Apartment 6F isn’t the the only group outside of Isaiah’s drag family to warrant an invitation. There’s the morning shift guy from the bodega, the owner of one of the jerk chicken joints, stoners from the park. There’s Isaiah’s sister, fresh off the train from Philly with purple box braids down to her waist and a Wawa bag over her shoulder. Every employee from the Popeyes downstairs ends up there the second they’ve clocked out, passing around boxes of spicy dark. August recognizes the guy who always lets them on the service elevator, still wearing a nametag that says GREGORY, half the letters rubbed off so it reads REG RY.

The party fills and fills, and August huddles in the kitchen between Isaiah and Wes, the former trying to greet every person who stumbles through the door while the latter pretends he’s not watching him do it.

“Wait, oh my God,” Isaiah says suddenly, goggling at the door. “Is that—Jade, Jade, is that Vera Harry? Oh my God, I’ve never seen her out of drag, you were right, bitch!” He turns to them, gesturing across the room at an incredibly hot and stubbly guy who’s walked in. He looks like he fell out of a CW show and into Isaiah’s living room. Wes is instantly glaring. “That is a new queen, moved from LA last month, everybody’s been talking about her. She’s this crazy stunt queen, but then, out of drag? Trade. Best thing to ever happen to Thursday nights.”

“Sucks for Thursday nights,” Wes mutters, but Isaiah has already vanished into the crowd.

“Oof,” August says, “you’re jealous.”

“Wow, holy shit, you figured it out. You’re gonna win a Peabody Award for reporting,” Wes deadpans. “Where’s the keg? I was told there would be a keg.”

Noisy minutes lurch by in a mess of shiny eyelids and Isaiah’s curated playlist—it’s just shifted from “Your Own Personal Jesus” to “Faith” by George Michael—and August is snatching a biscuit from the tray she brought when someone sets a platter of bun-and-cheese down beside it and says, “Shit, I almost brought the same thing. That would have been awkward.”

August looks up, and there’s Winfield in a silk shirt covered in cartoon fish, his braids bundled up on top of his head. Beside him is Lucie who, when she’s not in her Billy’s uniform, apparently favors extremely tiny black dresses and lace-up boots. She looks more like a girl in an assassin movie than the manager of a pancake joint. August stares.

“You— What are you doing here? Y’all know Isaiah?”

“I know Annie,” Winfield says. “She didn’t put me in drag my first time, but she sat at my counter enough to convince me I should try it.”

What?

“You’re—you do drag? But you’ve never mentioned—and you’re not—” August fumbles with half a dozen ways to end that sentence before landing eloquently on, “You have a beard?”

“What, you never met a bearded pansexual drag queen?” He laughs, and it’s then that August notices: Winfield and Lucie are holding hands. What in the world goes on at drag family Easter brunch?

“I—you—y’all are—?”

“Mm-hmm,” Winfield hums happily.

“As fun as it is to break your brain,” Lucie says, “nobody at work knows. Tell them and I break your arm.”

“Oh my God. Okay. You’re…” August’s head is going to explode. She looks at Winfield and gasps, “Oh fuck, that’s why you know so much Czech.”

Winfield laughs, and they disappear as quickly as they appeared, and it is … nice, August thinks. The two of them together. Like Isaiah and Wes or Myla and Niko, it makes a strange sense. And Lucie—she looked happy, affectionate even, which is incredible, since August kind of assumed she was made from what they use at Billy’s to scrub out the floor drains. Emotional steel wool.

By the punch bowl, the conversation has shifted to everyone’s Easter family traditions. August refills her cup as Isaiah asks Myla, “What about you?”

“My parents are, like, hippie agnostics, so we never celebrated. I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing Niko’s parents don’t like about me, my heathen upbringing,” she says, rolling her eyes as Niko laughs and throws an arm over her shoulders. “Our big April holiday growing up was Tomb Sweeping Day, but my grandparents and great-grandparents keep refusing to die, so we just burn a paper Ferrari every year for my great-uncle who was in love with his car.”

“My parents always made us go to Sábado de Gloria,” Niko chimes in. “The Catholic church taught me everything I know about drama. And candles.”

“Oh, no shit?” Isaiah says appreciatively. “My pops is a pastor. Mom leads the choir. Our parents should get together with the blood of Christ sometime. Except mine are Methodist, so it’s grape juice.”

Wes, who is perched on the countertop observing the conversation with the vaguest of interest, says, “August, didn’t you go to Catholic school for a million years? Is your family horny for Jesus too?”

“Only the extended family,” she says. “Didn’t go for Jesus reasons. Louisiana public schools are crazy underfunded and my mom wanted me to go private, so I went and we were broke my whole life. Super great time. One of the nuns got fired for selling cocaine to students.”

“Damn,” Wes says. He never did find the keg, but there’s a thirty-rack of PBR beside him, and he’s fishing one out. “Wanna shotgun a beer?”

“I absolutely don’t,” August says, and takes the beer Wes holds out anyway. She untucks her pocketknife from her jean jacket and hands it over, then follows Wes’s lead and jams it into the side of her can.

“I still think that knife is cool,” Wes says, and they pop the tops and chug.

When people start having to do shots in the hallway, Myla flings open the door to 6F and yells, “Shoes off and nobody touch the plants!” And everything overflows into both apartments, drag queens perched on the steamer trunk, Popeyes aprons dropped in the hall, Wes reclined across Isaiah’s kitchen table like a Renaissance painting, Vera Harry cradling Noodles in his beefy arms. Myla busts out the grocery bag of Lunar New Year candy her mom sent and starts passing it around the room. Isaiah’s Canadian friend tromps by with a box of wine on her shoulder, singing “moooore Fraaanziaaaa” to the tune of “O Canada.”

At some point, August realizes her phone’s been chiming insistently from her pocket. When she pulls it out, all the messages have collected to fill the screen. She swallows down an embarrassingly pleased sound and tries to play it off as a burp.

“Who’s blowing up your phone, Baby Smurf?” Myla says, as if she doesn’t know. August tilts her phone so Myla can see, bearing her weight when she leans in so close that August can smell the orangey lotion she puts on after showers.

Hello, I’m very bored.—Jane

Hi August!—Jane

Are you getting these?—Jane

Hellooooo?—Jane Su, Q Train, Brooklyn, NY

“Aw, she’s already learned how to double text,” Myla says. “Does she think she has to sign it like a letter?”

“I guess I left that part out when I was showing her how to use her phone.”