Page 14 of Weekends with You

“Isn’t dim sum really supposed to be breakfast or lunch food?” Liv asked, turning the menu over in her hands.

“Can’t just let people enjoy things, can ya?” Finn teased.

“She’s right,” Margot said, eyebrows raised, as if this were the first time Liv had ever been right about anything. Poor Liv. “But dim sum is so good that I can overlook the sacrilege. No one tell my mum, though. If she even knew I was eating Chinese that wasn’t hers, she might drop dead on the spot.”

“No one is telling your mum anything,” Jan said. “She is the scariest woman alive.”

“Makes a lot of sense how Margot got to be this way, then,” Henry added.

“Do you lot write your own material?” she asked, which shut them up.

At most of the dim sum places we frequented, we simply filled out a card with our order, but here the service was apparently more attentive. We had to tell the server we needed “just another minute” three times before we stopped arguing long enough to settle on an order.

Henry ordered for the table, and his confidence was astonishing compared to the men in my life prior to now. After years of sitting across the table from men who ordered without looking the server in the eyes or mispronounced even the most basic items on the menu, it was strangely attractive to see Henry rattling off dish after dish to our waiter. Either that, or my standards were at an all-time low. Hard to tell.

When the server returned with our food, we were just getting into our two-sentence updates. We paused to pass around plates piled high with dumplings, shumai, rolls, buns, and some other round foods I couldn’t identify, knocking elbows and slinging chopsticks as we made our picks.

“Mar, show me again how to use these, would ya?” Jan was tapping his chopsticks on the table like he was playing the drums.

“If you would just listen, we wouldn’t have to do this every time,” she said, grabbing them from his hands.

“We can’t all have Chinese parents, you know.”

“No one else at this table has Chinese parents, and they’re all doing just fine.”

“So, the update from Jan and Margot is that they’re still mortal enemies, is it?” Henry laughed.

“No, the update is actually that I got a spot in the East London tattoo convention this summer.” Jan looked at our astonished faces, and I think I heard a pair of chopsticks clatter to the floor.

“Are you having a laugh, mate?” Henry asked, holding a dumpling inches from his mouth.

“Nope. Quite lucky, aren’t I?”

“Jan, I don’t think you’re lucky, I think you’re talented,” Raja said.

“Agreed,” I said. “Isn’t that, like, impossible to get into?”

“Apparently not, if Jan can do it,” Margot said.

“Bugger off, Margot,” Jan shot back.

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Congrats, mate.” She raised a glass, a genuine smile on her face.

“To Jan,” Liv said, raising her glass and motioning for us to do the same.

“You know this means one of you is going to have to let me put some art on ya,” he said as we clinked.

“Give it up, man,” Cal said. “Never gonna happen.”

“Famous last words, Callum.”

“Not sure how anyone is going to top that,” Henry said, getting us back on track. “But who’s next?”

The rest of us took turns with our updates, mostly mundane, as usual. I was also congratulated when I shared that Renee and I had undertaken a bigger project, but I was too ashamed to admit that it was not only the first but probably the last, too. Raja shared that she was on track to graduate with first-class honors, which came as a surprise to no one, and Finn hit a new record on miles ridden in one night of bike deliveries.

“How was Iceland?” Cal asked once we had finished.

“Beautiful, cold, expensive,” Henry said.

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