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“Thanks for noticing my lemon soap,” August mumbles.
“I bet your subway babe noticed it,” Myla says, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.
“Jesus,” August says. “No, there was definitely, like, a note of finality. It wasn’t ‘not right now.’ It was ‘not ever.’”
Myla sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe you wait and try again if you see her.”
It’s easy for Myla to say, with her perfectly highlighted cupid’s bow and self-satisfied confidence and hot boyfriend, but August has the sexual prowess of a goldfish and the emotional vocabulary to match. This was the second try. There’s no third.
“Babe, can you grab me those green onions out of the fridge?” Myla asks.
Niko, who has moved on to eyeballing his homemade Alcoholado collection with extreme scrutiny, says, “One second.”
“I got it,” August says, and she pulls herself up and pads over to the fridge.
The green onions are on an overcrowded shelf between a to-go box of pad thai and something Niko has been fermenting in a jar since August moved in. She hovers once she’s passed them off, examining the photos on the fridge door.
At the top: Myla with faded purple hair, orangey at ends, beaming in front of a mural. A blurry polaroid of Wes allowing Myla to smear cupcake icing down his nose. Niko, his hair a little longer, making faces at a display of radishes at an outdoor market.
Below, some older ones. A tiny Myla and her brother swaddled in towels next to a sign announcing the beach in Chinese, two parents draped in shawls and sunhats. And a photo of a child August can’t quite place: long hair topped with a pink bow, pouting in a Cinderella dress as Disney World glows in the background.
“Who’s this?” August asks.
Niko follows her finger and smiles softly. “Oh, that’s me.”
August looks at him, his sharp eyebrows and steady presence and slim cut jeans, and, well, she did wonder. She’s habitually observant, though she does try to never assume with things like this. But an aggressive kind of warmth rushes into her, and she smiles back. “Oh. Cool.”
That makes him laugh, hoarse and warm, and he pats August on the shoulder before wandering off to poke at the plant in the corner next to Judy. August swears that thing has grown a foot since she moved in. Sometimes she thinks it hums to itself at night.
It’s funny. That’s one big thing out of the way between the four of them, but it’s also a small thing. It makes a difference, but it also makes no difference at all.
Myla hands out bowls, and Wes shuts his book, and they sit on the floor around the steamer trunk and divvy up chopsticks and pass around a dish of rice.
Niko turns up the volume on House Hunters, which they’ve been hate-watching with the cable Myla stole from the apartment next door. The wife of this couple sells lactation cookies, the husband designs custom stained-glass windows, and they have a budget of $750,000 and a powerful need for an open-concept kitchen and a backyard for their child, Calliope.
“Why do rich people always have the worst possible taste?” Wes says, feeding a piece of broccoli to Noodles. “Those countertops are a hate crime.”
August snorts into her dinner, and Niko chooses that moment to whip the Polaroid camera off the bookshelf. He snaps a photo of August in an unflattering laugh, a baby corn halfway lodged in her windpipe.
“Goddammit, Niko!” she chokes out. He crows with laughter and strides off in his socks.
She hears the snap of a magnet—he’s added August to the fridge.
It doesn’t feel like a Friday that should change everything.
It’s the same as every Friday. Fight the shower for hot water (she’s finally getting the hang of it), cram cold leftovers into her mouth, make her way to campus. Return a book to the library. Sidestep a handsy stranger next to the falafel cart and trade tips for street meat. Hike back up the stairs because her name’s not Annie Depressant and she doesn’t have the nerve to ask about the service elevator inside Popeyes.
Change into her Pancake Billy’s T-shirt. Scrub at the circles under her eyes. Tuck her knife into her back pocket and make her way to work.
At least, she thinks, there will always be Billy’s. There’s Winfield, gently explaining the daily specials to a new hire who looks as scared shitless as August probably did on her first day. There’s Jerry, grumbling over the griddle, and Lucie, perched on a countertop, monitoring it all. Like the subway, Billy’s has been here for her every day, a constant at the center of her confusing New York universe—a dingy, grease-soaked little star.
Halfway into her shift, she sees it.
She’s ducking into the back hallway, checking her phone: a text from her mom, a dozen notifications in the household group chat, a reminder to refill her MetroCard. She stares at the wall, trying to remember if the MetroCard machine at her new station works, wishing she hadn’t had to change her whole commute—
And, oh.
There are hundreds of photos cluttering the walls of Billy’s, mismatched frames bumping together like bony shoulders. August has passed a lot of odd hours between rushes counting celebrities who’ve dined here, the vintage Dodgers photos wedged between Ray Liotta and Judith Light. But there’s this one photo, a foot to the left of the men’s room door, a sepia-toned four-by-six in a blue pearl frame. August must have looked past it a thousand times.
