Chapter Text
In New York, Kaveh lived in the liminal space; the fifteen-minute walk to his Bushwick apartment from the Morgan Ave L stop, the elevator ride up thirty-one floors to his company’s Bryant Park office, the Saturday hours between waking up at 1pm and meeting friends by 8pm for dinner, drinks, pregames, concerts, clubs, whatever. It was fun. It was good. But then he’d blinked and it’d been five years since college, time slipping away like the last notes of a symphony, more echo than sound.
Another reason to like architecture, he supposed; buildings gave shape to time. He could trace the New York skyline and place himself amid its evolving silhouette. The Little Island (tacky, he thought) had opened the same week he’d been promoted at work. He and Tighnari had celebrated with a picnic and champagne, and it had all felt very Sex & the City until they received a $50 fine from the Parks Department. The cute brownstone around the corner had been demolished the same week he’d broken up with Alhaitham. It’d felt cliché. He’d cried anyways.
In the weeks after things ended, Alhaitham’s absence had been omnipresent; Kaveh felt him in the weekday dinners he now ate alone, in the way his mattress now seemed far too big for one person, in the realization that the last time he’d kissed Alhaitham was the last time he ever would and he hadn’t known that at the time. It had felt like the world was going to end, but then it didn’t, it kept moving, and that indifference had hurt just as much.
Still, he woke up every day, brushed his teeth, went to work, cooked dinner, washed the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, saw his friends. Life continued. Eventually, the riptide of grief mellowed into a ripple and one day the water was quiet. Three years, and he’d gotten over him. At least, that’s what he'd told himself until today, when his eyes met Alhaitham's from across the bookstore.
Time had been kind to Alhaitham, Kaveh thought, though perhaps that wasn’t the kind of thing one said about the years between twenty-three and twenty-six. There were constants — the same intense malachite eyes, the same shock of white-gray hair, new AirPods but still tuning out the world around him — and variables. He had filled out more, cords of muscle on display through his ribbed black tank. A piercing dangled from his left ear, a green gemstone — jade, maybe? — catching the light. He was still the most beautiful thing Kaveh had ever seen. He felt sick.
“What are you doing here?” Kaveh’s voice crackled with surprise.
“Hello to you, too.”
It was cordial enough, but Kaveh’s nose wrinkled with annoyance. “Can you take out your headphones when we’re talking?”
“Are we going to be talking for long?” To the uninitiated, he might sound cool, even-keeled, but Kaveh recognized the flash of defiance in Alhaitham’s eyes.
“God, the first time I see you in three years and we’re already arguing?”
“I said ‘hello’, you’re fighting with yourself.” He placed his Airpods in their case. “And it wouldn’t be the first time you’d seen me in three years if you hadn’t blocked me on Instagram. And Tiktok. And Snapchat.”
“I didn’t block you, Dehya blocked you from my phone.” It sounded childish because it was, and Kaveh’s face went hot with a mixture of embarrassment and anger.
“Yes, because in the three years since I’m sure you never had a quiet moment to exercise your own autonomy.” His tone was incisive, bristling with something approximating hurt.
“I—” The counter-argument died in his throat. He couldn’t tell him that Dehya had only blocked him because Kaveh had been seconds away from drunk texting his way into some ill-fated reconciliation. That afterward, it had felt oddly final because really, what would reopening that door even signal? It was over for a reason. They were done. He found himself apologizing. “Look, I’m sorry. I was twenty-four and sad and maybe a little dramatic.”
“You? Dramatic?”
“Look if you’re going to be a dick about my apology, I’m sorry for even try—”
“I get it.” Alhaitham interjected. “You look well, Kaveh.” With that, he left the bookstore.
~~~
“And he just fucking walked out! And he never told me what he was doing there.” Kaveh complained to Tighnari and Cyno over Korean food later that night.
“He does live here.” Cyno pointed out.
“And famously likes books.” Tighnari continued.
“Don’t take his side!” Kaveh whined. “And don’t be fooled. He lives by Columbia, why would he just happen to be at a bookstore in Brooklyn? No, he’s trying to send a message.”
“You sound crazy.”
“Maybe have a side of food with your soju.” Tighnari pushed the bibimbap toward Kaveh. It smelled earthy and warm, but Kaveh would not be deterred.
“I’m not drunk!” He was a little, and he knew the flush of his cheeks betrayed that. “And even if I was, I’m still right. I know him.”
Cyno sighed to Tighnari. “Well, it was good while it lasted.”
“Yeah, what has it been, two years without the specter of Alhaitham haunting our meals?”
“You’re being generous. It’s been eighteen months.”
“Nothing good lasts forever.”
“I hate both of you.” Kaveh glared at them in turn before tonging a generous serving of bulgogi onto his plate.
“I’m sorry that he booked it out of the store, Kaveh.” Cyno offered.
“…”
“…”
Kaveh and Tighnari exchanged a pained look.
“Well, at least we all have a reason to drink now.”
~~~
If he’d been buzzed at dinner, Kaveh was unambiguously drunk by the time he arrived back to his apartment. Not the untz untz untz drunk that portended a night out dancing with friends, but rather the kind that lent a false sense of profundity to every passing thought. He trudged up the five-floor walk up, leaned a little too heavily on his door as he turned the key, and half-walked half-fell into his home. Alhaitham would tell him to drink some electrolytes before bed, but fuck Alhaitham.
He fumbled for the switch. An overhead chandelier illuminated the room, painting a hazy yellow-orange light on the walnut floors and brick walls. Kaveh’s unit was small, but he’d managed to appoint it with a curated assortment of the old and the new. An intricately woven tan and white Tabriz rug here, an abstract painting titled simply “Knot” that he’d won at auction there. A Brutalist stool with books piled high here, a mid-century media console housing his PS5 there. It was earthy, organic, eclectic, and thoroughly him. He’d bought most of the pieces with money he barely had, but he’d always found beauty worth the price.
Besides, they were investment pieces, he lied to himself.
He sat down at his coffee table, pushing aside a half-finished jigsaw puzzle of the Parthenon, and took out his phone. It turned out he was also “stalk your ex on social media” drunk. Two clicks aaaaand unblocked.
Kaveh rolled his eyes as he scrolled through Alhaitham’s Instagram. “It wouldn’t be the first time you’d seen me in three years if you hadn’t blocked me on Instagram.” Pfft. He’d posted exactly once in the time since their breakup, a still from some camping trip he’d taken in upstate New York, looking serious as ever. Kaveh absently wondered who had taken the photo and hated the instinctive jealousy that thought summoned. Anyway, that was that, nothing more to see. He moved to block Alhaitham again — better safe than sorry — but his finger slipped (he swore it) and instead, he found himself traversing the past.
Alhaitham had never been one for social media. Didn’t see the point, he’d said.
“I know what I look like. You know what I look like.”
“What about documenting the moment! Creating a time capsule!”
“That’s certainly what the executives want you to think. Is your phone’s camera reel any less of a record? Must it be uploaded?”
“Some of us actually like connecting with other people.” Kaveh grumbled. “I enjoy seeing what my friends post and cheering them on. And it's about participating in the cultural zeitgeist, understanding it in a way.”
It had been the world’s most annoying argument, one where neither was particularly wed to his position — Kaveh was not some grand social media apologist, nor was Alhaitham a Luddite. They bickered for the love of the game. Alhaitham had started posting more after they officially started dating later that year, though as Kaveh pored over the photos with fresh eyes afforded by three years of distance and two bottles of soju, he realized that nearly half were just candids of himself. Why hadn’t Alhaitham taken them down?
Twenty posts total, and he’d hit the bottom of Alhaitham’s profile. He sighed. Enough reminiscing on Memory Lane, time to block the street off. Then he saw the second to last post.
October was a temperamental month in New York. One day, the sun was dancing between the skyscrapers, temperature soaring to the eighties. The next, frost coated the grass of Central Park until it crunched underfoot. The leaves, victims of early autumn’s mood swings, were just as indecisive, clinging to the last vestiges of green before surrendering to a rusted orange. It was a time defined not by the vibrancy of summer nor the sleepiness of winter, but by transition itself. There was beauty in that. People didn’t know how to appreciate the space in between.
All this, Kaveh explained to Alhaitham as they strolled around the campus quad. They’d met a month ago, and Kaveh wasn’t yet sure how to feel about him. He hated him, obviously — Alhaitham was arrogant, critical, cynical, and terribly aware of his own perfection. But there was something else about him, something that Kaveh couldn’t name but that drew him in nonetheless.
“Seems like much ado about nothing. It’s a month. The weather changed.”
Or maybe there wasn’t.
“You’re impossible. You don’t know anything about beauty.” Kaveh huffed, turning away from him.
Alhaitham shrugged. “Say cheese.” He snapped a photo of Kaveh’s profile.
“Don’t you dare post that!”
“Don’t you want to be documented among all the beauty?”
“You’re just going out of your way to spite me.”
“I never go out of my way. For anything.”
“Oh, so spiting me is just part of the plan?”
“A welcome side benefit.”
Oppositional from the start, Kaveh laughed to no one. But there was honesty in opposition. Trust, too, that dialog was allowed, that independence was a norm. Kaveh had spent so much of his life making himself as small as he could, contorting into the shape of others’ needs. In the beginning, that spark of fight Alhaitham pulled out of him had felt like exhaling for the first time. Conflict wouldn’t break them. And it hadn’t until it did.
K: i can’t believe you still have this photo up. i look terrible.
He shot the text off without a second thought, attaching a screenshot of the post. It was a mistake, he knew that. Dehya could smack him later. He moved to put his phone down and get ready for bed, but the reply was instant.
A: You always knew how to make an entrance.
A: Are you drunk?
Rude.
K: what are you doing up? it's 1:30am!!
A: Last I checked we share a time zone.
That seemed irrelevant. He could have at least had the good grace to ignore the text until morning.
A: I can take the post down. Is that all?
Kaveh went red. He had not, in fact, broken the silence to complain about a photo from 2016.
K: you don’t have to.
He exhaled. He started typing a reply three or four times, but the right words eluded him because really, how did one start? He knew what it must look like to Alhaitham, the lingering dot dot dot chat bubble betraying his uncertainty. But he'd come this far; he pushed down his anxiety and hit send.
K: i actually wanted to see if you’d be down to grab a coffee soon? it’s been a minute
A minute that had turned into minutes into years. But this, he had decided, sounded more casual.
A: Text me when you’re sober.
Fuck him.