“Ooh, I like that look,” Boomer told one mannequin in a top hat. Overhead, the museum’s PA told us politely to exit because the museum was closing.
“I miss hanging out,” I told Sofia. “You know, when it’s not an effort. When it’s just friends. I didn’t have that in Oxford.”
“Azra says you haven’t tried very hard.”
“Well, Azra probably learned her Oxford hanging-out skills at boarding school,” I said. “I was thrown into the pool while most of the people there seemed to have been born swimming in it.”
“Doesn’t matter, as long as you know how to swim,” Sofia pointed out. “And you, my friend, know how to swim.”
“I swim better in New York,” I said. “The water’s nicer there.”
“A statement that’s never been made before, ever. Unless you’re talking about what comes out of the tap.”
“You get my point, though. I want to go home.”
“So go home.”
A guard came up and told us the museum was now closed and it was time to egress.
“I guess we’ll have to go straight to the present!” Boomer said, heading straight for the door.
Outside, it was complete darkness, December having made away with all the daylight while we were inside. Sofia checked her phone for the time, then typed out a quick text.
“Just because she’s mad at you, it doesn’t mean she shouldn’t respond to me,” she grumbled.
“Do we have time for Bad Egg?” Boomer asked.
Sofia checked her phone. “Yes. But we need to be in a cab in an hour if we’re going to catch our plane. And since our luggage is going to be on it, we really should catch our plane. It’s the last flight of the night.”
“Can’t let your family think I’m a flight-skipper,” Boomer said as Sofia led us on, checking her phone the whole time.
“How are you feeling about meeting her family for the first time?” I asked.
“I’m terrified … in a good way.” Boomer grinned. “But that’s love, isn’t it?”
I thought about it for a second before concluding, “Yeah, maybe it is.”
Bad Egg was a brunch place that stayed opened well into the night. It felt incongruous to order huevos rancheros in the heart of London, but that didn’t deter Boomer.
“The stomach wants what it wants,” he said. Then, in addition to his huevos, he ordered a Christmas Pudding Sundae, which involved brandy-soaked fruit and something mysteriously referred to as Christmas pudding pieces.
I got a shakshuka and Sofia got a burger, and after our server left, I looked at the two of them sitting across from me, and it just got to me … in a good way. This was what I’d stepped away from when I was at Oxford, and what I’d tried to put out of my mind, because it made my loneliness that much more pronounced. I’d thought, for my higher education, that I’d wanted scholarship and erudition. But really, I’d just wanted to have people to sit across from at a diner, to talk about whatever was on our minds, Brontë sisters or Jonas brothers, Carl Van Vechten or Carly Rae Jepsen.
“Are you getting misty?” Boomer asked. Then he put his arm around Sofia. “Look—he’s really getting misty.”
“I just … I’ve missed you guys,” I said, wiping my eyes. Which felt far too mundane an expression of what I was really feeling, which was that I’d jumped too far from the bedrock of my life, and now I was lucky enough that it had come to me rather than waiting for me to return to it.
“We’ve missed you too,” Boomer said.
“Like the deserts miss the rain,” Sofia chimed in.
I couldn’t help myself. “Hasn’t that line always bothered you?” I had to ask. “Why can’t the desert just be a desert?”
Boomer backed me up. “He has a point.”
“Fine,” Sofia said. “Like the polar ice caps miss the cold?”
“Topical,” I said.
“Timely,” Boomer agreed. “Or like my stomach misses the sundae that isn’t here yet …”
Thus began a metaphoricalympics among the three of us, which lasted a few minutes until I sighed.
Reading my mind, or maybe just being of the same mind as me, Boomer said, “She should be here with us.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She should be here.”
“Agreed,” Sofia said. “Let’s all tell her that at the same time.”
We got out our phones and typed out the text: You should be here. On the count of three, we hit send. Then we did it three more times.
No response.
We talked and laughed and bantered over that non-response. Sofia was starting to get nervous about getting to Heathrow, so we got the check and paid it.
It was only as we were getting our coats on that Sofia’s phone buzzed.
Sofia had a surprised expression on her face as she read the text that had come in.
“Is it Lily?” Boomer and I asked at the same time.
Sofia shook her head. “No, it’s Azra. And you’re not going to believe where she and Lily are right now.”
eleven
December 22nd
You’ve ruined Christmas, Lily.
When I finally had the courage to look at my phone, this was the first text I saw, from my brother. But it wasn’t entirely a disheartening message. Next, he’d written:
Mom is so mad at you that she says she’s canceling Christmas this year. No present exchange, no lounging in PJs all day, no Christmas brunch. Hurrah, I say! It’s one stupid day of the year! It’s ridiculous we spend so much energy and money on it. I’ve had it with the crass consumerism and awful sweaters. I’ve been waiting my whole life for Christmas to be canceled, although I certainly never expected our family’s #1 Christmas nerd would be the reason why. Now I can spend the day with Benny’s family without Mom’s guilt trip about me splitting my time between my boyfriend’s family and ours. Because Mom’s the one who canceled Christmas—her idea!
Truly, Lily. You’re a genius. And TBH, the food at Puerto Rican Christmas is better than ours. But your cookies still rule. (I still think you should go to college. Even if it’s not Barnard. Let’s talk?)
As I walked from the Tube to Mark and Julia’s apartment to get my stuff, I ignored the text from Dash—What just happened?!?!?—and only glanced at the angry texts from my mother, as if I was taking mental screenshots of only her most vehement points.
If you think you’re not going to college you’re …
Pick up the phone, Lily!
Four generations of women in our family have gone to Barnard. You will not be the first who …
But it was the text I’d snuck a peek at half an hour earlier, when I was still on the boat with Dash, that had prompted me to make a run for it. It was from Dad.
You’ve broken your mother’s heart, Lily.
I didn’t know what I’d been thinking, jumping off that boat. It was a sudden, jerk move, like baiting Dash into a fight had been. I just felt so overwhelmed and lost. How had a day that had started so promisingly, with me taking a step into independence and seriously considering forging that independence in this exotic new place, gone so awry, so quickly?