For weeks, Edith did nothing but watch Gossip Girl. Rich teens got drunk and broke each other’s hearts. Some days they were a little less rich, or a little more. Every episode ended in a party. Having lost the beat of her life, this reliable pattern would have to do. Treats followed her every time she stood to get black coffee or snack cakes from the kitchen. In sleep, she clenched her teeth till the plastic cap flexed, the still-raw stump of her tooth aching her awake. She sat in the bath until the water went cold and listened to Sondheim. She did not read. She did not write. At night, she ran the dishwasher half-full because it sounded like northeastern rain. In seven months, her lease would end. She had seven months to decide what came next.

Eventually she went to the dentist, and a permanent porcelain crown was fixed to her mouth. We had to add fluoridation damage, the dentist said, so that it would match all the other teeth. His fingers in her mouth, she could not say, Why bother? Why should it look real?

Seb got her out of her apartment. Buy me dinner, they said. Tell me of your adventures to the wild north.

The air was feverish with hints of spring. They went to Patrizi’s, a food truck attached to a bar in the center of town. The bar had live bluegrass on Wednesdays; there was a theater space where she’d seen a puppet show about the Radium Girls. She and Seb sat at a picnic table with noodles piled onto paper plates.

We shouldn’t patronize this place, Seb said. They fired that trans busser because she was trying to unionize.

This was your idea.

Sure but, if anyone asks, we didn’t come here. They popped a ball of noodles into their mouth. So. Beantown. Details.

What’s to tell? It was good seeing people.

If you don’t give me something I’m gonna start spreading wild rumors. You got into a fistfight with Ben Affleck in a Dunkin’ Donuts. You took a shit on the JFK House lawn. Another twisted knot of noodles sucked from their fork. Seb could unhinge their jaw. Seeing your ex was good? Marriage revelations aside?

(When she’d told Seb Tessa’s news, they’d let out a long whistle and said, You dodged a bullet. No one who marries a cis boy can be trusted.)

I don’t want to talk about it. Edith could barely get her noodles to stay on her fork. I ran into this straight guy I lived with in college, actually.

Oh yeah? He cute?

He’s married. All her feelings sounded ridiculous to her. I had a really nice time chatting with him and his wife, weirdly.

What’s weird about that? Their waiter brought them a stack of garlic bread, and they spent some pleasant minutes tearing it to pieces. You’re in your Frances Ha era.

Don’t say that, I’m too old. Frances Ha was too old for her Frances Ha era.

You’ll never get anywhere going in circles like that. You want that last piece?

All you, bud. After two slices, Edith felt full to bursting. I think Boston was the last place I was happy.

Go back to stay, then. That’s an easy one.

My life is here, Seb. Who’ll buy you pasta if I leave.

You want to stay here forever? You want to die in Texas? Seb had lived in Texas longer than Edith and only had another year in them, tops. They were trying to emigrate to Argentina—easier said than done when your only credentials were a queer studies Ph.D. and a dozen bookstore jobs.

I figure we have fifteen years before the water runs out and I get gunned down by cannibal transphobes, no matter where I live, Edith said. You can’t go back to the last place you liked and expect to find the same life waiting for you.