“Would you check out these filing numbers for me and update the book for the CA on Friday? And check if Eddie has sent the package for the interrogatory because we’ll be reprimanded, AGAIN…”
“I actually… Can’t… Tonight.” Looking at the corner of the monitor, I’m already twenty minutes past my official working hours but that’s not something you actually consider in an environment like this. You kind of just give up when you’ve already fallen asleep twice, when the letters start getting mixed up or when you feel like the only way to solve your misery is by setting the trashcan on fire and then throwing it on your floor supervisor’s head. The latter was more of a Nina-solution, not a me-solution.
Nina, who by the way, literally rose up like a meerkat on the opposite side of the desks and gave me a questioning eyebrow-raise. You never say no. Which isn’t true. I totally, totally say no – sometimes. When I feel like that’s reasonable.
I just like being nice.
“Oh… Well, I…”
“I can try coming in earlier tomorrow? Maybe?” I just couldn’t take it, she looked so shocked. And it’s not like I actually use my mornings for anything, right? I can easily get up an hour earlier or something, maybe that will be better, actually, less people on the train. No one to ‘accidentally’ grope you on the J line. Yeah, that sounds fun. “Beth’s not in tomorrow before noon, anyway, I’ll have loads of free time to catch up.
“Sure… Yeah, sure. Just make sure they’re on Carey’s desk by 1 PM, okay?”
She knickey-knocks away on her heels, and I check my phone. No new messages.
“Who is it?”
I’m the embodiment of innocence when I meet Nina’s eyes. “Who’s who?”
“You know who.”
“Ralph Fiennes…?” Weak. Very weak.
She explains to me like I’m five, “You’re only leaving early when you’re going out with someone.”
“I’m not early though. My work hours have ended almost half an hour ago.” Weaker.
“Are you intentionally avoiding the unspoken question or do you just hate me?”
“I’m not avoiding it,” I insist. PC out, pens stacked, I put my screen-glasses back in the case and hide it in my bag. “It’s just none of your business.”
“My bed is directly across the wall from YOUR bed, so it kind of is.”
“I swear I won’t bring anyone up.”
“So you’re going to their place then? That’s worse. You know that I must live vicariously through you, the lesbian dating scene isn’t what they make it out to be!”
“It’s not like that. It’s not a date.”
“Who is it? Do I know them? Oh my GOD, it’s not fucking Zion again, is it?” Her face scrunches up comically, like she’s just tasted the worst ‘DIY easy dessert inspired by TikTok’ cake ever. “Come ooooon, that dude is so trash. Not even good trash, like, hot mess trash. Just… cold, disgusting garbage that’s been sitting on the sidewalk for three weeks.”
“Like I said: it’s not a date. Also, not anyone I’ve ever dated OR matched on any sites, I swear. He’s like… ” I wanna say friend, I really do, but that’s kinda a lie, isn’t it? Looking back at it, I start to recoil into myself at every single interaction I’ve ever had with Tay before, my pre-teen ass with her barely concealed attempts at hiding the MASSIVE crush I had on him belongs in some cringe compilation for real. That was some ‘country buuoooOOOy, I love yoooUUU’ level shit, kid you not. I’m convinced the only reason he never asked for a restraining order against me is because he didn’t have the money for it. “A family… associate…?”
That’s just not right.
“His little brother used to be fostered by my parents.”
“And he just what? Messaged you out of the blue?”
“I mean, yeah, kind of. Said that he saw one of my posts the other day and thought we should catch up or something.”
“’Catch up?’” She asks with one of her eyebrows raised. “Is he single?”
“How should I know?” It’s not like I spent a good four hours yesterday trying to backhack his last six years in tags and posts and found this girl who had a couple mentions and lived here in the city but had her insta private so I googled HER until I found out which school she went to so I can find a name from her public yearbook she’ll probably just barely remember and create a fake account and ask to see her profile only to find out it was a different Taylor Zheng who lived in NYC…! That totally didn’t happen…!
But she knows me better. And even if she didn’t, the way my voice squeaked would have given the clue.
“You gotta admire straight guy’s courage. I wish I’d hit up girls whenever I’m bored and want to score, instead, I wait for them to do it so you know it’s never gonna happen…!”
This was the best ‘I’ll allow it’ I can get out of her so I zip up my coat, ready to leave. “Why do you assume he’s straight?”
“When it’s a guy, you always go for the straights. And they’re always trash.”
I would objects to that but the facts do not support the basis of ‘I do not’ so I chose not to admit nor deny anything and just go towards the elevators.

I’ve managed to surprise myself by not being anxious up until the moment I stepped out of the office. From that point my heart seemed to beat a little bit faster with every step I took. By the time I opened the heavy glass door of the Five Guys – look, I tried looking up normal places but I doubted Tay’s image fit unsweetened herbal bubble tea or iced skinny caramel macchiato, and I dared not go near the popular grill places at dinnertime along 4th Ave in Park Slope which was halfway between Sunset Park and my office so Five Guys it is –, my throat seemed to close up.
Part of me expected him to bail, not because that would fit his profile, the opposite, actually, I just had a hard time working out in my head why he would want to meet me. I mean, the last time we saw each other… I wanted to feel good about helping him and JJ, I really did, but I just couldn’t, so I didn’t go to court with my parents, and I also deleted him on Facebook. It didn’t feel right to have him on there and it’s not like I suspected that he wanted anything further to do with me. He never tried, anyway. Not until now.
It's not hard to spot him, it’s a long, narrow place with the booths and tables pushed against the walls and he’s situated looking at the door. It almost makes me want to turn around. Almost.
“Heeey!” I shuffle up against the table. He’s still hot. Why is he still hot? Why is that my first thought? I’m just as bad as men. Gross. Do we hug? Do we NOT hug? I mean. He’s hot. I’m gonna hug. And he’s a guy, so he has to take it – ew, no. No, no. We don’t go there, Mac, you know that. You’re better than that.
…
Am I though?
Words. Use words. “Do I hug you or is that weird and you’re gonna bolt out the door like my cat?” Not these words.

Mac seems to be on all the major social media platforms and then some. Some I ain't even heard of, in fact.
She posted several pictures of her graduation on Facebook way back in 2020 – my favorite year out of all the years –, so I’ve been aware that she went on to get some law-type degree. Girl wasn’t kidding, I guess.
She wasn’t exactly my first stop, since I’m not usually one to ask for favors. I browsed through pages upon pages of Google results trynna find a lawyer who would be willing to strut into court and go “Your Honor, my low-income bachelor of a client who works twelve-hour shifts a day is indeed the best candidate to take custody of the child” just for me. All of this at a friendly rate, of course. Can’t cough up the deposit in full so I’m willing to explore alternative payment methods if the lawyer is hot. Needless to say, I wasn’t calling attorneys, they were calling me.
And then there's reality: me sitting at my laptop with Harriet MacLaine’s DM’s open at 2AM on a Tuesday, thinking...
Here goes nothing, I guess.

***

I’m sitting at the far end of the joint, trynna find something to look at on my phone. I came straight from the gym, bangs still kinda damp at the lengths – with water, not sweat, ‘cause I’m no wild animal, even if I did agree to throw a nine-year reunion at fucking Five Guys. Arguably lazy of me to drop in with a duffle bag, but it was the only way I could fit a session in this week. Besides, I’m about to beg for legal advice at a friendly discount, so it’s not like I was gonna leave this place with my ego intact, anyway. Maybe I should have gone all the way and showed up with a little red ball for a nose.
I glance up every time someone steps in, squinting at one suspicious girl as she fights her way through the door. That shit so heavy it’s almost like they don’t want people coming in here – or leaving. Takes me a few seconds to decide for sure that it’s her, brows flashing in surprise when I do.
I mean…
Wassup?
Thankfully, she’s looking all good-girl and I’m only stupid for the ones that will stab me to death using the wings of their eyeliner. Might get a bit freaky otherwise, seeing as she’s my brother’s ex-foster-sister. Not that that would realistically dissuade me, but can we pretend it would so I get to act like I’m better than the, uh, absolutely not-me, absolute creeps beating it to step-sister porn? Thank you.
– Heh-ay! – I chuckle in a way that sounds pleasantly surprised that she actually showed, which I kinda am, no lie. Last time we met, I took her parents to court, not very chivalrous of me.
I stand up to greet her, waddling out from between the table and the wall like a giant penguin. Staff better be on alert ‘cause once I get my usual Five Guys order, I won’t even fit through here, and I don’t think Mac's pull game will suffice to un-stuck me. Poor girl looks like half my bench press and I take great pride in being immovable. I’ve taken part in many an ambulance ride in my life and if I wasn't the unconscious one for nearly all of them, I would have told the damn kidnappers to just let me kick the fucking bucket in peace. I don’t need y’all carrying me around, it’s embarrassing and expensive. Some J.D. from Scrubs lookin’ shrimp wakes me to a shiny new ten-K bill and expects me to thank him? Bitch, I’d fold your ass right here if my neck wasn’t in braces, put me back to sleep.
Mac asks me if we should hug or nah and inside I’m like, oh noooo, that would be hooorribleee. For real now, who the fuck doesn’t like hugging girls, you got autism or some shit? Get outta here.
“Uuuhh-ghff, yeah, sure,” I sputter in mild surprise, blinking with my brows raised. I was gonna go for something more creative, but the question took me off guard (especially the cat part), and I’m not that witty, aight? So I spread my arms for a hug, letting her come to me so she doesn’t feel like a fucking solar eclipse is coming right at her personally.
When we’re done hugging, I clear my throat and say, “Long time no see,”, then I waddle back to my seat. The cheap wooden chair creaks loudly underneath my weight when I sit down – oh, shut up, Ikea, I’m not even that heavy. Go “eeeeek” one more time and watch me disassemble your ass.
“Thanks for showing,” I deadpan, gesturing at Mac. Knowing that I called her here for a favor makes this kinda, like, one-sidedly awkward for me. Just wait ‘til I whip it out, girl, it’ll be two-sided then.
(Whip out the favor, I mean. The favor.)
First things first, I let my knuckle drop onto the tabletop and turn my head towards the counter – I’m fucking starving, so let's get to the “So what you been up to” part and the “Help me adopt my nephew” part later.
“So… What would you like to order?”
Pfffff. WhAt wOuLdsT yE fAir MaiDeN likEtH to cOnSuME? I don’t know, some girls got that beaming-up-at-you energy that makes you adopt a slightly nicer (or at least more decent) tone than with other people. And I don’t mean talking to them like kids, ‘cause I don’t even talk nicer to kids, especially not boys. It’s a cruel world out there, better get ready and catch up on the vocab, right? Pay your fucking taxes, Jimmy.
(I know, I know. Kids ain’t even called Jimmy these days, they’re called Xzayvian or Facebook or some shit.)
I turn back to her and purse my lips in an awkward attempt at a smile. She's still got freckles.

He has this weird look on him and I can’t help but let the self-consciousness wash over me like… I know he hasn’t been thinking about me these past few years, I’m not THAT delusional, but I still feel like I should’ve made more of an effort. It’s pettiness, if anything; my fourteen-year-old, Sam Smith-listening self still refuses to accept that MAYBE he simply wasn’t interested, no-no, it had to be a me-problem and I had to prove him (and all those other people after him) wrong by having this massive glowup by the time I’m 25. Because when you’re fifteen, you look at people in their twenties and think: they look like they’re living the good life, they don’t have curfews, they go to actual parties and they’re just generally so cool…!
And then you turn 25 and realize the only difference is you need to pay your bills and if you lean an inch to the wrong direction during sleep, you won’t be able to turn your neck all the way for days. So yeah, sashaying into Five Guys after nine hours at the office with my Nike Airs and my empty lunchbox smelling like soy sauce filling up my whole bag like I’m trying to steal a whole watermelon from 7-Eleven isn’t the look I’ve been envisaging for a reunion. It doesn’t give as much ‘legendary’ as ‘leg and dairy’.
But then my other half is like… I shouldn’t give more. If my parents found out I’m meeting him, they might just cut me out of their will and I would deserve it. It’s not like it matters, anyway. I’m sure he doesn’t care and he was just bored or something.
So we do hug and I love hugging, it’s nice, I also love guy’s hoodies because they smell good and why does he seem even taller? Unfair. It’s almost like he just walks around being – tall – and has no consideration for midgets like me who have not grown one quarter of an inch since fifth grade. It’s cool. I like it. You get an uncontested view of stranger’s armpits so there’s that.
It doesn’t matter. Stop acting stupid. I try to rein in my smile so it’s less creepy ‘cause you know what? He hasn’t tried to contact me for years, so I’m well in my rights as a woman to consider that a personal attack. I should. I really should.
… Damn that’s hard. How do other people go around resenting each other?
“Yeah, no, I… I mean, you did surprise me but I like surprises so…” It’s not like I wouldn’t have come for anyone else, I mean, I have a hard times saying no to strangers, too, that’s how I ended up driving this girl I just met on Tinder to Bedford Hills so she can pick up her ex that just got out of prison. I even bought them McDonalds on the way back but luckiely they weren’t too pushy on joining them at her apartment because that’s really not my thing and I was weirded out and I mean… I was kind of sure I saw them actually lockpicking the door so I quickly drove away.
Not that I think Tay’s very similar to a Chilean lesbian girl who was convicted for the past five years for armed robbery and aggravated assault but “got out for being a good girl and it was a bunch of patriarchal B-S anyway”, buuuuuuuut…
“A cardiac arrest, probably”, I admit. I usually prefer Five Guys to other fast food because you don’t have a shit ton of options which always makes my order take ten minutes longer, and whatever you get is probably gonna be great. But now I start to feel like I should’ve offered a fancier place, a proper grill bar at least or something because back in the day we used to go to Five Guys a lot; I remember back in the late 2000s it used to be such a big deal because you know, you had everything is New York except that one thing you didn’t, and no matter how similar that thing was to everything else it was new and exciting so obviously better.
Middle-school me however wasn’t exactly prime me, you know. And normally I wouldn’t assume that he remembers that much but he has this weird look on him so I continue on with second-guessing. “I don’t have cash on me so I’ll go pay. You want me to get yours or…?” I don’t really give him a choice because I’m already up, sans my bag that he has to watch over now. That’s my favorite lunchbox in there, he better not let anyone else have it. And I just hate it when others pay for my food, even temporarily.
At any rate, sooner or later I settle back into my seat with a bacon-cheece burger and a milkshake I probably shouldn’t drink without having a clean toilet nearby but my bladder will just have to get over it.
“I half expected you to change your mind, to be honest. I mean, coming here. What’s with the bag?” I ask, nodding towards it while cradling a strawberry flavored instant brain freeze with an ‘it’s fine’ smile because no, mom, I’m perfectly capable of making good choices and freezing my throat off is one of them. “Are you a traveling salesman now? Wha’chu sell, insurance?” I hardly give him time to answer because one, it’s not hard to find him on the NYPD’s website since they are trying to become transparent and all, and two, speaking helps with the freeze-damage, and third, I’m kinda still thinking he might change my mind so I’m trying to scramble his feed with talking. “Oooh, did you get cajun fries? I always forget to ask for it. Wanna trade, like, five… No, six plain?”

I’m about to ask if I can pay for her cardiac arrest, but she’s up before I can utter a word,  already headed to the counter. I turn sideways in my seat and open my mouth, about to contest, but, I mean… Do I just leap after her like, “nO m’LaDy, aLLoWeth Me pAyEtH f’R ThEe”?
Nah, that ship’s sailed. Goddamn – am I slow or is she fast?
“‘S cool, I’ll get mine,” I wave after her before turning my head and scratching the nape of my neck, making that “eeh…” type face, baring my lower set of teeth. I reaaaaally shoulda paid, man.
This is about to be the third time in our lives that I’m trying to get something out of her. First time was when I used the story of her almost drowning to try and get recruited into the Coast Guard – conveniently leaving out the part where the whole thing was kinda my fault to begin with –, second time was when Jason and I got her to give us advice on how to legally remove him from her parents, and this time around I’m about to ask her to help me legally remove Jason’s kid from him. Why? 'Cause her parents were right and I wasn’t ready to properly raise a problem child on my own, and I’m not so sure what makes me more of a fit the second time around, honestly.
Holy shit, what a plan. Fuckin’ Megamind over here.
As soon as she sits down in front of me, I tap my palm against the table, grunting as I stand up, “Aaaand now I gotta get the bacon cheese, too.” I was thinking Willpower Wednesday and then she comes and hits me with the food porn. Can’t be grazing on a veggie sandwich now.
When I return, the first thing that probably appears in her field of vision is my massive…… tray of food. Hey, I just burned like four hundred calories at the gym, gotta replenish on two thousand. I guess I could try and exert some self control, but back in the day my child therapist told me everyone needed a bad habit, and I took that as board certified confirmation that I have done absolutely nothing wrong in my life, ever.
I purse the corners of my lips and knit my brows at her while I unwrap my burger.
“Why would I change my mind?” I stuff a mouthful of fries in my face. “I waf the one who called you here, remember?” I swallow and pause the chewing for a second, looking at my bag when she motions at it. “Oh, that? My emotional baggage.”
I turn back to her, my smile signaling one of those relatably self-deprecating millennial moments that I bet she thinks is cringeeey. I used to ironically imitate this type of “humor” so often back in the twenty-tens that it slowly morphed its way into my personality. I’ve become my own worst enemy, I can barely look in the mirror, man.
Biting into my burger, I look down and flash a brow when she asks if I sell insurance, that smile still tugging at one corner of my mouth. It stretches wider when she offers to trade five, “no, six” plain fries for the cajun ones. Where does she even get all this stuff?
“What, did the plain-cajun exchange rate just go up right there?” I intone, casually pushing my cup of fries in the middle. It’s the least payment I can offer for legal advice that would otherwise cost me the equivalent of an entire industrial shipment of fries. “Fry away.”
…Not gonna lie, I’m kinda proud of that one.
She’s probably wondering why I even called her here – probably thinks I saw her pics and decided to slide into her DM’s at 2AM on a Tuesday, figuring it’s free real estate after that nine-year grace period or something. I mean, I guess I kinda am that clown sometimes, but for fuck's sake, everyone's got moments they ain’t proud of when they down bad at 2AM, okay?
Not with my brother’s foster-sister whose parents probably hate my guts, though.
Unless…
“So…” I begin languidly, tongue trynna get something out of my teeth. “…You single?”
There’s this one-second, deadpan silence before I snort, waving in negation.
“Jhhhst kidding, just fuckin’ around,” I chuckle breathlessly, shoulders shaking one more time as I continue, “I-hi… I, uh, just wanted to, um... I ‘on’t know, it’s been almost a decade, and… And I was wondering how you guys were doing an’ all. I mean, we didn’t exactly, um… Part on the best terms.”
My brows meet in the middle for a split second as I blink, making that “Fuck, I’m so intrigued right now” type face. And I am, I do care what they’ve been up to, but with the favor I’m about to ask kind of lingering at the back of my mind, that shit got my asshole clenched tight right as we speak. I mean, she’s well in her rights to tell me to fuck off, and it's not like I got a backup. She is the backup.
“And I prolly shoulda reached out earlier, so…” I don’t really have an excuse, so I just awkwardly gesture at her with my burger. “…Yeah. No hard feelings, I hope.”

“Why not?” I ask, shrugging. “Something could’ve come up. You know, more…” Interesting. Or someone more interesting. Happens. “Important or… Dunno. I just had a hard time envisioning you actually sitting across from me after all these years I guess.” I’ll try not to go into detail about how I believe in this envisioning stuff, usually; if I can’t imagine it actually happening, then it probably won’t. As far as I can recall, he thought it was stupid. But maybe it’s only because he’s an Aries and they’re notoriously defiant.
And maybe he was also partly right, since he is here, despite my hunch, with his Mount Doom of food and I realize I can’t really recall a time when it was just the two of us. I mean, I had plenty of that in my maladaptive daydreams but it was almost always with JJ – I was supposed to be chaperoning them or something, as if Tay was about to bundle him up into his hoodie like a kangaroo and make a run for it. A part of me wanted to ask about him but the other part… I mean, he was… He was JJ. We all tried what we could but sometimes I’ll admit, he was more of a burden than anything else and it got much calmer in the house after he left, even with my parent fuming about the CPS investigating us for no reason.
“No, I just recalculated how much seems an appropriate amount to steal. Everyone knows Cajun is the superior one.” I was about to say ‘what is my self-worth’, but maybe we’re not there yet, and my self-deprecating humor is always fifty-fifty, it’s either funny or I get a lecture out of it.
So I have my – his, but my – Cajun fries and a piece of chewy bacon connecting my mouth to the burger like a Dadaist nod towards Lady and the Tramp when he asks if I’m single and for a moment I wonder if too much cholesterol causes hallucinations. He did not just ask that.
And he didn’t, not really. Just kidding. Sure. Joke. Funny. “Heh”, goes my overplayed yet unsure one-syllable laugh but as soon as I manage to chew through the bacon, I plaster a wide smile on my face. ‘Cause yeah, it’s a joke, it was funny, I don’t have to make him uncomfortable just because I’m weird. Just kidding. Yeah, it’s not like it could be anything else but a joke, get yourself together, girl, you’re not sixteen anymore.
“That’s one way to put it”, I breath out a languid laugh. It’s been a long time, and even though I doubt my parents could ever talk about him without tensing up – not that they usually wouldn’t rather avoid the subject altogether –, whatever he did that I aided a little bit, it’s not the end of the world. “Not your usual origin story, huh?”
Pointing it out does make me question what the hell I’m doing here again. He just wanted to ask how we were doing. Like he couldn’t have asked that in a message like every normal person. I shush that warning voice in my head like I always do. I might be unsure about why someone wants to spend time with me but I won’t complain.
“Yeah, no, I… I mean, I was never…” Angry? No, that’s not true, ‘cause I was angry for a little bit but mainly for the wrong reasons. “I thought it was for the better. And I still think so. My parents don’t really agree, but…” I shrug it away nonchalantly. It’s been years. They’re not one to keep the fire burning under resentment, either. “They didn’t keep on the foster thing for long after that. We had, umm… Two other kids for a shorter period, their mother got them back, and after that they started to concentrate on the center. They’re still doing that.” He wanted to hear about how ‘we’ were doing so I guess that entails them. “Oliver got his MD recently. He wants to be… A word I can’t pronounce. But you know, an ENT doctor. Don’t ask why, he goes on these weird-ass rants about sinuses and the nuances of the brilliance of the human body fulfilling itself in your neck-head area…” I look to the side with a nose-wrinkling grimace because it has been something I’ve been listening to at every family event ever since he decided on a specialty. And it’s always during dinner. Why is it always coming up at dinner? Shaking my head, I go back to smiling, “It’s weird. He's weird. But he got engaged to his girlfriend last year, Aniyah, she’s in anesthesiology, so he got something out of his weirdness. And Ian… made something blow up last science fair and he swears it was on purpose…?” I would really like to add anything else to Ian’s list of achievements but there’s nothing. He stays in his room and shoots people who swear at him. He says they’re his friends but I really don’t know. Although Nina does swear a lot.
“I finished legal studies, sooo I work at the Legal Aid Society here in Brooklyn, on Livingston…? I’m basically a glorified secretary but it’s cool.” I press that by munching on a fry like a divorced white dad with three kids living in a motel. “I tried Law School but it costs, like, a shit-ton of money, and full of unpaid internships, so that’s more of a ‘to be continued’ story. Moved out a couple years ago, we’re renting a place in Prospect Heights, in one of the not-so-pretty-brownstone-ey parts near the railroads, there’s, like, this Hmong family running the laundromat on the ground floor, so I’ve learned a lot of new swear words. And… That’s about it.” Because I’m not about to tell him about the other parts, I’ll leave self-destructive streaks, abortions and stalking exes who only stopped ‘cause they got locked up in Rikers for the 20th reunion. I’m also single and unhappy, thank you for asking. “What’s up with you? Are you single?” Please don’t answer that. “And, umm… JJ? is he doing better?”

I lower my gaze and nod in acceptance when Mac admits that her parents are still at least a teeeny bit mad. I mean, fair – Jason and I fucked ‘em over real good back in the day. If something actually came of my complaint somehow, they could have closed up shop on this entire kiddie business. (Yeah, that sounded wrong, I’mma just move on.) Can’t help but wonder if I was part of the reason they quit soon after, though, in which case I rid the world of two perfectly good foster parents. I mean, I was completely aware I was throwing ‘em a massive curveball, I just didn’t give a fuck. I wanted my brother back so bad, and for what.
I listen as she lists off the Hall of MacFame, nodding with my lips downturned as if saying, “Not bad”. Looking back, I gotta admit Helen and Jonathan must have been doing something right. So right in fact that every time I visited, this crippling jealousy would come over me, though I couldn’t decide what for. Was I jealous of them for being better caretakers to my brother, or was I jealous of the kids for having them for parents? It was a weird time – I was sixteen, I should have been happy that this whole parentification fuckfest was over, but I guess that also meant I was no longer needed. And if I’m not needed, what then?
I end up here, that’s what. Empty nest syndrome except my nest was a fucking pigeon’s nest at best. Consisting of like four small twigs and a plastic straw.
When Mac gets to the end, I smirk at my burger knowingly.
“So we got a doctor and half a lawyer on our hands,” I conclude. “Give Ian a few years, he’ll be the Nobel laureate of the litter.”
She can discount her achievements all she wants, but all I got to my name is a two-year degree that I studied four hours for in total, tops – so I make up for it by automatically knowing everything and always being right. That, and I’ve been doing so much swimming I can now dislocate my shoulder blades at will. Wish I had this skill in middle school, woulda had the girls running for the hills.
“I’m all ears,” I tilt my head with a smile, daring her to go ahead and swear at me in Hmong, then. No reason, it’d prolly be cute as fuck is all.
She asks me about myself and I crumple kraft paper into a ball before shamelessly moving on to unwrapping my grilled cheese sandwich.
“Went down the classic pipeline,” I shrug. “Boot to cop.” Looking absolutely over-the-moon with my decision, I draw my mouth to the side and click my gums, eyes half-lidded. “My one true calling.”
I bet she'd be impressed with my resume. Like, I could tell her about that time two years ago when I partially blinded a protester using a rubber bullet, point-blank range. I could get into the details of his hands shooting up to his eye, others gathering around him in the midst of the chaos, me staring wide-eyed through my face shield like, “Fhuuuuuuck.” Lawsuit’s still pending, only they have no way of saying who did it. I’ve come close to admitting fault a couple times, then thought about the consequences and decided it could wait ‘til tomorrow. Been “waiting ‘til tomorrow” for the past two years.
I mean, it’s not like owning up to it is gonna bring his sight back, for fuck’s sake, and it’s not like I told myself to use that shit…! I was doing what I was fucking told, as I have been for the past thirteen years.
“Been lookin’ into reenlistment lately,” I continue, eyes downcast, “but, uh. Something came up.”
She might be surprised to hear I considered going back, in view of my history with… Authority. I mean, I did spend all of high school with my faux Jordans stacked on top of the desk and bagging on my teachers and trynna get ‘em to pay attention to me, but once I got through boot camp and the Yessirs became second nature, I kinda went, y’know what? There’s worse things than order. There’s going home to an empty apartment and watching Doctor Phil, not sure whatever the fuck to do with yourself ‘cause cable doesn’t even have hot girls. Came close to texting my ex a few times, “I miss you, you toxic, pestering bitch who probably reminds me of my mother”, then stood in front of the mirror and slapped the stupid outta my face.
It got to the point where I considered hitting up the CG recruitment office and applying to be an officer – got to E-5 back in the day, so, theoretically, I stood a chance despite my two-year excuse of a degree. I also would have had to get at least two knuckle tattoos removed, and fucking hell I was ready to book that appointment. I’ll even teabag the recruiter while I’m at it, just give me something to do with myself, you power-tripping cock-sucker, puh-leeease.
“As for Jason…” I sigh, putting my sandwich down for dramatic effect I guess. I rub my palms together and clasp my hands on the table. Trying to come up with a way to put this nicely, I drag out the pause before finally meeting her gaze, lips parting with a smack. “Heeee… ‘sinprison.”
I blurt it out as fast as possible, then flash a wry, passing smile at her.
“Yeah. So…” I pout as if still chewing – I’m not –, then spread my palms and lean back with a sigh, resting one elbow on the chair next to mine. “Your parents were right, I guess. You guys became, what, doctors and lawyers and shit, and my brother iiiiis iiiin prison.”
I purse my lips and lift my hands slightly, like, “Ta-dah. For my next trick I'm going to make-disappear his kid from him. Stay tuned.”

“Laureate?”, I repeat his choice of word with an amused grin. “Fancy word for someone who almost failed tenth grade English.” And only saved ass by having a twelve year old work on his essays. The real task wasn’t whipping up a paper that fits curriculum a few years ahead of mine, but trying to make it look like it could actually be something that he could write IF he tried VERY hard. Not that he didn’t have the ability, he just hated schoolwork, I guess. I mean, they were still always very suspicious of him copying but since I wasn’t even going to the same school, it’s not like he could be busted. And in the end, he finished school, which is more than a lot of kids in the system can achieve, and I got him to remember my name, so… It’s a win, if you ask me.
So if there’s one trigger point I’ve acquired through the years that I just can’t get rid of is the fact that I can’t speak any Asian languages, even though I’ve basically bingo-ed out all of them according to my DNAncestry report. I’ve tried learning Korean, but even after all these years, I sound like a white person trying to do this really weird, racist stereotype… One actual Korean girl in my class back in college even told me I sound like Daniel Dae Kim in Lost, which is, I’m assuming, the worst possible thing to sound like. I’ve learned in ChildDev that your mother tongue is the one they spoke to you after your birth up to two years old; and I was only adopted at eighteen months. Shouldn’t at least proper pronunciation come easier, then? I mean, I’ve gotten better at it but it still feels like a failure.
“I said I know them, not that I use them”, I squint at him, before adding in a hushed tone: “Txiv dev.” [ special note: eskü így írják át, ne tudd meg meddig kerestem mikor rettentően fontos volt megtanulnom Hmong káromkodásokat az előző reagnál : ((( ]
I’m not sure if he really wanted to hear all that stuff about my family, because it’s not really interesting if you’re not IN the family, you know. And a part of me thinks if he wanted to ask about us he would’ve contacted Oliver. I mean, he’s also on every available platform and they were friends back then, even after he became like public enemy number one after the camping incident. I want to be flattered that he still decided to hit me up instead buuut… It’s really clear he has no ulterior motives like that, which is… Fair. Maybe Oliver didn’t accept his friend request or something. He certainly didn’t spend his hours at dawn chewing on his lips, awaiting one-word answers and counting out Mississippis in his head so that the dots won’t appear too quickly.
Suddenly I feel like I shouldn’t have talked so much when he cleared everything up with, like, two sentences, and I overloaded him with a PowerPoint presentation. Only he didn’t clear everything up, because that ‘something came up’ sounds weird, and I want to ask about it but he’s not even looking at me so he probably doesn’t want to talk about it, not with me, at least.
“You did seem to agree with the, umm… Coast Guard.” That’s the best you can come up with? I mean, I know exactly shit about the armed forces, of any kind; even law enforcement is outside my scope mostly, unless they happen to sack a kid during a bust or something. I’ve been accompanying a few lawyers to interviews and appointments as a silent partner these two years and although we didn’t do criminal court, a lot of times it coincided with family court cases. And a lot of times, the, umm… Image I had of the officers and detectives that would be associated with the cases wasn’t really… Nice. Even if I knew they were only doing their jobs with whatever resources they had. It was unfair sometimes, is all I’m saying. A regular sixteen-year-old throws a stone and deliberately breaks a window, they get grounded. A foster kid on probation for unrelated charges spills orange juice on a supervisor at a group home and suddenly it’s a felony.
The other comment I could offer was how I’m sure he looked amazing in any uniform and that wasn’t helpful. And also kinda gross. I mean, gender roles reversed, that wouldn’t fly. We don’t objectify people, period.
He gets my full attention back at Jason. I would say I’m surprised, and my eyebrows do jump up, but it’s a ‘saw it coming, still got smacked’ kind of situation. “I’m sorry”, is all I can say. I’m looking at him but it’s hard to decipher what his stance is on towards this. Does he think it’s justified? Is he still angry? Guilt was next on the list and seems to be a winner. “It has nothing to do with you”, I state, shaking my head. The half-eaten burger goes back to the tray because this isn’t a convo I should be having with grease on my chin. “I mean… Do you think it would’ve been any different if he stayed?”
He has never been one for ‘what ifs’, at least not out loud, and I doubt he has changed that since then. “We tried everything we could think of. It just didn’t work, mainly because he didn’t want it to. If it stayed the same with you, you couldn’t’ve changed anything about that. Sometimes…” Sometimes they’re beyond help. Sometimes they’re too far gone. I know these seem to be supported by evidence, but it still feels wrong to say out loud. Like I’m some poseur, all for helping them until it becomes too hard and then I give up because it’s easier. I know that’s how my parents felt; sometimes, I heard them talking in their room late at night; the room JJ was in was on the other side of the house, but my room was right next to theirs, and with open windows, you could hear everything. They have considered giving JJ up, and then always backed out. Who would care for him? Who could do something they can’t? Who would be willing? They said he’d likely just rotate between homes; Ian was only three when he got here but has already been through seven homes along with the back-and-forth with his birth mother. A problematic child with the defiance and anger of JJ would be tossed around like a tennis ball until he became ‘too old’ to foster, and then he would end up in a group home, where one social worker is responsible for at least a dozen kids, if not more.
They never talked about why they wouldn’t give him back to Tay. It was this… Silent agreement, or something. Like an undeniable truth I couldn’t wrap my head around. Now, I’m a bit more understanding. I know giving kids back to their family just because they’re blood is not always the best option, but he wanted to take care of him. That should’ve mattered, right?
Now, I wonder if this is the reason why they didn’t consider him. Because they knew what would happen, anyway but they were afraid to say it. “Sometimes, you can’t do anything”, I finish up with a deliberate shrug. I hope he doesn’t think I’m unmoved or something. “I mean, you didn’t turn out like that, and you had it the same, if not worse sometimes. I still think it was the right thing to do…?” I do think that I’m just not sure how he’s reacting. It’s still so weird he’s sitting across me that I feel like saying the wrong thing might make him disappear. “I wasn’t exactly ready for… some of the consequences back then but I would still do the same today, if that matters.”

I give a few awkward nods when Mac offers me her condolences. I really didn’t wanna hurl this whole coming-out at her, giving us both a bitch of a time, but it’s not like I had any other choice if I was gonna ask her for help. I’m about to open my mouth and say something nonchalant, act like it’s no big deal, it’s whatever – she’s faster though, asking if I thought it could have gone any differently.
Good question.
“I mean…” I shrug, filling the pause with a small hand gesture. “I might’ve been a bit… Asian-parent on him, I guess.”
It’s not like I knew any better. No matter what I did, I couldn’t convince him to fucking behave himself. The reins kept slipping and slipping, and over time I grew desperate to just pull him up by his bootstraps if he wouldn’t do it himself. Scare him straight, no backtalk, give me your phone type shit. I became more of a drill sergeant than a caretaker – figured if that military rigor beat some sense into my thick skull, then it should work on him, too.
Well, that shit backfired hard.
“Yeah… Thanks for giving it a try, anyway,” I shrug. “I think I only blamed your parents ‘cause it was… What… Easier? Than accepting how much of a b… handful he was.”
Almost said “burden” right there.
It was a lot of things at once. It was whatever I just told her; it was not wanting to make Jason feel like I didn’t want him; it was craving some semblance of a family for myself. Thinking back, maybe I was helping myself, not him, and I think he could tell. He’s been tossed around all his life and there I was, the one person who should have understood, playing tug of war over him against the MacLaines.
I’m tempted to believe Mac when she tells me I’m not at fault, but a part of me knows she’s only saying this ‘cause she simply wasn’t there. In many ways, Jason had it way worse. I was older, I could protect myself, he couldn’t. I had a few good years with mom before it all went downhill, whereas she was already a fucking goner by the time he was even born.
“Thanks,” I manage a strained half-smile and some fleeting eye contact. “But dragging you into it was… A dick move, to put it mildly.”
No idea what I’d do differently a second time around. Same as Mac, I thought we were doing the right thing, and yet it all turned to shit in the end. Guess I’m just not sharp enough to untangle whatever the fuck even transpired in this… “Family.”

“Doesn’t stop there, though,” I sigh, unhooking my elbow, leaning back onto the table. “‘Cause plot twist, he also got weak pull-out game.”
I mean, where do I even start.
“Kid’s eight months old. I didn’t even know until CPS called me saying, y’know, mom’s in rehab, kid’s been removed, we’re contacting family ‘cause it’s either that or foster care. And immediately I’m like, no fucking way I’m letting that happen. No fucking way.”
I hold her gaze like I mean it. She got adopted pretty early on, but I know she’s seen all kinds of kids coming and going, no doubt telling her all kinds of stories. Jason got lucky with her family in the end, but we’ve had brief tours at less Disney Channel and more midnight HBO families before that. Tossed back and forth between mom and complete strangers, sometimes together, usually apart. I remember them shoving all my stuff in fucking garbage bags whenever they decided it was time to move. My social worker and two cops pulling me out of class in front of everybody, me finding out then and there that I’m about to move “home” again ‘cause mother knows best.
No. Fuck that noise.
“Now…,” I take a deep, deep breath, “I know that girl pretty well. Jason dated her for four years, on and off. She lived with her mom and step-dad, still hung out at our place twenty-four seven ‘cause she said home was, and I quote, ‘a lot’.” I lower my head, keeping eye contact with this ‘C’mon now…’ kind of look. “Something was off, Mac. I won’t get into it, but something was... Way off.”
She wore long sleeves all the time, parted her hair like she was hiding something. Flinched at every sound, always eager to do whatever Jason told her. One time she let the pot overflow on the stove and apologized to me like her life depended on it, like I was gonna throw hands over a stovetop or some shit. And look, I’ve been there – I could tell shit was sketchy, so I tried to suck it up and act like I didn’t mind constantly having her there on five-hundred square feet.
“I don’t trust her mother, whoever she is. I don’t trust her one bit.” I squint at Mac and shake my head, looking sure as hell, even though all I got is a gut feeling. “So I filed a petition for guardianship, and guess what, it did fuck all. This dude dropped by, took a gander at my apartment, found out I worked twelve-hour shifts with rotating days off and said thank you, next.”
At least I still get to spend plenty of time around my partner Dale, a middle-aged marine reservist whose gun lubricant got “Liberal Tears” plastered on the container. He also sports Punisher merchandise and an irrational fear of hijabi women pushing strollers. If he had to make the difficult choice between fucking his sister or Alex Jones, I think it’d just have to be a threesome.
My being a “chink” was probably salt in the wound when his desperate housewife just absolutely lost it at every word I said during the precinct Christmas party.
“I thought this would be a no-brainer, ’anything but foster care’ and shit – then outta left field, mother’s mother files a petition, too, and now I’m fucked.”
Growing frustrated, I let my hand fall back on the tabletop, signaling the end of this whole rant. I don’t even feel like bingeing anymore, and that’s saying something.
“So now I’m looking for an apartment…” I let out a breathy laugh ’cause let’s not front, it's getting comical at this point. “…And legal advice.”

My attempts seem futile at best; like when someone dies and everyone just immediately jumps on the ‘my condolences’ train like it’s going to Aruba. It’s not something I had to say, but I wanted to and now I feel like I’ve failed to convey the message. Not that he needs it, I’m pretty sure a pity party isn’t what he’s looking for. “I didn’t require too much dragging, to be fair,” I add on, ‘cause yeah, maybe I did it to appeal to him – which obviously failed, and I shouldn’t’ve been so downtrodden about that because I’m preeeetty sure at that point I was dating someone –, but I was also very much aware what I was doing, so it wouldn’t seem fair to push all that responsibility on anyone, really.
I’m sipping unassumingly on my milkshake when he goes on, and I lean back in synch with how he leans forward instinctively. The milkshake cup is way too close for me to lean in like that, and… Not that it really matters.
I feel like my brain gets replaced with scrambled eggs the moment he goes on to say ‘pull-out game’, and I kind of forget to breath for the rest of it.
Is any of that really surprising? I mean… No, not really. As much as I didn’t like labeling anyone, even based on their own actions, it’s not hard to imagine that he wouldn’t exactly be a firm believer in Plan A, Plan B, or any other Plan, really. The fact that Tay didn’t even know about the kid does surprise me – he said things were bad between them but I never imagined that bad. I mean, how much strain does there have to be on your relationship to not even tell your own sibling about this?
My hand shots to my neck, messaging a knot that’s only starting to form. Or, you know, making sure I’m not too hot under the collar. It’s been years but sometimes I still think I should’ve done something different. They kept it. I didn’t.
Shaking my head to get rid of those thoughts, I try straightening my back. It’s not about me. And now at least I know why I’m here, even if it tastes bitter.
“Yeah, I get it”, my voice sounds small still, I just want to give some kind of conformation. I get what he’s saying, and immediately this picture’s forming in my head about this girl I don’t even know, and this family I have never dealt with. Nobody stays in a violent household willingly. That’s what my therapist told me, over and over again, until I managed to make that mantra mine. There are these – albeit possibly unfounded – connections, substance abuse and sustained abuse, fleeing from brutishness yet sticking to what you know…
What he’s describing is not unheard of, quite the opposite; only it’s not one case out of dozens of dozens that cross our desk every week, because… Well, it’s Tay. And also, it’s a little bit JJ. He could be charming and cute if he wanted to, especially when he was younger; it’s just, sometimes, his anger got the best of him. And then ‘sometimes’ became ‘always’. Like he said, this is a no-brainer.
“Win the lottery…?” There goes my first attempt at advice. That’s not even the worst one I had. Taking a few moments to digest what he just loaded out onto the table – the fry I’ve been toying around with goes back to the tray –, I’m lining up what we have. An eight-month-old baby in need of a permanent guardian, no parents in the foreseeable future. A possible abusive household on one side, but a household, nonetheless, and strong family background does matter. Besides, if we go out on grandparents, Tay’s mother isn’t exactly the greatest Cotsco coupon you could look for. Was the mother the abusive one or was it the step-father? Does he still live there? Are there any records of abuse? Do they own their place or do they rent? How old are they? How much do they make? Any of them retired…?
And then there’s Tay. He wouldn’t be the first unmarried uncle or aunt to get custody in a case like this, although grandparents are more common. He also wouldn’t be the first to be turned down.
“Well… First of all, I didn’t lie about the glorified secretary part. I’m not a lawyer. So just for the sake of preventing legal liability, I have to tell you that whatever I say is not legal advice nor educated opinion. As a… friend…” Or ‘family associate’ as I’ve put it. I sigh and shake my head. “My first friendly advice would be to get a lawyer, but… I’m guessing if that was a possibility you wouldn’t be here…?” Waiting for some kind of affirmation, I try to kick the shroud of disappointment I’m feeling back under the bed in my head. Out of sight, out of mind. I can always cry about it later and eat my Ben&Jerry’s above the kitchen sink. “I’m not… Sure you’d qualify at Legal Aid. Usually, it’s 125% or less of the state poverty line. For a one person household, that’s, umm… Around 25k? Sometimes they take 200%, but that’s still…”
On paper, he makes just a tad bit more to be considered low-income. In reality, everyone knows ‘on paper’ means exactly shit with the prices, and less every consecutive year. “I mean, we take cases that don’t qualify on paper, but they don’t have priority. And what you don’t have now is time. When did you get the court order?” A week and a half. I’m guessing he didn’t exactly have a lot of free time to look up lawyers and whatnot. “Okay. Well, you need to give notice of appeal within thirty days, right, so it’s not… Undoable. You just need a legal basis for the appeal, other than… ‘I don’t agree with it’. You can’t present new evidence, it has to be something that was already present during the initial case, so changing apartments won’t work. Unless you scratch the appeal and try it as a new petition. Until a final order is given in a case, you can petition whenever and howmany times you want to, basically. Unfortunately, that’s the same in case of the grandmother, so even if they are found unfit for any reason, age, mobility, income, they can just petition again if it’s something they can change. Luckily for you, it’s less likely that they can. Unluckily for you, while you are required by law to inform them of your petition, as grandparents have some rights over grandchildren, it doesn’t work both ways, since uncles or aunts do not have visitation rights. Which means they will know when your petition hearing is and can object to you being named guardian in person. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but you won’t be able to do it on theirs.” I shrug apologetically. My own head starts to overflow with stuff, and I wish I had any kind of pen or something in front of me so I could scribble some guidelines for myself on the napkin. I’m afraid I’m going to repeat something I’ve already said or leave another thing out.
“So… Yeah. I think, as a friend, that your best option is to not appeal. Judges do not like higher courts being brought on them, and you don’t seem to have legal basis. Unless you can get that girl or JJ to sign over parental rights to you, you can either hope that the grandparents are unfit as well and/or do the petition again, with a new apartment. Sometimes, things like… Going to court-approved foster classes help. I mean, hell, if you could mail order a bride from Russia, that would help. Anything to make you seem like the all-together better choice. After that, you wait for the trial and hope for the best.” Well that’s just cheery, isn’t it? I squirm around in my seat, trying to make it seem better. “Even if the court decides against you, you can always file a motion to set aside the order, if you think the order was given based on false information. Like… If they didn’t disclose a past abuse even though you have evidence it did happen.” Adding that bit in feels more insecure than I’d like to admit but it’s not like you can force someone to tell their story like that if they don’t want to. I don’t know that girl, but I get it, to a certain extent.
“I don’t know, Tay, there’s a lot of things to consider in cases like this. Family law is basically the wild-wild west of legislation. That’s why they always tell you to get a lawyer.” The thought that me and my shitty ‘legal advice’ might be the reason this doesn’t turn out well makes me feel sick to my stomach. “I can try to pitch it to one of the lawyers maybe? I don’t think you know, but I’m actually pretty lovable aaaand they love me there. I mean, it’s no promise, but maybe they can take your case at the final trial, and… I’d help you with the petitions?” I don’t know if I’m overstepping, since he only came to me for advice which I can’t exactly give. But it’s worth a try. Both of my pointing fingers shoot up, “Still not legal advice!” Terms & Conditions apply. “It’s just… I mean, if I can help that kid to stay out of the foster system, I want to. What’s their name?”

When she tells me to win the lottery, I crane my neck and look sideways at her, pleading.
“Please?” I squeeze it out like a question, like I’ve never uttered the word before. Girl, have some sympathy, it was already hard enough to imply that I needed help, and you’re making me say it out loud? I can’t – I’ve tried before and it simply seems to activate my gag reflex somehow. British scientists are still scratching their heads. I need h… heh… He... HuEGH. See? Can’t do it, don’t make me do it.
When she explains that I don’t qualify for legal aid, I grumble under my breath, “Oh, c’mon, who do I blow…”
The Goodwill of lawyers really out here telling me I ain’t broke enough, it seems.
Cool. I’ll just go fuck myself then.
“A week and a half,” I reply, clenching my jaw as I try to decipher her expressions while her actual words begin morphing into one single ‘…Whuuuh…?’ inside my head. Something seems to have clicked in her head and with that she’s off, she’s outta sight, just churning all of this out on the fly. Somewhere halfway, near “your best option is to not appeal”, I just lean my face against my fist and blink at her in a dopey way. She seems to be doing the thinking in real time, so let's just wait for the too long; didn’t read.
When she gets to the end, I straighten up and widen my eyes, brows furrowed 'cause… Dayumn.
“Okay, Smarties,” I intone, looking her up and down while I raise my can of coke to my mouth. I mean, I always knew she had brains, but it’s been a while, and it seems like she’s leveled up in the meantime. I guess that’s what smart people do, they read stuff and get smarter or something, who knew?
“Definitely not legal advice, though,” I summarize, pouting in mock seriousness. Legal advice? Me? Never seen her.
The way she points with both hands has me grinning kinda quizzically, like I don’t get it, but keep it coming. I mean, who even points like that? This girl’s free serotonin, man. And free legal advice.
“…Now can you repeat the whole thing once more? I got distracted.” Kinda hoping she’ll take it seriously, I skip a beat before turning serious. “Jus’ kidding. I’d love a hookup if you got one. And some help with the paperwork.” I pause, pursing my lips with tiny nods of gratitude. “You’re the best, Mac.”
And I get back to my grilled cheese sandwich ‘cause you know what, I kinda feel like eating again. Shut up, Fitbit, I need it to think.
Taking a bite, I gracefully stretch strings of melted cheese away from my face until they snap.
“Sho you’re shaying it’sh doable,” I conclude with my mouth full, reductive as ever. If there exists a way, I’ll just turn and walk that way – simple as that, folks. Wham-bam, new petition, sit back, profit.
And if that doesn’t work and the judge still bangs his hammer against the block with a “Denied”, I mean, be my guest – to a hammer against your head. It’s called fuck around and find out, grandpa. You, me, parking lot.
“I just need to find an extra bedroom, in my paygrade, fast.” I knit my brows at my sandwich and shrug like it’s no biggie. “Easy. I’ll just move back to Flushing, cheap fast bedrooms on every corner.”
At least there used to be when I was growing up. Rusty massage parlors in Chinatown backrooms, covered in tasteless signs, “WE HAVE MAN AND WOMAN”, and of course posters of the whitest-skinned Asian girls you’ve ever seen. I remember walking home at the age of like ten, some crackwhore smoking outside one of these, croaking, “HeLLo, BiG bOy…”. Reminded me of mom when shitfaced – she’d hit me with some reeaal eerie shit at times.
Area’s cleared up since then, though. Kid would be fine except I can’t afford Flushing anymore, so scratch that.
“Her name’s Billie,” I scoff, giving Mac a deliberate look. Fuck you mean ‘Billie’? For a girl’s legal name? I shoulda just waltzed into court like, ‘Your Honor, this woman named her child Billie”, and I’d have permanent custody by now. “Reason enough to rescue the poor little sh… Thing.”
Taking a napkin, I wipe my hands and smile ominously at Mac.
“Hey, you got somethin’ there,” I point near my mouth then grab another napkin, index and middle finger holding it out towards her. “You had it there for that whole non-legal-advice. I just didn’t wanna snap you out the Zone.”
I watch as she tries to wipe it off, waiting a few seconds before I decide to spare her any more undeserved frustration. I squint at her with my mouth ajar, as if trying to see clearly.
“Oh, hold up. Maybe it was just a freckle.”
She might remember me non-stop bullying her about her freckles, so this ain’t nothing new.
“Sorry,” I grab my coke, “had to. Old habits.”

I don’t deal well with stress – I deal with it. I just sometimes get stomach ulcers as a result. It’s one of the reasons why I’m still not sure if I could deal with being an actual lawyer; that’s a whole lot of responsibility. Even now, dishing out these basic procedures makes me feel like I’m about to mess up, like I didn’t spend weeks before every exam chewing on the whole McKinney’s annotated version of Consolidated Laws of New York – book 7B, Civil Practice Law and Rules. That was my Bible.
So one of the ways I deal with the fear of messing up is being thorough and precise.
But yeah, he can basically sum it up in one sentence.
“Yeah…? Most things are doable, with due cost, effort and sometimes luck.” Not exactly the hard-hated legal advice he might’ve expected, because I basically only said it depends in a fifteen minute presentation’s worth of words, but that’s what I have. Most definitely not legal advice. You shouldn’t be able to give that when you can barely refrain yourself from going up in flames over a simple thank you-compliment. “But yeah. I think your position is favorable. I’d choose you.”
… Would I, though?
Now that I’ve gone through the procedure in my head, I’m starting to realize that the reality hasn’t quite sunk in yet. It’s not all petitions and motions, or a Him vs. Others kinda deal. There’s also this kid, a baby, whose well-being is primary. It’s not only about who gets to have guardianship on paper – it’s about… Taking care of a baby, who’ll then be a toddler, a kid, a teenager. I’m slowly munching on a fry and can’t help but stare at him until he looks back up from his sandwich and catches me. So… Tay wants to raise a baby. Alone. ‘Wants’ may be an exaggeration, but that’s what he's heading toward.
Weird.
An empathetic half-smile presses my lips together. Yeah, that sucks. There was a reason I didn’t really want to move out from home and I needed something seriously big – Dylan – to make me change my mind. Getting a livable place nowadays is a feature in and by itself. But to make it livable for you and a baby, in a non-violent neighborhood, with limited resources, and equally close to your workplace and a daycare seems like a daydream. Or a shitton of luck.
“You can come live with us if you want”, I chime in with an obviously excessive amount of lightness. “I mean, we literally even have someone on the couch, but you could fold yourself in half and fit in the bathtub. You could put the crib on the washing machine. Babies love that, right?”
And, I mean, we have our own washing machine and a dryer. That’s a full-on flex by itself. We truly are living the big city dreams. Sure, it’s from the laundromat and they gave it up because every other cycle it floods the floor but we have towels.
“Aaaw!” I cock my head to the side, I mean, Billie…! Babies! Baby Billie! “Come ooooon, it’s cute! It is.” Better than Harriet, for sure. I don’t even know the poor thing but I’m already in love; so much so, that I can’t stop smiling, even though it’s starting to hurt. All right, reel it in, woman, I need to squirm around a bit to let out all the energy.
And after our grave disagreement whether Billie is a fitting name for a girl, I should’ve seen the trick coming, but I’ve let my guard down so long ago that when he gesticulates towards his mouth, my hands shoot towards mine. I can’t have another parsley-incident. I’ve just barely started to get used to my ulcer-free stomach after finals!
My shame-sparkled dismay soon turns to that ’ah’ feeling. That ’I’m so stupid’, which usually turns to another round of shame. And it kind of does, but now it’s just… Like this sudden feel of nostalgia, that makes me all giddy. The ‘oh’ of shock turns to ‘oh no you didn’t’. This past half hour makes me feel everything, one hairpin bend after the other, I swear. “A’ight, a’ight, you got me”, I concede with deliberate nods. “But you know what you ain’t got anymore? Cajun fries. ‘Cause I own these now.” It’s the least he could pay for stepping in the middle of my love-hate relationship with my freckles.
And I feel good, airy and lowkey lightheaded for the unorthodox unit of Two whole Cajun Fry. “Have you been to see her? Billie, I mean?” No. A part of me understands it; I mean, sure, he didn’t know about her before. It’s not his fault. Still makes me feel a little bit wary. “What if she doesn’t like you? Maybe she knows you’re talking shit about her name behind her back…” I’m still sporting a smile and yeah, obviously I’m not serious. But I do have some questions that I refuse to call doubts. I don’t doubt that he wants to do the right thing. “An eight-month old is… That’s very young. Do you remember JJ when he was that young?” I’m sure he does, in a way; I remember Ian when he came home to us, and I have memories of helping him use the utensils properly and changing his bedsheets in the middle of the night; the previous family swore he was out of diapers, but in reality he still needed them. He was about a year behind compared to his peers, which wasn’t surprising considering how many times his environment changed. He had no one stay around him for more than a few months. How could you develop properly like that?
So I’m sure Tay remembers JJ as a baby, and I’m sure he changed all his diapers. But there’s a little bit more to it than that. “Maybe… taking a few courses wouldn’t be a bad idea. It would look good on your, you know, guardianship resume. Everything changed a lot in the past, like, twenty years, so maybe it would make it easier for you to remove the rust on your baby skills.” Why do I feel like he won’t like this?

I know a lot of people don’t fuck with my amazing personality. At times I can actually see their lives flashing before their eyes, there’s no script for this, what now, how do I react?! Gotta sanitize your vocabulary before interacting ‘cause they got some kind of autoimmune disease and they don’t react well to “out of line”. I never got along with the joke police, it’s like I’m their kryptonite or something. In a way, Jonathan MacLaine was one of ‘em. Not the triggered, ”Umm, excUSE ME?” type – he just didn’t really see how messing around like this was “constructive”, I guess. He was dead set on creating a safe space for kids who needed it and I was the bad apple with zero grasp on what a “safe space” even meant, how it even worked. The place I visited from, we didn’t care if he hurt each other’s wiwwle feewings, we did the fucking opposite – and if you got your panties in a bunch, you knew better than to let it show ‘cause group home kids get their hard-ons from punching down.
But hey, at least we weren’t boring.
“Socialism really makin’ a comeback, huh?” I mumble through a smile when Mac decides to steal my fries. I wish my man Dale was wrong about this ‘cause the revolution will definitely be heralded by hot girls who studied Sociology or Transgender Studies or some shit and I’ll simply let ‘em take my stuff. I’ll let Mac take my fries, too, ‘cause I feel like if someone opened a window, she’d flop around in the draught like a napkin. Girl only carries that big ass backpack around as a paperweight, I bet.
“Nah,” I reply with a sigh. “They passed her down to OCFS, didn’t say where exactly. Like I’mma break in and snatch the kid or something.”
I’m still smirking at her remark when she warns me about how young Billie is, that soft-spoken note of worry in her voice giving me pause – like maybe I should be worrying, too. She asks if I even remember JJ as a kid and I think back for a moment, not sure what she’s getting at.
“‘Course I do,” I reply with a small shrug, not thinking much of it yet. I remember those times more vividly than I’d like, actually.
But then she goes on to suggest COURSES and shit, going about it in this nice little roundabout way, and yet it feels like an icy gush of water.
I can suddenly feel the thud of my pulse, chest rising more visibly than I’d like. All at once, it hits me – the realization that she isn’t worried about what if I don’t win custody, she’s worried about what if I do. I avert my gaze, jaw locking shut like a bear trap. She’s worried for Billie. And it’s not her fault, she doesn’t know the half of it, but I can still feel that good old tension crawling up my body.
I have an accumulated total of, what, ten years of experience practically raising a kid by myself. Yeah, it was a long time ago, and he didn’t exactly turn out a model citizen, but it’s not like my lack of diaper-changing skills are to blame. I didn’t just change his diapers for the first three years – we had to go back to that when he was around five, and again when he was six. I was mom, dad, handyman and cook, all the while wiping mom’s guts off the floor and various other surfaces. Without her as this mountainous fucking obstacle there, raising my brother would’ve been a walk in the park, for fuck’s sake.
It wasn’t me. I stood no chance, it wasn’t me.
Either way, it’s not like I ain’t been looking into it. I’ve been reading books and all because yeah, I do realize how young eight-month-olds are and contrary to popular belief, I also know how to read. It’s just that maybe I would’ve had more time for homework and prepping for college back in the day if I wasn’t too busy, again, raising a fucking kid. I’m not stupid, Mac – it’s not like I can’t grasp the gravity of the situation.
“Thanks. Will do.”
In the end, that’s all I manage to squeeze out, monotone yet more intense than intended. Can’t just flip a switch and instantly get over shit once it gets a hold of me, never could. In fact, it tends to get worse before it gets better, and I gotta be alone for that, but I can’t just walk right out, hoodie up, disappear.
We gotta round this off somehow.
“Well,” I blurt out awkwardly, “I don’t wanna take up any more of your time, though. I’ll, um, keep you in the loop and all. Thanks again, Mac.”
I look into her eyes passingly before averting my gaze, waiting for her to agree to the goodbye. Once that grueling moment is over, I stand up and do the penguin dance again, stepping in for a goodbye-hug and giving her a lukewarm back rub.
Staff usually handles the trays, so I just reach down for my duffle bag and jerk it onto my shoulder, grunting, “Aight.” I adjust the strap. “Take care.”
Once she’s said her part, too, I nod at her one last time and get going, hoodie up, disappear. She probably got no idea what the fuck just happened, and neither do I. One time, my child psychologist gave me a blank template of a person’s head and asked me to write my thoughts inside. I just took the pencil and scribbled one big tangled ball of a mess on there.
Hell, maybe I will take a course, but not because there’s some kind of dire need for that. It’ll be because I actually give a shit about something for the first time in a while.

SpongeBob Narrator Voice: One Eternity Later

One good thing that happened to office-based work in the last few years is the fast pace it gives space to home office. I don’t really mind going to HQ, most of my coworkers are fun, but whipping up court documents does feel less stressful when you’re wearing comfy pajamas. I did have a Zoom meeting around eleven, so I had some dissonance waist down and up, but at least I’ve managed to squeeze in my lunch early and on the clock, which meant that since the meeting ended early, I’ve finished up my tasks and I only had the next meeting scheduled at three, I had more than enough time to make it to Tay’s apartment.
Under different circumstances, I would have been hyped, but seeing as our last meet up ended on a less than ideal note – all my fault, thanks for asking, no, I definitely haven’t spent nights tossing around instead of sleeping –, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I know I hurt his… Feelings? Pride? Not sure. Although I’ve tried to apologize later, it’s not the same when you’re messaging, and although his text read ‘no problem’, my brain read ‘we have a problem’, so there’s that.
Truthfully, I’m not sure if he even wants my help anymore, seeing how hard it was to find a date that worked for the both of us so we can do the petition like I promised. I’ve offered every single afternoon and evening but he kept saying he’s working, and I’m not saying he was lying, but maybe he was working a bit too much.
So that left us with inconvenience for me, but a part of me felt like I deserved it. If Mohammed doesn’t go to the mountain… Then the mountain will insist on home invasion. He said he gets up around noon, give or take an hour, so when the meeting was wrapping up, I texted him. No response by the time I actually closed my laptop and left my desk, nor when I cleaned up in the kitchen.
My gaze is still glued to the phone screen – NO NEW MESSAGES – as I step out of the building and hurry down the stairs.
I do have that weird feeling like something isn’t right, but I attribute it to whatever is going on with Tay, so I actually do jump when someone emerges from the alley next to the flat.
“Hey, babe.”
Dylan’s towering right over me, cigarette in his mouth. He has an older looking bruise under his right eye that’s turning an ugly shade of yellowish green that even his darker skintone can’t hide. He looks different; it takes me a moment to realize that he’s gotten bigger. I suppose when it came to library or gym, he chose the latter while he was in.
He’s smiling, and he’s calm, and that sends a shiver down my spine, all my nerves on high alert.
“H-hey… I didn’t know you were out…!” I lie. I knew. He started texting me a few days ago; I’ve blocked his previous number, so he must have gotten a new one. I didn’t reply to any of them.  
“Really? I texted you, boo.”
“I have a new number.”
He pulls his mouth into an accepting grimace. “Really?” He pulls his phone out and the thought that maybe he’s about to call my ‘old number’ freezes me in place, even though my mind is telling me, run, run, run. “You could gimme then.”
Pulling on the strap of my bag, I croak, “I… I have to go. I have somewhere to be.”
“I can walk you.”
“That’s not… I… I have to go.”
I try pushing past him, maybe I can powerwalk myself out of this situation, but he takes one big step to the side and he’s in front of me. “Are you avoiding me?”
Runrunrun.
“No, I… I have a date, and I’m late. He’s gonna be worried.” That was the only lie that ever seemed to work with him; after I broke up with him for good, after he started leaving drunken or drug-infused, raging voice mails in the middle of the night only to follow up with lovesick, crying apologies in the morning, after he kept appearing at the same places as me, pleading to just talk, to give him another chance… He did this weird thing. Whenever my status changed to ‘in relationship’, he just disappeared. And then whenever it went back to ‘single’, even if I didn’t actually post it to social media, it was like he knew, and he came back again, with these walls of texts about how they didn’t deserve me, that I’m better off without them, and how he doesn’t deserve me, either, but he would do anything and everything. I’ve spent years breaking up with him for shit he’s done but then jumping right back in because he was just so good at making others feel like he deserves a chance. That he can change; and he did change, for a little while. But then it all started again.
I’d like to think I’m smarter now, that I know that’s just who he is, and he’s never going to change, there’s nothing for me to fix. I’d also like to think I’m braver now, but the words seem to rasp my throat like sandpaper.
“With Tommy?” I want to nod; when he moved in, that’s when Dylan disappeared for good. After that, the first time I heard from him was about a year later, when he texted to tell me he’s going to jail. He wanted to talk to me, one last time. If it wasn’t for Nina, I’d have gone. There’s an amusement in his voice that stops me from nodding though. “You do realize I know he’s a fag, right?”
“It’s not Tommy”, I shake my head. A person walks out from the restaurant on the other side of the street and lights up a cigarette. I know he could hear us if we talked louder, and even though I know people can be quite self-preserving, at least whatever’s cementing my legs in place lets go of me. “I need to…”
“I just need, like, five minutes, babe. Five! Can’t you give me that?!”
“You’re making me uncomfortable.”
I make myself look up at him with as much self-assuredness as I can. His face changes in an instant; the hard line disappear, there’s a line between his brows and in the end, he takes a step back.
“I’m not trying to do that, ‘swear.” I have an opening right there. And I don’t take it. I don’t know why, he just… Seems sincere, I guess. And he can see it. “I just really missed you. I thought a lot about you in there, you know? You know those charges were bullshit, right?” He’s nodding to himself, almost like he’s doing it in my place. Yeah, of course she knows. “I never hurt anybody. That’s why I got out early, good behavior ‘n shit…!” I suspect the real reason is overcrowding; state slowly shutting down Riker’s puts a heavy strain on the already troubled system. “I’d never hurt you.” Lies, lies, lies. He can’t help it though. He’s sick. He’s trying to change. “I’d never willingly… I just need like, shit, I just wanna talk. Can I take you out somewhere? Somewhere nice? You still like sushi?”
Sushi makes me gag now.
“I really have to go.”
For a moment, he’s not doing anything, just stares at me like he’s pulling everything out of me telepathically. He knows you’re lying. He knows. But then he nods and steps to the side. “Sure. Your date. Maybe later then.”
“Maybe.”
I know I shouldn’t have said that. That’s basically… That’s saying ‘sure, I’d love to’. That’s not a ‘no’. I should have said no. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can just imagine Nina’s face if she’d ever get to hear what happened – which she won’t.
All through the train ride, I’m hugging my bag to my stomach like a shield, so hard that I need to check multiple times whether I’ve cracked my iPad. I saw him stay right where he came from, that alley, still, I keep searching the crowd for his face. I know it’s useless; he’s very good at this. Even if he was following me – it’s for your protection, babe, there are all kinda crazy motherfuckers out there –, I wouldn’t know.
I can’t walk fast enough to the address Tay texted me – I only see his replies when I take my phone out near the street, to check if I remembered correctly. That’s also the first time I realize my hands are still shaking.
It’s so stupid. He’s never hurt me. Not like that. He hasn’t done anything, he’s right, it’s… I’m stupid.
Tay’s asking if I’m coming, and a part of me wants to reply ‘no’, even though I’m standing at the end of the street. The other part thinks about going back home with the possibility of Dylan still posted outside in a city where you’re always surrounded by people but you’re still usually alone and a wave of nausea hits me.
I’m here.
The click of the door opening rattles me out of my daze. As if I expected Dylan to somehow appear at the end of the corridor or something. Stupid.
“Hey!” It’s a nervous smile he gets from me, no hug. I have a feeling he wouldn’t appreciate it this time, even if I would, for different reasons. My tense shoulders relax immediately as he closes the door behind me. “Did you sleep well?”
Not by the looks of it.
“I’ve brought the papers”, cue my Folder of Boring Wonders that I’m presenting to him. “If you’d prefer it… On paper. Or we can e-file it. And, umm… Just to get it out of the way, I’ve talked to a few lawyers. With the apartment change and everything, they’ll probably be able to take the trial. Until there’s a date, they can’t say for sure.” Even though I might have annoyed them to agree to the ‘maybe’. Truthfully, all of them said the same. Sure, he can apply. Sure, if they have time, which they won’t, they’ll look through the files. But I’m pretty sure I can wear them down, so he doesn’t need to know. “But, umm… I’m also still in a few apartment advertising groups so I checked a few of them yesterday. So we can also do that, if you haven’t found anything yet…? I know you didn’t ask me, I just, umm…” I swear I know words, they simply aren’t cooperating now for some reason. Is this what it’s like to be a goldfish? “I… Had time.”

I knew I’d be shitfaced in the morning post-graveyard-shift, so I spent about three hours yesterday wiping the whole apartment squeaky clean. Again, it ain’t much in terms of square footage, so it only took that long ‘cause I got hungry halfway in and had to wait for my order off Doordash. Got the usual lychee pork with that good old ”You’ll die of cardiac arrest one day and no one’s gonna miss you” aftertaste, then I took all the paper bags from various takeout places that had been accumulating at my door for months and finally got rid of ‘em. All the glasses and cups are now visibly sorted in military-grade order inside the cupboard, displayed though frosted glass. That single burner on my gas stove is glistening so bright it actually goes “chinnggg!” when you look at it, and the same goes for all the cutlery. I was endlessly scrubbing away in rubber gloves yesterday, surrounded by piles of dirty dishes, despising my past self for letting it build up like that.
Obviously, I wasn’t gonna let Mac see my apartment in that state, most definitely not after our latest reunion. I could tell she had her doubts regarding this whole custody thing and while I did get some sand in my vagina over it, I had to admit that her uncertainty wasn't entirely baseless. I only ever get my shit together when it’s for someone else: I used to put in the effort for girlfriends, before that my brother, before that my NCOs. Without someone to keep me in check, I might take a few shortcuts while cleaning, I might skip a shower here and there. Not exactly the father-material look I’m trynna present to the court. And Mac.
So, on my way home from work, I even got one of these… Air fresheners? Diffusers? Whatever, the kind with the sticks. Mia used to always put one in the living room – she bought a different flavor every time, then got offended when I got home and didn’t notice. She’d always ask me to guess the smell and every time I’d be like, “...Uh, I ‘onnow, vanilla?”, but no, it was always something like "pear and blackcurrant leaf" or “eucalyptus and, like, a field of a thousand lavenders somewhere in France where you still haven’t taken me” or some shit.
The one I randomly grabbed off the shelves of CVS was called “Magic Hour” and I would have wiggled my eyebrows at that if I wasn’t trynna look like a grownup here.
So I unboxed the thing, placed it on the TV stand and put the sticks in...
Then I took one step back, the diffuser and I having this spaghetti-western staredown before I decided, “Naaah, you’re way overkill”. Mac will take one look at this and immediately know I’m just trynna trick her into taking me for a functional adult.
So I twisted the cap back on and hid the thing inside the stand – I’ll just put it back when she can’t see it. Hey, it was expensive as fuck, I ain’t about to toss this in the trash. So what if I smell like “sun-dried roses”, bitch? Talk shit, get... hugged. I guess.

Each time Mac texted me these past few days, I realized she didn’t actually believe me all those previous times when I tried to make her understand I wasn’t mad at her. Then again, I’m no texting champion, so I don’t know if I managed to get the message across properly. She was so set on overcompensating for last time that we kinda ended up with this agreement for her to just straight-up deliver herself to my place. It makes me feel like a real lazy fuck for wearing sweatpants right now, but hey, at least I went through the back-breaking trouble of putting on boxers. Not trynna poke her eye out as a sign of our undying gratitude, we gentlemen out here. Plus, I’ve already taken someone’s eye out and that’s cool, happens to the best of us – but a second time would be very tsk, tsk, tsk of me.
It’s past one and I’m chugging coffee in the kitchen, which is abooouuut three feet away from the door. My old white refrigerator is about Mac’s height with a metallic microwave set on top of it, lookin’ all disproportional; the counters are made up of exactly three wood-and-laminate units at a ninety-degree angle.
Even though I feel like I’ve been run over twice by the F-train, my brain fog’s starting to clear up and I’m pretty sure Mac ain’t the running-late type. I text her, “You coming?”, and I get no answer for about fifteen minutes.
And then: I’m here.

“Hey,” I mirror her greeting mindlessly, too distracted by this unexpectedly frantic vibe I’m getting from her. I knit my brows, giving her a puzzled once-over before huffing a laugh under my breath. “What, the ice cream truck chase you all the way or something?”
I step back and gallantly motion inside, observing the top of her head as she petites past me.
When she asks if I slept well, I squint to the side as if pondering a sudden suspicion, now that you mention it...
“I had a pretty weird dream.”
And that’s it, no elaboration, that’s all she gets. I mean, I think it’s perfectly fine, but others might say I can be a pain in the ass to converse with.
Admittedly, it’s getting pretty one-sided with her explaining everything and me just standing there in sweatpants, being myself. When she gets to the part where she’s even begun kinda apartment-hunting for me, I try and fail to hold back a lopsided smile. First off, the clumsy way she delivered that was pretty adorable, and second, it’s so overkill that I’m starting to wonder if last time’s guilt trip really got to her that bad or if she’s simply yet another victim swept off her feet by my borderline autistic lack of an EQ. I mean – girl, if you wanna go, we can just go, you know that, right? You don’t gotta solve all my life’s problems first.
…I won’t stop you, though. Feel free to solve all my problems.
“Thank you,” I declare with a nod for emphasis, sounding like I mean it. And that’s because I do, obviously. This girl really out here moving mountains for me for whatever reason. “For real, Mac, I owe you one.”
With that, I motion towards my tiny ass living room and my couch with the faded leather. It’s facing this cheap black square of a coffee table with a folded Acer set on top, all of it placed on outdated pine flooring against a single exposed brick wall, very nineties, as Mia once put it. Well, fuck her, ‘cause the clowns in this city will deadass pay twice as much for the same apartment if it’s got those walls. If I had an apartment to lease, I’d literally chip some plaster off myself with a hammer drill, then slap a couple extra hundo on the rent.
“Feel free,” I add, passing her by, stepping to the sink with my mug. “I’mma join in a second. You want anything?”
And then I go and pretend like I always immediately wash up my mugs once I’m no longer using them.
Since Mac doesn’t ask for anything, I then join her on the two-seater couch, the cushion sinking beneath my weight like it’s about to swallow us up right this instant, two new missing persons. I take the Acer in my lap and open it up, making sure the screen faces away from her.
“Lemme juuust…” I mumble absent-mindedly, tapping away at the mousepad. Gotta close certain tabs and clear certain browsing histories before I put the thing back onto the coffee table so we can both see the screen. I give Mac a sidelong smile. “Can we fill the thing electronically or would we be killing all the trees?” Seeing as she’s already printed it out once and I’m just a lazy ass who never got any idea where the fuck my last remaining pen disappeared. “I can go find a pen if it weighs on your conscience or anything.”
Unless she got one, of course.
…She pro’lly got one.

A short-cut laugh bubbles out of me at his question, which is hopefully equal part ’don’t be silly’ and ’i’m so fucked’. “Something like that.” Is it that obvious? I really should get myself together, I didn’t come to throw a pity party for myself. I’m sure he’d find all of it redundant if I told him, because unlike me, he has chill. I left mine in Korea, probably, because I sure as Hell don’t remember ever having it, when it came to uncomfortable situations.
Under different circumstances, I’d ask him about that ‘weird dream’. One, because it’s polite, and two, because he might actually answer, and when it comes to things like that it fills me with familiarity, which usually calms my nerves. Even when I know it’s only out of politeness; like when I went to the bank a few years ago to talk out my student loan options regarding law school and the clerk kept asking stuff about why I want to become a lawyer and stuff like that. It felt nice.
All of my options were pretty bad, by the way.
So I just give him an eyebrow raise as I pass by him, and when he decides not to share, there’s that. He can have his weird dreams. I don’t care, why would I? I’m not already second-guessing what that look meant and whether he changed his mind about needing my help at all. That’s just girl stuff, right? That’s what we do, try to pick up clues and decipher what the hell they mean, even when it means nothing. Sometimes they only buy you a cactus for your birthday not because they want to break up with you but that was the only thing left in the store that he recognized. Only by the time you get that out of him, you’ve already went though all five stages of grief and ready to see a couple’s counselor.
So yeaaaah, let’s go with the option that Tay isn’t mad at me and still wants my help and even if he doesn’t, my strategy is overloading him with information, so he won’t have time to think. I’m good at that.
“You really don’t”, I insist, shaking my head. If my thoughts weren’t so weirdly shaken up, I could probably come up with an offhanded joke about figuring out payment, but my humor has the ‘Lunchbreak’ plaque out in the window. This is literally my job, just… the unpaid version. Although I have to admit that Tay in grey sweatpants might be compensation enough and I may look after him a bit too intently before turning back towards the living room.
God, I’m so miserable when lonely.
Part of me wants to take time and wander around and just kind of touch everything; that actually has nothing to do with him, I’m just nosy and love touching other people’s stuff. I don’t know what’s up with me, whenever we go to an exhibition, I have to restrain myself from touching stuff labeled as DO NOT TOUCH, and it has nothing to do with overwriting authority. I’m simply a menace to artifacts and cool gadgets. Not that Tay has many. Or any. As I sit on the sofa a part of me wonders if it has anything to do with the coast guard. You don’t really see them on tv, so I’m only guessing that it’s the same as the Army. Discipline, right? Something like that? Whatever it is he has a lot of, seeing he has basically nothing not just like around, but… In general. My bedroom would probably give him a seizure.
I also spy a bunch of books nearly covered by the door, the word ‘BABY’ easily readable without craning my neck like an owl. They are definitely parenting books, definitely new, but with breaks along the spines. Based on how much he said worked these past few weeks, I’m gonna go out on a hunch and say he bought them before I basically accused of him not being ready.
Well, that makes me feel less shitty.
He’s not exactly sneaking around but his sudden appearance next to me still startles me and I definitely manage to make a big deal of looking away from those books. Why do I feel like I was doing something I shouldn’t have?
He goes on to clicking away on the computer – unnecessary but I’m not about to tell him that –, so I do what every other person in my generation does when they try to avoid a topic and immense myself with my phone. Opening the bubble of Nina, I’m about to tell him about Dylan – hey, guess who…– but ultimately delete the message. Hey, heads up… No. Delete. You out by 3? Yeah, that’s better.
“Hm? No, uh… These are from the office, you know, we have full packets. If you don’t need it, someone else will, so I’ll just get them back Monday. No harm done.” Setting my phone down on the far side of the coffee table, I get my iPad ready and pull up the folder I’ve prepared. “Sooo I thought I’d type up the applicable parts from your previous petition and you could look through these in the mean time?” Offering him the tablet, I take over his laptop. It’s a little more than a dozen ads I’ve saved yesterday, with the OG link in the subfolder as a note, so he can click on that if he’s interested to see if it’s still available. Shit goes fast here, so even though it was yesterday evening, you never know.
My phone starts buzzing on the table with a hollow sound; my initial though is Nina calling about the text but it’s an unknown number. The same unknown number I got the texts from. My thumb hesitates over the red ‘Decline’, but I decide against it. I said he had the wrong number. It’s probably best to let him ring, right? So the phone goes back down, this time on my legs so it won’t be as annoying. He rings for at least twenty more seconds.
“I haven’t actually realized how much prices went up”, I say instead with a small smile, because no, we’re not talking about the call I’m clearly not taking. “I mean, we also pay a shitload, but you know, it goes three ways, so it’s not as bad. It would be even better if Allie started to pay rent, too, or if her obnoxious non-boyfriend would stop eating all my yoghurt out of the fridge or at least get his socks up from the bathroom floor or something, but…”
Bzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzzzzz.
It’s fine, that’s the mantra I have in my head as I decline the call with a fast motion and put it between us. Maybe it’ll get lost between the cushions if I’m lucky. Then it won’t be my problem anymore.
“Whatever they’re trying to sell me, I’m not interested”, is what I finally tell him, and then I invade his private space – as much as he had left on this couch, anyway – to point on one of the pictures. “That’s a good one! It’s owned by the husband of a colleague of mine, and I know for sure it’s still available. I know it’s a little bit more than what you said, but it has this daycare a few blocks away that has this Immersive Chinese program that goes up to preschool. That’s an angle we could work, like, in general. And it’d be probably fun for her, anyway?” Insert ‘am I overstepping here?’ eyebrow raise. “I loved those Korean Cultural camps I went to as a kid. You can’t even adopt a baby nowadays from Asia without showing these receipts. Which is probably a good thing, to be honest.”
I know my parents were different to most adoptive parents in that they truly weren’t doing this for show, but I also know quite a few that just… You know. ‘Wanted an Asian kid.’ These people are the reason Mom stopped going to these help groups quite fast.
“Maybe you should buy a few of those… You know. The cat with the… Paw?” It’s hard not to laugh as I try to imitate the moving catpaw. “What’s it called? Something Neko, I think that’s in Japanese, right. Peak Chinese culture for white people.” So I may have some reservation as to whether I should be able to identify as Asian, culturally; but since most people only look at me and decide I’m something that’s decidedly not white, I think I should be able to at least make fun of it. So I move my arm up and down and keep snorting until the phone next to me buzzes, two short sets, and the screen lights up with “I hope your date goes well.”

I navigate to the dot-gov with the downloadable PDFs, abooouuut three thousand of ’em. Relax, people of New York, there’s plenty of confusion to go around.
“Damn,” I mumble when Mac casually confesses to mass-murdering innocent trees on the daily. “Not very vegan of you guys. I’ll take my business elsewhere.”
And with that, I open the wrong form with a double-click, pew-pewww. That’s how I fuck shit up, with impeccable speed and self-confidence. Not sure if this is part of what prompts Mac to ask for us to switch, but I won’t resist. The only emotion that surpasses my loathing for paperwork is my loathing for people who walk too slow in front of me on the sidewalk. Bonus if it’s a couple, expertly maximizing damage by holding hands. Don’t push me, y’all, I’mma yeet a bitch into orbit one day.
I part my lips with a little smack, handing my laptop over, “Aight, I’ll let the pro handle it.”
I flick a glance at her phone as it starts to vibrate. “You can take it,” I suggest casually. “No moaning into the mic, I swear. I don’t do that anymore.” Good times, good times. “Unless it’s your parents.”
Scrolling through pages upon pages of apartments, my judgment on most of ‘em is along the lines of, “Yeah, lemme just sell my kidneys real fast.” That should cover rent for the first month. The second month, I’ll sell my liver, then my pancreas, keeping this up until I gradually disintegrate, finally escaping the shackles of capitalism.
I’m not just salty over inflation, I’m baseline-salty over even having to move in the first place. Ain’t exactly excited about changing places in general – had more than enough of that kinda fun as a kid.
Mac’s phone gets to vibrating again and she seems dead set on ignoring this number. I wrinkle my forehead and peek at her from the corner of my eye, pledging yet again, “I swear.”
Telemarketing, huh?
…Not that it’s any of my fucking business, to be fair.
She leans in and points at a listing, very excited about some Immersive Chinese program a few blocks away. My lips twist into the letter S at the sight of the rent, but she sounds so enthusiastic about this one that I tap on it anyway, swiping through the photos.
“Kid better not grow past thirty inches,” I mumble tentatively, inspecting the floor plan. Well, neither Diondra nor Jason qualify for skyscrapers – I pro’lly got that from my anonymous sperm donor –, so we should be just fine. I’ll keep the kid in the cupboard.

When Mac curls her hand into a fist and begins miming a lucky cat out of nowhere, I simply turn my head and crack up. God fucked up in most areas, but he was definitely onto something when he came up with girls.
No way I’m holding an entire conversation in either Min or Mandarin, but those little creeps were must-haves in store windows around the area I grew up in, and I’m pretty sure we referred to them as “zhāocáimāo” – “lucky cats”. Not gonna lie, I had no idea they were originally from Japan. I remember asking mom as a kid why the cat was waving, and she told me it wasn’t waving, it was calling me. Cue the nightmares.
When I gesture “come here”, I bend my arm, palm facing up as I flap it towards myself. Mom still did it the Chinese way, though: she held her arm out in front, palm facing down, flapping diagonally downward. I knew what she meant, but I always found the gesture oddly humiliating, as if instructing me to get down in front of her or something.
I look back at Mac, gaze cast over her lips for a split second before I meet her eyes. Sorry-not-sorry, tends to happen while talking to girls. I could also come up with a less manwhore-ish way to comment on this except why would I want to, so I inhale, about to give it to her point-blank: “You’re adorable.”
However, I am once again interrupted by her phone and the light it casts onto her face. Glancing down instinctively, my brain automatically processes the very first sentence I see and from that point on, there’s no going back. She can probably see it coming from a mile away as I slowly lift my chin and my eyebrows, smiling down at her from the corner of my eye. She knows me – no way I’m letting her live this down anytime soon.
“Oh, is that what this iiiis…” I lilt in mock surprise as I sit back, elbow hooked on the backrest, occupying the space between us. “You should’ve run that by me. I would’ve ditched the sweatpants.”
I watch on as a wave of bright red embarrassment flushes her face and neck. Somehow, I’m simultaneously amused and amazed by this chameleon-like ability to turn all red.
“Okaaay, okaaay,” I half-whisper in a higher pitch, craning my neck to blow air on her face as if trying to cool her down. If she didn’t already, she probably hates me at this point, which, fair. I ain’t exactly helping here, taking this one message and running with it before she could even explain. In the same tone, I double down, “No need to change color over that…!”
Not gonna lie, under different circumstances, maybe I’d try and make some kind of move. I mean, she’s cute, for one. Two, I basically have foolproof confirmation (!) that she’s into me, so why the fuck not. And make no mistake, I’d be down – but something about her…
I don’t know. I just feel like I should leave her alone.
Shifting in my seat, I cock my head to one side, brows knit like, “Hmmm.”
“So why is the telemarketer wishing you a good date?”

Making a complete moron out of myself just to get someone laughing is one of my not so well-hidden guilty pleasures. My ability to impersonate a velociraptor both vocally and movement-wise may not look too hot in my Tinder bio, but it’s sort of all you have to impress others if you look like a little boy up to middle school. And we haven’t even talked about how I could totally pass for Jennifer Coolidge, Jennifer Aniston AND Jennifer Lawrence for the whole length of TWO consecutive sentences, so Tay doesn’t even know but the messed up lucky cat with the tennis elbow is one of my shittier acts. Not that I really have time to mind since I’m too busy being all warm and pleased he thought it was funny.
It also gives me that sweeeeet secondhand embarrassment straight from when I was about thirteen. I had no idea he came over so when he walked in after Oliver with a basketball and no shirt on, I was not ready for pre-teen hormones and I almost choked on my orange juice. Then it came back through my nose. And to this day, I know how much citric acid burns your nostrils, like Arby’s got the wrong door, but I’m pretty sure I would do it again to make him laugh.
So I feel good, like, really good for about ten seconds. And then the phone buzzes, and… I don’t know. Other people have fight or flight reflex; my reflex kind of tells me to freeze, like the danger is always a T-Rex that can’t hurt you unless you move. (Yes, I loved Jurassic Park, even the bad ones.) Usually I can hold my breath for a long time, too, until my lungs start to burn and my brain starts banging on the door for oxygen. But I’m not alone now, and I know Tay can see me.
He also sees the text, and for the longest moment I’m waiting on him to set the vibe. I half expect him to be angry at me, I don’t know why, he has never been mad at me. It’s usually the precedent with other guys, though. The guys like Dylan, anyway.
“No, I…” Is it suddenly hot in here or what. I’m not even sure what exactly I’m embarrassed about but I guess it’s better than the freezing-burning lungs thing. Even if it makes me feel like it’s freshman year all over again, and at first I do find it funny but then… There’s the text, and he’s talking, and I can smell his bodywash and whatever spicy stuff he had for lunch and it’s too much, too much noise coming from outside, the screen of the laptop is too bright and I can’t stop feeling all of it. 404 website not found, Task Manager frozen. But I mean, you keep smiling and laughing ‘cause that’s what you were conditioned to do when you’re uncomfortable.
And then he blows on my face and I’m back, and now I’m worried he saw whatever that was, the baby brother of a sensatory overload probably, and I want to cry and I don’t know why.
But I won’t. Obviously, I won’t. It’s fine. It’s just a stupid text. He’s being nice, and I’m not alone.
“Cute. Very cute. You get that a lot?” I’m gonna guess ‘no’, but my brain really doesn’t want to cooperate and come up with something more than that. “It’s, uh… A misunderstanding. Sort of.” The more he furrows his brows the bigger the arch on mine is. Believe me yet?
I’m a so-so liar. I think I only ever succeed because people don’t assume I’m about to lie, and in this case, I’m not sure it would work. Tay may not be an academic award winner – or he’s hiding his trophy somewhere else – but he’s definitely not dumb. “I… Ran into my ex on the way here. He wanted to talk, aaaaand… I didn’t”, I explain with a nonchalant shrug. Easy, right? Also: true. Absolutely. “Soooo I said I’m going on a date. It worked in the past, you know, to get him off my back so I thought it would work again. He’s never done theee… Calling thing before.” My hands basically live their own life, gesticulating wildly around my phone as if I’m about to summon a demon. “But last time I might have lied about being in a serious relationship with my flatmate who’s kinda gay, so, y’know, it’s not… Unreasonable.”
It all just sounds so stupid, out loud like that; and I hate the word ‘stupid’, It’s like sushi, my mind associates it with Dylan. That was one of his favorite words to say.
My hands feel empty, so I start pushing my right hand’s nails into every phalanx, one by one, leaving small, crescent-shaped red lines. I mean, they’re short, I can’t do with long ones, so it doesn’t hurt, but it makes me feel calm. Nina called it the ‘weirdest version of a binky she’s ever seen, and she used to suck on crack pipes’. She grew up as the youngest child of Classic Literature professors so I’ve had doubts about crack pipes but whatever flowed with her vibes.
“Whatever, it’s… Stupid. Sorry, didn’twanttomakeitweird.” The last part kind of comes in one breath, there’s this strangle in my throat. He doesn’t care, that’s not why I’m here, so let’s get back to that. “Umm… Sooo how are you doing? With the apartment thing, I mean.”

Once I’m done milking the absolute shit out of this one text and I actually take a moment to read the room, I suddenly get this feeling like something’s… Off. Not sure when it happened – she was smiling and laughing at first and I’ve been told I’m no expert at social cues, but when someone’s smiling and laughing, I tend to just assume they’re okay. Having fun or whatever. This used to drive my ex up the wall and the feeling was mutual, she felt like I wasn’t paying attention and I felt like she expected me to read her mind.
My own smile fades away as Mac gets to explaining and my gaze wanders freckle to freckle, trying to decipher her expression. Thankfully, there’s no need for telepathy because the longer she goes on, the clearer it gets: we got a psycho on our hands. What I’m hearing is that she got this ex who just rang her twice even though she told him she would be going on a date, and that this isn’t the first time she’s had to make up an excuse to “get him off her back”.
Then I notice her picking at her skin and I finally realize where that uneasy feeling came from. She’s anxious, she’s been anxious the entire time.
My gut reaction is “Give me his address, I just wanna talk,” but past experience tells me that threatening violence kinda-sorta tends to backfire with women. She doesn’t want that drama or she doesn’t want you to get hurt or she’s afraid of his revenge, I don’t fucking know, but all it does is she won’t tell you the next time he acts up. Been there with mom a hundred times over.
“I can be your excuse,” I guess, trynna match her level of casual, seeing as she seems determined to keep this a no-big-deal. “Tell him you’re now dating a cop. Who’s very good-looking. And weighs two-hundred pounds.” I shrug, briefly confessing as an aside, “He only weighs one-ninety, but make it two-hundred.”
That’s about a light heavyweight in the UFC, c’mon, no fucking way Mac’s ex is bigger than that. It’d be like that gif where the tunnel’s too narrow for the train, I’m sorry. Unless that’s what she’s into and she’s secretly dated Cain Velasquez, in which case we do have to meet after all ‘cause I wanna have his signature. One of only three undisputed champions of all time and the only one that actually car-chased and shot at a daycare owner that molested his four-year-old son. In other words, a legend.
“Aaand…” I turn back to her iPad and tap on Contacts, then New Contact, adding my number and casually titling it Tay. I own a Huawei but it literally says Add to Emergency Contacts right there, you don’t need a degree in Apple. Under Relationship, it automatically asks me to indicate who I am to Mac, so I stay consistent and tap on boyfriend. Then I wrinkle my forehead at her, pursing my lips, voilà. “...You can call him anytime.”
Her tablet rang when her phone rang, I almost picked it up by accident, so I’m assuming everything syncs onto her cell. Now – I don’t know if she’ll like this, but I don’t really need her to like it, I just need her to get the hint. If I got the wrong read or if she’s already got ten people watching out for her, she can always just undo it, I won’t take offense, naaah, not me, not ever.

I casually reopen the StreetEasy tab, fighting back any further urge to swoop into her life and save the shit out of her. That angle didn’t work out so well for me in the past, but I do love a damsel in distress. Okay, understatement, I eat that shit up like the free buffet at a Christmas party. When I first visited the Coast Guard recruitment office without any idea of what I was really signing up for, I was kinda hoping I’d at least get to save the occasional hot girl on duty who would then be all over me like, “MmMhhHh, you sAAAVED meEeeEE, sAiLorrRrrr…”, y’know, as soon as she’s regained consciousness and coughed up all the seawater.
(Let me tell you, there were no girls in sight for the next four years.)
“That said…” I get back on topic, letting out a brief whistle as I tap on a picture of the apartment she seemed so partial about. Place don’t look too grimy, floorboards are new and the kitchen and bathroom seem renovated with those white brick tiles that everyone and their mom is slapping on their walls right now. Plus, I assume Mac can vouch that the landlord’s not some tyrannical tight-ass, nor is the whole listing one huge bait-and-switch.
Cue my policy of ‘If it seems too good to be true, it probably is’. There’s only so much you can gather from a listing before you show up in person and the toilet valve is rusted shut and something’s living inside the water heater and oh look, a rat’s taking a shit on your Nikes, make sure to duck near windows ‘cause there’s three active shooters at large in the area.
Pretty sure my glass ceiling caps at about 2.1k, but sometimes landlords will give you some wiggle room if you fool them into thinking you’re a decent tenant or if you get a roommate for additional income. Too bad the judge probably wouldn’t appreciate some rando called Rick in my closet.
“It’s above my paygrade by about two-hundred, but I’mma take a wild guess and assume your co-worker likes you.”
Yep. She that type.
“Homecrest’s a pretty geriatric hood, though. Traffic’s just Chinese grannies who’ll stab you in the foot with their canes ‘cause ‘respect your elders’ and shit,” he explained racistly.
Anyone who’s ever set foot in a Chinatown knows what I mean, though. Tiny ladies who’ve watched the Ming dynasty crumble before their very eyes, crawling about at a Daoist speed in the middle of the sidewalk, the final bosses of my personal pedestrian hell. One of them asked me to help her cross Fourth Avenue once and I shit you not, it took us twenty minutes.
“Then again, I’ll be thirty-one in two months. The ‘one’ stands for one foot in the nursing home.”
Homecrest’s pretty close to kiddie places like Coney Island and Marine Park, and I’m more than ready to get the fuck away from the city.
In conclusion: sounds too good, don’t trust it.

Part of me really wants to tell him. I don’t really know what it is, the mere fact that I find him attractive and want him to see me in a certain light – one where I’m not being fussy for nothing, most guys don’t like self-proclaimed ‘high maintenance’ girls, unless they feel the need to overcompensate for something –, or because a decade ago he helped me a few times when I was distressed, like with that ‘mangy opossum in the closet’ which turned out to be Dallas’ bearded dragon that got lost a year before (still no idea how it survived), or… You know. When I almost drowned.
Maybe it’s just the fact I’m aware of our differences and a primal part of my brain goes man big, man strong, man protect through the anguished opposition of my inner independent modern woman who needs no man since Amazon invented that gadget which opens jars for you.
If he asked, I’d have told him, but he doesn’t, and it’s for the better. When he agrees to a question I haven’t even really asked, I can finally swallow my nerves though, and laugh out this heavy breath I’ve been holding.
“I’ll also make sure to add ‘very humble’,” I nod along, smiling for real. He seems so chill about this, like he does this stuff every other Tuesday – and I mean, maybe he does. I don’t really know anything about his current life. He might have a girl awaiting chivalrous rescue from her clothes by a hot police officer right now. I’m pretty sure he’s not in a steady relationship though; no way he could have a girl over on the regular and she doesn’t leave anything behind. Bears pee around their territories, girls leave hairbands. And he probably would’ve mentioned it regarding the guardianship.
Biting my lip with the full intention of making skincare professionals cry, I shamelessly stare at him as he types up his info into my iPad. I’m not sure I’d ever actually dare to call him if I needed to, he has his own problems to take care of, but it does feel very nice. My hand goes up to his shoulder and squeezes it as a silent thank you that I’m not ready to say out loud. That would make it real.
He does have a pretty solid build though, so I’ll give him that ten pounds.
“You don’t have to say you like it just for my benefit”, I chime in as he goes on to inspect the photos again. I mean, he’s a big boy, I’m sure he can articulate his opinion but sometimes guys, the ones that know better anyway, tend to be tiptoeing around women’s feelings like they don’t know what reaction to expect unless they go reaaaaaaal sloooooow. “It wouldn’t be too far from work for you?”
I’m not quite sure which precinct he works in, but Homecrest is kinda far from his current apartment. I tried looking around here but with all the development along 8th Ave and the docks, gentrification once again hits harder than Sandy.
He says mean things nonchalantly, which in his language usually means he likes it. I mean, I do; compared to most other neighborhoods, Homecrest is almost a suburb, the closes you’ll get without paying a lot more rent or move out to Long Island. I mean this place is closer to the inner city and isn’t quite your white picket fence setup, but…
“Well, I also saw this Mahjong club not far away, so you’d be set,” nod-nod. Get that stupid smile off your face, hArRiEtT. “You want me to ask if it’s still available?... I’m gonna ask.” I’m on my phone before he could answer. My thumb hovers over the notification of the missed calls and the text before swiping it away. Out of sight, out of mind. Nina also texts back, though.
yea but me + t are going to submit to heteronormative stereotypes after
his sisters stupid gallery thing
Tom’s family has this problem, and it’s called homophobia. He came out, like, six times already and they’re still like are you sure though, so he kinda gave up and went with the did i say penis, I meant vagina, I love vagina, stupid autocorrect road. I was his ‘girlfriend’ three years ago; his plan was to keep getting girls to front for him until every family member dies, but only for, like, a year or so otherwise they’d start asking about weddings. So that isn’t new.
that’s today?
yeaaa told you yesterday???
sometimes I feel like u not listenin gurlll
it hurts : (
who the ph-uuuuck does stuff in the middle of the week tho fr
I ask when they’ll finish up and go on to actually call the colleague, Daniel. I know I won’t interfere with work ‘cause he’s out on medical. Well, actually, his dog is out on medical but when you pay the worth of a city SUV for a dog and it still eats your diamond stud earring so you have to monitor his poop, I’m sure you start having heart problems. So I call him, ask how they’re doing – the dog’s still not pooping diamonds. I also needed to put the laptop back down and stand up because no, I can’t sit in one place when I’m on the phone. If I was home, I’d even climb the kitchen counters for more walking space.
“So, I’m actually calling about the apartment, you know, that we talked about last week? You still have it?”
“I mean, we have iiiit, it ain’t for sale, girl, but we do have people coming to see it later.”
Well that’s a bummer.
“Oh… You think they’ll take it?”
“Dunno. Don’t see why not.” Fair point. By this time, I’m leaning against the doorway. “But I mean, if you’re interested…? You’re home officing today, right? You could pop on over, take a look, fill the paperwork, maybe bring me a bubble tea on the way…?
“Isn’t that a bit douchey?”
“This isn’t Candy Land, there ain’t no Rainbow Trail. Except for you, I mean… Winston? You poopin…? Nah. Fucking dog, I swear, eating my fucking diamonds.” Oh yeah. So relatable. “The things I did for that diamond…! Keeps me awake at night. But yeah, whatever, look, we’d rather lease it to someone we know, Shawn got fucked over by tenants before. Like, last time, there’s this cute Colombian girl, right? She was snatched, like, everything on fleek, and she had kickass playlists on spotify, so I was like ooookay. You know what she didn’t have? Money for rent after sugar daddy left. So we give her the eviction notice, and kid you not, she takes the toilet. The TOILET!”
“She must have been determined.”
“Yeah, no shit. So whatever, if you’re interested, you got it, just come over, I’ll drive this poopfest there too. Is the other girl moving with you, too? Whatshername… The angry one.”
Oh yeah. I might’ve failed to mention the part where it’s not for me. I mean, Daniel’s cool, but he’s like Sonic on the corridors, you’re lucky to ever catch him so you either ask what you want in five seconds or you’ve missed your window. My gaze jumps on Tay who probably has no idea what the hell’s going on.
“Umm… Nina. But no, not really, umm… It’s more like… Not for me?”
“Whatchu mean not for you? Do you moonlight as a realtor?”
“No, it’s, umm… A friend.”
“… A friend?”
It doesn’t sounds like he’s all for ‘I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy’ type situations. My eyebrows jump up, and I have no idea why I’m silently asking Tay to answer the question when he’s just sitting over there, chillin’.
“Boy…friend…?” Is that okay?, I mouth right after. Probably not.
“Huh. I thought you were a lesbian.”
“Nnno, not really. Bi, but…” It’s probably against company policy and really unrelated.
“So you’re moving together?”
“Nnnno, it’s him. He’s moving.”
“What does he need a two bedroom apartment for?”
“…It’s complicated.” If this goes down the best way, then Tay will probably need to tell them about Billie. There was no ‘no children allowed’ section, so I think it’s cool.
“Isn’t it always?” He sighs and then there’s wild barking in the background, accompanied by a string of Spanish curses. “Look, as long as it’s not something freaky, like, illegal freaky, it’s cool. Just get there before three. I gotta go rummage around dog poop with three diplomas. My mom is so proud.”
The call disconnects and I’m immediately hitting up Google to see how fast can we work it out. If we hurry up and go, like, now, then we could get back by three and I can ask Tay if I can sign in to my meeting here. It’s not like I actually need to say anything, just nod and smile. Story of my life.
“So… How do you feel about looking at the apartment pretty soon?” I ask him, nodding towards my phone. “Like, now? Dan said they have someone look around this afternoon but they’d rather lease it out to someone who might not try to put the toilet on Craigslist, so…” It was a confusing conversation, confusing enough that I almost forgot about everything that happened with Dylan. The thought of going out there isn’t exactly enticing but I’d have needed to leave this apartment sooner or later, anyway. “We can’t finish the petition without a new address, anyway. And I think we need to get bubble tea on the way. Also rubber gloves, probably.”
Who knows when that diamond decides to show up.
Hopping back towards the couch, I’m turning off the iPad when I realize how I basically just barged in and in less then half hour just took over the couch, bitched about my ex, decided I’m going to lie to a potential landlord about him being my boyfriend and force him to take a trip to southern Brooklyn. He didn’t ask for any of this; he probably just wanted to chill in sweatpants and sleep before his shift.
“I mean, we don’t have to…? Sorry for assuming.” A nervous laugh escapes my lips as I shake my head. “I just really wanna…” Not go home. “…help.”

Girl, stop touching me or there gon’ be an uprising in the Southern regions of Sweatpantopia.
“How would that benefit you, though? You get a commission for pushing this place or something?” Feigning disbelief, I shift in my seat, upper body rotated towards her. “Shit, Mac, are you scamming me right now?”
You don’t hunt for apartments in this city without running into a couple con artists. Ones who’ll meet you on a corner and go “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, sir, the property you were interested in is no longer available, but let me sell you on this shittier one for a slumlord amount of a security deposit, what do you say?”. There came a point where this happened to me for the third time in a row and I just went, “Sure, you mind if I light one up in the meantime?”, and once he agreed – with duper’s delight written all over his face –, I lit a cigarette and put it off on his leather messenger bag, ‘cause fuck you. ‘Cause here I am taking time off work and you out here taking me on rides throughout the borough just to fucking lie to my face. Only thing I hate more than a nepo is a petty fucking sleazeball.
“Damn. Can’t trust nobody these days,” I shake my head, thoroughly disappointed.
When she asks if the location checks out, I realize she doesn’t even know I ride ferries for a living.
“I'm Maritime Unit,” I reply with a shrug. “I clock in and out on Columbia Street. Commute should be forty minutes, tops.”
Sure, it’s further away than my current apartment, but so far, the pros list seems to outweigh the cons list. Can’t wait to find out what that Surprise Dealbreaker is.
I smile back at her at that Mahjong line. Can’t decide – either we fuckin’ vibing right now or my wishful thinking’s back in full swing.
“Ask away,” I suppose. Not that there’s a need for my approval, seeing as she’s already made her decision. I feel like I’m playing life on easy mode, I don’t even gotta ask, she just goes and takes it upon herself to solve all my problems.
I slide down the couch with a knowing smile, crossing my arms in advance, ready to find out why this listing isn’t actually as good as it seems. C’mon, there’s always something. It’s never that easy, nothing’s ever that easy.
When I hear Mac asking if “he thinks they’ll take it”, I nod to myself and pick up the iPad, right back to browsing. She goes silent for a while and I hear nothing but a muffled voice coming from the other end, Mac interjecting here and there.
When she calls me her friend, I look up with an “Awww” kind of grin across my face, palm plastered on my chest as if touched by the sight of a shih tzu's little ponytail. She seems to hesitate for a second before I suddenly graduate to boyfriend status and I also find out she swings both ways – cue me nodding with a “Not bad” kind of grimace on my face.
In conclusion, that was one hell of a phone call.
“So, when’s the wedding?” I ask when she hangs up, so focused on her phone she’s practically typing with the tip of her nose. “Can I wear sweats at the altar?”
Everyone’s all about taking it slow these days, but us two, we’re doing it the old-school way. Me man, you woman, we just met, I offer three goats for your hand in marriage.
She looks up and breaks the news, asking if I’m ready to go right now, and at first I just kinda blink in surprise. Ain’t exactly the type that will spring to their feet going all “Yaaay!”, so maybe it’s my underwhelming reaction that’s making her second-guess herself.
I put her iPad down and stand up, looking exactly like the type that would post a toilet on Craigslist as I walk past her on my way to the bedroom.
“I’ll go put some pants on,” I smile, squeezing her arm the same way she did mine. Then I look back over my shoulder and shake my hand off, brows furrowed as I mouth, “Oohf…!”, like she’s so rock-hard ripped I just hurt myself touching her.

I return with actual grown-up pants on, grabbing my keys from the counter and shoving them in my pockets along with my phone and my wallet, creating the Signature Bulge(TM). My genetics have kindly saved us a few minutes of shaving since I can’t fucking grow a full beard even if I pop a vein straining.
“I’m parked under the expressway on 37th Street, ten minutes’ walk if we stop at ViVi on the way,” I lay out Operation Bubble Tea before explaining,“There’s one on Fifth Avenue. They knew you were coming, set up shop real quick.”
No matter what borough, what neighborhood, there’s always at least one ViVi bubble tea shop there – multiply that by a hundred if it’s an Asian hood. They the fucking bubble tea syndicate of this country, got at least three installments in Sunset Park only. Being a residential neighborhood, I don’t know if Homecrest will have its own, though, so we’re better off getting some here.

My side of Sunset Park is a pretty barren area, consisting of one-to-two-story brick buildings covered in chipped paint and signs in Chinese. We also boast garage doors covered in graffiti and endless rows of cars parked along the roads, it’s a sight to behold. Mac and I walk along the overpass, this giant snake of green steel, rusted brown in most places with cables running along the rivets.
The atmosphere gets a bit more animated as we get closer to Fifth Avenue for our detour. The ViVi is posted on a corner, crammed in-between a bus stop and a fire escape. The shop window is plastered full of their menu, tacky photos annotated in English and Mandarin.

The interior is surprisingly spacious, though. It’s cheap but on-brand with its pink counters and its boba pearl containers in the shape of teddy bears. There’s a colorful music video playing on a big TV screen, looks like some kind of Korean girl group. I like the one with the red hair.
“Found your guy,” I gesture at the lucky cat posted on the counter by the pink-and-yellow plastic straws.
A tired college student slides over to us in a pink apron, sounding bubbly.
“Hey guuuuysss, welcome to ViiiViii, how may I help yeuuu?”
“Hey, uh, can I get, uh, the matcha one?” I deadpan wearily, reaching into my back pocket to slide out my wallet. I’m way too old to be worrying about whether sipping on matcha bubble tea will shrink my dick by an inch or nah. Besides, the only two reasons I haven’t ordered my coffin off Amazon yet are girls and basically anything with calories in it.
“Medium or laaarge?”
“Large. With fries.”
“Sure. Uh, just a heads-up, we only have sweet potato fries, is that okay with yeuuu?”
Girl, I don’t want your soggy ass sweet potato fries. Defeats the purpose of fries, for fuck’s sake.
“You don’t have… Like. Normal fries?”
“No, sorryyyy,” she bobs her head to the side, admitting that sweet potato fries are in fact abnormal fries. “Only sweet potataww.”
“Okay, yeah, jus’…” I shrug dismissively. “Whatever, just scratch the fries.”
“And our milk-based drinks are all made with soy milk, is that okay with yeuuu?”
There she goes, kicking a man when he’s down.
“Yeah, just… Whatever.” I yield in frustration before looking at Mac, tone suddenly turning somewhat lighter. “Go ahead. ’S on the house.”

Dylan hasn’t given any indication that he’s trying to initiate anything since that text, so I feel ridiculous for being skittish as we walk out of his apartment. It’s not like Dylan’s gonna jump out from behind that rusty transformer on the corner like I’m playing one of Tom’s stupid indie horror games again. If I didn’t know that he was afraid I’d sue him for invasion of privacy, I’d think he takes secret TikTok videos of me getting the living shit, hon AND baek scared out of me at the same time. It’s my fault for always agreeing to play, to be fair.
The further we walk, the less weight I feel on my chest, like we’re walking out from underneath a rain cloud. I ask him about casual stuff like work on the way towards the ViVi he mentioned, because no, you’re not allowed to just casually walk in silence when I’m there. It’s weird, knowing that it’s been more than eight years since I saw him last. Doesn’t feel like it, or maybe it’s just that he’s chill. I love chill people, like him, like Nina, like Tom, I require them, actually; otherwise I’m bouncing around like a rabid hummingbird.
The fact that my hand swings close to his as we walk and it would literally take only thiiis much to touch it isn’t lost on me. I really, really need to dust off Tinder again, this is getting out of hand.
Despite how it looks, the inside of the ViVi place doesn’t smell like candies and sugar, but lemon scented disinfectant. My heart goes out to the poor girl who’s hauling this big bucket of cleaning water towards the toilets. During the first year at uni, I worked at a DiGiorno. You’d think growing up in a male-dominated family will prepare you for most things, but it only goes so far when jalapeno is involved.
“Huh?” I lost the plot when I saw the tv, happens a lot with pretty girls (or guys) doing stuff well, like, I don’t care what it is you’re doing, you could be peeling potatoes like a champ, I’m gonna be impressed. Synchronized dancing in music videos, especially Korean ones, definitely does it for me. Do I wanna be them or do I wanna be with them? The ultimate gay question. My eyes scan the room and I giggle like a moron when I see the cat.
Boop. Can’t resist, I need to touch the arm. I need to. It’s vital. Watching it bop up and down is almost better than synchronized dancing.
Watching Tay interact with the cashier is what I imagine the War of the Worlds to look like – I’ve never seen the movies, can’t stand Tom Cruise, but it can’t be better than this. No sweet fries though, dully noted.
“Umm, I’d like a large Coffee Jelly annnnd.. A Blue Galaxy?” I’m horrible with big menus so I usually order whatever I see first so I don’t freeze. With Daniel, I know what he likes, I used to do lunch runs for his team when I interned, although I’m not sure he was serious. Well, anyway, it can’t hurt, right? “With Jelly. Thanks,” I add on with a smile, and she sort of hopps away. Love the energy. Wonder what she’s on.
The cat is still bobbing their arm, though, and Tay better not actually buy one, ‘cause I’ll spend all day just booping it. Like I’m about to be invited again, right. That thought aside, I suddenly remember the scene from Marvel show about Bucky. Tay sort of reminds me of him – personality-wise, not so much in looks. That dude’s head is like 80% eyes, it kind of freaks me out.
“Hey, very important question,” I turn towards him, squinting, like I’m about to quiz him about his alibi. “Marvel or DC?” I manage to keep a serious face for the whole three seconds it takes for him to admit his darkest secret, and I need to clutch at my chest with an overdramatically pained expression. DC? That’s such a guy answer. No woman ever says DC. “I don’t know, we might need to think this relationship through. I’m not sure I can overcome that.”
No wedding in sweatpants, I guess. I’m about to say that Batman’s cool until it’s Ben Afflack when my phone buzzes in my bag. My temple grows cold for a moment before I realize it’s just Nina.
idk like 5 if its trash
later if there’s free booze
probs trash tho
I give her a thumbs up before sliding it back. It only occurs to me then that I should have said something along the lines of ‘please don’t stab anyone with fancy cutlery’ but I can’t be bothered to get it out again. It’d be rude, right? And she can manage one afternoon without murder. Probably. Hopefully.
“I’m afraid to ask the real questions now. Like, are hotdogs sandwiches?” It’s not like I’m about to ask whether the armed forces changed his views on politics or whatever in the middle of the bubble tea shop. “I love sweet potato fries, by the way. They are great, Vitamin C and all that. Or do you prefer to take yours in gummy form?”
I’m starting to feel like maybe eight years isn’t that long. I mean, we weren’t exactly best friend before the whole JJ thing went down, but I liked hanging out with him, even with the crush-thing aside. Maybe if I keep messing with him, I can fool myself into thinking this is normal. It also helps to take my mind off the fact that Nina and Tom might not make it back by the time I do.
When the cashier comes back with our order, I tap down my pockets until I find a five dollar bill in my back pocket and I slide it into the tip jar before taking a straw – yes, I boop the cat again – and pulling the drinks in front of me. I have a steel straw, save the turtles, you’d think it goes in easy. It takes two unsuccessful attempts until I give up.
“Could you…?” I push both towards Tay with a pleading smile. “Thanks. Last time I tried to force it, it blew up in my face. Literally. Work wasn’t fun after that.”
I should have read the ingredients list first, because the lime juice comes as a big surprise, the sourness scrunches up my face for a moment. Probably should have mixed it up before because my straw went straight for the lime on the bottom, but with whatever tea is in there, it’s sweet, and as the blue sweeps into the yellow, it starts turning purple in the middle. My little bi heart approves.
“How come you have a car?” I ask him between sips as we walk along the street, the cars going whooshier by the minute as the place gets busier. “Isn’t parking a nightmare around here? I don’t even have a license.”

Guess I’ll have to add “booping mechanized cats” to the list of things that Mac does that I can’t fully wrap my head around. Either way, it seems to bring her joy somehow, so I support her in her booping, y’know. Boop away, girl.
Another thing I didn’t realize is that there was a notable difference between Marvel and DC. I mean, what do I care which billion-dollar superhero franchise defines my identity better? Yes, I'm Jack's smirking revenge, I’m Edward Norton’s rant on consumerism, ‘cause knowing the entire script of Fight Club off the top of my head absolutely does not make me just as much of a basic bitch as Marvel fans.
I may or may not’ve had a couple phases in my teens where I practically just roleplayed as Tyler Durden, by the way.
“DC all the way.” Eyes lidded, I smirk at Mac like it’s a challenge. It’s always fun to pretend you care so hard you gotta rethink your entire relationship based on artistic differences. It’s so fun in fact that I’m suddenly feeling invested for real, turning to her, “I mean, have you seen The Dark Knight? What’s Marvel got to show for themselves, Ant-Man?”
Imagine discovering you have superpowers and you base your entire persona around ants of all things. And you’re played by fucking Paul Rudd. Dude looks like my non-existent white uncle, fuck off. “Oh, but he seems so niiice, he’s so funnyyyy,” fuck off.
Don’t know, something about these “hee-hee, ha-ha” guys, these “I’m so this, I’m so that” guys, it just pumps my blood pressure all the way up. The people that everybody loves at work, at school, in Hollywood, I take it upon myself to hate them. It’s a lonely road but someone’s gotta keep ‘em in check, ‘cause they fake as fuck, too. I mean, this is real life, no one’s actually that likeable and well-adjusted. I know you’re fuckin’ hiding something, Paul.
Mac turns back to her phone and I step to the terminal, card beeping against it. It’s very much unlike my cheap ass to be saying this, but I feel a wave of relief at finally getting to at least pay for something.
“Might just be me, but I eat fries for the salt and texture, not for the vitamins,” I crane my neck at Mac while shoving my wallet in my pocket. I love the fact that she actually cares about vitamins enough to know which kind sweet potatoes have in particular. I mean, I care about protein, for one, but not because I’m trynna “live longer” or whatever, I simply wanna look as swole as possible. Does Vitamin C help with that in any meaningful way? No? I don’t give a fuck, then.
I grab my order, looking like the target audience next to ViVi’s cutesy cup design of, uh, either little skulls or horrifyingly fucked up babies. I can’t tell no matter how hard I squint.
I watch in awe as Mac actually whips out this metal straw out of nowhere, trying and failing to stab it through the foil.
“You’re shitting me,” I blink at her when she holds it out at me. I take that fucking thing and wave it like a wand, on the verge of cracking up, begging through a tortured grin, “You carry this with hyouh?!”
My girl just carries a metal straw around all day, every day. That’s so fucking overkill, like, imagine always washing that shit up and making sure to pack one up just in case, imagine caring so much.
In the end, I just shake my head in disbelief, chuckling under my breath as I punch her little rose gold straw through the foil. “Fhuck, that’s adorable.”
Like I said though, I do love a damsel in distress. Even if it’s only a pickle jar or a straw through some foil, I switch gears when women ask me for help. One part of it is just good old ego, another part of it is the comfort of feeling needed. Like maybe I’m not completely obsolete after all – my qualities are still highly sought after in the industry of reaching the top shelf.

We’ve only walked a couple blocks and I’m already halfway through my cup, sucking on that shit like a mosquito.
“Less people in a car, ideally none,” I list the first pro, “and I work a lot of night shifts. I mean, you see those things?” And I nod towards the shabby caravans parked underneath the overpass we’re walking along, looking like these portable meth labs. “All the tweakers squatting in there come crawling out at night, and I’d rather not take a bullet to the thigh again.”
That’s it, I do not elaborate.
I stop in my tracks instead, head jerked left to right, cars whooshing past. A few seconds of this and I finally spot an opening, gotta let one last Jeep pass and then jaywalk – more like jayrun – over to my parking spot.
“You ready?” I intone like this is supposed to be fun or some shit. And then I hold my palm out, letting her take my hand. Man, it’s the perfect excuse, I’m basically a pick-up black belt over here.
The Jeep passes us by and I step onto the road, Mac and I scurrying across like two mutant chipmunks, an incoming school bus blaring its horn at us ‘cause bus drivers are goddamn drama queens. C’mon, people out here leaping from train car to train car like fucking Spiderman, let me live.
Once we hop onto the gravel underneath the overpass, I let go of Mac’s hand and pretend to wipe my forehead.
“Phew,” I articulate cartoonishly before adding with flat affect, “Adrenaline’s real right now.”

I drive a seventh-gen Camry, bought it slightly used but with a facelift ‘cause I just like big ass bumpers. Oohf, that came out wrong.
I plop behind the wheel with a grunt, sliding the cup holders out and shoving my bubble tea inside. I press a button to start up the engine and then another one to heat up the seats.
“How warm you want your butt?” I ask casually, setting it to three so it heats up faster. I still give her a little rundown in case she wants to make an informed decision, “Three’s God sent you straight to the ninth circle of Hell, two’s you’re being roasted in an oven, one’s you’re sitting on my lap.”
And I look at her with a half-smile, jokiiiiing. Unless of course she’s into it, then it wasn’t a joke. That’s the quantum physics of how all my flirting works: the moment the words leave my mouth, they’re hovering in this special kind of superposition between haha-kidding and completely-serious, we’ll just have to see. I’ve developed this little defense mechanism ‘cause I got bitch-slapped a few years back and I’m not gonna lie, it kinda took me down a peg. I’ll never forget looking in the mirror and seeing a red handprint spanning across one side of my face, cue sad violin music.
Hugging the back of Mac’s seat, I begin inching out of the parking spot in reverse, turning back and forth between the sideview mirror and the rear windshield for two minutes straight. It’s a whole ass maneuver thanks to this one retard who went and practically double-parked on my ass.
“Fffffhuuuuuuck youuuuu…” I filter through my teeth, seething as I spin the wheel to the right again.
I don’t hate public transport, I don’t hate driving, I don’t hate parking. I hate people.
Except for Mac, she seems alright so far.

“Oh yeah, that’s definitely just you,” I nod along, deadpan, brows furrowed. “What a weirdo.”
Under different circumstances, I’d probably buy one just to mess with him and I’d list off all the benefits I can still remember from my tenth year health science presentation. These facts have no right to still be imprinted into my brain but neither does the entire transcript of Mulan and here we are. Sign Me up for the next war! Nothing made me more confused than trying to decide if I should simp for Shang or Mulan. The more you know.
At first I have no idea what he’s on about, like, why does he look like I’ve just said the most outrageous thing ever by asking for his help. But then he gestures with the straw and oh, yeah, I get it now. I mean, I don’t. “Yeah…?” It’s my turn to give him a perplexed look. He doesn’t elaborate though. Adorable isn’t exactly what I’m going for here, my dude.
Also, I’m getting unsure whether this whole ‘I say something wild like it’s the most usual thing in the world and then NOT talk about it further’ thing is how he prefers to communicate or he’s just trying to be all mysterious and shit. Either way, I’m not trying to mess up his vibes so sure, let’s pretend getting shot anywhere is completely normal. “But, like… Technically, you still have to pass them…?” I gesticulate vaguely towards the spot he was pointing at, then back towards where I think his apartment is. “Like… If you park over there, and you live over there…?” I know we made an extra stop for bubble tea but I don’t really know if my orientational skills are failing or what. “I mean, fair points though. Can’t say I prefer the N line to Lyft.” I used to prefer Uber, ‘cause you can get it cheaper but you get your fair share of creeps, too. ‘Nice place you got there, you afford it alone?’ ‘If you girls want some company, you can always call me.’ F-that.
“Ready for what?” I blink at him, automatically taking his hand, but the end of the sentence sort of turns into a yelp. I hate going into traffic, always have a mini heart attack whenever I witness Nina casually walking through the avenue in rush hour traffic like she’s Miss Invincible or something. I have to admit, it only feels like half a Kamikaze action shot with Tay. He’s the size of a smaller building, maybe he could deter incoming cars like a breakwater.
It definitely doesn’t have to do with the fact that for ten whole seconds he’s holding my hand, nuh-uh.
“Easy for you, you freaking giraffe,” I nudge him with Daniel’s unopened cup. I got some sprinkle on the foil of mine and it dripped onto my hand. My heart says ‘you don’t waste food’, my mind says ‘you took the train here, hello STD’. So I rummage around my bag for a tissue and hope it won’t get sticky.
The bag goes to the back seat, Daniel’s bubble tea next to Tay’s, and I feel like a chipmunk just sitting there. I do have to wiggle around a bit to reach under the seat and find the thingamabob to adjust the seat forward. Whomever was here before me wasn’t a hobbit neither.
His question still finds me in that forward leaning position and I give him a quizzical look at first, like I’m unsure if I heard him right. It only takes me a moment though before it dawns on me. Mumbling incoherently, I shake my head at him and manage to adjust the legspace.
“Wherever you prefer me to be,” I end up saying, because at this point I’m almost sure he’s either messing with me, or that’s how he talks with everyone, and no amount of wishful thinking should convince me otherwise. Doesn’t mean I don’t feel the tip of my ears going hot but let’s pretend that’s residual from that whole twenty feet of running earlier.
I text Daniel an ETA of about twenty minutes, and he sends a thumbs up with the gate code to the building. I also see a few notifications from work, so I read up on those forwarded emails while Tay plays the weirdest Tetris ever with the car. Nothing too interesting for now, just a few heads ups about an upcoming trial and the change in schedule. I feel a little bit wrong about being here while I’m technically working but honestly, I’m aware how much anyone works even in the office, especially in the office, and I probably did more than most of them in four hours.
Even if I didn’t, I couldn’t really care right now, I can’t focus with Tay right next to me and his arm going back and forth. I have issues.
“What’s that mean?”, I end up asking as if pointing at his tattoo could justify me staring at him from the corner of my eyes. “Wait, you want me to guess?” All I know in Chinese is purely vocal, and includes maaaybe twenty words. Most of them are from menus, and in Mandarin. It wouldn’t be fun if I actually knew it though, would it? “Patiance. Freedom. No, no! Sesame chicken.”  
Pretty sure I got that right.
Whatever it is, looks cool, and he has the added benefit of not looking like an appropriating douchebag. “I once went out with this girl, she was nice, but she had this really elaborate, colorful watercolor-like design down her side, like, very nice linework, but it had four Chinese letters which she saw on her meditation candle or something and thought it meant ‘fire, water, air, earth’ but it was literally the ‘made in China’ sign.” She was nice but I still have to laugh whenever I remember. How do you go and have this huge tattoo made without even looking up what you’re tattooing? I make a vague gesture of the second letter in the air. “I recognized it because of the little boxed in Hanzi? And to this day I kind of regret telling her ‘cause she got really upset, and I probably shouldn’t have told her that she’d be missing an element, anyway. She just stormed off and left me at the concert.” I’m not exactly heartbroken about it, still laughing, although I did feel pretty stupid about it there. Like, it’s not exactly my place to correct people about stuff I don’t get, either.  “It was a shitty alt-concert, too.”
It's starting to get hot in here so take off all your clothes, so I get out of my blazer and fold it up in my lap. Getting your ass hauled across city in a car is nice. For one, you can actually hear what the other is saying, unlike on the train or walking. For another, you can gaze around, chill, not worry about sitting in something you don’t want to sit in – although heated seats do feel like you’ve just peed yourself or something –, so I just keep sipping my tea. When we’re stopped. You don’t get straws close to your face when you might need to emergency brake.
“Oooh, guess what though!” I turn back towards him, beaming like I’m about to rock his world with the juiciest tea ever. “I did this DNA test thingy a few years ago, because yes, I was that basic girl who thought it might get a match or something, it didn’t, but! Turns out I’m one-eight Chinese and Japanese, too. And there’s, like, a sixteenth Blackfoot. I’m a freaking street mutt.” With a headshake, I go back to my cup and staring out the window, deep in thought. I know most of these stuff doesn’t really matter, everyone’s mixed when you really start looking it up, especially here, but since my birthname was fully Korean and so was my mother’s according to my birth certificate, I was surprised. It also made me kinda more curious but it always goes back to how I’m not sure I’m ready to open up that can of worms yet. As the TikTok trend went: Just realized something very important about myself. I’m gonna repress it for a few years but good to know.
“I’ve been thinking about getting another tattoo though. You think I could rock sesame chicken?”

As Mac probably knows by now, I don’t really post on social media – but I do lurk sometimes. And by “lurking” I mean checking in on my girl, and by “girl” I mean whatever Instagram model I’m obsessed with at the moment. Current one’s handle is actually “girlygaaal” or something, an obvious sign that we were meant to be.
Anyway, I’ve been single for a while and even my rock-solid moral compass has its limits, so my thumbs do slip occasionally.
Sooo… I texted one of them. Yep, I’m coming clean, I went there. I hit rock bottom, I looked God himself in the eye and said “idc”, I was down that bad. So I texted her “Hello” once... Then “Hello” once again a week later and she left me on seen both times. So I tried to get her attention by waiting another week (don’t wanna seem too clingy, do we?) and I shit you not, I spent at least three minutes trynna come up with something. So in the end I just went: “I almost died yesterday.”
Which was half-true by the way, so, kinda rude of her not to ask if I’m okay, but whatever, it didn’t work. Maybe she was busy. I mean, there’s no way she saw me and thought “Nah”, c’mon. She was busy.
Anyway, I still believe that “I almost died” and “Sit on me” out of absolutely nowhere are top notch lines. Maybe I’ll try “I almost died” on Mac another time, since “Sit on me” didn’t seem to work. Either that or I should just consider a third option, namely, chilling the fuck out. Being around Alex – token butch lesbian of the unit, we bond over our mutual loathing for Dale – has done me some good, I think. God knows what algorithm she uses to compute her matchmaking decisions, but sometimes she’ll act like my wingman-slash-hypeman, other times she’ll just cockblock me in cold blood. I’ll be getting up from the table like, “I’mma go say hi,” and she’ll just put her hand on my shoulder with a solemn yet firm, “No.”
“I j…”
“Stay seated.”
“Since when’re y…”
“Nope.”
“The f…”
“M-mm.”
Deadass the only person I listen to, somehow.
“‘Morning star’,” I reply when Mac asks what the characters on my arm mean. I conveniently leave out the part where it actually says ‘star morning’ ‘cause I got it at this makeshift tattoo shop on Las Olas Boulevard and the artist was Cuban. Blind leading the blind type situation right there. “Got it in the Coast Guard. Everyone and their mom had the star itself tatted, but I’m not like other girls, so I got it as calligraphy.”
And that’s already corny enough as it is, even without the “star morning” part – I was nineteen and I felt like I finally had some semblance of a family, okay? –, so I think I’ll keep that detail to myself for now. I have several regrettable tattoos from that era, by the way. It was kind of a wild time, I enjoyed off-duty for the most part, got to see actual places besides Queens and I wasn’t coming home to furniture covered in vomit. I often felt guilty for not missing Jason a little bit more, it kinda scared me in a way. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be, but I was sure what I didn’t want to be: an absentee like my father, a quitter like Jason’s father, or a half-in half-out bitch like Mark.
Somehow, I hated him the most. I can’t have people giving me crumbs of themselves when I give it all and more. I’m out here breaking my back and you’re telling me that’s still not enough, I’m still second place. Remind me again why I’m trading my all for your fucking leftovers. I’m never doing that “part-time” shit again, it’s all or nothing.
There’s a method to how I’ve learned everything I know today, too. I simply watched the adults around me and I learned what not to do. Figured if I kept ruling out the don’t’s, I’d finally arrive at the do’s one day – instead, I myself became a whole new kind of “don’t” to Jason.
Oh, well. You fuck up one kid and you move on to the next, start over. A lot of fathers do the same thing, maybe mine did, too. Maybe he’s happy somewhere out there, doing it right with someone else. Someone that’s easier to love, someone that ain’t half a chink, mayhaps.
“Yeah…” I exhale absently as I lean forward, waiting for an opening before we roll out onto the avenue. “Can’t believe people don’t, uh… Check before getting shit done.”
Complete idiots, am I right?
When Mac excitedly tells me to guess-what, I smirk at the road, “What?”
I give her a quizzical once-over when she tells me she’s apparently one-sixteenth Blackfoot. I can kinda see it, actually.
“Sixteenth?” I don’t actually know anyone who gets oops-sorry-for-the-genocide money from the government, but I hear it’s supposed to be a thing. “You entitled to any reparations, at least?”
Yep, that’s my first thought. I go after every fucking dime I can get, I’d kick a baby squirrel for a free handout. This is America, it’s every man for himself, I don’t train year-round for Black Friday only to let Karens stomp over me. The benevolent sexism leaves my body in those moments, I swear. Can’t reach top shelf, bitch? Oops, founders keepers!
Some people do get off on being “the bigger person”, though. Letting someone else “have it” and whatnot, oooh, they’re so civiiiiiil. And I like those people, less competition. I cross guys on the sidewalk sometimes who look like if I asked for their wallet, they’d just go, “Uh… I mean, sure, I mean, I don’t know your situation, maybe you need it more than I do, plus I’m white so I deserve it, so yeah, here you go I guess, haha…”. Well, they didn’t grow up in group homes, that’s for sure. One thing I’ve learned, people will gladly trample over you if you let ‘em.
“I don’t know what I am,” I reflect, sounding pretty neutral about it. “Made in Fuzhou on my mom’s side, ‘least I hope so ‘cause I been telling everyone that.” I don’t talk about my father’s side, though. “What if you find out you’re not the culture you identify with? Knock-knock, Cancel Police, or what?”
I wanna be all suave and tell Mac “You could rock anything”, but now I’m overthinking, dOeS thAt sOuNd cORnY? Mom, pick me up, I’m scared. I want Alex in the backseat telling me what to do, I need her step-by-step lesbian instructions, I need her feeding me lines through a mouthpiece.
“I could see you with like, “NO REGRATS” across the chest, with an ‘A’ of course,” I brainstorm, hundred-percent serious. “Or how about one of those sailor hearts that say ‘MOM’? I bet Helen would approve. Or you could upgrade the one you have into a full sleeve, Yakuza-style.”
I mean, that would be metal as fuck. I’d support any and all of those decisions unironically.
“Need a hookup, though? I know a guy in Gowanus. Definitely undercharges, but don’t tell him that,” I sneak a glance at her, conniving. “Solid guy, though. He’ll even talk you down if you show up with a whack idea.”
Like that one time at twenty-two when I wanted a big ass phoenix tatted across my back, Ben Affleck style. This middle-aged Hell’s Angels type dude just shook his head like, “Man, I know I couldn’t talk you down the knuckles neither, but... I’mma let you sleep on that one, aight? Hit me up in two weeks if you still want this.” And then he patted me on the fucking shoulder, so infantilizing, so paternal. Inside I was like, shut the fuck up or I’mma get you in a headlock and bawl my fucking eyes out.

My eyes scan along the lines of his tattoo as if I’m about to solve the whole universe through the fading charcoal colored ink. And I’m definitely only looking at that. Yup. Hot women and men flexing? Not on my for you page. “I think I prefer sesame chicken.” I don’t recall him having that when he came back but maybe I just had the basic decency to look at his face then, mostly.
Not that I’m all ‘oh my god, all tattoos must MEAN something’ or whatever, I’m all for #AestheticPurposesOnly. My main problem with mine were deciding what I want. There’s so many options, how do you choose? It’s not rhetorical, literally, tell me. I’m bisexual for a reason. Don’t make me choose.
“Yeah. Suddenly my childhood fascination with Pocahontas makes sense, right?” Can I even make that joke? I’m genuinely not sure if I can. Tay can laugh all he wants about cancel police and cultural appropriation, it takes no effort and saves a lot of trouble on Twitter. It also helps that I don’t look white – which has also been a source of a wide array weird body and identity issues of mine, but you know, let’s try and stay positive. Gotta stop at the top of the waterslide and realize you’re too chicken to go down the spiraling tunnels to spare yourself a panic attack. His question helps a lot though, because suddenly ‘huh’ is the only thing echoing in my mind as I frown at him, still smiling. Sometimes I wish I could read people’s minds, but then I wouldn’t be surprised so often. “I… Don’t think it works that way…?”
Honestly, I have no idea. I’ve browsed Wikipedia for a few hours after getting the results and that made me feel like a creep, like I’m trying to find my next obsession so I can pretend I’m different than others. I wiped my search history like I’m hiding tentacle porn.
“I mean… I don’t know about you, but the only thing I could realistically identify with is the culture of Coldplay and having salt and pepper as your only spices on your chicken, which should be a criminal offense, anyway, sooo…” I know it sounds stupidly privileged but I did envy Tay sometimes in that regard; I would never exchange my childhood experience with his, no sane person would, but… I guess I was sheltered enough that my biggest problem is being adopted into a new culture with a lot of money. Oh no, poor me. I don’t think it would’ve ever bothered me had I not had my fair share of awkward, weird or downright embarrassing encounters over the years. “I did a year of Asian/Pacific/American Studies as an elective during university and I swear it made me live with white guilt for a while.”
Still am but at this point I’m starting to feel like it’s a kink or something.
Getting made fun of, somewhat, may also be a kink of mine ‘cause it doesn’t really bother me from certain people, Tay included. I’m actually surprised he didn’t mention the forever symbol or a dandelion. They are pretty though. The only reason I’m not getting them is because that’s way too basic, even for me. I’ll just keep my dreamcatcher above my bed, where it belongs.
“Speaking from personal experience?” I raise an eyebrow at him but the answer is kinda obvious so I just smile out the passenger’s seat window. “I might just take you up on that. The girl who did the one on my shoulder is kind of an ex of my roommate, so I probs shouldn’t go back there. And the one who did the others hooked up with my other roommate…?” I never made that connection before so the realization kind of weirds me out. “I think I just need to ask my friends to stop hitting on people I want to see again.” For a bunch of gay people who both claim to be looking for a steady relationship they do be fucking up a lot. That’s also why we can’t go to any Baskin’ Robins in Brooklyn anymore.
“Is your guy gay or secretly a girl?” If he’s not, we might be one step closer.
Homecrest either truly creeps up on me like we’ve entered the 4th dimension along the way or I just get distracted, first assigning my explanations to his tattoos I’m able to see (which are obviously a lot better than his), then I’m hitting up my TikTok because I want to show him this creator who translates Japanese lyrics into English and no one, not even Hozier can beat ‘my words have yet to grow up but one day I’ll give them to you’ like WHAT, and then it’s just me browsing my for you page, sound on and distracting him which probably would be dangerous if the car wouldn’t be going at like five miles an hour.
“Yeah, just take the left here, annnd… Yeah, the middle one.” Three identical, three-story red brick buildings stand across a row of single family homes with small fenced-in front yards. As soon as the engine turns off – because there’s an actual, free parking spot on the end of the small street. The traffic on Ocean Ave rumbles not far, but in a muted background noise sorta way. It’s as quiet as you can get this close to the city and without looking like the storage unit at the end of the alley hosts an unlicensed organ trafficking syndicate in the basement. There is an alleyway between the buildings, the sides probably used to be white before smog came along with condensation liquid from the AC units, and it’s closed off with a rusty metal fence but it doesn’t smell utterly like piss so that’s a win.
I stand in front, shielding my eyes from the sun with my palm, looking at the brick details at the top like I know anything about architecture. It certainly isn’t a new building but the evergreens next to the doorway look nice. “It’s kinda quiet,” I turn towards him, letting my hand fall back to my side. He’s shading me like a weird umbrella. “What’chu think, good quiet or bad quiet?”
I kinda like the noises of the city, but I’m a light sleeper. Before Tom came, we had another girl who left after two weeks ‘cause she couldn’t get used to the railway. I step up to the door and punch in the numbers Dan texted, the door opens with a deep buzz that echoes across the narrow corridor that’s clad in moderately kept artificial stone tiles. There appears to be three apartments on each side and each level, with a door leading out back to the alley. Dan’s is on the second level, so two flights of stairs it is. Muffled noises come from a few apartments as we pass them, at least one belonging to a kid, yelling on the verge of crying and his mother rebukes him in what sounds like an African language.
The apartment is in far corner, shabby golden numbers nailed to the heavy door – I only know it’s heavy because it creates a small whirlwind as Dan opens up, an exasperated look on his face that he’s half-trying to hide with a smile. I have no idea how he manages to sport a white sweatshirt with black cargopants like he just came from GQ but I have to respect it.
“Heeeey, helloooo, please come in before the dog makes a run for it.” He sounds like he’s done with the world for today so I scurry in next to him, noting the built-in wardrobe doors in passing before coming to a halt in the middle where the rooms open up from.
Winston and me are old pals where he doesn’t tell on me when I take extra breaks from the computer and he gets belly rubs whenever he passes by. He’s not the fittest of bois out there but now he’s just kinda laying on his side on the living room floor, wagging his tale.
“Winston’s not looking too hot,” I admit, eyeing the dog.
“Yeah, I guess an earring in your bowels does that. Hey, Daniel Castillo,” he extends his hand towards Tay with a restrained nod. “And you’re Lainey’s boyfriend, right?” He’s squinting at him like he’s some alien lifeform. “Why were you such a secret again? You’re not into some shady business, right?”
“He’s NYPD,” I answer for him, handing over the bubble tea. Dan gives me a quizzical look.
“Well good thing bribing me with a bubba isn’t the worst offence out there then,” he snorts, putting the cup on the empty kitchen counter to the right of him. “I’m gonna be honest with y’all, Iiii don’t really do this whoooole…” He makes a wiggly circling motion with his hand. “’look, here’s where you have the potential of putting the toiler brush’ thing, that’s my husband’s shtick, but one of us has to work today, so… You can look around all you want, I’ll be over there with Winston buuut… Here’s the excitin’ part of the deal.” He’s clearly talking to me now, handing me a few pages clipped together on a blackboard. My eyes skip through the lines, but it seems pretty standard. Well put together, it would be a shame otherwise, but standard. “Goin’ oldschool for the hipsters and elders out there, I’ll send over the digital one later, but it’s just inventory, the usual rules of conduct, you know, no parties after 10 PM and no smoking indoors, and there’s the personal form. We usually ask for ten percent as a reservation fee up front but your girl’s cool for that. We do a background check but it’s automatic and you should be fine, PD and all, it’s just for insurance purposes, and… Yeah. ” He’s looking up at the ceiling and nodding along, like he’s crossing out items in a list. “We do need you to move in within two weeks, but after you send us over your pay stub and it checks out, you’re good to go.”