Chapter 14 Nineteen Days till Christmas
14.
Nineteen days till Christmas
Rafi’s week of virtual work was excruciating. Conducted mostly in bed, each minute felt like an hour, capped off by one of the assistants accidentally Slacking the entire team with I know, I feel sooooo sorry for him! #shesaidno.
He logged off early, closing his laptop with a drawn-out sigh. It was Friday afternoon, but Rafi was unable to muster any enthusiasm for the weekend. Just more time to quietly question his entire existence.
The sun was setting, a burning lip of red visible in the west. The family room was empty—it was a little too early for the happy hour Birdie enthusiastically hosted each evening. He flopped onto the sofa, needing the kind of reality TV that puts your brain in a box and hurls it off a cliff. Opening the drawer in the coffee table for the remote, Rafi noticed a deck of cards, designed in minimal black-and-white. Bold block letters on the front read The Big Questions , and underneath, in smaller font, You Already Have the Answers. Well, he was in need of some answers, wasn’t he? Flipping it over, he read the instructions. Shuffle before every pull. Reflect.
What the heck. He tipped the cards out. The backs were illustrated in a trippy visual illusion: a monochrome maze impossible to solve. Rafi turned the top card over. On a white background, a question in black font: What is your dream house?
Rafi perked up. He could waste an hour thinking about something like a dream house. To follow the rules, he started to shuffle, letting his mind wander, ready to receive divine inspiration. He pulled a card and read its question.
What do you want?
Rafi blinked. What did he want? Just…in general? Not as in…for dinner? In his career? He flipped the card over. No addendums, no clues. Nothing but the same enormous question, which was still there when he turned it back over. What do you want?
Rafi tossed the card aside with a huff. Some game. There was nothing fun about it!
His sisters had always known what they wanted. Even if their desires changed—like how Liz first worked in publishing before switching to TV—they were both motivated to keep working, keep trying, even in the face of rejection. Rafi didn’t share that urge. He’d never been interested in going into entertainment, maybe for that reason, or maybe because it didn’t feel like there was room in the family for another showbiz darling.
He’d always been motivated by the idea of giving back and helping others. Community manager for a clean-water nonprofit had sounded like a dream job but turned out to mostly be answering testy customer support complaints, a grind he endured by dating someone fun at work. Philly was a nice enough city, but it wasn’t his forever home. It was a temporary solution to New York being too expensive. It was almost a shock to realize that he’d been living in Pennsylvania for three and a half years.
This couldn’t be it. This life, his life, it couldn’t be all there was. Because if it was? Rafi pitched forward on the sofa, his heart rate spiraling. Because if it was, he’d made some serious mistakes. He hadn’t gotten the right degree, dated the right people, made the right choices. He wasn’t fulfilled, his work was mindless, he wasn’t building a life with anyone. He was newly single, still living with a roommate, years away from marriage, even further from kids. Did he even want the white picket fence fantasy, or was that just another illusion? He was twenty-nine, a third of the way through his life, and what did he have to show for it?
“Oh shit.” The curse left his mouth as a gasp. “I’m fucked.”
“Who’s fucked?” Birdie strolled into the family room.
“No one.” He gathered up the cards, shoving the deck back into the drawer. “What’s up?”
Birdie dangled her car keys. “Feel like enabling my procrastination?”
He’d never said yes faster.
—
His sister drove them into town, where they spent a cozy hour nursing hot toddies at Tinker Street Tavern. As they sat side by side on stools at the bar, Birdie regaled Rafi with tales of her most cringeworthy sexual misadventures and Rafi let himself be entertained, avoiding his thoughts for as long as he could. About fifty-seven minutes.
“Birds?” Rafi shifted to face his sister directly. “What do you want?”
“Like, for Christmas?” Birdie brightened.
“No, I mean, in general.”
“Oh.” Her face fell before quickly reanimating. “It’s a cold and rainy night. Someone knocks at my door.” Birdie rapped on the bar for emphasis. “It’s Margot Robbie! Thoroughly drenched and begging to be let in. I stand aside, noticing as I do that her nipples are clearly visible through her—”
“Cut.” Rafi rolled his eyes. “I’m serious. What do you want in life? Big picture?”
Birdie frowned, considering the question. A longish pause. “I keep coming back to Margot Robbie’s tits…”
“Birdie!”
“I don’t know!” She laughed, draining her hot toddy. “Just, do comedy. Make a bit more money. Get my shit together. Why, what do you want?”
That was exactly what he needed to figure out.
—
Birdie took the long way home, claiming the “scenic” way would cheer him up, even though it was pitch-black and starting to snow. By the time they rolled down the driveway to Belvedere Inn, it was past dinner.
“Aren’t you starving?” he asked his always ravenous sister.
Birdie parked the car. “We have a surprise for you.”
They walked up the front steps, which were already dusted with snowflakes. “If it’s the dogs’ tuxedo outfits, Mom’s already shown me.”
Birdie punched in the door code, antsy with excitement. “It’s not the dogs.”
“Okay…” Rafi followed Birdie through the foyer, toward the kitchen.
The entire house—Liz, Violet, Jin-soo, and his mother—were hovering around the kitchen island, faces lit with expectant grins.
Rafi frowned at them. “What’s going on?”
Birdie spun him around so he was facing the adjacent family room. “Ta-da!”
In the middle of the family room stood a young man wearing dark-wash jeans and an expensive-looking navy sweater. His hair was the color of dark honey, wavy on top, short on the sides, freshly cut. Gold stubble shaded a square jaw.
Rafi’s eyes widened as he sucked in a stunned, delighted breath. “No way !”
It was Ash. His best friend in the entire world, a boy he’d known since they were both fourteen. He almost didn’t recognize him. Not only because Rafi wasn’t expecting him, but because—
“Dude.” Birdie clapped Ash on the shoulder. “You got hot in London.”
Rafi’s mind was spinning. He couldn’t stop smiling. “What the hell are you doing here? How did this happen?” He almost tripped over his feet pitching forward to hug Ash.
“Raf Attack.” Ash wrapped his arms around Rafi.
His skin smelled the same, musky and sweet, but a new deodorant or cologne was layered over it—a delicious mix of citrus and bergamot and something like blown-out birthday candles. His body felt different. Stronger. More muscular. Rafi squeezed the hidden new strength in surprise. “Jesus, what’s all this?”
Ash chuckled in a self-effacing way. “I started swimming.” He squeezed Rafi’s shoulder, friendly and brimming with good feeling. “So good to see you, man.”
“The best, ” Rafi echoed, but he was still getting his head around it all. The surprise. The new body he hadn’t registered on FaceTime; the unfamiliar, sophisticated scent.
“The category is cheekbones!” Birdie yelled, and the family descended, proffering their honorary son a glass of merlot, a plate of shepherd’s pie.
Ash had been part of the family since he and Rafi had met on the first day of high school. Birdie and Liz had attended elementary, middle, and high school in New York City, after the family moved back from L.A. when the girls were little. Rafi had gone to elementary and middle school in Soho like they had, but unlike his sisters, he’d finished school upstate, being the only child to move with his mother to Belvedere Inn. Rafi could still remember the neatly pressed, if clearly secondhand, shirt Ash was wearing on their first day. Now nothing about him was secondhand.
From the chatter whirling around them both, Rafi realized everyone was in on the surprise but him. Which was so thoughtful and generous…but was it because they were worried about him? His family hadn’t shipped Ash back to help pick up the pieces, had they?
No. That was ridiculous. Ash was here because this was where he belonged.
—
Everyone was keen to stay up, but Rafi knew even night owl Ash must be jet-lagged. At the first hint of a yawn, Rafi hauled him up from the sofa. “I’m calling it on London Man’s behalf.”
In the foyer, Ash retrieved a hard-shell suitcase from the hall closet, glancing up the staircase to the Inn’s second floor. “Which room is mine? Marilyn? Audrey?”
“Actually,” Rafi informed him, “all the suites are taken. You’ll have to bunk with me.”
Ash blinked. “Oh.” His eyebrows dipped. “Okay.”
The boys had shared a bed dozens of times—on trips, while camping, at sleepovers. But as kids, not grown men. Ash looked as if Rafi had just announced they’d be showering together. Obviously sharing a bed was something you jettisoned when approaching thirty. “I’ll sleep on the sofa,” Rafi amended. “You take my room.”
“No, it’s fine—”
“I really don’t mind!”
“Raf, shut the hell up.” Ash grinned, nudging him. “I’ve missed sleeping with someone who snores like a swamp monster.”
“Fuck off!” Rafi grinned back, relieved.
The bedroom was toasty. Ash surveyed the plaid blankets and club chairs, his gaze snagging only briefly on the bed. “Wow. It’s all exactly the same.”
Rafi remembered thinking the same thing. He sat cross-legged on the bed to watch Ash unpack. “I can’t believe you’re here and not there. I’ve missed you. More than I realized, I think.”
“How are you?” Ash examined Rafi in concern. “How are you feeling?”
There was an odd moment of disorientation, as if the proposal disaster had happened to someone else. It was almost an effort to recall Sunita’s broad smile and easy laugh, and the subsequent stab of sadness and regret. “It’s definitely made work harder. And I’ll never wear an ugly Christmas sweater again.” There was much more to say—especially everything he’d been thinking about this afternoon—but Ash was tired; this wasn’t the right time.
Rafi got into bed while Ash showered and changed into pajama bottoms. Peeling back the comforter, Ash slid in, relaxing all six feet two inches of him into the soft mattress. “God, that feels good.”
“Thank you for coming so far,” Rafi said. “I already feel better.”
Ash grinned back, and it felt like the old days. “You’re welcome.”
“What made you decide to do it?” Rafi asked, remembering Ash’s reticence in their last FaceTime.
Ash rolled to his side, propping his head up with one hand. “Your sisters are very persuasive. But I came because you needed me.”
Rafi smiled, pulling the comforter closer. “Can I ask why you haven’t come back until now?”
Ash let out a slow breath. His words sounded very carefully chosen. “I’ve been in New York and a part of your family for my entire life. I think I just needed to…experience something else. Strike out on my own to see who I could become, and what was possible when there was no safety net. When I let go of certain…ideas.”
Rafi wanted to hear more: How had Ash gotten in touch with what he wanted, what was his life in London like, what did the future hold? For now, Rafi just punched his now very solid arm. “I’m so fucking proud of you, man. You spread your wings and you soared. London looks good on you.”
“It feels good,” Ash said. “But being back here…it’s strange.”
“How so?”
Ash frowned, settling on his back, gaze lifting to the ceiling. “My life in the States started to feel like a memory, or a story I read once. And now that I’m back, in this room, I’m reminded it’s not. That it’s been existing this whole time, concurrently. Like a multiverse, or whatever. And everything in it feels just as real as when I left.”
They were quiet for a minute. Rafi assumed Ash was too tired to keep chatting. But then Ash faced Rafi again, his expression slightly pained. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “Look, I know you think I should’ve come back for Dad’s funeral.”
Rafi couldn’t deny it. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because I’d just moved! Just got the job! There were so many logistics, and flights were expensive, and…” Ash ran out of steam, kneading the skin between his eyes. “And obviously that’s not the reason why.” He let out a tight sigh. “My dad was a dick. He barely tolerated me—you know that better than anyone.”
Ash’s mom died when he was a toddler. Ash’s father was the only living family he’d had left. They couldn’t have been less alike. Willie was prone to conspiracy theories and extremely fixed ideas about gender and sexuality. He was the reason Ash had all but grown up at Belvedere Inn. Ash didn’t come out to his dad until he’d left for college. Rafi didn’t think Ash should’ve gone to the funeral for Willie. He felt Ash should’ve gone for himself: his own healing, his own journey. But clearly, Ash didn’t agree.
“It’s not my place to pass judgment,” Rafi said softly, “and I never will. I just felt if I was in your shoes, I’d want the closure. But it’s your decision, and I one thousand percent support you. In this, and everything, always.”
“Thanks, Raf.” Ash examined him. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Did you love Sunita—really love her?”
Rafi had been expecting a question about what the funeral had been like. Where the grave actually was. “I did love her,” he said. “In the way I love cheeseburgers and puppies.” Even though they’d been his ex’s words, they sadly summed things up. “Maybe I don’t know what real love is.”
“Don’t be silly.” Ash fought a yawn. “Of course you know what real love is.”
Rafi switched off the bedside light, wondering if that was true.
Outside his window, fat snowflakes continued to fall. He imagined them blanketing the house in flawless white, cocooning the seven bodies inside, warm in their beds. Rafi fell asleep picturing snow filling the surrounding meadows, a whisper of sleigh bells ribboning through the silent woods beyond.