She gives me a funny look while I debate whether I should say anything.
“I have a crush on Theo,” I admit.
“I’m sorry, that’s your secret?”
“Yeah?”
Her face splits into a gleeful grin, which in the elf costume makes her look like a horror movie villain. “That’s not a secret. Everyone knows.”
“Everyone knows?” Who is everyone? Does everyone include Theo? I thought Hannah believed the spark had passed. I’d been careful not to mention my crush since Theo and I became close friends.
Last Christmas—our second with Theo—was different from the one before. We left his apartment with plans to come back on New Year’s Eve for the fireworks. It turned out the buildings surrounding his blocked the view, but we didn’t mind. Instead, we killed six bottles of champagne and skinny-dipped in the building’s rooftop hot tub that was supposed to be closed for the season.
In the new year, there were brunches that bled into dinners, and movie nights that ended with us all crashing on makeshift beds on Theo’s living room floor. There were plenty of guest rooms, but we didn’t want to miss a single second of one another’s company, even to sleep. By the time the piles of gray snow lining the sidewalks had melted, the four of us had become inseparable. I didn’t realize there was something missing in our group before, but Theo seamlessly filled in the gaps, acting like our grout.
One night in March, my phone rang while I was watching Parks & Rec for the zillionth time to stave off the Sunday scaries. “Did you know London is less rainy than Miami?” Theo asked when I answered. No preamble.
“I did not know that. Are you in London or Miami right now?” If it was nine on the East Coast, that would make it two in the morning in London.
“London. It’s my father’s birthday and he’s hosting a massive celebration of himself. It’s not even an important birthday. It’s his sixty-ninth.” I stifled a giggle.
“Is it raining there?” I asked.
I heard the rustle of blankets and imagined him getting out of bed to check. In my imagination he was naked, a vision I could readily conjure since the skinny-dipping on New Year’s Eve.
“It is raining,” he reported.
“My weather app says it’s eighty-two and clear in Miami. I’d pick Miami.”
“Me too,” he answered.
I got these calls whenever Theo was away and couldn’t sleep, which was often. Usually, he’d open with a fun fact that sounded like it was cribbed from a Snapple cap. Did you know a male kangaroo is called a boomer? Today I learned that the Dallas Fort Worth airport is larger than the island of Manhattan. What’s the only US state with a one-syllable name? （Spoiler: it’s Maine）
The calls lasted hours, sometimes until dawn wherever he was in the world. While our in-person conversations were frothy and fun, these late-night phone calls were more serious. Talking without seeing each other and the late hour made it easier to lay ourselves bare. He told me about his parents’ very public and acrimonious divorce when he was ten, I told him about the summer I stopped speaking to mine. It felt like someone hit the fast-forward button on our friendship.
One night in May, when Theo was in Morocco, as our call ticked into its fourth hour my fatigue gave way to giddy delirium and I screwed up the courage to ask the question I’d been wondering. “What about the girls?”
“Are you asking if I call Hannah and Priya on our off nights? I regret to inform you that I’m a one-man man. And you’re it. Purely monogamous with my insomnia, I’m afraid.”
“No, I was asking about the girls you . . . you know . . . date? Do you still date girls?” I squinted my eyes shut as I braced for his answer. Maybe I was only a failed experiment.
“Do you ever have an incredible conversation with someone, like so good you’re turned on by the way their brain works? Not because they’re smart necessarily, though that’s hot, too, but just the way they see the world?”
I thought of the conversation we were having and wondered if he was using coded language to talk to me about myself. “Mhmm,” I said, not wanting to interrupt wherever this was going.
“To me, it’s about that feeling. I’m attracted to the person, not the package.”
“See, to me the package is very important.” The words slipped out of my sleep-addled brain, and I cringed as my crude joke ruined the moment if he had been talking about me. Here was proof my brain worked like that of a horny seventh grader.
“So are you saying you’re pansexual?” I asked to make sure I was clear.
“If you want to put a label on it, I suppose you could say that.”
He changed the subject to the proprietary color blue of Yves Saint Laurent’s house in Marrakech. It’s called Majorelle blue, he told me, and I opened my eyes and blinked at the ceiling of my bedroom, both disappointed by the subject change and relieved because the conversation had been edging closer to the line in our friendship that we never discussed, but by mutual unspoken agreement never crossed either. Not since the first night we met.
Over the past year, I’ve gotten very little sleep, but I’ve learned in addition to being hot and mysterious, it turns out Theo is also kind, generous, funny, and functions on four hours of sleep a night, at best.
“Have you two really never talked about how you met?” Hannah asks.
“Of course we haven’t!” I retort, horrified by the thought of that conversation, which could only result in my rejection.
“Well, this isn’t exactly shocking news, Finn. Priya and I talk about your crush on Theo all the time,” Hannah reports with a glance toward where he is stationed in his Santa costume beside Chicky’s gilded throne. “We weren’t sure if you knew or if it’s a subconscious thing. But you know you talk about him nonstop, right?”
“Sure, because we’re friends.”
“No, you, like, gush about how great he is all the time.”
I feel myself blush. “Does Theo know?” I hold my breath as I wait for Hannah’s answer.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Probably.”
This is so bad. If Theo knows, it means he doesn’t reciprocate my feelings. Because if he knew and he felt the same way, we’d just . . . be together, right?
“Also, you haven’t dated anyone since you met him,” Hannah continues.
“Not true!” I snap back. “I went on a Hinge date last week.”
“And how did it go?”
“He lived in Hoboken, so it would have been a long-distance relationship.” Her look tells me she’s not buying my excuse. “Nothing happened, but it could have if I wanted it to.”
“But you didn’t want it to, because you have a crush on Theo. I think you should tell him. Look, he’s obviously attracted to you. You met because you went home together, so he doesn’t think you’re some hideous bridge troll.”
“Right, but maybe he was only looking for a hookup.”
“Sure, maybe, but the two of you are attached at the hip. He enjoys spending time with you, he was attracted to you enough to go home with you. I think you’re being dumb.”