The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt sugar. Marisol had caramelized the onions too long, and Deon was scraping the pan with a wooden spoon, insisting it was salvageable.

"It's fine," he said. "It's rustic."

"It's carbon."

They had been together four years and in this apartment for two, long enough that the arguments had worn smooth, like river stones. Marisol wiped down the table they'd bought secondhand and never refinished. Deon put on a playlist he'd made specifically for the evening, then skipped the first three songs because they felt wrong now that people were actually coming.

Priya and Tom arrived first, with a bottle of wine and a bag of clementines, apologizing for the clementines. "They were on sale," Priya said. "I panicked." Andre came twenty minutes late, still in his work clothes, and immediately took off his shoes without being asked, which Marisol appreciated.

The chicken was dry. Everyone said it wasn't. Deon told the story about the guy at the hardware store who tried to sell him a specialty grout he definitely didn't need, and Marisol interrupted twice to correct details, and Deon let her, because her version was funnier.

Around ten, Tom found the deck of cards in the drawer with the batteries and the takeout menus, and they played a game whose rules nobody fully remembered. Andre kept score on the back of an envelope. Priya fell asleep sitting up for a moment and denied it.

By eleven-thirty everyone was gone. The clementines sat in their bag on the counter.

Marisol washed; Deon dried. He mentioned that Andre had seemed quieter than usual, and she said she'd noticed too, and they agreed one of them should text him tomorrow.

"You burned the onions," Deon said.

"You said it was rustic."

He hung the towel on the oven handle, crooked, the way he always did, and she straightened it, the way she always did.


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt sugar. Dana had caramelized the onions too long, and Marcus, coming out of the shower with a towel around his neck, said so without saying so—he opened the window over the sink and stood there a second, letting the cold February air push in.

"They're fine," Dana said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You opened a window."

He kissed the side of her head and went to find a shirt. She heard him rummaging, heard the closet door stick the way it had since October. He'd said he would plane it down. He'd bought the plane.

By seven the table was set with four plates that didn't match, which Dana had decided years ago was charming rather than a failure to buy a set. Marcus had made a playlist that was mostly songs from his sophomore year of college. He kept lowering the volume, then raising it.

Priya and Tom arrived at 7:20 with a bottle of wine and a container of olives nobody would eat. Priya took off her shoes without being asked; Tom didn't, and Dana decided not to care. They stood in the kitchen for the first forty minutes because that's where everyone always stood, drinking, while the pasta water refused to boil.

Over dinner Tom told a long story about his boss and a rental car in Tulsa. Marcus laughed in the right places. Priya asked about the apartment's radiator, which knocked, and Dana said they'd stopped hearing it.

Around ten Marcus started stacking plates and Dana said leave it, and he left it, and then twenty minutes later she got up and did it herself while he walked them down to the street.

When he came back she was elbow-deep in the sink. He picked up a towel.

"That was nice," he said.

"Tom didn't take his shoes off."

"I know," Marcus said. "I noticed."


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt sugar. Nadia had scorched the first batch of caramelized onions and started over, and Theo had taken the ruined pan out to the balcony to cool so the smoke alarm would stop threatening them.

"They're going to be late anyway," he said, coming back in. "Marcus is always late."

"That's not a reason to serve them something that tastes like an ashtray." Nadia was slicing the second onion, blinking hard. "Can you do the table? The good napkins are in the bottom drawer, under the takeout menus."

Theo found four cloth napkins, two navy and two a faded green, and decided nobody would notice. He set out the mismatched wine glasses, the ones from her old apartment and the ones his sister had given them, and put the bottle of red on the counter to breathe because Nadia had told him once that you were supposed to.

Marcus and Priya arrived at 7:20 with a bakery box and apologies about parking. Priya immediately went to the stove to look at what was happening. Marcus took off his shoes without being asked, which Theo appreciated.

They ate the pasta at the small table with two chairs pulled in from the bedroom desk. Priya told a long story about her landlord and a raccoon. Nadia laughed so hard she had to put her fork down. Theo refilled glasses and got up twice, once for the parmesan he'd forgotten and once for water.

Around ten, Marcus checked his phone and said something about an early meeting. There was the slow business of coats and leftovers in a container Priya promised to return.

Afterward, Nadia washed and Theo dried, and she said the onions had been fine in the end, and he said he'd told her so, and she flicked water at him.


Nadia found the good tablecloth wadded in the bottom drawer, creased into a grid. She shook it out and considered it. "Iron or lie?"

"Lie," Marcus said from the kitchen. "Say it's textured."

He was standing over a pot of curry, tasting it with the wooden spoon he refused to replace even though the handle had split. Nadia came in and dipped her finger in.

"Needs salt."

"It doesn't need salt."

"It needs salt."

He added salt.

They had forty minutes. Nadia collected the mail and a pair of his running shoes from the couch and dumped both in the bedroom, then closed the door on it. Marcus put on the album Nadia liked and turned it down until it was barely there, which was how she preferred it. The apartment smelled like cumin and the cheap candle from the bathroom.

The Okonkwos arrived first, ten minutes early, with a bottle of wine and their four-year-old, who had a cold and was asleep against Dele's shoulder. Nadia found blankets. Priya came at seven-thirty, apologizing about the train, and then everyone was standing in the kitchen, which held six people badly, drinking wine out of a mismatched assortment of glasses.

"You've painted," Priya said.

"Two years ago," Marcus said.

Dinner ran long. Someone spilled rice. Dele told a story about his boss that he had told before, and Marcus laughed at it again, honestly. Nadia refilled water without being asked. At some point the four-year-old woke and ate three bites of naan and fell asleep again on the couch, and everyone lowered their voices without discussing it.

They left just after eleven. Marcus started the dishes; Nadia dried, standing close enough that their elbows kept bumping.

"That was good," she said.

"Yeah."

"We should do it more."

"We say that."

"I know," she said, and handed him a plate to put away.


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt rosemary. Dana had turned the oven down twice already, but the chicken kept insisting on browning faster than the potatoes cooked.

"Do we have another lemon?" she called.

Marcus was in the living room, moving the laundry basket from the couch to the bedroom, which he had promised to do an hour ago. "There's half of one in the door of the fridge. It might be from last week."

"Last week's fine."

He came into the kitchen and looked at the counter, at the cutting board crowded with parsley stems and the bowl of salad greens still unwashed. He picked up the bowl without being asked and carried it to the sink. They had lived together for two years, and the choreography of a small kitchen was one of the things they'd gotten good at, along with knowing when not to talk during a bad week at work.

"Is Priya bringing wine or should I run out?"

"She said she was. But she also said that last time."

Marcus grabbed his keys. He came back with two bottles of red and a bag of ice, and by then the table was set with the mismatched plates and the cloth napkins Dana's mother had given them at Christmas, still creased from the package.

Priya and Ben arrived at seven-fifteen, apologizing for parking. Ben handed over a loaf of bread from the good bakery, and Priya, who had in fact brought wine, put it in the freezer to chill and forgot about it entirely.

They ate around the little table with their elbows nearly touching. Ben told a long story about his landlord that got funnier as it went. The chicken was slightly dry; nobody mentioned it. At eleven, after the guests left, Dana and Marcus stood at the sink washing dishes, tired and pleased, arguing gently about who had actually invited whom.


Nadia found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of cedar and last Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the table while Theo argued with a jar of olives at the counter.

"There's a trick," he said. "You hit the lid on the edge of the counter."

"You'll chip the counter."

He hit it on the edge of the counter. The lid gave with a pop, and he looked at her with the smug expression she'd been putting up with for four years.

They had forty minutes. Nadia had made a mushroom thing from a magazine, which had involved more thyme than she'd expected and a trip to the store at four o'clock. Theo was in charge of everything else, which meant bread, salad, and the playlist, which he'd been curating since Wednesday with unnecessary seriousness.

"Do we have enough chairs?" she asked.

"Five. Someone can take the desk chair."

"Not Priya. Her back."

"Then I'll take the desk chair."

The Bhatts arrived first, eleven minutes early, with a bottle of wine and a story about parking. Marcus came at seven-thirty with nothing, as usual, and apologized about it, as usual, and everyone said it was fine, which it was. The mushroom thing came out slightly underseasoned; Theo passed the salt without being asked and without saying anything about it, which Nadia noticed.

They talked about a coworker's divorce, then about whether anyone still used their gym membership. Priya spilled a little wine and blotted it with her napkin, insisting it was nothing. It was, in fact, nothing.

By eleven the guests were gone and the apartment had that flattened, warm quality of a room that's just emptied. Theo ran the water. Nadia dried. They left the good tablecloth soaking in the sink overnight and went to bed still talking about the divorce.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of the cedar block Devon's mother had given them two Christmases ago.

"It's wrinkled," she said, holding it up.

Devon looked over from the stove, where he was stirring a pot of white beans with too much rosemary in them, probably. "Nobody's going to inspect the tablecloth."

"Renata will."

"Renata will be three drinks in by the time she sits down."

Marisol ironed it anyway, on the floor of the living room because the ironing board had a broken leg they kept meaning to fix. Devon put on a record and then took it off because it was too loud for talking, and put on a different one. He tasted the beans and added vinegar, and then more salt, and then worried he'd overdone it.

The guests came at seven-fifteen, which meant seven-forty. Renata brought a bottle of orange wine and a story about her landlord. Theo and Priya brought a pie from the Vietnamese bakery on Callowhill, still slightly frozen in the middle, and everybody agreed that was fine.

They ate in the kitchen because the table there was bigger. Devon apologized for the beans twice before Priya told him to stop. The conversation went from rent to a documentary nobody had actually finished to whether Theo should quit his job, which he'd been considering out loud for a year and a half. Marisol refilled glasses. Devon got up to find the good olive oil and couldn't, and used the regular kind.

Around eleven the pie thawed enough to cut. Renata fell asleep briefly on the couch and woke up embarrassed. Everyone left by midnight.

Devon washed; Marisol dried. She said the beans had been good, and he said he knew, he just liked hearing it.


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt rosemary, which Dana insisted was normal.

"It's supposed to smell like that," she said, prodding the chicken with a fork. "That's the crust forming."

Marcus looked skeptical but didn't argue. He was setting the table, counting out four forks, then five, then remembering that Priya's boyfriend had bailed. He put one fork back in the drawer and rearranged the placemats so the burn mark from last Thanksgiving faced the wall.

"Do we have enough chairs?"

"We have the folding one in the closet."

"That thing pinches."

"Then you sit in it," Dana said. "You're the host."

"We're both the host."

She laughed and handed him a spoon with sauce on it. He tasted it, said it needed salt, and she said it didn't, and he added salt anyway when she turned around to check the oven timer.

They'd lived together two years in the second-floor unit on Kellogg Street, long enough that Marcus knew to run the dishwasher before guests came so the sink would be empty, and Dana knew he'd forget the ice. She'd bought a bag that afternoon.

Priya arrived first with a bottle of wine and wet shoes. Tom and Bex came twenty minutes later, apologizing about parking. Everyone stood in the kitchen because that's where people stand, even when there's a living room with a perfectly good couch.

The chicken was slightly dry. Nobody said so. Tom had thirds anyway.

Around ten, Bex told a long story about her sister's wedding that made Dana laugh so hard she had to set down her glass. Marcus watched her, then got up quietly to start the coffee.

After everyone left, they stood in the kitchen surveying the wreckage.

"That was good," Dana said.

"Yeah." Marcus turned on the faucet. "You wash, I'll dry."

"You always say that and then it's the opposite."

It was the opposite.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of cedar and last Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the table while Dev argued with the oven, which had been running forty degrees cold since March.

"I could put the chicken on the grill," he said.

"It's twenty-eight degrees out."

"I have a coat."

She let him go. Through the kitchen window she watched him standing on the little concrete slab behind their duplex, hunched in his puffer, poking at the coals with a pair of tongs while his breath fogged. She lit the two candles they'd bought at the drugstore and set them too close together, then moved one.

The Ohlssons arrived first with a bottle of wine and their eight-month-old, who fell asleep in the car seat and stayed asleep in the corner of the living room like a rumor. Then Ben, alone, which everyone had expected but nobody mentioned. Marisol took his coat and asked about his sister. He said she was doing better, which was what he'd said in October.

Dev came in with the chicken, triumphant, one sleeve smudged with ash. It was good — a little charred at the wing — and the potatoes were undercooked, and nobody cared. Kara Ohlsson told a long story about a coworker who kept stealing yogurt. Ben laughed harder than the story deserved and then apologized for laughing so hard.

At ten the baby woke and that was the end of it. Coats, leftovers pressed into hands, the front door letting in a cold slice of the street.

Marisol ran the water hot. Dev dried, badly, stacking plates while still damp.

"That went okay," he said.

"It went fine." She handed him the roasting pan. "You had ash on your face the whole time."

"Nobody said anything."

"I know," she said. "I was going to."


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt rosemary. Nadia scraped the blackened sprigs off the chicken skin with a butter knife while Dev hauled the folding table in from the closet, banging his shoulder on the doorframe.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine. This table's a war crime."

They had four people coming at seven, which meant six-thirty in practice, because Marcus was chronically twenty minutes late and had trained everyone else to compensate. Nadia had made the roast chicken twice before and both times it had been fine, which she considered a good ratio.

Dev wiped down the table with a paper towel, then found the mismatched chairs — two from the kitchen, one from his desk, the wobbly one nobody wanted. He put the wobbly one at his own place.

"Do we have candles?"

"Under the sink. But they smell like vanilla."

"Everything's going to smell like chicken anyway."

She let him have that. He was good at the small staging things, the way he tucked the cords behind the couch and turned the lamps low so the living room looked deliberate instead of tired. She was better at the food, and at remembering that Priya didn't eat pork.

Marcus arrived at 7:22 with a bottle of wine and an apology that was mostly a story about parking. Priya and Sam came ten minutes later with a store-bought pie still in its plastic dome. Everyone stood in the kitchen for the first half hour, the way people do, until Nadia physically pushed them toward the table.

The chicken was dry at the breast and good at the thighs. Nobody minded. Sam told a long story about a coworker's resignation email. Dev refilled glasses without being asked. Around ten, Nadia caught him yawning behind his hand and kicked him gently under the table, and he grinned and stopped.

They did the dishes together after, radio on, not talking much.


Marisol found the good tablecloth at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, which had been Thanksgiving, which had been at Dev's mother's house, which meant the creases were nine months old.

"It's fine," Dev said, when she held it up. "Nobody looks at the tablecloth."

"I look at the tablecloth."

He was cubing chicken for the curry, working slower than he thought he was. The rice cooker had already clicked over to warm. Marisol ran an iron over the cloth on the kitchen counter, which she knew was a bad idea, and got a faint scorch mark near one corner that she rotated toward the wall.

Priya and Tom arrived twenty minutes early with a bottle of wine and a bag of clementines, apologizing for both. Rob came late and alone; he and Jen had split in May and nobody brought it up. There were only four chairs that matched, so Dev dragged in the desk chair from the second bedroom and sat in it himself, rolling backward every time he leaned.

The curry was too hot. Everyone said it was perfect and drank a lot of water. Tom talked about his commute. Priya said she'd started running again, then admitted she'd gone twice. Rob, three beers in, described a coworker's wedding in exhaustive detail, and Marisol laughed at the right places while Dev cleared the plates.

At the sink, Dev bumped her hip with his and handed her a dish towel without saying anything. From the other room came Tom's laugh, then Priya's.

They left a little after eleven. Marisol found a clementine peel on the arm of the couch and Dev found a fork under the table. They loaded the dishwasher badly, ran it anyway, and left the tablecloth for morning.


Miriam found the good tablecloth at the bottom of the linen closet, folded around a smell of cedar and dust. She shook it out over the kitchen table while Daniel scraped the last of the carrot peels into the compost bin under the sink.

"Six or seven?" he asked.

"Six. Priya's bringing her sister, but Tom bailed. His kid has strep."

Daniel nodded and went back to the chicken, which he was browning in the Dutch oven because he'd read somewhere that you had to brown things properly or the whole dish tasted flat. The kitchen filled with smoke. Miriam opened the window over the sink without saying anything about it, which he appreciated.

They had lived in the apartment three years. The radiators knocked. There was a water stain on the ceiling shaped vaguely like Florida, and Miriam had stopped noticing it sometime last winter.

"Do we own six matching forks?" she called from the drawer.

"We own four."

"Then people will use whatever."

The first knock came at seven-ten. Priya and her sister Anjali brought a bottle of wine and a bakery box of something with pistachios. Then the Nakamuras, then Beth, who came alone and immediately took off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the couch like she lived there.

The chicken was fine. Slightly dry, everyone said it was good. Daniel drank two beers and told the story about the parking garage, which Miriam had heard forty times and still laughed at, mostly at the part where he did the voice.

Around eleven Beth fell asleep sitting up. Anjali took a picture of her. People left in a slow, staggered way, one coat at a time, promising things.

Afterward Miriam ran the water hot and Daniel dried. Neither of them mentioned the dishes taking forty minutes. Outside, someone's car alarm went off and then stopped.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet behind a stack of towels, still creased from the last time they'd used it, sometime around Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the table while Dev argued with the oven.

"It says preheated," he said, "but it's lying to me."

"It always lies. Give it ten more minutes."

He'd been working on the chicken since four, a recipe his mother had emailed him with no measurements, just phrases like *enough garlic* and *until it smells right*. The kitchen smelled right. It smelled like lemon and oregano and the faint scorch of something dripping onto the oven floor.

Marisol counted out four plates, then five, because Priya was bringing someone new. She set out the mismatched wine glasses and decided not to apologize for them. In the living room she moved the laundry basket into the bedroom and closed the door, which was, she thought, the entire art of hosting.

Dev came out wiping his hands on a dish towel. "Do we have enough chairs?"

"We have the desk chair."

"Someone always gets the desk chair."

"It'll be you," she said, and he laughed, because it would be.

The guests came at seven-thirty, ten minutes apart, so the door kept opening. Priya's friend Theo brought a bottle of something orange and unpronounceable and admitted he'd bought it because of the label. Sam took off his shoes without being asked and then apologized for his socks.

The chicken was slightly dry. Nobody said so. Dev noticed and kept refilling glasses to compensate, and by nine the table was loud with an argument about whether a hot dog was a sandwich, which Marisol lost on a technicality.

Later, elbow-deep in the sink, she heard Dev in the other room describing the oven's lies to Theo, who found it hilarious. She let the water run a while longer.


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt rosemary. Dana had set the oven too high, and now she stood fanning smoke away from the detector with a dish towel while Marcus pulled the chicken out and inspected the skin.

"It's fine," he said. "It's better than fine. It's rustic."

"It's charred."

"Rustic." He set the pan on the stovetop and went back to slicing bread, the good kind from the bakery on Delaney, which had cost eight dollars and which Dana had insisted on because Priya always brought something nice.

They had lived together two years in a one-bedroom with a radiator that clanked at three a.m. Dana had claimed the closet; Marcus kept his shirts on a rolling rack by the window. Tonight they had moved the rack into the bathroom, which felt absurd, and then they had argued briefly about whether to use the cloth napkins or the paper ones, and then they had used the cloth ones.

Priya and Sam arrived at seven with a bottle of red and a bag of clementines. Tom came at seven-twenty, apologizing, still in his work badge. There were five of them around a table meant for four, elbows negotiating space, the chicken passed hand to hand.

Sam told a long story about a coworker who'd quit by fax machine. Priya peeled clementines and handed the segments around without asking. Marcus refilled glasses. Dana got up twice—once for more bread, once because the smoke detector chirped again, low battery, and she stood on a chair while Marcus held her ankle and everyone offered contradictory advice.

By eleven the plates were stacked in the sink and the clementine peels made a small orange pile on the table. Tom left first. Priya hugged them both at the door.

Afterward Dana washed and Marcus dried, and neither of them said much, and the radiator started up.


The Table by Six

Nadia was still peeling potatoes when Theo came in from the garage carrying two folding chairs and a spider web across his forehead.

"We're one chair short," he said, wiping his face with his forearm. "Unless someone wants the piano bench."

"Rachel's short. Give her the bench." Nadia dropped a peel into the compost bin and glanced at the clock on the stove. Ten past five. "Did you text Marcus about the wine?"

"He said he's bringing something red. Which, knowing Marcus, means whatever was on the endcap."

Theo set up the chairs, then took over at the sink so she could start the chicken. They moved around each other in the narrow kitchen the way they had for four years, a hand on a hip to signal *behind you*, a shoulder tilt to mean *hand me that*. He put on a playlist she'd complained about last time and she didn't complain.

At 5:40 she noticed the tablecloth had a stain shaped vaguely like Florida.

"Just turn it," Theo said.

"Then the good end faces the wall."

"Nobody looks at the wall end."

She turned it. He was right, and she told him so, and he said he'd get that in writing.

Rachel and her boyfriend arrived first with a bag of clementines, apologizing for the clementines. Marcus came at 6:20 with a bottle of Malbec and a story about the parking. The kitchen got loud. Someone knocked over a water glass and someone else caught most of it with a dish towel.

The chicken was slightly dry. Nobody said so. Theo said it twice.

By ten they were all still at the table, plates pushed back, Rachel's boyfriend explaining something about his job that nobody quite followed. Nadia caught Theo's eye across the candles. He raised his eyebrows a fraction, meaning *good night*, and she nodded, meaning *yes*.


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt sugar. Dana had scorched the first batch of caramelized onions while answering a work email, and Miguel had scraped them into the trash without commentary, which she appreciated more than sympathy.

"Do we own six chairs?" he called from the living room.

"We own four chairs and that stool from your sister."

"So five." He dragged the desk chair in from the bedroom, wheels catching on the rug. "Five and a half."

They had lived together two years in a one-bedroom on the second floor of a building with a laundry room that flooded every spring. Tonight was Priya and Josh, plus Josh's cousin who was visiting from Tucson and had, according to Josh, "no dietary restrictions but strong feelings about cilantro."

Dana pulled the chicken from the oven and poked it with a thermometer. One-sixty-two. She put it back in.

"Wine's cold," Miguel said. "Do we have a corkscrew or did we lose that too?"

"Junk drawer. Under the batteries."

He found it. He also found a hair tie, a rubber spatula they'd been missing, and a coupon for oil changes that had expired in March.

The buzzer rang at seven-forty. Priya came up first with a bottle and a bag of ice nobody had asked for but everybody needed. Josh's cousin turned out to be named Teddy, and he stood in the kitchen doorway with his hands in his pockets until Miguel handed him a beer and asked him about the drive.

They ate at the table with the desk chair squeaking. The chicken was fine. The onions, the second batch, were good. Priya told a story about her landlord that made Dana laugh so hard she had to set down her fork.

At eleven-thirty, after everyone left, Miguel washed and Dana dried. Neither of them said much. The dishwasher had been broken since February.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, and she shook it out over the table while Devon stood at the stove, tasting the sauce off a wooden spoon.

"More salt," he said.

"You always say more salt."

"Because it's always the answer." He held out the spoon anyway, and she leaned over and tasted it, and admitted, grudgingly, that he was right.

They had four people coming at seven, which was really five, because Priya had mentioned she might bring the guy she'd been seeing. Marisol counted out plates. Two of the wine glasses had gone missing sometime last summer, so they set out a jelly jar for whoever came last and hoped it would read as charming.

Devon vacuumed the living room rug while Marisol cut the ends off the flowers she'd bought at the grocery store, arranging them in a pitcher because they didn't own a vase. At six-forty she went to change, and came back in the green sweater, and he told her it looked good without looking up from the oven.

"You could put on a different shirt," she said.

"This is a different shirt."

Priya came alone, in the end. Tomás and Beth brought a bottle of something expensive and a bag of clementines, which nobody could explain. They ate at the table with their elbows touching, passing bowls, and Devon told the story about the neighbor's dog getting into the recycling, and Marisol corrected him twice on the details until he let her tell it instead.

The night ran long. Someone found the box of dominoes in the hall closet. By the time everyone left it was almost one, and the kitchen looked worse than they remembered leaving it.

Marisol started filling the sink. Devon picked up a dish towel.

"That went well," he said.

"It did." She handed him a plate, still warm.


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt rosemary. Dana pulled the chicken out early, poked it with a fork, and put it back in.

"It's fine," Marcus said from the sink, where he was scrubbing a colander that had been in the drying rack for three days. "You said forty minutes."

"I said forty minutes at four-twenty-five. The oven runs cold."

"The oven runs cold," he repeated, in the voice he used when he was agreeing and mocking her at the same time. She flicked water at him.

They had lived together fourteen months in a second-floor walk-up with a radiator that clanked all winter. Tonight it was four people: Priya and Owen, who were married, and Jess, who had just left her job at the hospital and wanted to talk about it. Dana had bought a bottle of wine she couldn't pronounce. Marcus had made a playlist, then panicked about it and made a second one.

Priya and Owen arrived first, with a store-bought pie and apologies for the store-bought pie. Jess came twenty minutes late, hair wet, saying the trains were a nightmare. Marcus took her coat and hung it on the back of a chair because the closet was full of Dana's winter things.

They ate on the couch and the floor because the table sat four. The chicken was slightly dry. Nobody said so, and Owen took thirds. Jess talked about the hospital for a while, and then stopped and asked Priya about her mother, and Priya said, "She's okay, actually," and seemed surprised by it.

At eleven, Dana walked everyone down to the street door. Marcus was already stacking plates when she came back up. She took the towel from his shoulder and started drying.

"That went well," he said.

"You didn't play your playlist."

"I forgot," he said. "Next time."


Maya heard the oven timer and swore under her breath, wiping her hands on a dish towel as she crossed the kitchen. The chicken had gone a shade darker than she'd planned, but not burnt—just what her mother would call "well-caramelized," which was a generous way to put it.

"Do you want me to do the potatoes now or after?" Ben called from the dining room, where he was doing something aggressive with a tablecloth.

"Now. And don't put them in the blue bowl, it's cracked."

He appeared in the doorway holding the blue bowl. "This one?"

"Ben."

"I'm putting it back." He did, and grabbed the white one instead, and started spooning potatoes into it with the concentration of someone defusing a bomb. They'd lived together in the Somerville apartment for two years now, long enough that the choreography of a dinner party had become something like muscle memory: she cooked, he cleaned and poured, they both pretended the bathroom had been that clean all week.

"Nadia's bringing her new boyfriend," Maya said.

"The one who does crossfit?"

"The one who *teaches* crossfit."

"So we should hide the bread."

She laughed and threw the towel at him. He caught it, folded it, and set it on the counter with exaggerated care, which was his way of being funny about being tidy.

At six-fifteen she changed out of the sweatshirt she'd been wearing since Thursday. Ben lit the two candles they owned that matched and turned on the record player, then turned it down, then turned it up a little.

"It looks nice," she said from the hallway.

"It looks like we tried."

"That's the same thing."

The buzzer went off at six-thirty-two. Ben looked at her; she looked at the table one last time, moved a fork half an inch, and went to press the button.


Marisol wiped the counter for the third time, which Danny recognized as her tell.

"They're going to love it," he said, sliding the roasting pan into the oven. Chicken thighs, lemon, too much garlic. His grandmother's recipe, more or less, though he'd never measured anything in his life.

"Kayla's sister is a chef."

"Kayla's sister works at a chain restaurant in Peoria." He bumped her hip with his as he reached for the tongs. "And she's bringing her boyfriend, which means she'll be busy pretending he's interesting."

Marisol laughed despite herself. She'd been in a mood since Tuesday, when her manager had reorganized her territory again, and she knew the mood was leaking into everything, including the way she'd rearranged the throw pillows twice.

Danny had noticed. He'd bought flowers on the way home from the site — carnations from the grocery store, dyed an unnatural blue, because they were the only ones left and he thought she'd think they were funny. She had. They sat in a mason jar on the table now, next to mismatched plates they'd accumulated over four years in the apartment, some from his old place, some from hers, two from a yard sale in Bloomington.

"Wine's in the fridge," she said. "Do we have enough glasses?"

"We have six glasses and one is a jelly jar."

"That's fine. Give the jelly jar to Pete. He won't notice."

Danny turned on the speaker and put on the playlist she'd made, the one she pretended was for cooking but was really just songs from 2009. Marisol lit the candle that smelled like cedar. Outside, someone's car door slammed, and they both looked at the clock — twenty minutes early, or a neighbor.

"Neighbor," Danny said.

She kissed him, quick, tasting garlic on his thumb, and went to change out of the shirt she'd worn all day.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, exactly where she'd stuffed it after Thanksgiving. She shook it out and held it up to the kitchen light. Two wine stains, faint but present.

"Wrong side down," Dev said, glancing over from the stove. "Nobody's going to lift the plates."

"Priya lifts plates."

"Priya has never lifted a plate in her life."

She spread it over the table anyway, arranging the water glasses to cover the worst of it. The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt sugar—Dev had let the onions go too dark, then started over, and now the second batch was going right while the first cooled in a bowl he refused to throw away.

"We could use those," he said. "In something."

"In what?"

"I'll think of something."

She counted chairs. Five, plus the desk chair from the bedroom, which had a wobble but would hold Ben, who was the lightest. Six people, four dinner plates, two from the set his mother had sent when they moved in together and which neither of them particularly liked. Marisol had suggested once that they register somewhere, as a joke, and Dev had laughed and then not laughed, and they hadn't talked about it since.

He wiped his hands and came over to move the candle three inches left. She moved it back.

"It looks staged," she said.

"It looks nice."

"It looks like a restaurant."

"That's a compliment."

The buzzer went off at 7:04, which meant Ben, who was always first and always apologized for it. Dev pulled off his apron, hung it on the oven handle, and looked around the room once—the crooked tablecloth, the mismatched plates, the bowl of onions he still hadn't found a use for.

"Good enough," he said.

Marisol was already at the door.


Dana found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen drawer, wrinkled in a way that suggested it had been shoved there sometime around last Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the table anyway, smoothing the creases with the flat of her hand while the oven ticked behind her.

"It's fine," Marcus said, coming in from the porch with the folding chairs. "Nobody's inspecting the tablecloth."

"Sarah will notice."

"Sarah has a two-year-old. Sarah will be thrilled to sit anywhere that isn't sticky." He set the chairs down and crossed to the stove, lifting the lid off the pot without asking. Steam rose. He tasted the sauce with a wooden spoon, made a face that Dana had learned to read over three years of shared kitchens, and reached for the salt.

"Don't."

"It needs it."

"It needs to reduce. There's a difference." But she didn't stop him, and he added a pinch, and she tasted it after and admitted nothing.

They moved around each other in the small kitchen with the practiced choreography of people who had negotiated who got which side of the sink. Marcus dumped ice into a bowl for the beer. Dana lit the candles she'd bought that afternoon and then blew them out because it was still too early and they'd burn down to nubs before dessert.

At six-forty the doorbell rang, ten minutes early, which was Kevin, who was always early and always apologetic about it. Marcus went to answer it. Dana caught a glimpse of herself in the dark window over the sink — flour on her sleeve, hair coming loose — and decided it was good enough.

She heard Kevin's laugh in the hallway, and Marcus saying something she couldn't make out, and then more voices, and the house filling up the way it did.


Marisol was rinsing the last of the grit from the potatoes when Dev came in from the garage carrying two folding chairs, one under each arm.

"We're four chairs short," he said, setting them by the wall. "Unless people want to sit on the ottoman."

"Nadia will sit on the floor. She always sits on the floor." Marisol tipped the potatoes into a colander. "Can you check the roast? I think I put it in at three-fifteen."

Dev opened the oven and a wave of rosemary and hot fat rolled into the kitchen. He poked at the meat with a fork the way she'd shown him last winter, which he still wasn't sure he understood. "It looks like a roast," he reported.

"Extremely helpful."

He kissed the side of her head on his way to the sink and started washing the cutting boards stacked there. The apartment was small enough that they'd learned a kind of choreography over three years — he stepped left when she pivoted right, she lifted an elbow so he could reach the dish soap.

"Did you text Owen about the wine?" she asked.

"He's bringing two bottles of something Portuguese. He sent a picture of the label like I'd know what it meant."

Marisol laughed and started slicing bread. At six-forty she went to change out of the shirt she'd sweated through, and Dev put on the playlist they'd argued about, the one that was mostly hers with four of his songs buried in the middle. He lit the candle on the table, then blew it out because it smelled like vanilla and clashed with the food, then lit it again because the room looked better with it.

She came back in a green sweater, wiping her hands on her jeans out of habit. "How do we look?"

He glanced around: the mismatched chairs, the crowded counter, the window fogged from the oven. "Like people are coming over."

The buzzer rang.


Marisol was still elbow-deep in the sink when Dev came in from the garage carrying two folding chairs, one under each arm.

"We're four chairs short," he said.

"We're not. Beth is bringing her own, because she says ours hurt her back." Marisol wiped her hands on a dish towel. "And Andre is standing the whole time anyway. He never sits."

Dev set the chairs by the table anyway and started wiping them down with a paper towel. The garage dust came off gray. Outside, someone's leaf blower was going, which meant the Kowalskis were finally dealing with their maple.

"Did you salt the potatoes?" she asked.

"I salted the water."

"That's not the same."

"It's better," Dev said. "It's how my mother does it."

Marisol let it go. She had her own thing going on the stove, a pot of beans she'd started that morning, and she'd already decided she wasn't going to hover over his half of the meal. Last time she had, they'd both ended up sulking through dessert while their friends pretended not to notice.

At six-fifteen she went upstairs to change. Dev heard the shower for four minutes—she was fast—and then the closet door, and then her calling down about whether the green shirt was too much.

"Too much for Beth and Andre?" he called back.

"That's a yes."

"That's a no. Wear it."

He put on music, something without words, and lowered the blinds on the west side where the sun came in hard this time of year. There were still napkins to find. They had cloth ones somewhere from when Marisol's aunt visited.

She came down in the green shirt, holding two candles she'd dug out of the hall closet.

"They're going to be late," she said.

"They're always late."

"I know. I just like being ready before."

He found the napkins in the bottom drawer. The doorbell rang twenty minutes later.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, right where she'd shoved it after Thanksgiving.

"It's got a wine stain," she called toward the kitchen.

"So put a candle on it," Dev said. He was standing over a pot of rice, phone propped against the backsplash, watching a video of a man in Kerala explaining something in Malayalam that Dev only half understood. His mother had sent it three days ago with the message *this is how*. He'd made the dish twice before and ruined it twice.

Marisol came in with the tablecloth balled under one arm and inspected the counter. Four cutting boards, all dirty. Two colanders. The good knife on the floor, somehow.

"How long have you been cooking?"

"Since two."

"It's six." She said it without judgment, mostly. They'd lived together eleven months, long enough that she'd stopped narrating his messes and started just working around them. She ran the sink hot and started stacking.

"Leave it, I'll get it after."

"Yannick's always early."

"Yannick's never early."

"Yannick is always early and you always forget this about him." She scrubbed a colander. Behind her, Dev turned off the burner and lifted the lid, and the smell that came up was black mustard seed and curry leaf and something faintly burned at the edges, which was, he'd decided, part of it.

He put a spoonful on his palm and held it out to her. She tasted it off his hand, thought about it.

"That's really good."

"You sound surprised."

"I'm surprised every time." She dried her hands on the dish towel hanging off his shoulder. "Go change your shirt. There's rice on it."

He looked down. There was rice on it.

The buzzer went at 6:15. Yannick, early, holding grocery-store flowers still in their plastic sleeve.


Marcus tasted the sauce, made a face, and reached for the salt.

"You already salted it," Delia said from the sink, where she was scrubbing the good roasting pan they used maybe twice a year.

"That was before I added the tomatoes."

"That was also before you added the second can of tomatoes, which nobody asked you to do."

He salted it anyway. She let it go. They'd lived in the duplex on Halsted for two years now, long enough that she knew he'd never admit when she was right about food, and long enough that he knew she'd never stop being right.

The apartment smelled like garlic and the pine cleaner she'd used on the bathroom floor an hour ago. Outside, Chicago was doing its late-October thing—dark by six, wind rattling the storm windows.

"Did you text Priya about the peanut thing?" Marcus asked.

"I texted her. She said Ben's allergy is fine as long as we didn't cook with peanut oil."

"We didn't."

"I know. That's what I told her." Delia dried her hands and started counting out forks. There were only five matching ones, so she put the sixth mismatched one at her own place. "Your brother's bringing wine?"

"He said he was. Which means he'll show up with a six-pack and an apology."

"I bought a backup bottle."

"Of course you did."

She set out the plates, then went to change out of the sweatshirt she'd been wearing since noon. When she came back in a clean sweater, Marcus was moving the couch six inches to the left so there'd be room for the folding chairs.

"That's not going to matter," she said.

"It'll matter when Ben sits down and his knees are in the coffee table."

The buzzer went off. Delia looked at the sauce, then at Marcus.

"It's fine," he said.

"It's a little salty."

"It's fine." He kissed her temple on his way to the door.


Marisol had the oven at 375 and a timer she kept forgetting to look at. Dev came in from the driveway with two bags of ice and the good cheap wine, the kind that photographed well in the bottle and disappeared fast enough that nobody critiqued it.

"Sunlight's brutal in there," he said, nodding toward the dining room. "It's like an interrogation."

"So close the blinds."

"Then it's a séance."

She waved a wooden spoon at him. "Pick a mood, Dev."

He compromised: blinds half-drawn, candles from the drawer where they kept batteries and takeout menus and a single mysterious key. While he arranged them, Marisol tasted the braise and decided it needed twenty more minutes and possibly a miracle. They had lived in the house on Dupree Street for three years, unmarried in a way neither of them found urgent, though her mother brought it up at Thanksgiving with the reliability of a seasonal allergy.

"Table or laps?" he called.

"Table. There are seven of us."

"We own five chairs."

"There's the piano bench."

Dev dragged the bench in and wiped the dust off with his sleeve, which was, she pointed out, why he had to change his shirt. He changed his shirt. She swept the hallway, found a hair tie and four dollars in loose change, and put both on the counter without comment.

At 6:40 the doorbell went early — Priya always came early — and Marisol turned the burner down while Dev answered, and there was that half-second in the kitchen where she heard the door open and the porch noise come in, and she thought, unsentimentally, that this was the part she liked. Not the dinner. The ten minutes before, the two of them moving around each other in a small warm house, arguing about lighting.

"Bring wine!" Priya announced.

"We have wine," Dev said. "We have so much wine."


Dana found the good tablecloth at the bottom of the linen closet, wrinkled into a shape that suggested it had been shoved there in a hurry sometime around Thanksgiving.

"Iron or candles?" she called down the hall.

"Candles," Marcus said from the kitchen. "Nobody looks at the tablecloth after the first glass of wine."

She spread it anyway, smoothing the creases with her palms, and set the two mismatched candlesticks in the center — one brass, one ceramic, both from separate lives before the lease they'd signed together eighteen months ago. The apartment still had that quality, a merger of inventories. His cast iron, her stand mixer. His records, her books.

In the kitchen, Marcus was arguing with a chicken. He'd trussed it badly and now the legs kept splaying open like the bird was giving up.

"Just tie it tighter," Dana said, appearing at his elbow.

"I'm tying it as tight as physics allows."

She took the twine from him, looped it under the drumsticks, pulled, and knotted. The chicken pulled itself together.

"You've been holding out on me," he said.

"My mother made me help every Sunday for eleven years. It's not a talent, it's a hostage situation."

He slid the pan into the oven and checked his phone. "Priya says they're bringing that terrible wine again."

"Be nice."

"I'm being descriptive."

Dana wiped down the counter, then the table, then moved a stack of mail into a drawer, which was, she knew, not really solving anything. Marcus put on a record, something with horns, and turned it down until it was just a suggestion.

At quarter to seven she stood in the doorway and looked at the room — the candles unlit, the chairs pulled from three different rooms, the smell of the chicken beginning to fill everything.

"It looks good," she said.

Marcus handed her the lighter. "It looks like people live here."

Downstairs, the buzzer went off.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, which had been Thanksgiving, which had been nine months ago. She shook it out over the table and smoothed the folds with her palm while Dev hollered something from the kitchen about whether five pounds of chicken thighs was too much for six people.

"It's never too much," she called back. "Ana eats like a linebacker."

He came out holding a spatula, apron strings hanging loose behind him because he never bothered tying them. "Ana is five foot one."

"And she'll take home a plate. Trust me."

The apartment was a second-floor walk-up in a part of Providence where the rent had gone up twice since they'd signed the lease, and they'd agreed—separately, at first, then out loud—that they'd stay anyway. There was a wine stain on the living room rug from a party the previous winter that Dev had scrubbed at for an hour and Marisol had eventually covered with a chair.

She lit the candles at six forty. He turned them off—the overhead lights, not the candles—and then turned them back on because it was too dark to see the food.

"You're nervous," she said.

"Beth's husband is a chef."

"Beth's husband works at a hotel restaurant. He makes eggs Benedict for tourists." She reached past him for the corkscrew, hip brushing his. "Also nobody's grading you."

"Everybody's always grading me."

She laughed at that, and he did too, a little, and then the buzzer went off downstairs and they looked at each other with the same flicker of panic—the salad wasn't dressed, the bathroom hand towel was the ugly one—and then Dev pressed the button and said come on up, and Marisol swapped the towel, and it was fine.


Marisol was rinsing the last of the arugula when Dev came through the back door with two bags of ice and the particular expression he got when he'd been thinking too long in the car.

"They only had the cubed kind," he said. "Not the good crushed."

"Nobody's going to notice the ice."

"Priya will notice the ice."

She dried her hands on the dish towel hanging off the oven handle and took the bags from him, and he went to change out of the shirt he'd worn to work, which smelled faintly like the copy room. Their apartment was on the second floor of a house in Somerville, and it had the kind of kitchen where two people couldn't both be productive at once, so they'd developed a rotation over four years: she cooked, he cleaned as she went, then they switched for the last twenty minutes.

He came back in a gray henley and started on the dishes stacked from the roasting pan. "Did you text your brother back?"

"I will."

"You said that Tuesday."

"I know what I said." She was tasting the vinaigrette, adding salt, tasting again. "Can you light the candles? The ones on the shelf, not the fancy ones."

"What makes them fancy."

"They were eighteen dollars."

He found the matches in the drawer with the batteries and the takeout menus nobody had thrown away since 2019. Outside, a car door slammed, and they both looked up, but it wasn't for them.

"Chicken's got fifteen minutes," she said. "Sit down for a second."

They sat at the table with the leaf still folded, in the two chairs that faced each other, and didn't say much. He reached over and straightened the collar of her shirt where it had folded under.

Then the buzzer rang, and she stood, and he got the door.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, exactly where she'd shoved it after Thanksgiving. She held it up to the kitchen light, squinting at a faint ring of red wine near one corner.

"Dev, do we own an iron?"

"We own an iron." He was crouched at the oven, checking the chicken thighs, the skin just starting to blister. "It's behind the vacuum. Under the thing."

"That's not an answer."

"It's a location."

She found it, eventually, and set up the board in the living room while the radiator clanked. Outside, February had turned the street into a gray slush. Their apartment was the top floor of a Brooklyn walkup they'd been sharing for two years, long enough that his mother had stopped asking pointed questions and started asking about their landlord instead.

Dev pulled the pan out, tipped it, spooned schmaltz over the chicken. "Julia's bringing her new boyfriend."

"I know."

"Do we know anything about him?"

"He does something with insurance. Actuarial." Marisol ran the iron over the stain, which did not improve. She flipped the cloth so the corner would sit under the wine bottles. "Or he's an actuary. I wasn't listening carefully."

"So we've got nothing."

"We've got you asking him questions about insurance for forty-five minutes."

"I can do that," Dev said. "I'm genuinely capable of that."

She laughed, and he glanced over at the sound, still holding the spoon. The kitchen smelled like garlic and lemon. Somebody downstairs was playing a bass line through the floor.

At six-forty the buzzer went. Marisol was still barefoot, hunting for the corkscrew in the drawer with the batteries and the takeout menus. Dev wiped his hands on a dish towel, kissed the top of her head as he passed, and hit the button.

"Found it," she said, holding it up.

"Perfect timing." He was already unlocking the door.


Marcus wiped the counter for the third time while Dana stood in the doorway of the pantry, holding two bottles of wine like scales.

"The Malbec or the Rioja?" she asked.

"Both. Ben drinks whatever's open, and Priya always brings something anyway."

Dana set them on the counter and went to check the oven. The chicken had another twenty minutes. She'd found the recipe on a food blog Tuesday night and had been quietly anxious about it ever since, though she'd told Marcus it was easy.

"Did you text Joel about the parking?" she said.

"I told him to use the alley. Whether he reads it is another matter."

The apartment was small enough that they kept bumping into each other, a choreography they'd gotten used to over four years — first in her old studio, then here, in the second-floor unit on Adams with the radiator that clanked. Marcus moved the laundry basket into the bedroom and shut the door. Dana lit the candle her sister had given them at Christmas, decided it smelled too much like a hotel lobby, and blew it out.

"Napkins," Marcus said. "Do we have real ones?"

"In the drawer under the silverware. The blue ones."

He found them, folded them badly, and set them out. Dana came behind him and refolded two before catching herself.

"Sorry."

"No, they were terrible."

She laughed. He put his hand on her back on the way past, briefly, the way he did.

At six-forty the buzzer went. Dana pulled the chicken out — it looked right, better than right — and Marcus went to hit the door release, calling down the stairwell that they were on the second floor, watch the third step.

"Ready?" he said.

Dana pushed her hair back with her wrist. "Ask me in an hour."

Voices came up the stairs, Priya's laugh among them, and Marcus opened the door.


Marisol was pulling the roasting pan out of the oven when Dev came through the back door with two bags of ice and rain on his shoulders.

"They were out of the good limes," he said. "I got the sad ones."

"Sad limes are fine. Nobody's making cocktails but you." She set the chicken on the stove to rest and tented it with foil. The kitchen smelled like garlic and burnt lemon, which was mostly her fault—she'd let the peels sit too long under the broiler.

Dev dumped the ice into the cooler on the porch and came back rubbing his hands on his jeans. "Table or floor?"

"Table. There are only six of us."

"Last time you said floor."

"Last time it was August."

He got the leaf out of the hall closet and wrestled it into the table while she found the cloth napkins, the ones her mother had given them when they moved in, which they used approximately twice a year. One had a stain shaped like Ohio. She folded it so the stain faced down and put it at her own seat.

"Kaycee's bringing her new boyfriend," Dev said. "Do we know anything?"

"He does something with insurance. She said he's quiet."

"That could mean anything."

"It could mean he's quiet."

At six forty Dev put on a clean shirt and a record, something with a lot of horns, and Marisol swept the hallway where the dog had been shedding into the baseboards for a month. She looked at the living room from the doorway the way a stranger would, then moved the laundry basket into their bedroom and shut the door.

"You look nice," Dev said, handing her a glass.

"You're just saying that because I'm the only woman here."

"Kaycee's coming."

"Then I'll enjoy it while it lasts."

Headlights swung across the front window. Dev went to the door.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, exactly where she'd shoved it after Thanksgiving. She held it up to the kitchen light and counted three wine stains.

"Iron won't fix that," Theo said, edging past her with a colander of green beans.

"I'm aware. I'm mourning." She folded it back up. "Placemats it is."

They'd lived in the duplex on Fillmore for two years now, long enough that their systems had merged. Theo cooked, mostly, because he liked the control of it. Marisol handled everything else—the playlist, the lighting, the strategic hiding of the laundry basket in the bedroom closet. She'd learned that people never opened closets.

"Did you text Priya about the shellfish thing?"

"She said allergy, not preference. I'm not making the shrimp." He was blanching the beans now, one hand on the tongs, the other scrolling a recipe he'd already read four times. "Can you do the thing with the candles?"

"The thing with the candles is called lighting candles."

"You do it better."

She did, actually. She arranged three mismatched votives on the windowsill and a taper in an old wine bottle on the table, then dimmed the overhead until the room went soft and forgiving, hiding the scuff marks by the baseboard.

At 6:40 Theo swore quietly at the oven. The chicken needed twenty more minutes, and everyone was due at seven, and Sam was always early.

"Wine first," Marisol said. "Nobody's ever mad if there's wine first."

He looked at her, still holding the tongs, his shirt half-untucked. "You're right."

"I'm frequently right."

She pulled the corkscrew from the drawer that stuck, and he came up behind her and kissed the side of her head, briefly, on his way to the sink. The buzzer rang at 6:52. Sam, of course.


Marisol wiped condensation from the kitchen window and watched the last of the daylight slide off the neighbor's roof. Behind her, Dev was arguing gently with the oven.

"It says preheat to four hundred, but it's been beeping at four-twenty for ten minutes."

"That thing lies," she said. "Trust the thermometer, not the beep."

They'd lived in the rental on Winslow Street for two years, long enough to know which floorboard announced visitors and which burner ran hot. Marisol was chopping cilantro; Dev was assembling something involving chickpeas that he'd found on a food blog at 2 p.m. and had been quietly panicking about since 4.

"Ravi's bringing wine," Dev said. "Which means it'll be that one he likes that tastes like a barn."

"Be nice."

"I'm being descriptive."

She laughed and handed him the lime. Outside, a car door slammed somewhere down the block, and they both looked up — false alarm.

There was a stretch of twenty minutes where things got tense in the way they always did: Dev couldn't find the good serving bowl, Marisol realized she'd forgotten ice, and someone had to run to the corner store. Dev went, jacket half on, and came back with ice, a bag of limes they didn't need, and a bunch of grocery-store tulips that he stuck in a water glass because the vase had broken in August.

"They're a little sad," he said.

"They're fine." She moved them to the middle of the table anyway, adjusting them twice.

At 6:52 they stood in the kitchen doorway, surveying it: mismatched chairs pulled from the bedroom, a playlist Marisol had made that morning, the smell of cumin and garlic thick and good.

"We forgot napkins," Dev said.

"Paper towels. Folded. Nobody will notice."

The doorbell rang. He kissed the side of her head on the way past, and she followed him down the hall.


Marisol pulled the roast from the oven at 6:40, twenty minutes later than she'd planned, and the kitchen filled with the smell of rosemary and burnt garlic from the pan she'd forgotten on the back burner.

"It's fine," Devon said, scraping the pan into the sink. "Nobody's going to know."

"Ellen will know. Ellen notices things."

He ran water over the pan and set it aside to deal with later, which meant tomorrow. Their apartment in Somerville was small enough that the dining table had to be pulled away from the wall, and he did that now, dragging it three feet into the living room and hunting for the folding chairs they kept behind the coat rack. One of them had a wobble. He gave it to himself.

Marisol changed out of the shirt she'd cooked in and came back tying her hair up. "Did you get wine?"

"Two reds. And the seltzer for Priya."

"You remembered."

"I remembered."

She looked at the table. He'd set it with the good plates, the ones her mother had sent when they moved in together two years ago, and he'd folded the napkins into something approximating triangles. There were no candles because they'd used the last ones at Christmas, so he'd put a small lamp in the center instead, which was strange and somehow worked.

"That's nice," she said.

"It's a lamp."

"It's nice."

At 6:55 he vacuumed the rug, quickly, in long ugly strokes, while she carved the roast and arranged the potatoes in a bowl that was slightly too small. The buzzer went off at 7:04. Devon shoved the vacuum into the hall closet and Marisol wiped her hands on a dish towel and threw it into the bedroom, and they looked at each other for a second in the middle of the room.

"Ready?" she said.

"No."

She hit the buzzer anyway, and they heard footsteps starting up the stairs.


Marcus checked the oven timer for the third time in five minutes. The chicken had another twenty, which meant he had another twenty to worry about whether he'd used enough rosemary.

"You're hovering," Priya said from the dining room, where she was wrestling a tablecloth into something resembling flat. "Come help me with this instead."

He came. Together they smoothed the linen, working from the center outward like they'd learned from a video neither of them would admit to watching. The table had been her grandmother's, hauled from Sacramento in a rented van two years ago, back when they'd first signed the lease on the little bungalow in Rosemont.

"Six or seven?" Marcus asked, counting placemats.

"Seven. Danny's bringing whoever he's seeing now."

"Whoever he's seeing now."

"Be nice."

"I'm always nice." He set the seventh placemat down and went back to the kitchen, where the salad still needed dressing and the wine needed opening and somewhere in the back of the fridge there was a container of olives he'd forgotten to put out.

Priya put on music — something instrumental, low, the kind of thing that filled silence without demanding attention. She lit the two candles they'd bought at the farmers market and never used. Then she went to change out of the T-shirt she'd worn all day.

When she came back, Marcus had the wine open and had spilled a little on the counter and was wiping it with a paper towel that was disintegrating in his hand.

"It looks good," she said, meaning the room, the table, all of it.

"It looks like we tried."

"We did try."

The doorbell rang eight minutes early. Marcus swore quietly. Priya laughed, tucked her hair behind her ear, and went to answer it, and behind her he heard the oven timer finally start beeping, right on time for once.


Marisol wiped the counter for the third time, not because it was dirty but because her hands needed something to do. The apartment smelled like garlic and browning butter, and outside the kitchen window the November dark had already settled over Milwaukee.

"They're going to be late," Devon said from the living room. He was crouched by the record player, flipping through sleeves. "Priya's always late."

"Twenty minutes late is on time for Priya. That's just her timezone." Marisol lifted the lid off the pot, tasted, added more salt. She'd been nervous about the braise all week — it was her grandmother's recipe, and she'd never made it for anyone outside her family.

Devon came in and stood behind her, resting his chin on her shoulder for a second before reaching past her for a wine glass. "Smells like your abuela's house."

"Don't jinx it."

He laughed and started uncorking the bottles they'd bought Saturday, lining them up on the counter like soldiers. Then he disappeared into the bedroom and came back holding two shirts on hangers. "Blue or the green one?"

"Green. The blue one has that thing on the collar."

"What thing?"

"The thing. Trust me."

He went to change. Marisol set the table — six places, mismatched plates they'd accumulated over three years of living together, the good napkins her mother had sent as a housewarming gift with a note that said *for when you have people over*. She lit two candles and immediately blew one out, deciding it looked like too much.

Devon returned in the green shirt, sleeves rolled. He surveyed the table, moved a fork a quarter inch, and she rolled her eyes at him.

The buzzer went off at 7:12. Devon looked at her. "Priya time," he said, and went to let them up.


Marisol wiped the counter for the third time, though it was already clean. She kept doing that when she was nervous—finding small tasks to fill her hands.

"They're going to be forty minutes late," Dev said from the living room. "Kenny is always forty minutes late."

"Then the bread will be perfect." She pulled the loaf from the oven anyway, tapping its bottom, listening for the hollow sound her grandmother had taught her to listen for. It was there.

Dev came in carrying a stack of mismatched plates, the ones they'd accumulated over four years of thrift stores and hand-me-downs from his sister. He set them on the table and stood back, frowning.

"Do we care that none of these match?"

"We've never cared."

"I know. I'm asking if tonight we care."

Marisol looked at him over her shoulder. He was wearing the gray shirt she liked, sleeves pushed to his elbows, and he had that particular expression—half-amused, half-genuinely worried—that meant he was thinking about his mother's dinner parties from 1998.

"We don't care," she said.

He nodded and started folding napkins into rough triangles.

The apartment smelled like garlic and rosemary and the beeswax candles she'd bought on a whim at the farmers market. Outside, the December dark had come early, and the window over the sink had fogged at the edges.

"Wine's open," Dev said. "The red one Priya brought last time. I figured we'd return the favor by serving it back to her."

"That's terrible."

"That's economical."

Marisol laughed and handed him the salad tongs. He took them and, in the same motion, kissed the side of her head—quick, unthinking, the way he had a thousand times.

The buzzer rang. Twelve minutes early.

"That'll be Priya," Marisol said.

Dev went to the door. Behind him, she straightened the last crooked fork, and let it be.


Marisol was slicing lemons at the kitchen island when Dev came in from the garage carrying two folding chairs and a bag of ice that was already sweating through the plastic.

"Six people, four chairs," he said. "I did the math around three o'clock and panicked."

"You could have panicked out loud. I would have panicked with you." She wiped her hands on the dish towel hanging from the oven handle and took the ice from him before it soaked his shirt.

Their apartment was a second-floor walkup in a building from the fifties, with radiators that clanked and a window in the living room that faced the parking lot of a Walgreens. They had moved in together fourteen months ago, after a stretch of Marisol keeping half her clothes in Dev's closet anyway. Her mother still asked, gently, about plans. Marisol still said, gently, that they were happy.

Dev set up the chairs, then rearranged the coffee table twice before Marisol told him it was fine. He put on a record because he liked the ceremony of it, though the speaker in the kitchen would have been louder.

"Did you salt the pasta water?" she asked.

"I salted it like the ocean. Like a man who has been told about salt many times."

She laughed and reached past him for the colander, and he caught her by the hip for a second, briefly, the way people do in kitchens.

By six-forty the chicken was resting under foil, the salad was dressed except for the greens, and the good glasses—eight of them, mismatched, collected from estate sales—were out on the counter. Marisol changed her shirt. Dev lit the one candle they owned that wasn't scented like a bakery.

The buzzer rang at seven. Someone downstairs was laughing already.

"Ready?" Dev said.

"No," she said, and went to hit the button.


Marisol dropped the last handful of cilantro into the bowl and glanced at the clock. Six-forty. Danny had said seven, which meant Priya would show up at six-fifty-five and everyone else would drift in by seven-thirty.

"Do we have enough chairs?" she called.

Danny came out of the bedroom pulling a shirt over his head, hair still damp. "Five, plus the two from the desk. That's seven. Who's coming?"

"Priya, Marcus, Deb, and Tom. So six of us."

"Then we're fine." He crossed the kitchen, kissed the top of her head, and opened the fridge. "Where's the beer?"

"Bottom shelf. Behind the milk."

He crouched, moved things, made a sound of triumph, and started lining bottles on the counter. Marisol nudged him aside with her hip to get to the sink.

"Sorry." He stepped back. "Should I light the candles?"

"After they get here. They'll burn down."

They'd lived in the apartment on Belmont for two years now — long enough that the arguments about the dishwasher and whose turn it was to call the landlord had settled into a rhythm neither of them thought about much. Long enough that Danny knew to salt the rice again after she said it was done, and Marisol knew he'd fold the towels wrong no matter how many times she showed him.

He picked up the pile of mail from the table and shoved it in a drawer. She wiped the counter behind him.

"You look nice," she said, not looking up.

"You too." He was already retying his shoe. "Did we get bread?"

"On the top of the fridge. Where you put it."

The buzzer went off. Six fifty-three.

"Priya," they said at the same time, and Danny went to press the button.


Marisol pressed the last dish towel into service, wiping condensation from the wine glasses she'd pulled from the back of the cabinet. The good ones. The ones they only used when someone besides the two of them was eating.

"Do we have enough chairs?" she called toward the living room.

Danny appeared in the doorway, sleeves rolled, holding the folding chair he'd retrieved from the hall closet. "Six, counting the desk chair. Nobody's going to fight about it."

"Rob will comment on it."

"Rob comments on everything." He set the chair against the wall and came into the kitchen, leaning past her to check the oven. The chicken had another twenty minutes, maybe less. He'd started the marinade that morning before work, garlic and lemon and too much oregano, the way his mother made it in Cleveland.

Marisol slid the salad bowl toward him. "Toss this when they get here, not before. It gets soggy."

"I know how salad works."

"You made soup out of it at Thanksgiving."

"That was a mistake I've carried with dignity."

She laughed and reached up to fix his collar, a small automatic gesture, then turned to light the two candles in the middle of the table. They weren't fancy candles. They'd come from the grocery store on Larkin, three dollars for a pair, and they smelled faintly of vanilla, which clashed with the oregano, but the light was good.

Danny put on music, something with horns, low enough to talk over. He poured two fingers of wine and handed her the glass without asking.

"They're going to be late," she said.

"They're always late."

The doorbell rang at 6:52, eight minutes early, and they looked at each other, and Marisol wiped her hands on her jeans and went to answer it while Danny reached, finally, for the salad.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, the one her mother had given them when they moved into the duplex on Fremont Street. It smelled faintly of cedar. She shook it out over the dining table while Danny stood at the stove, stirring a pot of white beans he'd started that morning.

"Did you salt these?" he called.

"You salted them. I watched you salt them."

"I salted them once. That's not the same as salting them."

She came into the kitchen, dipped a spoon in, tasted. "More salt."

"Thank you."

Ruthie and Ben were bringing wine. Marisol's coworker Dev was bringing his new girlfriend, whom nobody had met, which Danny had said three separate times that week like it was a plot development. The apartment was small enough that they'd have to eat with two chairs borrowed from the bedroom, and one of those chairs had a wobble Danny kept meaning to fix.

"The bathroom," she said.

"I did the bathroom."

"You wiped the sink."

"That's the bathroom."

She got the cleaner from under the kitchen sink and went to do the mirror and the tub while he pulled the bread out and set it on the rack. Through the wall she heard him put on the record they always put on, the one Ben had left behind in June and never asked for back.

At six forty she changed her shirt twice. At six fifty Danny came in with his hands still damp and said, "Do I look like a person who cooked?"

"You look like a person who's been standing over beans for eleven hours."

"Good."

She straightened the collar of his shirt and he caught her wrist for a second, not saying anything, and then somebody knocked, and the dog next door started up, and they both went to the door at the same time.


Marisol wiped the counter for the third time, though it hadn't gotten any dirtier since the second.

"They're going to be fifteen minutes late," Dev said from the stove. "Terrence is always fifteen minutes late."

"Which means Priya will be early to compensate." She checked the oven light. The bread was browning unevenly, the way it always did in this apartment's ancient range. Three years in the place and they still hadn't complained to the landlord.

Dev tasted the sauce and made a face. "Too much lemon."

"There's no such thing."

"Says the woman who puts lemon in coffee."

"That was once. In Portugal. And it was a mistake I've apologized for repeatedly."

He handed her the spoon anyway. She tasted, considered, shrugged. "More salt."

The apartment smelled like garlic and the eucalyptus candle she'd bought because the label said "calming" and she'd been in a mood at Target. Dev had lit it an hour ago without being asked, which she noticed and didn't mention.

She set the table—six plates, mismatched, two from his mother's set and four from a thrift store on Grand. The wine glasses didn't match either. Nobody had ever commented.

"Napkins," he said.

"Paper towels."

"Marisol."

"They're the nice ones. The ones with the pattern."

He laughed, quiet, still stirring. Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped.

She changed her shirt twice, settled on the green one, came back out. Dev had put on music, something with horns, low enough to talk over. He'd wiped the counter again. She let him.

The buzzer went at 7:12. Priya, apologizing for being early.

"You're not," Marisol said, taking the bottle from her hands, and Dev came out of the kitchen still holding the wooden spoon, and the apartment filled up the way it did—loudly, all at once, everyone talking before their coats were off.


Marisol found Dev in the kitchen at ten past six, elbow-deep in a bag of ice, swearing at the cooler that wouldn't close.

"You bought the wrong ice," she said.

"There's a wrong ice?"

"Cubes, not crushed. Crushed melts in twenty minutes." She took the bag from him anyway and dumped half of it in the sink. "It's fine. Just put the beer in the fridge."

Their apartment in Somerville was small enough that they'd been navigating around each other for three years without collision, a kind of choreography. Dev slid past her to the fridge; she pivoted to the stove without looking. The chicken thighs had been braising since four, and the whole place smelled like paprika and onions, which mostly covered the smell of the neighbor's cigarettes drifting through the bathroom vent.

"Did you text Kenny about the parking?" she asked.

"I told him to use the lot behind the CVS."

"He'll get towed."

"He's a grown man."

"He got towed in April."

Dev conceded this by not answering. He went to work on the table instead, unfolding the leaf they only used for company, setting out the mismatched plates—six from her grandmother, two from a yard sale in Vermont. He arranged them so the chipped ones faced away.

Marisol tasted the sauce and added vinegar. Then she stopped, wooden spoon in hand, and looked around at the folded napkins and the lamp Dev had moved to hide the water stain on the wall.

"We're actually adults," she said.

"Don't jinx it."

The buzzer went off at 6:40, twenty minutes early, which meant it was Priya, who was always early and always apologized for it. Dev wiped his hands on his jeans. Marisol pulled the tray from the oven, set it on the stovetop, and said, "Okay. Go let her in."


Marisol wiped the counter for the third time, though it was already clean. Behind her, Devin was arguing with the oven.

"It says two-twenty-five," he said. "But the dial only goes in fifties."

"Just split the difference and check it in twenty minutes."

He set it to two-hundred and slid the tray of chicken thighs in anyway. The apartment smelled like lemon and garlic, which covered the fact that neither of them had vacuumed since Tuesday.

They had lived together fourteen months. Her mother still called it "the arrangement," in a tone that suggested it was temporary weather. Devin's parents had stopped asking. Between them, there had never been a conversation about rings, only a long, unhurried agreement about who bought the coffee and how to load the dishwasher — his way, which was correct, though she wouldn't admit it.

"Kenny's bringing his new girlfriend," Marisol said, folding paper napkins into imperfect triangles. "The one who does the pottery."

"Ceramics."

"That's what I said."

"You said pottery. She corrected me once. It stuck."

The doorbell wasn't until seven-thirty. It was six-fifty. Devin found the good glasses on the top shelf and handed them down one at a time, and she rinsed the dust off them, and neither of them said anything for a while. The radiator ticked. Somebody's dog barked in the courtyard.

"Do we have enough chairs?" he asked.

"If Ellie sits on the ottoman."

"Ellie always sits on the ottoman."

"Then we have enough chairs."

He came up behind her at the sink and rested his chin on her shoulder, just for a second, the way he did maybe twice a week without ever planning to. Then he went to find the corkscrew, and she started the rice, and at seven-twenty-five the first knock came, early, the way Kenny always was.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, exactly where she'd shoved it after Thanksgiving. She held it up to the kitchen light, considering the wine stain near one corner.

"Just put a candle on it," Devon said, edging past her with a colander of rinsed green beans. Their apartment in Somerville had a galley kitchen that made two people feel like four.

"A candle isn't going to cover a stain the size of my hand."

"Then a serving dish. Nobody's inspecting the linens, Mari."

She spread it anyway, positioning the bread board over the offending spot with the precision of a surgeon. Outside, a plow scraped down the street, though the snow had stopped hours ago.

Devon had made his mother's chicken and rice, which meant the whole place smelled like saffron and browned onions, and which also meant he'd been slightly tense since two o'clock. He kept lifting the lid to check.

"You're letting the steam out," Marisol said.

"I know what I'm doing."

"You've said that four times."

He grinned without turning around. "Because it keeps being true."

She found six matching wine glasses by combining two sets — three from his old apartment, three she'd inherited from her grandmother — and lined them up on the counter. Six people, six glasses. Jess and Rob were bringing dessert. Amara was bringing her new boyfriend, whose name neither of them could remember.

"Theo," Devon said, reading her face. "It's Theo."

"Theo. Right." She wiped a water spot from the last glass. "Do we have enough chairs?"

They didn't, quite. Devon carried the desk chair in from the bedroom, and Marisol draped a throw blanket over its cracked vinyl seat, and they stood back and looked at the table together for a second, the way people do.

The buzzer rang at 7:04.


Marisol wiped condensation from the kitchen window and watched the rain slick the driveway. Behind her, Dev was arguing with the speaker in the corner, which kept insisting it couldn't find the playlist he wanted.

"Just put on anything," she said. "They'll be here in forty minutes."

"Anything is how we ended up with smooth jazz at Toby's birthday."

She laughed and went back to the chicken, which had been in the oven since four and smelled the way her mother's kitchen used to smell on Sundays, garlic and lemon and something faintly burnt at the edges. Six people, counting them. She'd counted the forks twice already and still felt like she was forgetting something.

Dev came up behind her, kissed the back of her neck, and took the pepper grinder out of her hand. "You're overseasoning again."

"I'm compensating for the fact that you undersalted the potatoes."

"I salted them exactly right. You have destroyed your palate with hot sauce."

They had lived together three years in the small blue house on Ferndale, long enough that these arguments had grooves worn into them, comfortable as a couch cushion. Marisol's sister still asked when they were going to make it official; Marisol had stopped having an answer beyond a shrug. It didn't feel unfinished to her. It felt like this: rain, chicken, Dev hunting for the good corkscrew in the drawer full of takeout menus and dead batteries.

"Napkins," she said suddenly. "That's what I forgot."

"Paper's fine."

"It is not fine, Toby's bringing his new girlfriend."

Dev found the cloth ones in the linen closet, wrinkled, and ironed them badly on the counter with a dish towel underneath while Marisol lit candles. Headlights swung across the front window. She smoothed her shirt, he wiped his hands, and they went to the door together.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, back in April for her sister's birthday. She shook it out over the dining table and pressed the folds flat with her palms.

"Do we have enough chairs?" Devon called from the kitchen. He was standing over a pot of chili, tasting from a wooden spoon, adding cumin, tasting again.

"Six, if we bring the desk chair in."

"That thing squeaks."

"Then Kevin can sit in it. He'll think it's funny."

Devon laughed. He wiped his hands on a dish towel and went to get the chair anyway, wheeling it down the hallway while Marisol counted out silverware. They'd lived in the apartment two years now, since the lease on her old place ran out and it had seemed obvious, almost boring in its obviousness, that she should just move in. Her books had taken over his shelves. His records had taken over her record player, which she never used anyway.

"Napkins," she said. "We have those paper ones."

"We have cloth ones. Somewhere."

"Do we?"

He found them in a drawer under the takeout menus, four of them, mismatched. Marisol set them out and decided four was fine, that Kevin and Priya could share.

At six-fifteen Devon went to shower. Marisol lit the two candles they owned and turned on the lamp in the corner instead of the overhead light, which made everything look like a dentist's office. She put on a record — his, an old Bill Withers — and turned it low.

He came out with his hair wet, buttoning a shirt she liked. "It smells good in here," he said.

"That's you. That's the chili."

The buzzer went off at six-forty. Devon looked at her, and she looked back, and then she went to let them in.


Marisol pressed the last dish towel flat over the counter while Dev wrestled the leaf into the dining table. The apartment smelled like garlic and browning butter, and outside, a February dusk was settling over Providence in that particular gray-blue that made the streetlights look premature.

"Did you text Priya about the nuts?" Marisol asked, tasting the sauce.

"I texted her. She says almonds are fine, it's cashews that kill her." Dev locked the table extension and stood back, frowning. "This thing is not level."

"It's never been level. Put a coaster under it."

He went hunting for a coaster and came back with a paperback instead, wedging it under the leg with his heel. They'd lived here fourteen months, since the lease on his place ended and neither of them wanted to admit it was a decision. Her books had migrated to his shelves. His mother sent them a card at Christmas addressed to both names, which had felt like something, though neither of them said so.

Marisol handed him a stack of plates. "Four, five — Ben's bringing someone."

"Since when?"

"Since Tuesday. Try to be normal about it."

"I'm extremely normal." Dev set the plates down, one at each place, and straightened them with more care than he'd admit to. "What's her name?"

"Jenna. She teaches middle school science."

He nodded, filing it away, and went to open the wine so it could breathe. Marisol turned the oven light on and crouched to look at the chicken, her knees popping.

"Twenty minutes," she said.

"Music?"

"Something without lyrics. Otherwise everyone talks over it."

He put on something with a piano. From the kitchen came the sound of a knife against a cutting board, steady, unhurried. Downstairs, the buzzer went off early — Ben always came early — and Dev wiped his hands on his jeans and went to let them in.


Marisol found the good tablecloth at the back of the linen closet, the one her mother had given them when they moved into the duplex on Vine Street. It smelled faintly of cedar. She shook it out over the table and smoothed the creases with her palm while Dev, in the kitchen, swore softly at the oven.

"It's not preheating," he called.

"Did you press start?"

A pause. "I pressed start."

She came to the doorway and watched him crouch in front of the oven door, phone flashlight aimed at the dial. He had flour on his forearm and his reading glasses pushed up into his hair, which was how he lost them roughly twice a week.

"It's on broil," she said.

He looked. "Huh."

They'd been together six years, in this apartment for three, and neither of them had brought up marriage in a way that required an answer. Her sister asked at Thanksgiving. His mother had stopped asking, which felt worse somehow.

Dev fixed the dial and stood, wiping his hands on a dish towel. "Chicken's twenty minutes behind now. Do we have enough wine to stall them?"

"There's the bottle Priya brought last time. And that beer in the crisper drawer that's been there since August."

"That's Owen's beer. He'll be thrilled."

She lit the candles on the table, then blew one out because it was smoking. Outside, a car door slammed, and she looked up, but it was only the neighbor coming home with groceries.

"Napkins," Dev said, handing her the stack. Their hands touched. He kissed the side of her head, absently, the way you'd check a doorknob you'd already locked.

"You have flour on you," she said.

"I know. It's a whole look."

The doorbell rang eleven minutes early. Marisol pulled off her apron, tossed it toward the couch, and missed.


Marisol was slicing lemons at the counter when Dev came in from the garage with two folding chairs under his arm, apologizing for the dust.

"Just wipe them down," she said. "Nobody's going to inspect the chairs."

"Theo will. Theo notices everything."

She let that go and went back to the lemons. The chicken had been in the oven forty minutes and smelled right, which was a relief, because she'd changed the marinade at the last minute and hadn't told anyone. Dev set the chairs by the table and started opening drawers, looking for the tablecloth they'd bought in Santa Fe two summers ago and used maybe twice.

"Bottom left. Under the placemats."

He found it. It had a fold crease down the middle that no amount of smoothing would fix, so he put a bowl of clementines over the worst of it and called it done.

They had forty minutes. Marisol showered while Dev vacuumed the living room rug, which they'd both been ignoring since Tuesday. He moved the laundry basket into their bedroom and shut the door, the oldest trick there was. Then he put on music, something instrumental and low, and turned it down twice because it felt like it was trying too hard.

Marisol came out with her hair still damp, wearing the green shirt. She looked at the table.

"You put out the good glasses."

"We have good glasses. It seemed like the moment."

She kissed his shoulder on her way to check the oven. The chicken was fine. Better than fine. She pulled it out to rest and told him to slice the bread, and he did, badly, in thick uneven wedges that she rearranged in the basket so the ugly ones faced down.

At 6:52 headlights swung across the front window. Dev looked at her.

"Ready?"

"No," she said, smiling, and went to open the door.


Marcus found the good tablecloth in the linen closet behind a stack of beach towels, wrinkled from eight months of neglect. He shook it out over the dining table anyway, smoothing the creases with his palms while the oven ticked toward 375.

"It looks like a topographical map," Priya said, passing through with a bag of ice. She'd gotten home from the pharmacy an hour late and still had her name badge clipped to her shirt.

"They're coming to eat, not to inspect our linens."

"Danielle inspects linens."

He conceded the point and went to find the iron. Priya emptied the ice into a mixing bowl, then reconsidered and hunted for the cooler in the hall closet, which required moving the vacuum and a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to hanging. Their apartment was small enough that seven people would be a negotiation. She'd already moved the armchair into the bedroom.

Marcus checked the chicken. It needed twenty more minutes, which was fine, because the potatoes needed thirty. He texted the group chat: *no rush, running slightly behind.* Three people replied with thumbs up.

"Did you tell Kevin no cilantro or did I?" Priya called.

"I don't think either of us did."

"There's cilantro in the salad."

"He'll survive."

She came into the kitchen and leaned against the counter, watching him. He was doing the thing where he read the recipe on his phone with the screen dimmed almost to black, squinting. She reached over and turned the brightness up.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

She picked a piece of cheese off the board she'd assembled and ate it. He didn't say anything about it. Outside, a car door slammed, and they both looked toward the window, but it wasn't for them—not yet. There was still time. Priya went to change her shirt. Marcus put on music, then changed it to something quieter.


Mara found the good tablecloth wedged behind the winter coats, smelling faintly of cedar. She shook it out over the dining table while Devin worked the counter, halving cherry tomatoes with the small knife he insisted was the only decent one they owned.

"Six or seven?" she asked.

"Seven. Priya's bringing her cousin." He scraped the tomatoes into a bowl. "Which means we need another chair."

The apartment had four dining chairs and a wobbly stool. Mara dragged the desk chair from the bedroom, wheels catching on the rug, and Devin laughed without looking up.

"That's fine. That's very sophisticated."

"It swivels. Someone's going to love it."

She wiped down the bathroom sink, hid the laundry basket in the closet, lit the candle her sister had given her that supposedly smelled like a library and mostly smelled like vanilla. In the kitchen, Devin was arguing quietly with the oven, which ran hot and had ruined two chickens that spring. He'd compensated by starting early and lowering the temperature, and now the whole place smelled like lemon and thyme.

"Music?" he called.

"Something without words. Otherwise people sing."

At six-fifteen they stood in the small clear space between the kitchen and the table, surveying it. The rug was crooked. The wine was open. There were two candles instead of the four Mara had imagined, but the light was good, low and forgiving.

Devin touched the back of her neck. "You changed your shirt."

"Twice."

"I noticed the first one."

Someone buzzed from downstairs, early, the way Priya always was. Mara pressed the button and left the door ajar, and Devin poured the first two glasses before the footsteps reached the landing. Voices came up the stairwell, overlapping, already laughing at something neither of them had heard yet.


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt sugar, which Priya insisted was the correct smell for a Tuesday.

"You caramelized those onions into charcoal," Marcus said, peering into the pan.

"They're rustic." She nudged him aside with her hip and scraped the darkest bits onto a paper towel. "Nobody will notice under the cheese."

He'd gotten home from the site at four-thirty, still smelling faintly of sawdust, and had barely showered before she handed him a bag of potatoes and a peeler. Now it was ten after six. Rachel and Dev would arrive at seven, probably seven-fifteen, and Tomás was always early, which meant they had maybe forty minutes of actual peace.

Marcus set the table with the mismatched plates they'd accumulated over three years — some from his mother's basement, some from the estate sale in Hyde Park where Priya had haggled a stranger down eleven dollars. He put out cloth napkins because she'd bought them and never used them.

"Do we have wine glasses for six?" she called.

"We have wine glasses for four and two jars."

"That's very us."

He found the jars, washed them, dried them with the good towel. In the living room, he stacked the mail into a pile and shoved it in a drawer, then straightened the throw pillows in a way that looked, he thought, effortless.

Priya came out with a dish towel over her shoulder, hair pinned up, still in the T-shirt she'd worn all day. "How long do I have?"

"Twenty minutes."

"Perfect." She kissed him on the jaw, quick, and disappeared down the hall.

He turned the music on low, opened a bottle to let it breathe, and stood for a second in the quiet, looking at the table. Then the buzzer rang — Tomás, of course, twenty minutes early — and Priya shouted something from the bedroom that Marcus didn't catch but answered anyway.


Marisol was halfway through chopping cilantro when she heard Dev swear at the oven.

"It's preheating," she said without looking up. "It just takes forever."

"It says three-fifty. It's at two-eighty. Elena's going to be here in forty minutes and the enchiladas need thirty."

"Elena's never on time. She wasn't on time to her own thesis defense."

Dev laughed and wiped his hands on the dish towel slung over his shoulder. Their apartment in Cleveland was too small for eight people, technically. They'd done it before anyway—folding chairs from the basement storage unit, the coffee table pushed against the wall, plates balanced on knees. It always worked out better than a dining room would have.

He came up behind her and looked over her shoulder at the cutting board. "That's a lot of cilantro."

"Ben likes cilantro."

"Ben is one person."

"Ben is one person who drove four hours." She scraped the pile into a bowl. "Can you deal with the ice? The trays are empty again because someone keeps not refilling them."

"That someone works nights."

"That someone still has hands."

He filled the trays and slid them into the freezer, then started stacking bowls on the counter—the mismatched ones from his grandmother, the plain white ones they'd bought together at a restaurant supply store on a Saturday two years ago, back when they were still figuring out whose furniture would survive the move.

At six-fifteen the oven finally hit temperature. Marisol slid the pan in and set a timer on her phone. Dev put on a record, something with horns in it, and turned the volume down when she gave him a look.

"Too loud?"

"Too loud for talking."

He adjusted it. She untied her apron and hung it on the hook by the fridge, and they both looked around the kitchen at the same time, taking inventory, and then the buzzer rang.

"Told you," Dev said. "That's Elena."

It wasn't. It was Ben, early, holding a bottle of wine and apologizing.