The Christmas Orphans Club(91)



“Finn, for chrissakes, I went home with you the very first night we met. You could have had me then. I didn’t think you wanted me. And you—all of you, Hannah and Priya, too—became so important to me so quickly. It felt like too big a gamble to risk losing you. You know my dating track record is shit. So I thought I would be your friend instead. I thought it would be better . . . for both of us.”

A slightly hysterical laugh bubbles up the back of my throat. It starts as a giggle and builds to a full guffaw. “Let me get this straight—” I say between gasping laughs.

“Well, not straight, certainly. At least, bi,” Theo corrects. His expression melts into a sly smile that makes my internal temperature tick up a few degrees.

“We both wanted to be together this whole time?”

He nods. “The whole time,” he confirms.

“And you waited until now, a literal minute before I’m leaving, to tell me this?”

“That’s about the size of it.” He looks around the gate area and the rapidly shrinking line of passengers like he’s not sure what to do now. “Finn, will you please stay?”

Stay?

It’s like he took a safety pin to my soap bubble of happiness.

How could he ask me to do this? Anger wells inside me, and I’m so blindsided by his request that all I can manage to spit out is, “I will not be your Andie Anderson!”

“Who?” His voice is panicked, his eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “I’m not asking you to be him. I don’t even know who he is!”

“Not him! Her. From How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.” His blank looks remains. “You know, when Matthew McConaughey recklessly drives his motorcycle across the Manhattan Bridge to track down Kate Hudson who’s on her way to an interview in Washington, DC, because it’s the only place where she can pursue her dream of serious journalism. Which, of course it’s not the only place she can pursue her dream of journalism, but also how could he quash her self-determination and ask her to stay in New York for him?”

Theo looks more confused than before I launched my word vomit at him. The two gate agents, done checking in passengers, have turned to gawk at the scene I’m making.

“Finn, I’m not asking you to give anything up,” he says, putting an arm on my bicep to calm me down. “I’m just asking if you can take a later flight.”

In all the times I’ve imagined this, us getting together, the fantasy always flickers out with the declaration of love. I’ve never considered what will come after, and now I’m panicking.

“How will this work?” I demand.

“I thought we already covered that my father owns an airline, I’m sure we can figure something out.”

“Not the flight. Us.”

“Well, you said it. I don’t have a job. I’m sure I could come up with all sorts of reasons to be in LA, if I needed an excuse. I was thinking that maybe we could try the Golden Girls thing where we live together and are best friends and eat a lot of late-night cheesecake, but also, we’re in love. But I think that’s the least of our concerns.”

“Okay, what’s at the top of your list?” I ask.

He gives me a shy smile. “That we haven’t had our second kiss yet.”

My insides melt into a molten puddle as he leans closer and brings a hand to cup my jaw. I watch his eyes flutter closed before I lean in. And then our lips meet. At first, it’s tentative, but then he wraps his arm around my back and pulls me closer. At the last minute I swing my iced coffee to the side so it doesn’t get crushed between us.

I’m stunned that I can’t remember our first kiss. How could I forget a kiss this incredible? I feel electrified, like fizzy particles of energy are surging through his hands and his lips and his tongue and everywhere we’re touching and pinballing around my body. I bring up my free hand and wrap it around his neck, burying my fingers in his curls.

We kiss for what could be five minutes or five hours. When we break apart, one of the gate agents wolf whistles and I remember where we are. We lean together, our foreheads still touching, while we recover.

“Yeah, I’ll take a later flight,” I tell him.





SEVEN MONTHS LATER





epilogue


    Hannah


I’m slathering my body in SPF 70—the mineral kind that’s a workout to rub in, but still leaves behind a white pallor—when there’s a knock at the door.

When I open it, Finn is standing there shirtless in a pair of red-and-green-striped swim trunks with gold-rimmed aviators resting on his head. His skinny chest is bronzed after three days in the sun. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

“We switched rooms; the walls are not as thick as you and Theo think they are.” Theo rented out all twelve rooms of the boutique hotel, so we have the run of the place, and with only three rooms occupied there was no reason to stay in the room next door to Finn and Theo, listening to their marathon reunion sex.

“Whoops,” he says, not sounding at all chastened. “We haven’t seen each other in a month.” Theo and Finn have been doing long distance since Finn left New York. Theo let it slip after dinner our first night on Holbox, after a couple of mezcal margaritas, that he’s looking at houses in LA, but he made me swear not to tell Finn. He wants to ask Finn to move in with him on Finn’s birthday next month.

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