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The first sight Pete had of him was small and intimate—a little figure against the backdrop of the highway toting a bag half his height. He trekked down the road without pause, head bobbing, and Pete tore his gaze away to look at the ad campaign—painted across a canvas as wide as the sky itself—welcoming him into the Chiang Mai Province. It was November now.
The traffic moved forwards and he did too.
Chiang Mai was like Bangkok. When he watched another stream of people invade the crosswalk, salarymen and students alike, he remembered why he’d left in the first place. Too much noise, too many people, too familiar, so he had to wonder why he went through the trouble of even coming here. He was tempted to leave altogether.
“Here’s your Americano.” The woman was wearing a turtleneck under her apron—something it was too hot to ever wear in Bangkok—and her smile was tempered and gentle. She set down a white mug and a plate of cake he hadn’t ordered. “This one is on the house.”
She left before he could ask and Pete stared at the peaks of chocolate frosting that hit a little too close to his heart.
He stayed at an out-of-the-way guest house that had a two-star rating and only one other occupant. The owner never talked outside of business and Pete wondered whether people in Chiang Mai grew to be mountains as well—quiet and selective and wary of strangers.
Towns were small, Pete had realised, and the spaces between them were large. The roads connecting them were messy and broken, sometimes, and reminded him too much of Bangkok and the life he had put on hold to come here.
Soul-searching. He hated the term; he knew what he wanted and how to get it. But perhaps escape was too true. Felt closer to the truth, like hitting an old bruise on a coffee table corner he thought he knew how to avoid by now. It left him with an uncomfortable twinge in his stomach and a bitter taste coating his mouth. Pete pretended like he didn’t notice how big Chiang Mai was and how conquered he felt by the depths of it.
Pete saw him again, the backpacker from the first day in the province. Street after street, avenue after avenue, until he was in some narrow alleyway with no knowledge of how to get back to his recent hotel and his camera a heavy weight around his neck. Between the towering ramshackle buildings on either side of him, he looked small with his mask tucked under his chin and a paper cup of something warm in his hands.
When he took another sip, head turned to the side to watch the buttery shaft of sunlight pooling on a stray cat asleep on a box, cheeks tinged just the slightest red from the cold, Pete took a picture. Felt like he wanted to run, again. But he didn’t. Not yet. He stared down at the zoomed-in photo. The smile across the man’s lips was small, but noticeable, and Pete thought that it looked better than any he had seen in Bangkok.
For a season of sleep and rest and feeling joints ache when climbing out of the covers in the morning, Pete felt all the more alive in Mae Hong Son province. His phone remained ignored, buzzing with messages every once in a while, and Pete could feel the weight of its presence on his mind every time he reached past it. Would it be too much to throw it off this mountain and forget about his life back home?
Wandering around the various towns and cities in Mae Hong Son was tiring. Pete couldn’t complain about it. He knew the firm difference between athletic prowess and city stamina; no matter how much he kept in shape, or valued his full-body muscle training, walking around towns was exhausting. The cracked and lined concrete beneath his soles leeched his energy and thoughts until all he could focus was on walking, one foot after the other.
He saw him again, maybe two weeks into it, walking into the city with that ever-present backpack and his coat zipped up tight. His steps were infinitely light, like maybe he had always been meant for the hustle and bustle of city life and walking, and Pete ducked into a bookstore to watch him.
Was it weird that he followed him a bit? Just for one day, weaving himself a Mae Hong Son that was filled with odd little restaurants and little houses and a field filled with a sea of tiny pink flowers that he could have thrown himself into. He saw a small post office and sent a post card while he was at it, watching the man write diligently on his own one, and went to an old music store filled with CDs, and went to a temple and made modest prayers in silence. And by the end of the day, Pete felt a little lighter, feet aching, the sky howling overhead, and made a prayer at a small shrine for the man he had followed.
It grew warmer the further south he went—winter nothing but a passing fantasy—and Bangkok tugged at his gut in nervous anxiety, calling him back.
Swathes of forests, of farmland, a few cows and pigs, and more trees. Nature seemed overwhelming when he drove and Pete looked forward to the pockets of civilisation he saw; it was too quiet with the trees.
An empty road stretched out and Pete's soul ached looking at the distance to reach the small houses dotting the horizon in the distance. There were two of them and nothing else for miles apart from the city at his back. How long would they survive out there? People were tenacious, but they were living on borrowed time. One disaster and nature would pull the roads back into the earth and swipe away their buildings like a stack of cards.
There was a small photo-booth in the only mall in the town he was staying at and Pete took pictures alone and sent them off in an envelope, marked for home. He wrote on the back with a borrowed ink-pen that left too many splotches in some places and not enough in the rest.
Dad, I miss you. I’ll be back soon.
The storm fell heavier by the second, battering the line of traffic trailing down the highway, and Pete saw him again, walking down the highway with his hood pulled tight around his head and backpack drenched.
He found his window rolled down before he could think, letting in the harsh slap of wind and rain, and he yelled. “Hey! You!”
Past the heavy artillery of rain, past all the senses that told him to close the window, Pete squinted as the man approached his car. He looked like a mouse, the few wisps of hair escaping his hood flat against his head, with soft eyes and a smile playing against his lips like he hadn’t been walking through a storm. Something weird turned in Pete’s stomach.
“Do you want a ride?” Pete asked him. His neck prickled oddly.
“I’m alright,” the man said with a smile.
“It’s going to come down harder.” The radio announced as much once more, warning travellers to be careful, and Pete pushed away the wet hair from his forehead and wiped his eyes. “You can get off once there’s no rain, if you want. Or I can drop you off somewhere if it’s en-route.”
A horn honked behind them and he thought he would be refused, surprised a little when the man nodded hesitantly and walked around to get into the passenger’s seat, hunching into himself to make himself as small as possible. The traffic moved forwards and Pete watched him root through the bag and come up with a towel which he used to dry himself off as best as he could, mumbling apologies under his breath about getting the car seat wet.
“It’s alright,” Pete said. It wasn’t. When had he last allowed someone to drip all over his seat without cussing them out? “Where are you headed?”
“Hua Hin,” the man said wistfully. “The final stretch.”
Pete took a deep breath, a current of it to match the high winds outside, and felt his heart prickle with rain. “Oh?”
“Yeah.”
His name was Kao. He was 27 years old, had a younger sister, and had walked across sixty-five provinces before deciding to go back. He had brown hair—natural, he told Pete—and soft eyes and a softer heart. He lost his wallet in Uttradit province and someone posted it to him in Phayao province with the money intact. He was smart and had studied in the same college Pete had studied in, in Bangkok, but they’d never talked and Pete couldn’t remember him at all.
And he was asleep, now, with his head propped against the tinted window of Pete’s car and condensation blooming everywhere he breathed. This late at night, with only the vast sky, the constant beat of the rain, and Kao’s soft breaths for company, Pete finally felt his shoulders uncoil. Just the slightest.
It was raining in Hua Hin as well. A coconut seller told them they made it there at the worst time of the year—one of the weeks it actually rained, when there were no other tourists, and the beach was a little too chilly to swim in—but Kao had smiled brightly and said that was what he had been looking for. So, Pete followed him. Booked a room in some shady little inn Kao assured him was fine and followed him outside with a plastic bag of snacks and a large towel the inn staff had given them.
They abandoned their slippers three steps into the sand and walked through the firm wetness to a large umbrella. Kao set down the towel and Pete breathed. Inhaled the mixed scent of sea salt and rain and the ozone flickering through the air as he sat down next to Kao. He felt small in front of the waves breaking and breaking against the shore, swallowing the shore and spitting it out, leaving it heavy with water—hollow-boned like a bird.
Kao seemed perfectly content in not talking, arms looped around his knees.
The wind howled in booming crescendo and seeped through the cracks in his wet clothing in a horrible draft. Pete shivered against the cold and accepted the lukewarm can of beer Kao pressed into his hand. Kao knocked the cans together and took a sip. Pete set his into the sand.
“Did your trip work out for you, then?” Kao asked him after a long silence and Pete watched him wipe perspiration off the side of the can, picking at it with his nail.
“Maybe,” Pete sighed. He felt too big and too weak next to Kao—ugly, unpretty, and too violent as he dug his fingers into the sand and thought about loss and the rut he experienced back home. Someone quick to get away when things got tough. Stripped of all the false smiles he gave in advertisements P’Jo still made him do, from time to time, and like he had too much gall. “I don’t know.”
“Hm.” Kao took another long sip and Pete watched the bob of his throat and the drop of beer clinging to his lips that he smacked together. “If you’ll take an opinion from a stranger, I think it did. You look less stressed than you did back in Khon Kaen.”
He wasn’t surprised. They had travelled almost the same path—two lines meeting together—and of course they might have chanced upon each other. But to know that Kao had noticed hi, then, had bothered to remember that until now, made something warm curl in his stomach and maybe Pete hadn’t been as alone as he had thought he was.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Kao laughed, hoarse but true.
Pete didn’t say anything back, lips curling, and he didn’t dare to move when Kao leaned into his shoulder just the slightest—a press of humanity and warmth and just being there. When the rain continued to fall and the cold breeze made his body descend into a set of tiny trembles matched by Kao’s, he realised that he would be quite fine out here, wet in the rain with someone he had never met who warmed his entire left side, his heart. Quiet was hard to find in the city in the first place.
“Let’s go inside before we get a cold,” Kao murmured above the crashing waves, fingers brushing against the soft inside of his wrist for half a second in a touch that burned, and Pete pretended the separation didn’t affect him in the slightest; but it did, of course it did, and he wished maybe they’d met under different, more concrete circumstances.
“Okay.”
Hands skimmed in the sway of the walk, almost held, so nearly held, but ultimately settled for the graze of pinky fingers. It was still raining and damp outside now, three days later, and hardly any food carts populated the streets on the other side of the beach. Pete breathed in the thick, heavy air. Some of the streetlights worked and some flickered, dancing in the dark grey evening, and they kept close to the beach with its chilly waves that lapped his bare feet, breaths heavy in the storm.
“I think it worked out,” Pete answered out of the silence, gaze fixed on the faint stars he could see up ahead. “My trip.”
“Congratulations,” Kao said languidly, body loose as they walked and their shoulders bumped together.
They came to a stop together, watching the rain splash and bounce against the roiling sea, and Pete wondered if the quiet affair would be burned into his memories forever. Something nostalgic, something a little old, like he had experienced it before.
“Want to play a game?” Kao asked him suddenly, dropping to his haunches to run his fingers through the cold water. Pete followed suite. “It’s easy.”
“What game?” Pete asked.
“Just say something you want. We go until one of us doesn’t have anything else they could want.”
“What happens to the loser?”
“Hm, they buy the other ice-cream?”
“Ice-cream in the winter?”
“It’s hardly cold.” Kao offered him a smile, one of the softer ones. “Or they could buy the winner a cheesy souvenir. I want one for my sister.”
“You’re awfully confident you’ll win.”
“You have to be.”
Pete thought about it. “Fine. You’ll buy my dad the worst keychain you can find. He likes collecting them.”
They started small and slow. Socks, slippers, a handkerchief for the long walks, an umbrella that wouldn’t flip inside-out the first chance it got, more sunscreen (but above 75 SPF and with UVA and UVB protection). Kao said something about yet another pair of shoes because he had worn three pairs out. Pete mentioned a mosquito cream because he got bitten all the time.
Kao laughed at that and proudly showed his unmarred arms. Pete rectified it with a light pinch, fascinated as it bloomed red under his fingers, and Kao elbowed him back.
Strawberry ice-cream. Strawberry pocky. Kao made a face at him. Chocolate mocha frappe. Vanilla ice-cream. Latte. Americano. Those little muffins. Those tiny sausage samples because they always tasted better at supermarkets than at home. Fried chicken. Pizza. The lists automatically made themes and neither of them broke the chain.
Walking through the last eleven provinces. Driving through the last eleven provinces. Cheating, Kao laughed, but fine. I’ll allow it. A raincoat. Pyjamas. And on and on and on.
“To have a nice new year,” Kao hummed dreamily, lost in his thoughts as he trailed his fingers through the water. Pete’s knees ached.
“That my dad stays healthy.”
“That we get back home safely.” We.
“That you have an auspicious love-life,” Pete blurted out. “Because you’re nice.”
“You haven’t know me that long,” Kao smiled. He flicked water at Pete’s ankles and he couldn’t feel it over the warmth in his gaze. “That you have an auspicious love-life as well. Because you deserve it.”
His breath caught in his throat a little, eyes stinging because when was the last time someone had told him he deserved something, and Kao looked away first. Stars floated out of his grasp as Pete looked down to watch Kao's red fingers and he knew he’d done it again—fallen in love too quickly for someone he didn’t even know.
“A cup of tea,” Pete licked his lips, fingers itching as they bumped against Kao’s underwater and felt the wet sand under the water. He felt something smooth and pulled it out to look at the shell.
“A warm bed,” Kao added, shivering. He plucked the shell out of Pete’s fingers and turned it this way and that. “It’s a pretty shell. You should keep it.”
“Your number.” Pete swallowed down hard, fingers wrapping around Kao’s and the shell. For a season so harsh and cold with rain, he felt like he was burning up, body aflame. “I want your number. And a date.”
He liked to think he said it because it was too cold now—between the harsh wind and cold rain and the waves biting at their fingers and toes—but also because when would they meet? Would their paths diverge once they got to Bangkok? He had nothing to lose. And if he was going to die, to die in Bangkok’s rut and the awful cycle awaiting him, he might as well ask for all he wants.
“You.”
To this, Kao said nothing. Pete let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding when Kao wrapped fingers around his and tangled them close together wordlessly.
He was asleep, now, with his head propped against the tinted window of Pete’s car and condensation blooming everywhere he breathed. Again. Washed in amber lights as they entered Bangkok and the city centre where he was dropping Kao off, he looked beautiful. Made the gritty, loud, cacophonous city seem like the guest-house he had stayed at in Chiang Mai and looked like peace. Like he was in some happy place with his fingers curled over Pete’s still.
Beautiful, Pete decided in the little glimpses he stole in between the weathered roads and chipped signs. The road, the city, the houses, the company. Beautiful.
He was lost in the city, in his job, when his phone rang and Pete’s heart nearly jumped out of his chest. He picked it up with a smile stifled against the back of his hand—too used to looking fierce in front of his coworkers—and he realised he had never really been subtle about these things, had he?
“Didn’t it take you too long?” He asked, trying to keep the giddy relief out of his voice.
“Maybe,” Kao answered shyly. There was a laugh to his voice and the bustle of people walking around, just like how Bangkok always was. “It’s only been two weeks.”
“That’s half a month.”
“We only knew each other for two weeks,” Kao laughed. He sounded happy, too, not like the quiet and relaxed happy of Hua Hin, but the bright and cheerful happy of someone who was where he wanted to be. Pete felt his own smile widen. “You never called me either.”
“Thought I’d scare you off,” Pete admitted. He touched the photograph from the photo-booth somewhere far away, poking at the happy smile he’d had on then. “I like you a lot.”
There were coworkers eavesdropping on him, he knew it. When had Pete Phubodin ever accepted a personal call this intimate? Never. He thought of Kao and his sweet smile and poked at the photograph one last time, drawing his hand away as he waited for Kao to respond. Had he scared him away for real this time?
“I like you a lot too,” Kao said without hesitation. “But I’d like to get to know you some more. Over coffee.”
“Is that a date?”
“Of course.”