At a crowded New Year’s Eve party in Robbie’s rent-controlled Bed-Stuy apartment, Henry is drunk and overwhelmed by constant attention. Trapped in a hallway corner, Henry lets a handsome stranger kiss him, but Henry cannot even remember the man’s name and feels increasingly sickened by how automatic the desire seems.

When the stranger starts fumbling with Henry’s belt, Henry stops him and demands to know what the man actually sees in him. The stranger offers generic praise—gorgeous, sexy, smart—and cannot explain how he knows any of it. Henry realizes the words are hollow, and when Robbie walks by and sees them, Robbie looks hurt and storms off.

Trying to escape the party and the suffocating “smoke” in people’s eyes, Henry slips into Robbie’s room and climbs onto the fire escape. The city noise is still there, but the space lets Henry breathe and think; he sits freezing with an empty beer bottle, dreading returning to the tide of admiration that now feels like a weight.

Bea joins Henry on the fire escape and confronts him about hiding outside. Henry admits that Robbie is in love with him, but says it was never truly about who Henry is—more about who Robbie wanted Henry to become. Bea insists Henry is “perfect,” and when Henry asks what that means, Bea calls Henry her best friend and lists qualities that make Henry feel exposed, because Henry knows he has not always lived up to them.

Henry asks Bea what she would wish for if she could “sell [her] soul for one thing,” and Bea says she would buy happiness—being satisfied with herself. Henry admits he would buy love, and Bea warns him that love without choice is not real. As the countdown begins, Bea stays with Henry, then kisses him at midnight for luck; the new year arrives, and Henry is left certain he has made a terrible mistake and doesn’t know how to undo it.