Jeri sighed. “I love you to death, David, but I swear to god, sometimes I think you were put on this earth to give me an ulcer.”
“Someone’s got to keep you on your toes.”
“I have a wife for that.” She stood with a groan David felt in his own joints. Restaurant life was not for the faint of heart—or the faint of body. “Seriously, though. I’m glad you met this guy, even if you fucked it up at the end. Life’s short. Seize joy where you can.”
“I didn’t fuck it up!” David said. “It was a mutual thing.”
“Mm-hmm.” Jeri pursed her lips. “Sure, David. Come on.”
David swung by finance bro’s table. He was boring his date with (painfully inaccurate) trivia about Bordeaux wines; David thought about correcting him, but honestly, 90 percent of the finance bros he’d ever known had a terminal allergy to being wrong. So he just topped both glasses up and moved on.
As he passed by the host stand, Kyra flagged him down.
“Everything okay?”
“Aside from the whole fryer debacle?” Kyra shrugged. “Fine. Hey, you free a week from Monday? The thirtieth?”
“I’m not letting you set me up with anyone,” David said automatically. But actually, maybe that’s exactly what he needed: some meaningless sex with a stranger, to help him get the meaningless (but quantifiably excellent) sex with Farzan out of his mind. “Actually—”
“Oh my god, I know, I know,” Kyra said, hands raised to ward off David’s annoyance. “I got tickets to the new Wiley exhibit opening. You want to come with?”
“Okay, now you’re just trying to set me up with you.”
Kyra laughed, a high crystal thing that started in her belly and made her eyes crinkle up.
“David, I’m so far out of your league, I’m playing a different sport.”
“Damn. You’re really talking me into this.”
On the one hand, Kehinde Wiley was incredible, and David loved his art. There weren’t many queer Black artists at Wiley’s level, and David had never gotten to see any of his work in person.
On the other hand, a day taking in the museum meant a day of not studying. Any break in his momentum now, no matter how small, could end up with disastrous consequences.
He was about to say no when Jeri walked past, nodding at him before sharing a long-suffering look with Kyra.
She was convinced David didn’t have any friends. Well, she was wrong.
“Sure. I’d love to go. Send me the details.”
fourteen
Farzan
Farzan-joon, you mind taking out the trash?” Persis asked.
“Sure, Maman.” Farzan grabbed the huge bag from the kitchen and hauled it out to the dumpster in the back lot of the strip mall where Shiraz Bistro stood. As soon as he opened the lid, he was assaulted by the smell of nail polish remover, courtesy of the Trans’ nail salon next door.
The salon itself was already dark; they closed at seven p.m. As a child, Farzan had wandered into their salon when he got bored, admiring the wall of colorful nail polishes. Maybe that should’ve been an early sign of his nascent queerness, but his parents had a lifetime of gender expectations courtesy of their upbringings in Iran. It honestly hadn’t occurred to them that their oldest son could be anything but straight.
Not that they’d been unsupportive in any way at all. Farzan knew how lucky he was. When Farzan came home from grad school one day and announced he was gay, his parents had accepted him without batting an eye. He was luckier than Arya, who’d gotten into a huge fight with his parents (though they’d since come around), or Ramin, who’d lost both his mom and dad before he even had the chance to come out to them.
Persis and Firouz had more or less adopted Ramin after that—though they’d already treated Ramin (and Arya) like extra sons pretty much from the first day Farzan came home, excited he’d made friends with other Iranians at school.
When Farzan stepped back inside, Firouz was giving the grill one last scrub, while Persis stood over his shoulder, talking in rapid Farsi.
“We should tell him,” his mom said.
“We said we’d wait.”
