“Our spot?” he asked, confused, thinking I meant me and him.
“Me and Finn’s spot. We started coming here right after we moved to the city.”
“Ah, the infamous Finn,” he mused. “I feel like he’s your imaginary friend. When am I finally going to meet him?”
“Well . . . ,” I stumbled, wondering about the ethics of inventing a glamorous job abroad for Finn. Maybe he was in Barcelona, or better yet, Shanghai, where the time difference made FaceTiming difficult. But in the end, I opted for the truth. I didn’t want to lie to David. “We’re not exactly speaking right now.”
He drew his head back in shock, eyes wide, before he could school his expression into one of mild curiosity. “Why’s that?” he asked finally.
“What’s my girlie having today?” Michelle interrupted.
“Can you tell me what beers you have on draft?” I asked, grateful to draw out the distraction even though I knew I was getting a frozen margarita. The only good part about Finn not being there was that he couldn’t roll his eyes at my order and speculate about the last time they washed the margarita machine.
As Michelle ticked off the draft options, my shoulders inched down from my ears. When she left with our orders, I changed the subject to David’s softball league, giving him an opening to rattle off statistics about his teammates’ batting averages.
It feels inconceivable that Finn, my most important person, has never met David. Since then, information about Finn has been meted out in small doses. One Sunday in September, over bagels at David’s apartment, a crossword clue caused a chink in my armor. “What’s a nine-letter word for ‘Phantom’s love interest’？”
“Christine,” I answered without looking up from the book on my iPad, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.
“How did you know that?”
“Finn played Raoul in a production of Phantom our sophomore year. He wanted to play the Phantom, but he didn’t get it.” I went on to tell him about the costumes we wore on our first Christmas and the winter break of adventures that followed.
“I know you miss Finn, but you and I could go on adventures, you know?” he said shyly. It was sweet, so I kept it to myself that the Finn-sized hole in my heart was not one in want of filling. My love for David occupied a separate but equally important compartment, but they weren’t interchangeable, as much as some days I wished they were.
“I’d love that,” I told David, because it was still a sweet offer.
And David excelled at planning adventures. He sent me event listings from Time Out and write-ups of secret dumpling kiosks hidden in shopping malls in Queens with notes that said: This weekend? We went to Storm King and the Met Cloisters and a secret bar hidden behind a telephone booth in a hot dog restaurant. The adventures were a good distraction from missing Finn. So were the early days of falling in love.
* * *
? ? ?
?After David leaves for Christmas Day at his parents’ house, I spend the morning scrolling Instagram in his bed, trying to distract myself from my anxiety over seeing Finn for the first time in a year. I show up at 2:05, as casually late as I can stand, to the address on Canal Street Priya gave us. She’s already here, dressed in a plum-colored coat that stands out against the gray stucco building behind her. The nondescript building gives zero clues about what she has planned for today.
When I’m in arm’s reach, she pulls me into a hug and squeezes me for a solid thirty seconds, even though we saw each other yesterday morning before I left for David’s and her for Ben’s. “Merry Christmas!” she squeals directly in my ear. Her excitement verges on manic, like if she’s done a good enough job planning, she might be able to repair the rift in our friend group, and I desperately hope she’s right.
“Where is everyone?” I ask.
“Running late, I guess.” Priya shrugs.
Over the past year, while Theo became a ghost, Priya became our glue, going the extra mile to spend time with each of us. Making sure there was a friend group to come back to if Finn and I finally mended fences. She was the one who vetted and blessed David. She had a standing Friday lunch date with Theo whenever he was in New York, which had become rarer, his travel schedule picking up as the year—and my and Finn’s fight—dragged on.
Theo and I never talked about the fight; we didn’t talk at all except for a handful of polite texts on our respective birthdays. But it’s as if he thought by removing himself from the equation—or at least my side of it—Finn and I, and by extension our group, might go back to how things were.
And I knew Priya spent time with Finn, too, even if she refused to tell me about it. “If you want to know what’s going on with him, you can talk to him yourself,” she said when she got sick of my less-than-subtle questions. The only exception she made was to clue me in that Finn had fibbed and told Theo our fight was about Jeremy, which, to Finn’s credit, it partly was. Having our story straight apparently superseded her refusal to play middleman.
Priya cheerfully took on the burden of planning this year’s Christmas festivities, but she’s kept the details a surprise. All month I’ve watched her sneak away to take furtive phone calls and hustle shopping bags into her bedroom.
“Will you at least tell me if Finn is coming?” I asked last week.
“He’s coming, but it wasn’t easy to get him to agree.”
While Priya and I wait for the others, I babble nervously about my gift exchange with David. The enormity of seeing Finn has me on edge. In April, I floated him a text to test the waters. A link to an article about the demolition of BC’s gym, affectionately called the Plex, with its weird-looking circus-tent roof, to make way for a new state-of-the-art athletic facility. Nothing personal, which gave me plausible deniability that the text wasn’t meant for him if he didn’t respond, which he didn’t. Two hours later, I couldn’t stand the idea of the text floating in the ether, and I sent a see-through excuse: Sorry, meant to send to someone else.
I know our fight is stupid. At this point, I’m mostly angry at him because he’s still angry at me. It’s the kind of fighting I did with Brooke when we were kids and she’d catch me listening in on her calls or I’d borrow her favorite tube top from the dELia*s catalog without asking. Eventually, our mom would say, “This house is too small for half its residents to be fighting,” and force us to say one nice thing about the other person, hug, and make up. But Finn and I don’t have any parents between us to intervene. And of the bystanders we do have, Priya is way too nice to tell us off and Theo is keeping his distance.
While I hope today ends with us burying the hatchet, I’m terrified it will only make things worse, and we’ll burn the bridge for good.
Ten minutes later, Finn rounds the corner from Bowery pulling a wheeled suitcase with one hand and Jeremy with the other. I didn’t realize they were still together. I have a momentary flash of anger at Priya for not telling me Jeremy would be here and letting someone new into our tradition without asking. I tamp down my annoyance because I already have enough grudges among today’s company, but I can’t shake the feeling that this Christmas is already getting away from me.