Archive of Our Own

Bloom & Butter

April

The sign went up on a Tuesday, and Nut watched it from across the street with his hands deep in a bucket of cold water and tulip stems.

For three years, the shop on the corner had stayed empty. Before Nut had arrived, it had been a tailor’s place, and before that, supposedly, a watch repair, though Nut had only ever known it as the unlit storefront opposite his own. He had grown used to seeing his reflection in its black windows on his way to work in the mornings, used to the long sound of nothing happening there. It had been, in a strange way, a kind of company.

Now there was activity. A man in a navy apron stood on the sidewalk with his hands on his hips, looking up at a contractor who was hanging the new sign crookedly. The man in the apron waved his arms at the contractor. The contractor shrugged at the man. The sign jiggled, settled, and stayed crooked.

A bakery, then—the sign showed a little loaf in clean white lines on dark wood.

Nut wiped his hands on his apron and went back inside.

It was just past nine. He had a funeral spray to finish before lunch—white lilies and small chrysanthemums for an old man’s daughter who had cried in his shop the day before and asked for something not too much, not too sad, just—pretty, I want it pretty for him. Nut had nodded, and let her cry, and made notes on his little pad. Pretty. He had a sense of what she meant.

He worked through the morning. The bell on his door jingled twice—a regular came in for her single weekly rose; a woman bought a small jade plant and asked if it would survive a north-facing window, and Nut said yes, gently, and showed her how to water it.

By three o’clock the funeral spray was finished and resting in the cold room. Nut was sitting on his stool behind the counter, eating a mango with a small knife. Sun came through the front window in long warm bars. Across the street, the contractor had left. Through the new bakery’s open door he could see the man in the apron carrying a tray of something pale.

A few minutes later, the bell on his own door rang.

The man stood in the doorway, breathing as if he had run from his shop to Nut’s, which—Nut realized—he had. He was holding the tray.

“Hi,” the man said. “I’m Hong. I’m opening the bakery across the street. These are—” he looked down at the tray, as if he had forgotten what was on it. “These are test pastries. If they’re bad I need to know now. I have, um, two days.”

He held out the tray.

There were six things on it—three small round buns dusted with sugar, two squares of something brown that smelled like butter and burnt sugar, and a single croissant. The croissant looked almost embarrassed to be there alone.

“Try anything,” Hong said. “Please.”

Nut put down his mango. He wiped his hands on a clean cloth and reached for one of the buns. He bit into it.

Cardamom, salt, a little orange. The bread was so soft it gave way like cloth.

He chewed. Hong watched his face the way people watch a doctor reading test results.

“It’s good,” Nut said.

Hong let out a breath he had clearly been holding for several minutes. “Oh, thank god.”

“Really good. You don’t need to worry.”

“I always worry. I’ve been worrying since November. I worry about everything.” Hong sat down without asking on the small wooden chair Nut kept by the counter for customers who needed a minute. He set the tray on the counter. “What is your name? Sorry. I should have led with that.”

“Nut.”

“Nut,” Hong said, as if testing the shape of it. “Hi. Sorry. I’m—do you want to try the brownie? I’m not sure about the brownie.”

Nut tried the brownie. It was also good. Less remarkable than the bun, but solid, dense, a little chewy at the edge.

“More salt,” Nut said. He surprised himself. “On top. Big flakes.”

Hong leaned forward. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Hong nodded, mostly to himself. He pulled a small notebook out of his apron pocket and made a note. “Salt on top. Got it.”

He looked around the shop, then, properly, for the first time. Nut watched him take it in—the zinc buckets of cut flowers on the wood floor, the cooler with its slow blue light, the dried bundles hanging from the ceiling like upside-down little gardens. Hong’s face went soft in a way Nut had not yet seen.

“This is the prettiest shop I’ve ever been in,” Hong said.

Nut did not know what to do with the heat that rose in his face, so he did not do anything with it.

“For the opening,” Hong went on, recovering whatever he had lost looking around, “I need—I want flowers in the front window. For the day. Something that looks like a bakery’s idea of flowers. Do you know what I mean? Something a little messy, not too formal. Like they just grew there.”

“Yes,” Nut said. “I know what you mean.”

“Can you do that? In two days?”

“I can do that.”

Hong stood up. He picked up the lone croissant from the tray and held it out toward Nut. “Take this one. You can have it. I haven’t decided about it yet.”

Nut took the croissant. Their fingers brushed. Hong did not seem to notice.

“Thursday,” Hong said, in the doorway. “We’re opening Thursday. Eight a.m.”

“I’ll come.”

Hong smiled at him, then, and Nut thought, oh.

He thought, that is going to be a problem.

The door closed. Hong was visible for a moment through the front window, half-running back across the street with his empty tray.

Nut looked down at the croissant in his hand. He tore off the end and ate it. It was, like the bun, very good. It had the particular taste of something a person had stayed up too late making, and Nut held that small fact in his head for a long time afterward, sitting on his stool, with the afternoon sun in the shop and the mango forgotten on the counter beside him.

Nut went to the opening on Thursday. He stood at the back with a coffee he had bought to be polite and watched Hong, flushed and harried and beaming, sell out of nearly everything by ten. The flowers Nut had done sat in the front window, a little messy, like they had just grown there. Hong caught his eye once across the crowded shop and grinned, and Nut lifted his coffee an inch, and that was all, because Hong was busy and Nut did not want to be in the way. He left before Hong could get free.

Two days after that, on a quiet Saturday morning when no one had come into the shop yet, Hin called.

“Happy birthday, brother.”

“Thank you.”

“What are you doing today.”

“Working.”

“Of course you are. Will you at least eat something nice.”

“There is a new bakery across the street.”

“Oh?”

“I am going to go buy myself a cake. From him.”

A pause.

“Him?”

“From the bakery.”

“Hm.” Hin had heard, in two syllables, more than Nut had meant to say. “Tell me about him later. Have a good day.”

Nut hung up. He turned twenty-three at twelve-fourteen in the afternoon—that was the exact moment his mother said he had been born, and she had told him this same fact on every birthday of his life—and he marked it by walking across the street and buying himself one of the cardamom buns he had liked so much on Tuesday. Hong, behind the counter, did not know it was his birthday. Hong wrapped the bun in a small wax-paper bag and gave him an extra one for free because the dough is best fresh, and Nut walked back across the street with two cardamom buns in a paper bag and ate them both, slowly, in the back of his shop.

He did not tell Hong it was his birthday. Hong would not, until that October—when Nut would finally mention, in passing, that his birthday was in April—know that the first thing he had ever sold him had secretly been a birthday cake.

May

By the end of the second week of May, they had a routine.

Hong opened at six. The bakery was busy from seven to eleven on weekdays, packed on weekends. Nut opened at nine and worked until seven, though some days he came in at six anyway because there were deliveries to prep, or because he simply liked the quiet of the shop with no one in it yet, just him and the soft sound of stems being trimmed.

Around four o’clock, every day, Hong came across the street.

It was never a big visit. Sometimes Hong just stood in the doorway with a plate covered in foil. Try, he would say. Tell me. Sometimes he sat on the chair by the counter for fifteen minutes. He always left before the late-afternoon rush of office workers buying flowers on their way home to apologize for something. He seemed to have memorized Nut’s schedule without asking.

Nut, in return, sent flowers across the street.

It had started accidentally—the first Friday after the bakery had opened, Nut had been left with half a bucket of ranunculus that had not sold, and he had brought them across the street and dropped them in a heavy glass jar by the bakery’s register, mumbling something about not wanting them to go to waste. Hong had looked at the flowers, and then at him, and not said anything for several seconds.

Then Hong had said, “Thank you,” in a small voice.

After that, it was understood. Every Monday morning Nut walked over with whatever he wanted to feature that week, and Hong gave him a fresh jar and a corner of the counter to arrange them in. Customers asked. Hong told them where the flowers came from. Customers crossed the street to Nut’s shop. Customers crossed back with bread. And on the way they passed Tui’s café two blocks over, and a fair number of them stopped, so that within a month Tui had started sending people the other direction—the bakery does a coconut thing on Thursdays, the flower shop is worth seeing even if you’re not buying—and the three little businesses had, without anyone discussing it, become a small unofficial triangle of foot traffic. Tui, who had befriended Hong on roughly the third day of the bakery’s existence and had a habit of befriending everyone in a roughly two-block radius whether they liked it or not, had taken to greeting Nut by name through the café window and was clearly, slowly, deciding to adopt him too. We should print a map, he kept saying, to whoever would listen. A little trail. People love a trail. Nobody printed a map. Tui brought it up about once a week anyway.

Nut’s shop, which had always done fine, started doing better.

Hong’s bakery, which had been doing fine, started doing very well.

They did not, exactly, talk about this.

“What do peonies mean,” Hong asked, one Tuesday, eating a slice of pear while sitting on his chair. He had taken to bringing his lunch over. “I had a customer ask. I didn’t know what to say.”

“Depends on who you ask.”

“I’m asking you.”

Nut considered. He was wrapping a single tulip in brown paper for a man who had come in saying his wife was angry with him. “Honor. Wealth. A happy marriage. They get used at weddings a lot. The Japanese associate them with bravery. The Greeks have a myth where they came from a nymph turned into a flower so someone wouldn’t be jealous.” He paused. “I don’t put too much weight on it. People assign meanings; that doesn’t always make them true.”

“Hm.”

“What did you tell your customer?”

“I told them I would find out and that they should come back. Now I have something to tell them.” Hong wrote a quick note on the corner of his napkin. “What about hyacinths?”

“Which color?”

“Are there different ones?”

“There are different ones for everything,” Nut said, and Hong laughed, and Nut felt that laugh settle somewhere just under his collarbone.

After that, Hong asked about a different flower every day. Sometimes two. He kept his little notebook updated. He never asked about roses, which Nut found interesting.

There was, also, the matter of the customer.

He came in on a Thursday, early in May, and bought a small bunch of yellow tulips. Nut, who had been wrapping them, had registered him only as a tall man in his mid-twenties with a cheerful face and very nice hair. The man had paid in exact change. He had thanked Nut. He had left.

He came back the following Thursday. He bought ranunculus this time. He came back the Thursday after that, and the one after that, and before long Nut had started preparing a small posy before he even arrived, because the man always asked for whatever you have that is the prettiest right now, and Nut had decided that if he was going to be a weekly fixture they could at least make the transaction efficient.

His name was William. Nut had figured that out after a few weeks because the man had introduced himself, easily, on the way in—I’m William, by the way, I keep forgetting to say.

“His name is William,” Hong said, one afternoon at four, when Nut mentioned him in passing. “He is—Nut, he is my best friend. From when we were fourteen. He has been coming around this part of town for the last year or so—he is dating someone who lives over here, though he has been cagey about who, for months—and once I opened up over here, he started dropping by the bakery whenever he was in the neighborhood. Then in May I told him you had a flower shop across the street, and he has been coming for flowers every Thursday since. Which is—Nut, William has never bought himself flowers in his life. He is bringing them to someone. I have a theory.”

“You have a theory.”

“I have a theory.”

“What.”

“There is a small record shop two streets over. Have you noticed it? The narrow one, with the green awning. The owner—I don’t know his name—is the kind of person you do not forget. Quiet. Reads at the counter. He has been there about a year. William’s flowers go that direction. I have seen him turn right out of my shop with them.”

“You watch him from your window.”

“I watch the street, Nut. I look out at the street. I sometimes see him.”

“You watch him from your window.”

“Hong’s theory is good. I am keeping it.”

“Have you asked William about it.”

“I have asked William about it. Repeatedly. William is being cagey. William, who has never been cagey about anything in his life, has been telling me for two months I’ll tell you when there’s something to tell, Hong, which means there is absolutely something to tell.”

“Hm.”

“He has known me since I was fourteen years old. He cannot keep a secret from me for long. I am waiting him out.”

Nut did not push back. The next Thursday he packed William’s posy with a small extra sprig of jasmine for no charge. William, accepting it, blinked once and then said, “Oh—thank you. He’ll like that,” and Nut, who had been trying not to fish, registered the he without showing any sign of it.

Hong, hearing about this later, was triumphant. “I told you.”

“You told me nothing.”

“He is bringing them to a he. Nut, that is—that is the prettiest thing I have heard all week.”

“You think everything is the prettiest thing you’ve heard all week.”

“It is true. I do.”

The next afternoon, on a hot Friday at the end of May, Nut was walking home from the wholesaler and passed the narrow record shop with the green awning. The door was propped open. Inside, at the small counter, a man was reading. He looked up, briefly, as Nut went by—Nut had the impression of dark eyes and a quiet open face—and then went back to his book. On the counter beside him, in a small ceramic jar, was a posy of the exact ranunculus Nut had wrapped for William the day before.

Nut walked the rest of the way home very pleased with himself.

He told Hong about it that afternoon. Hong was extremely pleased about it too.

“His name is Est,” Hong said. He had come over at four, as he did, and was sitting in the chair by Nut’s counter with a slice of pear. “I asked Tui. Tui knows everyone.”

“Of course Tui knows everyone.”

“He says Est has been in this neighborhood for about a year. Quiet. Keeps to himself. Listens to a lot of jazz.”

“And William.”

“And William. They have been together a couple of years apparently.”

Nut, trimming stems behind the counter, said nothing for a second. He was thinking about how a month ago he had not known any of these people—Hong, William, Est, Tui—and how his days had been one quiet shape, and how they were a different and louder shape now, and how he liked the new shape a great deal. He thought, distantly, about how a neighborhood was a kind of map that revealed itself slowly, the longer you stayed in it.

“Nut.”

“Mm.”

“You are thinking.”

“A little.”

“What about.”

“Nothing. Hand me that wire.”

Hong handed him the wire.

On a Sunday at the end of the month, Nut came to work earlier than usual and saw, through the bakery window, Hong sitting at one of the small tables inside, with a girl. She was maybe ten, in pigtails, eating something with her hands and getting it everywhere. Hong was laughing in that quiet shoulder-shake way he sometimes did when something was actually funny rather than performatively funny.

Nut stood on the sidewalk for a second too long. Hong looked up and saw him through the glass. Waved. The girl turned and waved too.

When Nut went into the bakery later that morning, the girl was gone.

“My little sister,” Hong said. “She visits on Sundays sometimes. My parents drive her in from the suburbs. She has decided she is going to live with me when she is older and we are going to run the bakery together. I have not had the heart to tell her she would have to do dishes.”

“What’s her name?”

“Ploy. She is a tyrant. I love her.”

Nut smiled. He took the small loaf of sourdough Hong had set aside for him, the way he did every Sunday now, and he held it against his chest like something fragile on the walk back across the street.

He thought, sometimes, about asking Hong over for dinner. He did not, yet. He told himself it was because they were both busy. He told himself there would be a right moment.

He was, he knew, partly making excuses to himself.

But he liked the rhythm they had. He liked four o’clock. He liked the small notebook. He liked the heat that was slowly building in his chest over the course of weeks, like a kettle on a low flame.

It would boil eventually. He could wait.

June

The storm came on a Friday afternoon at three.

The sky had been white all morning—not the gauzy white of a bright day but the heavy white of weather building. By two o’clock the air was hot and still. By three the first crack of thunder rolled across the rooftops and the rain came down in sheets.

Nut had time to bring in the small zinc tubs of zinnias from his sidewalk display and lock the front door against the wind. He stood at the window for a minute, watching the street go silver. Across the way the bakery’s awning was holding up, but the strings of fairy lights they had put up for the weekend were swinging hard.

Then he saw Hong on his own sidewalk, in the rain, banging on his own bakery door.

Nut opened his shop door and yelled across the road. The wind took most of it.

Hong looked up, saw him, and ran across the street.

By the time he reached Nut’s door he was soaked through. His white shirt had gone translucent and was sticking to his shoulders. His hair was plastered flat. He half-fell through the doorway and Nut shut the door behind him fast.

“What were you doing?” Nut said.

“My keys—” Hong gasped. He was laughing in a high-pitched way, a kind of stress laugh. “My keys are in the back. I locked the front when I went out to take a delivery and I left the keys—and then it started raining and now—” he gestured at himself, water dripping from his elbows. “Can I—I’m so sorry—can I wait it out in here?”

“Of course.”

“I’m getting your floor wet.”

“It’s a floor.”

Nut went to the small back room and came back with a towel. He handed it to Hong, who took it, but then just stood holding it as if he had forgotten what it was for. Nut took it back and put it over Hong’s head. Hong’s hair stuck up in wet spikes when Nut lifted the towel off.

“There,” Nut said.

Hong stared at him.

“Use this one for your shirt,” Nut said, holding out a second towel. “And here. Take this.” He pulled a sweatshirt off the hook by the back door—his own, soft and gray, smelling faintly of the cedar he kept in his closet. “It’ll be too big. You can leave it. I’ll have it for you tomorrow.”

Hong took the sweatshirt. “Are you sure?”

“It’s just a sweatshirt.”

Hong disappeared into the back to change. He came out a minute later with his wet shirt rolled up in his hand and the gray sweatshirt drowning his shoulders. He looked younger like that—the soft fabric, the wet hair drying in a curl at his forehead.

He sat on the chair by the counter and watched the rain.

Nut put on the kettle in the back. Nobody was coming in—nobody had been on the street when the storm hit, so nobody was going to risk the run. He brought out two cups of tea and a small plate with the last two pieces of a chocolate bar his neighbor had given him the week before.

They sat in companionable silence. The storm thundered. The rain hammered on the awning.

“What’s that one called,” Hong said eventually, pointing at a tall stem with feathery purple at the top.

“Liatris. Sometimes called blazing star.”

“What does it mean?”

“Depends who you ask.” Nut sipped his tea. “Some people say happiness. Some say I will try.”

“I’ll try.”

“Mm.”

Hong was quiet for a moment. He was holding his teacup in both hands.

“I like the way you talk about them,” he said.

Nut looked at him. Hong was not looking back. He was looking at the liatris.

“About flowers.”

“You said that already,” Nut said, gently, because he remembered. Hong had said it once in the second week of May, and Nut had not known what to say then either, but he had carried the sentence around with him for a month.

“Did I?” Hong looked at him then. There was something open in his face. “Well, it’s still true.”

The thunder cracked overhead. Hong jumped, just slightly, and Nut watched a smile pull at the corner of his own mouth without his permission.

The rain went on for an hour. By the time it eased and Hong went back across the street with the gray sweatshirt still on and his wet shirt balled under his arm, the late afternoon light had gone gold and soft. Nut stood in his doorway and watched Hong fumble at his own door, then go inside.

Hong did not bring back the sweatshirt the next day.

He did not bring it back the day after that, either.

Nut did not mention it.

July

It started, properly, with William.

He came into Nut’s shop in the first week of July, alone, on a day that was not his usual Thursday, which was already strange. He stood at the counter and shifted his weight twice before he said anything. He was—Nut registered with great private interest—uncharacteristically pink in the ears.

“This is going to sound strange,” William said.

“Okay.”

“My boyfriend and I are getting married. At the start of August.”

Nut did not say I know who your boyfriend is. Nut did not say Hong has a whole theory. Nut said, “Congratulations.”

“Thank you. Thank you. We—we have been trying to figure out the flowers and the cake. And we have been arguing about it for two weeks. And then Est said—Est said, the people right there, William, the flower man and the cake man, who already know each other—the flower man you have been getting my flowers from for two months—why are we sitting here making a spreadsheet about caterers when they live across the street from each other—”

“Hm.”

“So I am here. To ask. If you would. With Hong. Together.”

Nut, looking at William’s pink ears, said, “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Go talk to Hong. Tell him I said yes. He will also say yes.”

William, who had clearly been bracing for negotiation, looked unmoored for a second.

“That was—that was easier than I thought it would be.”

“You can leave now.”

“Right. Yes. I—Nut, thank you—”

“Go.”

William went. Hong, fifteen minutes later, came across the street with his apron still on and a slightly stunned look on his face and said, “Did William just—”

“Yes.”

“And you said—”

“Yes.”

“Nut.”

“Yes.”

“We are doing William and Est’s wedding.”

“We are doing William and Est’s wedding.”

Hong sat down in the small chair by the counter. He stared at the floor for a moment.

“I have known him since we were fourteen,” he said. Quietly. “I watched him fall in love with Est. I—I am going to do their cake, Nut.”

“Yes.”

“Their wedding cake.”

“Yes.”

“Nut.”

“Hong.”

A small silence.

“Okay,” Hong said. “Okay. Yes. We are doing this. I am very normal about this. I am very, very normal.”

Hong was not, in fact, very normal about it. Hong walked across the street and into the bakery and Nut, watching through the window, saw him stand at his own counter for a long minute, pressing both palms flat against the marble, breathing.

The wedding was at the start of August. They had five weeks.

Est came with William to the meetings. He was—Nut had been right, on that first walk past the record shop—quiet, with dark steady eyes and the kind of presence that took up surprisingly little room until he said something. When he said something, the room stopped. He was not loud about it. He simply meant everything he said.

He held William’s hand the whole time, every meeting, the way people do when they have been holding the same hand for years and have not yet stopped noticing it.

They wanted simple things; they were not the kind of couple that demanded edible gold leaf on every cupcake. But they wanted the cake and the flowers to go together, they said, and that was where Nut and Hong had to actually figure out how to work as a team.

It was, in fact, Est who set the whole direction in a single sentence. At the first meeting William had talked for fifteen straight minutes—about themes, about a color he had seen in a magazine, about whether they could have a fountain, about why actually a fountain was a bad idea, about three different songs—and Nut and Hong had been nodding along in a slightly stunned way, and then Est, who had not said a word the entire time, had quietly put his hand on William’s arm and said, We just want it to feel like the bakery and the flower shop. That’s the whole thing. That’s why we asked you and not someone fancy. And the room had gone still, and William had looked at Est with an expression of such open helpless love that Nut had to look down at his mood board, and that had been the brief. Nut and Hong had referred back to that one sentence for the entire five weeks.

This required them to sit in the same room for hours at a stretch.

It also meant Hong, who now had a wedding cake to develop on top of the regular bakery load, finally admitted he could not do it all alone. He put up a small handwritten help wanted, weekends card in the bakery window, and within a week he had hired Lego—a bright, fast-talking seventeen-year-old from one of the schools two blocks over, recommended by Bua, the older baker from down the block who pitched in on busy mornings and had known the kid’s family for years. Lego was serious about his dancing and wanted the money for shoes. He turned out, to Hong’s delight, to be extremely competent and completely incapable of silence—he narrated everything he did, had an opinion on every pastry, corrected Hong’s playlist within his first hour, and could pipe a tray of éclairs while explaining the entire plot of a drama series Hong had never heard of. He was sharp as a tack and never forgot an order. Within two weeks Hong had stopped checking his work and started just letting him talk, which was, Hong found, oddly soothing once you stopped trying to get a word in.

They started holding the planning sessions at Nut’s shop because Nut’s shop had more floor space and because, after closing, Nut could spread mood boards out on the long wooden counter without worrying about flour. Hong brought iced coffee from Tui’s place. Tui took one look at the two of them in the second week of working together and saw, with the clarity of a person who noticed everything, the thing that neither Nut nor Hong had yet admitted to themselves. He started preparing a separate iced matcha for Nut without being asked. By the fourth week he was charging Hong for both drinks but handing over a single bill marked for the lovebirds. Hong had not corrected him. Nut, when he heard about it, had also not corrected him. Neither of them had mentioned to the other that they had not corrected him. (Much later, after everything, Tui would claim he had called it months before either of them did—which, infuriatingly, was true.)

They argued, sometimes. About colors. Hong wanted cream and pale green; Nut wanted cream and the very palest blush. Hong said pink was too obvious for an August wedding. Nut said his pink was barely pink. Hong said any pink was pink. Nut showed him three different blooms, side by side, and asked him to point to the pink one, and Hong pointed at all three, and Nut had laughed—actually laughed, head tilted back—and Hong had stopped talking and watched him.

They settled on cream and the very palest blush. Nut suspected Hong had given in on purpose. Nut did not call him on it.

By the third week of July they had a plan. By the fourth, the cake was being test-baked and the flowers were being ordered, and they were sitting on the floor of Nut’s shop one Thursday night surrounded by clipped magazine pages and printouts and a plate of test cookies Hong had brought because he had baked too many— “I cannot eat sixty cookies, Nut, please.”

“I can’t eat sixty cookies either.”

“We will eat thirty cookies each.”

“That is a lot of cookies.”

“We are professionals. We can do hard things.”

Nut took a cookie. It was a lemon shortbread with cracked pepper. It was, genuinely, one of the best cookies he had ever had.

“This is unreasonable,” he said.

“What is?”

“This cookie. It is too good. You are showing off.”

“I am not showing off,” Hong said, “I’m just—” he stopped. He was looking at Nut. Nut was sitting cross-legged on the floor in a beam of late evening sun, holding a cookie, and Hong was looking at him with an expression Nut could not read.

“You’re what.”

Hong shook his head. “Nothing. I’m pleased you like it.”

By the end of July everything was, against all odds, ready. The cake had been test-baked three times. The flowers had been ordered. Apple—Nut’s younger cousin, who helped out at the flower shop a few days a week and was the only person Nut fully trusted with his cooler—had taken on extra hours to help with the morning-of arrangements. Hong had reduced the kitchen at the bakery to a state of military preparedness. They had, between them, eaten more test cookies than was reasonable.

There was nothing left to do but get through August.

August

The wedding was on the second.

It was, Nut would later say, the kind of day that went well in the way of days that have been over-prepared for. Nut delivered the flowers at noon. Hong delivered the cake at one. They saw each other across the venue twice—once during setup, when they had both turned around at the same time and caught each other looking, and once in the middle of the reception, when Hong had been standing near the cake table in a black shirt with his sleeves rolled up and had given Nut a small private wave that Nut would think about for several days afterward.

William cried during his own vows. Est, predictably, did not—until the very last line, where his voice broke in a way that made the room go silent for a beat before the applause came in.

A week later a thick envelope arrived at Nut’s shop. Inside was a thank-you card from William and Est and three photos. One was the cake. One was the table arrangement. One was a candid of Hong and Nut standing next to each other behind the cake table, talking about something, neither of them looking at the camera. Hong was smiling. Nut had his head tilted toward Hong in a way that suggested he was listening very carefully.

The note inside was short and in handwriting Nut did not recognize, but which he understood, immediately, must be Est’s. It read, Thank you both. You made it look easy. We owe you for the rest of our lives. —W & E.

Nut put that one in his desk drawer.

He saw, the next week, that Hong had framed his copy of the same photo and hung it on the wall behind the bakery’s register.

He did not say anything. He felt warm about it for days.

The night market festival was at the end of the month. Hong did not start the day thinking, Today I will finally admit to myself that I am in love with my neighbor.

He started the day thinking about whether two hundred kanom buang—the crisp little folded Thai crepes, filled with sweet cream and bright threads of golden egg—would be enough for the festival booth or whether he should make more.

By six in the morning he was elbow-deep in batter. By seven the air in the bakery was so thick with the smell of palm sugar that he could taste it when he breathed. Ploy was helping today—his sister had begged for the chance to come into the city and “work the booth,” and his parents had agreed for two days—and she was sitting on a stool drawing labels on the kraft paper bags with a black marker, sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth in concentration.

“Why don’t you have a logo,” she said.

“I have a logo.”

“That’s not a logo. That’s just the name in a box.”

“It’s stylized. It’s minimalist.”

“It’s boring.”

“You are ten.”

“You can hire me to design you a new one. I take cookies as payment.”

He laughed. He was already laughing too easily this morning. He was tired and the kind of pleasantly nervous he got when something was going to happen, and the festival was going to be busy, and he had been thinking, all morning—he had been thinking, against his will, about how Nut had walked past the bakery window at seven and not come in but had paused, just for a second, to look at the new tray Hong was carrying.

He also had Lego coming in to help. Lego had been working the bakery’s weekends for a couple of months now, and had turned out to be the best hire Hong had ever made—quick, sharp, and keeping up a running commentary that Hong had learned to let wash over him like a radio left on.

Today Lego was running the back of the booth while Ploy and Hong ran the front. He was sliding fresh kanom buang onto the tray faster than Hong could sell them, narrating the whole time—that man bought six, P’Hong, six, write it down, that’s a record—and bickering cheerfully with Ploy, who had decided within ten minutes that Lego was the most interesting person she had ever met and was following him around taking notes.

The festival itself was a small thing. The street between the bakery and the flower shop got closed off for one weekend each year. Vendors set up booths on either side. Strings of paper lanterns went up over the road. It was the kind of festival that was for the people who actually lived there—children running around with cones of sticky rice, old women sitting in lawn chairs, a single saxophonist who showed up every year and played, badly, for tips. Tui had set up a small iced-drink stand halfway down the block and spent the entire evening telling everyone who passed that the bakery and the flower shop were the heart of this street, go, go support them. William and Est had come too—William because William came to everything, Est because William came to everything—and William had stationed himself near Hong’s booth for an hour eating kanom buang and offering loud unsolicited commentary on Hong’s technique until Hong threatened to bar him from the bakery for life.

Hong’s booth was right outside the bakery. Nut’s booth was right outside the flower shop. They faced each other across the road.

By six p.m. the street was full of people.

Hong’s kanom buang sold out by eight. He had not made enough. He sent Ploy to ask Nut, who was less busy because nobody bought cut flowers at a night market, if Nut could spare a chair from his shop because Hong’s back was killing him.

Ploy came back not just with the chair but with Nut, who set it down behind Hong’s booth and said, “You should also eat something, you have not eaten.”

“I have eaten.”

“You have eaten one piece of toast, I saw it.”

“You were watching.”

“I look across the street sometimes,” Nut said, in his normal voice, as if this was not the thing that made Hong forget about the chair for a second. Then Nut said, “I brought you something,” and put a small paper plate of cut mango on the booth’s counter. He had cut it the way Hong had once said his mother used to, in little cubes still inside the skin, like a flower.

Hong stared at the mango.

“Eat it,” Nut said.

“I—”

“Eat it, Hong.”

Hong ate the mango. Nut went back across the street.

Ploy, who had been watching this whole exchange with the unimpressed expression of a ten-year-old who has noticed something her brother has not, said, “He likes you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“He brought you mango.”

“He’s a nice person.”

“Yeah,” Ploy said. “He is. He likes you, though.”

Hong did not say anything because his hands were full of mango and he could not, in that moment, trust his face.

Later, much later, when the festival was winding down and the lanterns were starting to come down, Hong saw Nut on the far side of the road. There was an elderly woman next to Nut’s booth whose long hair had somehow caught in the cords of the lantern strings overhead, and she was bent at an awkward angle, trying to free it, and Nut had stepped behind her and was carefully—so carefully—working her hair loose, strand by strand, from the cord, talking to her as he did it, saying something Hong could not hear that made her laugh once, and then again.

The light from the lanterns was on his face.

Hong forgot how to breathe.

It was a thing he had read in books. He had not thought it was something that actually happened. But he watched Nut untangle this old woman’s hair with the same patience he watched Nut do everything—with the same care he had seen Nut wrap a tulip in brown paper, the same care Nut had folded into a free sprig of jasmine for William, the same care that had cut a mango into a flower an hour ago—and Hong thought, oh.

He thought, it’s been him for months.

He thought, I am in so much trouble.

He walked Nut home that night. Or, technically, he walked Nut to his door, which was upstairs above the flower shop, but they had to stand together at the door while Nut got out his keys, and Hong stood there in the warm August night with his hands in his pockets and could not, for the life of him, think of a single thing to say.

“Thanks for the chair,” he said, finally.

“It’s a chair.”

“And the mango.”

“It’s a mango.”

Nut was looking at him. Hong was looking at Nut. They were, both of them, quiet in a way that felt loud.

“Good night, Hong,” Nut said.

“Good night, Nut.”

Hong walked across the street and locked himself into the bakery and stood for a long time with his back against the door and his eyes closed, trying very hard, and failing, not to smile.

September

Nut saw them on a Tuesday.

He was on his way back from the wholesaler with a flat of small begonias in the back of his bicycle cart, taking the corner past the bakery slowly because the cart was heavy. The bakery’s afternoon rush was easing. Through the open door he could see Hong at the register, and—next to him, behind the counter, where customers did not go—a man.

A tall man, in a black T-shirt, with very nice hair, with his arm draped easily over Hong’s shoulders.

Hong was laughing about something. The man was leaning into him.

Nut kept going.

He told himself, as he unloaded the begonias in the alley behind his shop, that it was nothing. Hong had friends. Hong had a sister; he probably had cousins. Hong was twenty-two years old and lived in a city and obviously knew people.

He told himself this while watering the begonias. He told himself this while sweeping the back step. He told himself this while pricing the new succulents.

The next day Hong came over at four with a plate of something. Nut was busy. He said so.

The day after that Hong came over at four with a slice of cake. Nut said he had paperwork. Nut did not have paperwork.

The day after that, Hong did not come at four.

Nut was miserable. He had also been a coward all week and he knew it. He had not asked about the man. He had simply gone quiet, which was the most Nut thing he could have done, and the most pointless, because Hong had no way to know what was wrong.

At six on the day, Hong came across the street and walked into the flower shop and stood at the counter and said, “Did I do something?”

Nut put down the secateurs.

“No,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

Hong took a breath. “Okay. Look. I don’t know what I did. I’m trying to figure out what I did. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine, but I want you to know that I notice when something’s off, and something is off, and I would rather hear what it is than not hear it. Even if it’s bad. I would rather know.”

The shop was quiet. The cooler hummed. A car passed on the street outside.

“There was a man,” Nut said.

Hong blinked. “Sorry?”

“There was a man in your bakery on Tuesday. Tall. Black T-shirt. He had his arm around you.”

Hong stared.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Nut said quickly. “It’s not—I’m not saying you did anything. I just saw, and I—” He stopped. He did not know how to finish that sentence in a way that did not give him entirely away.

Hong, slowly, started to smile.

“Don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not laughing at you.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“I’m not.” Hong was definitely laughing at him. “Nut. That was Tar.”

Nut closed his eyes.

“He is an old friend of mine. From high school. He has been living abroad for three years. He was in Bangkok for a single day on his way through to somewhere else and he came by the bakery unannounced and demanded free pastries and then announced loudly to my customers that he had taught me everything I know about food, which is a lie, he can barely make rice. He was hanging on me because that is his entire personality. He has been hanging on me since we were sixteen. He has a wife in Berlin and three cats. He flew out the next morning. He is not—he was not—Nut.”

“Oh.”

“Nut.”

“Don’t say it.”

“You were jealous.”

“I was not.”

“You absolutely were.”

Nut covered his face with his hands. After a moment he felt Hong’s hand on his arm, very gentle, and he uncovered his face and looked at him.

Hong was not laughing anymore. He looked, in fact, like he was trying very hard not to do something else.

“I’m not seeing anybody,” Hong said. “I haven’t been. Just—I want you to know that.”

“Okay,” Nut said.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

They stood there for a second. Then Hong squeezed his arm and let go and stepped back.

“Four o’clock tomorrow?” Hong said.

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

Hong left. Nut stood at the counter for a long time and tried to think about the begonias and could not, and eventually went upstairs and sat on his couch and did not move for an hour.

When he finally went to bed, very late, he lay on his back in the dark and thought about Hong saying I’m not seeing anybody. He thought about Hong’s hand on his arm. He thought about how he was going to have to do something—actually, finally, do something—before the end of October, because he was not going to survive Hong’s birthday in this state.

He had a month. He had time.

He started, in his head, planning a bouquet.

October

Hong’s birthday was the sixteenth.

The bakery was closed for the day. Hong’s parents had come into the city in the morning, and his sister had presented him with a hand-drawn birthday card that featured what appeared to be a dragon eating a croissant. They had all gone for lunch at the place Hong’s mother liked, the one with the duck. They had gone back to Hong’s small apartment and had cake—the one Hong had not been allowed to make himself (“It is your birthday, son, your one job today is to not bake”). His family had left at five.

By seven Hong was alone in his apartment with the leftover cake and an evening that he should have been spending pleasantly but instead was spending looking at his phone every two minutes, because Nut had texted at five that morning to wish him a happy birthday and had not been seen since.

At seven-thirty there was a knock at his door.

Hong opened it and found Nut standing on his landing holding a bouquet.

It was small. That was the first thing Hong noticed. It was not a showy bouquet. It was the kind of arrangement Nut made for himself, the kind he sometimes put on the counter of the shop and did not sell. Maybe six or seven different things, wrapped in plain brown paper.

“Happy birthday,” Nut said.

“You—you didn’t have to. Come in.”

Nut came in. He did not immediately hand over the bouquet. He stood in Hong’s small kitchen with it in both hands and looked at the floor.

“I made you this,” he said.

“It’s beautiful—”

“Wait. Let me. Let me tell you what’s in it.”

Hong stopped. Something in Nut’s face had changed. Nut held the bouquet up, very slightly, and pointed with one finger to a small white star-shaped bloom.

“Jasmine,” he said. “For thinking of someone.”

He pointed to a delicate purple stem.

“Heliotrope. For devotion. There are a lot of variations on the meaning but that’s the one I—that’s the one I think of.”

He pointed to a small sprig of red carnation.

“This one. It means—” His voice caught. “My heart aches for you. Old meaning. Victorians. I know how it sounds.”

Hong was not moving. He was not, perhaps, breathing.

“This is sweet pea. Blissful pleasure, traditionally. I just—I just liked the smell. It made me think of you.”

Nut took a breath.

“This last one is just—it’s a rose. A small one. The color is between coral and pink. I couldn’t pick. The book says coral means desire and pink means gratitude, and—and so I picked one that was both, because I couldn’t choose, and I—” He stopped. He looked up. His eyes were wet. “Hong.”

Hong took two steps across the kitchen and kissed him.

He kissed him with his hands cupped around Nut’s jaw and his thumbs against the soft skin of Nut’s cheek, and Nut made a small sound against his mouth and dropped the bouquet onto the counter and grabbed the front of Hong’s shirt and kissed him back.

They were both, distantly, aware of the bouquet.

After—after a long moment in which the world went quiet, and then started up again at a slightly different speed—Hong pulled back just far enough to put his forehead against Nut’s. He was, he realized, smiling. He could not stop smiling.

“You made me a bouquet,” he said.

“I—yes.”

“You made me a bouquet that means you love me.”

“I—” Nut closed his eyes. “Don’t make me say it like that. Not in your kitchen. Not on my first try.”

“Sorry. Sorry.” Hong was still smiling. He could not stop. “Okay. Yes.”

“Yes what.”

“Yes, also.”

“Hong—”

“Whatever you said. Yes, that. I am also that. About you.”

Nut laughed. It was a small, wet laugh, and Hong felt it against his own mouth.

“Happy birthday,” Nut said, into Hong’s shirt.

“Yeah,” Hong said. “It really is.”

Later, Nut helped Hong put the bouquet in water in a heavy glass jar on the kitchen counter. Hong did not let go of his hand the whole time. He kept thinking, distantly, ridiculously, that it was very impractical to arrange flowers one-handed. He did not let go.

They sat on Hong’s small couch and Nut put his head on Hong’s shoulder, and they did not, for a long time, say much of anything at all.

When Nut finally got up to go home, around eleven, Hong walked him to the door. He kissed him again, slowly, in the doorway.

“Tomorrow,” Hong said.

“Tomorrow.”

“Four o’clock.”

“Four o’clock.”

Nut walked down the stairs. Hong stood at the open door listening to the sound of his footsteps until they were gone.

He went back into the kitchen. He looked at the bouquet in its jar. He sat down on a chair at the small table and put his face in his hands and laughed, just once, just to himself.

November

Their first date was at a noodle place two streets over.

Hong picked it because his sister had been the one to recommend it—on Sunday Ploy had pulled him aside and demanded to be told what was going on with the flower shop man, and when Hong had blushingly admitted, Ploy had clapped her hands like a small evil mastermind and said, “You have to take him to Aunty Som’s noodle place, that’s where Mom and Dad had their first date, it’s lucky.” Hong had pointed out that he was not planning on marrying Nut after one month. Ploy had said, “Yet,” and Hong had told her she was unbearable, and Ploy had eaten his pudding.

So. Aunty Som’s.

It was a Friday night. Nut had closed the shop at six. Hong had closed the bakery at five and changed his shirt three times. He had also called his mother to ask whether it was weird that he was wearing the gray sweatshirt for a first date. His mother had said it was not weird if it was a nice sweatshirt. Hong had not told her whose sweatshirt it had been originally.

At seven they walked to the noodle place. Nut held Hong’s hand on the way—not all the time, just on the quiet stretches, dropping it when they crossed a street and finding it again on the other side. Hong did not say anything about this because he had a feeling that if he commented on it, Nut would stop, and Hong did not want him to stop.

Aunty Som’s was small. There were eight tables. The walls were yellow. There were photographs all the way up to the ceiling, mostly of Aunty Som with various other people. Aunty Som herself stood at the counter and pointed at them when they walked in, then pointed at the table by the window. They sat.

Nut ordered for both of them. He knew, by then, the things Hong did not like.

“Tell me about your friend,” Nut said, halfway through dinner.

“Which one.”

“Tar. The one who got me in trouble.”

“He did not get you in trouble. You got you in trouble.”

“Hong.”

“Fine.” Hong put down his chopsticks. “We met when we were sixteen. He was the one who always forgot his PE uniform—every single week, for years. He was the kind of friend who came to my house every weekend without being invited and ate everything in our fridge. He moved to Berlin three years ago to study and then never came back. He emails me at four in the morning my time about—about, I don’t know, whatever he is thinking about. He has a wife. He has three cats. He is, miraculously, very happy.”

“Are you close?”

“Less, now. But still close. He is the kind of friend who is close even when you do not see him. You know? Some people are like that. Distance does not eat at them.”

Nut smiled.

“What about your friends,” Hong said.

“My friends are mostly my brother.”

“Nut.”

“What.”

“That cannot be true.”

“It is. I have my brother. I have Apple. I have one friend from university who I see twice a year and exchange birthday cards with. That is it. I am—Hong, I keep to myself. I always have. I had not realized how much until you came across the street with a tray and started pulling me out of it, every day, a little more.”

Hong put down his chopsticks.

“Nut.”

“What.”

“Are you doing it on purpose.”

“What.”

“Saying things like that on the first date.”

“…is it working.”

“It is working,” Hong said, slightly hoarse. “Eat your noodles.”

“Tell me about your family first.”

“My family is small. My parents, and Ploy.” Hong set down his chopsticks. “Ploy is ten. She is the dictator of our household. She thinks she is twenty-five and has announced that she will be running the bakery with me when she is older, in the tone of someone reading out a verdict I am not allowed to appeal. She found out about you on Sunday and has not let it go since. She is the one who picked this restaurant, actually.”

“She picked this restaurant.”

“She did. It’s where my parents had their first date. She informed me it was lucky and that I was not allowed to mess it up.” Hong paused. “She also told me to comb my hair, which, in fairness, I did.”

Nut smiled.

“And then there is William, who is not family but might as well be.” Hong nudged his bowl aside. “You already know him—or you know him as the man who buys flowers and refuses to explain who they are for. But he is, before anything else, my oldest friend. We got assigned to the same desk on the first day of secondary school because our family names were one letter apart, and he talked at me until I gave up and loved him, and that was that. Almost ten years. He has been at every important thing that has ever happened to me. When my grandmother died he slept on my floor for a week. He is the loudest person alive and he would walk into traffic for me and he still owes me money from when we were nineteen, which he brings up himself, every few months, and then does not pay.”

“I like William.”

“Everybody likes William. It is his whole gift. He has been unbearable about you, by the way. He could tell something was different with me from the way I talked about my new neighbor, weeks before I would admit anything. He is going to be insufferable when he finds out we came here.”

Nut laughed.

“Your turn,” Hong said. “Tell me about Hin.”

“My brother.” Nut put down his chopsticks too. “His name is Hin. He is two years older. He is a teacher in Khon Kaen. He is very serious and he writes me letters—actual letters, on paper—every two months. He is the most unembarrassed letter-writer I know. He sends me things like Dear brother, today I noticed that the small bird that nests outside my window has come back, and I thought of you. He has been my favorite person for my entire life.”

“Anyone else?”

“You already heard the whole list. Apple, and the one friend from university—his name is Ben, he lives up north, he is as quiet as I am, which is why it works. That is the entire roster.” Nut almost smiled. “I told you. I keep to myself. But the few I have, I keep for a long time.”

Hong watched Nut talk. Nut’s face went soft at the corners. Hong thought, possibly for the hundredth time that month, oh, I am gone, I am completely gone.

“You’ll have to meet him,” Nut said.

“Eventually.”

“Eventually.”

“Tell him about me first. So he is not surprised.”

“He already knows.”

“You—”

“I sent him a letter last week.”

“Nut.”

“He wrote back already. He says I should not scare you off by talking too much about flowers. He has met you, in a sense. He is glad.”

Hong was, again, smiling like an idiot. He noticed it and tried to stop and could not.

After dinner they walked back the long way through the small park between Aunty Som’s and their street. The park was lit by yellow streetlamps. There were a few late dog walkers. The air had that particular softness it got in late November, when the worst of the year’s heat had finally let go and the evenings were almost pleasant. Hong, halfway through the park, leaned over and kissed Nut on the cheek, just because, just to see if he could. Nut made a small startled sound and then a quieter pleased one.

At Nut’s door—the small door beside the flower shop, leading up to the apartment—they stopped.

“Do you want to come up,” Nut said.

“Not yet.”

Nut nodded, not at all hurt, looking like he had wanted Hong to say exactly that.

“Goodnight,” Hong said.

“Goodnight.”

Hong kissed him at the door, softly, just the once.

He walked back across the street to the bakery. He locked the door behind him. He stood at the window for a moment and looked across the road and saw Nut’s apartment light come on, upstairs, and then, a moment later, Nut’s silhouette at the window.

Nut waved.

Hong waved back.

December

By the middle of December they had figured out a system.

Mondays they were both off. They had not started spending Mondays together right away—Hong, who knew himself, had said early on that he would need some Mondays alone or he would lose his mind, and Nut, who knew himself, had said the same—but somewhere around the first cool week of November they had started ending up at each other’s apartments anyway. Most weeks now, Hong came over to Nut’s place on Monday evenings with whatever he had been baking that morning. They cooked dinner together, badly. They watched a series Nut had been recommending for months that turned out to be exactly as good as Nut had said. They fell asleep on the couch sometimes. Hong went home around eleven, usually, and walked across the empty street with his hands in his pockets and a stupid look on his face that he did not even try to hide because there was no one out to see him.

Sometimes, though, he stayed.

The shops had a Christmas pop-up window now. They had done it together. Hong had baked small gingerbread men, and Nut had made tiny dried-flower wreaths the size of coasters, and they had filled the front window of the bakery with them in a way that Nut said was “messy on purpose” and that Hong said was “messy because Nut would not let me line them up.” Lego had spent a whole Sunday helping string the lights, balanced on a ladder with the easy fearlessness of a seventeen-year-old, directing everyone below him like a film crew and refusing to come down until it was perfect—no, P’Hong, left, your other left, who taught you directions—while Hong handed bulbs up and took the abuse with the patience of a man who had grown genuinely fond of the kid. Tui had supplied hot drinks to everyone involved and then stood on the sidewalk critiquing the arrangement like an art director. William and Est had come by on a Thursday—William loudly declaring the window the best thing he had ever seen, Est quietly buying three wreaths and one gingerbread man and saying almost nothing, which Nut had learned, by now, was Est’s way of saying he was moved. The window had been featured on a small neighborhood blog. Customers had crossed the street to ask if they could buy the wreaths. Nut had let them.

On the twenty-third, the night before Hong was supposed to fly home to visit family for the holidays, they sat on Nut’s couch.

The apartment smelled like the pine boughs Nut had brought in from the shop. The lights were low. Hong had his head in Nut’s lap and Nut was very gently, almost absently, running his fingers through Hong’s hair.

“I’ll be back on the second,” Hong said.

“I know.”

“That is ten days.”

“I know.”

“It is going to feel longer than ten days.”

“It is going to feel exactly like ten days, but you will be sad about it.”

“That’s not nice.”

“It’s accurate.”

Hong shifted so he could look up at Nut. From this angle Nut’s face was upside down. He looked, Hong thought, very fond.

“What are you doing for the holiday,” Hong said.

“Hin is coming down. He’ll stay until the first.”

“Will he—” Hong tried not to sound nervous. “Does he want to meet me before he comes? On a video call or something?”

Nut considered this. “He would say no. But he would actually like that. Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

A long pause.

“Hong.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you.”

Hong’s chest did something stupid. He had heard Nut say it before—four times, at this point, Hong was counting, like a small loon—but every time it landed in him as if it were the first.

“I know,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Yeah. I love you too. Obviously.”

Nut’s fingers paused in his hair. Then started again.

“Obviously,” Nut said.

The next morning Hong got on a plane with the kind of soft, embarrassing ache he had not had since he was sixteen and away at his first sleepaway camp, and Nut stood at the window of his apartment and watched the empty street and thought, very calmly, that he had never been this happy.

The video call with Hin happened on the twenty-eighth. Hong was nervous beforehand—Nut could tell because Hong texted him three times in the hour before the call to ask what topics he should not bring up—but Hin, who came across as serious but was not remotely as scary as Hong had apparently braced for, was charmed by Hong inside of five minutes. They talked for forty minutes. Hin said afterward, in a voice message to Nut, “He is very fond of you and he is also a sensible person. I approve.”

Nut listened to that voice message three times.

On January second, Hong came back. Nut had been at the airport since two hours before the flight, which was unnecessary, and which they both pretended he had not done. Hong came through the gate with his bag over his shoulder and a paper sack of his mother’s homemade cookies and a look on his face that Nut would later describe, accurately, as devastating.

Hong dropped his bag. Nut held him for a long time.

“Welcome home,” Nut said, into Hong’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Hong said. “Hi.”

They walked out of the airport together. The new year was cool and bright. The world was, as far as either of them was concerned, all right.

April (one year later)

It was the bakery’s first anniversary.

Nut woke up before Hong did, the way he always did—Hong, who was still not a morning person and never would be, had given up on pretending he was going to bake earlier in the day than necessary. Hong had moved in the previous month, after a long discussion about whose place had more closet space and whose place had the better light. Nut’s place had won on light. Nut’s place had also won, in a more important way, by being the place where they had spent most of their time anyway.

The morning was already warm. The window was cracked open to let in whatever breeze there was. Nut lay on his side for a while, looking at the back of Hong’s neck, at the soft small spot just above the collar of the old gray sweatshirt Hong wore to sleep in—the same one, the original one, that Hong had never, in the end, returned.

Hong stirred. He made the small unhappy sound he always made when he started to wake up. He rolled over and put his face against Nut’s shoulder.

“Don’t say it’s morning.”

“It’s morning.”

“I told you not to say it.”

“Happy anniversary.”

Hong opened one eye. “Of what?”

“Of the bakery. One year.”

“Oh.” Hong closed his eye again. He smiled, slowly. “That. The other one was a couple of days ago.”

“The other one?”

“A year since you opened your door for a stranger holding a tray. Two days before the bakery. I counted.”

“You counted.”

“Of course I counted.”

Nut was quiet. Hong felt, against his face, Nut’s smile.

It had been just over a year since Hong had stood across the street with the contractor and tried to make the sign hang straight, since he had run across the road with a tray of test pastries because he could not stand the suspense, since he had walked into the prettiest shop he had ever been in and seen the man who would later make him cry over a bouquet in his kitchen.

It had been, by any measure, a fast year.

They got up. They went down to the shops. They drank coffee on the back step, because Hong drank coffee and Nut drank matcha and they each held a cup of what the other was not having. Hong had a tray of small celebratory pastries to give away free to the first thirty customers; he had decorated them with little marzipan flowers Nut had helped him shape over the weekend. Nut had a small bouquet on his counter that he was going to take across the street as soon as the bakery opened.

The bakery would be packed today. And Nut’s birthday was coming up that same week—twenty-four, his second one with Hong, the first one Hong was going to know about properly. Hong had been planning it for two months, in great secret, in a group chat that Nut was definitely not allowed to see—William and Est, Tui, and Lego, the whole neighborhood crew, all of them far more invested than the occasion strictly required. William had been sending party-planning links at three in the morning. Tui had volunteered his café for the afternoon. Nut, who was usually so observant, had not figured any of this out. Hong was extremely pleased with himself about it.

“I was thinking,” Hong said, drinking his coffee.

“Mm.”

“That we should do another festival. In May. A neighborhood thing. Like the night market in August, but ours.”

“You and me?”

“You and me. The block. Anyone who wants. We do a Saturday afternoon. We open up the road. We sell things. We give things away.”

“Bloom and butter,” Nut said.

“What?”

“For the name. A festival of bloom and butter.”

Hong looked at him.

“That is awful,” Hong said. “I love it.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s going on the poster.”

“Okay.”

The day passed. The bakery sold out by three. The flower shop had a steady run all afternoon, mostly people coming in for tulips because tulip season was almost over and people had remembered, suddenly, that they liked tulips. Around six the air went golden and the long shadows came down the street, and Hong, who had been on his feet since six, came out of the bakery and crossed the road and walked into the flower shop and leaned over the counter and put his forehead against Nut’s shoulder, just for a moment.

“Tired?” Nut said.

“Yeah.”

“Come here.”

They moved into the back of the shop, where Nut kept the cooler humming and the little wooden stool he sat on between customers. Nut pulled Hong into a hug. Hong’s whole body relaxed against him the way it had been doing now for almost half a year, like coming home.

“I’m closing up,” Nut said into Hong’s hair. “Stay.”

“Mm.”

“And Hong.”

“Mm.”

“Thank you.”

Hong pulled back. “For what?”

“For—” Nut started. He thought about it. He could not think of a single specific thing. He thought about the test pastries, the small notebook, the cardamom buns and the salted brownies, the wet shoulders in the gray sweatshirt and the festival mango and the bouquet and the noodle shop and the airport and the cookies from Hong’s mother sitting on their kitchen counter. He thought about all of it.

“For coming into the shop,” he said finally. “On the first day. With the tray.”

Hong looked at him for a long second. Then he smiled.

“I almost didn’t, you know.”

“You almost didn’t?”

“I changed my mind three times before I came over. I thought it was weird. I thought you’d think I was weird.”

“You’re so weird.”

“Yes.” Hong leaned forward and kissed him, slowly, on the mouth, in the back of the shop, with the cooler humming and the green smell of cut stems all around them. “I am.”

Nut closed up the shop. They stepped out into the warm evening, and Nut locked the front door behind them, and as he always did he glanced across the street—the bakery sign was still slightly crooked, and it always would be. Hong had decided long ago not to fix it. Nut, looking up at it, thought, of course. It had been crooked from the first day. It belonged that way.

They turned together to the small door beside the flower shop—the one with the narrow staircase up to the apartment—and went in.

Upstairs, the windows were open. The street outside was quiet. The whole evening lay ahead of them like a long unhurried breath.

“Dinner?” Hong said.

“Dinner.”

They went in. The door closed gently behind them. The flowers on the kitchen counter—a small arrangement of jasmine and heliotrope and a single coral-pink rose, which Nut still made fresh every week, which Hong still kept in water without ever saying anything about it—stirred a little in the breeze from the open window.

And outside, on the street between the shops, the light went soft, and the day was over, and tomorrow there would be more bread and more flowers.

end.