The Christmas Orphans Club(52)
My knee bounces as I wait for my turn. I did so much better.
This year we put a $50 price limit on gifts after Theo got us all iPads last year. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate his gift. In fact, I love mine, especially since I found out the New York Public Library has an app that lets me borrow e-books. But I felt like an idiot when he gave me an iPad and I gave him sweatpants as a joke. I’d never seen him wear anything less formal than jeans and thought he’d be grateful I introduced him to athleisure, but they haven’t made an appearance since. They’re probably buried in a drawer with the tags still on.
Even with the price limit, I’m positive I nailed it. The gift, not the wrapping paper. My wrapping paper blows. It’s a cheesy cartoon Santa motif, the only gift wrap left in stock at Duane Reade at 11:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
Priya rips the last of the paper off the second part of Finn’s gift and shows off a mint-green tin of Fortnum & Mason tea. “Oooh, the Royal Blend,” she announces before taking the lid off and burying her nose in it. She makes that satisfied humming noise people make in Folgers commercials after they have their first sip of coffee.
“Jeremy helped pick it out,” Finn tells her. “He prefers tea, too.”
“Tell Jeremy thank you from me,” Priya says.
Finn whips out his phone to relay the message. By my count, this is the third time Finn’s brought him up this morning. The most positive thing I can say about Jeremy is he exists. He’s the Flat Stanley of boyfriends: good for a picture, doesn’t add much to the conversation. But he’s all Finn can talk about: Jeremy prefers tea to coffee. Did you know Jeremy went to Princeton? Jeremy has a blue sweater just like that. Even facts about Jeremy are boring. But Jeremy’s blandness aside, it’s cute how smitten Finn is.
It’s also, frankly, a relief.
After last Christmas, Finn spent January and February moping about Raj. Even after Raj’s dismissal around Valentine’s Day, Finn’s mood didn’t improve. “Why don’t you tell him now?” I urged once Theo was single.
“I don’t need to hear the words to know. I’ve had as much rejection from Theo as I can take.”
“But he’s never rejected you.”
“Not outright, but tacitly. If he wanted to be together, we’d be together by now.”
“I think you’re being dumb,” I told him, because he was.
Spring was better. After almost a year working at ToonIn, Finn saved enough to move to a studio apartment in the West Village—his first without roommates—declaring it perfect because it’s halfway between me and Priya on the Lower East Side and Theo on the Upper West Side. But Theo spent most of the spring in Paris, consoling his mother after the end of her third marriage, which clocked in at a mere eighteen months. In his absence, Finn downloaded every dating app in the app store and committed to dating like it was a second job and he was gunning for a promotion. Early drinks and a dozen oysters at Mermaid Oyster Bar with one guy and a nightcap at Dante up the street with another.
“No one is looking for anything serious,” Finn complained.
“Are you looking for something serious?” The way I saw it, he needed a palate cleanser, maybe a slutty phase.
“Of course I want something serious! There hasn’t been anyone serious since college. I’ve wasted all this time hung up on Theo and now I’m behind. I have a gay wedding this summer. It’s not just the breeders who are getting married, even the gays are starting. Can you believe it?”
I could believe it. Priya and I had so many save the dates and invitations to bridal showers and weddings on our fridge that we ran out of magnets and were posting them in overlapping layers based on date. I didn’t realize I liked enough people to be invited to so many life events. Though, to be fair, more than half of them were for events celebrating Priya’s family members. But I was happy to fill in as her plus-one as needed. I’d learned Hindu weddings were much superior in both food and spectacle to the American ones I was invited to. At her cousin’s wedding last summer, the groom entered riding an elephant.
After six months of frenzied dating, Finn met Jeremy. I see why Finn swiped right. Jeremy has a mop of sandy blond hair and Abercrombie model looks, but his thick black Warby Parker glasses and dopey who, me? grin take the edge off his attractiveness and make him approachable. The first time we met, over happy hour Narragansetts in the backyard of a low-key bar off Bowery, Jeremy showed up in spandex and a cycling jersey and spent the first five minutes explaining his cycling conditioning schedule before transitioning into a ten-minute set about the feeding habits of the sea anemone he breeds in the lab where he works at NYU. By my second beer I was drowning in an ocean of useless factoids.
“He’s nervous,” Finn whispered when Jeremy went to the bathroom.
After our first meeting, I wondered if Finn was settling because he was worn out, not to mention dead broke, from his dating spree. Surely Jeremy was a rest stop on the highway to true love. But here we are, three months later, Finn gushing about Jeremy’s taste in tea bags.
“Okay, it’s my turn,” I announce, unable to wait a single second longer to give everyone my gifts. I pass out medium-sized boxes to each of them. “They’re all the same. You can open them at the same time.”
Finn and Priya rip into their presents, while Theo meticulously unwraps his like he plans to save the crappy drugstore wrapping paper for a second use. Finn is the first to lift the lid off the box inside. He pushes aside the tissue paper and holds up a jean jacket in front of him with a confused look on his face.