“Who is he?” Hannah whispers once we’re alone in her Polly Pocket–sized kitchen. Not in a coy oooh, who’s your new man way but more in a who is this stranger and what is he doing in my house way.
“It’s a long story.” I grab the kettle from the stove and fill it at the sink.
“Well, let’s hear it. You brought someone to Christmas! Are you dating?”
“No.”
“You’re dressed in matching sweaters. You two look like you stepped out of a freaking J.Crew catalog.” I didn’t expect this reaction. And we don’t match, we coordinate. Me in red, Theo in green. Not that correcting her will make this any better.
Instead, I blurt, “You brought Priya last year!”
“She lives here!”
“Well, I can bring someone, too.” I know I should have asked, but she’s making a way bigger deal of this than it needs to be. She’s also physically blocking my path to the stove, so I’m whisper-yelling while holding a sunny yellow tea kettle with daisies all over it—definitely Priya’s—which I fear is undermining how seriously I’m being taken.
“You can’t make unilateral decisions about Christmas. Christmas is our thing. We talked about inviting Priya!” Hannah takes a breath and resets. “I didn’t say you couldn’t bring someone. I asked who he was,” she says in a measured tone.
“I brought him home from a bar last night, and he didn’t have any plans today, so I invited him. There, are you happy?”
She rears back like she’s been slapped. “So you don’t even know him. He’s some, what? Some stray?”
“You do realize we can hear you, right?” comes Priya’s singsong voice from the living room.
Hannah’s hands shoot up to cover her mouth and we exchange a horrified look before she rushes out of the kitchen, taking the corner so fast her socks slide on the hardwood floors.
“I’m so sorry.” She addresses this to Theo. “Honestly, I didn’t mean anything by it. We’re all strays. I’m a stray, Finn’s a stray. I guess Priya’s not really a stray, but she screens most of her mother’s calls.”
“Hey, leave me out of this!” Priya protests.
“I’m so, so, so sorry,” Hannah continues.
“Please don’t apologize. I completely understand why you’d be surprised by a stranger showing up at your apartment uninvited, and on Christmas, no less. Perhaps I should go—”
“No!” Hannah and I shout at the same time.
“Please don’t go,” Hannah adds.
“I was going to say, go take a walk around the block and allow you a few minutes to chat.”
This is his way of making a polite exit. There’s no way he’ll come back. This will become an anecdote he tells over cocktails and canapés to his rich friends about how the other half lives. “Can you believe how rude they were?” I imagine him saying while someone named Mitzi or Bitsy titters with laughter.
Theo stands up from the beige Ikea couch, and my heart drops into my stomach. I fish my keys from my front pocket and press them into his hand. Maybe some collateral will make him more likely to return. “Here, take my keys,” I blurt, “so you can get back into the building. It’s the two silver ones.”
“Okay.” Theo shrugs on his peacoat.
A loaded silence settles over the room while we listen to his footsteps retreat. When the door clicks shut, Priya says, “Do you think he’s coming back?” at the same time Hannah says, “Did you sleep with him?”
“No,” I answer.
“To which?” Hannah asks.
“To both. He’s probably already in a cab uptown. Giving him my keys was dumb. Now I’ll have to sleep here until Evan gets back from Maryland and I didn’t bring a change of clothes.” I sink my head into my hands and sputter out a long “Fuuuuuuck.”
* * *
? ? ?
?I’m in the kitchen doctoring three mugs of hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps. My head is throbbing after the Advil’s brief reprieve, and I completely blew it with Theo. Some Christmas this is turning out to be. I’m about to carry the trio of mugs into the living room when I hear a key turn in the lock.
I rush to the hallway to intercept him.
“You came back,” I whisper, my voice full of wonder. This must be how my childhood schnauzer Noodle felt when we got home from church on Sunday after he’d been convinced he was being abandoned. Unlike Noodle, I did not pee in anyone’s closet to express my distaste for the circumstances.
“Of course I came back. I have your keys,” Theo says.
“But we were awful.”
“Eh, I know awful. You were garden-variety rude at best.”
“Are you leaving again?” I ask.
“Do you want me to leave?”
“No.”
“Then it’s settled. I’ll stay,” Theo confirms.
* * *
? ? ?
?The rest of the group spends the afternoon watching a double feature of Elf and Love Actually while I spend the afternoon worrying about whether Theo is having a good time. Is he bored? Does he regret coming back? Does he notice the way the paint is peeling on the doorframe? Does he think these movies are childish?
But, remarkably, from my position glued to his side, the miniature sofa providing a convenient excuse, I feel his laughter reverberate through my own rib cage when Buddy’s arm goes into hyper-motion throwing snowballs in Central Park. At one point he reaches over and puts a hand on my knee, and I almost pass out. Maybe from relief, but more likely because all the blood in my body has rushed to my dick.
* * *
? ? ?
?Later, another black car paid for by Theo drops us outside a restaurant sandwiched between a TGI Fridays and a deli. A vinyl sign affixed to the scaffolding reads dim sum authentic banquet with some Chinese characters below it.
Last week I heard a group of boys complaining about their hangovers after a wild night at China Chalet while we waited in a fluorescent-lit hallway for our turn to audition to play an unnamed factory worker in the chorus in Kinky Boots. I called for a reservation the minute I left and pitched the plan to Hannah and Priya as a surprise, mostly because I’d been eavesdropping and wasn’t sure about the particulars.
“Is it open?” Hannah asks, sounding underwhelmed. The Financial District, which is always quiet outside of market hours, feels abandoned to the point of eeriness, like we’ve stepped into the opening scene of an Unsolved Mysteries reenactment.
I’m surprised when I pull the restaurant’s door handle and it opens. We ascend a flight of stairs and emerge into a stodgy banquet room dotted with white-linen-topped tables. Each place setting has a green napkin folded into a fan. The napkins clash with the worn red-and-gold carpet, which clashes with the strip of pink neon lights that ring the room. Only a handful of tables are seated.
“Isn’t this great!” I say with forced cheer.
“Jews have been eating Chinese food on Christmas forever,” Priya says as the host leads us to our table. “I think they have it right. I mean, nobody even likes turkey, but everyone loves dumplings.” I make a mental note to get her a better belated Christmas gift than the rainbow socks I gave her earlier for pretending that this is not a total bust.