“But for now… I guess we’re going to try to enjoy it. The being together, I mean. For real.”
“Aww,” Arya cooed. “Look at you. Finally locked down a permanent supply of Vitamin D.”
Farzan scoffed and rolled his eyes. Ramin swatted at Arya’s shoulder, but Arya ignored him.
“Hey. You know what this means?” he asked.
Farzan narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“Now that kickball season is over, I’m putting together a volleyball crew. You can ask David!”
Farzan laughed. “What makes you thinkI’mdoing it?”
Arya straightened up and leveled Farzan with an intense look. “Dude. You can’t leave me hanging. Todd already backed out.”
Todd’s lease was up at the end of the month, so he and Ramin had been busy packing and moving. Much too busy for a volleyball league.
“Sorry,” Ramin muttered, but Arya waved his hand.
“It’s fine, I get it,” he said. “I’m happy for you. You know that, right?”
Farzan carefully avoided Arya’s eyes. Like him, Arya also wanted Ramin to be happy, no matter what.
Also like him, Arya only gave Todd a B-minus. But Ramin loved him.
“I know.” Ramin smiled this wistful, sweet smile that made Farzan forgive Todd for his terrible taste in music. Any man who made Ramin that happy was worth it, no matter his flaws.
Arya turned back to Farzan. “Anyway, we only need six players. So what do you say?”
“Send me the schedule and I’ll think about it.”
“What about David?”
“I’ll think about telling him, too,” Farzan said, though truth be told, he wouldn’t mind the chance to get sweaty with David more often. Especially if they could have more sweaty sex after.
“Fine,” Arya grumbled and sipped his tea. “Hey. Did I tell you about this guy I met last weekend?”
“You didn’t, and you don’t need to,” Ramin teased, but he leaned in anyway.
Arya’s hookup stories were always chaotic and hilarious.
“Okay, so first of all, his profile pic was a stuffed animal, which you’d think would be a turnoff, but he’d lit it just right and I’ll be damned if that Build-A-Bear didn’t look weirdly sexy…”
Farzan ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He wanted to bang his head on his desk, but it was too full of paper. And what was it with bills always coming on Tuesdays?
It wasn’t the money. The bistro was doing fine, it stayed full most nights—hell, they usually had to turn away guests on the weekends. It was the tedium. And the gnawing anxiety that if he missed one piece of paper, the whole thing would come crashing down around him. He knew it wouldn’t, but still.
Why couldn’t everything be on autopay, like his bills at home?
The more time he spent at Shiraz Bistro, the more he admired his mom, who’d seemed to juggle the endless stream of paperwork and to-do lists and little annoyances with ease. Farzan felt like he was constantly treading water, only a few to-dos away from drowning. Some days he barely had time to get into the kitchen.
Farzan paused his music (theFinal Fantasy X-2soundtrack, and he would hear no blasphemy about either the soundtrack or the game itself, which was a masterpiece) when he heard thumping. There it was again. He stood and groaned; he’d been slouched over his desk too long.
The mail carrier was at the front door with a few small parcels. A couple of the staff had taken to having packages delivered to Shiraz Bistro, since most lived in apartments with shoddy mail security. (Including Farzan, after all the packages he’d had stolen from the mail room at home.)
“Thanks,” Farzan said to the postal worker. As he stretched and enjoyed the sun on his face—he’d definitely been inside for too long—he glanced right at the Trans’ place and froze at the new sign on the window.
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS
