My Straight Best Friend Thinks It's Bro Stuff novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Make a Wish
The caretaker of the old apartment block on Yulin Road took one look at the brass key and let Tang up without a word.
It was the twentieth of March, a cold clear night, and the stairs to the roof were steep and unlit.
He climbed them with a cake box in one hand and a lighter in his pocket.
He had turned twenty-three two weeks earlier.
He had a graduate recommendation in his bag and a silver medal on the shelf.
None of it had made his hands as unsteady as they were now.
The roof was exactly as he remembered it.
Gravel, a rusted water tank, a low parapet, and a view across the old neighbourhood of lit windows and television blue.
He set the box on the parapet and opened it.
It was a cheap cake from the bakery on Yulin Road, with blue icing and a crooked white 22.
He had made the baker redo the 22 four times, and in the end he had asked her to leave it crooked.
He put in the candles, twenty-two of them, and lit them one by one with his hand cupped against the wind.
Then he stood still and waited.
The door to the stairs opened at ten past nine.
Fu stepped out onto the gravel in his grey sweater and reading glasses.
He had a scarf round his neck and the green notebook under his arm.
He stopped.
He looked at the cake, and at the candles bending in the wind, and at Tang.
"My mother said there was a problem with the flat," he said. "A burst pipe, or something. She said I had to come at once."
"She lied."
"She does that when she's very happy."
"Come here," said Tang.
Fu walked across the roof slowly.
His eyes were bright behind the lenses, and he was smiling, the small private smile that Tang had learnt to wait for.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of My Straight Best Friend Thinks It's Bro Stuff are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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