The morning of his twenty-fourth birthday, Lorath Runa woke to the grey London light filtering through his floor-to-ceiling windows and felt absolutely nothing.
Three thousand miles away, it was already evening. You would be asleep. Or maybe you’d remembered, and left a voice note he hadn’t checked yet because he was saving it, hoarding it like a miser with gold. Long distance was hard. His thumb hovered over your contact photo of you, laughing, half-cut off because you’d moved right as he took it and then his phone buzzed viciously in his hand.
Group Chat: The Idiots
Marcus: 7pm. La Petite Maison. Be ready.
Jian: We will literally break down your door.
Marcus: We’re already in the Uber.
Lorath set the phone down. Pressed his palm to his sternum, where missing you lived like a permanent ache. He’d Facetimed you until 2am his time, watching you yawn into your pillow, your voice syrup-slow with sleep. Happy early birthday, you’d murmured. I wish I was there.
He wished you were, too. He wished it so fiercely it sometimes choked him.
By 6:45, his friends were indeed breaking down his door. Lorath answered in a black cashmere sweater, hair still damp, glasses perched low on his nose. He looked, as always, unfairly handsome: sharp jaw, dark eyes, the kind of handsomeness that made strangers stare. He looked, also, murderous.
“I don’t want to do this.” He said flatly.
“Noted.” Marcus shoved a coat into his hands. “Get in the car.”
“You said there would be cake,” Jian offered, steering him by the shoulders. “And a woman. A very beautiful woman, apparently.”
Lorath’s jaw tightened. “I’m not interested.”
“You haven’t even met her.”
“I have a girlfriend.” His voice dropped, quieter now, almost reverent.
His friends exchanged glances with a knowing smirk that Lorath missed. Marcus opened the car door. “Just come. Eat the cake. Then you can go back to moping.”
Lorath got in. Not because he wanted cake, or a woman, or any of it. Because fighting them would take energy he didn’t have, and because somewhere, stubborn and aching, he hoped you might call.
...
The restaurant was warm, golden-lit, filled with the clink of glass and low laughter. Lorath sat stiffly in the velvet booth, pushing around his plate, contributing monosyllables to conversation. His friends were trying. He knew they were trying. They’d ordered his favorite wine, remembered he hated cilantro, didn’t even mock him when he checked his phone under the table.
No new messages from you.
He tucked the phone away, swallowed the disappointment like ash.
“So,” Marcus said, too casually. “About the woman.”
Lorath’s grip tightened on his fork. “I told you-”
“She’s bringing the cake. It’s a surprise.” Jian grinned, unrepentant. “Just… wait. You'll be dying to meet her.”
Lorath said nothing. His mind was not open. It was closed and locked and the only key was in a country far from here, probably eating breakfast right now, probably oblivious to the fact that his chest was a hollow drum.
The lights dimmed slightly. A ripple moved through the restaurant: muted gasps, appreciative murmurs. Lorath didn’t look up. He was calculating time zones, wondering if it was too late to call.
Then Marcus elbowed him. Jian was smirking. The table had gone quiet.
“Look.” Someone hissed.
Lorath looked.
And the world stopped.
You were walking toward him, candlelight catching in your hair You were holding a cake, his favorite, dark chocolate and raspberry, and you were here. Not on a screen. Not in his dreams. Here, in the warm gold of a London restaurant, wearing that dress you knew he loved, looking at him like he was the only man in the world.
The cake was forgotten. The restaurant, the whispers, the knowing grins of his friends all of it dissolved.
[Swipe for more]