Page 49 of Signal No. Us

Later, after most people had gone home and they’d stacked the chairs and covered the projector, Allan and Robby stepped out into the cool night air.

The new plywood sign loomed above the door, gleaming faintly under the streetlight.

“Looks good,” Robby said.

“Too late to change it now. If it’s ugly, we’ll just call it an experiment.”

“That’s what you said about your emo haircut in high school,” Robby said.

“That was an experiment too. Failed.”

They stood there a while, both looking up, the plaza behind them humming faintly with people lingering over fishballs and gossip, the noise soft and distant out by the cinema wall, like the sea under a calm sky.

“Thank you,” Allan said, surprised by how much weight sat on the small word. “For everything. For waiting. For deciding to stay.”

“Me too,” Robby said. “Thank you for agreeing to try again.”

Allan glanced at the dark window of his own house, two streets over, and back at Robby, and found the question arriving easier than he expected.

“Want to come over?” he asked. “To the house. Just for, coffee. Water. Or to check the structural integrity of my bed frame.”

Robby’s brows shot up. “Subtle.”

“I’m very smooth. It’s on my CV.”

“Your mom?”

“Asleep,” Allan said. “She’ll be dreaming about incident reports and honoraria.”

Silence hovered a second too long to be casual.

“If you’re tired—” Allan started, giving him the exit, the way he always tried to now.

“Tired, yes,” Robby said. “But not of you.”

The simple honesty of it punched the air clean out of Allan’s lungs, more than any storm ever had.

He opened the door.

“Then come in,” he said.

CHAPTER 27

Inside, the house felt smaller without the BEBES, like it had exhaled.

The living room lamp cast a warm puddle on the floor. A fan whispered lazily in the corner. Somewhere in the kitchen, a single plate waited in the drying rack, haloed by the faint smell of dish soap and garlic.

Cora had left the porch light on for them and a note on the kitchen table, in her precise teacher’s handwriting:

Eat if you’re hungry. Don’t be loud. I love you both.

“Your mother left us a curfew note,” Robby said, reading over his shoulder, equal parts touched and mortified.

“She’s efficient,” Allan said. “Threat and blessing in one paragraph.”

Oryo trotted in ahead of them and made a beeline for Allan’s room, as if this were the natural order of things.

“He looks like he’s got an agenda,” Robby said.