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Christmas fell on a weekday this year, not that it mattered to you. Winter break was winter break all the same. You’d filled the past week and a half with as much sleep as you possibly could. It was pretty easy to, when the days were all cloudy and your closest friends were abroad in Taiwan.
Bruce and TK seemed a bit reluctant to leave you behind, but Eileen made it clear the trip was for family only. What that says about TK is something you haven’t bothered to peel back. You were fine with it. Families need to stick together.
Your mother called you on Christmas day, early in the morning, and talked to you for two hours about her adventures in Spain with your father, who popped in at the five and fifty-five minute mark to add a brief comment before disappearing into the brightly-lit expanse of the rented villa.
You nodded and mmh-hm’d at the right moments, fingers rubbing the edges of the seafood poster they’d sent to you in the mail. You were fine.
Yet, for some reason, you were not a fan of early-morning calls and never would be.
Which is why, right when you started to drift back asleep before eight in the morning, your body feeling like it was floating nestled between your soft blankets, you groaned when your phone rang, because you were an idiot and forgot to put the thing on mute.
You grab your phone with clumsy fingers off the nightstand.
You glance at the caller ID.
Charles.
Your friend’s brother you’ve met literally once.
Holy shit.
You drag yourself into a sitting position against your headboard as if he can somehow see you through the phone.
It wasn’t like the two of you never contacted each other after that fateful Thanksgiving day. Sure, you never called, and he never called, and your only text exchange was a one-sided series of questions from you about baking castella, but that had to count for something, right?
Your phone continues blaring its ringtone.
You tap the green button. “Hey Charles. How are you?” you ask before coughing. Stupid dry mouth.
“Are you well?” he asks, voice deep, all while you fumble for the thermos of hot water you keep next to you at night that’s likely gone cold. “You-you can’t drink too much cold. Cold drinks.”
“I’m fine,” you say after a few sips of tepid water. His voice is a bit slurred, but so is yours. “How are you?”
“Fine. All fine.” There’s a long pause, and you’re convinced he hung up before he blurts out, “Happy New Year.”
“...Thanks?” It’s 7:55 AM on the 31st, an hour past sunrise at best. A few stubborn streaks of sunlight try to make their way out from behind your curtains. As the second tick by and your tight-handed grip on your phone becomes ever firmer, clouds eclipse even those little bits of light. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. You, too.” Charles must be out of breath, or something. “Are you well?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, just had to-Charles, didn’t you just ask me this?” you say without thinking.
“I did. Fuck. I did. Just forgot. Sorry.”
You narrow your eyes even if nobody else is there to see them. Slurred speech, forgetting things.
The realization hits you.
Of course Charles drunk-dialed you, because who would willingly contact you on a holiday outside of your own parents? Even Bruce and TK forgot to leave a message on Line for Christmas. “Charles, I’m going to hang up. You need sleep.”
“No, no. This is important,” he says with all the seriousness he can muster, which is unfortunately no different from his default voice. “The castella. Castella. You were mixing the dry ingredients one after the other. You need to mix them all together first, then fold it in four times. Four parts. I mean four parts, one parts at a time.”
One parts? That’s not a plural. “Hold on, lemme get something to write with,” you say, scrambling to grab an envelope off the nightstand and a pen. Your hand quivers a little as you scribble down his instructions, not out of fear. “...Done.”
And you decide to humor him, because it’s nice of him to at least call you. “Does the humidity in Taiwan make it rise faster?”
“No. Should be fine for you. Use the zarame sugar. It looks like rice crackers. Tiny rice crackers. You should-do you have enough to eat?”
“Yes, Charles, I do,” you say, an unbidden smile forming, heartbeat getting faster. Loud popping noises boom from the speakers on your phone. You’re in shock at first, wondering if Charles got shot (you thought they didn't have guns in Taiwan like they do here), but the popping has a pattern. “Hey, are those fireworks?”
“Yes,” Charles says, voice tinny amongst all the noise.
“Is it the show in City Hall? I’ve heard good things about it.”
“...How did you know?” He sounds genuinely bewildered. You feel like the smart one for once.
“Oh. One of my,” you’re hesitant to use the word ‘friend,’ as the most you’ve done is copy off each other’s lab results, “acquaintances in med school visits her grandparents once a year, so she always sees the fireworks. Sorry if that came out of nowhere.”
By now, you’ve straight up forgotten what else you were going to ask. Probably something about if he’s eaten at RAW. Are they still open?
“No. Not out of nowhere.” He lets out a gentle exhale of amusement, audible through the phone. “Lots of red…orange. Red and orange. You’d like it here.”
You never really had a favorite color, but you’d always appreciated red and orange and the other bright warm colors dotting Alhambra during the town’s Lunar New Year festival. It was the one day your family came together.
“Really? Send me a photo. If you can.” You’re quick to add on that last part. You really don’t want Charles to fall off a building or something. Drunk people do weird things, as evidenced by TK’s unfortunate encounter with a pedestrian crossing sign at an empty intersection in your neighborhood.
The sign won, by the way. TK had to go to urgent care for a busted nose.
There’s the sound of a giant clatter (the phone, perhaps?) and distant swearing in a language that isn’t Mandarin. At first you think maybe Charles really did take a dive off a roof by accident, except he doesn’t sound like he’s in pain and there’s no loud crash at the end.
Nevermind. There is a loud crash at the end, followed by more clattering across rough ground.
“Is everything okay?” you ask.
Yet more noises of hard plastic on ground as Charles scrambles to pick up his phone. “This is a flip machine. Flip phone. I can’t,” he pauses for breath, “call you and take a photo at the same time.”
That explains a lot. “Don’t worry. Just hang up and call me back when you’ve got it sorted.”
“No, I don’t think I will. It’s nice to hear your voice,” he says, voice a bit husky from the effort of picking up slippery plastic and metal from the ground while inebriated.
Your face heats up, you can’t find a comfortable spot to settle on your bed, and you’re thankful, for once, that you’re not in Taiwan with Charles, where he could see all of this. And potentially also his family.
Hold up. Bruce and TK are there. Why isn’t Charles with them?
“It’s uh, nice to hear yours, too,” you offer. “Where’s Bruce?”
“Always you and him, being friends,” Charles grouses, voice slurring more at the edges. “But when will you ask about me?”
In literally any other situation, you’d realize Charles is being kind of weird. But you’re fortunately the same brand of weird as he is, and the thought of him being jealous of Bruce just for his proximity to you sends you grinning wildly, your apology unbelievably insincere: “Sorry, Charles, I didn’t mean to.”
Just when you’re about to continue, the staccato of pop-pop-pop ends. The crowd goes wild, their cries loudly coming through your phone’s speaker. “Oh, is the show over?”
“Huh?”
“Oh, I meant the fireworks. I don’t hear them anymore.” For a minute, one actual minute, none of you speak. It’s just fading cheers coming in from his end.
“Yes,” he finally answers. “The show is over.”
If the show is over, it means there’s nothing to keep Charles anchored from doing something stupid. He seems far more responsible than TK, but you don’t want to risk him getting any ideas.
“What’re you doing after?” you ask, swiping from your phone app to Line and frantically texting Bruce: dude you need to check in on ur brother
“A lot of things,” he proclaims.
That’s not cryptic at all.
You assume he isn’t going to commit murder or yank a stop sign (do the ones in Taiwan look the same as the ones in America?) from the ground, or yank a stop sign from the ground and commit murder with it, so you keep talking until Bruce can actually read your text and get to him. “Okay, well, whatever you have planned, I hope you make it back home safely.”
“Of course.”
“And thanks for calling. I’ve,” you bite your lower lip, body feeling like it's turning to ice and floating upward like a lychee slushie left alone too long, “been wondering about you. How you’re doing.”
Where did that come from?
More awkward silence. Almost two minutes, this time. You think maybe you’ve broken Charles, or the alcohol’s sent him to sleep standing up (is he standing up? Who knows), and self-immolation is the only remedy, until he finally speaks again.
“You have winter break in medical school, right? Winter breaks,” he says.
“For third and fourth-years, everyone’s on call. So no.” You ignore his sigh. “But next year, I’m taking a vacation in the fall, even if it kills me.”
Over twenty years of perfect attendance in class. Your parents were the type who insisted a good education was the best foundation in life, so no, you didn’t have a fever, get your backpack and go to school already even if you’re going to infect everyone.
“Let me know. We can see the fireworks together.” Charles pauses. There’s a lot of pauses. Probably the alcohol. “I’ll pay for your tickets.”
Your heart jumps in your chest, first in fear, then from the tentatively excited ‘what if’ of the whole scenario. “Oh, you don’t need-“
“We’ll have to see if the fireworks are the same red and orange next year. Double Ten Day.” His tone is more sure this time. Less slurred. The alcohol must be wearing off, not that you know. The last time you drank with Bruce and TK, you ended up sleeping twelve fitful hours on the couch, the same couch you’re 99% sure Charles tucked you into with a blanket just a month ago.
Your face gets warmer. You turn on your side, to the cooler end of your pillow, and rest your cheek on there.
“Yeah? I’ll hold you to it,” you say. It’s entirely possible Charles will forget about this entire exchange, and you’re not cruel enough to hold a drunk dial over his head, nevermind force him to pay for your tickets (your parents worked abroad for a reason, you can afford a trip overseas for literally one time in your life), but you want to dream.
This is going to fuel you through the few weeks in January of slogging through labs.
“My phone. My phone is almost out of battery. Have a good day. Night,” Charles says. Then he calls your name, softly. It makes you shiver, because of course the objectively good-looking guy who baked pastries with you and called you at eight in the morning on a holiday would say it like that.
“Thanks, you too-“ you’re cut off by the sound of Charles hanging up. You don’t need that cool side of your pillow anymore, because Charles is somewhere in Taipei and Bruce hasn’t answered any of your damn messages. And knowing Charles is out there, away from his own family, cuts you deep in a way you’re too familiar with. Before your mind can continue down its rabbit hole of speculation, you throw your blankets back, skin prickling at the cold air. Happiness and fear fills your body.
Whichever side wins, you know you’re not going back to sleep today.
“Hello?” the voice struggles through on your phone. If Charles was noticeably drunk, Bruce is damn near incomprehensible. “Charles is here,” Bruce tries to say, but it comes out sounding closer to “Charrrless iz hereeee.”
You’ve gotten all you needed to know. “Good. Happy New Year,” you say before hanging up.