Once we’re seated, a waitress pulls up to our table with a cart full of bamboo baskets. She holds up items one by one, taking off their lids and presenting them to us like she’s the Vanna White of dim sum. By the time she wheels her cart away, every inch of the table is filled with baskets of pork buns and pot stickers and satays.
The addition of food eases the mood. “These are fucking great!” Hannah says through a mouthful of cold sesame noodles.
Having a newcomer gives us an obvious topic of conversation, but Theo is sparse with details, like he’s embarrassed by the largesse of his upbringing. Over the course of dinner we eke out a few basic biographical tidbits: He grew up in a townhouse in Belgravia, but left for boarding school in Switzerland at eleven before going on to college in Paris. He has an older brother, so old that he was at university by the time Theo was in primary school. He speaks four languages fluently and a few others less fluently. This we learn when he summons the waitress and requests more shrimp dumplings in rapid Cantonese. She laughs at something he says and ruffles his curls. When she returns, she has an extra basket, even though we only ordered one. His father is skiing in Gstaad for the holiday and his mother is on a beach vacation in Thailand.
“Do you miss home?” Priya asks.
“Not really, no.” He rushes to cover: “Does that make me sound awful? I guess I don’t think of it as home. I haven’t properly lived there since I was eleven. In a lot of ways, it’s easier to be away.”
A wave of recognition crashes over me, like his words could have been my own. Outside of Hannah, I’ve never met anyone else who doesn’t have a family. I feel blindsided when friends mention going on family vacations or having two birthday parties—one with friends and another with family—even now that we’re firmly into our twenties. A reminder that they’re part of a set, while I’m a lone Lego piece. Those people I don’t get, but this . . . this, I get.
When the check arrives, Theo lunges for it, putting down his credit card despite our objections. “You got me breakfast,” he says, “this is only fair.”
When the waitress returns with the credit card receipt, she takes inventory of our group. “Are you going in back?”
“In back?” I’m intrigued.
“To dance?” she clarifies.
“We’re definitely going in back to dance!” I tell her before anyone can object. “And where do we go to do that, again?”
She points to an unremarkable swinging metal door opposite where we entered, which leads to a mirrored hallway. We follow it deeper into the building before taking two turns and a flight of stairs that deposit us into a cavernous basement, the air thick with cigarette smoke despite the city’s nonsmoking ordinances. The floor shakes with the driving beat of “I Love It” by Icona Pop. I’m shocked we didn’t hear music in the dining room, there must be some industrial-grade soundproofing. A disparate crowd of revelers—from skater punks to glossy uptown girls—wave their hands in the air dancing with reckless abandon. Here are our people. Here are the other Christmas strays dancing the night away at China Chalet.
* * *
? ? ?
?Later that night, or more accurately, early the next morning, Hannah and I stagger into her apartment on tired legs. My ears still ring from the music. We left Priya there, her mouth fused onto the face of the DJ, who periodically broke their kiss to switch out the record on his turntable. Theo hopped into yet another black SUV with promises we’d do this again soon.
I could sleep in Priya’s room. She won’t be using it tonight. But instead, Hannah and I lie face-to-face in her full-sized bed, under the watchful gaze of Florence Welch, whose illustrated form stares down at us from a poster above the dresser.
“Did you have a nice Christmas?” Hannah asks through a yawn. She’s already half asleep despite the cacophonous performance the old steam radiator is putting on.
“Definitely top three.”
“Because of Theo?”
I’m glad my back is to the window so the slant of streetlight doesn’t catch the gooey smile that comes to my face unbidden. I reach up and cover my mouth with my hand just in case.
“Do you like him?” she follows up when I don’t answer.
“Maybe.”
She kicks my shin. “Okay, yes,” I admit.
“I do, too,” she says. “For you, I mean. But promise me if you fall in love with him, we can still have Christmas together every year.” There’s a whiff of desperation in her voice, but I could never leave her.
“Of course I promise.” I reach out my pinky finger and she hooks it with her own.
three
Hannah
This year, November 14
Sunlight streams through the windows of the Tribeca apartment. Even after five months, it’s hard to think of it as mine. Ours, really. Every morning the ample light and space surprise me anew when I walk out of our bedroom, like maybe it was all a lovely dream.
I moved here with David, our first apartment together, after Priya announced her plan to move out of Orchard Street. “You’ve lived in the same apartment since you were twenty-two, Hannah. Don’t you think it’s time for a little upgrade?” she nudged. “Wouldn’t it be nice not to be on top of each other? To have closets that fit more than five outfits? To have a living room with windows? A dishwasher? And with this new job, I’m finally making enough to get my own place.”
Of course those things would be nice, but Orchard Street was my home, mostly for lack of other, better options to claim.
Plus, I loved living with Priya. It was the college roommate experience I never had. Saturday nights doing our hair to a soundtrack of Lana Del Rey and Lorde in the apartment’s Pepto-Bismol-pink-tiled bathroom, nursing mugs of cheap white wine. I’d gotten used to her sounds （her marimba alarm tone and her favorite podcast, Call Your Girlfriend, which she listened to while getting ready for work） and her smells （the expensive Diptyque candles that were her most-cherished beauty editor perk and the rooibos tea she left half-full mugs of around the apartment）。 After almost six years living together, Priya was fully ingrained into the fabric of my days.
With her moving out, David suggested we move in together. The idea was as intriguing as it was terrifying. Even though I already spent most weekends and an increasing number of weeknights at David’s Flatiron apartment, living together felt like a huge step. What if he was turned off by my apathy toward basic housekeeping, or found me annoying when there were no breaks? After all, Finn and I had only lasted two months as roommates.
“I already know that you have awful dragon breath in the morning and that you prefer the crappy one-ply toilet paper to the good stuff, and I still love you,” David joked. “I want all your quirks, Hannah. Bring ’em on.” And just like that, his exuberance melted my resistance.
Rather than moving into his apartment, David suggested we find something that was ours instead of his. I was a goner the second I saw this apartment with its oversized factory windows, exposed brick walls, and a top-of-the-line kitchen straight out of a Food Network set.
But better than the apartment itself was the man I got to live here with. We’d been dating for a little over a year by then, and I felt like I’d gotten away with something by getting his tacit agreement we’d stay together at least the duration of a twelve-month lease.