Unfortunately, none of the shows Finn had greenlit held a candle to Sparky’s success. This new job is long overdue—he could use a clean slate. I’m proud of Finn. I’m also relieved I’ll never have to hear about Sparky MD ever again.
“I didn’t even know you were looking for new jobs,” I tell him.
“I didn’t want to say anything in case it didn’t work out,” Finn says. “I didn’t want to worry you for nothing.”
“Worried? Why would I be worried? This is great! I’m so happy for you.”
He fiddles with a groove in the table, avoiding eye contact. “Because the job is in LA,” he says to the wood.
I blink rapidly trying to process this new information. I see Priya’s lips moving, asking Finn a follow-up question, but I can’t hear it above the roar of static in my brain.
Sometimes I wake up at 4:00 a.m., an old habit from years of working on a morning radio show. I lie in bed trying not to move, so I don’t wake up David, and I make mental lists of all my worries. I worry about work deadlines or a snappy comment I made to David when I was hangry, but mostly I worry about my friends. I worry Theo will grow bored with New York and decide not to return from a trip to Paris or Bangkok or Sydney, or wherever he happens to be at the moment. I worry Priya will decide to follow whichever man she’s dating; her men are always so transient. Last I heard, she was dating a chef who ran a series of pop-up dinner parties in airstream trailers across the country. But I never even thought to worry about Finn leaving.
And now he is.
Once the initial wave of shock recedes, I realize I’m also angry. Angry Finn didn’t tell me separately before he told Theo and Priya. The delivery stings almost as much as the news itself.
Maybe we aren’t as okay as I thought.
My attention snaps back to the conversation to find everyone staring at me.
“You look kind of pale. Are you feeling sick?” Priya asks.
“I’m fine, totally fine! Just surprised!” I gulp my drink to buy time and get a noseful of champagne bubbles. I start coughing, which only draws more attention. Now the surrounding tables are staring, too.
A hush falls over the table. I need a distraction. A subject change. I need people to stop staring at me and give me a moment to process. So I overcompensate. “Christmas!” I blurt.
My friends give me puzzled looks like I’m a robot short-circuiting.
“Since Finn is moving, this might be our last Christmas together.” I forge ahead. “We have to make it our best one ever!”
“Are we doing that this year?” Priya asks.
Finn gives a noncommittal hum.
“Of course we’re doing Christmas this year!” Finn and I have done Christmas together every year for a decade, Priya has been there for six, Theo for five. How can they think we wouldn’t do Christmas this year?
“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?”