“Do you remember how awful that night was?” I ask.
“Oh god, yeah, your sister is a terrible cook. Not that you’re much better. Glass houses and all that.” He raises his eyebrows at me. “That ham she made was, like, black on the outside, but somehow still raw in the middle. And those rolls! We could have played hockey with them. You know, if one of us knew how to play hockey.”
“Sure. But do you remember how insufferable she was?”
“What do you mean?” He gives me a blank look.
“How she completely erased every single trace of our parents and moved on like: Poof! Brand new life!”
He’s silent for a minute while he mulls this over. “That’s not what I remember. I mostly remember how bad the ham was and how the whole apartment smelled like burnt meat. Although, in hindsight, who were we to complain? I’m pretty sure we showed up empty-handed.”
“No, you must remember. She was sucking up to Spencer’s mother and we had that stupid white elephant with all that taffy because that’s what Spencer’s family does every year? We didn’t even watch The Grinch. We used to watch it every year when I was a kid, it was our favorite part of Christmas.”
“Hannah, she probably didn’t want to watch The Grinch because you were twenty-one, not twelve.”
I puff out a breath. How could he have forgotten how bad that Christmas was? Time must have dulled his memory. In mine, that Christmas was painful. I wouldn’t have survived it without him.
“I remember one other thing,” he says with a finger poised in the air. “I remember her telling the story about her trip and how she went to all the places in your mom’s journal. I thought that was really nice.”
“What?” I would have known if that’s what Brooke was doing on her gap year. “No. Trust me, she was just gallivanting from one hostel to another following Spencer around like a little duckling.”
“I swear I remember her telling a sweet story about how much that trip meant to her and how she used your mom’s list as a guide. Maybe you were in the bathroom or something? Or you were talking to someone else?”
A seed of doubt plants itself in my gut. If she did say that, I definitely wasn’t there to hear it.
“Well, even if that’s true about her trip, it doesn’t counterbalance her abandoning our family.”
“I don’t know if I’d put it that way. Maybe she . . .” He hesitates. “。 . . Moved on?”
“Exactly! She moved on! From me, from her only family. Who does that?”
“She invites you to every Christmas and Thanksgiving. Weren’t you complaining that she invited you to a Fourth of July barbecue last year?”
“Yeah, but they’re pity invites. She’s glad when I don’t come. You don’t abandon your family like that. You’d never do that to me.”
“Wait.” He turns to look at me. “Is that why you didn’t go to David’s parents’ house for Christmas?”
“What are you talking about? Brooke has nothing to do with that.” I can’t believe how out of sync Finn and I are right now. I wonder if he’s still a little buzzed from the champagne at lunch.
“Sure, I mean, not directly. But you know it’s alright for you to spend Christmas with David, right? It’s okay for us to move on from this tradition, to grow as people. Healthy, even.”
“What if I don’t want to move on? What if I like things the way they are?”
Why is everyone in such a rush for the next thing? What about appreciating what you have? Because I know from experience that it could be gone any second. I finally have Finn back, things are good with David—or they were until the past month. Why can’t that be enough?
He puts a hand on my knee. “Hannah, you know that just because we met on Christmas, you’ll still be my family even if we don’t spend Christmas together. Like, we can have Arbor Day or Halloween instead. Oh, and I definitely want National Margarita Day. Or we can do something special on Valentine’s Day or Flag Day. What I’m saying is, you couldn’t get rid of me even if you tried. And it doesn’t matter what arbitrary holiday we celebrate that on. It’ll be special because we’re together, not because of the date on the calendar. Hell, we can make up our own holiday. July twenty-third! I’ve always felt like there are too few summer holidays.”
I launch myself at him and wrap my arms around his neck, my tears soaking into his rainbow cape. “I wish I could think of something bigger than I love you,” I say into his shoulder.
“I bigger than I love you, too,” he says into my neck. I think he might be crying, too. “And it’s okay if you love David, too. It’s not one or the other.”
Suddenly, it all clicks. What if after my parents died, I made my life small: existing like a magpie, clinging to my friends like hoarded treasure? Positive it was only a matter of time before anything good was taken from me. That disaster lurked around every corner. What if Brooke did the opposite, and made her life big? Leaping headfirst into every new experience—travel, dating, motherhood—since the time we get here isn’t guaranteed.
Oh god, what have I done?
I think of the ring, the one missing from David’s sock drawer this morning. His words from our fight ring in my head: I’m not sure you need me or even want me now that you have Finn back. What if I pushed him away one too many times? What if it’s too late to have both?
“Finn, I think I really messed up.”
“Priya will forgive you. But I think she was a little right. Maybe more than a little. We’ve all been so caught up in Christmas.”
“I can’t believe we didn’t know about Ben or that she got fired. I feel awful she was going through that alone. How was I so blind? I’ve fucked everything up so badly. Definitely with Priya, but David, too.” I tell him about the ring that was and then wasn’t. About our fight this morning.
While I wait for him to tell me that yes, I have single-handedly ruined my own relationship—the only serious relationship I’ve ever had—a woman in dress pants and a crimson sweater walks by us. I recognize her from inside the rec room. “I’m sorry for whatever you’re going through. I know how hard this is,” she says in a hushed whisper and as she passes. At first, I think she’s talking about Priya or David and wonder how she knows, but then I look at Finn’s tear-streaked face, which must match my own. The two of us sitting on a bench in the hallway of the children’s wing of a hospital.
“Oh no, we’re not—” I rush to cover.
“Thank you,” Finn says at the same time. When she reaches the end of the hall and ducks into a bathroom, we exchange a look. Finn’s shoulders heave with silent laughter.
“It’s not funny,” I tell him.
“Hey, you were the one gawking at the sick kids in the first place. I was going along with your bit. I was yes, anding you.” He straightens his shoulders, and a serious look comes over him. “Look, I don’t think it’s too late to fix things with David. You need to talk to him, tell him that you messed up. Call him and tell him everything you just told me. There are still”—he looks down at his phone in his lap—“four and a half hours left of Christmas.”