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Hakeem liked it immediately.

He ordered two al pastor plates without waiting for Layla because he wanted them, and at work, they often joked about sharing one brain cell. Doing something useful with his hands was preferable to sitting alone with the previous twelve hours echoing in his bones.

Layla arrived in oversized sunglasses that mostly hid her eyes behind dark orange lenses, and a denim jacket she once boasted she’d gotten from a dead woman.

A dead woman, Layla? Explain. Hakeem remembered.

Well, it was an estate sale on behalf of a woman who died. Truly, impeccable taste in clothing. So yes, Hakeem, this jacket is from a dead woman.

She dropped into the chair across from him, pushed the sunglasses up into her hair, and studied his face with the diagnostic precision of a woman who had been doing this long enough to skip the warmup.

"Okay," she said. "What happened?"

"Nothing happened. I wanted lunch."

"You texted me at nine a.m. on your day off. That's a distress signal."

"It's a taco."

“Hakeem." She leaned forward. "You look like you slept in a dryer that’s on its second cycle because the clothes are still wet."

He probably did look like that. He had not slept well. Through the wall, Antonio's room had been silent in a way that felt louder than noise.

"I'm processing," he said.

"Processing what?"

He paused. "Life."

"Try again."

Hakeem picked up a lime wedge to squeeze, but the food hadn't arrived yet. "Do you ever feel like you came to this city with one version of yourself and the city just quietly replaced it with a worse one?"

Layla took off her jacket and folded it over the back of her chair. "It’s L.A., babe. Also, that's a question for a more qualified therapist than me."

"You’re not a therapist, and also, I can't afford therapy."

"Which is why you're at a taco stand with me."

Their food arrived. Hakeem watched the woman behind the counter set down two plates that looked like they had been assembled with genuine civic pride.

Hakeem ate a bite and felt, for one brief second, like a person with manageable problems.

"I've been thinking about home," he said.

Layla looked up. Hakeem almost never talked about Las Cruces. She knew the broad strokes—small city, big sky, the kind of place where everybody knew your name in ways that were either comforting or claustrophobic, depending on the year. She knew he had done acting there. She did not know, because Hakeem had never quite found the right tone to say it in, how much that had meant.

"What about it?" she asked.

Hakeem set his fork down. "I was good there."

"You're good here."

"No, I mean—" He rubbed the back of his neck. "I was the guy. Community theater. High school before that. Every play, every showcase, every weird little one-act somebody's aunt directed in a church basement. I got leads. Not because I was the only option. Because I was the best option. My abuela’s friends would ask her when my next show was."

Layla watched him without interrupting.

"Then I went to New Mexico State," he said. "Theater major. And I was still good. Better, maybe, because I was learning actual technique instead of running on instinct and good lighting."