Checkered Hearts
But sitting across from Arthur Sullivan in a restaurant that charged too much for coffee, he found himself illiterate.
"You didn't have to do this," Arthur said for the third time. He was wearing a shirt that buttoned—actual buttons, not the racing-team polos Cyrus had seen him in. It was blue, the color of surgical scrubs but softer, more expensive. It made his eyes look darker, more guarded, more beautiful.
"I know," Cyrus said. "I wanted to."
They were in Makati, a rooftop place that his colleague Lena had recommended for "dates that aren't really dates." The city spread below them in a glitter of dysfunction—traffic jams and luxury towers, the uneven pulse of a metropolis that refused to