Inside Lau Kee. On a Thursday afternoon. In Chinatown. In the same blue and white sweater from that morning, looking straight at May with his eyebrows slightly raised.

“Hello,” Cassiel said.

Auntie Tsang did not serve, usually, but Nina, the girl who had replaced May out front, had needed the day off. The shop was not full, never was during this hour. Just two old men at the table by the window, both eating noodles, and a woman waiting for a takeout order.

“You can sit,” Auntie told Cassiel.

“He will sit!” May said, a fraction too loudly, scurrying to his boyfriend’s side and touching his arm. “I’ve, I’ve got it, Auntie.”

The woman retreated to behind the register, her arms folded, eyes hidden beneath the lid of the Eagles cap.

“It’s four o’clock,” Cassiel said as May led them to the only table in the restaurant that was far enough from both the noise of the TV and the kitchen. There was also no view of the bathroom from here, and fake bamboo provided some cover from prying eyes.

“Yeah, I know that. Did you know you’re in Chinatown?” May pointed at the seat he’d selected for Cassiel. It had a direct line of sight to the front door.

Cassiel raised his eyebrows, which is something he did when he was about to be a smartass. He stood there in front of the table, not sitting like he’d been told, so May stood too, and they just stared at each other. At least two pairs of eyes were watching them.

“Do you not want me here?”

“No, I—I just didn’t know you were taking the… Chinatown Guy thing seriously,” May sighed. He pulled his chair out and sat down, relieved when Cassiel followed his cue.

“The siu yuk rice is supposed to be very good,” Cassiel said.

The cover story from forever ago. They had made up an entire fake relationship that involved Cassiel coming into Lau Kee on his break and ordering siu yuk rice, and they had never, in their real relationship, executed any part of it because Cassiel did not come to Chinatown.

“Isn’t it…” May gestured around, sighed. The lighting, the noise, the smell, the noise. “This sucks for you.”

“Yes.”

May was oxygen-deprived from not breathing. How long did it take for your brain cells to start dying? A minute? Something like that. It hadn’t been a minute. His fingertips were starting to slide against the edge of the table, which he’d been gripping.

“So,” he tried again. “Are you actually here for the rice? Did you come to pick me up?”

Cassiel did not answer immediately, which was Cassiel mulling something over. May watched him, and let the potential answers tumble around in his own skull while he waited. Cassiel’s hand came out of the coat pocket and produced the hair clip May had given him between his fingers. He clicked it once, slow.

Click.

“I’m here because your sister told me about hide-and-go-seek.”

“Okay, you’re really messing up the whole dynamic we’ve got going on, Cassiel, do you know that? Because I’m the one who says a bunch of non-sequiturs and you go ‘What,’ only now I’m⁠—”

“We spoke at the restaurant,” Cassiel cut in. “When you took Louis outside.”

Right. May had known something had happened at the table at the same time he’d been begging Louis not to be a chode for one night. He had known it on the night, and he’d known it at breakfast because Anna had been holding something back.