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Today was not a Friday, but Nagi still looked to the door every time the little bell jingled in the doorway. He pushed the cake sitting in front of him further into the counter to conceal it from nosy patrons and returned to idly polishing a glass while the bartenders cleaned up a particularly heavy happy hour.
The bar was once again quiet with the only patrons being a pair of regulars who were professors in the neighboring university. They usually weren’t here this early into the night, but Nagi was not complaining about their presence. He had the habit of eavesdropping on their conversations when he was there on Thursdays. He started scheduling himself around their visits in order to get his fill of academic gossip, even though the bar was fully staffed. Yet tonight, he didn’t even bother listening in as he listlessly looked towards the door.
It was stupid waiting here. Nagi knew that. He was better off going home and not getting in the way of the other bartenders. But, he couldn’t stop himself from staying where he was. He pulled up a bar stool, sighed so deeply he attracted the attention of his customers as he stretched out on the bar counter, and laid his head in his arms. He watched the ebb and flow of the streets outside, hoping the door would open.
His staff did not bother him and wordlessly stepped around him, continuing with their duties. The professors returned to their conversation and slowly the sun dipped down the horizon. As the evening drew in, the bar grew louder with the civilized conversation of groups of office workers from the trading firms downtown came in, ready to burn some of their Wall Street money on craft beers, and old-fashioneds.
Even with the considerable rush, Nagi remained on his stool watching the door. He hummed in response to the few questions the employees threw at him, but did not pitch in. The servers let him be. By now, they figured out who he was waiting for. Only after the streetlights replaced the sun, did Nagi finally move to help his staff with the influx of customers but instinctively swerved when the jingle of the bell rang through the room again.
It was Reo.
Nagi raised his hand, almost calling out to the other man, but reluctantly set it back down when Reo turned, revealing that he was on a phone call. His dark circles had worsened since the last time he came around. His purple hair was still slicked back into a tiny ponytail, but after what looked like a long work day, little strands fell forward and framed his face. His bangs brushed against his eyebrows as he frowned and repeated into the phone, “Yes, I’m sure, Father. You all can continue without me. I have something to finish today.”
Reo rolled his eyes when his father on the other side of the phone line obviously tried to object. He was not the type of person to hang up on anyone, much less his father, so Nagi watched as Reo made it across the bar into a booth, all the while convincing his father that it was a good idea to miss his own birthday dinner.
What made Reo choose his ex-husband’s bar over the swanky party his family was throwing on his birthday? Nagi didn’t question his choice. After all, it was that ridiculous hope which kept him in the bar today. Reo would come to his bar and Nagi would greet him with a birthday cake as a token of goodwill.
Nagi was very careful with his cake selection. He had visited the bakery near their university that Reo used to frequent when the burden of grading and research pressed down on him, when he thought no one was looking. Nagi got a full cake of the one flavor he saw Reo ever indulge in. It was a smooth tiramisu with a layer of decadent mascarpone cream.
He placed the cake on a tray with some cutlery. He fiddled with the presentation and looked up at the table Reo sat at. Reo was still on call with his father, but he had pulled out his laptop and was typing furiously. He rested his forehead on his hand out of exasperation. Speaking to Nagi’s ex-father-in-law was always a war of attrition. Nagi had always given up almost immediately, but Reo always asked for what he wanted anyway. Nagi wondered if the Mikage head of family was speaking to Reo as a father or as a boss right now.
Reo never looked his way and continued working while fending off his father’s insistence. Nagi put down the tray in disappointment. He waved over the server heading to take Reo’s order.
“Take this to him. Don’t tell him it’s from me though.” He instructed.
His employee looked at him with a mixture of pity and understanding. Nagi never told the staff his history with Reo, but they saw the Mikage heir in the bar often enough that they slowly pieced together their own version of the events.
Nagi observed Reo as the server placed the cake on his table. He paid it no attention and just nodded at her. Right when she was about to leave, Reo called her back. When the server returned to the bar, Nagi stopped her.
“What did he order?”
“Whiskey on the rocks,” she replied.
Nagi almost thought he didn’t hear her right. Whiskey? Reo didn’t drink hard liquor anymore. Especially when he was working. He never drank anything harsher than wine with his laptop open. As a bar owner, Nagi still complied. He picked out a smooth bourbon and poured a drink.
When the server brought it back to Reo, he had finally ended his phone call. Reo accepted his drink graciously and threw her one of his lightning smiles. Reo was always dashing, but Nagi noticed how his mouth was set too tight and his eyes still were dim in the warm woody lighting of the bar. He watched Reo sip his whiskey. He mulled it over once or twice, studying the ice in his glass before downing it all in one go. He set the glass down next to the cake, still paying it no attention. Before long, Reo asked for another.
Nagi was not the one who poured it. A new group of loud men in crinkled office wear burst into the bar, taking up the bar counter and blocking his view. He sighed and inevitably got to work. He wanted to catch another glimpse of Reo as he poured round after round of drinks for his patrons. They ordered shots and whiskey sours alike, still young and spry from the looks of it. They were only a few years younger than Nagi and were celebrating one of their friends passing their A exam and advancing to candidacy for their PhD.
Ah, the A exam. He never made it that far in grad school, dropping out sometime near the end of his second year, so he never celebrated this achievement. And, his relationship had long soured when Reo passed his. Nagi was not invited to the party.
The young men picked up a conversation with Nagi in their excitement. They were also in physics grad school. The very one he attended.
“Say, Mr. Bartender,” one of them called him over, “Did you always want to become a bartender? You must make good money near a school like this.”
“No, I dropped out of grad school to open this bar,” Nagi responded, shaking a cocktail for one of the other members.
The students hooted with laughter, slapping each other on the back. “That sounds so much better than a PhD, man. I’m glad it’s working out for you.”
“In that process, I also got divorced, so maybe it’s not.”
The employees who heard him stopped for a second to stare. When Nagi didn’t elaborate, they returned to work, but gave each other conspicuous glances as if they confirmed something about their boss. The PhD students fell quiet and meekly sipped their drinks, until one brave guy quipped, “Well, good thing none of us got game, so we don’t have to worry about that!” The crowd roared in agreement and fell back into their merriment.
When the kids finally left, it was quite late and the bar fell into its pre-closing slumber. There were only one or two customers, sitting on their own, and probably working through some demons of their own. Nagi left the bar counter to help wipe down some tables.
Reo still remained at his booth. His laptop was still open, but he was hunched over a legal pad scribbling down what was probably calculations. The cake remained untouched, but a small army of whiskey glasses now populated the table. A server stopped by to hand him another drink. He set it aside and continued to write.
Nagi abandoned his dishrag on a table and marched over to Reo’s seat. As Reo reached over for what seemed to be his sixth– no, seventh drink, Nagi grabbed the glass and downed it instead.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Reo looked up in annoyance when his whiskey disappeared before his eyes. When he saw Nagi, the annoyance deepened into bitterness. To put it lightly, Reo looked like shit.
Of course, he looked like shit when he was married to Nagi as well. They were in physics grad school, for fuck’s sake. But, at least then, Reo’s eyes shone when he was at a blackboard, working out a new idea for his hypothesis. Now, he looked tired from the inside out. His work is pristine on the paper in front of him, but it was terse, it was complete, and Nagi could tell that it completely bored him.
There was nothing Reo hated more than being bored. The Mikage Reo that Nagi once knew would never do something he found boring for this long. Nagi didn’t understand his ex-husband anymore. After worrying for his well being, Nagi was relieved that Reo was not finding his transition to corporate life difficult. Then, why was he running himself this ragged? On his birthday, nonetheless.
“Let’s eat cake,” Nagi couldn’t be the one who saved Reo from his boredom, but he would feel bad if he tried to drink himself out of it.
“I’m busy, Nagi.”
“My name is Seishiro,” Nagi corrected. “I stopped being Nagi when you married me.”
Usually, it was the other way around, with Nagi insisting that Reo use his pre-marital name. Reo refused, since Nagi took on the Mikage name when they got married and still didn’t give it up legally.
“Fine,” Reo conceded, “I’m busy, Seishiro. I’d like my drink replaced.”
“The bar is closed,” Nagi deadpanned. He was trying to get a rise out of Reo and pry him off his work.
“Don’t piss me off today,” Reo didn’t take the bait. Of course, he saw right through these childish tricks. He continued reviewing his notes and began typing them up on his laptop, paying no attention to Nagi still staring him down.
Back in grad school, everyone thought that Reo had an inhuman amount of patience to put up with Nagi’s bullshit, but what they didn’t know was that Nagi had just as much patience, if not more, to keep Reo in check. So, he ignored Reo ignoring him and cut two slices of the cake. He placed one next to Reo’s notepad and sat down next to him in the booth.
“That loud group of kids who came by earlier were physics PhD students.”
Reo simply hummed in response.
“They reminded me of us in grad school.”
“Look how that turned out,” Reo let out a dry laugh.
“I think it turned out fine, actually.”
Reo stopped typing. He narrowed his eyes at Nagi, but elected not to respond. Nagi held his gaze and took another bite of the cake. Oh dang, it was good cake. Reo always had good taste. As Nagi challenged Reo to respond, he imagined curiosity in those purple eyes, he imagined them analyzing his own looking for an explanation, he imagined hurt. He couldn’t see it anymore, of course. Reo would never let him see it. But, it wasn’t hard to think about. After all, his ex-husband was here almost every week. He never drank as much as he did today, but that didn’t mean the alcohol didn’t betray his mind.
“You’re off downtown following your father’s footsteps to become a bigshot businessman. And, the bar is doing quite well these days,” he gestured at the glasses strewn between them, “You certainly are doing your part to keep us in business.”
Reo stayed silent, but picked up his fork, poking at the slowly deflating mascarpone layer. Nagi continued eating, letting his words hang in the air.
“What’s with the cake, Seishiro? How did you know I’d be here today?”
“I just had a feeling,” Nagi lied. He just hoped Reo would come around. In the very likely situation that he didn’t, Nagi was going to eat the cake on his own after closing time. But, Reo didn’t need to know that.
Reo finally took a bite. “It’s good. It tastes like–”
“Tastes like the bakery two streets down near campus.”
“Yeah, I used to go there all the time when we were students,” Reo stopped himself. HIs body tensed when he realized what that meant. Nagi had the grace to leave out that he not only remembered the bakery Reo went to but also his order.
“I didn’t expect you to get me cake.”
“It’s good cake.”
“It’s good cake,” Reo repeated, smiling to himself. His smile wasn’t as wide as Nagi remembered, but it was the first time he saw one on Reo today.
“You brought work into my bar today,” Nagi leaned over to peek at Reo’s laptop.
Reo closed his laptop and returned it to his bag. “Oh, it’s nothing important. I finished the models hours ago, I was just typing up some edits for other people.”
It was Nagi’s turn to narrow his eyes. Why would some simple edits stress Reo out this much? It wouldn’t be enough to keep him this late. “Then why didn’t you go to your birthday party?”
Reo jerked away. “How do you know about that?”
“Your mother sent me an invitation last week. I didn’t go because–” Nagi gestured vaguely to the space between them and Reo laughed. “Also, I was scheduled today and couldn’t skip work.”
“Of course, Seishiro,” Reo smiled knowingly before burying his face in his hands. “I didn’t go because the girl my parents are trying to set me up with was going to be there.”
“So you manufactured a crisis at work to get out of attending your own birthday party?”
Yes, but I don’t think it worked,” Reo complained, “My mom isn’t taking no for an answer, so I guess I have to meet her eventually.”
An ice pick sank deep into Nagi’s heart.
Reo was moving on? Reo was moving on! Of course, Reo was moving on. He was a highly sought after bachelor. Despite being a divorcee, Reo had his pick of ladies everywhere. Nagi was no longer an obstacle. He couldn’t stop Reo. He shouldn’t! But, maybe Nagi should’ve gone to the party after all. Just to see the pretty heiress that Reo would eventually end up with. He bit his lip in displeasure, but replied, “I’m sure she’s nice, Reo.”
Reo grimaced and pushed a piece of cake around with his fork, “If you say so, Seishiro.”
The conversation held off there with neither Nagi nor Reo acknowledging what would happen once Reo actually did meet this girl. What would happen to these visits? What would happen to the cake? What would happen to Nagi?
Reo finally set down his fork, and Nagi moved to collect the plate along with Reo’s whiskey glasses. When he placed his own plate on the tray he was carrying, Reo interrupted him.
“Thanks Seishiro,” Reo placed his credit card on the table, “It really was good cake.”
Nagi eyed the card in suspicion. His shoulders slumped. Once again, Reo drew a line between them. Reo never had to pay at his establishment, considering that, all in all, he actually owned it and Nagi was just working to eventually buy it off him. The card on the table broke this unsaid agreement, moving Reo from being a benefactor, to being Nagi’s investor. He just wasn’t in Reo’s life like that anymore. Nagi ignored it and went to put the dishes away.
“Happy birthday, Reo.”
When Reo came to the counter to ask for Nagi, and pay for his whiskey, Nagi hid in the kitchen. Nagi’s employees loyally refused to take the heir’s card, and after Reo insisted on paying, they sent him away citing the bar’s closing time.
Nagi only emerged from the kitchen when he was sure Reo had left. The cake was still on the table. Reo couldn’t take it with him. Just like he couldn’t take Nagi.
Nagi took it home instead.