The Christmas Orphans Club(15)
“The last couple years, Christmas has been . . .” Priya trails off. She doesn’t need to continue; we were there, too.
“But everything’s fine now! And we have to do it this year . . . for Finn!” I sling my arm around his shoulder to illustrate how okay everything is. It has to be.
four
Hannah
Christmas #5, 2012
When I wake, Priya is banging around in the kitchen. I hoped she’d be gone, but no such luck.
Priya has lived here since Garrett moved out in June. Garrett, my roommate after Finn, liked to do kickboxing workouts in the living room, which is already too cramped for sitting quietly, never mind jab-cross-uppercutting. I’m also pretty sure he peed in empty soda bottles in his bedroom. Either that, or he was massively dehydrated, because sometimes he wouldn’t leave his room for the whole day on Sundays.
The only positive part of Garrett’s roommate tenure was that he was gone over Christmas. Back to wherever he came from. I never found out where that was.
In the kitchen, Priya is standing in front of the single square of countertop in a pair of pink-and-red-striped thermal pajamas, her hair gathered in a topknot. The counter is littered with vegetable scraps and broken eggshells. She’s humming along to “We Are Young” by fun., which pours out of the tinny speakers of her cell phone. “I’m making us breakfast!” she announces.
I peer over her shoulder into the mixing bowl, where there’s a goopy mixture of eggs and what looks like remnants of every vegetable in the fridge. “Thanks,” I tell her, despite how dubious the contents of the bowl look.
“My mom always makes this. She calls it kitchen-sink quiche. She takes everything left in the fridge, mixes it with cheese, and puts it in a pie crust. It looks gross now, but I promise it’s really good.” It wouldn’t normally phase me, but today—on Christmas—my own lack of family feels more acute. I’m struck with a twinge of jealousy that Priya has a mother to refer to in the present tense. “Anyway, I was up early and thought I’d make a special breakfast since it’s a holiday and all.” She glances at me over her shoulder and gives a sheepish shrug. “Plus, what else do I have to do today? For all us non-Christians, Christmas is just a weird day on the calendar when everything’s closed.”
Her kind gesture makes me feel like an asshole for withholding an invitation to spend Christmas with me and Finn.
“We should invite her,” Finn urged last week. “She said she doesn’t have plans.” I was less sure. She’d been a solid roommate so far. Way better than Garrett, which is a low bar. She’s out most nights: PR events on weeknights, dates or bars with friends on the weekend. She brought Finn along to a couple of the press parties and he raved about the signature cocktails, mini crab cakes, and gift bags stuffed with travel-sized beauty products and branded water bottles. He couldn’t believe it was all free.
As for Priya and I, we probably wouldn’t hit it off if we met at a party—she seems too normal, too well-adjusted—but we have the same taste in takeout and TV shows, which goes a long way where roommates are concerned. But still, I held out hope that I’d wake to an empty apartment this morning. Maybe one of her other friends would invite her to spend Christmas with them. But it looks like she isn’t going anywhere.
We eat our kitchen-sink quiche in the living room, whose aesthetic is an odd marriage of our possessions. My Backs?len loveseat next to her lucite coffee table. My Band of Horses tour poster beside Priya’s For Like Ever one. Even her paperback of Something Borrowed looks slightly uneasy on our Billy bookshelf next to my copy of The Hunger Games. But at least one of us has taste when it comes to decor. Even I have to admit that the addition of her possessions has made the apartment feel homier.
“I’ve always wondered,” she begins, “what’s the deal with you and Finn?”
“We met in college, on Christmas our sophomore year. And we immediately clicked. It’s like he’s my soulmate, my person.” I pause. “Ew, I’m explaining this all wrong. This sounds so cheesy.” I laugh.
Her eyebrows rise so high and so quickly, I’m worried they might shoot right off her face. “Wait, are you, like, in love with him?”
“I mean, yes, but not romantically, if that’s what you mean. We’re just friends. More than friends, really. But not like that.” I shoot her a pointed glance. “I just mean . . . I don’t know how else to describe it. Have you ever had someone like that?”
I cringe at the babble I spewed at her. I’m not good at talking about my feelings. It’s as if after so many years of suppressing them in the years following my parents’ death and vehemently reassuring everyone I was fine, totally fine, I lack the vocabulary to make someone understand, even when I really want them to. This is where the non-biological-twin sense Finn and I share comes in handy. He just gets me, and vice versa.
“Ben,” she says, “But we were absolutely like that. But I know what you mean.”
“Who’s Ben?” I ask with a mix of curiosity and certainty that no matter who he is, their connection couldn’t possibly be the same as mine and Finn’s.
“My college boyfriend.” She stares down at her plate of quiche, suddenly guarded even though she volunteered his name.