The Christmas Orphans Club(23)

“Easy,” Theo says. “Send everything early and stay with me. You can borrow anything you need.” He flops down on his back and knocks a pile of red sweaters on the floor. I wait to see if he’ll pick them up, but he doesn’t notice. He’s engrossed in something on his phone. Classic Theo, helpful with the big things, incredibly unhelpful with the little ones.

“Thank you, I’ll think about it,” I tell him, and pick up the red sweaters.

“What’s there to think about? I’ve solved it. Now, should we nip out for brunch?”

So that’s why he’s here. This is also classic Theo. Whenever he’s single, he packs his weekends full of plans—museum visits, shopping, dinner parties, cocktails, never a solitary moment—and when he doesn’t have plans, he instigates them.

“I still have to pack!”

“Can’t you pay people to do that? Don’t you get some fancy moving stipend?”

“Yeah, and it’s paying for the moving truck, which is really freaking expensive.” I know he’d offer to pay for a packing service if I’d let him, which I won’t. To change the subject, I hold a red sweater against my body. “Should I keep this?”

“You must keep that! You wore it to Christmas the first year I came, didn’t you?”

He’s right. I’d forgotten. But I like that he remembers. I ate cereal for dinner for weeks to afford the sweater, which now feels tragically out of style with thick cabling down the front. Very Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally. I fold the sweater and put it in the keep pile.

“What about this one?” I hold up a lemon-yellow sweater.

Theo glances up from his phone. “Not your color.”

I bought it a few years ago after I saw a famous singer wearing the same color sweater, but Theo’s right, I can’t pull it off. Once, I wore it to the office with jeans and spent the whole day worried people thought I was doing some weird Arthur cosplay. I put it in the donate pile.

Next, I hold up a green sweater for Theo’s inspection.

“Just so I’m clear, are we doing the Sex and the City closet clean-out montage thing?” He flashes me a cheeky grin. “Promise if I do this we can go somewhere for brunch after. I can’t watch you waste one of your last Sundays in the city.”

I really should keep packing. The yellow sweater is the only thing I’ve managed to part with, but he has a point. I only have a few weekends left as a New Yorker. The reality crashes into me that soon I won’t have Theo’s casual drop-ins. He won’t be a twenty-five-minute subway ride away, instead it will be a six-hour flight.

I think about the hours and hours Hannah and I have logged watching bad reality TV, hungover on her couch between Seamless orders. All the warm days lounging on a blanket in Washington Square Park, half reading our books, half people watching and gossiping. The endless weekends of exploring every new fad New York has to offer with Priya under the guise of research for a column. I’ll be losing those, too. The thought makes my stomach knot.

“Fine,” I relent, “but we’ve gotta get rid of some of this stuff first.” I dangle the green sweater into his line of vision to keep things moving.

“I can’t tell. Try it on.”

I shuck off the navy Henley I’m wearing and toss it on the bed. As I pick up the green sweater, I glance over to see if Theo is looking. He isn’t. He’s still absorbed in his phone. I take my time putting on the sweater, watching from the corner of my eye to see if he looks up. He doesn’t.

It’s not like I’m an exhibitionist, but ever since I turned thirty earlier this year, I started exercising for the first time in my adult life. Hannah laughed when I told her. “Wow, I have missed a lot. We’re not gym people,” she said.

And historically, she was correct. We’re more watch Bravo with a running dialog of snarky banter people. The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is our sport of choice. Before this year, the only purposeful exercise I got was running my birthday mile. Every year on my birthday, I wake up early and walk to the Hudson River. I blast “My Shot” from the Hamilton soundtrack and run one mile as fast as I can to prove I’m not actually getting old and can still run a sub-six mile, the same mile time I needed to make the varsity track team in high school.

This year, I puked after I finished. But I finished in 5:58, which is the important part.

Another thing that was different about this year’s birthday mile was that I laced up my sneakers and ran again the next day. And the next day. And the one after that, too.

It was miserable and I was slow as shit when I stretched my runs to three miles then five then seven—I could hear my high school track coach yelling at me to pick up the pace in my head—but it was also addictive. Running is the only thing that shuts off my brain and lets me be in the moment instead of agonizing over how my life at thirty looks nothing like I thought it would and how I haven’t had sex (or even kissed anyone) since I broke up with Jeremy in the spring. I’m beginning to fear I might never kiss anyone again. These days, settling for like instead of love doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.

Now, three and a half months into my running regime, I’m starting to see physical changes, too. I’m not destined to become some beefcake Instagram model, my frame’s too wiry, but the slight paunch I developed around twenty-eight is gone, and if I stand at the perfect angle first thing in the morning, before I eat anything, there might be the faintest outline of abs forming. I wonder if Theo will notice, too.