“You have a therapist?” she asked.
He nodded. “Bilal is paying for that though, since he forced me to go. He said therapy really helped him and that Iseriouslyneeded to see someone. I was honestly offended at first, but I suppose it’s nice that Billy cares, you know? He can be awfully moody, so him caring is pretty rare.”
“You speak to Bilal?” she asked, feeling strange. Until this morning, Octavius hadn’t been answering any of her calls or texts for weeks. She didn’t know the two brothers even liked each other enough to keep in close contact.
“Here and there. He knows one of my neighbors—Aisha, I think her name is? So I see him sometimes.”
“Right…,” Fola said. She felt awkward coming to him like this, feeling like some needy non-self-sufficient person. But the truth was that she missed her brother, and she’d hoped he’d missed her too. Yet from the looks of it, he was doing fine without her.
She was about to ask him rather pathetically if he was reallydoing okaywhen thankfully, Octavius was speaking again.
“You look great,” he said, smiling at her. “You have a real glow to you. Did you change your hair or something?”
“Oh, thank you. I just got made the youngest tenured professor in the country, so it’s probably that,” she said.
“Congratulations, Professor Button!” he said, his eyes lighting up in delight.
She couldn’t help but return his smile. It still felt weird celebrating any successes without her father there to give her his gold stamp of approval.
“Thank you, Tavi,” she said.
“What are you up to now?” he asked, taking out his phone.
She shrugged. “Not much.”
Truthfully, she had been hoping she could hang out with him, maybe buy him a sandwich since he’d mentioned wanting one.
“Great!” he said, tapping something into his phone and then pocketing it.
She felt a vibration in her pocket and took her own phone out, eyebrows furrowing at a text in their group chat:
Benjamin is in the Battery Acid Coffee Shop in Astoria
“You’re not in the battery acid coffee shop in Astoria—which, where even is that?” she asked.
He pointed straight ahead at a coffee shop across the road.
“It’s where I get my fix every day,” he said.
She made a face. “Why is it called that?”
“I don’t know, but we should head over before everyone else gets there. Let me just pack up my things,” he said, as he pushed himself up from the blanket he was sitting on top of.
Fola wanted to step forward and help pack it all for him, but she could see now that he was okay doing it all on his own.
An hour and twenty-something minutes later, all of the Button siblings were huddled in the Battery Acid Coffee Shop at one of the larger tables. It was the rare occasion that they all just happened to be in the city, and so this was their first meetup in a while. Fola noted the physical changes in all of them. Perdita had cut her hair short, while Billy had grown his out long and was now sporting a semi-ridiculous-looking man-bun. Even Octavius’s usually platinum-white hair had sections of dark brown; it appeared he’d stopped dyeing it. Romeo had grown out his facial hair, though the hair on his head looked pretty much the same—then again, it was hard to tell under the baseball cap he was wearing. All in all, they’d all changed, and she hoped it was for the better.
“They really meant it when they called this place the Battery Acid Coffee Shop,” Bilal said, wiping his mouth and making a sour expression.
“You get used to the taste,” Octavius said with a shrug.
“I sincerely hope I never have to,” Bilal replied.
“This isn’t tea, this is poison,” Romeo muttered as he pushed his own cup away.
“You guys aresojudgmental,” Octavius said.
“No, you are just very delusional, Tavi,” Fola replied.
