// Toriv

I woke up on a chilly March morning, completely alone.

For a while I just lay there, enjoying the warmth of the blankets and listening to my rats puttering around in the next room. It was peaceful and nice, but I couldn’t help feeling like something was missing. Like that annoying feeling you get when you’re about to walk out the door but you’re super convinced you’ve forgotten something important, like your keys or your brain.

“Shit,” I said softly, then I rooted around in the covers until I found my phone.

There was already a message waiting for me from Mahendra. It just said Good morning 🙂 Happy Sunday, but even those few little words felt nice. I felt weirdly like I’d accomplished something, although you could argue the opposite since I had totally failed to bring him home, or get invited home, or manage anything even approaching petting of any kind. This was so far outside of my regular dating habits that I guess I was still figuring out how to react to the whole thing.

When my mind starts to feel a little weird like this, the best strategy I’ve come up with is to lie somewhere comfy and think out my thoughts in as organized a fashion as I can manage. This doesn’t always work because as you’ve probably noticed by now, my thoughts like to run off in any direction the wind takes them, but I try, okay? I try a lot.

So I buried myself back in the blanket, pushed my head under the pillow and did my very best bug in a rug impression. It was extremely cosy for about five minutes, but then I started running out of air and overheating like nobody’s business. None of this is really great for thinking thinky thoughts, so I kicked off the blanket and flailed around in the bed until I’d dug a sort of channel in the mass of softness. Then I laid on my back, crossed my arms and stared at the fairy lights covering my bedroom ceiling. In the nighttime those lights look pretty magical, all soft and glowy, but in the daytime when the wires taped to the ceiling all show, it’s kind of a letdown. But whatever, that wasn’t what I was lying there to think about! Thinky thoughts. Good, proper, definitely not-sexy thinky thoughts.

At this point, I could tell you that I lay there in deep meditation for a respectable amount of time, going over my life choices in excruciating detail and coming to some grand conclusions about my existence that were sure to carry me to the gates of the kingdom of elf heaven. But the truth of the matter is, I’m just not that smart. Or more like, the amount of smarts I do have tends to be cancelled out by the amount of time it takes me to gather up these smarts, put them in a box so they don’t run away, and carry them over to whatever part of my brain needs them the most at any given moment. Do you see what I’m saying? It was going to take more than a casual hangout in my own bed to figure out these thinky thoughts and I wasn’t about the waste the day trying to hammer my feelings into a shape that made sense.

What I did figure out as I was making coffee, feeding the rats and grimacing at the weather report was that I had actually managed to have a ton of fun with someone without needing the happy ending, as it were. This might seem obvious to any normal person, but when you’ve lived most of your adult life in the hard and fast and no-time-for-feelings-where’s-the-booze way that I have, some of your perspective will want to slip away quietly until it feels like you’re ready to handle it.

The next logical question was, was I ready to admit to Mahendra that I enjoyed being around him just for the sake of it? Wasn’t that already taking the whole thing one step further than I had ever planned? When I’d first agreed to go out with him I hadn’t really been thinking about the next time or the time after that. I’d never really had to before, so why was I gonna start now? It’s not like I had never been asked out randomly by handsome strangers in my own neighborhood. In my experience, that kind of encounter usually ends in a grand slam, then nothing. Which is how most guys seem to prefer it these days, so who am I to complain? Isn’t that just how the world works now?

“What is love?” I mumble-sang to the rats as they mashed around in their digging box. “Baby don’t hurt me.”

By this time, all this thinking was starting to make me jittery, so when my phone suddenly blared out the chorus to that one old elven ballad that my mom absolutely hates, I basically fell off the couch in shock.

My mom said, “Hey kiddo, what’s for lunch?”

I said, “Ow.”

“I’m not familiar with the dish.”

“This one exchange pretty much explains my entire childhood. I don’t know, Mom, what’s for lunch?”

“Eh, I was going to let you decide. Want to come over? Church ran long and I am starving.”

Only my mother would complain about church running long with the most church-committed guy we both know within earshot, but I guess my dad’s used to it. It must be enough for him that she bothers to go at all when she barely believes in any of it.

I looked up at my ceiling from my crumpled position on the floor. I’d been seeing a lot of that ceiling lately, which couldn’t be a good thing, so I said, “Yeah, sure, I’ll come over. What are you guys hungry for?”

“Surprise us. But bring wine!”

Getting day-drunk with my parents seemed as good a plan as any for a thinky thoughts Sunday afternoon, so I picked myself up and put Sys and Dia back in their cage, leaving them to clean off their little paws and chow down on the sunflower seeds I’d hidden in their digging box like delicious ratty gold. I decided that a little trip around town would help me adjust to my new brand of internal monologue, so I was off into the spring cold in a jiffy. Maybe I was walking a little faster than I normally would on a day off, but if there was still a chance that I could outrun all these new emotions trying to crowd their way into my head, I wasn’t about to pass it up.

One short culinary tour of the city later, I was jumping up the steps to my parents’ apartment and crushing the buzzer like I’d never wanted to crush anything more in my life. My mom appeared on the balcony two floors above and shouted down, “Just come in!”

I yelled back, “Why do you do this every single time? That’s not how apartment buildings work!”

“Vriev, let our poor boy in from the cold!”

My dad must have obeyed because the door alarmed at me, just begging to be opened. I was upstairs in a minute and was smothered by my mom the second I walked in the door. I held my grocery bags out to the sides so they wouldn’t get as annihilated as my ribcage was getting.

“Oof! Everyone’s so violently huggy this week.”

“Who’s everyone? Besides, I’m your mother and I haven’t seen you in ages.”

I sighed. Some of my mom’s crazy curly hair was going up my nose. “I saw you two days ago when I came to make breakfast.”

“That’s forever in mom years.” Without letting go, she looked up at me and made the biggest puppy dog eyes in the world. “What did you bring us?”

“Cachitos.”

“Gezundheit.”

“It’s a kind of Venezuelan bread stuffed with things. I also got you some dulce de leche cupcakes from the same place.”

“Aaaand?”

“And,” I added, “some wine. Venezuelan, in keeping with the theme.”

“Vinoriev,” she said happily as my dad popped his head into the hall, probably to see what was keeping us. “Look at our Toriv. He’s such a good provider now.”

Dad smiled. “Yes. And I am sure he is wonderful at taking off his shoes and coming in, if you would let him.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m great at that. You could even say I’m the best.”

“Well, get cracking, then.”

She finally let go of me. Sweet release. She grabbed all the stuff from my hands and left me to kick my boots off and hang up my jacket. As I was fixing my hair in the mirror above the telephone stand, I noticed my parents had added some photos on the wall. Along with the same old family photos and approximately half a million pics of me as a kid, there were some recent shots taken inside the café, some group photos with my parents’ friends at Sharpe’s bar and a posed shot of my parents with my grandpa, my dad’s dad, outside his old house way out in the new homelands in the west. I’d never seen that picture before, so I squinted at it for a bit before finally wandering into the kitchen.

There’s always a weird moment when I walk into my parents’ house where I instantly feel five years old again. Today that moment was in the kitchen, where the sun was slanting in between the bead garlands hung from the gauzy curtains and the smell of my dad’s favorite herbal tea was in the air. When he handed me a cup of the tea, I realized it was the same old cup I’ve had my tea in since I was maybe twelve, even though I could have sworn I’d accidentally smashed it years ago.

“Thanks, Daddy. Hey, uh, when did you guys go to see Grandpa?”

Mom said, “What?” because she was already busy shuffling through the grocery bags, but for some reason Dad looked embarrassed, like he’d just realized he’d forgotten something really important.

“You know, the picture in the hall. Is it from a while ago? You don’t have your snake arm piece yet.”

Mom stopped putting stuff out on the table and glanced down at the cobra tattoo curled around her bicep. When her eyes flicked back up to me, she had the same weird look my dad had.

“Oh,” she said, which told me exactly nothing.

“Hrm,” my dad said, which told me the same.

I sipped my tea nervously. “What’s up? I’m just asking. If I’d known you were going, I would have gone too. You know I haven’t seen Grandpa since I was a kid.”

Mom turned away and started setting the table again. After a look in her direction, my dad saw how it was going to be and was finally the one to answer me: “You were gone, at the time.”

“Gone?” It took me a second, but then it clicked. “Oh. You mean after I’d left home the first time.”

“Yes.”

“Your dad was so funny,” Mom said from the table. She was clearly not looking at either of us. “He was convinced that was where you’d gone. You, on your own! As if you’d even remember the way.”

I tried to laugh. “Hey, maybe I could have figured it out. Worst case, I would have hiked to Grandpa de Carneus’ cave and asked the old lizard if he remembers where the new elven homelands are.”

Making a joke about the old dragon on the mountain was usually enough to lighten any atmosphere — he’s pretty famous around these parts, which I guess just automatically happens when you’re the only transmuted dragon still kicking in the province — but the kitchen felt as tense as ever. This always happens when someone mentions “the time you were gone”. Never mind that it was a decade ago and we’ve all definitely moved on from it, especially me.

“Um,” I said into the weird quiet. “It’s fine. Sorry I asked.”

“No, no,” my dad said.

He came over and put his arms around me, so that I had to hold my tea squished up against my chest to let him close. I felt him shift as if he was looking at my mom, but she wasn’t moving from over by the table.

In a tense voice I’ve only heard a handful of times in my life, Dad said, “Evanis” followed by something in elven. Whatever it was, it finally got her to creep over and touch her hand to the back of my head. That’s always been her “I’m here” gesture, so despite the weird way this conversation had progressed, I felt comforted.

“I’m sorry, okay?” I said against my dad’s shoulder. “I’ll never stop being sorry.”

“I know, baby,” Mom said. “Me too.”

Dad didn’t say anything, but I felt his arms tighten like he hadn’t seen me in ages either. As an adult, it feels strange to be held like this by your parents, but it feels even stranger to hear them apologize to you. As far as I remember, it’s the only thing my mother’s ever said sorry to me for.

We all stood like that for a good long while, then Dad said in elven, “We should eat”, then in English, “Thank you for coming home today.”

“Aw, stop,” I said pathetically. “I’m gonna cry.”

“Then cry, you big baby.”

“God, Mom!”

“Enough, now.” He was trying to be serious, but I could tell Dad was laughing. “This food our son brought us must not be wasted. Sit.”

“Yeah, what he said. Eat, be merry, etcetera, etcetera.”

So we did. The cachitos were pretty much the best thing ever, with their soft sweet bread and savoury fillings. My mom basically had an anerurysm over how good the dulce de leche cupcakes were. She made me swear we’d reverse engineer the recipe for the shop, so like a good and dutiful son I wrote the task down in my to-do app: Poach dulce de leche cupcake recipe. Then I thought about it for a second and added Pick up DdL cupcake for Mahendra. Maybe his tastes in sweets extended beyond just chocolate. Besides, seeing him again would be a way for me to check that my new emotions vis-a-vis dating were the real deal and not some fluke born of one too many Long Island iced teas.

“Who’s Mahendra?”

When I looked, Mom was peeking over my shoulder at my phone. Naturally.

“You met him at the shop, remember? Professor Singh?”

“Ooooooh.” I really did not like the sound of that. “Hiiiiim.” I liked the sound of that even less.

There was a second of quiet where everyone was busy sipping their Venezuelan wine and I foolishly allowed myself to believe the matter was dropped, but then Mom said, “So you’re on a first name basis now.”

“I’m on a first name basis with all my regulars.”

“Uh-huh. Do you go out of your way to buy pastries for all of your regulars too?”

“Mom–“

“Well, I have it on good authority,” she continued menacingly, “that you’ve been seeing someone of the tall, dark and handsome variety, and I am not pleased with the fact that I, your mother, am the last to know.”

I wanted to pinch myself. Every single conversation I’ve had with my parents today has been too awful and surreal to be true.

I said, “There’s nothing to know, Mavae. On the other hand, I’d like to know who told you there was so I can murder them in their sleep.”

She held up her phone like that explained everything. Dad tried to disguise a laugh in a cough and dunked the rest of his wine to cover his tracks. I narrowed my eyes at them both.

“Out with it,” I said in my best murderous pirate voice. Maybe the wine was starting to go to my head a little, but in my experience that only makes for better murderous pirate voices.

Mom refilled her wine glass and sucked the wayward drop from the edge of the bottle from her thumb. “I’ll never tell.”

“You will if I withhold your discounted coffee price for a month.”

“What? Cruel! How would you like it if I withheld your friends and family discount at the tattoo shop?”

“Eh, I’ve got all the pieces I need for now.”

She called me something in elven that I’m pretty sure means “snotty little shit”, and which I’m also pretty sure is a third of all the elven she knows. “You bad boy. After all the work I did to get this information too.”

“Ah.” I took a long pull of my wine. It was actually really good for something I had picked out randomly at the SAQ. “I see now. So it was Loriev.”

Mom’s face fell. “How did you know.”

“Everyone else I was thinking of would have been way too eager to dish the dirt, so you wouldn’t have had to convince them. Also congrats, I’m going to have to kill my best friend and quasi-brother because of you.”

“Don’t be mad at Riev, baby. He had to say something for me to stop bothering him all evening.”

“I bet.”

“You can only blame yourself, you know. I wouldn’t have to find out about your personal life from your friends if you kept me more up to date.”

“There’s nothing–” Suddenly I needed more wine but my glass was still full, so i knocked it back and poured myself another. “Nothing happened, I’m just the same as I always was. I’m busy. Gotta pay bills. Rats need vet appointments. All that jazz.”

Mom reached for the wine bottle too. Without looking up from his weekend paper, Dad swiped it and placed it on the other end of the table where she couldn’t touch it.

“So you’re telling me that this news about you having a new British boyfriend does not have a lick of truth in it?”

“No!” Stare. “I mean–” Staaare. “I–” BIG STARE. “There might be a…tiny lick?”

“I KNEW IT!”

“Whoa, whoa. Don’t bust out the party garlands, okay? We went on two dates. Two dates does not constitute a relationship.”

“No, but it’s the beginning of one.” Mom came around the table and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Ooh, baby, I’m so happy for you. Maybe this guy will be the one, huh?”

“Staaawp. I haven’t even thought that far ahead.”

“Well, you should. You never know what you could open yourself up to.”

So far, it only looked like I was opening myself up to a lot of lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling, but that’s not the kind of thing you tell your parents if you want them to leave you alone. “Yeah. Sure. I get it. Dad, give her back the wine, please.”

He gave me his “I think we’ve all had enough” look and got up to put the bottle away in the fridge. My mom and I both sighed. Then we all ate more cachitos and started arguing about whether I should implement a loyalty card system at the shop. I would be fine with a simple card-stamping shindig, but the rents thought I should dream a little bigger, as if that wouldn’t cost me more time and money than I already have.

“I’m just saying, if you can find the right person in your team or something, you’ll be golden.”

“Mom, where am I supposed to find an app programmer among my team?”

“Aren’t the twins going to cegep? Engineering?”

“Sound engineering. They’re musicians, not computer nerds.”

Eventually we stopped having sensical arguments and just went back to the same old topics a family always talks about, with a sprinkling of neighborhood gossip overheard (and sometimes instigated) by my mother during an evening at Sharpe’s. The afternoon passed in this lazy, familiar way. I wasn’t tipsy anymore, but by the time the sun began to dip below the roofs I felt fuzzy, like my entire brain had dry mouth. I’m not sure I could blame it entirely on the wine. But I was trying not to think about it, like I was trying not to think about last night’s date with Mahendra or about the way my dad kept touching his fingers to my arm, like he was checking for a pulse.

After a while, I realized it was probably time to remove myself. It always takes me way too long to recognize when my regular brain fuzziness is gearing up to become a specific kind of brain fuzziness. The one I’m thinking of usually comes with a kind of antsiness that makes you either want to run for miles or tear your own skin off. Either way, it’s not a good look. It was high time to make myself scarce.

As was pulling on my boots and jacket, my parents stood in the hall, giving me that lost “I can’t believe you’re leaving” look they always give me when I go, as if I don’t live three streets away and they could come see me whenever they want.

“Take care at work and stuff, kiddo,” Mom said.

“Watch for the cold,” Dad said.

“Yeah, sure,” I said to them both.

My gaze landed on the photo of them with my grandpa again. When I looked properly, I could see my parents looked tired and drawn, even in the summer sun. One of my grandpa’s wiry strong hands was clamped tight on my dad’s shoulder, like he was holding him together.

“Hey,” I said. “Can we go visit Grandpa together sometime? He’s getting pretty old, right? Like…at least a million.”

“Of course, amavae,” Dad said.

“You’ll have to practice your elven again,” Mom said. “The older he gets, the more he’s losing his English.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, talking to him was like charades for me. So channel some of your not-boyfriend’s school smarts and study up, okay?”

I promised. Then I left. The sun was almost set by that time and the wet spring cold was setting in, which meant I was chilled to the bone within minutes. I set off at a fast clip, my hands dug deep into my pockets, my breath fogging the air in front of my face.

In the moment, making them promise to take me to see Grandpa had made sense, but now that I was walking down the chilly street and thinking about it, I felt weird. I haven’t seen my grandfather since I was a little kid, barely out of diapers. When I think of his face, it floats up in my mind’s eye as a strange mishmash of my child’s memory, features I remember from photos, and a bit of my own dad’s face. I remember his voice a tiny bit more — rumbly like a mountain and accented like Dad’s — and his arms, which were real hard and strong and picked me up like I weighed nothing at all.

I wondered if I’d still be able to communicate with him. Whenever my dad managed to get him on whatever shitty phone line they bother to set up for them out in the new homelands, he always spoke to Grandpa in elven. Apparently I spoke elven a lot more when I was a kid, but now I can barely string two words together. Maybe, like with mom, he would barely be able to understand me at all.

The thought made me really sad, so sad that I could feel the sadness like a lump at the bottom of my stomach. I had to walk around the neighborhood a few times before the lump started to go away.

Eventually, my emo wanderings brought back me downtown, close to where I’d bought the cachitos and cupcakes. I popped back into the Venezuelan shop as they were winding down for the night and bought out all their day-olds, a big ol’ paper bag full of them, good for all my lunches for this week. I also picked up another carton of the amazing dulce de leche cupcakes. Those would be a real shame to let go to waste. Plus they seemed like they’d be good to scarf down Bridget Jones style in my underpants in front of a sad movie.

I walked out into the spring night again, dragging my feet and my purchases homeward. I didn’t actually feel up to sitting alone in my apartment eating cupcakes and feeling sorry for myself. Doing stuff like that can be kind of fun if you’re not really taking it seriously, but I know from experience that in a mood like this one, it usually just makes me feel worse. And really alone. The alone part is what can really push you over the deep end.

My neighborhood was slowly creeping into view. My toes were frozen stiff in my leather boots and my arm was starting to ache from clutching the big bag of bread. Overall, it was looking to be a pretty depressing night.

Then I came up next to a familiar condo building. I stopped and looked up into windows filled with orange light. It looked nice and warm in there. I wondered if the people in there were alone too or if they were enjoying their lives alongside people they knew and loved.

Without really thinking about it, I got my phone out and flipped through my contacts. Then I called Mahendra. I stood there in the dark, watching the shadows move back and forth in the orange rooms.

When he answered, his voice was very warm and happy. It was nice to hear him so close to my ear.

“Good evening, Toriv.”

“Hey, you. How would you feel if I dropped by unexpectedly?”

A pause, then he said, in an even happier and warmer voice, “I think I’d like that. Just as long as you don’t mind me in my pyjamas.”

“Oh, but if you’re just about to go to bed–“

“No, no, I’ve been in my pyjamas all day. As it happens.” He cleared his throat. “When are you coming by?”

“Uh, well, I’m technically right outside your building right now. Not in a weird way,” I added quickly, which definitely made it sound like it was in a weird way. “I’ve been walking around a lot today. Was heading home. Decided I didn’t feel like being alone.”

He waited a little bit, maybe processing what I was saying, maybe waiting to see if I was really finished. I tried to sound silently nonchalant, like it didn’t really matter either way, but the moment of quiet made me nervous, so I had to add, “Only if you really don’t mind. Actually, never mind, I shouldn’t be bothering you. And I should definitely not be standing outside your apartment like a weirdo. Me being out here is probably bringing down the property value as we speak.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said quietly. He has the kind of voice that makes you stop and listen, even when he says things as gentle as can be. “You’re not bothering me and I do want you here. Why don’t you just come up?”

“Um. Sure. Thanks.”

He buzzed me in and I went, squeezing my bag of bread like it could protect me from my own feelings. When I got to his floor, Mahendra was waiting for me in his open doorway, dressed in PJs and slippers and an extremely fancy bathrobe. Dunno how he managed to make me feel underdressed when he was literally dressed for bed, but there you go.

“Hey,” I said faintly. The lump in my stomach had moved up to my throat, so it was hard to talk.

“Hey, yourself,” he said. “Long time, no see.”

“Yeah, it’s been what, a whole twenty four hours? Don’t know why we ever go so long without seeing each other.”

“Yes, I can’t imagine why.”

He smiled and gestured me into the apartment. I shuffled in and tried kicking my boots off without actually bothering to undo the laces. He plucked my paper bag from me to make my life easier and peeked in as I continued to wrestle with my shoes.

“Groceries?”

“Bread. Literally just a whole pile of stuffed bread.” I yanked my left boot off with a grunt and dropped it to the floor. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Probably that they look very yummy,” he said cheerfully.

“Speaking of yummy…”

I held my box of Bridget Jones cupcakes out to him too. His eyes got wide and interested.

“I got you some cupcakes. Dulce de leche flavour. They’re to die for.”

The look of wonder and excitement on his face was probably the cutest darn thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It was just like when I had gotten him the Café Vanellas signature hot chocolate or when we had sat together for pho. Maybe this is dumb, but I like people more when I know they love food as much as I do.

By this time, I had actually managed to get my boots off and had placed them neatly by the door, so they wouldn’t ruin his nice hardwood floor. Mahendra managed to tear himself away from the cupcakes long enough to help me out of my coat, which he hung up in his little hall closet. Up close he smelled really nice, warm and freshly washed, so it was easy to just give in, to lean until my body was nudging against his.

He looked at me, then he turned and his arms came up around me. We just stood there for a bit, me in his arms with my head leaning against his shoulder, his hands warm on my back. His bathrobe was fantastically soft.

After a few seconds, I started to wonder why he wasn’t pulling away. I wondered why I wasn’t pulling away either. I’m not touch-phobic by any stretch of the imagination and I definitely appreciate a good hug, but lingering like this in someone’s space isn’t really my thing. Any other guy I know would already be making fun of me, then I guess I would turn it into a dirty joke and get out of it that way. Not Mahendra, though. He just stood there and held me right up against his own body, so close I could feel him breathing. Honestly, it was kind of amazing.

This went on for another little while, then I made myself move. He let me go, but his fingertips lingered on my biceps.

“Why’d you hug me like that?” I asked.

“It seemed like you needed it,” he said. Like it was obvious, like it was something everybody did. “Are you all right?”

I shrugged like it was no big deal, but I couldn’t really look at him. I felt his hand brush my cheek and place a strand of hair back behind my ear.

“Let’s eat some cupcakes,” he suggested. “I’ll make tea.”

I followed him into the kitchen, where he put the kettle on, picked up a gorgeous little glazed teapot, shook out some tea leaves and dropped them into the pot. As I watched, he rinsed out the steaming leaves in the pot, then poured the wash water out and added some fresh hot water for steeping. After two minutes, he poured the tea into a pair of little matching teacups in the same dreamy green-blue glaze as the pot. To make myself useful, I had warmed up two of the cupcakes and put them on a pretty flowered plate from his china cabinet.

“Oh, scrumptious,” Mahendra said as we settled at the table.

“And you haven’t even tasted them yet.”

I carefully unwrapped one of the golden cupcakes from its paper suit and held it out to him. He took it with the reverence that was appropriate for such a beautiful dessert and took a big bite. He put his fingertips to his mouth as he chewed.

“Good?” I asked him smugly.

He nodded enthusiastically and swallowed before declaring, “Fantastic!”

I laughed. “It’s adorable how much you love sweets.”

He looked embarrassed and took a swig of his tea. Then he looked pleased.

“Try it with the tea.”

I did as he asked. He had brewed a kind of black tea, Earl Grey judging from the perfumy lavender notes. The earthiness of the tea cut the sweetness of the dulce de leche just enough. I wouldn’t have thought it would make such a great combination, but that just shows how much I still have to learn.

“Amazing,” I sighed. “I love food.”

He agreed with his eyes. We kept on eating in silence for a bit, enjoying our individual cupcake-and-tea experiences. My knee jittered under the table. I tried telling it sternly that it had to stop, but it just kept jittering. Rude.

Once the cupcakes were done, Mahendra got up to put the extras in the fridge then went to make another pot of tea. I watched him from the kitchen table, my chin in my hand.

“Hey,” I said suddenly. “Remember that thing we talked about yesterday? About language and culture and stuff.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Like…is it supposed to be depressing to think about it? I don’t want to feel shitty whenever I think too hard about it, but I can’t help it. It gets to me.”

He paused just long enough to pour the next share of hot water into the pot, then he turned to me. His eyes were full of concern, like a worried puppy. A worried friend, I guess.

“Do you mean the fact that you don’t speak elven?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I guess. That’s part of it, for sure. I mean, when I was a kid I was super close to my grandpa. Stuck to him like glue, did everything he did and spoke our language to him and everything. But now it’s all gone. Everything I could have ever learned from him as an adult…it’ll never happen.”

I had to stop. My voice stuck in my throat like a whole-ass olive was trying to go down the wrong tube. I tried to take a sip of tea to get it down, but my cup was empty.

I felt Mahendra’s eyes on me from across the kitchen, but I didn’t really feel up to meeting his gaze. After a tense couple seconds, he back came over and placed his hand really gently on my shoulder. I just tried to concentrate on breathing.

“It isn’t your fault,” he said kindly. “Clan Vanellas…isn’t there a story, from the end of the gods’ war–“

“Yeah,” I said roughly. “But the gods didn’t make us forget our language. It was up to us…to people like me…to keep at least that going. But I dropped the ball.”

My eyes felt like someone had just thrown a handful of sand in them. I was getting way too upset and a small part of my brain was yelling at me to get a grip, but I couldn’t. I turned away from Mahendra, from the whole room, literally turned in my chair so none of them had to see me losing my mind over something so stupid.

There was a really awkward silence. I was holding my breath so I wouldn’t be able to cry. I didn’t even know what exactly I was crying over. Was it the whole grandpa thing, or the conversation with my parents, or my mess of feelings over Mahendra, or just the embarrassment and shame over all of these things? Why was my head choosing now of all moments to turn into an absolute jumble of craziness? Mahendra didn’t need to see me crazy. No one does. No one should.

“Dang,” I managed to choke out. “Worst third date ever, huh?”

Behind me, Mahendra made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “Not the worst I’ve been on, trust me.”

I felt him move a tiny bit closer, so close I could feel his body heat against my back. Then he placed both hands on my shoulders, his thumbs pressing lightly against the back of my neck.

“Listen,” he said in a careful voice. “Words aren’t everything. When two people are truly close, then it doesn’t matter if it’s oceans or languages that lie between them. Your grandfather will understand you because you’re family. That’s all.”

I must have had some reaction, like a shiver or a hiccup, because he started rubbing little circles into my nape. It felt good. It gave me something to think about besides how dumb I felt.

I said, “It’s funny. I kind of almost believe you.”

“It’s a start. Try it yourself if you don’t trust my word on it.”

“No, I trust you.” I sniffed hard, like a little kid. “I mean I trust your word and you. You’re extremely trustworthy.”

“Thank you.”

“Just so you know, I don’t usually get this emotional over cupcakes. I’ve had kind of a weird day.”

“Of course. Completely understandable.”

“At the risk of making this even weirder, I’d really like to kiss you right now.”

I twisted around to look up at him over my shoulder. It was a weird angle to be looking at him from, but I still caught the slow smile that was spreading over his face.

He moved back so I could get up out of the chair. I gave him a little poke in the middle of the chest to make him move back more, until he was up against the other chair and understood that I wanted him to sit. The moment he did, I pushed myself onto his lap and got to business.

The first time you have a full-blown drooling makeout with someone is always an exciting moment. It doesn’t matter if you’ve known him for two weeks or two hours, there’s just something good and fun and weird about getting your face all up in someone else’s. Especially when they’re hot. Especially when they kiss you back with as much enthusiasm as Mahendra was now.

His lap was really comfortable. I felt him bracing against the floor so he could bear my weight properly. His hands shifted around on my body, slowly and methodically, like he was having a little look-see, so to speak. They had started at my back and waist but now they settled just at the tops of my thighs, fingers spread to keep me steady. Gods, it was nice. It was just what I needed.

He moved his hands back to my hips as we came up for air. When I shifted back to look at his face, his eyes were still closed. I touched one finger to the bridge of his glasses and his eyes flew open. His eyes were a deep brown, with golden reflections from the kitchen lights.

“Well, well, well,” I said, feeling the grin pull at my lips. “You’re an old hat.”

“Emphasis on ‘old’,” he pointed out. “But yes. Seems it’s a bit like riding a bike.”

“You’re not old-old! Forty is the new thirty, right?”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

I leaned forward again to press a kiss under his round human ear. He shivered and wrapped his arms around my waist.

“Who cares about age,” I whispered, “when we can make each other feel like that?”

He said “Mmm” and ducked his face against my shoulder. I felt him nosing against my shirt.

“Want more?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer for a second. His head was still down against my shoulder. I brought a hand up and stroked it through his curly, fluffy hair.

When he looked up, his expression had changed. The haze of pleasure was still in his eyes, but underneath it he looked anxious. There was something he wasn’t saying. I had sensed it the night before, when I had tried and failed to be invited in. I still wasn’t sure if I should ask about it. Hard to know how to react when a guy looks so afraid of something he hasn’t even said yet.

“I should tell you something,” he said finally.

I slipped off his lap and back into a chair. He bunched his fingers up in the sleeves of his bathrobe.

“I’m listening,” I said, when he didn’t say anything.

“It might change your opinion of me,” he said.

“Why, are you an axe murderer?”

“No, but–“

“A cult leader?”

“N-No–“

“A cannibal? I don’t mean the old world kind, I mean the creepy Mads Mikkelsen kind.”

A tiny smile broke through his worried face. “Not that either, creepy or otherwise.”

“Okay, so I should be good. What’s up?”

Now that I had run out of jokes, I was starting to get nervous. What if he told me he was already attached, married, with kids? It’s happened before. I can be a lot of things, but I don’t like being anyone’s side chick. It sounds exciting on TV and stuff, but in real life it basically sucks all around, except maybe for the married asshole in question.

But he didn’t seem the type and his apartment was clearly an elevated bachelor pad, so I just waited. He was a genuinely nice guy, so how bad could it be?

Mahendra shuffled around in his chair for a bit, then he suddenly jumped up and ran for the teapot. Guess he’d been letting it steep too long. I waited for him to come back to the table, but raised my eyebrows at him to let him know he was starting to be kind of weird.

“Sorry,” he muttered into the teacups.

I accepted my new cupful from him and said, “It’s fine. I can take it, whatever it is. I’m a big boy.”

“You’ve just been terribly upset, I shouldn’t–“

“Dude, I said it’s fine. You listened to me. We made out. I feel better.”

For some reason, that made him look even guiltier. I pulled on his wrist to make him sit again and scooted my chair closer to his side of the table.

“It’s clearly been bothering you. Just spit it out already.”

“I’m not what I seem,” he said really quickly. “On the outside.”

“Okay. Elaborate–?”

“I’m trans,” he said just as fast. His hands held onto his tea cup really tight. “I’m transgender. I was born a woman. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”

His words hung in the air for a long second. Soneone’s dog barked out in the distance. The fridge buzzed. Mahendra held onto his cup so hard his knuckles were turning white.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, in the tiniest sorriest voice.

I sat back in my chair. Then I sat forward again, because I didn’t want him to think I was moving away from him. He was looking straight down into his tea. The tea was fresh and hot, so his hands were probably burning.

Slowly, I reached out and touched his tightly interlaced fingers. His hands came apart suddenly, like a rope had just slackened.

“Is that it?” I asked him.

His head jerked up, his eyes wide behind his glasses. Beautiful, brown, gentle, scared eyes.

I took his hand and wrapped my fingers around his.

I said, “What, did you think I was going to freak out? Call you names? Do something awful? It’s the twenty-first century, bro. We all got bigger things to worry about than who’s got what kind of junk.”

The tension in his shoulders lowered just a little.

“Still,” he said. His eyes traveled across my face, like he was looking for a lie. “Some people still…especially gay men, sometimes.”

“Well, I’m not one of them,” I told him firmly. “And I’ll beat anyone who tries to tell you you’re anything less than you are. Beat ’em with my tiny stick arms.”

He cracked a smile then. Just a little one, but it was a start. I rubbed his knuckles with my other hand, like he had rubbed my neck when I felt bad.

“No worries, okay? No worries, no worries. See, I rubbed them all away.”

He laughed then, a little giggle under his breath. Then he gave a big sigh and shook his head.

“Sorry, it’s just such an emotional subject. I never do get used to telling people. And, um…” He rubbed my hand back and looked sheepish. “I usually tell them before I’ve kissed them the first couple of times.”

“Nooo worries. You told me now. Maybe I would have been a little more shocked if you had waited until I was taking your clothes off…uh, unless…?”

“No,” he said quickly. “I haven’t…everything down there is the original architecture, so to speak. My breasts and uterus are gone. The rest is hormones.”

“Oooh. Cool.”

He looked at me sideways, a smile tugging on his mouth. “Cool?”

“Yeah, cool! The wonders of science, man. But yo, how come your voice is so much deeper than mine? I probably had like years of a headstart on you.”

He definitely laughed that time. His hand tightened around mine. “That’s genetics. I got lucky, is all.”

“Then I guess it was meant to be.”

He smiled then covered his mouth with his palm. I patted our joined hands soothingly.

“Whew,” I said. “It sure is a night for intense conversations, huh? Actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Do you actually like dudes? Or am I the big exception?”

He looked at me with bright eyes and his funny little British smile. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’re not exactly the exception to the rule.”

“Aww, dang.”

“I actually like dudes. And women too. And it’s the second time I’ve had to say that today.”

“You on a coming out spree?”

“It happens sometimes,” he murmured.

His face was getting close to mine again, so I met him halfway and planted one on him. This time when he kissed me, he was all in. No more holding back. No more fear in his eyes at all.

Before long, I was in his lap again. The tea probably got really cold. I don’t think either of us cared.

\\ Mahendra

I woke up on Sunday morning rather early, far too early for having spent half the night wandering the streets and eating pho at midnight. Somehow my body managed to reach for my phone and type out a little good morning message to Toriv, which I absolutely did not recall writing until I checked my messages later that day. I dozed the rest of the morning away, dreaming contented dreams of good food and even better company. I woke up properly when the sun was high in the early spring sky, to an insistent buzzing from my mobile and a matching Skype bleep from my computer in the next room. It seemed I was suffering an onslaught on all fronts from my two nieces.

A text from Celeste: Good morning, uncle!!

A text from Anastasia: Minecraft, uncle

Another text from Celeste: Minecraft, Minecraft

When I stumbled over to my laptop, which had been idling on the coffee table, the open Skype conversation I share with Celeste and Anastasia was blinking and chiming insistently. Minecraft, Minecraft, Minecraft, now, uncle!!

All right, Minecraft, I typed blearily, just give me ten minutes.

When I emerged from the bathroom and was putting on the kettle for tea, I got an additional text from my sister Charlotte: Sorry for the girls. It’s raining in London and they’ve been cooped up all weekend.

It’s no trouble, I answered, smiling. And when isn’t it, honestly?

Maybe we should spend our holiday in Montreal after all. I hear it gets so lovely and sunny in the summer.

It does. It also gets terrifically humid. A bit like Delhi.

Oh, Lord. Still tempting, though.

I chuckled and brought my tea over to the sofa, then pulled out my mouse and clicked over to Minecraft. The girls had supplied me with the server number, so I logged in and joined them in their virtual world. At the same time, I started the voice call, so we could communicate without bothering to type.

“You’re not wearing your skin,” Celeste said by way of greeting.

“My skin?”

“The one we engineered for you,” Anastasia said impatiently. She was eight years old and possessed of a stunning vocabulary, being a big reader, but sometimes I feared her smarts gave her a bit more attitude than necessary.

When my only response was a questioning grunt, they both sighed. One of them sent me a file via the Skype window, along with instructions on how to upload it to my game so I could change the look of my character.

“Honestly,” Annie added, as though I’d committed a great misdeed.

When my avatar reappeared in the world, it had dark skin and dark hair, which was already much more accurate to me than the default character. When I took a walk in a circle to stretch my virtual limbs, I saw that the girls had also drawn a little pair of glasses on my avatar’s face. Adorable.

“I feel ready for anything,” I declared. I made my character do a little jump for emphasis.

Celeste’s Minecraft representation also had dark skin and was dressed in a flowery pink dress. Annie’s character looked like a clown, complete with big red nose and multicoloured wig.

“Why doesn’t yours look like you?” I asked her.

“It’s my defense system. Enderman’s afraid of clowns.”

“Why would Enderman be afraid of clowns?” Celeste demanded.

Annie’s avatar advanced on Celeste’s. Celeste backed away hurriedly, shrieking. I winced at the overloud sound coming from my feeble laptop speakers.

“See?” Annie said smugly.

“You’re a pest.”

“Now, now,” I said soothingly. “Play nice with your sister or I’m logging off.”

“Nooooo,” Celeste said pleadingly. “You have to help us build our glass castle.”

“It’s almost finished,” Annie said. “But we need more glass blocks. Can you start getting some sand from the beach?”

I went about my duty, shuttling cubes of sand from the beach to the smithy built into the side of the nearest mountain. The area had been developed since I’d last seen it. Now there was a vast wheat field under the great glass castle being constructed on the mountain, where oddly-shaped pigs and sheep roamed and presumably grazed. There was also a village presiding over the field. In the distance, I could see more block people milling about among the houses.

“Are those monsters?”

“No, they’re villagers. They…do stuff, I guess.”

“Annie just likes to kill them.”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“That’s not a very nice way to rule,” I pointed out.

“She isn’t nice. She is a tyrrrant.” Celeste said the latter with a distinct Indian inflection, which is what she does when she really wants to annoy people.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Anastasia is very easily moved to annoyance. She growled “Shut it” with all the venom a little girl can muster, but before I could intercede Celeste said, “You shut it! You’ll kill all the villagers again if you don’t stop. I’ll take apart your underground railway.”

“Don’t touch it!”

“Then stop ruining the game!”

“You’re ruining it by making all your stupid rules–“

“Girls! Peace!” I had to raise my voice to be heard over their tinny shouting from the computer speakers. “Make up immediately or I shall kill your villagers and take apart your railways.”

It was an empty threat, as I had no idea how to do either, but the girls seemed convinced. There was a moment of utter silence, then Celeste whispered, “You wouldn’t dare.”

Anastasia cackled. “Uncle Mahendra is a tyrant too!”

After the sisterly tussle subsided, we settled into proper gaming mode. The girls gave me instructions and helpful tips whenever I forgot which keystroke did what. I had gotten not so bad at Minecraft by that point, memorizing all the important crafting recipes and such, though I was still in the unfortunate habit of falling down holes and meeting my untimely doom at the bottom.

“Drat,” I said aloud as my bespectacled avatar tumbled, yet again, into a black abyss.

You have died, the game informed me.

“What happened?” Celeste asked distractedly. She was building an automated something or other at the opposite end of the map. Annie was probably off spearing villagers or innocent block animals.

“Death by falling. Again.”

I sighed as my character returned to life in its bed within the base. I rather felt like going back to bed myself. Celeste made an amused sound. It was a much more grownup sound than I was used to hearing from her. I always forget that she’s on the cusp of teenagehood. Or I try to forget. The idea of my as-of-yet adoring nieces outgrowing me is something I’m not quite ready to face, so I turned my mind to more palatable ideas, like retrieving my lost equipment. It was a task only slightly more palatable than wrestling with my early and extremely misplaced empty nest syndrome.

“I don’t understand,” I complained, “why I always need to go back to find my things. In other games, when you die, it just turns back time. No harm done.”

Annie gave her raucous little giggle. “That’s other games. Minecraft is more like real life.”

“Except 3D,” Celeste added.

“Is real life not also three dimensional?”

“Nooo.”

“Obviously.”

“It’s infinite dimensional.”

“My mistake,” I said humbly, to more giggles. “I’ll have to catch up on my theoretical physics.”

I meandered around a while, sipping my tea as I searched for a way to reach the bottom of the crevasse without breaking my virtual head open a second time. I finally managed to slink down by digging my way in a rough downwards spiral. I also remembered to bring a torch with me, as I wasn’t keen on a repeat of the time I had accidentally dug myself into a dark hole and was subsequently ambushed by zombies in the most nightmarish way possible.

Work resumed once I had retrieved all my scattered belongings and safely made it out of the hole. As I was ferrying more sand blocks to the furnaces for the great glass castle project, Celeste asked me, “Have you decided when you’re coming home for summer holidays yet, uncle?”

I made a non-commital noise and loudly sipped my tea. “Not yet, pet. There’s my grad students and all, even during the summer. And besides–” I scrabbled frantically for an excuse that wouldn’t disappoint them too much. “–there isn’t all that much to do in London, is there?”

“We could go to the British Museum? Or to see my horse.”

“Or to Brighton,” Annie suggested. “If Grandmama lets us take the train. Just, summery things. It doesn’t matter where.”

The hopefulness in their voices made me feel very ashamed. I couldn’t believe it had come to the point where my young nieces had to try to convince me to come home, when normally I should have been the one raring to see them. I stared into the computer screen, suddenly glad that the girls hadn’t turned on video chat, and wished that the virtual ground would swallow up my Minecraft character as penance.

“Your mum said you might be coming here on holiday,” I said weakly. It wasn’t strictly true, but… “Would you like that? To come visit me in Montreal? It’ll be something different. I’ll show you all my favourite places.”

Truthfully, there weren’t all that many except for the few restaurants I regularly frequented, the university, the fine arts museum, and the national library. The Café Vanellas came into mind as well, and with it the mischievous crooked-toothed smile of its owner. A cheering image, but right now, it wasn’t much help.

There was quiet as the girls considered this. Mechanically, I gathered more sand. Celeste and Annie’s avatars busied themselves over and around the blocky hills.

Finally, as I was beginning to feel truly wretched, Annie asked, “Can we get beaver tails?”

“And poutine?” Celeste added.

“And go to that lovely tea shop you sent us a photo of once?”

“Of course,” I replied, relieved despite myself. “Anything you’d like. All my treat.”

“I want to go to the vintage shops,” Celeste declared. “All the ones in the Plateau.”

“Yeah, and get me a cool old leather jacket like in the movies.”

“My, someone’s been doing their research. Have you been Googling my town?”

“Well, we haven’t gotten to visit it since we were babies,” Celeste said. “I’ve been telling Mum we should go there instead, but Grandmama and Grandpapa always want us here.”

“I’ll talk to them,” I promised. “There must be some way to get you to visit me. Even if I have to pay an international spy to get you out.”

The girls squealed at the notion of escaping their grandparents in such a dramatic fashion and began immediately debating about the best skills for an international spy. These included “excellent fashion” and “the ability to eat a lot”, in case said spy needed to go undercover in a five star restaurant, I imagine.

“Will we get to meet your friends?” Annie asked next.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, pet.”

“Don’t act daft with us, uncle, it won’t work. Your friends. You know, people you hang out with so you don’t have to talk about boring work things.”

Frantically, I tried to think of a friend my nieces wouldn’t be bored to tears with within fifteen minutes. The only person I could think of was my office mate at the college, also an anthropology professor, who was a very nice woman but probably not someone who would make riveting company for two energetic and argumentative young girls.

Quickly, you awful uncle with the big fat brain. Who are the most interesting people you know right now?

“Erm,” I said eventually. “Well, there is this café I go to…”

Both girls said “oooh” like this was terribly intriguing, probably because neither of them are allowed to drink coffee yet. Celeste commanded, “Show us. Google Maps!”

A click and a hop later, we were all staring at the Google Streets view of the Café Vanellas. The cheery green sign was already in place, but otherwise the place looked barer than normal. Perhaps the photo was taken just at the opening of the shop, a couple of years ago. Just the sight of the place was enough to lift my heart a little. Lord, but I really was besotted if even the sight of his workplace was enough to put a silly grin on my face.

“Do you drink coffee, uncle?”

“A little. There’s a nice drink called a mocha that they make there, it’s coffee and chocolate–“

“We know what a mocha is.”

“Shut up, Annie. It looks cute. Do you know anyone who works there?”

“I know a few people who work there. The baristas. And the owner. His name is Toriv.”

“Is he elven?”

“Yes, he’s a Vanellas elf. He’s…well, he’s very kind. And…I should tell you…”

I hesitated. All my life, I’ve waited for and dreaded this sort of moment, especially where the girls are involved. I’ve tried never to lie to them, about myself or anything else, but things can get complicated where children are involved, or rather where the guardians of these children are.

Still, my sister is a fantastic mother, as loving and caring as she can be. The girls are fantastic and loving as well, the very best little girls I know. And they already know so much about me that they’ve accepted without a thought. It’s been a long time since I’ve been someone like that, a being made of pure love.

I thought of that, and of all the ways I wished people had spoken to me when I was young, and knew with certainty that it would be fine.

“…I should tell you, girls. This boy named Toriv, I’ve sort of been seeing him.”

Silence, but for the sound of little brain cogs turning.

Annie said, “You mean with your eyes?”

I laughed. A brilliant eight-year-old is still an eight-year-old. Next time, I’d take the road less fraught with silly adult euphemisms.

“Annie!” Celeste chided. “He means they’ve been dating. They’ve gone on dates. Right, uncle?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Ooooh,” Annie said, comprehension audibly dawning. She thought about it some more. Then she said, quite briskly, “So are you gay?”

“Well, if you really want to get into technicalities, I’m bisexual. I mean, I like boys and girls and everyone in between. This time, it just so happens to be a boy.”

“All right. Cool.”

Annie’s clown avatar, which had paused in its activities since the conversation had taken a more serious turn, went back to whatever clowns do during a busy work day.

Annie said, with absolutely no difficulty or ceremony, “Do we get to meet your boyfriend when we visit you?”

“I–he’s not really my boyfriend. Not yet.”

“He’s not?” Celeste gasped.

“Why not?” Annie asked, exasperated. “You’ve gone on dates.“

I had to suppress a manic giggle. “Yes, pet, but it’s more complicated than that.”

“Why?”

If I knew the answer to that one, my personal life would have been a lot less chaotic over the past few weeks. I share a lot of things with my darling nieces, but the emotional stresses of adult life are not something they need to be burdened with just yet.

“Oh, you know, these things have to be done proper-like. Stars need to align and all that. I’ll get it sorted. Now who needs all these glass blocks I’ve made?”

Both avatars rushed over to collect their blocks and resume castle construction. After watching them hop about for a bit, laying the foundations for their fairy tale home and arguing in the sharp, playful way only sisters can argue, I joined them with my own pocketful of blocks. This time, I didn’t fall off anything.

After the game, as I was fixing myself a late lunch and catching up on work emails, Celeste sent me a Skype message from her individual window. It read: Thank you for telling us about Toriv. We won’t tell anyone else if you don’t want us too.

My heart felt three sizes too big. I set my fresh mug of tea down with a trembling hand and wrote back, You’re welcome, pet. You made your old uncle feel very well loved today. And you can tell your mum if you’d like.

There was a distinct danger that our parents would be the next ones to find out after Charlotte, but I’d never ask the girls to hide anything from their own mother. Even I’m not heartless enough for that.

I’ll tell Dad too! Celeste wrote. I’m sure he’d be happy for you as well. Maybe he’ll reach up into the sky and help align the stars for you.

I sat heavily back on the couch and swiped my fingertips over my eyes, under the glasses frames. All I was able to type back was Thank you, love, and all I was able to feel was utterly, completely blessed.

=====

Toriv visited that evening, quite unexpectedly. The conversation that followed left me a bit stunned, even after I’d gone to bed that night. I had done it at last, unburdened myself to him in one of the deepest, scariest ways I knew how. And he had thought it was cool.

I don’t like to hide the fact that I’m transgender. If anyone ever happened to ask, even out of the blue, I’d tell them so. I’ve been honest about it with my nieces too, since they were old enough to be aware of the differences between boys and girls. Charlotte hadn’t wanted to tell them at first, but she had relented when I had told her how important it was to me.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to fly largely under the radar for several years, so it’s not a conversation I need to have often anymore. No more accidents or misunderstandings, except those caused solely by my own dunderheadedness.

Still, one doesn’t easily shake the idea of being afraid. It becomes a thing so entrenched in your life, so tangible, that even the suggestion of danger can cause a physical response: the cold fear sweat and shaking hands of a man on the gallows, or the protective slump of the shoulders and back, to block a remembered blow. Sometimes I still feel the bruises, physical or otherwise, as though they are fresh from the day before.

It’s been years since I was lashed out at, cornered and having to defend myself. Years since I’ve had to raise my fists and throw my glasses off to the side so they wouldn’t be broken. Years since I’ve had to be sure I always had antiseptic and gauze in my medicine cabinet, just in case. But the flesh and the heart remember.

So you see now, mysterious reader of boring memoirs. Perhaps you can imagine. Perhaps you even know. If that’s the case, then I wish you didn’t. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.

Even after the danger had failed to materialize, I still felt on edge. It took a few minutes of Toriv’s soft, eager kisses to come down from my spiral of anxiety. I don’t know if he read my fear in my movements that evening, or if he did, then I don’t know if he saw the cause. He made it seem easy and simple, the unconcerned It’s just the right thing to do attitude of the young and politically aware. I was grateful, of course, and relieved to the point of floppiness, but I knew that wasn’t the end of it.

Still, though our evening together had started out rather intensely, by its end the tension had returned to its relatively flat  baseline, leaving me in a mingled state of bliss and anticipation. Kissing really is a heavenly thing, when one is so inclined. And a good and proper snog was what it seemed we both needed to distract us from our individual problems.

We ended up on the sitting room sofa sometime after my heart rate had come down from my confession in the kitchen. I had tossed my housecoat over the coffee table and had gathered Toriv into my lap again, where he seemed very happy to perch as my hands roamed over his bottom. It was lovely, but not as heated as it could have been. Now that the initial ecstasy of being seen and accepted had passed, I was pulling back again, not wanting to go too far just yet.

His lips were a little chapped from the cold but had grown soft with our loverings. When he trailed his mouth down over my neck I sighed. I wondered if the sensation of his flesh on mine would ever become familiar. I think I hoped, with perhaps a bigger part of my heart than necessary, that it would.

“You okay?” he murmured against the cleft of my collarbone.

I nodded, which of course dislodged him when my chin accidentally struck his nose. He reeled back in an exaggerated manner, yelping.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I said anyway.

“Boo,” he said, crossing his eyes for a moment before grinning his cat-like grin. “I was just asking. You can say if you wanna stop.”

“I do want to stop,” I admitted, but was sure to add: “For today.”

He made a pleased cat-got-the-cream sort of face. I was discovering that he was cat-like in many different ways, least of all in the manner in which he clung to me as we kissed, like a housecat demanding petting.

“Not done with me, huh?” His fingers drummed on my arm expectantly.

“Not in the least. It’s just, there’s no sense in using it all up in one go, is there?”

“If you say so,” he said.

He kissed me just under my ear, so I stroked his long elven ear in return, just a gentle skimming touch along the edge to where it ended in a point. He shivered in my arms and pushed his face against my shoulder.

“God,” he moaned. “That felt good. Why are we stopping again?”

“Because I asked you to. Sorry.”

He raised his head to give me a resentful, yearning look, so I soothed him with another quick kiss and a squeeze of the bum. Then I pushed him gently off my lap. His sigh could have moved mountains, but he consented to being displaced back onto the couch cushions. He had a sulking look in his green eyes that was terribly funny.

“Aw,” I said. “Used to getting your way, are you?”

“Yeah, I guess. You sure you don’t want some of this?”

“It’s not that I don’t.” If only he had a window into my fantasies from the past few days. “But not tonight.”

“Yeah,” he said again.

He picked up a throw pillow from the end of the sofa and very deliberately placed it over his lap. I snorted and he rolled his eyes.

“It’s basic biology, man,” he said petulantly.

I patted him on the hand. “I’m well aware of the mechanics of the penis. I’m sure you’ll live.”

He still pouted as I went to make a fresh pot of tea — the previous one had gone cold and wholly undrunk, us having had much more pressing business to do with our mouths — but soon he wandered in after me and leaned against my hip, his arm casually draped around my waist.

“Are you hungry?” I asked him. “I ate already, but there’s leftovers.”

I wanted badly to ask him to stay, but didn’t quite trust my dedication to temporary abstinence, especially when we were both still obviously thrumming with desire. He looked up at me, a long considering look that I couldn’t decipher, then he smiled and said, “Nah, I’m good. You really want me to eat your food after the rollercoaster of emotions I put us both through?”

“It wasn’t so bad,” I replied. I brushed a finger under his jaw and noted the sparkle in his eye when I did. “Besides, what’s mine is yours now.”

“Oh yeah?” he said, amused. “So what does that make us?”

I looked away under the pretense of lifting the steeping basket out of the teapot. “I don’t know. What does that make us?”

There was a pause as Toriv thought about this. The silence stretched out, longer and longer, until I stood nervously waiting for it to snap.

After a long moment, he answered my question with another: “I’m guessing you’re looking for some kind of exclusive arrangement? But I mean,” he added before I could reply, “I was wrong about you being a cute lil’ virginal type, so I could be wrong here.”

I wasn’t certain whether to be flattered or insulted, so eventually I went with: “Oh, aren’t I cute?”

Toriv laughed and nuzzled his temple against my shoulder. His hand traveled down to my behind and it took all of my willpower to keep myself from leaning back against his touch.

“You are cute,” he said. “Truly, madly, deeply. But you didn’t answer the question.”

I thought of what I had told the girls earlier, about how this kind of thing would only happen if the stars aligned. Was my brother-in-law really doing his part up there or wherever he was, reaching up to push the stars a little closer in alignment over my head? It was a silly notion, but I still couldn’t help feeling that this was as much of a bone as the universe was going to throw me, and I had better seize it before the chance escaped me.

I said to Toriv, “I’d like you to be my boyfriend. Exclusively. But with no big expectations.”

“Oh-kay?” he said. “What do you mean by big expectations?”

“I mean, none of that thirty-under-thirty relationship milestone nonsense. Just…us, and however we feel like being.”

“Ooh. So, like, just going with the flow?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh. Fair enough,” he said slowly. “I can do that. Totally. I did just go with the flow with the whole not-having-sex-although-we-clearly-really-want-to bit we just did. Yeah, no problem.”

“I’m sorry abstinence is so far out of your area of expertise,” I said with a grin. “But maybe the new experience will be good for you.”

“Well, if you’re gonna be like that, then I’m going to have to bring something shiny and new to the table too.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

He wrapped both arms around my waist. I turned in his arms to look him in the eyes. There was something I couldn’t quite read in them, a quiver of something like nervousness or fear, but it was gone the next moment.

“Sure,” Toriv said in his same assured voice. “I’ll be your boyfriend, Professor Singh. I bet we could have lots of fun together.”

“I hope so.”

My chest felt so light, like my ribcage had finally loosened enough to let free a cleansing breath. I leaned in to kiss him and felt him respond in kind. His hands threatened to bring me back for another go on the sofa, so I forced myself to lighten the kiss, to be cool, as the kids say. He resisted the separation, tried to reel me back in with lips and hands, so I cupped my fingers under his chin and placed my thumb against his lower lip. His skin gave very gently as I pressed, warm and velvet and inviting under my touch. His wide eyes roved over my face like he wasn’t sure where to look, then they settled into a new, darker expression, like a coal fire burning low. I felt an answering burn deep in my belly, a pleasant warmth that I would let smoulder in the days to come in hot and heady anticipation.

“You know,” he murmured, his bottom lip slipping under the pad of my thumb. “You might be on to something.”

I smiled and moved my thumb just enough so I could kiss him again, chastely. “Trust me. I am an old hat, after all.”

“Mmm. Then you’d better show me the advantages of having an older lover.”

“Now you’re just making me sound like a lecherous old man.”

“Aren’t you? Kidding!” he screeched when I smacked him in the arm for the slight. “You’re not that much older than me.”

“How old are you? It’s hard to tell.”

Toriv grinned and draped his arms over my shoulders, using his weight to pull me against him until we stood leaning heavily against the kitchen counter. Over his shoulder, I eyed the teapot, which was rapidly going cold again.

“I am thirty-one years old, Mister President,” he said breathily, in what I had to assume was some sort of Marilyn Monroe impression.

“Oh–” I braced my hands against the countertop so we wouldn’t go tumbling over. “That’s nearly ten years’ difference, you know.”

He shrugged, then seemed to think about it, then shrugged again, like he had decided it was fine after all. I couldn’t help the laugh that puffed out at his rapidly changing expressions. He took advantage of my moment of inattention and dragged my mouth down to his again. I really could get quickly used to this, snuggles and kisses and laughter in my warm kitchen.

When we parted, he didn’t let me pull away completely, but clung to me so that when he spoke, his lips brushed against mine, tantalizingly close.

He said, “Are you worth waiting for, Professor?”

And I dearly hoped I was. By God, I did.

// Toriv

The first spring rains went on for days, turning pretty much the whole city into a pile of icy sludge. This is only slightly better than it being an icy snowdrift like it is six months in the year. This is prime boot-ruining weather hour, fashionistas beware. I swear I was walking everywhere on my tippy toes, that’s just how afraid I was. Why don’t I live somewhere that’s never seen winter, like Los Angeles? Plus everyone’s gay in LA, that should be reason enough.

I’d miss this place too much, though, even with the garbage weather. And I couldn’t really run off to sunny Los Angeles with a date to keep.

Mahendra and I texted a little over the next few days, just making small talk. He sent me a few more smiley face emojis, which was precious as shit for some reason, but he didn’t actually show his face at the shop again until Friday afternoon. Jamie was in too, sitting perched on a barstool to show off what I can only assume were genuine red-soled Christian Louboutins. If you’ve ever met a Montréal elf who loves shoes more than his own life, it was probably Jamie Me’aranas.

“Bonjour, monsieur le professeur,” I called as the professor pushed open my door. “Are you enjoying monsoon season?”

“Pas du tout, monsieur le barista,” Mahendra said. He shook out his damp hair and looked sadly at his water-speckled briefcase. “Though if you want to see a real monsoon, try India in July.”

“I’ll pass, if it’s all the same to you. How about a drink to warm you up?”

His face lit up in one of those shy little smiles that make his brown eyes shine behind his glasses. “Yes. The mocha, please.”

As he crept up to the counter to pay, Jamie turned in his stool with a sly “well, well, well” look that, I’ll be honest, put a bit of the fear of the gods in me. If my life were a kid’s cartoon, Jamie would definitely be the incredibly stylish but manipulative supervillain who worms his way into the hero’s friend circle before unleashing his dastardly plan and very best evil laugh. I love him to death, but just sayin’.

“Hello,” Jamie said with a flutter of his fingers. “Nice to see you again, Mahendra.”

Mahendra looked surprised just at being addressed, which I was finding out is a common look for him. “Hello, Jamie. You look lovely today. Louboutin?”

“Yes, sir. They’re the same model I wore to senior prom. To much scandal, I should add.”

“‘Scandalous’ is your middle name,” I said. “I wore my ratty old combat boots to my prom.”

“So did I,” Mahendra said a little wistfully, while me and Jamie looked at him with matching expressions of shock.

“You? Oh, darling,” Jamie said passionately. “I was sure you were more of a ‘not a thread out of place’ kind of guy.”

“I wasn’t always.” He shrugged, like saying that he hadn’t always so put-together wasn’t completely crazy. “I actually didn’t care much for nice clothes in my youth. And those were my favourite boots.”

“That has to be a joke. You’re made to walk down a runway. Tell him, Toriv.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said super smoothly. “You’re, like, really tall. So that’s great. For runway purposes.”

Jamie gave me a look like I’d just murdered all the younglings at the temple, while Mahendra said bashfully, “I’m only five ten. And not nearly handsome enough to model.”

Jamie shook his head. “Too humble. How is it you’re dating Toriv, who has ego practically bleeding out of his ass?”

“We’re not dating,” Mahendra and I said at the same time.

Jamie only raised his eyebrows at us. Daeci and Kiv passed by next to me and also raised their eyebrows at us. I’m pretty sure everyone in the shop was raising their eyebrows at us.

“We’re not,” I said again, because I love to put too fine of a point on things.

“I’m sorry,” Mahendra said.

“Why are you sorry?! I’m the one who’s still apologizing to you.”

“Oh, did you get mad at him for that night at the bar?” Jamie asked airily. “I told him he was being a brute, but does anyone ever listen to the guy in the dress?”

“It’s less to do with you being in a dress and more with you being a total busybody.”

“You don’t get as far as I have without stepping on a few toes. I hope you’re taking him out properly this time.”

“He is,” Mahendra said before I could answer. “A lounge in the Old Port.”

“Well, now. That’s much better,” Jamie said. “A nice man like you should be treated right.”

“He is! He will be,” I said loudly. “Now can we stop talking about how much of an asshat I am? It’s bad for business.”

“Is it?” Mahendra asked. He blew gently on the top of the mocha I had just handed him then looked at me over the rim of his glasses. “I thought people liked a bad boy.”

“I mean…they like a bad boy, but not a boy who’s been bad, ya dig me?”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I dig you.”

Jamie smiled while watching at us, probably crafting about fifteen evil plans in the same moment. Then Mahendra sat next to Jamie at the coffee bar and things went on in that quiet late afternoon way they do at the shop. More than anything, I wanted to keep hanging around by the counter to talk, but duty calls. Cabinets to be stocked and fridges to be checked. I’ll be honest, I had a bit of trouble paying attention to all my tasks once Mahendra had settled at my counter. There was something about the sound of his voice that drew my ears, like I always knew the second he had started talking even though I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He had a good voice. It sounded like he never raised it at all and even though it was low and kind of rumbly it wasn’t rough. I guess that’s what they call a velvety voice, like a good dark chocolate ganache. God, I love ganache.

Mahendra gave me a sweet little smile as he went that evening. His fingertips touched mine just a little as he was handing back his cup.

Saturday arrived in a flash, almost like all the world and time were pushing me to fix my stupid mistake as soon as possible. But the days normally pass pretty quickly anyway, seeing as I’m always working. After all, there wasn’t really much of a reason for me to be looking forward to Date Night 2: The Re-Datening so hard that it actually affected the normal flow of space time. As you know, I’ve been on tons of dates. An incredible amount of dates. So many dates that I don’t even know what to do with them all. Why can’t I hold all these dates? I am a dating veteran, is what I’m trying to say.

But Toriv, you might be saying at this exact moment, hold up, man, wait just a goshdarned second there, son, slow the tempo, my brother. What’s all this about you having been on sooo many dates when you spent basically an entire chapter of your scintillating and insightful autobiography telling us all about how you don’t date? Was that a lie? How could you lie to us, Toriv? How will we ever live with this betrayal?!

Well, I’m here to say relax, good fellow, old buddy, old pal. Ol’ Toriv wasn’t lying to you. Ol’ Toriv is like, the George Washington of elves. Straight as an arrow, except for, y’know, the not-straight part. Ol’ Toriv, however, does have his manly pride, so he doesn’t really appreciate being called out like this in the middle of a paragraph, so why don’t you just sit tight and let him do his thing, okay? Great.

All that to say, I wasn’t at all nervous about Date Numero Dos, because I am a man of vast experience. But okay, maybe I was a little bit nervous that this awesome date I’d planned wasn’t going to be quite as awesome in the moment. Mahendra was turning out to be difficult to predict, so for all I knew he could absolutely hate cool, sexy lounges and was just too polite to tell me so. Which was why I was already primed and ready with a list of alternate venues for Operation Rad Date Night, all within convenient walking or metro distance from the original date site. The only question left was, is five replacement date locations too much?

“It’s definitely too much,” Loriev told me over the phone that evening.

“I knew that.” I shoved my phone between my ear and my shoulder so I could shuffle through my clothes drawer with both hands. “I already knew that. Why did I do it if I already knew that?”

“Because you’re you and excessive planning is how you get things done? Don’t worry so much. Isn’t it enough that he wanted to go out with you again? I thought you’d be happy.”

“I am happy. Can’t you hear how happy I am?”

I yanked the entire drawer out of the dresser with a loud scrape of old creaky wood and dumped everything onto the bed, then tossed the drawer onto the top of pile, upon which it immediately keeled over and crashed onto the floor.

“It sounds more like you’re renovating your apartment,” Loriev said.

I sighed. “Now imagine what my brain sounds like right now.”

“Calm down. You’ve got this. Have I told you you’ve got this?”

“At least twenty times today,” I said pathetically. “But I could stand to hear it again.”

“You’ve got this,” Loriev said patiently. “Now hang up the phone, get dressed and go on your date. It’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Okay, okay, okay.” I took a deep breath, held it, then let it go as slowly as I could. “Okay. I’m good. I’m fine. I’m fantastic.”

“You are. And if he doesn’t see it after tonight, then he’s not nearly as nice a guy as I thought.”

“Heheh. Okay, I’ll go. Sorry to bug you.”

“You never bug me. Have fun.”

I put down my phone and threw it into the crumpled-up bedsheets with determination. I stared at the pile of my not-too-dressy-but-not-disgustingly-casual shirts that I’d just scattered all over the bed for a good long minute, then decided that it was too much to handle and went digging for my phone. When I found it, I saw the timed alert for my next appointment had popped up: Operation Rad Date Night, 6PM. I only had a bit of time left before Mahendra was expecting me at his place, so it was time to kick my own ass into high gear.

“Black, black, this weird beige, black,” I mumbled while flipping through my clothes. “God, why is everything I own black? Am I in a neutral-toned hell of my own design?”

My phone hummed in response. When I snatched it up out of habit, high gear be damned, I saw a message from Mahendra: Looks like rain tonight. I hope they didn’t open up the terrasse too early.

I bit my lip, feeling real glad that I’d thought to check the weather even with thoughts buzzing around in my head like a million hyped-up mosquitoes on a June night. I asked and its still nice & toasty in there!! So dont worry, I got it covered 😉

“Too much?” I muttered. Sometimes I regret being a trendy emoji-using millenial, but a guy does not change his texting habits overnight.

I looked again at my pile of clothes, then back at my phone. I typed what are you wearing? then backspaced it when I realized how it sounded, then wrote out of curiosity, what color are you going for, outfitwise?

After about a minute, he answered: Good question. Still getting dressed but right now, it’s a toss-up between royal purple or forest green.

“Purple!” I dived back into the clothes pile, my phone hand held up like I was drowning. “I can do purple. I swear to the gods I had something purple–aha!”

I finally found the V-neck t-shirt I’d been thinking of. It was clean, not too crumpled and made my bod look great, so it would do. Throw on a pair of skinny jeans in (you guessed it) black and the slim cut blazer I was suddenly really glad my mom had forced me to buy that one time, and you have one excellent and effortless urban cool outfit for going out on the town. It was almost like I’d excessively planned the whole thing.

A quick toss and style of the hair later, I was finally ready to go. I fed the rats their dinner, giving each of them a little pat before I went.

“Wish me luck, guys,” I said.

“Chitter chatter,” Sys and Dia said, which I took to be their own brand of ratty encouragement.

The sky was looking pretty rainy as I stepped out, but I was too amped to get going to bother looking for my umbrella, so I just went. You can plan things out all you want, but sometimes life (and messy closets) just force you to jump out and deal with things as they come.

I was at Mahendra’s door faster than even my brain on overdrive could figure out. I punched the buzzer before I had time for second thoughts, waiting on pins and needles until the intercom bleeped back at me.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mahendra! It’s me.”

“Oh, dear. Yes, of course.” Shuffling noises came from the other end of the line. “I’m sorry, I seem to be running late. You’d better come up.”

He buzzed me in and I stepped into a cool, quiet lobby all done up in cream-coloured tile. The only thing missing was a stony-faced concierge with a fancy cap and a dark past, but I guess it wasn’t that sort of condo. I crossed the lobby and pushed the button for the elevator, then decided that was going to take way too long and took the stairs to the third floor instead.

Mahendra’s apartment was at the end of a long, silent hallway. I could still feel my heart beating in my ears from the climb up the stairwell, but I wasn’t about to let a little cardiovascular activity get the better of me. I did spend a few seconds right in front of the door, checking to make sure I didn’t already have pit stains, then I knocked a little shave-and-a-haircut to announce my fabulous presence.

His smile, when he finally opened the door for me, was stunning. Now I don’t use the word “stunning” a whole lot because there aren’t many things in life that actually stun me, but for some reason Mahendra’s expression that evening was so bright and beautiful that I took a literal step back.

“Hey,” he said through that big, wonderful smile.

“Hey, yourself, my good man!” Good thing I can still talk even when my brain is busy being stunned. “Ready to have a gay old time?”

“Nearly ready.” He opened the door all the way to invite me in. “Sorry, I just need a few more moments.”

“It’s cool, I think I’m early anyway. Nice digs, by the way.”

“It’s modest,” he said modestly. “But thank you. Would you like a glass of water or tea? You seem a little winded.”

“Oh, that’s ’cause I took the stairs. For the ol’ thumper, you know. And yes, I know no one actually says that.”

“You just did,” he said pleasantly. “Water, then. This way.”

He led me into a warmly lit all-white kitchen, which was on the small side but still incredibly functional, and including a sparkling new stovetop I would have gladly given my left nut for. He poured me some water from a pitcher from the fridge and sat me at his table.

“I just need a minute to fix my face,” he said.

“But your face looks great,” I said, then decided to chug my cold water before I accidentally dished out any other heavy-handed compliments.

He didn’t seem to think I was being weird, though, because he just smiled and backed out. I waited until he was out of sight before putting my forehead down on the tabletop to ride out my insane bout of fridge water induced brainfreeze. Ow. Damn. Crap. Okay, we’re good now. I popped back up and washed my glass out, then had a look around the kitchen in the way my rats do when I switch up their cage layout and they need to scope out their new territory.

The living room looked like a better place for a snoop to start, so I headed in there to have a gander at his bookshelves. They were, as you can probably guess, full of books. A lot of them were big heavy textbooks that he probably used in his classes, but I figured out there was a dedicated fiction section too. Most of these were historical looking things about princes and ladies-in-waiting and stuff, then a few crime thrillers and more than a few romance novels (shocking). I resisted the urge to check if any of the romance books had heaving bosoms on the covers and moved on to the next shelf. This one was full of picture frames, mostly featuring his two nieces and a woman I had to assume was his sister. She had the same dark skin, curly hair and brilliant smile that he did, though she was shorter and rounder. A real mama bear type, I guessed. The older niece looked exactly like her too.

Once I’d gotten over the adorable family photos, I noticed a small simple golden frame at the back. It held a professional shot of another Indian woman, but she didn’t really look like family. Her hair was sleek and dark as ink and everything from her makeup to the string of pearls around her neck was absolute perfection. She was so beautiful it made me check my face in the reflection of my phone screen, you know, just in case something was out of place.

Then I heard his footsteps behind me. I turned so fast it was probably really obvious I’d been snooping, but tell me you wouldn’t have done the exact same thing in my shoes.

“I should have known you wouldn’t stay put,” Mahendra said.

He had gone with the royal purple shirt after all, which he’d accessorized with a black leather tie and a silver tie pin. Good look, if I’m being honest.

I grinned my sincerest grin. “Sorry. I didn’t touch anything that wasn’t in plain sight, I swear.”

“I believe you.” He came up to the photo shelf and pointed out his sister Charlotte and her two daughters to me, as I’d already guessed.

“They’re so cute. And who’s that?” I asked super casually, meaning the small gold frame with the ridiculously pretty girl in it.

“That’s my closest friend, Anushka. She works at a law firm in Manhattan.”

“Geez. Are all of your friends this gorgeous and successful?”

He laughed. “Some of them. Anushka is the cream of the crop, so to speak.”

I looked at Anushka’s perfect smile again and joked, “Should I be jealous?”

“Oh, not at all.”

Something about the way he said it sounded funny to me, but in the moment I couldn’t really figure it out. Then he was steering me away from his prized possessions with a hand just above my right hip, just a light little touch that was so fast I almost didn’t have time to be distracted by it. Almost. What can I say, I’m extremely distractible.

Cue dark chocolate ganache voice: “Shall we be going?”

I lead him all the way to the nearest metro platform in relative silence. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk, but there was something about those early date minutes that called for quiet. Maybe we were sizing each other up, building up our second impressions.

My second impression of him was that even if he didn’t care much about clothes in his so-called youth, he sure learned a lot along the way. His outfit was meticulous, which is another word I don’t use a lot, so take that however you like. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen anyone wear a tie pin, which is probably a sign of it being an old fusty thing, but he made it work. His watch was silver too. He fiddled with it a lot to make it sit just right then he would smooth the sleeve of his coat over it, over and over like he was never satisfied with the way the fabric lay.

After a few minutes of waiting around on the humid metro platform and watching him fuss with his clothes, I moved a bit closer and caught the edge of his sleeve with my fingertips.

“You look good,” I said as he looked up at me in surprise. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” he said. He glanced away but his expression was kind of funny, like he was trying not to smile and failing hard. “I know that I know how to dress, at the very least.”

“Yeah, you do, so why you fussin’? Do you need a fidget spinner or something?”

“Nothing of the sort.”

“Then maybe a bit of a confidence booster. Like–” I struck a pose like Will Smith showing off his girl to the red carpet crowd and yelled, “Lookee here! Best-dressed man on this platform! Send your good vibes!”

“Stop it!” Mahendra hissed.

He swiped a hand at me but I danced away, then pointed at him and said, “BELIEVE IN ME WHO BELIEVES IN YOU!”

“Stop–people are staring–” He was trying so hard to be serious but he was definitely laughing, so who’s the winner here? Yeah, it’s me.

The metro rushed into the station just as our laughter was dying down. He shook his head at me as the closest car slowed next to us, but I just grinned and quirked my eyebrows, which is my standard response whenever anyone tries to tell me how to act. He gestured me into the car with a big regal sweep of his arms, so I went in with my nose held up high like a snobby duchess.

The metro car was about as full as you’d expect on a rainy Saturday evening, so we got stuck metro surfing in the middle of the car. I’d forgotten how much taller he was than me, so I got to spend most of the ride thinking about just that as I stared into his shoulder and tried not to bump into him with every sway of the car. It’s hard to talk in a noisy crowded metro car, so we didn’t, but the silence was more bearable this time, more easy. That’s the magic of sharing a laugh over your date’s dumb antics, I guess.

More people than is probably legally allowed had to squeeze themselves into the car at the big connecting station, so Mahendra had to move over into my space. He whispered “sorry”, his face so close to mine that I felt his breath in my hair. I shook my head and let my hand rest on his arm to keep us steady. The little smile he had for the whole rest of the trip was adorable.

Back outside, it was just a skip and a hop to the Ver’aranas Lounge. By that time, the air was getting misty and heavy, the usual introduction to big bad rain. We pushed into the entrance of the lounge just as the first drops starting falling behind us.

“Whew,” I said. “Made it.”

“And just in time,” Mahendra said, looking back out into the street where the rain had already stained the cobblestones of the Old Port dark blue. “May I take your coat?”

I let him slip my coat off my shoulders like in an old timey Hollywood movie. He waved away my dollar when I tried to pay for coat check too, which was like, damn. Guess I wasn’t the only one who had decided to ramp it up for the great Re-Datening. It felt kind of nice. I mean, when was the last time anyone offered to take your coat? Basically never.

We moved into the lounge proper. It was just the way I remembered it, with a few added string lights and the ambient music set to some totally cool chillhop numbers to keep with the times. It wasn’t too noisy, but the night was just getting started. I watched Mahendra’s face nervously, but he seemed just fine, even happy. He caught me staring and smiled all the way up to his eyes.

He said, “It’s very nice in here. Is your friend working tonight?”

The feeling of relief that washed over me made me feel a little floppy, but I managed to answer, “Yeah, she should be. Let’s go over to the bar once we have our table.”

Turns out there was no need, because the moment we had pushed our way over to the cutest little reserved table by the balcony windows, there she was as if summoned. She wrestled me into a bear hug before I could even turn to say hi.

“Toriv!” Korianis shouted. She’s a huge elf with a huge voice like thunder rumbling right over your head, so the effect was pretty intense. “How are you, little man?”

“I’m just dandy, big lady,” I said while trying really hard to breathe normally. “I love ya, but please free my lungs.”

She put me down and wrapped an arm around my neck instead. Not much better, breathing-wise, but at least I had my feet on the ground.

“Mahendra,” I said breathlessly, “this is my good friend and fellow entrepreneur Korianis Ver’aranas. If she loves you then she really loves you, but if she doesn’t then you’d better be ready to die.”

“Sounds like my kind of person,” Mahendra said.

He shook Kori’s free hand. I could see them both leaning into the handshake and squeezing real hard. This went on for long enough that I wondered if I should intervene before someone busted a vein.

“So you’re the new man,” Kori said. “Toriv did say he needed somewhere to keep it classy. Now I see why.”

“He also told you not to bring it up,” I said, still squished up in the crook of Kori’s arm.

Kori shrugged and Mahendra laughed. I see how it is.

“You’d better sit and let me serve you fine and classy gents, then,” Kori said. She pushed me down into my chair, then helped Mahendra into his. Like a normal person, and not by slamming him down so hard his knees gave out, like mine had.

She took our first drink and hors d’oeuvre orders, then stomped away to get them going. If you haven’t already guessed, Kori does nothing without making a huge racket. She says it’s how she makes her mark on the world.

Then I was alone with Mahendra again, sitting across from him at a small table with our knees almost touching. He was looking around the lounge, taking in the dope atmosphere with that pensive look he usually has.

I cleared my throat and asked, “So…do you like it here? If you don’t, we can go somewhere else. I know a couple of other places. Like two or three. Definitely not an excessive number of them, like five.”

“And waste our drinks? I think not.” He turned back to me and adjusted his glasses. “No, it’s just fine. It’s wonderful, actually. I haven’t been somewhere like this in ages.”

“Me neither. Uh, sorry about Kori.”

“No,” he said again. “I like your friends. Most of them, anyway.”

He looked away and sipped his ice water, then said, “I wasn’t aware I was ‘the new man’, though.”

God, cringe. “Ah, uh, well, people like to talk. Especially Korianis. All I said when I made the reservation was that I wanted someplace classy to take someone to.”

“And everyone automatically assumes it’s a date?”

“I guess that says more about me than them, huh?”

He smiled into his glass, then set it down carefully and reached out for me. He brushed the edge of my sleeve with his fingertips, so close to my skin that it sent a shiver down my arm.

“Royal purple,” he said in a low voice. “It looks good on you.”

“Thanks.” I let my eyes linger on him, drinking in the deep purple hue of the shirt, the texture of the leather tie, the glint of the silver pin like a tiny star. “You too.”

When he smiled next, it was different than before. Like there were a lot of things he wanted to say, but he was going to sit on them for a bit, just to ramp up the mystery factor. Which was just fine for now, I think. In a place like that, with the smooth slow beats going and the liquor flowing warm and golden, it felt like we had all the time in the world.

\\ Mahendra

When I called Anushka that evening, tormented as I was by the usual assault of doubt and excitement, I was consternated to see her hang up on me before the phone had rung twice. I fumed like a teenager for about a minute before giving up the cause and tossing my mobile back onto the bed. I had better things to worry about, like what to wear for the all-important second date. So far, my attempts to put together a decent outfit hadn’t brought me much farther than “maybe suspenders”.

“Who wear suspenders to a date?” I said to my silent phone. My expression, reflected back to me in the dark screen, said A nerd. Which is what you are, anyway.

As I was contemplating the dark pit of sartorial despair that was slowly forming in my soul, my phone came to life on the bed. Anushka was calling me back.

I answered with a peevish, unbecoming “You hung up on me.”

In her best American drawl, Anushka said, “Sorry, bro, I was on the can.”

She could have been joking, but I know her too well to believe she was being anything but truthful. “Why do you have your phone with you in the toilet?”

“I was working.”

“On the t–“

“Hush hush, I know. The worst part is that it’s nearly the only time I’ve had to go to the toilet all day. Remind me why I chose this profession again?”

Despite my current distress, I smiled at her familiar voice. “Because you wanted to make enough money to support yourself and your acrylic nail habit until you found a rich American lawyer to marry and have beautiful mixed babies with?”

“Despite your tone,” Anushka said with a sigh, “I know intellectually that you support my life choices no matter what.”

“Of course I do, gold digger.”

“Cheers, liberal hippie.”

“Listen, I just need a quick word then I’ll be out of your hair.”

“I absolutely want you in my hair, you goose. What is it?”

I switched over to video calling and focused the camera on my open closet. “Clothes, I need them.”

“I see plenty,” she said flatly.

“I mean…I need a good outfit for tonight. For right now, actually.”

“And?”

“And you have impeccable style?”

“Thanks, but wasn’t actually fishing for that. I mean what do you need it for. Context, my dear.”

I had hoped to get through this conversation without actually giving away the cause for it, but I suppose I should have known better than to try that with my best friend, who is also incidentally a barrister.

“It’s for…dinner.” I tried, but when she gave me the auditory equivalent of raising an eyebrow in scepticism, I relented and said, “I’m going on a date.”

“Interesting,” she said, drawing out every syllable malevolently. “Is it he of the dirty chai?”

“Yes. It’s the second time I’m seeing him, actually.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment or two, but I heard the Very interesting as well as the I told you so in her pregnant silence.

“Well, what’s his style like?” she asked finally. “Are you looking to match or contrast?”

I stared into my closet’s gaping maw. “Matching seems a bit much for a second date, don’t you think?”

“I suppose. What ever happened to just going as you are?”

Who I am is incredibly dull, though, is what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t answer that unless I wanted to be verbally eviscerated, so I settled with, “Dunno. I’m just not feeling comfortable in anything right now.”

“Let’s have a look, then.”

I took Anushka’s little video self on a tour of my closet and the environs, right down to my collection of watches and the small fortune in gold jewelry that I haven’t worn in years but kept out of filial guilt.

“Put something on for me,” she ordered next.

“So I’m to clotheshorse about, now?”

“We have to start somewhere. Show me your best face.”

I grimaced at her. She rolled her eyes so hard it might have hurt.

Four changes later, I was still undecided and she was getting impatient, which historically has never lead to anything good. Still, she waited until I’d done a little turn for her in the latest outfit, then declared, “You look just fine. There’s nothing wrong with your clothes.”

“Is it me, then?” I wondered aloud. My frown, reflected back at me in the mirror above my dresser, was thunderous.

“Yes, it is you. You’re doing the thing you do.”

“What thing.”

“You know the thing. The thing that makes you refuse to dress and go out like a normal person.”

“I’m not–“

“The thing that made you chop your hair off and cry all day on the floor of our flat.”

“Didn’t need reminding, thanks,” I sighed. I sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed a hand over my face, smudging my glasses horrifically in the process. “God, I am doing the thing though, aren’t I?”

Anushka nodded. Her words were harsh, but she wasn’t unsympathetic. That’s just the way she is.

“I know you must be nervous,” she said. “But if he really likes you, won’t he just accept you the way you are?”

“Who knows.”

“Well, only one way to find out.”

In that moment, I would have loved nothing more than to stay curled up in bed and to spend the rest of my evening talking to Anushka. She’s always had a way of dampening my fears and making me feel braver than I am. Being close to her is a comfort I never did manage to describe. Even now, from hundreds of miles away, her voice and manner were slowly bringing me down from the quasi-manic state that manifested in me every time the concept of being seen and judged by others overwhelmed me. I think she’s the only person in the world who knows or cares when I become like this.

On the small screen, she looked as beautiful and brilliant as I remembered, and I found myself wondering for the thousandth time why we hadn’t managed to stay together. I knew better than to ask — we’d been through it enough times, as it is — but the thought was there, sticking in my mind like a speck of dust I just couldn’t clean out.

I glanced out the window above the bed, where the sky was now completely dark. It was nearly time to go and I wasn’t even close to being dressed, let alone mentally prepared for whatever social perils the evening might have in store for me. Even for late winter, the underside of the clouds seemed unusually heavy. It was warmer outside than it had been in weeks, though, so I thought perhaps it might even rain instead of snow.

I typed a message out to Toriv as Anushka said airily, “You chose a pair of trousers, at least. That’s a start. One might even say it’s the essential piece.”

“Trousers usually are.”

I faffed about some more, trying to figure out which watch I wanted to wear and chatting with Anushka to keep my mind occupied. Then my phone vibrated and Toriv’s name popped up on-screen, right next to Anushka’s waiting expression.

“Just a minute, Anushka. Toriv just texted.”

“Toriv,” she said musingly. “You know, I don’t think I remember you ever dating any elves.”

“Really? You must know I’m not one to discriminate.”

She rolled her eyes as if to say that’s for certain. “I remember the satyr boy from college. And the string of flatmates quickly turned ex-flatmates.”

“Oi.”

“And that girl with the ringlets, what was her name…Janice, the boring librarian!”

“Librarians aren’t boring, just misunderstood.”

“And plenty more I don’t remember, I’m sure. Your ancestors are rolling in their graves, my dear.”

“They can roll all they like. I’m sure it’s excellent post-life exercise.” I glanced down at the two closest shirts thrown together in the bed. Royal purple and forest green. Surely I could choose one of those by the time Toriv turned up at the door.

Anushka was quiet for a minute, then she said, “You seem to have things well in hand. I’ll go now, let you finish.”

What I felt next is hard to describe, though I’m certain everyone must have felt it at some point in their lives. When we signed off that night, or indeed whenever Anushka and I have said goodbye in the long years of our friendship, my heart seemed to reach out for her, as if to say don’t go. The feeling had the desperate, grasping quality of a child that wants for loving. The sensation always leaves me feeling a little abashed, a little ashamed. How long ago did I learn to feel shame just for not wanting to be alone?

It was a question for another time, or more likely, for never. So instead, I said, “Then I’ll let you get back to your work. Please remember to go to the toilet every once in a while.”

“I’ll do what I want. This is America, land of the free.”

“Feel free to take care of yourself, then.”

“Take care of yourself too, Mahendra.” She paused like she wanted to add something. For just a moment, her expression took on a worried cast. She jokes about my moods and hounds me to break out of my shell, but she knows better than anyone why I have to be so cautious. She’s seen what could happen to me if I’m not.

“I’ll be fine,” I said eventually, when the silence had grown too thick. “Like you always say, there’s no knowing unless you try.”

“You taught me that first,” Anushka said crossly. “Twit.”

I laughed. “Goodbye, harpy.”

“Text me afterwards!”

Then she was gone, leaving me once again with a dark phone screen and uncertainty blooming in my heart like poisonous thorns. Well, there was no banishing the weeds without bringing in the sun.

The doorbell rang as I was struggling into my trousers. I looked up at the clock in alarm. Of course I had spent far too much time fretting about getting ready and not nearly enough actually getting ready. Now I was going to be tardy as well as harassed.

I yanked on my trousers and jogged to the door to push the button. Toriv’s voice came through, so I buzzed him in then turned around anxiously in the hall until he knocked. I took a second to compose myself, the words Calm down, you great goose coming to me in Anushka’s voice, then I opened the door.

There he was, looking a little windblown but as perfectly charming as always. His crooked eyetooth poked through his smile, which was a look so dear that I just had to grin in response. The urge to kiss him in that moment was so overbearing that my brain shut down for a second, so it was only through the miracle of habit that I managed to answer when he asked “Ready to have a gay old time?”

I ushered him in, set him up in the kitchen, and excused myself to finish dressing. As I was knotting my tie and finally choosing a watch, I strained my ears to catch any sound of Toriv moving about the flat. After a moment, I heard him pad softly to the sitting room, making audible “hmm!” noises like he was at a museum exhibit.

“Okay,” I murmured to myself in the mirror. “You’re dressed. You look good. You’re going to go out and have fun.” My reflected self smiled self-consciously. “No problem at all.”

I went back out, peering around the corner of the hallway to see where Toriv had gotten himself to. He was standing by the shelf where I keep my photos, observing them with concentration.

I said, “I should have known you wouldn’t stay put.”

He turned, boyish guilt written all over his face. I liked that look on him too.

He had seemed curious, so I pointed to each of the faces in the picture frames in turn. “There’s my sister Charlotte and her girls, Celeste and Anastasia. They’re a bit younger here than in the videos I showed you.”

“They’re so cute. And who’s that?”

He gestured to the gold frame that held Anushka’s portrait. I had been visiting her briefly in Manhattan a few years back and had gone with her to get the professional headshot done. I remembered how I had waved the photographer away and had placed her hair and pearls just so, while she had smirked mischievously under the bright lights.

Perhaps it’s bad form to keep a portrait of one’s ex-fiancée on the mantle, as it were, but hiding it in a box somewhere would have rung false. So there it stood, both a comfort and a reminder of things lost.

I turned my thoughts back to the present. It would be truly foolish to ignore what was right in front of me, no matter what the eventual outcome of such a dalliance may be.

I summoned my courage and charm and let the smile bloom over my face, hoping that my sincerity would shine through my nervousness.

“Shall we be going?”

=====

We made good time to our date destination, which was fortunate considering it began to rain just as we were stepping inside.

The contrast between this place and the bar from the previous week was like night and day. The lounge was dimly lit in a oceanic kind of way, the music muffled behind the heavy velvet drapes lining the tall windows. It was a warm and pleasant space, filled with a murmur of low, intimate voices and the gentle clink of ice in glass. I loved it instantly.

Toriv was watching me with a kind of anxiety, so I was quick to reassure him. “It’s very nice in here. Is your friend working tonight?”

We wove around the little tables and couches towards the tiny windowside table marked with a Reserved card, and were soon accosted by Korianis, Toriv’s friend and owner of the establishment. She was a very large, very loud elf, fair-skinned and golden blond where Toriv was tanned and dark. Good handshake, as well. It’s silly, but I’m very serious about handshakes. It’s the first indication of someone’s mettle one can get, after all.

After we had been greeted, seated, and served, we sat together in silence. Now that we were here, I had no clue what to say to him. I was happy to see him, almost ecstatically so, but the need to prove myself interesting to him was apparently keeping me from being of any interest at all.

So it was small talk for a while, as the murmur of voices and the hum and boom of the music settled over us like a haze. He was pleasant to talk to, even if it was only about the weather and goings-on at the shop. I told him a bit about my classes, though not in as much plodding detail as to be boring. He seemed quite interested and insisted there simply must be some digging going on — it’s the anthropologist’s curse, to always be mistaken for an archeologist — but I denied the whole thing by claiming that dinosaurs were never too interesting for me anyway, to which he replied with amused disbelief.

“Everybody’s got something for them in dinosaurs, man,” he extolled as Korianis returned with our drinks and food. “I like the weird little ones. Y’know, the ones who ate the eccentric billionaire in that one book?”

I thought about it and said I supposed all the dinosaur-era creatures of the deep ocean were pretty cool, which made Toriv shudder and declare he’d never dare dip his toes in anything deeper than his Long Island iced tea. He then sipped said Long Island demonstratively.

“That’s a little funny,” I said, as I tucked in some rather good fried calamari. “Didn’t the ancestors of clan Vanellas come from across the sea?”

“Yeah. I mean, that’s what they say about us, anyway.” He munched a sweet potato chip thoughtfully. “Guess I just don’t have the sea-faring gene in me. My mom’s been wanting to go back there, wherever there is. Last I heard, people were saying the homeland was somewhere near Puerto Rico, but who knows.”

“It might be nice to go back.”

“I guess so. I don’t really speak Spanish, though. Or elven, for that matter. Seems almost silly to go knowing that.”

He smiled wanly, like it was a thought he’d had many times before. There was a look in his eyes that was familiar, something distant and yearning, yet resigned. I thought of England, so far away, and of India, even farther, and felt a little the same way.

To fill the slightly awkward gap in the conversation, I offered him a particularly crunchy looking piece of fried squid, which he exchanged for a couple of chips and a rueful smile.

“How about you?” he asked. “Speak anything other than English and that delectable Parisian French?”

“I speak Punjabi as well, though not much lately. I’m probably horribly rusty.”

“That’s still mega cool. My mom’s always pestering me to learn elven, but I’m like, when’s a working adult gonna find the time? Plus she barely speaks it, so whatever.”

“She doesn’t?”

“Mom grew up here in the city. My dad’s the one who’s all old world this, elven culture that.” He grinned. “Elfiest guy I know. He’s on the council of elders now, too.”

“Impressive!”

“Hahah. Ah, who knows, they might have just brought him in to fill their Vinoriev Vanellas quota. The previous one died last year.”

I must have had quite a bewildered look on my face, because Toriv laughed until the patrons at other tables began to stare at us.

“That was a joke! God, your face.” He swiped a tear of laughter away with the heel of his hand. “Just a pinch of elven humour. Every other guy in clan Vanellas is named Vinoriev. My dad might as well be called Jim the Big Ol’ Elf, descendant of the guy who ruined all the clanspeople’s lives.”

“I-I see.” I hid my embarrassment in my glass. “I had no idea.”

“Can’t say I blame ya,” Toriv replied cheerfully. “So you see, I’m not totally culturally-challenged when it comes to my own folk.”

“I don’t think you’re culturally-challenged.” When he tipped his head at me with a skeptical look, I tried to smile reassuringly. “I know how hard it can be to feel so far removed from one’s family heritage.”

He considered me over the rim of his glass, his eyes roving like he could read my own history on my face. The feeling unnerved me, but I found I couldn’t look away.

“It’s weird,” he said finally. “I don’t usually talk about this stuff. Am I being a downer?”

“Not at all.”

“It kind of depresses me to think about it sometimes. It’s like when–it’s like when you order something at a restaurant, but once you start eating you realize you wanted to order something else? You never even got to see the thing you didn’t order, but you sort of miss it anyway…”

He looked self-conscious and awkward suddenly, like he hadn’t meant to speak. The drone of other conversations filled our little pocket of silence. I watched him as he finished his cocktail in one long gulp then fished out an icecube to crunch methodically between his teeth.

It was strangely moving to see this new side of him. He had put into words so easily that nebulous feeling of loss that often comes from making a life in a country different from your own, a feeling that had formed much of the basis for my decision to study anthropology in the first place. It was a common ground we shared that I hadn’t expected to find at all.

Before I could allow myself any second-guessing, I reached out and gently placed my fingertips on his hand resting on the tabletop. He looked at me from under his lashes, not smiling exactly, but not saying no either. It was a strange moment and I almost pulled away, but at the last second he flipped his hand over and caught my fingers with his.

“You’re sweet,” Toriv said. His eyes were very warm. “Hey, want another drink?”

I had barely nodded in response before he was off towards the bar, his hand slipping quickly from mine. As I watched him go, I felt bereft yet brave, disappointed yet brimming with anticipation. It was all I could do to stay in my seat and occupy myself with people-watching instead of haring off after him like a dog in heat.

Just as I’d managed to convince myself I was not going to succumb to hormonal excess anytime in the near future, Toriv returned with the second round in hand. He placed a delicate-stemmed martini glass in front of me. The glass was fired in a way that made it appear iridescent as an old dragon’s scales, and was filled with a swirling brown liquid.

“It’s a chocolate martini,” Toriv said, settling down with his second Long Island iced tea. “I had Kori make it for you special. A one of a kind, exquisitely crafted, totally original never-before-seen drink.”

“I saw it on the menu earlier,” I pointed out.

He shrugged and crossed his legs under the table. The toe of his boot brushed the side of my calf.

“It’s on me, anyhow,” he said genially, which I gathered was as close as he would get to admitting that one. “To thank you for giving me a second chance. Give it a try.”

I sipped the chocolate martini delicately. The flavour was decadent, smooth and sweet and just boozy enough to satisfy. It was a drink to savour. I licked my lips to get the sweetness off, and was gratified to see Toriv’s eyes flick down to my mouth.

In the end, we lingered there for hours, exchanging rounds and chatting. My nervousness slowly melted away as the night wore on. It was oddly easy to relax with him. He had an inviting, open demeanor that encouraged you to lean in and bend his ear. Suddenly I was desperate to tell him all my secrets, to lay myself bare, so to speak, but I managed to rein myself in. Caution, murmured the constant slow beats coming from the walls. Some things really are too good to be true, you know.

We headed out just as the night was getting started for the younger club-going folk. Toriv got some appreciative looks as we filtered out through the growing crowd, a fact that I only noticed, probably, because I was looking so appreciatively at him myself. He helped me into my coat at the entrance, his hands pausing on my shoulders as I fiddled with my collar, on the pretense of “checking how much taller you really are compared to my tiny self”, as he said in my ear.

Thankfully, it had stopped raining by the time we emerged back into the street. The night was cool but not bitingly cold, one of those famous Montréal winter fakeouts before the temperatures plunged back to -20 for another week or two. My breath steamed in the air, backlit by the silvery glow of the wrought-iron streetlamps of the Old Port.

“Gods above, below, and everywhere around,” Toriv said as he stepped out beside me. “I’m actually really hungry.”

“Oh no. It’s true we didn’t actually have dinner, did we?”

“Then Toriv needs a snack. Join me?”

We wandered down the street for a time, peering in through foggy restaurant windows while Toriv searched “where to eat when you’re mad hungry because you forgot to eat actual food” on his phone. Most of the places we saw were winding down for the night. We were about to call it a lost cause when I had a better look at my surroundings and realized that I knew where I was.

“I think I know someplace,” I told Toriv. “Just down the street here, in Chinatown.”

Toriv lit up like it was Christmas morning and entreated me to lead the way, so I took us down the sloped winding road from the old town into the even older one, where the lights had a reddish cast and the eaves were strung with banners and alphabets from dozens of nations and clans across the world. It was louder and brighter here than it had been in the Old Port, as though the multi-tongued denizens of Chinatown were only just getting started for the night.

“I love this place,” Toriv said. Then he latched onto the edge of my coat sleeve and didn’t let go until I’d found the door to the place I’d been searching for.

It was a little Vietnamese bistro, similar in size and atmosphere to the Thai restaurant that Toriv and I had visited on our first date. There were a number of patrons despite the late hour, sitting at well-worn but spotlessly clean laminate tables and slurping from steaming bowls of soup.

We sat and were promptly served by a drowsy teenager with wildly-coloured hair. We had barely had time to make the usual complaints about the weather before we were delighted by the delivery of two huge bowls of fragrant broth. I began salivating just at the smell. Toriv mimed going into a lady-like swoon that would have definitely gone into Scarlet O’Hara’s top ten, then began loading his soup with condiments from the sauce bottles and the pile of sprouts, basil, and tiny chili peppers provided.

He said, “This stuff is the best on a cold rainy night, huh?”

I grinned and said, “Pho sure”, which under normal circumstances might have gotten me ejected from the date for indecent wordplay, but Toriv acted like it was the funniest thing he’d heard in his life.

After that it was all business, the two of us spooning and slurping with alacrity, enjoying the tender noodles and savoury, aromatic soup, the satisfyingly chewy bits of tripe and brisket mingling to perfection with the crisp little onions and plentiful spices. I’d eaten at this establishment before and already knew the food to be excellent, but it seemed even better now that I was sharing it with someone, especially since that someone was so obviously enjoying himself.

Perhaps we should have continued to talk, to get on with the whole getting-to-know-you ritual that the date required, but it was pleasant to just sit and eat. Sometimes nervousness makes one want to fill any awkward silences with even more awkward small talk, but in that moment I felt easy, absurdly easy, and I wouldn’t have traded the comfortable quiet for anything in the world.

By the time we finished sharing a little pot of green tea, it had gotten quite late. I only thought to check my watch when the first wave of sleepiness came upon me, and said “Oh dear” with such dismay that Toriv snorted into his tea cup.

“Past your bedtime?” he asked.

“Eons past it.” Now that I’d admitted it, the tiredness hit me all at once. I barely managed to stifle a yawn. “If you don’t mind, it may be time to go.”

“Of course. I’ll treat ya.”

“Don’t even think about it.”

“I insist.”

“You shan’t.”

“I shan! Shall. Absolutely will. Come on, bro–“

I stood abruptly and raced to the cash register with Toriv at my heels. The rainbow-haired waitress looked at us in sleepy bewilderment.

“Just the one bill, please,” I said to her.

“No fair,” Toriv whined.

“Your punishment for giving me so many free coffees,” I told him as I tapped my card before he could shoulder me aside. “I’ve never seen anyone so insistent on paying my way. It’s almost like you have something to prove.”

“Don’t I?” He dropped a handful of coins into the tip jar and pouted at me, like he was daring me to keep him from paying for that as well.

“Well, your wealth isn’t it.”

“That’s great, ’cause I ain’t wealthy. Guess I’ll need to find other ways to impress you.”

“Yes, do.”

“Mmyes, do,” he repeated in lightly mocking mimicry. I pushed him lightly as we stepped back out into the cold with expressive shivers and silly laughter lingering on our lips.

The trip home was much too quick. Though my sleepiness was reaching critical levels, I was desperate to stay, to keep close to him and continue drinking in his charm and good cheer. For a moment I was certain that I was going to ask him to come back up to my flat, and every reader in the world knows where that would have led us. I wasn’t opposed to the idea, quite the contrary, but something in me was still whispering Not Yet in a nasty, concerned voice, and I wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or grateful that the voice of callous reason still had its hold upon me.

Toriv walked me to the door of my flat and leaned casually on the frame as I fumbled with my key. I heard him giggle at my efforts and was going to reprimand him for teasing me, but in the moment I didn’t quite trust my own voice.

“I had a lot of fun with you today,” he said, once I had finally wrestled the door open.

I chanced a look at him. His face seemed genuinely warm and happy, so I allowed my expression to reflect my own happiness.

“I had fun with you too,” I said. “Thank you. It was nice of you to take me out like this.”

“Heheh. Well, it was the least I could do after showing you such an awful time before.”

“Are you still on about that? I’ve already forgiven you.”

“So you were mad!”

“Just a touch.”

“I’m guessing that even just a touch of anger is a lot, coming from you.”

I ducked my head to hide my smile, but he caught my chin in his hand and kept my eyes level with his. In the dim light of the hall, his eyes were dark green, the pupil blown wide with interest.

“Don’t look away,” he murmured. “I like it when you look at me.”

I tried to laugh, but it came out as only a breath. He looked obliquely up at me, his head lowered coquettishly though he had forbidden me from looking away.

All the want in my body had curled up somewhere in the back of my throat, making it difficult to breathe. Then, because he wasn’t moving forward or away or anywhere at all, I slowly tipped my face down towards his and met his mouth with mine.

It wasn’t a deep kiss, or particularly long, or even particularly good, but I had been waiting for so long for any kind of definite contact with him that it seemed for a moment like everything was riding on this one little thing. It was like being a teenager all over again, losing sleep and breath over the slightest brush of lips.

I felt his hands alight on my shoulders, keeping me close, so I pushed gently forward, dropping my keys onto the hall carpet so I had both hands free to grasp at him in turn. He let out a quick breath, like he was about to speak, but then he just tugged me closer, his mouth opening to mine. His lips were dry and chapped from the cold but his skin was very warm. I relished the coffee-whiskey-coriander taste of him, trying my hardest to memorize the weight and feel of his body close to mine before the inevitable parting.

We did part eventually; it felt like an age and no time at all. His fingertips were hot against my cheek. He stroked me once before leaning in for another peck and a whispered request: “Invite me in?”

And Lord did I want to. It would be so easy, to give in to the rush of need that had reared up in me like a beast revived. All I had to do was say yes, please, stay, and he would. There was nothing simpler in the world.

I said, “I’m sorry.”

He said, “You’re sorry?”

I said, “Not tonight.” I bit my lip, but when I tasted him on my own skin, it only made things worse, and I could only repeat, “I’m sorry.”

There was a beat where I had time to live an entire life’s worth of embarrassment and sadness, then Toriv shook his head and laughed his most lovely laugh to date.

“Dude,” he said. “It’s fine. No big deal.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. I know my dark good looks and lite biker aesthetic can be deceiving–” His eyetooth peeked out cheekily. “–but I’m not a total scoundrel.”

“No,” I said faintly, “just a touch of one.”

He grinned in agreement then stood up on his toes to give me one last little kiss in the corner of my mouth. Then he gave me a good squeeze around the middle. I embraced him back, gazing into the middle distance behind him in a sort of kiss-induced daze.

He propped his chin up against my shoulder to say, “Don’t leave me on read, okay?” I hadn’t the foggiest what that meant, so I was glad when he clarified: “I want to see you again, so don’t make me pine. It’s a bad look for me.”

I rubbed my cheek against his hair, which was even blacker than mine and very thick and soft. “I won’t. I’m not in the habit of throwing off people I like.”

He pulled away, finger-combing his hair briefly before he flashed me another crooked toothed smile, and then he was gone, down the silent hall and out through the stairwell before I could even blink.

I picked up my keys and went into my flat. As I was toeing off my shoes, I felt my mobile buzz in my pocket. When I flicked it on, I had five unread messages from Anushka.

go get ’em tiger

how’s dinner?

oi, you’d better not be drunk or dead

or fornicating. fornicating seems the most likely

so??

I bit my lip to keep from laughing aloud in the nighttime gloom of my flat, then I wrote to her: Verdict, besotted. And there’s a chance he might be as well.

A minute later, she answered mrow. there’s the conqueror of hearts i know and love

I told her Oh piss off, to which she replied with an animated sticker of a chubby grey kitty cat shooting off cartoon hearts, and then with the decidedly unadorable message of just as well, reckon you really needed a shag

I called her just to say “Actually, literally, absolutely piss off”, but she just laughed and asked me how it went.

So I curled up on the couch and told her, my face feeling radiant with embarrassment and happiness the whole time.

// Toriv

I woke up late the next morning a little bit hungover. Not too much, just enough to feel it and be reminded of the stuff leading to it. It came back to me slowly, like a warm and pleasant dream: the evening at the bar, the flow of conversation and heat of everyone’s bodies, the brush of hands…then something stuck in my brain, like an old-school music record coming to a screeching halt. Something wrong, something I had missed–

The other side of the bed shuffled and tossed, then buried deeper into itself in an attempt to escape the bit of noonday sunlight coming in through the curtains. I leaned over and poked the sleeping mass and was immediately rewarded with a kick in the shin.

“Ow! Dude!”

“You’re on my side,” the ungrateful blanket pile mumbled.

I poked it again, because I am not a quitter. “This is my bed, bro. All sides are my side.”

“I thought Northern elves were supposed to be hospitable.”

“And I thought red dragons didn’t even need blankets.”

The blanket mass turned red dragon turned Red flipped the covers off of his face, probably so I could fully appreciate the force of his just-woken-up glare. In case it wasn’t already obvious, he isn’t really a morning person. Or afternoon person, as it were.

I held up my hands and said, “Okay, okay, mi casa es tu casa and all that. You sleep your life away if you want.”

He grunted and went back into the blankets. That’s what I get for my Northern elven hospitality. That charming morning greeting along with the height of the sun behind the curtains told me that it was high time for a cup of coffee, so I slipped out of bed to make some.

The spring sun was bright over the rooftops, a sight which never fails to make me sigh like a lovestruck maiden. Gone were the woes of winter, cursed season of the cooped-up motorcycles and ruined lace-up boots. March was the month of new beginnings. Hopefully. This is Montréal, after all, which means springtime snowstorms are very much a possibility even after it’s been warm and sunny for weeks, but I live in hope.

The first thing I did was feed the rats their breakfast. It should be noted that Sys and Dia were much happier to see me than the grumpy lump still camping out in my bed, but I reap the friends I sow, I guess. In any case, a little ratty love got me cheered up and ready for breakfast, so I set the coffee to perc while I sliced and toasted some bread and threw on a few condiments to sweeten the deal.

Red was still facedown under the monstrous pillow-and-blanket pile when I came back in with the breakfast platter, so I set the tray down and threw open the curtains to the glorious soon-to-be-summer sun.

I said, “Wake up and smell the coffee, my dude.”

Red said, “Mmmrngh.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and dug him out piece by piece. I always find it kind of funny how the only time Red can stand layers is when he’s sleeping. You can’t get him to wear a coat in the dead of winter but like hell you’re going to get him to leave his blanket pile until he’s good and ready.

Finally, he deigned to emerge from his cave, by which I mean he poked his head out and blew his hair out of his face. “What is that on the toast?”

“Uh, avocado?” I reached over to my half of the tray and took a bite. “And some sun-dried tomatoes and pepper. It’s so good, man, try it.”

He looked at me like my entire existence was a disappointment to him. “That is some serious hipster shit.”

“Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of all this deliciousness.”

“It’s green and mushy and not going in my mouth.”

I took another bite and chewed and swallowed before answering. “That’s a great thing to say to the guy who sucked your dick and then made you breakfast.”

Red snorted and started to roll over, presumably to go back to sleep, but then he changed his mind and sat up just enough to be able to get his coffee, which I humbly  think is a testament to the amazingness of my coffee.

When he continued to look at my avocado toast like it had kicked his dog, I said, “There’s some plain toast for you too, you big baby.”

“Thank god,” he mumbled through his coffee.

Good enough for me. I already know Red’s taste in breakfast is pretty minimalist, which is my poetic way of describing it as “boring, but I respect your life choices”.

We breakfasted in silence, sitting on my bed in our varying states of naked, sipping piping hot coffee and listening to the sounds of the city through the walls. Red’s gaze looked far away, like he wasn’t quite awake. Normally, breakfast improves his mood a lot, but after I’d cleared the dishes away and let him have his go at the bathroom, he didn’t look any less grumpy. I gave him free reign of my PS3 to see if that would cheer him up, but even a few rounds of Call of Duty weren’t enough to please sourpuss over there.

“Do you need to go back to bed?” I asked him over my phone, which was overflowing with notifications as usual. “Because you’re acting like a kindergartener who needs his nap time.”

“Hilarious,” he said flatly, before putting the controller down, straddling my thighs, and grabbing my face for a kiss.

Red is not a gentle kisser. I consider him a good friend-with-benefits of mine, but I don’t think there’s ever been a tender moment between us, which is, well, fine. You’re friends with different people for different reasons, I guess, and I don’t need sappy morning-afters from Red. His taste in foreplay is pretty minimalist too, and if I minded it all that much I wouldn’t keep inviting him over.

We fell over on the couch and stayed there for a good long while, doing that thing that guys do when they get their hands and mouths all over each other. Red’s mood finally got better after that particular activity, which I think is fair to say tends to be the case for most people. At least, for most people I know.

When I woke up from a short snooze — I’m the after-nap type — I found Red at the windowsill, smoking out the open window while typing angrily on his phone. He sighed deeply around his cigarette, sending a spark soaring out to fizzle against the cold metal steps of the fire escape.

“Chill out with the firestarting, there,” I said. “I like this apartment. Don’t want it coming down.”

“I haven’t done that in ages,” Red said super casually, overgrown delinquent that he is.

I came up and draped myself over his shoulders. He let me, but tilted his phone away like a naughty teenager.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing. It’s just Ma.”

“She okay?”

“Fine.” He switched his cigarette over to the other corner of his mouth. “Just layin’ into me over stupid shit.”

“If there’s anything I can help with–“

“Nah, man. It’s just council stuff. She’s like–whatever. It’s whatever.”

I’m at least  smart enough to take a hint, so I let it be. If there’s one thing I know about clan business, it’s that you let the clans take care of it. If you believe the stories, which I do about 89 percent of the time, things get really messed up really fast when the different clans start getting up in each other’s business, like they did way back when the Great Silence happened. Not that I don’t think the legend of the Hero Vinoriev isn’t one of the greatest love stories of all time, but it has its place in historical war accounts for a reason.

“Okay,” I said lazily, enjoying the one-sided cuddle in the post-sex, post-nap afternoon haze. “Now you ask me an intrusive question.”

Red tilted his head up and exhaled two streams of smoke out his nose. When he spat the remnants of the cigarette filter out onto the fire escape, it crumbled into ash and dispersed in the cool spring breeze.

“Sure,” he said. “Where’d you really find that professor guy?”

“Mahendra? He’s just one of my customers. A sorta regular.”

He shook a fresh cigarette out of the crumpled box from his pocket and didn’t answer. I’d expected a bit of ribbing over befriending a guy so different from most of the other guys we know, but nothing like this weird, quiet suspicion of his. It was something new coming from Red and I didn’t really know how to react to it.

“What?” I asked him. “Did he offend you or something? Though I doubt it, considering he’s one of the politest people I ever met in my life.”

“Chyeah,” Red said. “He is that.”

“Then what?” I nuzzled against the nape of his neck, burying my nose in the long swoop of his hair on the not-shaved side. He smelled like cigarette smoke and warm skin and male sweat.

“Dunno. He just kinda rubs me the wrong way.” He lit his cigarette with a flourish. “Stuck-up.”

“He really isn’t, though.”

“Dressed and talking like that? They always are.”

“Because you know a ton of British-Indians who wear Hugo Boss like it’s casual daywear.”

“I might.” He turned to grin at me around the glowing end of his cigarette. “They’re usually in the closet too. Makes it feel a bit more dangerous when you’re sneaking into their million-dollar condos at night.”

I laughed and gave him a little nibble on the shoulder, where his collarbone juts out from under his t-shirt. “You’re so full of shit.”

“Psh. Why are you defending him, anyway? Thought you’d just met.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“So, what? You in love with him or something?”

“‘Course not.” In the moment, it occurred to me that to mention it would just dig the hole deeper, but for some reason I made myself say it: “He did ask me on a date, though. Last week.”

Red snorted so hard I was afraid he’d hack another fire gizzard spark into my hair. I brushed through it just to make sure, but he pushed my hand away and slid his own across my scalp and gripped my hair at the roots, just tight enough that I could feel it. Call me weird, but that’s one of the better feelings of life, if you ask me.

“Don’t tell me you went,” Red said, then laughed his smoker’s laugh when I nodded under his hand. “Shit. Guess I misjudged Mister Professor, then.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I figure guys like him wait until at least the third date before whipping it out.”

“Oh. No, dude, it wasn’t–we didn’t hook up or anything. It was just a date.”

“You serious?” His hand fell abruptly out of my hair. “Since when does Toriv Vanellas ‘just’ go on dates?”

“What, you’ve never just had dinner and a conversation before?”

Red leaned back against my windowsill and blew a couple of smoke rings out into the city air. Guess that was a stupid question as far as he was concerned. Not that he’s never been annoyed at me before, but I didn’t see anything that he should be annoyed at me for, so that just annoyed me in turn.

“Don’t knock it ’til you try it, Red,” I said. “Mahendra’s a nice guy. It was nice. No expectations, you know?”

“Sure,” Red said, not looking at me. His phone buzzed and he glanced at it, then scowled and shoved it back in his jeans pocket. “God, what a bitch.”

I stood up and fixed my hair. “If that was still your mom, you shouldn’t talk about her like that.”

“Yeah, well, my ma doesn’t coddle me like yours does, so whatever.”

“Jesus, dude. So are you just going to smoke on my fire escape all afternoon, or do you have stuff to do?”

“I’m going.” He got up and brushed past me, trailing cigarette smoke like a miasma. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“Thanks for thanking me, for goddamn once.”

We stared each down across my living room for a long tense moment. I knew that I should apologize and maybe make some joke to reassure him — “come on, bro, his ass has got nothin’ on yours”, something like that — but I already knew it wouldn’t quite feel true. So I just let the moment pass and before either of us could jeopardize our relationship any further Red was gone, slamming the door and stomping down the wrought iron staircase until his noise blended in with all the other noises of a Sunday afternoon in Montréal.

I collapsed onto the couch and sighed, then jumped back up to open all the windows so the smell of Red’s gizzard-fueled cigarette smoke wouldn’t get into the furniture. Then I re-collapsed onto the couch and lay there wondering why the afternoon had gone to the dogs.

That was when it hit me, the thing that had bothered me as I was just waking up. I checked my phone hurriedly but there were no new messages from Mahendra, even though I had sent him one after he had left the bar the previous night. My last text to him glowed like an accusatory neon sign: hey let me know when you get home & be safe ok?

That he hadn’t responded after all was what I deserved, I guess, considering I had had eyes only for Red the entire night. I vaguely remembered Jamie getting upset at me for something, but by that time I had been more than halfway up the road to Hammeredville so not much was getting through. Everything after that had just been the same familiar whirlwind of sound and sensation and heat that a night on the town brings. It shouldn’t have been any different than usual.

Except that it had been different, and me not noticing that even though I had invited the guy myself had probably put me on somebody’s shitlist. By which I don’t mean Red, who could go off and be a petty, jealous ninny if he wanted to.

Thing is, I knew exactly how I could fix things with Red. He and I were pretty much the same make, after all, so I already knew that a saucy text message and a few drinks would get us right back in the friends-with-benefits zone without any problems. But Professor Mahendra Singh was a complete mystery to me. He had already made it clear that any overly friendly advances weren’t the way to go with him in these early stages, which pretty much eliminated all of my usual go-to solutions.

After lying on the couch racking my brains, taking a break for a bit of playtime with the rats, and then racking my brains again, I finally decided there was nothing for it and started busying myself with the weekly cleaning. Put on some good tunes and break out the broom and laundry detergent and soon you’ll have danced and scrubbed your cares all away. So I slipped my phone into my back pocket, which is as close as I come to forgetting about it, and did just that for the next couple of hours.

Unfortunately, there are some worries that even a good cleaning session can’t erase, so after a late lunch and a good stretch, I went out for a jog. Maybe it was still a bit cold for it, but nothing gets your blood going like running in the brisk spring air, so off I went.

Jogging outside in the middle of the city is probably one of the stupidest things a guy can do in this modern society. If you stick to the sidewalks then you’re constantly dodging slow-walking pedestrians, reckless cyclists, and uneven bits of pavement jutting out of the ground, but if you step onto the actual road then you’d better have your will all written up and witnessed. Montréal drivers are a lot of things but they are not friendly, and seeing a squishy flesh bag in their way instead of another screaming metal death carriage does nothing to make them less aggressive. Still, there’s nothing quite like running out in the open air, even with the noise and traffic and smog and constant threat of instant demise. And you couldn’t pay me to run on a treadmill anyway. Almost getting run over every five seconds is still better than jogging for forty five minutes and getting absolutely nowhere.

I followed my usual route through and around the Elven Quarter, breathing in the crisp air like sweet ambrosia and letting the city vibes clear my head. Sometimes I feel like this city is as much a parent to me as my own mom and dad, which I guess is a weird thing to say. I really couldn’t live anywhere else, though. The few times I’ve been out of Montréal were good times, but I was always eager to come back to my own place. It’s just where I belong. Just listen the next time you’re out for a walk or something: listen to how every beat of your feet on the pavement matches up with the music in your earbuds, feel how the earth vibrates under you like a heartbeat every time a truck passes by. Breathe in the aura of every single person you pass on the street and fall in love with them just as they turn the corner and disappear from your life forever. That’s what it’s like for me, living in the city, feeling so close to it. There’s nothing like it in all the world.

This is the kind of weird shit my brain gets up to when I’m running. It’s a bit strange to see it written down now, in electronic black on white. Almost like I’ve revealed too much of myself in the middle of all this word vomit I call an autobiography. Well, it’s not like anyone but me is going to read it, unless I already tell them all of my secrets first.

My first outdoor jog of springtime brought me round and round, farther than I should have gone for having been cooped up in indoor tracks all winter, but when a guy’s gotta run, am I right? So I just ran, giving all my breath and cares back to the universe. I ran so far that I dashed right past the building where my dad’s work makes it base, a welding gig that always smells of molten metal and big hulking dudes. I knew he tried not to work Sundays so I was ready to gallop on past, but then I noticed the light in the little adjoining workshop was on. Curiosity killed me, so I dug in my heels and veered over in that direction. And me being me, I didn’t realize how fast I was going until I was running towards a stationary object, so I basically crashed right into and through the door. It would be fair to say I barrelled, which I’ll admit is how I do most things anyway.

My dad was inside the workshop just as I’d thought he would be. He looked up sharply as I came in, which is about as surprised as my still-waters father runs. I followed his lead and closed the door gently behind me, then leaned casually back on it, my chest heaving from the long run.

I said, “Hey, Dad.”

Dad said, “Hello, Toriv. Is something wrong?”

“Nah,” I said breathlessly. I was streaming sweat like a madman. “Does something look wrong?”

He looked at me real closely, his eyes flicking up and down like he was checking for damage to my person. When he found nothing but a sweaty and disheveled me, he sat back and visibly relaxed. “You were out running, then. In this cold?”

“It’s not that cold. I thought you usually stayed home on Sundays?”

“Usually.” He looked away and rearranged some stuff on his workbench. “Your mother said she needs her space today. So I thought, best I leave.”

“So you decided to come to work instead?”

Dad shrugged and tossed me a clean-ish rag, which I used to mop the sweat from my face, then he pushed out a stool for me to sit on. I figured I should stay a while then. “Mom is having an emotion” is a lot of the reasons for stuff happening in our house so we’re both used to it, but just between you and me, I think it makes my dad a little lonely. In case you haven’t noticed yet, my parents tend to be on opposite sides of the spectrum for just about everything, so I wasn’t expecting him to say anything about it, but give me some credit as a son and agree that I can sort of tell anyway.

I sat back on the stool and savoured the feeling of my heart rate going slowly back to normal while my dad went back to his work. This little workshop isn’t part of his job here, but working for a place like this for more than twenty years gets you a few little treats, like the space to do all the really neat, delicate metalwork my grandfather taught him back when he was a kid. As I watched, Dad worked a few little pieces of silver with pliers and hammers, carefully shaping them until they fitted together just the way he wanted. Then he took the hand torch to them and worked his magic, finishing up a beautiful, unique piece of silver jewelry in the same time it takes me to do a pourover.

He held the finished loop of silver up to the light, inspecting it for any flaws. The jewelry my father makes is so tiny and delicate that it’s almost impossible to imagine him making it until you see it for yourself. I’m short and slender because I take after my mom, but Dad Vanellas very much belongs in the long line of elven blacksmiths he came from, at least when it comes to looks. He’s built, as the saying goes, like a brick shithouse, but Mom would say he’s gentle as a doe. Even with me being pretty much the most frustrating offspring in existence, I’ve rarely heard him raise his voice. To be honest, my dad’s pretty okay when we’re not arguing about how I should be living my life.

“That looks nice,” I told him.

He turned to me like he had just remembered I was still there and smiled. “Thank you. Maybe it will be for your mother.”

“I could use another pair of earrings, if you’ve got the time to spare.”

He raised his eyebrows at me. “If you promise to not sneak me money under the door again.”

“Aw, come on, Dad. Work is work. I wouldn’t ask you to ply your trade for free.”

“Not from my child,” he insisted. “Never from my child.”

It’s hard to argue when he says it like that, so I did my filial duty and shut up as he came over to look at my head like it was a fresh new canvas.

“Drops again? Or something else?”

“Maybe just the one, for my helix.” I tapped the spot near the long thin end of my right ear, where a simple non-Dad-made loop was sitting.

“Your party earring.” He smoothed my sweat-flecked hair back behind my ear. It was the kind of parental gesture that makes you feel ten years old again, no matter how old you get or how long you’ve been away from home. “A cuff, then. Stay.”

For some weird reason, the word “party” out of my dad’s mouth made all the events of last night and this afternoon come rushing back to me. So much for my nice cathartic run. Guess even the city air can’t banish your misdeeds when you’ve messed up hard enough.

While my father went to gather some tools, I said, “Hey, Dad?”

“Hm?” He came back and took a tiny ruler to the side of my head, taking measurements for the ear cuff.

“Have you ever…” I sorted through every ending to that question I could possibly think of, trying to find the one that was the least incriminating and least embarrassing at the same time. “Have you ever sort of let someone believe that you cared about them, but then sort of let them down afterwards?”

My dad said, “Hmm” and turned my head with the tips of his fingers so he could measure along my ear.

“I mean…have you ever kind of sabotaged yourself and then woke up the next morning thinking, ‘oh god why did I do that?'”

“I am sure I have,” Dad said. “Silver or steel?”

“Silver, if you’ve got any left. So what did you do? To fix it, I mean.”

He walked off to the other end of the workshop to look at some scraps of metal he had and put a few choice pieces aside. Then he began to clean up the mess of his last project from the tabletops, making everything fresh and ready for the next job.

With his back to me, my dad said, “When you were still growing in your mother’s belly, we would fight a lot, she and I. The pregnancy was…difficult for her, though it is not an excuse.”

I sort of knew all this, so I just said, “Yeah.”

“One day, she got angry. Very angry and upset. And I did not know what to do, so I left.”

“You left?”

“Not forever, of course. I never intended to leave her forever. But I went out without saying, and she did not–” He paused to hang up some tools on the pegboard on the wall, putting them carefully back in their places. “She did not understand what I meant by it. She thought I was gone.”

I leaned back on the stool and rubbed the sweat from the back of my neck. Dad shuffled around some more, putting things back, taking other things down and preparing them on the workbench.

“In truth, I was only around the corner, at Sharpe’s.” A bar everyone in the Elven Quarter knew, run by an old friend of my dad’s. We’d used to live practically above it. “But when later in the evening I returned, she was crying like I had broken her heart. I suppose I had.”

It’s weird to hear this kind of stuff about your own parents. I’d always known my mom had had a tough time being pregnant with me — it’s one of the reasons I don’t have any siblings — but they’d never told me any stories like this. I felt more than a little awkward and I could tell my father did too, but it didn’t stop me from asking, “So what happened?”

“We talked about it. I promised her I would never leave her like that again. And again she was very angry, but in time she forgave me.”

He tilted his head at his table, counting his tools, then nodded to himself. “I decided it was best to be open, to talk about the things you feel, and to be sincere in seeking forgiveness from others. It made me a better husband. But you are not looking for marriage advice,” he continued. “Are you?”

“Uh. Not exactly. But it’s okay advice anyway.”

“Good.” He finally turned to look at me and his gaze was steady and a little sad. Seeing that hurt my heart as if the invisible parent-child cord in my chest had suddenly been tugged real hard. “I know we have not always agreed, as father and son, but…”

“No, Dad,” I said quickly. “It’s fine. It’s behind us now. Right?”

“Is it?”

“Yeah…isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” he said. He came over and took the sweaty rag from me. “Tomorrow, do you work?”

“Not until nine. I was thinking of coming to make you guys breakfast, actually.”

“That would be nice, amavae,” Dad said.

He hasn’t called me that since I was a kid, which put the weird cherry on the top of this weird father-son bonding time cake, so I stood to leave. A cold gust of wind blew in when Dad opened the door for me.

“Perhaps take the metro home,” he said to me.

“Nah,” I said, though I shivered so hard it made my teeth clack. “You always walk to come to work, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t walk to go home.”

He just smiled and waved me out, so off I went again, into the chilly evening air and the orange light of the sun setting behind the skyscrapers. I ran all the way home, breathing the life of the city itself, my father’s words echoing back and forth through my head the whole time.

When I got home, I kicked off my running shoes and jumped in the shower. There’s nothing like a good shower after working yourself to the bone, whether it’s during a workout or a long day in the shop. While I soaped and rinsed all the dirt and sweat of the world away, I made up my mind to check on Mahendra. I still had no idea how he was feeling about me basically ignoring him the whole night, but I wasn’t going to find out by lying on my couch and feeling sorry for myself, so I just had to jump in and hope for the best.

I toweled off my hair and sat on the bed to make the call. The line rang and rang and rang, ratcheting my nervousness up by several degrees every time, until finally it opened up, and I said, “Oh, hey, Mahendra–“

“This is the voicemail of Mahendra Singh,” the voicemail of Mahendra Singh told me, which was probably also what I deserved. “Leave me a brief message and your name and number and I’ll get back to you soon. Ceci est la boîte vocale de Mahendra Singh–“

I fell back onto the bed and groaned. So far, this was not going as smoothly as hoped, but I guessed leaving an apologetic message would still be a good first step.

“And just in case you’re one of my students calling me frantically in the wee small hours of the morning,” the voicemail of Mahendra Singh continued, to my surprise. “Remember, you’re the one writing your thesis, not the other way around. Now go get some sleep, please.”

The virtual answering machine beeped and I scrambled to find my words again. “Oh, okay, hey, Mahendra. It’s Toriv. Uh, cute answering machine message? I’m guessing your students call you a lot, huh?”

Not. Going. Well. I cleared my throat and sat up again. “Okay, listen. I know I kind of left you high and dry at the bar last night, so you might not have had the best time, and I just wanted you to know that I take full, absolute full responsibility for that. I’m a douche for inviting you to hang out with us and then not following through. We have established this now. And I’m–I’m real sorry for it. Honest.”

The voicemail of Mahendra Singh waited, judging me silently. I resisted the urge to clear my throat again. “So look, all this to say, I want to make it up to you. Let’s meet up again, okay? Just you and me. And I promise to not be a total drunken fool this time.”

I stopped, out of breath and out of ideas. Across the apartment, the rats shuffled in their cage, chittering encouragingly.

“Okay, well,” I continued, but in a totally poised way. “It’s up to you, then. I’ll see you at the shop, I hope? Bye.”

I hung up, which doesn’t give nearly the amount of relief and satisfaction it did when phones had to be put down to be turned off, but I managed. Nothing to do now but wait to see if he would answer this time. It’s more hoops than I’m used to jumping through for a man I barely know, but I had the feeling it might be worth it, if I let it. If I allowed myself to care. And if he decided he wanted to give me another chance.

\\ Mahendra

I woke up the next morning feeling absolutely wretched. It took me a few moments to remember why, and when I did the sense of shame filled me up like fire in my gut, and like a child I groaned and pulled the duvet up over my head.

Hidden there in the warm darkness of the under-duvet world, I could allow myself to feel all the uncomfortable feelings I had been fleeing in my slumber. Most prominent was the embarrassment I felt at having been duped into thinking I mattered to someone like Toriv Vanellas. How could I have been so foolish, to think for a moment that someone as magnetic and popular as him would have any interest in me? If I had ever met anyone whom I should have considered out of my league, it was him. Best I face my defeat and accept it as quickly as possible, in order to shed these feelings and wrestle my life back on track.

I spent a few long minutes hiding there, trying to rid myself of any scrap of youthful optimism I had left. Finally, there was nothing to do but get up and face the world again, so I slumped out of bed to shower and clear my head. A headache pounded between my temples, the combined result of the alcohol and the late-night bedtime. I turned the warm water up and leaned my forehead against the cool tiles of the shower wall, hoping that the sounds and sensations would soothe me back to my regular state of mind.

They say that inspiration sometimes strikes easier in the shower, something to do with the white noise and repetitive sensations, perhaps. I’ve learned in the long years of being me that leaving my thoughts to wander often may have a self-destructive effect, however. It comes from having a melancholy disposition. Whatever the reason for their coming, I spent a good portion of that shower session fighting back all the bad thoughts that emerged out of the steam: why did you bother, why did you try, why did you think you were good enough, not good enough, never good enough. Go back to your quiet, boring life, why don’t you. Yes, that seems the sensible thing to do, cheers.

In essence, I did about all I could to beat myself up, short of literally knocking my head on the wall. A fine thing for an adult like me to get up to, but if I wasn’t going to vent all these feelings while I was alone in my flat with no one to see, then there would never be another chance.

I emerged from the shower feeling just a tiny bit better, so I made a strong pot of tea, snuggled up in my fluffiest housecoat, and sat down to finish grading those papers. It was late afternoon by that time. A lovely springtime sun was streaming over the balcony in the sitting room, so I sat back to admire it for a spell, sipping my tea and trying to let my cares filter out through my skin.

It’ll be all right, won’t it? If I just make tea for one and sit here quietly? Nothing can go wrong in here. I’m through rebelling and taking risks and putting myself in danger. That was a lifetime ago. It’s all right to just live peacefully from now on, getting in no one’s way, doing things at my own pace.

These were the thoughts that I allowed to soothe me, as the tea went down warm and reassuring and the familiar rhythm of the scratch of my pen on paper rocked me into a comfortable stupor. I was much better suited to this kind of life, really. None of this running after fashionable young men who smelled of coffee and whose eyeteeth stuck out when they smiled. No more getting charmed by laughing green eyes or the brush of warm slender hands. I was done, over it, finished. A quiet middle age of good tea and classrooms for me, please and thank you. I require nothing else.

I was so absorbed in grading and in convincing myself that my life was perfectly fine that I failed to notice the blinking chat window on my laptop screen until it let out a shrill ringing noise. I jumped nearly out of my skin and sent my pen skittering across the floor. It seemed my sister was calling me on Skype. I dashed to retrieve my pen then rushed back and rearranged my facial expression — fix your face, as my mother would say — and answered the call.

“Hello, Charlotte, sorry I–“

The face that popped up as the video call resolved wasn’t my sister’s, however, but that of her eldest daughter, Celeste. At twelve years old, she looked very much like her mother in miniature. She smiled brilliantly and waved, making her curly hair bounce about her face.

“Uncle Mahendra!”

“Oh, hello, dear. How are you?”

“I’m just fine. Are you busy? Mum said you might be working–“

“I am, but it’s all right. Tell me what you’ve all been up to.”

Celeste spent a few minutes updating me on the all the goings-on in their house in central London. The girls have a lot of extracurricular activities so they keep very busy. Celeste on her own has school, violin lessons, dance lessons, horseback riding, and regular visits with my parents on weekends and holidays, not to mention the bevy of friends she must entertain on a daily basis. Last I’d heard, Celeste had been cheerfully putting up with it all. She’d certainly been energetic this past Christmas, the last time I’d been home, but that day she seemed a little changed. Subdued was the word. Celeste had always been an upbeat girl, never glum, except during that very difficult period just after her father’s accident.

“–haven’t even gotten to go out for dinner lately, with Annie being so–” She gestured elaborately to convey her frustration. “–Annie. She won’t even get in the car to go to school. I’ve had to take the tube with her all week. And then Grandmama found out we’d been telling the driver to stop picking us up, and I got in trouble for it!”

“Scandalous,” I said, attempting to look appropriately scandalized.

“I know! I said we should bribe him to keep him quiet, but he’s too ‘loyal to the family’, I guess, so Annie said it wouldn’t–“

“Celeste! We don’t endorse bribery in this family!”

Celeste only sighed like a woman five times her age. “That’s what Mum said when Annie told her everything. Maybe she’s the one I should have bribed.”

It took me some moments to impress the general no-no-ness of bribery on my eldest niece, but even after she’d had a good laugh at my expense (“I wasn’t really going to bribe anyone, honestly.”) she still looked a bit troubled. Talking to young girls of Celeste’s age about their feelings can be precarious, but I decided to take the plunge and asked, “Are you all right, pet? You seem a little preoccupied.”

“I am that,” she said, leaning her cheek in her palm. Luckily, Celeste is also the forthright sister.

It took only a few seconds of silent, parental staring on my part for her to shake her head and declare, “I got into a fight with Grandmama yesterday.”

“Over the driver?”

“No, no, another one. It’s because I told her I wanted to quit violin.”

“Quit? Whatever for? I thought you loved the violin. And you were so wonderful at your recital in December.”

“I guess,” Celeste grunted.

She seemed resigned to having much the same argument she had had with my mother, so before history could repeat itself, I tried another tack. “Why do you want to quit, then? Is there something else you’d rather do?”

She brightened at the question, but cautiously. So young to be so jaded with the adults in one’s surroundings. “Yes, actually.”

“Well?” I sat back and blew on my tea. “Out with it.”

Celeste held her breath for a moment, like she was deciding whether opening her heart was worth the risk, then she said quickly, “Polo.”

I nearly choked on my mouthful of tea, but managed to valiantly hold back from sputtering. “O-Oh. That’s unexpected. Field or water?”

“Field, obviously. I could probably even use my own horse if we start training right away,” Celeste said excitedly. Suddenly, she had found her childlike fervour again. “I’m sure Guinevere would love it too. She’s gotten so big now!”

“Big enough for polo, do you think?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “My riding instructor used to play, he said she’d do just fine. And my friend Gabrielle already has a club for it, and she said they want another member–“

“Well…” I blew some more on my tea to give myself time to regain my composure. “It sounds like you have it all figured out already. Almost like you’ve been thinking about this for a while.”

“Yeah,” Celeste said, her glumness returned. “If only I had been able to carry out my master plan. But now that Mum and Grandmama know, there’s nothing for it.”

“Now, now…is the club in London? Surely you could find a way–“

“No, it’s outside London. Can’t take the tube or anything.”

She put her head down on the desk and sighed like her heart was flooded with sorrow. Poor thing. I longed to reach through the screen and comfort her. I wondered for the millionth time why I had chosen Montréal of all places, when being all the way out here prevented me from supporting the people dearest in the world to me when it mattered.

“I’d drive you if I could, pet,” I told her gently.

It was weak comfort, to be sure, but she rolled her head so she could smile at me through her disappointment. “I know. Thank you, Uncle Mahendra.”

There was a beat of silence during which we both probably felt a little sorry for ourselves, then I said, “You know, Cel. You shouldn’t be afraid to do the things you want to. Especially when you’re still so young.”

“Tell that to Grandmama.”

“I mean, ideally. In a perfect world with no grandmamas in the way.”

She giggled into her arm at this, so I went on, encouraged, “What I mean to say is, don’t feel like you’re wrong for wanting to do stuff other than what people expect you to do. I know this is just about your extracurriculars, but…other stuff as well. Life stuff.”

“I get it, uncle,” Celeste said, still into her arm.

“Okay. Good. I’m glad.”

Another silence, then she raised her head and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I wish Dad were here. He would think me wanting to learn polo is pretty cool.”

I had no idea if this was true, so I just said, “That’s because polo is cool. Though I’m sure it doesn’t sound as cool coming out of my mouth as it would coming out of your dad’s.”

Celeste laughed. “You’re cool too!”

“But not as cool as a dad.”

“You could be. Don’t you want to be a dad too?”

“Mm, I don’t know. Being an uncle is quite enough work as it is.” I fixed her with a look. “What with my rebellious niece bribing the family driver and rejecting her grandmother’s teachings all day long.”

Playing along, Celeste sat up and shouted, “Rebel, rebel, you’ve torn your dress!”

In for a penny, in for a pound. “Rebel, rebel, your face is a mess!”

“Rebel, rebel, how could they know?”

“Hot tramp, I love you so–don’t tell your mum I said ‘tramp’ in front of you.”

Celeste was in stitches. “Who’s the rebel now?”

After the song and laughter had subsided, we chatted for a while longer until Charlotte’s voice called from off-screen, “Celeste! Let your uncle go now, it’s bedtime!”

“It’s too early!” Celeste called back.

“Celeste!”

“Fine…goodnight, Uncle Mahendra.”

“Goodnight, dear,” I said. I ached to say more, but I quietly pushed my latent parental needs down. “I love you very much.”

Celeste smiled, heartbreakingly sweet. “Love you too. Come visit again soon, okay?”

“Yes, yes, of course. Perhaps over the summer.”

“You’d better!”

She blew me a kiss then ended the call. I sat there in front of the empty chat window with my cooling tea, feeling old and lonely. The sun was setting past the balcony railing, refracting off the glass and metal walls of the surrounding condos like a fiery prism. I realized with a start that it was already getting to be early evening, though I hadn’t noticed because of the lengthening of the daylight. Another year, another readjustment. No wonder I was always so sleepy, what with the seasons slipping by and trading their hours back and forth just as I was getting used to the new schedule.

I decided to go for a little turn around the neighbourhood before I starting putting down roots in the floor, so I changed into proper clothes and went out. The coat I slipped on smelled a little bit of coffee, which startled me. I supposed I would have to air it out later, and wondered how many of my clothes had absorbed the same warm, earthy smell. It wasn’t a bad scent at all, but if I was going to continue living my peaceful, uneventful life, it wouldn’t do to keep any reminders of my past folly around.

With that incredibly reasonable thought in mind, I went for my walk. Just half an hour, nothing overly ambitious, only long enough to enjoy the slowly emerging scents and sights of springtime in the city. The snow had nearly melted away in front of my apartment building, though everyone knows that there must be at least one more snowfall before spring settles in for good. I ambled along the main street of the Elven Quarter, admiring the way the store and restaurant lights lit up the falling night. A great many savoury cooking smells wafted from restaurant doorways, followed by the heat of many bodies and the hum of conversation. In the romantic dusk light, every window seemed a perfect portrait, every room a wonderful golden world all its own. Passing slowly by all these different versions of living, I could look in and pretend everyone in those painted worlds was having the most marvelous day, the most charmed life. And in doing so, perhaps I came one step closer to imagining my life as being the same.

Things aren’t so bad, after all. You haven’t been unhappy.

And it was true that I hadn’t been. All things pass, as they say. Having grown older, I know this to be true, because I’ve come out on the other end enough times to trust that I can do it again. I suppose that is what I have gained from all this. It’s the kind of lesson that will see you through most things.

I turned and slowly began to make my way back to my flat, taking a bit of a detour to vary the journey home. That was how I came upon the Café Vanellas again, quite by accident, having arrived from the opposite direction that I normally arrive from. It was properly night then, the streets gloomy between the streetlamp halos on the sidewalk. The bay window was lit up like a painting of its own, showcasing the quaint little tables, the dozens of mini-prints and photos hung up on the walls, the collection of hand-painted mugs on the shelf above the counter. It looked like such a warm place, such a homey place that I couldn’t help feeling drawn there, despite my very recent mishap with its owner. Through the hazy glass, I could see the twin red-haired baristas, Daeci and Kiv, and another girl, a teenager with a backwards baseball cap, all going through the motions of closing the shop. They waved at the last of the departing customers and Daeci locked the door behind them, then they began moving tables and chairs back to their original positions while giving the whole place a last little cleanup. They seemed comfortable and happy, like a family, or rather like a family should. I turned quickly away then, before they could chance a look outside at me, and headed home.

When I arrived back at my darkened flat, a glow from the far end of the sitting room caught my eye. It turned out that I had left my mobile on the couch during my walk and had not even noticed. Next it will be my keys or my very important term papers, and then we’ll see the sort of trouble I get into.

I picked it up to check the lit-up screen, and my heart thudded as I read: Toriv Vanellas  — 1 voicemail message.

What could Toriv possibly have to say to me? I speculated wildly for a solid minute before deciding it was ridiculous to hypothesize, so I dialed the voicemail number and listened for the message. “Oh, okay, hey, Mahendra. It’s Toriv.“

Just hearing his voice so close to my ear was enough to make me a little unsteady, so I sat to listen to the rest. How was he the one who was apologizing to me? I couldn’t understand it, so I listened to the message again, and then a third time just for good measure.

After that, I sat staring at my phone for a long while. How to respond? Hadn’t I already decided that I was better off not getting involved with him or anyone like him, that I could perfectly happy without? It was uncanny how just a few words from him were enough to shake my resolve, leaving me right back where I had started.

The question was now, should I call him back? I glanced up at the clock, remembered it was dark, then remembered I had a phone in my hand and checked the time there. Not quite ten o’clock, but he probably had work first thing in the morning, if his previous week’s schedule was any indication. Still, I couldn’t deny that the desire to speak with him had been revived, perhaps worse than ever. And if he had gone through the trouble of calling me even after I had ignored his messages from the night before, then he must also be suffering some sort of effect after what had gone on last night. Maybe I had been wrong to assume he didn’t care, unless this was some sort of ploy to set me up for further embarrassment.

I thought of his smile, and his easy conversation from our dinner together, and the way he had wrapped his arms tightly around me for our first hug, and I decided that he didn’t seem like the kind of man to string someone along for his own selfish amusement. I washed up again quickly and changed for bed, then I sat on the edge of the mattress to type, Good evening, Toriv. Are you awake?

In the few seconds it took me to turn the sheets down, he answered, yeah i’m still up! How are you?

I thought about it, then said, All right. A touch hungover earlier, if I’m being honest.

hahah yeah same here, guess we both got a lil carried away huh?

Before I could reply, he sent another message, which read: can i call you?

I hesitated for a long minute, then I summoned my courage and typed, Yes.

Almost immediately, my mobile vibrated in my hand, surprising me into dropping it onto the duvet. I snatched it back up and answered. “Toriv?”

“Hey there,” Toriv said cheerfully. He sounded just the same as always, but much closer. “How’s it hangin’?”

“It’s hanging…fine. I thought you might be in bed by now. Since you usually have an early start.”

“Oh, yeah. My schedule changes a little week to week. One of the perks of being the boss, I guess.”

“I see.”

We lapsed into an awkward silence. I leaned back against the headboard and tried to breathe through the frantic beating of my heart.

“So, uh–” Toriv said suddenly, at the same moment that I said, “Toriv, look–“

“God, sorry, I interrupted you,” he said sheepishly.

“No, no,” I said quickly. “I interrupted you. Please, go ahead.”

“You sure? ‘Cause I–“

“I insist. What were you going to say?”

“Just that…” He trailed off, then took an audible breath. “Just that I’m sorry. Again. I’m really sorry that I invited you to our guy’s night out and then basically forgot about you. It was stupid of me. And I understand if you’re pissed off at me for it.”

He stopped and took another deep breath, but when he didn’t say anything more, I understood that it was my turn. I shifted on the bed, fighting the twin urges to plunge into the situation or to run away as fast as I could.

“It’s all right,” i said finally.

“It’s really not, though. At least let me know if you’re mad or…?”

“I, well…I was upset, but…” I pulled my knees up close to my body. “How do I say this…”

“Just be honest,” Toriv suggested, his voice gentler than before. “You’ve got nothing to lose.”

“Then…I’ll admit I was…rather upset, at first. In the moment. I couldn’t understand…I guessed you were having too much fun with your friend–your friends, I mean, and that you had simply forgotten about me.”

Toriv sighed and I heard the shuffling of fabric on the other end, like he was shifting around in his own bed. “Yeah, I  guess that’s pretty close to what happened. Sorry, I just–no, there’s no excuse. I’m just kind of a dickhead like that sometimes. I mean, I try not to be, but sometimes…” He made a frustrated sound. “I’m sorry, this is going really badly on my end. God.”

“You’re fine.”

“You’re fine. I can’t believe how calm you’re being right now.”

“Well…I’m a calm person.”

“Yeah, I got that much.”

“And honestly, in the grand scheme of things, what happened last night wasn’t really so bad. I was just…disappointed, I guess is the word.”

“Yeah,” Toriv said quietly. “Yeah, I can see that.”

Silence. There were more shuffling noises from Toriv’s end of the line, and when he settled his voice was even nearer and warmer, like he had moved closer to the speaker: “So, I’m sorry. And like I said earlier, I really want to make it up to you. If you’ll let me.”

My face got warm and I was glad he wasn’t there to see my expression. “There’s no need–“

“There is,” he insisted. “I don’t want you to think I’m in the habit of throwing off people at a moment’s notice. Especially not cool people like you.”

I had to swallow through the sudden catch in my throat. “You…think I’m cool?”

“Uh, yeah? Is that weird?”

“No, I just–my niece said the exact same thing to me, earlier today.”

“Awww,” Toriv cooed. “Look at you, mister cool uncle.”

“Only uncle.”

“Coolest uncle, then.  Nice.”

I laughed into my palm. I was so relieved it felt like wanting to cry.

I summoned my courage again and asked, “How are you planning on making it up to me, then?”

He made an embarrassed sound, half laugh and half sigh. “I hadn’t gotten that far yet. But I promise you it’ll be awesome. And classy. Like, Kingsman levels of classy.”

The grin that pulled at my mouth was irresistible. “It had better be. Manners maketh man, after all.”

“I love,” he said fervently, “that you know movies.”

It was my turn to sound embarrassed. “Not most movies. But Colin Firth’s work is of particular interest to me.”

“Then I love that you’re into Colin Firth. Tell you what, gimme a few days to think of a totally rad date to take you on and I’ll let you know, okay?”

“Okay. It must be getting late now, I should let you get to bed.”

“Nah, I’m good, I–” He cut himself off for a moment, then chuckled when he came back on. “God, I just yawned so hard my jaw cracked. You’re right, I need to sleep.”

I laughed gently and leaned my forehead against my knees, as though to hide my face from the empty room. “As do I. By the way, I…I’m sorry I didn’t answer your text message last night. I’m very sorry if you worried over it.”

“It’s all good, dude. I mean, being left hanging was part of what got me to wise up in the first place, so I should really be thanking you. Thank you, Professor Mahendra Singh,” Toriv said regally, “for ignoring my texts. You have shown me the error of my ways. I am most humbled.”

Lord, did he have to be so charming even over the phone? It was all I could do to not wriggle around on the bed like a giddy schoolgirl, but somehow I managed to answer, “You are welcome, good coffee peddler. May we meet again soon.”

“Most indubitably,” he said, then broke character completely to giggle and exclaim, “Look, you’ve even got me talking like you now! Okay, goodnight, goodnight, I gotta go.”

“Yes, of course. Goodnight, Toriv.”

“Sleep well. And take it easy.”

He hung up before I was quite ready for it, so I sat for a few foolish seconds just listening to the dead end of the line before I had the sense to put my phone down. The call had only lasted a few minutes, but the me from after the conversation felt significantly different from the me from before it. Funny how one’s worldview can change in the span of just a few moments, or in the space of just a few words.

I set my mobile down on the bedside table and bundled myself into bed. I was sleepy despite spending most of the day sitting still, but I still spent longer than necessary replaying the conversation with Toriv in my head. Was there hope after all? At that point in time, I wasn’t even sure what I was hoping for. A bit of attention, perhaps, from a man more interesting and attractive than any who had ever paid attention to me before.

As I drifted slowly off to sleep, I told myself that I could be satisfied if he’d just give me a little more of his time before the inevitable separation. If we continued to see each other, after all, I would have to tell him everything, all about my history and my demons. Just the thought made me tremble in my bed, and I suddenly felt very afraid and alone.

I took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly, willing all the dread to move out of my body with it. It didn’t quite work, but it was enough to allow me to grasp at that warm, exciting feeling again, of having him speaking so close and intimate in my ear. I held the memory tightly to me and snuggled deeper under the duvet, protecting myself from all the doubts that threatened to overcome me from within.

I never suspected just how deeply our lives would continue to intertwine after that. Perhaps I would have been even more afraid if I had, or perhaps it would have given me comfort. In any case, I soon tired of grappling with all my familiar uncertainties and roundabout trains of thought, and much like the night before, I slipped into a heavy sleep.

The next morning, a Monday, was a dreamy spring morning of the variety one rarely sees in March in Montréal. I saw it as a good omen and felt very cheerful indeed as I went about my sleepy morning routine. The day passed as usual, lectures and discussions and the distribution of reading questions. I always found it interesting how different the atmosphere of my uni classes differs from that of my cegep classes. I suppose that’s the difference just a few years can make, when one is in one’s early twenties compared to one’s late teens. I found myself idly wondering whether the difference would be as notable when Celeste and Anastasia grew to be college-aged. They were good girls, though mischievous at times, especially Celeste. I hoped she wasn’t as rowdy in class as she could be at home.

After classes, I stayed around for my regularly scheduled office hours and made a stab at writing an upcoming exam for my younger students. When that failed, I decided I was too hungry for it and headed for home. The sky was threatening rain by that time so I hurried from the metro exit, turning the collar of my coat up against the sudden chill.

In the distance, I recognized the warm amber light and cheerful green sign of the Café Vanellas. My inner world had undergone the deepest of turmoils and the loftiest of joys in the space of a week, but the little café remained as steadfast as ever, a comforting constant. My steps slowed and brought me to the door. The door chimes tinkled happily as I pushed inside, the colourful hanging things dancing in welcome.

“Bonjour et bienvenue!” The twins yelled from the counter. They posed like supermodels, mirroring each other in that perfect way that I’m sure only people who share the same DNA can pull off.

“Good afternoon,” I said.

“Here for coffee?” Daeci asked.

“Or for cake?” Kiv asked.

“Please order something,” Daeci said.

“It’s been dead in here and we’re so bored,” Kiv said.

I took pity on the poor taskless baristas and ordered a large mocha and a sandwich. They fired so many delicious-sounding recommendations at me that I ended up with a Frankenstein’s monster of a sandwich, but as promised it was all scrumptious, and I dined with relish as I flicked through emails and the news on my mobile. The twins puttered about the store, straightening things and cleaning the floor. It was raining in earnest by that time, great fat drops that splattered visibly on the sidewalk outside and left odd light-refracting patterns on the surface of the bay window. I imagined it was the rain that kept people from venturing out to their local coffee shop. Bad news for business, perhaps, but I rather liked being the only customer in the place. It felt a bit like being at home, except I was wearing shoes and sipping on a chocolate confection more lovely than any I could ever make in my own kitchen.

The minutes passed in this slow, blissful way, with the patter of the rain as a pleasant counterpoint to the acoustic guitar music piping in through hidden speakers, then the door was thrust open with a flutter of the chimes, and a familiar, slender figure in a hooded sweater strode in, their hood up against the rain.

“Whew. Good thing I’m not the Wicked Witch of the West,” Toriv said to his staff, both of which smirked and tipped their chins towards my table in mischievous unison.

Toriv turned to me, pushing his hood back and running a hand through his rain-soaked fringe. His eyes were bright as he said, “Oh, hey there.”

“Hey, yourself,” I said. I noted his sporty-looking hoodie and jogging leggings and shoes, all in sleek black and white. “You weren’t out running in this weather?”

“I’m afraid I was, good sir,” he sighed. “The rain snuck up on me as I was on my way back. I’m soaked down to the core of my very being.”

He pulled his hoodie up over his head and shook out his hair. From the counter, Kiv threw him a clean dry towel, which he caught deftly and used to mop the back of his neck. He gave me a strangely shy, inquisitive look from under his lashes, so I pushed out the chair across from me with my toe. He darted over and sat, smiling all over his exercise-flushed face.

Now that he had removed the hoodie, I saw that he was wearing nothing but a vest of the same slick black sports material, baring his arms and shoulders. There were swirls of dark ink running from his collarbone and the base of his neck down to the cleft of his pectorals, and more visible along the curves of his deltoids and biceps. There was something vaguely familiar about the intricate swirls and patterns — something traditionally North elven, perhaps — and the whole was in fact very striking against his lightly browned skin.

He caught me staring, flicked his eyes towards the ink, and grinned. “You a fan of tattoos, Professor Singh?”

I cleared my throat. “In a cultural sense, I suppose. Inking of the skin is a long-standing tradition in many cultures.”

“And in an aesthetic sense?”

“I can certainly appreciate that,” I said quietly.

He seemed to get my drift, for he stuck out the point of his eyetooth in a cheeky smile as he rubbed the rain from his hair. Then he gestured towards the twins, who came over to bring him a demitasse of espresso, though the delivery of it certainly didn’t require two people. Having the two of them standing momentarily over our table felt oddly like being chaperoned, so I kept my nose in my mocha until they had finished fussing over their rain-dampened employer.

When the two red-headed baristas had disappeared into the backroom to carry out some coffee shop task or other, Toriv set his towel down on his lap and ran a hand through his hair to place it. His voice was low as he said, “So, uh. I thought of something. For that rad date I mentioned.”

I looked at him over the rim of my cup. “Really? I thought you said a few days…”

“Let’s just say I was extra-motivated.” He winked like a rogue as he sipped at his espresso. “There’s this place in the Old Port, The Ver’aranas Lounge. It’s a small, quiet, lounge-type bar, real classy. A friend of mine runs it.”

He showed me some pictures from the website on his mobile, and I said, “It looks lovely.”

He nodded. “It’s on a little side street too, a bit out of the way, so it doesn’t get too busy. There’s even a little balcony if you want to admire the old world European architecture across the street.”

“And a view,” I said. My face was flushing just at the thought of spending an evening on an intimate terrasse with such a man. “It sounds wonderful, Toriv.”

“Really? So you’ll come?” he said excitedly.

A laugh bubbled up in my throat as I said, “Yes! Yes, of course.”

“Great.” Toriv heaved a relieved sigh, sat back in his chair, and knocked back the rest of his espresso like some kind of victory shot.

We sat together in silence for a while, gazing at the raindrops criss-crossing each other on the window. I drained my mocha and set the mug back on the table, and when I looked up Toriv was looking at me, his head tilted a little to the side, thoughts ruminating behind his eyes. It was a considering gaze, a what-if gaze. I was well-acquainted with such a look, though it had been some years since it was pointed towards me. The feeling it gave me was familiar and foreign all at once. Exhilarating, though the two of us continued to sit quietly in a quiet shop, contemplating each other in silence.

Finally, Toriv turned his gaze away, his hand going to the back of his neck. I couldn’t tell if the flush across his cheeks was a remnant of his run or if he was feeling as self-conscious as I was.

“I need to go home and shower,” he said. “But, um, is Saturday good for you? I’ll pick you up at your place.”

“Saturday is perfect. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” He gave that little giggle that I had first heard over the phone the night before, and it was even better in person. “You can’t thank me until I’ve done my maximum to woo you first.”

“Then I’ll be waiting,” I said.

He left soon after, with a twinkling smile and a “don’t be a stranger”. As he went he made some aborted gesture towards me, as though to hug me again, but seemed to think better of it and simply let his fingertips slide off the edge of my shoulder.

I sat in the café for a while longer, just until the rain had thinned enough for the walk home. Though it was cool and dark outside, my steps felt light, and I felt very awake and energized, my mind buzzing with so many possibilities it was impossible to catalog them all.

That evening, as I went to bed, I texted Toriv a simple goodnight, which he answered in kind. Like a fool, I held my phone against my heart for a moment, as though I could possibly feel him through it, and hoped that he would have pleasant dreams.

// Toriv

Over the course of the following week, February moved into March and everything finally started to warm up.

I mean, sort of. It was less of the exciting all-around warming-up of spring and more like when you try to microwave a hunk of leftovers that’s been in the fridge for eons and the middle of it keeps being left cold and hard. Not the most appetizing of metaphors, I know, but darned if it doesn’t describe the awkward Montréal winter-spring transition to a T.

Spring-or-whatever is a busy season for us at the shop, mainly because the rebirth of the post-winter world also means the rebirth of the Café Vanellas’ repertoire. Last year we’d been short on funds so I hadn’t been able to change much, but this year the numbers were looking good and I was feeling change on the wind like the scent of first-thing-in-the-morning ground coffee in the wee hours of shop opening.

“I need,” I said decisively. “An idea.”

“I have one,” Kiv said from the counter. “Give me a raise.”

“I didn’t mean that kind of idea.”

“You didn’t specify.”

One problem I have with idea generating is how long it usually takes me to get an idea, which is kind of the crucial step, I think we can all agree.

“If I give you a raise, am I going to have to give Daeci a raise too? I mean I’d give it to everyone, but isn’t it important you and Daeci get it at the same time? In case I break the universe or something?”

“Uh, that’s not really how twinship works, boss.”

“Like hell it isn’t. There’s gotta be a reason elven twins used to be revered in the old days.”

“Maybe it’s just that we’re really lucky? I mean, what are the odds, right?”

Another problem I have with idea generation is that I get distracted easily, which should be pretty obvious by now. And after extended bouts of attempted idea making, I usually decide to give up the active portion of thinking and just let the thoughts simmer in the back of my mind for a while. Because as you and I should both know, simmering is the key to incorporating every flavour in the dish. And that is the last of the weird food metaphors for a while, I swear.

“I need an idea,” I tried again, “for a new angle vis-à-vis our drinks selection.”

Kiv was leaning half his body over the counter, his phone dangling in his hands, and he still managed to shrug in that totally cool 50s rockabilly manner of his. Not that he’s old enough to have any real idea of what the 50s were like, but if the aesthetic fits.

“I guess the coconut milk slash chili slash almond whipped cream hot chocolate idea was too wild for most people,” I continued.

“Professor Mahendra seemed to like it,” Kiv said. He was staring down at his phone and typing as he said it, but his smarmy smirk was unmistakeable.

The memory of Mahendra’s reaction to the hot chocolate threatened to put a grin on my face, but I was in boss mode and had to remain as such at least until my dinner break. “Professor Mahendra is not our entire clientele. And likely has exotic tastes to begin with.”

“Oooooh–“

“What,” I said, knowing exactly what he meant.

“Nothing at all, boss,” Kiv said, knowing that I knew exactly what he meant. “How about something spicy? People like spice. Like one of those spicy tea things.”

“Like…masala chai?”

“I guess.”

Loriev popped his head out from the backroom and said, “Doesn’t Starbucks already have one of those?”

“It is forbidden the speak the S word in here,” I told him severely.

When he just raised his eyebrows at me, I continued, “I thought you were quitting them. It was your New Year’s resolution.”

“I like their flat white,” he said sheepishly.

“I can make a flat white!” I chased him into the backroom as he scampered off in Starbucks-induced shame. “Just ask me to make one and I will do it! What’s theirs got over mine?!”

“Nothing!” Loriev shouted. He banged trays and things into the sudsy industrial-sized sink and started washing like his life depended on it.

The shop was pretty dead that afternoon, so I thought it safe to waste a few minutes hanging off my best friend’s shoulder like a pretty leech as he did dishes. As always, he let me do it. Good ol’ Loriev.

After a little while of watching him labour, I said, “I was just kidding, you know. You can keep going to Starbucks if you want. I’ll still support you no matter what.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly. He blew out a breath to get his bangs out of his face. “Sometimes I just need the extra caffeine. It’s nothing personal.”

“I get it, bro. We all do what we have to do to survive.”

I paused to look at his face. Loriev is normally pale in that platinum-blonde, media-stereotyped elf way he has, but that day he was positively ghostly.

I said, “Speaking of which, how are you surviving? You look tired.”

He said, “I’m fine.”

His bangs slipped back down over his forehead into his face again. I untied and retied his ponytail for him so he wouldn’t have to take off his soaked yellow rubber gloves. I made sure to sweep his bangs back too, the way he does it for working.

“You know, Lor, if you’re tired, you can just go home. Me and Kiv can hold down the fort for the rest of the night.”

He shook his head. “It gets busy on weekend evenings. I’ll stay. I’m just tired because I was at the store this morning.”

I was, as they say, aghast. “I wouldn’t have scheduled you if I knew you were working weekends at the bourgeois homegoods emporium!”

“I’m not.” He washed another plate, carefully scrubbing every inch of it to get off the sticky crumbs before piling it in the clean dishes rack. “I was called in. And it sounded urgent, so I didn’t want to say no.”

“Yeah, well, you should have told me, then. I could have called someone to take your spot here.”

“Too short notice.”

“And getting called in isn’t?!”

Loriev just shook his head again, and I just said, “Jesus, dude” because I know how he gets.

I stood there and helped with the dishes for a bit, knowing Kiv would holler for us if he ever needed help up front. We washed in silence, trading scrubbing sponges and dishes back and forth. I’ve known Loriev for so long that I can almost sense how he’s going to move, so we were smooth as satyr clockwork. When the dishes were mostly done, I got Loriev to sit down at the desk in the back where I forget all about the tax forms and went to make him a flat white. Dusted with just the right amount of cinnamon, of course, just the way he likes it. Love is getting your buddies’ coffee right every time, if you ask me.

He took a big gulp and his smile was instantly more steady, which is all the proof I need that caffeine fixes everything.

“Better than Starbucks?” I asked.

Loriev laughed. “Definitely.”

He sipped the foamy milk top that I spent months of my life learning to perfect, while I knocked back half a triple short espresso in one go. Caffeine definitely fixes everything.

Then Loriev said, “So, how was your date with Professor Singh?”

I almost choked on my second gulp of espresso. “Who told you?! Mav?”

“Kiv.”

“That boy really doesn’t know how to shut up.”

“Uh…so was it bad?”

“No, it was…” I searched for the right word, the word that would encompass everything I thought about Dinner with Mahendra, 6PM. “…fine.”

Loriev just looked at me, his coffee cup pressed against his lip. I sighed.

“I mean, it was nice.” I continued as eloquently as ever. “He’s really nice. Like, ridiculously nice.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah, but I mean…really nice.”

“So,” Loriev said slowly, “does that mean you like him? Or does it mean you don’t?”

I sat on the edge of the desk and flopped my arms in a kind of full body shrug. Loriev nodded like this made perfect sense.

After a few minutes of quiet coffee sipping on Loriev’s part, I went: “If I’m being honest, I get the feeling he’s kind of…I don’t know…out of my league?”

Loriev looked up. “Really? How come?”

“I mean…he’s a educator. And he looks and talks and acts super high class. And he went to Oxford. Oxford, Loriev!”

“So?”

“So! He’s probably crazy smart, because you know they don’t let guys who look like him into ancient institutions like Oxford University, England on shit like family reputation. Even if he does wear friggin’ Emporio Armani shoes.”

Loriev smirked into his coffee. “You have Emporio Armani shoes.”

“They were on sale! We’re talking full price here and you know it.”

“Point taken. But you’re making it sound like a man being educated and well-dressed is a bad thing.”

“It isn’t!” I wailed. “But what’s a guy like me supposed to bring to the table for a guy like that?”

I grabbed Loriev’s empty cup from him and stomped to the sink to wash our dishes. As I was scrubbing hard enough to give myself a full traps workout, Loriev crept up to me and put a hand between my shoulder blades, where he knows I like to be rubbed.

“I’ve never heard you worry about this kind of thing before,” he said gently. “Are you okay?”

I said, after taking a big breath to cool myself down, “Yeah, I’m good. Look at me, makin’ you worry when you’re so tired you can barely stand.”

“It’s okay,” Loriev said, because that’s what he always says.

We stood there for a while, doing the no-verbal-communication-necessary thing while Loriev literally patted me on the back. Then he said, in a voice that was a little different, “Why didn’t you want to tell me? That you went on a date with Professor Singh.”

“Oh. That.” I wished he would just go on rubbing and patting me between the shoulders. That always makes me feel better about things, even awkward conversations about your quasi non-existent love life. “I dunno. I guess it’s a bro code thing?”

“I didn’t think we two were bound by anything like the bro code.”

“I guess it’s a modified version of the bro code? Seeing as we’ve, you know, made out.”

His laugh was a warm little puff of air against my neck. Just between you and me, that’s the kind of thing that made me lean over and kiss him that first time, all those years ago.

“So,” he said, being about as sarcastic as Loriev ever gets, which isn’t much. “You didn’t want to tell me you’re seeing someone because we used to be a thing?”

“Well, it’s kinda rude,” I whined. “If we’re talking ex-wise.”

“But it should be cool bro-wise, right?”

“I don’t know, man! I didn’t write the bro code! Besides, I’m not seeing him. We went on one date.”

“Are you going to go on another one?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “He seems to want to. He asked if he could see me again.”

Loriev was still behind me, but I swear I felt him roll his eyes. “Let me guess. You made some wisecrack and put him off the idea entirely.”

“No. Maybe. Shut up. I think it just made him like the idea even more.”

“Huh,” Loriev said softly.

No idea what he meant by that, but by that time I was willing to do anything to shorten what was looking to turn into an in-depth conversation about my feelings and stuff, so I took preventative action by saying: “Listen, I’ll send Kiv on break and then call Mav to see if she can come in to take your place. You need your rest ASAP.”

This time, he didn’t argue. I’m guessing he was finally too tired to. So I left him in the backroom to babysit my untouched tax forms while I went up front to do exactly what I had promised.

Saturday evenings are normally lots of fun at the shop. It gets pretty busy, even in the cold months where it’s hard to get enough of a grip on the sidewalks to go get a leisurely coffee, but it’s the good kind of busy, good for the body, good for the soul. But my soul, on that particular evening, did not seem to want to give me a rest. I kept replaying my conversation with Loriev over and over, mentally beating myself up for not seeing his exhaustion sooner and agonizing over how dumb and lukewarm my responses about my date with Professor Mahendra Singh had been.

I won’t pretend I really know much about dating. I was able to act cool and confident during the actual date because I am just naturally a cool cat, but don’t look at me if you want the logistics of how to progress after that first little get-to-know-you session. Most of my experiences with get-to-know-yous have usually ended in Really-get-to-know-yous, followed by no-longer-need-to-know-yous. So you can understand if the idea of going on a second date was a bit foreign to me.

I wasn’t exactly dreading it, though, because it had gone well, right? About as well as an outing with someone as shy and apparently straight-edge as Prof. Singh could have gone. I mean he was so nice he could probably coax a fully transmuted dragon over to his side, and being well-spoken and easy on the eyes didn’t hurt either. Even if he did have a habit of saying sorry when he didn’t actually have to.

Over the course of that particular shift, where I sent Kiv on his break and got Maveliv to come in for a few hours so Loriev could go home and cuddle with his cat, I wondered about what had gotten me so worked up about Professor Singh. Because let’s be real, I wasn’t exactly unused to people being attracted to me, and he obviously was. By which I mean he was obviously attracted to me, and also obviously unused to having people be attracted to him. Do you see where I’m trying to go with this? He wasn’t really the kind of guy I was used to hanging out with. If anything, he reminded me a bit of Loriev, which you should have figured out by now probably meant me and the good professor were headed down the fast track to the friendzone. I say that in the nicest way possible, because as you know Loriev is the best buddy I’ve ever had, but you get my point.

All that to say, I didn’t really know where I stood with Mister Designer Glasses and Bookbag Professor, or if I even stood anywhere at all. So on my dinner break that evening, I sent him a text message: hey Prof how was your week?

I was still admiring how sleek and efficient and not-weird my text was when he answered: Hello, Toriv. It was all right. Lots of papers to grade for next week so the students don’t bite my head off.

I said, work never ends huh? 😛

He said, As you well know.

I imagined to myself that he said it with that tiny smile he sometimes gets, like he’s afraid of smiling too hard. I guessed it was a good sign.

feel like taking a break? I asked him. free mocha if you come do your grading at the shop 😀

He waited for what felt like an age before sending, On my way. But decaf only, please 🙂

“Guys. The professor just sent me an emoji,” I announced.

Mav passed by with the broom and said, “Good to know he’s hip to your jive.”

“Why shouldn’t he be? He’s not that much older than me.”

“So you’re both old. It’s a perfect match.”

She went on sweeping and clearly ignored me as I made insulted choking noises in her direction. That’s all the thanks I get for foster brothering a teenage elven orphan, apparently.

“Forty isn’t that old,” I said when Mav failed to repent for her awful behaviour. “It’s respectable. Old enough to have life experience, but young enough to still learn new things.”

“He is a pretty nice forty,” Mav admitted.

“And sooo dreamy!” Kiv added. He draped himself over the cash counter like a lovestruck maiden, hand to the forehead and everything. “Oh, take me now, Professor!”

“You’d better put your heaving bosoms away by the time he gets here,” I said. “And need I remind you that I am still your boss and that is my counter you’re rubbing your pheromones all over.”

“My pheromones will go wherever they please.”

“Not if they want to get paid.”

Luckily, Kivariev’s passionate chest was safely censored by the time Mahendra walked in about thirty minutes later. It was still a bit windy outside even with the temperature steadily climbing, so he came in accompanied by a positively orchestral gust of wind that made the tails of his coat flutter like they were on a movie set.

“Tell them ‘free’ and they will come,” I said to him regally. Master of my domain, as it were.

He smiled a little under the collar of his herringbone greatcoat, looking a bit like the typical Hollywood oldies male lead coming to greet his ladylove on the train platform. Oh, take me now, Professor. Maybe I rearranged myself a little more favourably at the table I was having my dinner on. Out of habit, you know. No point in not looking your best at any given moment, is what I always say.

“I intend to pay for everything I buy tonight,” he said.

“And I don’t intend to charge you for a complimentary beverage while you’re working so hard. Don’t you ever take the weekend off?”

He came over and put a monstrously large folder stuffed full of papers on the table next to mine. “Do you?”

“I asked first.”

“I simply have too much to prepare for the following week to afford taking days off,” he said, like this was totally normal and not complete workaholic behaviour. “There. Now you.”

I grinned my winning grin. “Uh, I need work to have a purpose because without purpose I die?”

“So you see,” Mahendra said, though in some posh and mysterious way, he didn’t specify what I should be seeing.

He had a nice smile, I noticed. Not that I hadn’t noticed before, but it was easier to see when he wasn’t holding it back so much. I could already tell that holding things back was going to be a theme with him, but it didn’t bug me too much. Like I’d told him, I like a challenge.

“Well, since you’ve decided to show your fine face, I’ll go and make you that mocha.” I gave him the dashing wink I’ve been practicing in the mirror since I was fifteen. “And decaf, of course.”

His fine face flushed a little. I might have to go a bit easier on the flirting until he gets used to it, in case I accidentally break him or something.

As he finished arranging his stuff at his table (straightening his papers, setting down his phone, smoothing down the lapels of his greatcoat like it was a precious fur stole), I skipped over to the espresso machine, ignoring Kiv’s shoo-ing “you are on break” hand gestures, and made Mahendra his promised mocha. Extra care with the steaming wand for that awesome milk foam texture and just the right amount of chocolate. You’d think the joy of turning out the perfect  drink would fade after a few years, but for me the passion never dies.

“Do not charge the man,” I said across to Kiv as Mahendra approached the counter with his wallet.

“Please,” Mahendra said, holding out a ten.

“You please. I don’t lie when I say complimentary.”

“You heard the boss,” Kiv said loyally. The boy has his good qualities, as you can see.

Mahendra turned to me with a funny sort of pained look, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. In response, I asked, “Whipped cream?”

He sighed and put his money away. “Yes, please.”

Sweet victory. I dressed up his beautiful steaming mocha in its festive handpainted mug, courtesy of my artistically-inclined mom, and handed it to him over the counter. He did that bashful blushing smile thing of his and then hid his face in the first sip. I have never in all my life seen a man who loves whipped cream like that one.

“Thank you very much,” he said. His eyes skittered away from my face, but his smile was sweet and real. “It’s just what I needed.”

“That’s what I love to hear.”

He went to work at his table while I finished my dinner. It was kind of amazing to me how he managed to sink into his state of work focus almost instantly. His hand would automatically bring his mug to his lips every so often, but it was mechanical and he didn’t stop reading and writing as he did it. The stack of unfinished papers seem to magically melt away into finished papers. I also noticed that he scribbled in the margins of every single one, offering what was sure to be wise and teacherly advice in emerald green pen. For some reason, I liked that he used green ink. Red ink all over your assignments just makes you feel bad, but green is okay in my books.

I guess there are just some people you have to hang around with for a while to start seeing how attractive they are. For him, it was the little things, like his choice of ink colour and the way the tip of his tongue would kind of dart out to lick the mocha foam from his lips, but I know me enough to know the little things are usually what get to me in the end. Like Chinese water torture. Or something much less painful and terrible than Chinese water torture. Sexy Chinese water torture? I’ll get back to you on that one.

I came back to reality with a snap and realized I was already five minutes overdue on the floor. Who would have thought you could lose yourself in just watching someone work? Kiv was bantering with customers at the counter and Mav was mopping, looking daydreamy, so I figured neither of them had noticed my tardiness yet.

There are a million things I could have said or done at that precise moment, but before I could do any of them the door of the shop whooshed open and a fine specimen of a different variety strutted in.

“Red!” I exclaimed.

You know when you have a few very good and specific memories about a person, and when you see them again after a while the emotions associated with those memories all come rushing back at the same time? That’s how I felt when I saw Red walk into my shop that evening. What can I say, I have a type and most of the time, Red is squarely it.

I hadn’t seen him in over six months but he was the same as always, except for the half-shave that made his dragon crest even more obvious. He’s always been proud of his crest, what with him and most of his family being untransmuted. I guess it’s a dragonkind thing.

I crossed the shop to grab his hand and shoulder hug him. Getting close to Red is always kind of electric, or magnetic, I guess, seeing as it’s hard to pull away. But I managed, because I am thirty-one years old and no longer think entirely with my dick.

“Good to see you, man,” Red said. His eyes looked kind of smokey, like literally smokey, the way they get when he’s gone through half a pack out in the cold and his fire gizzard’s working in overdrive. “Thought I’d come for that cup of coffee.”

“Well, we definitely have that here,” I said. “The dark roast, black?”

“You know me. It’s a dollar eighty-five, right?”

“Ah, it’s on me tonight. Haven’t seen you in yonks. How were the mountains?”

He sighed. “Shitty, as I said. But grandad’s still kicking, at least. Even if the other council members seem happy to leave him to rot up in his peak.”

I poured out his coffee in one of my mom’s other mugs and passed it over. “Grandpa De Carneus should be like great-great-great-great-great grandpa by now, huh? Isn’t he like six hundred years old or something?”

“Five hundred eighty nine and senile as shit. But Ma said I should go see him anyway, in case he needed someone to help him with all the council business.”

“Well,” I said slowly, “he is family.”

Red shrugged and took a deep pull of his coffee. As I watched him knock it back, my eyes slid past his shoulder to Mahendra at his little table. He had gotten distracted from his grading and was staring out the window with his chin in his hand, his eyes unfocused. It was getting close to nine thirty, so maybe he was getting sleepy.

“Hey, Mahendra,” I called.

He twitched and looked up, giving me that startled “moi?” look of his. I waved him over and after a second’s hesitation he stood and came to the counter.

“Let me introduce you to my friend,” I said, gracious hostess-like. “Mahendra, this is Red De Carneus, my longtime buddy. Red, this is Professor Mahendra Singh, most beloved regular.”

They shook hands. Red’s eyes flicked up and down. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed being on the receiving end of that look, but the professor didn’t seem to notice.

Red said, “Professor of what?”

“Anthropology,” Mahendra said. His voice was real quiet in a way I hadn’t really heard before. “Medical anthropology.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“And what do you do?”

“I tend bar at a place in the Village” Red said offhandedly. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen you around, though I feel like I should have.”

Pretty sure the meaning of that was clear combined with the obvious once-over he’d given, but Mahendra took his time answering, like he wasn’t exactly sure how to respond. I guess he wasn’t used to being asked if he frequents gay bars at night in the hopes of meeting other men. Red’s direct that way.

“I don’t go out much,” Mahendra said finally. “Too much work, I’m afraid.”

“Shame.” Red turned back to me. “Speaking of going out, me and Jamie are having a few drinks after he gets off work tonight. You down?”

“After I close up shop, sure. The usual spot?”

“Yeah. You want in too, Professor of Anthropology?”

“Me?” Cue baffled Mahendra. Even I was pretty surprised, seeing as everything about Red’s body language and talk had told me he wasn’t super keen on Prof. Singh, but what do I know, apparently.

“Yeah, you.” Red’s smirk was sharp behind the rim of his coffee mug. “Something tells me you could use some loosening up.”

Maybe I imagined it, but something in the tilt of Mahendra’s head at that exact moment made the light flash weirdly over the lenses of his glasses. “Thank you for the offer, Mister De Carneus, but I think I’m just loose enough.”

“Whatever floats your boat. So we’ll see you at eleven, Toriv?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Great.” He downed the last of his coffee and slid the mug back across the counter to me. “See you in a bit, then.”

And he left with a wave and a sideways look at Prof. Singh. Now anyone with sense would have seen that little exchange to be the first sign of trouble, but like I said, I’m biased when it comes to Red.

Now that I’m sitting here writing this after the fact, though, I kind of wish I hadn’t been so much.

// Mahendra

The Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday that occurred after my first date with Toriv passed in a silly, almost bucolic haze. Now I am normally a hazy kind of person, but the levels of distracted cheer that I aspired to that week bordered on the legendary. My grad students teased me about getting about as little sleep as them, and to my embarrassment all I could do was smile in that self-conscious, half-guilty manner of the completely smitten.

It had always seemed strange to me that the world could just continue to turn while such emotional catastrophes were going on inside one’s own head. Perhaps that makes me a self-centered person. It’s certainly a habit I’ve been trying to rid myself of for most of my life, but I suppose people can’t change all that much.

It seems ridiculous in retrospect, but I found myself completely unable to do so much as send a little text message to Toriv after that evening we spent together. Every time I tried, I ended up backspacing anything I had written and in a fit of despair, putting it off for later. It wasn’t that I had no desire to see him or talk to him — very much the opposite, in fact — but now that the initial ice-breaking session had been done, I found myself quite unable to figure out how to proceed. I supposed normally one would text or call to emphasize how much of a good time one had had, and perhaps to request another meeting of the same kind? But every time I tried to make the thought become reality, some part of me shied away, and I found myself mired in inaction.

This happens to me a lot when it comes to interpersonal relationships, as you can probably imagine by now. I do far too much daydreaming and not enough real-world interaction, and then wonder vaguely why things never seem to turn out quite in the manner I’d hoped. I’m well aware it’s a  wholly inefficient process for meeting people, but I’ve never learned to do otherwise. It seems going out of my way to visit a new coffee shop near my flat was the farthest I was willing to go in changing my habits.

So you can guess how shocked and pleased I was when Toriv messaged me out of the blue on Saturday evening, asking after my week and generally being the same cheerful, generous person I’d met back in in the beginning of the year. I dropped my pen and ignored it as it rolled off the kitchen table, such was my haste to snatch up my mobile phone and craft a response. This took a few moments, and when I had finished my heart was racing like it had been as I was waiting for Toriv in his shop on the night of our date.

His response was light, silly, inviting. I often wonder what it is about other people that makes it so easy for them to talk and tease, when it takes so much effort and courage for someone like me to merely start a conversation. I find I tend to gravitate towards these people, as though in the hopes that some of their openness will rub off on me. In any case, I accepted Toriv’s kind invitation and prepared myself and my precious trove of freshly minted papers for departure at once.

I’m a little embarrassed to confess that it felt strange for me to be heading outside after nightfall. I rarely had reason to go out at night and had gotten used to wrapping myself up in the warmth of my flat during the winter months, so stepping out into the purple darkness of the Montréal evening felt a bit thrilling and illicit. Poor, dull Maddy. Perhaps I really was letting myself grow too old, too fast.

After the brief stroll down the cheerfully lit streets of the Elven Quarter, I arrived at the Café Vanellas. Light was spilling from the bay window, reflecting off the last of the receding snow banks in a warm golden glow. I pushed in through the door, hauling my stack of papers and probably looking more than a little windswept, and was immediately greeted by Toriv at one of his little café tables.

“Tell them ‘free’ and they will come,” he said, looking very much like the cat that had gotten the cream.

Despite the evening hour, he still looked fresh and handsome and sparkling with energy. His crooked eyetooth gave his smile the same mischievous cast I remembered from Tuesday night. Magnetic was the word, if I’m being fanciful. Every time I was around him I seemed drawn to him as though by gravity, or by the inexorable tidal pull of attraction I thought I had learned to resist years ago. It was a good feeling, even with the underlying uncertainty. There was something nostalgic about it, like a song I’d once loved and forgotten all about until this precise moment.

“I intend to pay for everything I buy tonight,” I said, rather bravely, I think.

I had already told myself on the walk over that it would not do for me to get used to receiving mochas free of charge, even from damnably alluring elven baristas, but it seemed the house was intent on complimenting me, and I walked away with a lovely little decaf mocha in my hands. There’s something about the gift of food or drink that makes it all the more delicious, don’t you think? I know I wasted a few blissful moments savouring the chocolate and whipped cream confection, while Toriv sat at the table next to mine to finish his supper.

Even as I sunk into the comfortable stupor of paper grading, I was hyper aware of him as he sat there an arm’s length away, chewing on the last of his salad and scrolling through things on his phone. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I was choosing my fortieth year of all years to begin going gaga over men again, when for the last decade or so I had been perfectly content with a few passing glances and ambiguous coffee dates. Was this was what they called a midlife crisis? As soon as the thought hit me, I reflected that it would probably be safer if I went out and bought myself an Aston Martin than if I dabbled in–well, whatever it was that had begun between Toriv Vanellas and myself.

I could have asked him, I suppose, about whether he could see our first dinner date blossoming into something more, but before the thought could really coalesce in my mind, the chime above the door jingled and Toriv immediately shot to his feet, shouting “Red!” in an overjoyed voice. The person who walked in was a man with a tail of red hair down his back and with a scarlet-scaled dragon crest on his brow. He walked, if you’ll forgive the reference, like he was walking onto a yacht. I’ll be the first to admit it can be charming in a certain context, but something about the man’s brazen good looks and attitude only set me on edge. I suppose if I had the opposite of a type, he would be it.

The new arrival and Toriv spoke for a while, so I turned my attention back to my work. Surely it wasn’t unusual for friends of the boss to come visit, so I tried to think nothing of it. I forced myself to close the sound of their conversation out and to slip back into the quiet, muffled state of being to which I am accustomed. Papers to grade, marks to enter. Best to return to my work in times like these.

It was all ruined, of course, the moment Toriv called my name. It was almost embarrassing how quickly my attention snapped back to him, almost like it had never left him. Smitten, terribly and awfully, I think we can all agree.

Toriv called me over, so I went to be introduced to the dragonkind man with the shockingly red hair. The look he gave me, as we shook hands by the counter of the café, was like that of a cat surveying its prey. Before our hands had even parted, I decided that I did not like this Red De Carneus. I try not to judge people on appearances, but I’ve learned there’s something to be said about one’s gut feelings as well.

I was more than a little surprised when he invited me along to his outing with Toriv. Was it a game? In any case, he didn’t seem terribly disappointed when I refused, and left the shop with about as much irritating flair as he had entered.

There was a beat of silence by the counter, then Toriv said, “You sure you don’t want to come?”

His expression was strangely earnest, like he actually wanted me to join them on their drinks outing, though surely he already knew enough about my lifestyle to guess that I wasn’t exactly the going-out type. Still, it was enough to make me hesitate, which he took as an opportunity to insist: “Me and the guys have been going to this place for years. It’s always a good time.”

“I don’t know–your friend didn’t seem to like me all that much.”

“Red?” He was incredulous. “Aw, that’s just him being him. He’s a bit hard to get to know, but once you do…”

He trailed off meaningfully. I suppose what I was meant to take away from that was that Red wasn’t really as bad as my instincts were trying to tell me.

“Besides,” Toriv continued. “You’ll like Jamie. He’s mad smart too. I think he’s finishing his thesis right now? Something about elven youth and the disconnect with ancient elven culture. Mass exodus, generational gaps, the impact of the Great Silence on city elves today, that sort of thing. It’s totally your cup of tea.”

“I don’t know–“

“What’s to know? You can always bail early if it’s not your thing. Please,” he added, completely unnecessarily, I should add. The earnest, pleading expression on his face had already won me over.

The café was due to close in a little under an hour, so I headed home to change. I doubted that I possessed many clothes appropriate for a casual bar outing, but I was determined to improvise if it meant getting to spend a little time with Toriv in a non-workplace setting. And I had to admit to myself that I was a little curious about the bar scene in Montréal, how much it had changed since I was of bar-going age and how it differed from Oxford bar culture of the nineties. It was a rather roundabout way of convincing myself I could find a way to have fun tonight, but it was all I could come up with in the time it took to scurry back to my flat in the dark.

It isn’t often that I ignore my gut feelings. I’ve learned that to ignore my sense of impending doom is usually to walk straight into it. And seeing as I am no longer a young man, one would think I would be more cautious about heading into strange situations, but that night I found, after overcoming my initial reservations, that I didn’t much care. Infatuation has a way of addling the mind like that.

So I returned home, dropped my pile of half-graded papers onto the kitchen table, and got out a pair of jeans and an often-worn but still presentable buttondown shirt in navy blue. I loosened the top button and rolled the sleeves up to my elbows and peered at myself in the mirror. The result was simply a slightly more dressed-down version of myself, and no amount of tweaking could make the outfit anything less than business casual. I decided I would look nothing but professorial no matter what I did, then headed out again into the deepening night.

The address Toriv had texted me during my preparations was in a neighbourhood I had not often had reason to visit, even in nearly ten years of living in this city. The metro car and surrounding tunnel walls felt like a foreign landscape at that time, the topography of the place somehow changed with the falling of night. I huddled in my coat and ignored it all, trying to blend into the cityscape like I belonged.

Emerging from the underground was a bit of a shock. It was not quite eleven but the metro doors and surrounding streets were teeming with people taking advantage of the first mild nights of spring. There were young people with the air of students about them, sporting their wild haircuts and daring expressions, and a few people in their thirties and maybe-forties, looking seasoned and easy and free. I moved self-consciously among them, following the tiny blinking cursor on my smartphone screen that was pointing me towards my destination.

The Gay Village was all lit up like a dream, in bright pinks and blues and golds. Because it wasn’t yet summer, the wide pedestrian walkway and characteristic overhead Pink Balls exhibit were conspicuously absent, but the crowded sidewalks still gave off the same sense of life and adventure and unbridled joy. It was contagious; I found my step growing lighter the farther I walked, as I trailed the maps cursor like a beacon of hope.

In the interim, I received another text message from Toriv: hey Prof we’re already inside, just look for the table with the 3 handsome devils 😉

Their bar of choice was the kind of place one heard before seeing. In the summer, I’m sure it was lovely and airy, with the terrasse tables spilling into the street and the pink lights shimmering overhead, but in early spring it seemed a sealed box, full to bursting now that prime drinking hours were fast approaching. The noise came through the walls like a deep, dark pulse, and when I opened the door it was nearly deafening, so much that I blinked and almost backed away. But I pushed on and in, sliding my mobile away and casting my eyes about for Toriv.

He saw me before I saw him and stood from a table at the far end to wave and shout. His voice was lost in the din, of course, but it was enough to get me to come over, slipping between tables and chair backs as well as I could in my long coat. Toriv grabbed my arm as I arrived and moved his face very close to say in my ear, “Glad you made it!” And he seemed to really mean it, which made me feel warm all over, as if I needed any help.

He nudged me into one of the two remaining chairs and shouted, “Take off your coat, dude! You’ve met Red, and Jamie will be back in a second. He lost the coin toss so he’s getting the first round.”

Red was sitting right across the small table from me, one arm casually slung over the back of his rickety chair. He didn’t seem to have a coat, but red dragons are generally like that. I’ve never known a single one who needed a coat even in the dead of the winter. He motioned to me with one hand, a vague acknowledgement that I’m not sure was completely friendly, but it was better than the look he’d given me earlier in the shop, so I returned the gesture in kind.

There was a kind of lapse then, a moment where none of us knew what to say and the noise of the bar pressed in to fill the silence. Thankfully, the awkwardness was soon broken by the return of the fourth member of the party, another elf who called in a lilting, ringing voice, “Make way for the social lubricant, boys!” as he placed four brimming beer glasses down on the table.

This last member of the gathering was strikingly blond, tall and slender as a model. He was dressed, quite dramatically, all in white, and in a very short fringed skirt which must have left his legs smarting with the cold outside, but I suppose people who dress this way quickly learn the trick of not caring. He wiped his fingers on a napkin to get off the condensation from the beer glasses and shook my hand in a surprisingly strong grip.

I said, “Mahendra Singh. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m James Me’Aranas, Jamie to my friends.” He fluttered his eyelashes and tossed his waist-length hair over his shoulder. “And you can definitely be my friend.”

Red snorted into his beer like he’d heard that one before, and Toriv said cheerfully, “He says that to all the boys.”

“I do not,” Jamie replied, his eyes still on me. “Just the good-looking ones.”

“Or the rich ones,” Red added.

Jamie sighed extravagantly. “Well, I’m not gettin’ any younger. And with all the shifts I have to pick up, my thesis isn’t gettin’ any doner, either.”

Relieved that the conversation was going in a direction I was actually familiar with, I said, “That’s right, Toriv did say you were writing one. Elven culture and the estrangement of youth, was it? How is it going?”

“Nooo,” Red groaned from across the table. “Don’t get him started, man. I was trying to have fun tonight.”

“Ignore him, he’s never read a book in his life,” Jamie said sweetly. “Are you an academic, Mahendra?”

“I am. I’m a professor of anthropology and a grad advisor.”

“Oooh! Toriv, where did you find this one?”

“He just walked in one day, I swear,” Toriv said. He looked incredibly pleased.

Jamie and I talked shop for a while, or about as much as we could with the din of the crowd and the steady thump of music in the background. Toriv and Red chatted on their end, leaning their heads in very close to hear each other. I don’t know why this detail stood out to me so, even as I was discussing the ins and outs of Jamie’s thesis with him; he seemed happy to have someone to talk about it with at last, and I should have been paying more attention than I was, but it was difficult to stop myself from watching Toriv out of the corner of my eye.

He looked completely in his element here, drinking leisurely and talking away like he didn’t already spend most of his day doing just that. His conversation with his friend Red seemed to have absorbed him entirely, though he did raise his eyes a few times to greet some acquaintance passing by the table. It seemed that even in a rowdy place like this, Toriv knew plenty of people well enough to say hello and how are you. I don’t suppose I should have been surprised, but it hadn’t yet occurred to me that Toriv was in the habit of spending a lot of time in this area, and what the implications of that were. All I knew was that although he had insisted on my coming, Toriv had barely said two words to me the whole evening, even with me sitting not two feet away.

The realization was a miserable one, shocking in its intensity. The more I tried to ignore it, the more persistent the feeling became, until I found myself quite unable to continue making ordinary conversation, even given its academic nature. If Jamie noticed my discomfort, he gave no sign, but instead made some side comment to Red and Toriv which made them laugh and rope him into the discussion across the table.

The mess of voices and clink of glasses and boom of music seemed only to grow louder as the night wore on. I’m not sure how long I sat there, mired in sound and shared body heat and something like thwarted desire. It was a familiar feeling, a chest-deep ache so profound you could mistake it for your own heartbeat. A sense of anticipation with nowhere to end up, as it were.  I found myself growing more and more agitated under its influence, even as the three-sided conversation continued to flow around me, helped along by the second, third, and fourth rounds bought by each of us in turn.

Minutes, hours, or days later, I knew I needed to step away for a moment or risk going out of my head, so I stood awkwardly for the washroom. Toriv raised his head to point it out to me, but his voice was distant, like he had quite forgotten who I was. Red had moved his chair right next to his on Toriv’s side of the table, his elbow propped on the back of Toriv’s chair. His eyes flicked up to me as I went but I ignored him and wove my way around to the back of the room where people were queueing for the loo, leaning against the time-stained walls and flicking across their phone screens.

As it turns out, a bar washroom is of little relief during peak hours of the night, but I barricaded myself into one of the two stalls and tried to breathe normally. I was certain this kind of place hadn’t changed much since I was a young man; it was only I who had aged, who had lagged until I was left behind, no longer able to cope with the sheer amount of sound and scent and feeling that bled from such places. Not that I had ever really enjoyed going to bars or clubs, but when one is young that is one does, and now that I was no longer, it proved to be a monumental task. Being practically ignored by Toriv was making that task even more impossible. It was juvenile, I knew it was, but it’s difficult to put such emotions away once they’ve been let out into the open.

I went out again after a time. The push of the atmosphere was no better even after the brief respite, so I decided to go, though it was still early by bar-going standards. I struggled back to the table to fetch my coat. Jamie looked sorry and tried to get me to stay, but when I refused he snapped his manicured fingers in Toriv’s and Red’s faces to get them to look up and bid me goodbye.

“You’re going already?” Toriv said. He half stood from his chair. “I’ll walk you to the metro.”

“No, no, it’s all right, I couldn’t interrupt.”

“Seriously–“

“Let him go, Toriv,” Red broke in. He was still sitting with his arm laid easily across the back of Toriv’s chair, and was looking at me with a mix of amusement and disdain on his handsome face. “It’s past his bedtime.”

“You’re an ass,” Toriv told him, but the little bit of eyetooth was poking into his smile. He turned to me and reached out to give me a squeeze on the shoulder. “Okay, well, be careful on your way back.”

I couldn’t look at him anymore. I said, “I will, goodnight,” and left as hurriedly as I could, the tails of my coat catching in chair legs as I went.

The outside air felt frighteningly open and cold after the closeness of the bar, but at least I could breathe. The lights and windows of the Village were as bright as ever but I turned away from them all and headed slowly for home, feeling tipsy and foolish the whole way back.

The warmth and dark of my flat was the balm I knew it would be, however, and as soon as I had stepped in and hung up my coat I began to feel a little bit better. I was still drunk but not ferociously so, and in a way I was grateful. The buzz of alcohol has a way of dulling feelings you’d really rather wait for morning to face.

I showered and put myself to bed. My mobile vibrated and lit up just as I was setting it down on the bedside table, but I took my glasses off so I couldn’t read the sender’s name. Then I turned the thing off, rolled away from it, and slept a deep and heavy sleep.

// Toriv

I hate winter. I feel like I need to say that again. I HATE winter. Witness, by my conspicuous use of all-caps, just how much I hate it.

Where some people see a winter wonderland, I see only the slushy sidewalk that ruined my favourite pair of lace-up boots. Where most city-goers look forward to downhill skiing and other winter sports, I can only think of my poor pent-up motorbike, forced to hibernate for almost half the year in a cold and lonely garage, unridden. How tragic is that?! Some creatures just need to be free, yo.

Plus in the winter you can’t go anywhere without suffering from the cold at some point. Montréal has plenty of underground malls and subway stations and things, but no matter how well you time your travels you’re going to end up shivering at a bus stop eventually, or accidentally stepping into an ice-cold slush puddle (RIP boots), or getting snowed on so hard you can’t see across the street. Winter is balls, is what I’m saying.

So you can understand if I spend maybe more time than is strictly necessary standing at the window to the café and gazing wistfully up at the grey winter sky, sighing as I try to will the seasons to take that final turn into springtime. I guess the end of February is still a bit early for it, but a guy can dream.

“I need a vacation,” I said this afternoon to no one in particular. “Somewhere warm. Tropical, maybe. I’ll go to Puerto Rico. Mom, let’s go to Puerto Rico.”

From the table closest to the counter, my mom put down her paperback and said, “What?”

“I said let’s go to Puerto Rico. To visit the motherland, you know.”

“Ay, caramba. You don’t even speak Spanish. I don’t even speak Spanish. I’ve never even been.”

“So let’s go. Rediscover our roots.”

“Our roots are here, baby,” she said sagely. “Anyway, I was trying to convince your father to go for our fortieth wedding anniversary.”

I turned around and put on my most Scandalized Son face. “That’s in ages! And I can’t go with you if it’s your anniversary!”

“Well that’s not on me, is it? Get a rich boyfriend and get him to take you.”

“Problem solving,” I sighed. “Just like my daddy taught me.”

“If I’ll have managed to teach you nothing else,” my daddy said as he very inconveniently walked in.

It was just lucky Loriev was in the back doing dishes, because it is really annoying when my dad makes a jab like that in front of other people. As it was, all I had to give him was a face. You probably know the face. A kind of “how are you even my dad” face. He gave me a kind of “how are you even my son” face in return. That’s me and my dad in a nutshell.

“I seem to recall you forbidding me from ever touching the solderer for the rest of my life.”

“I seem to recall you declaring you’d never be a jeweler anyway.”

“Didn’t want to make any competition for you,” I said, which made my mother smile and my dad roll his eyes.

I abandoned the window to go fix my father’s coffee, while he kissed the tip of my mother’s nose and sat down with her. My parents are the kind of couple who have somehow managed to remain stupidly in love despite being together for over half their lives. And I mean disgustingly in love, the whole renewed wedding vows thing and everything. I’m pretty sure they would willingly kill a man for each other. I’m pretty sure they would kill a man together. They would for me too, I guess, but they kinda have to considering I’m their kid. When you’re with someone, it’s usually because you choose to be. You chose them out of a potentially infinite number of people. It’s a lot more charged, somehow, if you ask me.

I’ve been in love a few times. It never really panned out, as you can probably tell by my single and swingin’ status, but it was good while it lasted. The problem is always when it stops lasting. The bigger problem is when it stops lasting for one of you and not for the other. It makes for very many awkward situations down the line, so awkward that I’ve kind of just stopped putting myself in the way of them.

That’s not cold-hearted of me, is it? I don’t think it is. If anything, it’s practical, it’s what I need in my life right now. No one should have to force themself to have a relationship and be in love if it’s not their jam.

Though I have to say, growing up with my parents, it gets a little complicated to figure out what someone like me wants from love. I could aspire to have the same kind of fairy tale, fireworks romance the parentals have, but how often does that happen in real life? I’m pretty sure my parents just got super lucky or are blessed by the gods or something. What they have is a rare thing, I can tell you that much.

But what about me? Well, what about me. I guess I figured early on that being unattached works better for me. Not just because finding someone worth being in a relationship with is so difficult, but I just plain don’t have the time for it. Running a coffee shop is pretty big deal. I work most days, either behind the counter or on orders and accounts. Sometimes I’ve even got to make a field trip to one of our suppliers so we can talk business. The barista life isn’t all fun and games, you know. I’m technically, like, CEO of café Vanellas. I should get a nameplate for my desk at home. TORIV VANELLAS, CEO. Bet that’ll bring all the boys to the yard.

Anyway, all that to say, I don’t exactly have the ideal lifestyle for fostering a new relationship. It’s the darn truth. I’m sure that under normal circumstances, I’d love to have a boyfriend. It sounds nice. But who has the time?

Later that same day, I was sitting around during my break trying to write when I noticed my parents looking at me from their table. Maybe I was typing too intensely.

“May I take your order?” I said.

“Just wondering what you were up to,” Mom said.

“Writing. You know, that thing I was telling you about.”

“Your autobiography?”

“Something like that.”

“Have a title yet?” Dad asked.

“It’s a bit early for a title.” I thought about it for a second. “What about ‘Sex, Coffee, and Rock n’ Roll’?”

My mom laughed so hard she choked on her lactose-free latte, and my dad thumped her on the back while looking sidelong at me and making The Face again. That’s parental encouragement for ya.

“It needs work,” I admitted.

“You’ll get it, baby,” Mom hiccuped. At least I made somebody’s day. “Can I read it?”

“Um, no way.”

“Oh come on. It’ll be like when I’d go over your essays for school.”

“Exactly! You ain’t touchin’ this.”

“Vriev, tell our boy to let his mother read his writing project.”

“I’m not getting involved in this,” my dad said around a mouthful of coffee.

“My daddy is a wise man,” I said, and then immediately regretted it when the professor walked in, just in time to hear me say ‘daddy’ loud enough for the whole store to hear.

I must have made a face just then because my mother went into another laughing fit, almost ruining her paperback book with coffee in the process. The professor stopped dead in the door, looking politely confused behind his fogging-up glasses.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked as my mom continued to cackle in the background.

“Not at all,” I said. “Just my parents being insufferable.”

“Don’t badmouth us to the clientele!” Mom exclaimed.

“Don’t ridicule me in front of the clientele!” I exclaimed back.

“You did that yourself!”

“I can pretend I didn’t hear anything,” said the professor amiably.

“Thank you,” I said.

I hopped up to get behind the counter for his order, although there were technically still a few minutes left to my break. The things I do for these people, honestly.

“Your parents hang out here, then?” the professor asked as I rang him up.

“When I don’t annoy them too much. Say hello to monsieur le professeur, Mom and Dad.”

“Does the professor have a name?” Mom said, smiling her winning I’m-a-lot-older-than-I-look-but-tell-no-one smile.

The professor hesitated. “Singh.”

“It’s nice to meet you, professor Singh. I’m Evanis and this is my husband Vinoriev. And you’ve met our son Toriv.”

“I have.” He smiled at me out of the corner of his eye. “Just a few weeks ago, in fact.”

“Thinking of becoming a regular?” I asked.

For a second he looked startled, like he did the other day when I spoke to him while he was working. I guess he’s the kind of guy who isn’t used to attention. It’s kind of cute, to be honest.

“I think so,” he said finally. “This is a very nice place.”

“Isn’t it?” my mom said earnestly. “Toriv built it all himself, you know. My own small business manager.”

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have an ounce of shame in my body, but it’s hard to not be embarrassed when your mother gushes over you in public. “When you’re done being my entire PR department, Mom.”

“Sorry, baby.” She did not look sorry at all.

The professor left soon after with another of café Vanellas’ specialty mochas. The larger size this time and extra hot. Guess he likes it. Chalk one up for the coffee guys.

My mom looked thoughtful for a while, her paperback open but idle in her hand and one of her ankles propped on my dad’s knee. Like me, Evanis Vanellas is never silent for long, so it was a little weird.

Finally, she said, “What’s he a professor of?”

“What?” I’d been counting our remaining stock beneath the counter and took a second to clue in. “Uh, I don’t know. Something serious and academic, probably.”

“He does look pretty serious.” She lapsed into a suspicious silence again, then closed her book and smacked it on the table, like some big decision had been made. My dad didn’t even look up from his daily newspaper at the noise and my mother’s loud declaration of: “You should ask him out.”

“What? Mom, meddling much?”

“All I’m saying is you could do worse than dating a professor.”

My dad made a characteristic kind of grunting noise to support her words, though his eyes were still on the paper. At least he’s long since given up arguing with me over the company I seek out in my free time.

“Teachers are undateable,” I said ultra-emphatically. “They always love rules more th–“

“–than they love you, I know.” Guess she’s heard that one before. “Fine, it doesn’t have to be him. But I’m getting worried about you.”

“Mavae. I’m fine.”

“Of course you’re fine. I always knew you’d be fine. But I want for you to be better than fine.”

Would you believe me if I said we’ve had this conversation about every six months since I was twenty-five? Just like the seasons. I’m going to have to start thinking up new material if I ever want to escape the cycle of parental anxiety.

“What’s even the big deal?” I said, counting up bottles of syrup with the half of my brain that wasn’t negotiating with the worry warts across the counter. “It’s not like I’m middle-aged or anything. I’ve got plenty of time if I want to settle down later.”

“That time runs out faster than you think.”

“Come onnn. As if you weren’t totally a swinger once too.”

“Oh, unfair. That was only until I started seeing your father.”

“So.” I stood up, stretched, and moved to another cabinet to continue the count. “Maybe I’m just waiting for the right guy.”

“Let the boy find his own way, Vani,” my dad said finally. He still hadn’t looked up from his paper, just kept on reading and turning pages, but I knew he had been listening closely the whole time. If my mom is the meddler, then my dad is the listener. They really do go well together.

It was annoying, but somehow that conversation continued to bother me even after my parents had gone to do their groceries. I’m not really sure why. It wasn’t much different from all the other versions of that same exchange: my mother suggesting I start seriously dating, me arguing against her, my father closing it all down. We’ve done it over dinner, at the movies, at the corner store. Everyone who works here in the café with me has probably heard it almost as many times as I have.

Maybe it was because of the guy she suggested this time. The quiet wallflower of a professor. Glasses and book bag and shirt tucked into pants. Not that he isn’t good-looking — he is, in a mature, scholarly, dark-haired and dark-skinned kind of way — but he’s not really the type I look twice at. Not when I’m out on the prowl, anyway.

My mother’s words had planted a seed, though, as they often tend to do. I turned the idea over and over in my head for a while after that. For so long, actually, that spring had already begun to spring.

// Mahendra

Springtime in Montréal brings a number of things around, every year like clockwork: the insidious reappearance of every hidden pothole in the city, until then cunningly filled in with hard-packed snow, and final exams.  Often these two things tend to work against each other. I’ve had more than one student complain of nightmares related to tardiness caused by poor road and traffic conditions. It’s the reason I don’t drive myself.

And because I don’t drive, and because my graduate students are generally nice people, I’ve occasionally been offered rides to and from the university. I don’t know if this makes me a popular professor or not. It’s possible they feel sorry for me, always sleepy-looking and arriving and leaving alone, but who knows.

I don’t remember ever having any special feelings for any of my college professors, but then again I had been a little withdrawn as a student. I had always done excellently in school, of course, not that I had much choice in the matter. Those of you who have had strict parents (apparently, in my mind, there are now several of you hypothetical readers) will understand. Always do well, but don’t raise your head too high. Speak, but not too loudly. Be yourself, but not too much. Lessons that a person, as an independent adult, sees as largely ridiculous, but lessons that are difficult to shake off, as ingrained behaviour typically is.

Still, I try to convey the best parts of those lessons to my own students, especially to my grad students, with whom I spend more time. I’m well aware of how daunting it is to stand before an assembly and defend an academic thesis. You feel like your words are going out into the void. It takes courage just to stand from your seat, to gather all your wits and research and note cards and to face an audience that probably knows much more about your own field than you do. Graduating from that kind of environment is truly a trial by fire, so I do all I can to help the students under my care to withstand it.

And generally, they survive it well. One doesn’t attend graduate school on a whim, after all. Most of them are tough stuff to begin with, passionate and eager for more knowledge, more discussion, and always, more sleep. Such is the up-and-down life of an academic.

I suppose, since I spend so much time advising them, that I shouldn’t be surprised that quite a few of them seem to like me personally. I rather like them myself, especially this year’s new bunch, many of them still fresh from undergrad. I’d call them fresh-faced and eager, but to be perfectly honest, the end of the winter semester usually brings with it a handful of red-eyed, overwrought, caffeine-chugging individuals whose only desire on this Earth is a flat surface upon which to lean and steal a nap.

So it isn’t a stretch to say they’re dear to me, though they always leave at the end of their two year stint. A few of them have returned over the years, to consult on some matter of grave anthropological importance, to request a letter of recommendation, or simply to visit. The corkboard in my office is covered in printed-out photos of some of my past students on their various adventures around the world. I always did think that anthropology graduates had the tools to be some of the most interesting people in the world, and my students prove it every day.

And here I am, aging and sedentary, feeling awfully protective and parental about them and too afraid to really show it. Perhaps I should follow Charlotte’s lead and go on vacation as well, somewhere warm and dry that hasn’t seen snow in decades.

Speaking of snow: I sloshed into school on a late February morning to find most of the hall to my department trailing with the grey, watery remnants of it, right up to where the common study area for medical anthropology graduates was located. When I entered, the room was a chaos of damp winter coats, scattered rubber boots, and mass hysteria of the variety that can only be mustered in a school environment.

“Professor Singh,” someone wailed. “My research proposal is ruined!”

If I had a dollar for every time I heard that. “I’m sure it’s salvageable, dear, but let me just hang up my coat–“

“Professor Singh! Someone’s throwing some serious shade in that journal you like!”

“Do I need to put out a hit?”

“Professor Singh, a certain two Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology profs have taken up again. Living in delicious, delicious sin, if you know what I mean.”

“I expect the gossip on my desk by this afternoon.”

“Professor!” the first one yelled. “My proposal!”

And so on. Just another day at the office, really. They’re a lively group this year. The one of the devastated dissertation is Annamaría, the only grad student I have in this batch who is older than I am. The others are younger folk of the formerly fresh faces: Lucien, the former medical student whose field you really would not guess at first glance; Sangeeta, the college valedictorian whose surname also happens to be Singh; Marie-Claire, the newly minted academic who turned out to be a fierce debater in close quarters; and Chem, the once painfully shy art major who has since become a sort of den mother for the group.

They milled about in the graduate common room as I ducked into my office to hang up my winter coat and to change into proper office shoes. The scent of freshly brewed coffee was thick in the air, warm and heady after an early morning spent navigating the streets in a brisk wind. I wrapped my scarf back around my neck to stave off a remaining chill and reemerged into the common area, ready to face a day of academic toil. “Now, where are we at?”

“Total disaster,” Annamaría moaned, her head down on a table, an ancient laptop and piles of notes scattered before her. Chem was standing next to her, patting her back in a comforting manner, and looked to me beseechingly.

“Here, now, dear,” I said gently. “Let’s see what we have. The rest of you get set up, please. We’ll go over everyone’s progress in a bit.”

I sat a while with Annamaría as the other students settled around the large conference table with their myriad electronic devices and stacks of research notes. Many of them were already arguing despite the early hour, trading good-natured barbs about this or that academic source or big name in the anthropological world, though some of them, like Annamaría, only sat looking weary and distraught. ‘Tis the season, I suppose.

It took some doing, but I finally calmed Annamaría down enough to get a few coherent statements out of her, and was able to provide some guidance as to the direction of her proposal. The deadline for the submission of the research proposals was quickly approaching, and pressure has a way of getting to even the hardiest of people. I remember spending more than a few nights lying awake in my underheated Montréal flat — then the first of many — staring at the dark ceiling and wondering vaguely if my life was spiralling out of control or not.

Soon after that, we had our little weekly session, where everyone settled with their first, second, or third coffee of the day and shared their progress with their research proposals. Spirits were a bit low that day, probably due in part to the awful weather. I’ll spare you, hypothetical reader, from the dreary details, but suffice it to say that my students were not at their happiest by the end of the round.

“Chin up, everyone,” I said once everyone had had their turn. “Remember that only proposals are necessary for this semester. The bulk of your research need only be done over the summer.” I was trying for reassuring, but everyone looked at me like they knew what my game was, and that they weren’t pleased with it.

“So when do we get to sleep?” Marie-Claire asked crossly.

“What is this sleep you speak of?” Lucien said, his nose in his frankly immense coffee tumbler.

“I promise once your proposals are submitted, you’ll already feel much better,” I reassured the circle of glum, sleep-deprived faces. “Now go off to your classes or naps now. You know where to find me if need be. And monsieur de Beaupré, you told me you were cutting back on caffeine.”

“I lied!” Lucien declared, pumping a fist in questionable triumph as he exited the room.

Everyone’s departure left me to my own devices until midday, so I spent the time getting caught up on grading and cleaning my small office space of the remnants of midterm exams. All very boring teacherly stuff, the kind that keeps one from getting third dates, I assume. A few colleagues came and went as well, looking nearly as windswept and chilled as the students. It’s the time of the semester where everyone keeps their head down, noses in books and coffee mugs, to ensure that they come away with those few precious numbers on a page that will determine where they’ll be next semester, or a year from now, or five years from now.

Sitting alone in the muted light of my office, I found it strange, all the stress and running about and obsession over arbitrary numerical measurements. It’s true I’ve never been a fan of the numerical grading system — as an anthropologist, especially, one does come to see the folly of measuring all people by the same system — but there isn’t much I, as a teacher, can do. So I spend my time educating my students in the best ways I know how, all while doing my best to help them scrape those much coveted grades onto their plates. Academia is a strange world.

After a quick lunch and consult with a fellow teacher, I found it was already time to go. No other classes for me on this day of the week, so I usually reserved the afternoon for running the errands I usually didn’t have time to do any other day. Today it was groceries, so I set off into the cold again, writing the shopping list in my head as the people of the city bustled past, staring blank-faced past me as they thought of their own shopping.

I ended up in one of the more diverse neighbourhoods and found my spirits lifting at the thought of some nostalgic homemade dinners this weekend. Many of my happiest childhood memories have to do with food: the scent of naan warming in the oven and of warm plates of rice fragrant with spices are sense memories I hold very dear. There are some things a person just can’t leave behind, even across oceans, and even through grief and anger.

The ageing woman at the cash of the Indian grocery nodded wearily at me as I entered, and I answered in kind. Immigrants of my parents’ age tend to look tired around here. From the cold, perhaps, or something far more bone-deep. I am fortunate in that I’ll probably never know for sure.

Strolling the narrow aisles was strangely comforting. Indian spices have a way of making even the chilliest day feel warm. I picked up a few packets of things, mentally filling out the spaces in my spice rack at home. A plate of warm food, then a mug of tea and a book by the warmest radiator in the sitting room — it sounded like heaven already.

I was so preoccupied by thoughts of supper and warming up that I didn’t pay much heed to the person sitting back on their heels in the next aisle over. It took until I was nearly upon them — nearly stepping on them, in fact — for me to clue back into reality just in time to avoid what would have an embarrassing collision. As it was, I did still manage to brush them with the edge of my coat, and when they looked up, my automatic apology died on my lips, because it was Toriv Vanellas of café Vanellas fame. He pushed the hood of his winter coat back, smoothing the dark hair back from his brow in the same motion, and smiled like he had never been more pleased to run into someone like me in a dingy grocery store aisle. “Hey there, Prof. Come here often?”

“No,” I blurted out, then amended in a much calmer voice, “No, not really.”

“Me neither,” he replied cheerfully. “Actually, I’m here doing research.”

“On–” I glanced over at the shelf he was crouching by. “–tea?”

“A most excellent observation.” Toriv stood, holding a little cardboard box of tea in each hand. “And since you’re here and you are very British and also probably Indian, maybe you can help me out.”

“I am very much British,” I conceded, “and most definitely Indian. I’m not sure how I can help, though.”

“Just tell me which one’s your favourite.”

“Right or left?”

“And which one you might probably drink as a latte. Maybe with espresso…?”

“With espresso? I’d have to be mad.”

“Seriously? Not a fan of the dirty chai, huh…” He looked a bit put out at that and spent a long moment staring at the two tea boxes like they had personally offended him.

I felt a little bad for ruining what seemed to be his latest big idea, so I added, “Everybody likes a good tea latte. Perhaps chai, like in those big chain coffee shops–”

“Everyone and their grandma has a chai latte, though,” he sighed. He juggled the boxes like he was considering tossing them over his shoulder and trying again. “I need something different. To make us competitive, you know?”

I didn’t know, but I kept quiet and scanned the rows of tea boxes instead. A plain little box off to the side caught my eye, so I gestured to it with my gloved hand. “What about that?”

“Masala?”

“It’s all staple ingredients back home, but here it might be different enough to stand out.”

He plucked the box of generic masala from the shelf and read over the ingredient list, his lips pouting thoughtfully. Then he looked around furtively, saw the aisle was empty but for us, and quickly flicked the box open to sniff at the silver packet of spices inside. Then he turned away to sneeze violently into his sleeve, nearly bending in half from the spice-induced spasm. A laugh escaped me before I could tamp it down, causing him to turn and look at me accusingly before he lowered his arm and broke into a sheepish grin. “Could have warned a guy.”

“Sorry. It’s potent stuff, isn’t it?”

“For sure. Smells good, though. I could finagle a little something from this.”

“You think so?”

“I mean Starbucks slash Verismo has already got something like it, but I bet I could make it better. And with a ton more love.”

Toriv dropped the packet of masala into the shopping basket hooked on his elbow then gave me a comradely little knuckle punch to the arm. “Thanks, Professor Singh. I might call on your expertise again sometime.”

“I am available for taste tests as well,” I said.

Toriv smiled again, and the sight of his grateful, teasing smile stayed with me all throughout my shopping and the long windy route home. It probably went quite a ways to warming me up later, along with the nice meal I managed to whip up with the products of my grocery.

With internet radio music piping gently through my laptop speakers and with the nice cutlery on the table, it looked and felt a bit like a date night. All it was missing was the date itself. Unless I counted the date as myself? It wasn’t every night that I treated myself to carefully prepared homemade meal, after all.

As I was swiping the last dollop of stew from my plate, I found myself suddenly thinking of chai and espresso. What had he called it? A “dirty chai”. The thought of polluting a perfectly good cup of tea with coffee certainly felt dirty, not that I had ever actually tried it. It was just such a strange thought, though I suppose no stranger than convincing myself that I was wining and dining myself in order to not care that I so rarely had anyone to share such wining and dining moments with.

It could be different, I remember thinking to myself as I carried my wineglass to the sitting room. It won’t be like in books, but it could be different. You could be happy.

I’m happy now, I answered to myself, as I settled on the couch with a blanket and the bookmarked historical romance novel at the top of the pile. Happiness is a good book, a good meal, and the memory of a chance encounter warming your insides.

Thankfully, I had begun to get absorbed in the book, and my inner self decided to leave me in peace for the rest of the night.

// Toriv

I like to make a big deal out of breakfast. Most important meal of the day, to use the cliché. But more importantly, it’s your first chance in the day to say hello to the people you love. To me, breaking the nighttime fast applies to people too.

Maybe that makes me a sap, but I like it, so whatever, I’m a sap. To pick up Freud again (and this is the last time I will, I swear), it probably stems from childhood too. My mom used to have to get up really early for work, “at the asscrack of dawn”, as she’d say when my dad was out of earshot. As a kid I’d miss her at breakfast, so I learned to get up at the asscrack of dawn too, just so I could sit at the table with her and drink my juice and tell her about all the stuff I planned to do during the day. I was that kind of kid, always talking, always drawing attention. Like I thought that if the grownups’ attention faltered for even a second, I’d die or just stop existing. I guess it’s an only child’s kind of mentality. Not to say that I was spoiled, far from it. Hard to be spoiled when you have my dad for a dad, or my mom for a mom, for that matter. But I did grow used to having them for myself.

Anyway, breakfast. Breakfast is my favourite meal ever. I could live off of breakfast food, which sounds gross and weird to some people but hey, more midnight pancakes for me. Breakfast is awesome because it can be anything you want it to be — savoury or sweet, heavy or light — and it’s still breakfast. It’s the most versatile meal in the day, the greatest thing since sliced bread, especially when it is sliced bread.

Back when I still lived with my parents (eons ago, if you must know), I used to make them breakfast most mornings. My mom likes sweet breakfast and my dad likes salty, so I’d always make a bit of both to make everyone happy. I also learned exactly how my parents like their coffee and would make it for them every time, and to perfection, thank you very much. Then we would sit down to eat and discuss the coming day’s activities, and my mom would tell me to knock ’em dead, and my dad would tell me to not get into trouble (again), and I would tell them sure thing, Mom, and when do I ever get into trouble, Dad, honestly.
So all that to say, I’m not really used to having breakfast on my own. It was the weirdest thing ever, actually, once I started living in my own place. Most mornings, I’d go over to my parents’ house anyway, just as they were getting up, and make them breakfast just like old times. They never told me not to do it. I think they kind of knew it was something I had to do, at least until I had gotten used to being all on my lonesome.

I’m better at dealing with it these days, thanks for asking. I’m a big boy now, I eat my scrambled eggs alone and everything. Except when I’m not.

These days, when I make breakfast for someone, it’s usually a guy. The ones who stay the night, anyway, and I usually ask them to stay the night. It’s just nicer that way, even if the sex is only so-so. So-so lovers deserve breakfast too, that’s my philosophy.

It’s trickier to make breakfast for a near-stranger, though. For my parents or for my friends, it’s easy to guess what they’d like on any given day. For a guy you only met the previous night, you can’t really guess, unless you happened to have a discussion on preferred breakfast foods in between making out and undoing buttons. So you’ve gotta ask, which is fine, but sometimes the guy will get awkward, or impatient, or confused, and then you’re stuck standing there with the question floating between the two of you like a ghost. I swear some people get weirder about what would you like for breakfast? than they do about the STD question.

But I ask because I like to do it, because the rewards usually outbalance the weirdness. Even if I’m never going to see them again, I like to send people off with a full belly and a smile. That’s just how it is: when the people around me are happy, I’m usually happy too. I’m a simple guy with simple pleasures.

Now that I think about it, that’s probably the reason I decided to open a coffee shop. Sure, most customers will be in a rush to grab their coffee and go, but I always make sure to send them off with a smile. Breakfast and a smile, a winning combination! I’d put that on the sign if it weren’t too long and too corny.

So doing business in breakfast is pretty great. My father thinks I should have more ambition (you must be able to imagine his tone by now). I think he sort of wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor or something, despite him being a craftsman himself. But whatever, I’m happy, I keep my head above the water, I see the people I want to see everyday, and I meet new ones every time someone steps up to the counter. The chime above the door is the cheerful refrain to my coffee-scented days. It’s enough. It’s enough! Some days I’m so happy I feel I could die.

Even the solitary breakfasts, the quiet mornings before the café is even open are okay when you’re that happy. Even loneliness isn’t that bad when you know you’ll be throwing your doors open to the world in a few minutes. Business in breakfast is probably the best idea I’ve ever had.

// Mahendra

I have breakfast alone most mornings. It’s a good chance for me to wake up, get my bearings, and plan out my day. This usually takes some time; I don’t wake easily. Often it takes until I’m actually in class preparing my notes for the upcoming lecture for me to shake myself fully awake. One time last winter I came to school so groggy that I walked right into the doorframe. At my age! My grad students were in stitches and didn’t let me forget it for a long time.

Sometimes my sister Charlotte and her children join me for breakfast. They get impatient waiting for me to wake up sometimes. I can only use the time difference of five hours for so long.

“Hello from Montréal,” I tell them, when I finally get online.

“Hello from London,” they chorus back.

“You look sleepy,” Celeste, Charlotte’s eldest, always says.

“I feel sleepy,” I always reply, which never fails to make them all laugh.

So it goes. My sister’s children are at the age where the adults in their life still enchant and interest them, so they always have plenty to say. And I suppose it must be exciting to be talking to their faraway uncle, whom they only really see twice or three times a year. I like technology, but more than that, I’m grateful for it. In my parents’ time, communicating from across oceans and continents wouldn’t have been as easy or expedient as this.

I didn’t think much of it when Charlotte appeared on the screen by herself one morning. It was almost noon over there; the girls must have been busy. But when my sister smiled in greeting, she looked haggard and wan, like she hadn’t slept all night.

I asked her, “Are you all right?”

“Me? I’m–”

“You look–”

Then I remembered, and checked the date to be sure. February 10. In the little window, Charlotte sighed and leaned her cheek on her hand.

“I’ve just been thinking about him,” she said. “You know how it is.”

Four years ago, my sister lost her husband in a car accident in downtown London. She’s recovered, mostly, but the days before and after the anniversary always bring her down. People like us (like my parents and their generation and their generation before them) have complicated views on marriage, so I didn’t know if she would ever marry again.

Charlotte said, “I was up with Annie most of the night.” Anastasia, her youngest daughter. “She had those night terrors.”

“Again? I thought those were over with.”

“She gets them sometimes around this time.” Her face turned sorrowful, lined with a kind of tired helplessness. “Winter is difficult for her. She’s so afraid of the streets.”

This pained me, deep in my chest where my heart sits. We’d both hoped that Anastasia would have been too young to remember the traffic accident that took her father and spared her, but the ghosts of that day cling to her, though with her nearly nine years old.

“Maybe you should have moved to somewhere in the southern hemisphere. Australia or something,” Charlotte joked weakly. “That way I could send the girls to you for half the year.”

I tried my best to smile. “Sounds like fun. Me and the girls in the Australian Outback.”
“And then you’d all die from the heat,” my sister laughed, in such a way that I couldn’t help laughing too.

“Or the spiders!”

“Oh, eugh!”

We talked for a while longer, reminiscing about her Paul. I hadn’t known him very well, but we had gotten along. He’d been simple and kind, a good husband and father. He’d loved the girls to bits. And he’d been half-Indian, so my parents hadn’t fussed much more than necessary when Charlotte and he had announced their engagement.

Celeste, being the eldest, did her best to put on a brave face, but Anastasia still missed her dad openly. I felt sorry and wished I could comfort them all more, but that’s difficult when one lives an ocean away.

“I need a vacation,” Charlotte said finally. “Now that the holiday rush at the clinic is over.”

“Then take one. Go somewhere warm and pretty.”

“I was thinking Montréal, actually. The girls want to see your flat.”

I made a show of looking around, to make Charlotte giggle. “They’ve seen my flat. They said it was boring. Too grown-up.”

“They’ve only seen it over Skype! They told me the other day, and I quote, they absolutely must see it for themselves, it is imperative that they do.”

“Wherever did they learn the word ‘imperative’?”

Charlotte pressed a hand to her face, suppressing laughter. “I thought they learned it from you!”

“You know full well that their reading level has long since surpassed mine.”

Charlotte laughed until she hiccuped, and when she emerged from it, her eyes were brighter than before. On the small screen, I couldn’t tell if it was from mirth or tears.

“I miss you,” I told her once she had quieted. “All of you. Do come over, I’d be glad to have you.”

Charlotte sighed. “Oh, I’m not sure anymore. It’s flu season, you know. So many concerned parents–”

“The other doctors can handle it for a few days.”

“–and having us all there would get in the way of your work. You know the girls, they wouldn’t leave you alone. Favourite uncle,” she teased.

“Only uncle,” I corrected. “I’ll take off work. Or we wait until summer. I’ll only have my grad students then.”

Charlotte bit her lip, thinking and fretting. I finished off my morning tea and looked reluctantly at the clock. Time to go. I told Charlotte so, and was afraid for a moment that she would begin to cry, but she pulled on a watery smile and waved.

“Until next time, then, big brother,” she said. “Call Mum and Dad, will you? You always forget. Mum got upset again the other day. ‘Maddy hasn’t called since Christmas–‘”

My heart hurt again, for different reasons. “She can start by leaving off ‘Maddy’.”

Charlotte looked sad and torn. “You know how she is.”

I wanted to say “stubborn”, but that felt unkind. And Charlotte was right. It was difficult to make an old woman change her ways, especially when she was your mother.

I let it go. It was always best to let it go. “Take care, Sherry.”

She smiled. “Take care, Mahendra.”

I finished my breakfast alone, doing my best to forget the sound of the name ‘Maddy’ from my sister’s mouth. Let it go. This is why you left. Just let it go.

The next day, I went to café Vanellas for breakfast. It was strange; I don’t usually leave the house early enough to stop for anything longer than a pastry hand-off, but maybe I was restless that day too. It had been happening a lot lately. Midterm jitters, perhaps. They got to me as much as they got to the students.

The man behind the counter greeted, “The prodigal professor returns.”

I clutched the strap of my bag as I walked up, like I’d been caught at something. “How did you know I’m a professor?”

He smiled and he looked cheeky and young. I found that I couldn’t really tell how old he was. He was youthful and mature all at once. “Lucky guess. I have an instinct for such things.”

Before I could reply, another employee emerged from the backroom, wiping his wet hands. This one was willow-tall, blond, but with the same pointed ears. He said, “Don’t listen to him. Toriv watched you grading papers the other day.”

“I wasn’t watching,” the barista named Toriv protested. He’d been caught, but his grin said he didn’t mind. “Stop looking at me like I’m full of crap. He does have a professor-ly air about him.”

I said, “So I’ve been told.”

“So there.” He didn’t stick his tongue out, but he may as well have. “So, what’ll it be, Prof?”

I ordered a breakfast sandwich and sat down to eat, going over emails with my free hand. Toriv and his fellow bantered behind the counter as they went about doing barista things. Toriv called him Lor and needled him constantly, which was probably annoying, but the man took it with the good humour of one who is used to such things.

Not for the first time, it struck me how cosy and comfortable it was in this place. Gentle music piped in from hidden speakers, which Toriv sang along to absentmindedly as he went about his tasks. The walls were hung with pictures of green landscapes and smaller amateur-looking photographs, objects and memories like that looked like they had been accumulating for years. It was a public space but every touch was personal. It was a place that made you want to linger, to drink in the light and the warmth and the good cheer permeating the room.

I had to leave before too long and found I was reluctant to go, but duty calls. Toriv appeared and swept my plate away as I stood. It was different standing next to him without a counter between us; he was shorter than I’d thought, and when he smiled he looked up at me through his lashes.

“See you next time, Prof,” he said. “Oh, just a sec–”
He stepped quickly to the counter to set down the plate, then returned with a small steaming beverage. I could smell it from here: chocolate and espresso.

“I didn’t order this,” I said, flushing, probably, from the attention.

“On the house,” Toriv said cheerfully. “Figured you could use it, to kickstart your early morning. If you want it.”

I hesitated, perhaps a touch too long, judging from the way his chin tipped away, but then I reached out and took what he was offering, my fingers closing around the top of the cup to avoid his. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you.”

“Just promise you’ll come back,” was all he said. “I want to hear all about you terrorizing the youth of today.”

“I do no such thing,” I replied, but I could feel myself grinning.

Toriv sent me off with a complicit smile and a wave. The mocha was excellent and warm, and suddenly I felt more awake than I had in days.

// Toriv

Café Vanellas sits in the middle of a bustling side street just off downtown Montréal. Normally I’d tell you exactly where — we have to do all our own advertising, you know — but right now my dad is worried just the simple fact of me writing this will attract the wrong kind of attention. Yes, I can see him worrying from here. So here I am, telling you about this café of ours while unhelpfully keeping the location somewhat secret, hoping that by the end of this I’ll have intrigued you enough for you to put the effort into actually finding the place on your own.

In the spirit of thwarted but persistent advertising, here’s an interesting factoid: café Vanellas is staffed entirely by elves. Now before you start crying about the evils of overbearing political correctness, I should tell you we don’t consider ourselves particularly political. I mean I vote and everything, but that’s really all I, personally, have to do with this great country’s politics.

I don’t mean to sound super sarcastic about it. Canada really isn’t so bad, but I’ve lived here my entire life, so honestly what do I know. My parents have lived here all their lives too, though they didn’t always live in the city. But that’s not really important right now.

As I’m writing, I’m starting to realize that I don’t really know what is important, really. To be honest, this whole Toriv-sitting-down-during-his-break-and-writing-about-his-life thing is still a new idea. A work-in-progress, if you will. In-progress enough that my old man over there (I can see him from here, he’s looking at me out the corner of his eye in that way he has, like he suspects I’m doing something naughty) is still capable of being worried about it. But my dad’s always been leery of new ideas. He’s someone who likes to get all nice and comfy in a routine: work, wife, kid, friends. The occasional vacation in the country, when he and my mom get too sick of all the smog. Otherwise, routine, routine, routine. Sometimes I have no idea how we’re related.

I’ve only written a few paragraphs and I’ve already said way too much about my father. Freud would have something to say about that, probably. Ah yes, he would say, stroking his chin and speaking in the kind of thick Austrian accent you only hear in movies, ze subject, he has daddy issues zat stem from childhood. Something something sexual repression something. I don’t really read, so you’d probably know Freud better than me.

For your information, I have never had a single moment of sexual repression in my life, unless you count the one or two times I’ve had to escape through a window because someone’s parents came home early. But I would argue that such occasions were technically brought on by the opposite of sexual repression. Therefore, ergo, etc, etc.

So what have I written about so far? The café, my dad, sex. Yeesh. What would Freud have to say about that, I wonder.

Since I’m sitting in the café right now, I guess I should talk about it some more. Technically, it’s mine. I mean, it’s ours: mine, my parents’, my friends’, because we all built it from the ground up together. But technically it is mine since it’s in my name, and since it was my idea in the first place. You could say I have both physical and intellectual ownership over this place, which I think sounds pretty cool. Toriv Vanellas, owner and manager of café Vanellas, of a certain number on a certain street, Montréal, Quebec, Canada, North America, the World.

I named it café Vanellas because clan Vanellas is my family, and I want everyone who comes in here to feel like they’re among family too. I mean the good kind of family, the kind that smiles when you walk in and actually wants to know how you are. The kind that’ll fix you a hot drink (or a cold one in summer; we do those too, take note) just the way you like it and hand it off with another smile and a “see you later”, like they can’t wait to see you again. The kind of family I’ve always had, because I’ve been lucky.

Because yeah, as much as I like to complain about my dad and sometimes my mom and occasionally about the nerds I call friends, I wouldn’t be here, in this chair, in this café, in this city, if it wasn’t for them. So I guess this coffee shop in the middle of town is my way of giving back.

That, and I’ve always wanted to be the cute barista people come in to secretly fawn over. That’s my idea of corny urban romance.

My dad just looked at me again. How does he know when I’m being vain inside my own head? What kind of freaky dad senses is he possessed of? Just one of the many questions about my parentals I’ve been trying to solve for years, without a whole lot of success. But I guess that’s parents for you. They’ve been through so much you’ll just never know all of it.

Turns out Dad was looking at me because my break was over ten minutes ago, and he was wondering what was taking so long for me to get my ass back into gear. Which just goes to show, you can own your damn business and still have your father get all up in it.

Back to the grind! (That was a coffee joke. I made myself laugh over it. Genius.)

// Mahendra

To begin, I’ll admit that I do not frequent coffee shops all that much. Mostly it’s because I normally drink tea. Horrifically British of me, I know, but there’s no changing where one comes from.

That being said, I have begun to frequent them a little more often. I’ve discovered that the white noise of coffee grinders and steaming wands and conversation helps me concentrate while I’m grading. I’m sure the caffeine does as well, as long as there isn’t too much of it.

There’s a place I’ve discovered recently, just a few blocks from my apartment complex: a café Vanellas, a little place whose plain exterior belies the surprising cosiness and warmth of the interior. Of course coffee shops must normally be inviting and cosy these days, just enough to appeal to the everyday sensibilities of the city worker and student. The atmosphere of a restaurant is important to a lot of people, though it isn’t something I’m used to noticing. Perhaps I’m always too busy to note my surroundings, cosy or not. My own personal failing, the curse of absentmindedness. Or is it the opposite? An overabundance of focus, so much that I simply forget to raise my eyes. If my sister were here, she’d snap her fingers in my face. Look up, will you, smell the roses!

Having said that, I miss her horribly. I haven’t seen her or the girls, her two young daughters, since Christmas. The curse: forgetting to look up for hours, days, weeks at a time. I’m a sham of a brother, truly.

So, the café Vanellas. I never cease to find it incredible that one could live in the same neighbourhood for years and still be discovering things about it. I’d never seen it before that day a few weeks ago, when construction on the road along my usual path to the metro station forced me to deviate from routine. And I suppose my monstrous sweet tooth must have been rearing its head that morning, because it simply wouldn’t let me pass by the little coffee shop until I’d ventured inside to peruse their assortment of cakes and muffins. Sweets for breakfast, there’s a bad habit I’ve never shaken, but needs must.
On that very first day, there was a man behind the counter. I should say an elf, though noting it excessively must seem a faux-pas, these days; they’re about as common a sight as any other race in the melting pot of Montréal. I should clarify that he struck me less by virtue of his race and more by virtue of subjective beauty standards: he had the most striking dark eyes, the most open and charming grin.

“Hello,” he said, “Welcome! Bonjour et bienvenue! What can I get you?”

For a small shop, their pastry selection was extensive, and it took me a moment to settle on a harmless-looking cinnamon cake.

“This is one of my favourite ones,” the man behind the counter told me, though who knows if it was true. “Goes great with a mocha.”

“Tempting,” I said, and it really, really was. The everyday agony of a sweet lover. “But I’ll pass for today.”

“Hope that means you’ll come back,” he said. He grinned again as he said it and placed the bagged cinnamon cake in my hand. “But either way, have a great day.”

I wished him the same and left. The cake was had during the metro ride, and it was exquisite. Unsurprisingly, I craved hot chocolatey drinks for the whole rest of the day, but I do have some measure of self-control.

The next time I brought my patronage to café Vanellas was in the afternoon, maybe a week later. I was restless, overly sensitive to the bustle and noise of the city, but too strung up to simply go home and rest my head. So to the café it was, with a bundle of midterm papers under my arm, with urban exhaustion all over my face.

“So you did come back,” greeted the man behind the counter. His black hair was swept back in a messy ponytail and his hands were very slender. There was an easiness about his every movement, a confidence too pure to be arrogance. Clearly he belonged in this place, he fitted right in just like all the interlocking tables and chairs.

“I did.” I felt shy suddenly, as I often do when I’m noticed. “Thought I’d give that mocha a try.”

He smiled like he’d won a game. “Coming right up, monsieur.”

The mocha was excellent, as I’d hoped. I savoured it as I graded papers at a table by the wide bay window. Patrons came and went, and for every one there came the cheerful “Hello and welcome! Bonjour et bienvenue!” The sun was warm through the window, even with the haziness of the winter sky and the chill of the frozen streets. It was homey and comfortable, and the cup of coffee was warm and sweet to the last drop.

For a fleeting, foolish moment, I imagined his smile tasted the same way. But as is the case with such imaginings, rare as they are, I made sure it was gone in the next moment.