5
We walked in silence together for several blocks, the odd couple in our finery, Xavier standing more than a foot over me, blocking out the streetlamps as I gradually recalled where I was. I should have, considering I had planned to attend graduate school not twenty blocks from here. I had been obsessed with Columbia, even while finishing my degree about twenty blocks north at CUNY. Nearly every day, I took the B train down to 116th Street to study around the neighborhood.
There was the deli that made my favorite pastrami sandwich. And that was the brownstone where I dreamed of having my very own studio apartment. One of my classmates shared an apartment with two others in a building just four blocks west. We even passed Jewel, the bar where Xavier and I had met. Two blocks from the park, three south of the Columbia campus. The intersection of Kismet Street and Ruin My Life Avenue.
On and on I strode, like Ebenezer Scrooge, followed by my shadow and guided by my own personal Ghost of Christmas Past until I stopped at the base of a tall brownstone that at one point during the last century had been converted to an enormous bookstore and café that rivaled The Strand.
“What are you doing?” Xavier asked.
I turned. “You wanted dinner. It’s my favorite place around here.”
He looked through the windows with disdain. “It’s a bookshop.”
“Correct. It’s called NovelTea. And they do, in fact, have novels. And excellent tea.”
He looked horrified. “You want tea for dinner?”
“They have food too. I can order a salad, maybe. Or a sandwich. I like the avocado toast.” I was definitely still feeling the effects of all that champagne. Avocado toast would probably be the perfect antidote.
“You want a piece of the overprocessed cardboard that passes as bread in this country smeared with overripe tropical fat for dinner?”
“That’s right. Delicious.”
Xavier rubbed a hand over his face, muttering something that sounded an awful lot like “Good fucking God” before looking back at me. “I don’t think so.”
I huffed. “Where were you thinking?”
He shrugged, then pulled out his phone and scanned it for a moment. “There’s a kaiseki restaurant near Lincoln Center I planned to try during my visit. Doro.” He wrinkled his long nose like he had just smelled something bad.
“What now?” I asked.
“I was just thinking I wouldn’t name my restaurant after the Japanese word for dirt.” He smirked, but in a blink, his steely expression was back in place. “Just one more competitor to put out of business and poach their staff. Anyway, they’re known for their Miyazaki beef-wrapped oysters. The chef has a Michelin star.”
I blinked. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
Xavier blinked right back like I had just morphed into a cockroach. “You don’t know what a Michelin star is?”
I glared. “I’m not a complete moron. I live in New York. Of course, I am aware of the world’s preeminent restaurant rating system. My point is rather, why should I care?”
“Because—because—” he stumbled, almost as though the words were caught in his mouth. “Because it’s the best!”
I tipped my head. “There’s a lot of the best here in New York, you know. Some of it only costs two dollars a slice. Or, you know, per pot of tea.”
His neck muscles bulged, but the only other sign of his annoyance was the ticking at the corner of his jaw. It would have been funny if I hadn’t found his stern glare attractive. Too attractive, really.
I rolled my eyes. Apparently, champagne made me particularly flippant. “Anyway, some of us don’t care about fancy schmancy oysters. Some of us just want something familiar to put a horrible night to rest.”
Irritatingly, he rolled his eyes right back. “Obviously, I would pay. I am a gentleman. Some of the time, anyway.”
“Are you saying I can’t afford to buy my own dinner?” I demanded.
Xavier coughed. “What? No, of course not. Only that Doro is fairly expensive, and—”
“And I couldn’t possibly afford it on a teacher’s salary, right?”
“Well, er—”
I couldn’t help arguing. I was enjoying being the one with the upper hand now. He’d had me so flustered I’d literally run out of a party, and now just a slight overreaction had this ice sculpture of a man stumbling himself.