Mom sips champagne while making small talk with the waiter. She’s a regular, and he kisses up to her so shamelessly I have to look away. She orders for us while I gaze out the window at the boats going up and down the Bund, tourists taking pictures, the Oriental Pearl Tower. There’s a roller coaster inside. When I was little, I used to go on it with my dad. I smile at the memory.

The waiter finally leaves us alone.

“Did you know your father and I met here?” she asks. She points to the foyer, where the hostess, in pencil-thin stilettos, balances delicately behind the white marble table. “Right over there.”

She’s told me the story a thousand times. She was a college student at Fudan, working as a hostess that summer. He was an executive with a considerable expense account. It was love at first sight. And a trip to Cartier shortly after.

“I was just nineteen!” my mom reminds me. “Not much older than you. So young.”

Her cheeks flush with nostalgia, and I settle in for a trip down memory lane. I try to take a sip of her champagne, but she moves the flute out of reach.

I protest, “Aw, c’mon.”

“I was so beautiful then,” she continues, ignoring me.

“You’re still beautiful,” I remind her. I can’t tell you how many classmates—the guys especially—have commented on my mom’s appearance.

“Your mom’s gorgeous,” they’d say, usually followed by “You sure she’s your mom?” Har har har.

It used to bother me that she looked so much younger than all the other moms. I guess that’s what happens when you get started at twenty. She used to joke that we were both still kids. She’d ask me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and I’d ask her back, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And she’d laugh and laugh.

I don’t know when she stopped laughing. She shakes her head at the champagne, pursing her lips.

“I’m getting old,” she sighs. She grows quiet, eyes welling up. I hope that’s not what she’s blaming Dad’s infidelity on.

My phone dings. It’s a WeChat voice message from my boyfriend, Teddy. He’s a year older and studying hard for his gaokao. The Chinese college entrance exams are so intense that girls take birth control pills to avoid getting their period during that week and construction work is halted, traffic diverted near the examination halls so as to not disturb the students. So far, though, he still has time to mess around. I try to tap out of the app, but my finger accidentally presses Play.

“Hey, babe, just thinking about the other day, in the back of the library. It was so—”