The Christmas Orphans Club(61)
“Where is everyone?” I ask.
“Running late, I guess.” Priya shrugs.
Over the past year, while Theo became a ghost, Priya became our glue, going the extra mile to spend time with each of us. Making sure there was a friend group to come back to if Finn and I finally mended fences. She was the one who vetted and blessed David. She had a standing Friday lunch date with Theo whenever he was in New York, which had become rarer, his travel schedule picking up as the year—and my and Finn’s fight—dragged on.
Theo and I never talked about the fight; we didn’t talk at all except for a handful of polite texts on our respective birthdays. But it’s as if he thought by removing himself from the equation—or at least my side of it—Finn and I, and by extension our group, might go back to how things were.
And I knew Priya spent time with Finn, too, even if she refused to tell me about it. “If you want to know what’s going on with him, you can talk to him yourself,” she said when she got sick of my less-than-subtle questions. The only exception she made was to clue me in that Finn had fibbed and told Theo our fight was about Jeremy, which, to Finn’s credit, it partly was. Having our story straight apparently superseded her refusal to play middleman.
Priya cheerfully took on the burden of planning this year’s Christmas festivities, but she’s kept the details a surprise. All month I’ve watched her sneak away to take furtive phone calls and hustle shopping bags into her bedroom.
“Will you at least tell me if Finn is coming?” I asked last week.
“He’s coming, but it wasn’t easy to get him to agree.”
While Priya and I wait for the others, I babble nervously about my gift exchange with David. The enormity of seeing Finn has me on edge. In April, I floated him a text to test the waters. A link to an article about the demolition of BC’s gym, affectionately called the Plex, with its weird-looking circus-tent roof, to make way for a new state-of-the-art athletic facility. Nothing personal, which gave me plausible deniability that the text wasn’t meant for him if he didn’t respond, which he didn’t. Two hours later, I couldn’t stand the idea of the text floating in the ether, and I sent a see-through excuse: Sorry, meant to send to someone else.
I know our fight is stupid. At this point, I’m mostly angry at him because he’s still angry at me. It’s the kind of fighting I did with Brooke when we were kids and she’d catch me listening in on her calls or I’d borrow her favorite tube top from the dELia*s catalog without asking. Eventually, our mom would say, “This house is too small for half its residents to be fighting,” and force us to say one nice thing about the other person, hug, and make up. But Finn and I don’t have any parents between us to intervene. And of the bystanders we do have, Priya is way too nice to tell us off and Theo is keeping his distance.
While I hope today ends with us burying the hatchet, I’m terrified it will only make things worse, and we’ll burn the bridge for good.
Ten minutes later, Finn rounds the corner from Bowery pulling a wheeled suitcase with one hand and Jeremy with the other. I didn’t realize they were still together. I have a momentary flash of anger at Priya for not telling me Jeremy would be here and letting someone new into our tradition without asking. I tamp down my annoyance because I already have enough grudges among today’s company, but I can’t shake the feeling that this Christmas is already getting away from me.
“Jere,” Priya squeals, “you came!” Another jab of annoyance, this one mixed with jealousy, that Priya’s spent enough time with Finn and Jeremy to be on a nickname basis.
“Sorry we’re so late,” Finn says. “We got the bus back from Scranton after breakfast and presents with Jeremy’s family and there was traffic.”
“I lied and told you to get here an hour earlier than you needed to.” Priya rolls her eyes at him and Jeremy hiccups out a nervous laugh. Still awkward as ever, I see.
“Hannah, you remember Jeremy?” Priya asks in an attempt to break the ice.
Jeremy scrapes his blond mop away from his forehead and smiles at the sidewalk instead of at me. Finn stares me down, and I want to blurt out a million apologies and beg for his forgiveness, but it doesn’t feel like the time or place. Not with Jeremy here. I wonder what Finn told him about why we’re not speaking. Not the truth. I can’t imagine they’d be together if Finn told him I made out with the man he’s in love with and he lost his mind over it.
I’m saved from figuring out the correct thing to say when a black Escalade pulls up to the curb, depositing Theo onto the sidewalk. “I thought I’d at least beat Finn here!” Theo slings an arm around Finn’s shoulder.
The knot in my stomach pulls even tighter. It seems there were no repercussions for Theo over last Christmas’s debacle; the two of them appear tight as ever.
“So will you tell us what we’re doing?” I ask now that the whole group is here.
Priya bounces on her toes as she looks around the circle, milking the big reveal. “It’s a Christmas-themed escape room,” she says finally.
A chorus of groans travels around the circle.
“What?” she asks, like she doesn’t see anything wrong with locking this group in a room for ninety minutes. She’s either completely clueless or an evil genius. From the challenging look she flashes my way, I’m leaning toward evil genius. “It got a write-up in New York magazine in October,” she explains. “It’s been sold out for months. Do you know the strings I had to pull to get these tickets? We’re doing it.” Her tone leaves no room for argument.