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Nile’s texting with her brother when she hears someone talking in the hallway. Tomorrow Indy’s heading home to Chicago for Easter. Nile can’t go this year and she’s really sad about it.
The talking out in the hallway continues. It’s... baby talk? It’s really cute baby talk, and when she looks out her peephole it’s coming from a DILF.
So she opens the door.
Booker is once again the only single adult at seder, but it’s ok, his friends generally manage to not be weird about it. And this year it’s extra ok because there’s BABIES.
Little Eliahu was getting fussy and Booker leapt at the chance to take him. So here he is, pacing up and down the hallway outside his friends’ apartment, babbling with Eliahu and making silly faces at him and soaking up those sweet little baby smiles. After a while he hears the others singing Dayenu through the door so he starts singing it to the baby. Then one of the other apartment doors opens.
Out walks this beautiful woman who he’s gonna be totally chill about and not stare at. Only, in his effort to be cool about her he forgets to stop singing.
She’s... just sort of standing there?
Eventually he manages to remember his manners and say hi. “Bonjour,” he says, only in sing-song baby voice, complete with a little wave of Eliahu’s hand.
Girl what are you doing, Nile wonders to herself. She had zero plan for this. Literally just opened the door on impulse and now here she is awkwardly standing here getting waved at by this hot dad and his perfect sweet squishy smiley baby.
“Um, hi,” she eventually says. “Sorry, I was just missing my family, and then I heard you and the baby, and, uh,” she trails off.
It’s awkward, but it’s not awkward, because both of these people who are trying to play it cool and kinda failing are utterly charmed by each other. You see, dear reader, these two will soon discover that they’re soulmates.
Nile, 26, lives in France for work or grad school reasons unspecified by this particular narrative. Booker, 31, is not the father of the baby in his arms, or any baby for that matter, but Nile doesn’t know that yet.
“How old is your baby?” she asks. Booker scrambles to remember that Eliahu is 6 months old, and then scrambles to add that this isn’t his baby. Just in case, you know. In case she was wondering.
Nile asks what he was singing, since it didn’t sound like French to her, so he explains that it’s Hebrew, and he’s here in the hallway outside his friends’ place for seder.
“Oh!” she says, excited in that way a lot of religious Christians get when Passover and Easter overlap. Booker braces for her to be weird about it, but fortunately for both of them, Nile’s excited in the sweet way, just interested in learning new things and appreciative of the parallels that come up sometimes with different ways of experiencing the world.
“I was just missing my family,” she says, “because everybody's on their way home for Easter except me. I couldn't afford a quick weekend trip across the Atlantic this year.”
Booker’s heart melts for her. He soon learns that Nile has a cousin with a baby around the same age as Eliahu, and he offers for her to hold the baby, an offer she takes him up on just as enthusiastically as he’d done a little while earlier.
At some point in all this, they exchange names. They talk about what brought Nile to France and what Booker does when he’s not pacing hallways with his friends’ babies and other getting-to-know-you things. Eliahu is having a great time getting cuddles and baby talk from two not-parent adults who are rightly obsessed with him, and Nile and Booker are so into their conversation neither of them realize how much time is passing.
Eliahu’s parents look up from the haggadah all of a sudden. “Hang on, where’s our baby?”
One of them goes to check in the hallway, and lo and behold, there’s Booker and their kid making a new friend.
Booker mildly panics at what his friend has just walked in on, but it’s ok, Nile finds it charming. Eliahu’s parent clocks what’s going on and turns around to ask their hosts, “Hey, can the stranger Booker gave our baby to join us for dinner?”
Nile, who in another universe gets distracted from some pretty serious ongoing traumatic experiences by the joy and wonder of finding a Rodin in a cave, is in this universe delighted by this invite to make some new friends and participate in a new-to-her religious ritual. Booker was worried at first that this would be uncomfortable for Nile, but she seems genuinely happy to join, so he makes a little ushering gesture towards the door and all of a sudden he’s bringing maybe a date to seder.
Nile waves little Eliahu’s hand as she says bonjour to Booker’s friends. She meets her impromptu hosts, Yitzhak and Lykon, and Eliahu’s parents and the other guests, OCs that remain unnamed in this ficlet but are no less dear to Booker for their lack of canon names. Everyone shifts things around on the table and someone locates an extra chair to pull up next to Booker’s. There’s not an extra haggadah but it’s ok, Nile and Booker don’t mind sharing.
Somewhere in all of this Booker takes the baby from Nile. Probably for the best, Nile thinks, because the table is covered in what looks like a complicated setup she’ll need to pay attention to. This is all brand-new to her and she doesn’t want to be rude!
Impromptu Nile-inviting just so happens to happen at a mighty convenient point in the seder for maximum Christian’s First Seder hilarity. When everyone’s settled, Yitzhak draws attention back to the haggadah for the last few ritual items before dinner. He remembers exactly what it was like to bring Lykon home for seder that first time, and they’d been dating for nearly a year at that point, plenty of time to prepare him. What a joy it’s about to be to throw Nile in the deep end and watch Booker try to be cool about helping her through the impending horseradish.
They bless and eat the matzo, and like clockwork, Nile says the traditional unwritten blessing of those who haven’t yet spent 8 days in a row eating matzo instead of real bread: “This is actually pretty good!” Everyone laughs affectionately. It’s a nice warmup for what’s about to happen.
“Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has sanctified us with the law and commanded us to eat bitter herbs.”
Booker is busy keeping Eliahu’s little hands away from grabbing something that could hurt him, so he doesn’t stop Nile from piling a big scoop of horseradish on her matzo.
Nile handles it like a champ, insists she loves spicy food. The best part, in Yitzhak’s opinion, is when Booker whispers an apology to her and she smiles at him brighter than the sun and calls him sweet.
Over dinner the others ask Nile basically the same getting-to-know-you questions Booker did out in the hallway, plus some very chill and not at all pointed inquiries about her, ahem, social life. They’re just curious!
For no reason whatsoever Lykon insists on telling the story of his and Yitzhak’s meet-cute. Everyone enjoys this and Booker definitely doesn’t send him an “I know what you’re doing” glare.
Fortunately for Nile and Booker, all this is punctuated with Eliahu and his two-and-a-half-year-old sister doing Baby Things that simply cannot be ignored even for the sake of some friendly meddling in the unfolding meet-cute. This in turn leads to Eliahu’s parents peppering the other couple, one of whom is heavily pregnant, with all kinds of tips and war stories the parents-to-be understandably blanch at.
At one point someone drops that Booker’s wanted to be a dad for as long as he’s been big enough to hold a baby. Nile may or may not Look at him about this, and the others are all very considerate about hiding their knowing smiles.
This same friend turns out to have a common interest with Nile that they end up talking about to the extent that by the time dessert is coming out they’ve made plans to meet up again.
Nile’s mom raised her right, so of course throughout dinner she says how much she appreciates being invited and how good the food is. If she can’t be home for her grandmother’s Easter brunch, then between all the delicious food and the sense of warmth and welcome this is definitely the next best thing. Booker’s friends are all so nice, and Booker himself—
Oh no. This is too cute. How the hell is she supposed to be a good dinner guest when faced with this?
Eliahu’s too young for solid food of course, so the coconut macaroon in front of him is purely for tearing apart with his sweet little baby hands. Only he’s all of a sudden completely lost interest. He’s, um, he’s pawing at Booker’s chest.
Booker has a really nice chest.
“Feeding time,” says one of Eliahu’s parents. “Sorry, Book. Pass him over to me?”
Nile knows she’s staring. She knows she should stop. But she can’t help it, ok? “Wow, Eliahu is really determined,” she says. Out loud. About how this baby is uninterested in getting passed around the table to his parent who actually has milk for him because Booker’s tits are just clearly superior.
Not in a lactation kink way necessarily, but damn, she can relate.
How is Booker supposed to cope with this? The adorable wriggly friend in his arms has been taken away and now there’s no buffer between him and visibly panicking about how hard he’s falling for Nile.
His friends are going to tease him about tonight until the heat death of the universe. How, under these conditions, is he supposed to play it cool and be a version of himself Nile might want to see again?
Then Nile gives him the cutest little private smile and the butterflies in his stomach settle just enough to help her find the right page in the haggadah.
Soon enough it’s time to open the door for Elijah. The confident way Nile’s been joining in on the songs and trying to pronounce the unfamiliar blessings has boosted Booker’s own confidence, so he doesn’t overthink it when he gets up to open the door and welcome in the prophet.
“Oh no!” Booker baby-talks to the empty hallway. “We’re supposed to welcome in Eliahu but he’s not here! Where did he go?” Still without overthinking it, he turns to exaggeratedly scan the room. “Where is Eliahu?” he wonders aloud. “Oh! There you are!” he croons to the baby. “I found you!”
Eliahu’s parents, who were going to make this joke themselves if someone else didn’t beat them to it, make a big show of handing the ritual Elijah’s Cup to their infant child. Yitzhak’s heirloom Elijah’s Cup is over on the bookshelf this year — he was also going to make this joke if someone else didn’t, which is why all night there’s been a sippy cup in a place of honor next to the seder plate.
When Booker makes his way back to his chair, Nile leans in and murmurs, “That was really cute.”
A few more songs and blessings later, seder ends with the traditional “Next year in Jerusalem!” as well as the predictable “Next year with another baby!”
Someone adds for Nile’s benefit a few thoughts about how it’s a symbolic hope that next year things will be better, not necessarily a literal one about wanting to be in Jerusalem next year, especially not with how much Netanyahu has in common with Trump and le Pen.
Booker finds he’d really like to hear what Nile thinks about French politics, but it seems now’s not the time, because one of his friends has jumped in to redirect the conversation with, “Next year with Nile again!”
“You’re so sweet. I’d be honored!” she says, and it sounds like she means it. “This has all been so lovely — thank you again.”
The thought of a whole year with Nile in his life gets Booker so flustered that when everyone’s getting up from the table he throws himself into helping with cleanup instead of, you know, talking to her. At one point he looks up from loading the dishwasher to see her happily chatting away with his parent-to-be friends. She looks so comfortable in what’s got to be a pretty intense situation for meeting new people. Everything he’s learning about Nile just makes him want to know more.
She catches him looking at her, but somehow, it’s not awkward. She gives him a dorky little wave and mouths, “Bonjour.”
Just like that, all his nerves evaporate in the face of something much more important. A few quick paces and he’s across the room and she’s right there smiling up at him.
“Thanks for inviting me,” she says. “Oh, um, I mean thanks for being cool about me being weird at you in the hallway.”
“My pleasure,” he says. He’s too taken with her to be nervous when he adds, “Can I walk you home?”
“I’d like that.”
Dear readers, Booker’s friends were planning to lovingly tease the shit out of him once Nile left, but they want me to tell you that witnessing this heart-pounding moment in person is far and away more fun. They’re all going to be Jewish-goodbyeing for at least another half hour but each of them is careful to keep their goodbyes with Nile and Booker as short as possible. It would be like a crust of bread on the seder plate to disrupt this romantic tension.
It’s a short walk down the hall to Nile’s door and they make the journey without talking. What is there to say?
Nile turns her back to her apartment door so she can prolong this moment with Booker. Once again she’s just standing there looking at him. Eventually, without any planning on her part, she finds herself saying, “I’m really glad I met you.”
“Me too,” Booker says. He looks down for a moment and Nile can’t help but look at his mouth. She bets his beard is soft.
“Can I see you again?” he asks.
All she’s doing is just standing there looking at him, and he’s standing there looking back at her all earnestly hopeful, like he’s so taken with her that her being weird doesn’t even matter. So she takes his phone when he offers it and she puts in her number and texts herself, “Bonjour.”
She really wants to kiss him.
Maybe that’s too fast — maybe all of this has been too fast? Or maybe it’s just nerves. Maybe she’s doing just fine. Maybe, even though tonight they’re reading from a book she’s never heard of before and half of it’s in a language she doesn’t speak, maybe they’re on the same page.
She savors another long moment of looking at this sweet goofy wonderful future-DILF man, and then she leans in for what she means to be an air kiss.
Her nose brushes ever so slightly against his beard. Mmm. Ok, yeah. She leans in the rest of the way and gives him a lingering kiss on his fuzzy cheek.
“Goodnight, Sébastien. Until next time.”
“Goodnight, Nile,” he says in a quiet rumble she’s so looking forward to hearing again. “Bizous.”