“Alas, he’s the one who got away!” Clementine teases.
Finn starts choking on his drink and lets out a hacking cough. “Sorry, wrong pipe,” he covers.
Undeterred, Clementine smiles beatifically up at Theo and winds their hands together on the couch cushion between them. Theo shows no signs of discomfort.
“Well,” he coos at her, “I’m here now!”
“And I leave next week!” she adds with an exaggerated pout, continuing their two-person show.
“Clem’s on tour again at the moment,” Theo adds for our sake, although I’m well aware. The radio station has been playing ads for Jingle Ball, which Clementine headlined, every fifteen minutes for the past six weeks and it’s my job to queue them up. “And I figured Clem would fit in well with you lot. She’s a bit of a stray, too.”
“Well, that’s not how I would phrase it!” she says, taking offense to Theo’s word choice. “But my mum’s gotten remarried and she’s spending the holiday with her new husband’s family. It’s all a bit new and weird. Didn’t think they needed the woman from the telly showing up for pudding.”
“But enough about us. I’m sure we’re boring you. I want to hear about you all! Theo’s spoken so highly of his New York friends.”
She must have us confused with other people. We’ve met once. How could we possibly merit mentioning? My list of rude questions grows longer by the second.
“Should we move into the dining room?” Theo asks, sensing an opening in the conversation.
We stand mutely. I look over at Finn who is glancing around the room in search of an emergency exit.
I clear my throat. “I’m going to head to the bathroom to wash my hands before we eat. You know, subway grime. Finn, do you want to wash your hands, too?”
“Yes, I do! My hands are very dirty, actually,” he says.
“Mine are, too,” Priya adds, not wanting to be left out.
We are the three least subtle people on the planet. Theo raises his eyebrows, but doesn’t try to stop us.
In the hallway on the way to the bathroom, I linger in front of a photo of Theo with Phillip Benson, the eccentric billionaire owner of Infinite Airlines. I wouldn’t have taken Theo for one of his legions of fanboys. Maybe he has a kink for celebrities.
Inside the massive marble powder room, Priya is perched on the vanity, while Finn paces the five steps from the toilet to the far wall. I close the door behind me and take a seat on the closed toilet lid. Who has a powder room large enough to pace in? But the real estate gawking has become secondary to the actual pop star in the living room.
“So Theo is bi?” Priya asks Finn.
“He could be pan,” I offer.
Finn, who has been conspicuously silent, looks like he might throw up.
“Are you alright?” I ask him. “You didn’t know about this, did you?”
“Of course I didn’t know,” Finn stops pacing and leans against the far wall. “He woke up naked in my bed. Sorry I didn’t think to ask in detail about his sexual preferences.”
“Well, has he ever mentioned any other women he’s dated?” Priya prods.
Finn slides down the wall into a crouch and scrubs his hands over his close-cropped hair. “Guys, I hung out with him one time, the same as you. I had no idea.”
“Yeah, but you’ve been texting,” I say. The other week, Finn dropped a weird comment about Gaston into our text thread when I asked if he wanted me to grab him an egg sandwich on my way to his place, before remembering it was an inside joke he had with Theo instead of me. “Did this never come up?”
“No, it didn’t come up. It’s not like we were exchanging body counts and comprehensive biographies of everyone we’ve ever slept with. I kind of didn’t think to assume he was bedding A-list celebrities.”
“You seem kind of upset about it,” I say.
“I’m not upset.” His body language begs to differ. “Why would I even care?”
“Because you like him?” I ask.
“I don’t like him,” he scoffs. “I told you on my birthday I’m over him.”
And I didn’t believe him then either. The past month Finn has been all giddy smiles whenever Theo’s name or our plans for tonight come up in conversation. But it’s almost as if I can see the mask slide over his face as he shuts down and detaches right here in this bathroom, like this is a role and he’s getting into character. Tonight, the role of Finn will be played by . . . this other robot version of himself. Letting him have this is easier than calling him on his bullshit because we still have to make it through dinner.
“Then what are we even doing in here?” Priya asks.
“I thought we were washing our hands and gossiping,” Finn says. “I think Clementine’s had work done. Did you notice her nose looks different? I’m not saying we should, but if we wanted to, we could sell a photo of her from tonight for a lot of money.”
* * *
? ? ?
?Our group of five is seated around a dining table that could easily fit twelve. Instead of putting all the place settings at one end of the table, the extra chairs were removed, and we’re spaced at odd intervals. It’s not just the seating chart that’s awkward, the conversation has stalled since we returned from our bathroom confab.
While everyone busies themselves with their salads, I’m staring at the roast in the center of the table—each shank is topped with a little paper hat—and hoping I’m not expected to serve myself, because I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how to cut into that thing.
“It’s a crown roast,” Theo explains when he catches me staring. “When I was a boy, this is what we’d eat at the holidays. So I asked the caterers to make one for us tonight.”
A round of appreciative hmms circle the table.
“We always had Christmas crackers on the table, too. But I didn’t leave time to order any,” Theo tries again to spark a conversation. “One year my father had some custom made with hundred-pound notes inside, except I’d been particularly naughty that year, almost got thrown out of primary for scrapping with one of my classmates, so he made one for me with a lump of coal inside.”
Clementine reaches out to put her hand on his arm to console him, but she’s too far away and her hand swats at air before coming to rest on the white tablecloth in the vast space between them.
Over her shoulder, I notice another framed photo of Theo, sandwiched between Phillip Benson and an older woman with frosted blond Farrah Fawcett hair and a face frozen into a startled expression with injectables.
“Wow, you must be a major fan of Phillip Benson,” I remark for lack of anything better to say. “If you start quoting from his book, I may have to excuse myself.”