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She propped her scarf-covered chin on her glove-covered hand. “Ooh, right. I’m kind of jealous of your life. At least the running-a-café part of it. When I was little I used to want to run a bakery, at least until I found out how early you have to wake up every morning and how little you get paid.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t those things also apply to being a kindergarten teacher?” I cringed inwardly at myself, hoping I hadn’t just insulted her, but she just laughed, too.
“Oh my god, you’re telling me. People seem to think I just chill out and play with little kids all day. But do you know how hard I work? I’m teaching them to read and behave in public with other little humans for the first real time in their lives. I bet my job is harder than that of at least half the lawyer and marketer and programmer parents of my kids who think I don’t do anything all day.”
“Oh my god, same here,” I said emphatically. “People think running a café is easy and romantic, that I just chill out whipping up fun drinks and gossiping with the townsfolk. But it’s such hard work. I bet I wake up almost as early as a baker, and…”
We went on for a while, comparing and complaining about how hard our jobs were. By the time we’d run out of things to say, Freya’s hat had slid up and her scarf had slid down, exposing rays of staticky white-blond hair and a chapped lower lip, and I was pretty sure I had a serious case of wild eyes. I took another sip of my mulled wine. To my surprise, I was almost at the bottom of the cup. Also, I had no idea where Seth was. “What are we doing right now, by the way?”
Our group had spread out a bit, and I realized we’d been shuffling along behind them as they slowly moved toward something. Like we were waiting in a line. Freya said, “I have no idea. Hey! Seth!”
There he was. He’d turned his back to talk to one of the Mikes, but he’d been there all along. “You guys seem to be getting along well.” The smile he gave us was surprised but pleased, a little guarded. I guess the thought of Connor and Seth interacting gave me similar feelings, even though Seth wasn’t even my real boyfriend. Something about the past and present meeting, two people who both knew intimate versions of you from different times.
“We totally are,” I said. “Freya is great. She’s been telling me all sorts of embarrassing stories about you from when you two were together.”
His eyebrows jumped to his hairline. “Please tell me she didn’t tell you about the lobsters.”
“I was joking,” I said. “But now I need to hear about the lobsters.”
“Oh my god, okay,” Freya said. “So we went away to Maine for a long weekend over July Fourth one year, right? And we decided to host a lobster cookout for all our friends. We went to the store and picked out live lobsters and everything. Only—”
“—only we couldn’t bring ourselves to kill them,” Seth said, a smile twitching at his lips. The memory might have been embarrassing, but it was also clearly fond. “Freya cried when it came time to put them in the boiling water. So then we looked up other ways to do it, and apparently you can kind of cleave them in half through the brain and that kills them instantly, except—”
“—except Seth got all freaked out by how they moved and couldn’t get his knife in place, and he was panicking about cutting into the wrong spot and causing the lobster pain,” Freya said.
“So when all our friends got there, expecting some delicious grilled lobster rolls and lobster salad and whatever else, we were just standing there with our live lobsters squirming around the yard,” said Seth. “By then we’d named them.”
“After various Disney Princesses. We had Belle, Aurora, Jasmine, Cinderella—”
“—Snow White had a big white blotch on her claw—”
“And so obviously, the thought of eating them was a lost cause,” Freya said. “We ended up having a ceremonial release and ordering in from the local burger place.”
“I know it seems hypocritical, because cows, but at least we didn’t know their names,” said Seth.
I wondered if they would stop laughing if I told them the one time I’d cooked lobster I’d had no problem tossing that sucker into the water and closing the lid.
I automatically stepped up again when they moved forward. Freya and some of the Mikes struck up a conversation, leaving Seth and me in relative solitude. “Freya told me you apologized to her.”
“Yeah. It was long overdue, and I’m glad you pushed me to do it. I’m surprised she told you, though.” He raised an eyebrow. “You guys really do seem to be getting along well.”
“Is that okay?”
“Of course it’s okay,” Seth said. “I’m happy about it. You’re both people I care about very much.”
That awkwardness squirmed in my stomach again. We stepped up once more, following Seth’s friends. I asked, “Are we in line for something?”
And didn’t need a response, because then I noticed it: the banner proclaiming MEET SANTA! in big red letters. Kids dressed like elves in pointed plastic ear bands and forest green outfits flanked a Santa who might have been out of a movie, big and round and red and jolly, with a bulbous nose and full white beard that might actually have been real. “Ho, ho, ho!” Santa called out joyfully into the wind.
I nudged Seth with my elbow. “Why are we waiting to see Santa?”
He shrugged. “Dan thinks it’s funny for us all to get pictures with him.”
Fine, whatever. The line crawled forward. A Mike and his date went up first, each perching precariously on one of Santa’s knees. It was hard to see who looked most afraid that the old man might collapse. “Have you ever had a picture with Santa before?” I never had. My parents had obviously never taken me, and I’d never gone on my own.
He shrugged again. “Dan used to drag us before I moved.”
The Mike and his date finished without crushing any elderly knees and got up, ceding the space to Dan and his friend. Dan leaned in to whisper in Santa’s ear. I tried to picture myself doing that, and it felt…weird. Not bad weird, necessarily, like I would be doing something wrong. But uncomfortable weird, like trying to put on pants that no longer fit or eating eggplant, which for most people was great but for me made my throat itch.
