Đạt worked the register at the pharmacy on El Camino, and I worked at pretending I needed things there. Cough drops. A phone charger I already owned. One night I bought a single birthday candle and he didn't ask who it was for, just rang it up and slid it across the counter like it mattered.
We started riding the 22 after his shift. It's the longest bus line in the county — it runs all night, San Jose to Palo Alto and back, and nobody takes it end to end unless they have nowhere to be. We had nowhere to be. He'd fall asleep against the window somewhere around Sunnyvale, and I'd stay awake counting the stops under my breath in Vietnamese, the way my mother counts stitches, low, so I wouldn't lose my place.
He never told me why he rode all night instead of going home. I never told him I knew — that his father's temper kept a schedule, and the bus was cheaper than a room. Some things you hold by not holding them.
On the last warm night before he left for the job in Sacramento, he stayed awake the whole loop. Near Mountain View he took my hand and turned it over, tracing the lines like he was reading the timetable of me. This one goes all the way to the end, he said, following my lifeline down to the wrist. I said the bus does too. He laughed, and it fogged the window, and he wrote something in the fog I didn't get to read before it faded.
I still ride the 22 sometimes. I sit on his side. When the glass fogs up I write my name and wait to see if it remembers his.