F*&! It, I Love You (Excerpt #2)

Downtown SoHo hummed like a beehive, neon and laughter layered over the clatter of plates and a saxophone drifting from a side street. Claire and Nisrina moved together through the press of bodies, shoulder to shoulder, the little silver-wrapped box in Rena's hands catching streetlight as they crossed. Claire kept one palm at the small of Rena's back like a lighthouse beam—habit, comfort, claim.

The restaurant announced itself with a flood of warm gold from the doorway and the steady breath of star anise and ginger. Paper lanterns bobbed lazily in the air-conditioning, their cords nearly invisible, their light pooling along lacquered banquettes and a row of jade-green tiles behind the bar. A host appeared with a smile and a nod—"Party for Steven?"—and led them through a tide of chatter to a big round table already brimming with faces.

"Finally!" Claire's mother sang out, pushing back her chair. She crossed the few steps and folded Rena into her arms first. "You look wonderful."

"Hi, Nana," Rena said, muffled against a silk blouse. She turned toward Claire's father next. "Hi, Papa."

"Hey, kiddo," he said, the hug gentle, paternal, familiar. Around the circle there was a ripple, a wave of greetings that washed over with her full name—"Rena!"—a chorus of welcome that made her cheeks lift and the space between her ribs loosen.

Steven stood. Thirty-one looked good on him: a soft sport coat, a smile that leaned into one side, stubble he'd pretend was intentional. He hugged Claire first, a quick squeeze and a sibling forehead knock, then opened his arms for Rena. "There she is," he said. "The guest of honor who is not me."

Rena laughed, letting herself be pulled in. "Happy birthday, Steven."

Claire slid into the seat between her brother and Rena, and the table was suddenly doing that thing big families do: stories being told in overlapping arcs, a cousin shouting a question across a lazy Susan like it was a microphone, someone at the far end bargaining for an extra chair even though a chair had clearly materialized.

Menus arrived like fans, and chopsticks snapped from their paper sleeves. Claire's father, who took great pride in ordering family-style like a maestro calling cues, held the room for just a moment. "Okay, team," he said. "We've got vegetarians, spice-leaners, spice-avoiders, and one person who thinks cilantro tastes like soap."

"That's not a personality," Claire said.

"It is tonight," her mother replied, and the table snorted.

They ordered a parade of things everyone loved: scallion pancakes and soup dumplings, dry-fried string beans, mapo tofu, Peking duck that would arrive on its own lacquered platter. When the first dishes landed, there was a hush—an inhale—then a soft clatter as ladles dipped and plates were offered like gifts.

Rena's nerves quieted around the second dumpling. This was the part she loved: how Claire's family turned dinner into a relay race of care. Here, take this. No, more for you. Try that with the black vinegar. She and Steven shared a look as the first bite of crispy duck skin shattered with a tiny music. He mouthed, Perfect, and she nodded.

Gifts were stacked between glasses—envelopes with cards tucked like birds' wings, small boxes wrapped in shiny paper, a long cylinder that screamed "poster" with the confidence of a marching band. Steven made a show of opening each slowly, giving every giver a moment to glow. A watch from Claire's parents, simple and handsome. A whiskey someone swore was "peaty but polite." A set of knives from a cousin who had become evangelical about cooking. A tote bag that read I DIDN'T BUY THIS IN SOHO and got a laugh big enough to be remembered.

"Open ours," Claire said, nudging Rena's silver parcel forward. Her tone made it sound like theirs was a minor magic trick.

Steven peeled the tape back carefully, then pulled out a slim, bound journal with a leather wrap and, beneath it, a fountain pen whose blue-black ink was rumored to make every word look like a good decision. "For the restaurant notes," Claire said, and Rena added, "Or the novel you swear you're not writing."

"I'm not writing a novel," Steven said quickly, then touched the journal like it might skitter away. "But if I ever were to not write one, this would be perfect."

"Speech," someone shouted, and Steven pressed a hand to his heart. "I vow to use these for the noble purposes of menu tweaks, bad haikus, and maybe—just maybe—a secret list of everyone who says cilantro tastes like soap."

He tucked the gifts away and sat back as the lazy Susan turned. Claire's mother picked up the thread of conversation like a knitter finding her place. "Nisrina, how's Juilliard? You look rested, which must be an illusion."

"It is," Rena said, laughing. "But I'm good. We had juries last month, and I survived. The new piece I'm working on... it's a little weird, but my professor called it 'ambitious,' which I'm pretending is a compliment."

"It is," Claire's father said. "Ambitious is code for 'I can't do it, but I respect that you tried.'"

"Papa," Claire warned, smiling.

"And school?" her mother asked. "Classes? Friends?"

"Good on both," Rena said, sliding a piece of broccoli beef onto Claire's plate without asking. "I'm working with this small ensemble for a fall concert. We're trying to make Bach sound like he accidentally walked into a jazz club."

Steven nodded gravely. "So, you're committing crimes."

"Victimless," Rena said. "Mostly."

Claire, who had been waiting like a cat with a secret, chose her moment. She leaned her elbow on the table, eyes bright, voice casual. "Also—and I'm only saying this because she'll never tell you herself—Nisrina has a boyfriend."

The word boyfriend landed like a pebble in a still pond. Ripples of delight moved outward. "Ooooh," Claire's grandmother cooed. "What's his name?" Her grandfather leaned forward too, ears perked like a teenager's.

Rena felt the heat rise under her skin, but the smile stayed. She stared down at her tea for a beat, then looked up through lashes. "He's... nice."

"Eight months nice," Claire added, triumphant. "Which is basically a decade in New York."

The table erupted—questions, jokes, a cousin pretending to take notes like a journalist. "Is he coming tonight?" "Does he like cilantro?" "Is he taller than Steven?" "No one is taller than Steven, Millie, that's not the benchmark." The grandparents made their plea in the sweet, earnest voices that always undid her: "We'd like to meet him," Nana said. "Soon," Papa added, as if he had any say over time.

Rena opened her mouth, closed it. She thought of the soft certainty she felt when she and  Xavier were side by side, how quiet the world got. She also thought of how new it still felt to shepherd two spheres of her life into one room. Claire slid a knee against hers under the table. "You will," Claire said for her, eyes steady. "You'll meet him soon."

The question hung for a moment, warm rather than heavy, then drifted off like steam when the server arrived with a large oval platter that hissed audibly. "Sizzling beef," he said, setting it on the turntable, and a collective "oooh" rose again. Conversation rerouted itself back toward food and Steven's latest restaurant mishap—an order of 60 scallion pancakes that had turned out to be an accidental autocorrect of six.

"The prep cook gave me a look that said, 'I will haunt you from beyond the grave,'" Steven explained, and even the grandparents laughed. Rena watched the way he told stories—hands carving out beats, eyes gaining speed—how Claire watched him with a pride that had nothing to do with success and everything to do with survival.

Between bites, small pockets of talk bloomed and faded. Claire's father asked Steven about the new location he'd been scouting in Brooklyn, and Steven admitted he liked the bones of the place but not the neighbors' habit of forming a drum circle at all hours. Claire's cousin leaned toward Rena, lowering her voice to confess that she, too, had once tried to make Bach swing and had been asked to "return him to the eighteenth century immediately." Claire's mother pressed fortune cookies into the hands of children at the next table who were watching their feast like a nature documentary.

The light shifted slightly as the evening deepened, lanterns brightening to hold the room together. The clink and clatter smoothed; glasses refilled themselves as if by spell. Rena found that her shoulders had dropped. She could hear her own laugh mixing with Claire's in a way that felt like harmony. She thought of the word family and how it could mean a dozen things at once.

When the plates finally thinned and the lazy Susan slowed, the staff made a quiet, coordinated migration. The overhead bulbs dimmed a fraction. A glow approached from the kitchen—one, two, three—until the cake arrived, tall and glossy with chocolate ganache and thick piping along the edges, thirty-one slender candles shivering in the conditioned breeze. Someone had spelled STEVEN in red icing and then drawn a little duck beside it, which made him bark a laugh.

The first notes of "Happy Birthday" leapt into the air with the eagerness of a rehearsed chorus. Some sang on key, some valiantly tried. A pair of strangers at a nearby table joined in before realizing they did not, in fact, know Steven. He didn't mind. He leaned forward, hands on the table, face lit by thirty-one tiny suns, and the room became briefly, beautifully simple: a man at the tender edge of one number and the hopeful beginning of another, all the people who loved him gathered close enough to hear the candle flames hiss.

At "dear Ste-ven," Rena sang his name like a harmony note, and Claire slipped an arm around her waist, giving the lightest squeeze. The wish—private, sacred, ridiculous, who could say—lived for a heartbeat behind Steven's eyes. He blew, one long steady breath, and the candles went to smoke with a small, triumphant cheer from everyone present.

Applause fell into the quiet that follows a good joke. The smell of blown candles—wax and warmth—hung for a second before the servers whisked in with plates and a long knife. Steven straightened, cheeks pink, grin easy.

"That's the good thumbnail," Claire told him, snapping a photo anyway.

Rena glanced around the table, letting the scene fix itself in her mind: Claire's mother dabbing at her eye though she would pretend she wasn't; Papa leaning back with his hands folded over a contented stomach; Nana already angling for the corner piece with extra frosting; cousins leaning in to compare fortunes even before the cookies were cracked. Family stories began to reknit themselves from the threads of the night.

Cake was cut. The first slice, thick and leaning, went to Steven; the second, by a rule no one had spoken aloud but everyone obeyed, to Nana. Rena accepted her plate with a quiet thank-you and a glance toward Claire that said everything. The music from the side street found them again through the glass, a saxophone sketching a line that felt like an invitation.

And that was where the evening breathed out: candles cooling into wicks, a birthday boy happy in the glow, and Rena—held in the small orbit of Claire's arm—certain that soon could be soon enough.

Xavier stepped out of Juilliard's glass doors just as they were swinging closed behind Rena and Claire. He caught a last glimpse of them heading down the block — Claire's arm hooked lightly through Rena's, both of them angled toward each other.

He stopped just past the entrance, watching them disappear into the Friday-night crowd until they were swallowed by it. The wind caught his jacket, but the tightness in his chest had nothing to do with the cold.

Friend

That's what she'd called him.

The word was still lodged in his head like a stone he couldn't spit out. Friend. As if eight months of late nights, private jokes, and the kind of touch that makes you forget the rest of the world was just some casual acquaintance thing. As if he'd misread the whole damn thing.

And maybe the word would've stung less if it weren't for the bigger truth hiding underneath it — Claire didn't know anything about him. Nothing. Not his name. Not the first thing about how he and Rena had met, or how long they'd been together, or the kind of person he was. Rena had kept that door shut.

Eight months. And not one mention to her best friend.

He started walking, cutting a path through a cluster of students lingering by the entrance. He heard bits of conversation — complaints about rehearsal times, someone bragging about an audition — but they blurred into static. His thoughts kept looping back, tighter each time.

He'd told Rena things. Real things. He didn't open up to just anyone. And yet here they were, eight months in, and she'd built a wall between him and the rest of her life so tall, he was starting to wonder if she even planned to let him over it.

By the time he reached the corner, his phone was in his hand almost without thinking. He tapped Mason's name.

"Yo," Mason answered, music thumping faintly in the background.

"What are you doing?" Xavier asked, his voice flat enough to hide the edge beneath it.

"Not much. Jake's here. We're thinking about heading out. You in?"

Jake's voice carried over the line, loud and unfiltered. "Tell him to stop being boring and get over here!"

Xavier's mouth twitched into something close to a laugh, though it didn't quite make it. "Where?"

"There's this new bar on Orchard," Mason said. "Good beer, solid food. Heard the bartender's a legend."

"Fine. Text me the address."

Twenty minutes later, he was sliding into a booth under dim industrial lighting, the smell of hops and fried food already settling into his clothes. Mason was grinning across the table, Jake waving like they hadn't seen each other in months even though it'd been three days. Dave  — lifted his glass in greeting.

"Boys' night," Mason announced, clinking his pint against Jake's. ", Chad and Rafi are coming too."

"Whole damn reunion," Xavier said, leaning back.

Rafi showed first, same easy grin as always, tossing his jacket over the back of a chair like he owned the place. Chad rolled in right after, loud enough to turn a few heads, already chatting up the hostess on his way to the booth.

The first round came fast, cold glasses sweating onto the table.

They fell into the kind of rhythm they always did — Mason telling stories that got louder with every drink, Jake interrupting to correct details no one cared about, Rafi jumping in with a punchline that made the whole booth laugh. Chad flirted with the waitress like it was an Olympic sport.

Xavier kept pace. Smiled when he had to, laughed when it was expected, threw in a comment here and there about the music or the beer. But under it, the anger was still there, slow and steady, like a pilot light.

He knew exactly what would happen if Mason or Jake picked up on it. They'd pounce, push for the story. They weren't subtle, and they weren't good at letting things go. If he admitted he was pissed about Rena, the questions would come hard and fast — What happened? Did you fight? Are you okay? — until he either lied or laid it all out.

He didn't want to do either tonight.

So he kept it buried. Another sip of beer. A smirk when Jake tried to reenact some ridiculous conversation from last week. A headshake when Chad turned his full charm on a table of girls who looked like they could've been freshmen.

But every so often, his gaze drifted past them, unfocused. He'd see Rena again in his head, walking down the block with Claire, her whole other life unfolding somewhere he wasn't invited.

And no matter how loud the bar got, or how many drinks they ordered, that image stayed exactly where it was — right in the center of his chest.

About the Author

Jessica Steuer is a 24-year-old inspiring author. She hails from the Windy City of Chicago and is currently studying abroad in England.