Page 2 of Fundamentals of Chemistry

As soon as I reached the train station for the trip home, I changed out of the damn Chanel slingbacks that had tormented my feet all through dinner. My mules, lovingly broken-in over years of strolls through Central Park, were a one hundred percent improvement over the designer torture devices. But the damage was already done. The pinching was gone, but the relentless ache persisted throughout the train and subway rides. I felt every step of the climb to my fifth floor walk up on the Upper West Side.

Despite the late hour, a lamp had been left on, bathing the living room in a warm, welcoming light. I kicked off my shoes and stood barefoot on the doormat for a moment, stretching out my toes and pressing them into the soft, pink shag. If I could bottle and sell this feeling, I’d never need Dad’s money again.

The reminder felt like accidentally scratching a scab off a fresh wound.

I groaned and slunk over to the sofa where I promptly collapsed into a pile of throw pillows that were much more cheerful than I was. I took the opportunity to yell into the cushions, the sound muffled by downy fluff. It helped, but what I really needed was a friendly face.

I rolled onto my side, hugging a magenta, velvet bolster to my chest. My parents would have called this behavior unbecoming. But I didn’t need to worry about what they thought anymore.

“Silvia,” I moaned. I sounded at least half as pitiful as I felt.

There was no response.

“Silvia,” I called again, a little louder.

Still nothing.

I sat up on the sofa, still clutching the pillow like a life preserver, and pitched my voice even louder.

“Silvia Grace Nguyen! I know you can hear me through these cardboard walls.”

The walls in this building were probably made of concrete or wood or some other normal building material, but they were about as good at blocking sound as noble gasses were at conduction—which was to say, terrible. People told stories of real born-and-raised New Yorkers falling asleep to the sounds of car horns, random shouting, and the occasional gunshot. But after two sleepless nights in the city, I invested in a three-dollar box of earplugs from the corner bodega and resigned myself to the fact that I might never be that type of New Yorker.

“Give me a minute,” my roommate replied from our shared bathroom.

“M-kay.” I flopped back down onto my side to wait. I pulled my long, blonde hair out of its bun and shook out the waves. My headache immediately began to ebb.

An impossibly-long thirty seconds later, the bathroom door opened to reveal a petite Vietnamese woman in cotton pajamas and fluffy socks that she insisted were knit from genuine muppet fur.

Silvia took a moment to regard me. “Well,” she said, “you don’t look any worse for the wear.”

“Naturally,” I agreed. “All of the trauma is on the inside. And also on my feet.”

Silvia leaned in to inspect a blister. “Not the slingbacks again. Your poor toes deserve better.”

“Oh, you know Mom and Dad. It’s either dress appropriately for dinner, or sit through a twenty-minute lecture about how a Burke of the Connecticut Burkes must uphold a particular standard of propriety.”

“I still think those two are batshit crazy.”

She sat down on the arm of the sofa, and I rolled onto my back to face her.

“You won’t hear me disagreeing. But they’re my parents.”

“I still don’t understand why you had to see them in person. I feel like this could have been a phone call. Or an email.”

I rolled my eyes. “They probably would have found out even if I didn’t tell them at all—their social circle is so small. But doing it myself, in person, felt necessary, you know. Like closing one door before I open another one.”

There wasn’t much else to say on the subject. Over the last five years of rooming together, Silvia and I had discussed my parents many times, usually after a bottle or two of wine. We always reached the same conclusion: my parents were pretentious, manipulative, and brazenly egotistical. In a word—they sucked, even if they had bankrolled my life.

“I know what we need,” Silvia announced. “I have a bottle of Prosecco chilling.”

“Say less,” I said, and let her pull me to my feet.

I followed her to the line of cabinets that served as our kitchen and found a pair of flutes. She retrieved the sparkling wine from the refrigerator and started picking at the foil.

“Do you need to vent?” she asked.

Leaning back on the edge of the counter, I sucked in a deep breath. Then, I dropped my head back and blew out a sigh.