Before I can move, Theo turns and hovers his head over my right shoulder looking past me into the fridge. “Can you see, is there butter in there?” he asks.
“Uh, yeah, there’s a whole box.”
“Salted or unsalted?” Theo is so close I feel his breath on my neck when he asks. How is such an incredibly unsexy question such a turn-on?
I bend over, not thinking, so I can read the label on the box of butter. My ass bumps Theo’s crotch and I hear his breath hitch in his throat.
Is this? No, it couldn’t be.
This is an embarrassing accident caused by his narrow kitchen and my overactive imagination. I’ve been fantasizing about this moment for years. Actual years. In plenty of my fantasies, things started with me sweaty after a run. Imagining such a scenario is what kept me on the treadmill downstairs pounding out mile after mile, way past my initial goal of three.
But I never imagined it would start with butter.
“The butter is unsalted,” I announce, my voice hoarse and croaky.
I straighten up, unsure what to do next. Do I lean back into Theo? Do I turn around? If I turn around, will he kiss me? Am I completely misreading what’s happening here? And if this is Theo making a move, why the hell has it taken so long? Why has he waited until two weeks before I move? The last two questions make me angry.
I swing around to face him, unsure if I want to kiss him or yell at him. I expect him to step back, restoring my bubble of personal space. But he doesn’t. He moves forward, backing me against a shelf in the still open fridge. He leans against me, pushing his cashmere-clad chest to my sweaty one.
“Sorry,” he says. “Trying to see what brand it is.”
How on earth are we still talking about butter?!
Is he waiting for me to kiss him? For a second, I consider it before the too familiar line rattles through my brain. You’re never going to be with Theo because you’re a coward.
Instead of making me brave to prove her wrong, Hannah’s words from our fight invite reality to come crashing in.
What do I have to lose? For starters, a place to stay. I could probably stay with Hannah and David for the two weeks before I leave, but from what I’ve heard about their current Christmas standoff, that doesn’t sound too appealing. And then, worse, I could lose one of my best friends. I’m not willing to chance that for a kiss. Not if I’m not positive.
And just like that, the moment evaporates. Theo takes a step back and leans against the counter, watching me with his forest-green eyes to see what I’ll do next.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I sputter out. Apparently, what I do next is chicken out. I scurry toward the kitchen door, my shoulders slouching forward in defeat.
“Wait!” Theo calls.
I feel my heart jump into my throat as I turn around. He hesitates, one finger held aloft in the air between us. Finally, he says, “Do you want to watch Ellen with me after your shower? Clementine’s the guest.”
“Uh, sure.”
It’s going to be a very long, very cold shower.
sixteen
Hannah
Christmas #10, 2017
“Oh man, I’m so late.” David makes his way from the bathroom to the closet. His light brown hair is still damp from the shower.
On the nightstand, his phone lights up with a flurry of incoming texts. “Someone keeps texting you,” I say as messages ping in one after the other.
“Adam is so pissed. The kids are having a meltdown because my mom won’t let them open presents until I get there.”
He reappears at the closet door in a white Oxford shirt neatly tucked into jeans, looking every inch the goody-two-shoes honor society president his yearbooks confirmed him to be. He was voted Most Likely to Succeed while I was voted Most Likely to Never Be Heard from Again, a superlative that proved spot-on if you were one of my high school classmates. Being with him almost makes me want to go to one of my high school reunions, if only to show him off and back-door brag about my job working in podcasting. Show them that for the weird girl everyone pitied, I turned out okay.
He smirks at me; the reason he’s late is fresh in both our minds. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”
“Oh, I already came. Twice,” I answer from where I lie naked under the sheets.
After coffee and presents—a John Mayer album on vinyl from me as a nod to his dating-app bio, and tickets to see the National at Forest Hills Stadium from him—he dragged me back to bed, where he gave me what he claimed was the other part of my Christmas present and went down on me for half an hour. Not that I’d taken much convincing.
“I’m being serious. Come to Connecticut. It’s our first Christmas. Shouldn’t we spend it, you know, together?”
“I don’t want to be the stranger who crashes Christmas. I’ve only met your parents once.”
“And they adored you!”
“Next year,” I tell him.
“Next year,” he echoes back with a shy grin.
He comes over to the bed and gives me a final kiss before he leaves. “Call me if you change your mind or things get too awkward with Finn. I’m just saying there’s a twelve forty-five train from Grand Central. I can pick you up at the station in Fairfield.”
“It’s going to be fine. We’re all adults,” I say with more certainty than I feel. A minute later I hear the door close behind him.
Finn has become a ghost haunting our relationship. Heard about, but never seen.
Once, in our early days of dating, I brought David to Lucky’s for the first time. The Friends had Central Perk, the How I Met Your Mother gang had McLaren’s, and we had Lucky’s. A few years ago, we tried switching to Bar Belly down the street with their $1 oysters and happy-hour craft cocktails, but it didn’t feel right. Lucky’s is a dive, but it’s our dive.
The minute we opened the door we were assaulted by a blast of air-conditioning and the scent of stale beer. Michelle, our favorite bartender, looked up from where she was mixing a screwdriver for the lone patron at the end of the bar and said, “Oh hey, girlie! Long time no see. Where’s your other half?”
She meant Finn. I hadn’t been there since our fight. I gave her a shrug and hoped David interpreted her comment as referring to a nonexistent ex-boyfriend, not a very real ex–best friend.
It was inevitable that David would hear bits and pieces about Finn, him being so omnipresent in my memories, but I hadn’t exactly been forthright about our fight. I’d only started going number two at David’s apartment the previous week; it felt too soon to tell him I wasn’t speaking to my best friend. I feared it would make me look like an unfeeling monster.
I led David to one of the tall wooden booths and slid into one side of the banquette. When he settled into his side, he eyed me warily across the booth. “Should we go somewhere else? Schiller’s is right around here, isn’t it?”
“No!” I was crestfallen he’d written this place off. But I got it: Lucky’s didn’t look like much on the surface. The walls were plastered with signed headshots of famous patrons—exactly zero of whom we recognized; Finn was convinced it was a prank and they were photos of the owner’s friends—and the tables had a sticky patina that had become permanent. In the four months we’d been dating David had taken me on a tour of his personal landmarks in the city. Eating and drinking our way through “his spots.” This was the only place in the city I had the audacity to claim as mine. “This is our spot. Let’s at least have one drink.”