She loops her arm through mine, and I lead her to Terroir, a neighborhood spot David and I love. I rationalize that being a regular gives me the right to show up in workout clothes with my sweaty hair plastered to my head.
Once we’re installed at a table with a cheese plate between us and an order of fries on the way, I broach the subject that’s been nagging at me ever since Finn’s announcement earlier this week. “So, about Christmas—”
“I was wondering if this would come up,” Priya interrupts. “Hannah, I don’t get it. I thought you’d spend Christmas with David’s family this year. Are things not going well?”
“Things are going great with David. But this isn’t about him, this is about the four of us.” I’m frustrated that everyone seems willing to give up on our Christmas tradition so easily.
She arches an eyebrow at me. “You haven’t even talked to David about Christmas yet, have you?”
I gulp half my glass of water in an attempt to dodge her question. She knows me too well.
My time apart from Finn brought me and Priya even closer. Before, I would split my confidences between them, never wanting to be too much of a burden to either. But when my relationship with Finn evaporated overnight, Priya was promoted to my sole sounding board. I’m afraid if I give her the chance, she’ll talk me out of Christmas the same way she talked me down when I nearly broke up with David twice in our first months of dating.
“Don’t you think he sounds a little too good to be real?” I asked Priya after our fourth date. “I mean, first of all, intellectual property lawyer sounds fake, right? That’s exactly what a catfish would say. And he asks so many questions—about my job, about all my favorite things, about my childhood. It’s like he’s trying to figure out my online banking password. Do you think this could be some kind of identity theft scam?”
“Hannah.” She gave me a look like I was the densest person in the world, which maybe I was. “I think he’s actually trying to get to know you. And I hate to break it to you, but you make seventy-five thousand dollars a year and spend half your post-tax income on rent. I don’t think your identity’s worth that much. What if he’s just a good guy?”
She was right about David, but there are other things she can’t understand. Not fully. Not like Finn can. And I’m afraid Christmas might be one of them.
After our first Christmas, I wasn’t sure I’d see Finn again. But he showed up to my dorm day after day, always armed with a plan for an adventure. There were plates of French toast at Johnny’s Luncheonette, a morning spent wading through the bottom floor at the Garment District where the clothes are in one big pile and priced by the pound, and a movie night where he forced me to watch Moulin Rouge and in return I forced him to watch Garden State.
Becoming friends with Finn felt like that classic falling-in-love scene in a rom-com, told in a montage over the backdrop of an upbeat pop song. Unknowingly, he broke me out of my haze of grief and self-pity. By the time the rest of the student body was back on campus in January, our friendship was cemented.
And after a decade of Christmases together, I feel like I owe it to Finn to give him one last Christmas to commemorate all he’s given me. So I avoid Priya’s question about whether I’ve told David that I can’t spend Christmas with him and his family. He’ll understand why this is so important.
“We always spend Christmas together, the four of us,” I say to Priya. “I mean, were you going to do something else instead?”
“I was thinking about going to Bali,” she says, “I looked it up and tickets are really cheap if you fly on Christmas Day. Glossier is closed for the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and it sounds better than spending the week freezing in New York.”
I’ve never heard Priya mention Bali in the six years I’ve known her. It’s like she threw a dart at a map, like anything would be better than spending Christmas here with us. The idea that she thinks so little of our tradition stings.
“But why go to Bali alone when you can spend Christmas with your friends?”
“Because last Christmas was . . . awful.” Priya grimaces as if the memory physically pains her.
“Well, sure. But that wasn’t anyone’s fault.”
“And the one before?” she asks in a stern voice, like a teacher trying to get me to admit my dog did not actually eat my homework.
“I get it, but trust me, Finn and I are fine now. It was a blip. This year will be different. I promise you, it will be so much better!”
“Hannah, why is this so important to you?”
“Why isn’t this more important to you?”
Before she can answer, Priya’s phone lights up with a call from Amma. The screen shows a photo of Priya and her mom with their faces pressed close together. Priya’s nose is scrunched in laughter.
Priya looks down at the phone and then up at me. The answer to my question hanging in the air between us. She doesn’t need Christmas like I do. She has a real family. She would never phrase it like that—and neither would I, out loud—but it’s the truth.
She flips the phone over, ignoring the call. I’m not sure if it’s because she doesn’t want to talk to her mother, who calls almost every night to warn her about some mysterious new medical concern based on whichever patients she saw that day at her job as a nurse practitioner, or out of deference to me.
I smear some Brie on a piece of baguette and pop it into my mouth, chewing slowly to try to figure out how to articulate what I need Priya to understand. “This is Finn’s last Christmas in New York—”
“So? He can fly back next Christmas if he wants. He’s moving to LA, not Antarctica.”
“Yeah, but what if he makes new friends? Or has a boyfriend? Or what if we don’t do it this year and then the tradition is dead, so he doesn’t fly back and is all alone in his sad apartment.”
“Why are you assuming his apartment is sad?” she asks.
“I don’t know! That’s not the point. The point is Finn is my family—you and Theo are, too—and this is our tradition, and if this is our last Christmas we need to do it right: one last time while we’re all here together.”
Lately it feels like we have so much less time for one another. It used to be a given that the four of us would spend our weekends together. We didn’t need restaurant reservations or concert tickets to bind us to a date and time. If we didn’t have something to do, we’d find something to do. That’s how we wound up spending a rainy Saturday in April at the Dave & Buster’s in Times Square trying to win enough tickets for the most expensive prize, which was, disappointingly, a toaster oven that still lives in Finn’s kitchen. But now it takes thirty emails and a Google Calendar invite a month in advance to lock in a date, and even then there’s a fifty percent chance at least one person bails. I thought Christmas was our one sacred tradition, but now even that’s in jeopardy.
She heaves out a sigh. “I know this is important to you, so I’m in. On one condition.” She holds up a finger in between us. “No drama this year. You have to pinky swear that this really will be the best Christmas yet. No repeats of the last two years. And you have to convince Theo, too. Or else Ubud here I come.” From her smile I know she’s kidding, and I breathe a sigh of relief. One down, one to go.