A Taste Of You

Chapter 2

"It's been three months," Oliver comments to Kao as he plops down the couch next to the latter, on him a plate filled with the pesto pasta that Kao had made from scratch. The TV is playing some animated Japanese movie, and Kao is too busy reading the subtitles to look up and greet his friend.

"Yes. Three months," Kao deadpans in response, his half-empty pasta plate balanced on his lap. "Time passes like that, yes. At first, seconds go by, then minutes, hours, days—eventually weeks, months, years." He looks at Oliver glibly. "What are you even talking about?"

Oliver sneers; reaches over to Kao to grab the remote control from Kao's other side. He uses it to lower the volume of the TV, which automatically makes Kao frown.

He swats Oliver's hand away. "I did not include you in the dinner I cooked just so that you could interrupt my movie."

Oliver ignores him purposefully. "It's been three months," he repeats. "You met Up in the spring, and now it's summer, and throughout all of June so far, Up has practically lived here. It's reached a point where it feels like I'm stuck in a time loop. In the morning, I wake up, walk out of my room and find him having breakfast here before he heads to work, and when I come home at night, he's usually already here, stretched out across this very couch watching cartoons with you—"

"Excuse you—they're a form of art," Kao finds himself arguing huffily; Oliver only rolls his eyes at him.

"—and then later at night I hear all the ridiculous sex sounds coming from your room. I've had to invest in noise-canceling headphones!"

"Good investment," Kao interjects again. "So what are you still complaining about?"

"—and then," Oliver ignores him, "morning comes and—rinse, repeat."

"What is your point?" Kao looks down and idly twirls some pasta with his fork.

"My point is—is this going somewhere?" He wiggles his eyebrows and pokes Kao's side.

"We're just fucking," Kao answers, grabbing Oliver's wrist and throwing a baneful glare his way. It's like a script at this point. We're just fucking. It's only sex. There's no meaning to any of it except a good time.

"Seven days a week?" Oliver pushes anyway. "For three months?"

"He's not over that often," Kao argues as he lets his hold go.

Oliver scoffs.

"And we're not exclusive," Kao adds.

"Again—I haven't seen anyone come or go apart from Up over the last few months."

Kao shrugs. "You know I hate playing the game. The dating pool in this city sucks. It's easier to have him come over than find someone else to fuck."

"What about him though?"

"What do you mean, what about him?"

"If you're not exclusive, then is he seeing anyone else?"

"How would I know!" Kao snaps a little sharper than intended.

Oliver laughs. "I'm gonna answer for you—he isn't! He doesn't have time to! He's always here!"

Kao stares at him. "Why are you suddenly so invested in my sex life?"

"I'm not! I'm just curious, you know, as your roommate–"

"And soon you aren't even gonna be that anymore," Kao interrupts. He had first met Oliver around the tail end of his university years when they had been introduced to each other by people who mingled in there, at the time, overlapping circles—rich, Thai students studying abroad. Kao doesn't keep contact with most of those people these days, but he supposes Oliver had turned out palatable enough to keep in his life.