So Old, So Young Summary Chapter by Chapter | Grant Ginder

She reveals that “Annie,” the ghost they invented for their apartment, is actually her sneaking out to experience New York’s elite social circles alone.

Chapter 5: Mia

Mia runs into her college rival Courtney Paulson, who incorrectly assumes she’s in love with Adam. After a dismissive encounter with Mitch Reynolds, Mia goes outside to smoke and tells Adam she plans to quit in five years when she turns thirty.

Chapter 6: Adam

Adam tidies the party debris, driven by a childhood compulsion to please after his parents’ deaths. He watches Richie from across the room, feeling jealousy and attraction, and recalls meeting him at a gay bar called Barracuda.

Chapter 7: Richie

Extremely intoxicated, Richie invites Adam and Sasha to smoke a joint in his room. He recalls a past hookup with Adam under the fake name “Sean Straub” and ends the chapter by blowing smoke into Adam’s mouth and kissing him.

Chapter 8: Mia

Mia joins Marco on a walk to the bodega, where he describes Bogotá with a precision that enchants her. They share their first kiss on the stoop under the blue and pink lights of a passing police car as the New Year begins.

Section 3: Cancún (June 14, 2014)

Chapter 9: Mia

Seven years later, Mia suffers through Courtney Paulson’s wedding in the Riviera Maya with a painful sunburn, bitter that Sasha scheduled her honeymoon during this trip.

She watches Marco with his new girlfriend Emily and cries as fireworks misspell the groom’s name.

Chapter 10: Adam

Adam is in a photo booth with Richie, who is doing cocaine and pressuring him to join. He reflects on their cycle of breaking up and getting back together and realizes he might have outgrown Richie.

Chapter 11: Marco

Marco sweats through his linen suit, feeling tense about Mia sitting across from him. He recalls the night in Greenpoint when he told her about his World Bank job and she refused to move to D.C., leading to their breakup.

Chapter 12: Mia

At the bar, Richie tries to cheer Mia up by mocking Marco’s receding hairline. Emily approaches with a Tide pen to help with a wine stain and reveals that she and Marco are engaged.

Chapter 13: Marco

Emily moves to sit near Mia, and Marco becomes paranoid they are trading secrets about him. He recalls calling Emily after his final encounter with Mia, using her voice to “absolve his guilt.”

Chapter 14: Mia

In the bathroom, Mia frantically scrubs wine stains while remembering how she tried to excise Marco with fake happy photos on social media. Emily finds her and mentions their wedding will be capped at forty people.

Chapter 15: Richie

Richie escapes to the bathroom for cocaine, breaking a promise to Adam, and overhears others mocking him by the pool. Driven to “break something,” he returns to the table and publicly humiliates Nina Guzman.

Chapter 16: Mia

As the wedding ends with fireworks, Mia and Adam sit together on a lounge chair, both feeling the weight of their losses. Mia cries ferociously, realizing things are changing “little by little” until they’re unrecognizable.

Section 4: Amagansett (Labor Day 2018)

Chapter 17: Mia

Mia arrives at an Airbnb with her older, prestigious boyfriend Lev Archaki, feeling alienated by her friends’ constant talk of babies and real estate. She observes a “looseness” in the group, like “socks losing their elastic.”

Chapter 18: Richie

Richie celebrates one year of sobriety and is in a relationship with Rami, winning game after game of bocce. He still feels lingering love for Adam and a desire for Adam to be angry with him so he can feel forgiven.

Chapter 19: Mia

Mia watches Marco interact with his daughter Ava and feels excluded from parenting conversations. She reveals she had a miscarriage months ago that she never told Sasha about, and Lev told her “serious people don’t have children.”

Chapter 20: Sasha

Struggling with motherhood and Theo’s depression after losing his job, Sasha has been having an affair with Mitch Reynolds. She feels she’s “playing a character” of a wife and mother without a script.

Chapter 21: Marco

Marco fears being a terrible father and resents Emily for constantly correcting his parenting. He and Mia share a brief honest moment, but he ruins it by telling her Lev might not be the right person.

Chapter 22: Richie

Blindfolded for a handicap during bocce, Richie spins around and tosses the ball with “added verve.” The ball shatters glass near the kitchen and hits Lev in the face, causing a massive bruise.

Chapter 23: Mia

Mia tends to Lev’s swollen eye while he panics about his appearance for an upcoming festival. At dinner, Lev tells a long story about clogging Elton John’s toilet that the group finds both annoying and impressive.

Chapter 24: Richie

During a game of Celebrity, Marco and Mia dominate, finishing each other’s sentences in a way that unsettles Emily. Richie watches Adam and Rami together on the couch, feeling an “unbearable surge of jealousy.”

Chapter 25: Nina

Feeling like a “try-hard and a loser,” Nina walks in on Sasha and Mitch Reynolds in a bedroom while looking for a bathroom. Sasha confides in her, creating a secret bond that makes Nina feel “intensely happy.”

Part II: The Present

Section 5: Montclair, New Jersey (October 29, 2022)

Chapter 26: Mia

Four years later, Mia is single and living in Greenpoint after breaking up with Lev. She takes the train with Adam and Richie to Sasha’s suburban Halloween party, dressed as a mouse and feeling out of place.

Chapter 27: Sasha

Overwhelmed by suburban life and the death of her son’s goldfish Tuna, Sasha has a mental breakdown at Petco.

She feels guilty for bailing on a planned Miami trip with Mia but finds Mia’s constant texts “repulsive” and needy.

Chapter 28: Mia

Mia arrives with the replacement goldfish Sasha requested. Sasha pulls her into the bathroom to draw whiskers on her face and then cancels the Miami trip, lying about childcare issues.

Mia later discovers Sasha is actually going to D.C. to help Emily.

Chapter 29: Richie

Bored and finding the suburban party depressing, Richie receives a call from crying Nina, who reveals she wasn’t invited.