by Leta Blake
“He’s going to meet me at the house to help me get it inside and decorate it.”
Joel shrugged. The Troy he’d known wasn’t always reliable, but maybe he’d changed. They were both grown men now. Supposedly. “If you’re sure?”
“Absolutely.” Her crinkled rose-petal cheeks glowed in the chilling air, and she winked at him. “You close up shop here and get on home now. Surely you have a young lady waiting with a good dinner for you?”
“Ladies and me? We don’t seem to hit it off, Mrs. H,” Joel said, grinning slyly. “I’m too much of a player, I guess.”
She pshawed and slapped his arm. “Silly boy!”
“Actually, I’ve got a crockpot, and it’s been simmering some nice bison chili since early this morning. From what I hear, that’s almost as good as having a wife. Maybe better.”
“Oh, law, Joel! You make me laugh, honey.” She rubbed his arm affectionately. “Too bad about the ladies. Though, I’m sure you’ll find the right one someday. I’m glad to hear you can fend for yourself in the meantime.” Her eyes crinkled with her smile. “I bet you’ll enjoy that chili.”
“I hope so. I sank my grocery money for the week into it.”
Mrs. Hendrix laughed like he was joking, and he let her think he was. She didn’t need to know how tight things were for him now that Pop was in the nursing home. A crockpot meal to get through the week was hardly the worst of it.
Between the weekly expenses associated with his father’s care and the way the big companies like Lowe’s and Costco had cut into Vreeland’s Home and Garden’s bottom line, Joel was just barely keeping the place alive. He’d reduced staffing down to just him, his assistant manager Brandon, and three employees. He’d even cut back on his smoking habit. He allowed himself a mere half-pack a week and limited himself to a six-pack of beer a month.
“If you need any more string lights for your bushes out front, I’m running a sale on the white ones. Half off.”
“Oh, white Christmas lights!” Mrs. Hendrix snorted, waving the idea away. “Who wants those? So boring! Put a sale on the colored ones and you’ve got a deal.”
He chuckled as she walked around to the driver’s side of her car and climbed in. He rubbed his hands against the cold wind and watched her pull onto Kingston Pike with the Christmas tree he’d just sold her shivering and shedding on top.
Turning back toward the brightly lit store, he whistled low under his breath. A shiny, white Lexus SUV pulled into the parking lot with the wide, telltale swing of an entitled S.O.B. with money to burn. It was late and he was hungry, but he couldn’t close up quite yet, no matter what Mrs. H seemed to think. Not when there might be customers to sell trees to, like this rich asshole. Hopefully, he’d buy more than a tree and make staying open worth Joel’s while.
Joel plastered on a “welcome to Vreeland’s” smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes as he rearranged a table of poinsettias positioned near the Christmas tree lot. He glanced at what he had in stock and made a mental note to get Angel—his annoying, goth-brat employee from hell—to contact the nursery for another dozen fresh trees tomorrow.
The SUV door slammed shut, and Joel’s back stiffened. Pivoting to greet the new customer, his breath caught in his throat and his heart skipped a beat. The young man standing in front of him was about six feet tall, slim, and as all-American as they came, with light-brown hair that was almost blond, a straight nose, creamy skin, and a pouty-looking mouth that Joel had always wanted to—
Oh, crap.
Casey Stevens.
Just standing there smiling at him like he’d never gone away, wearing clothes that could probably fund Joel’s father’s stay in the nursing home for a month or more, and glowing like he’d been spit-shined and polished. Brighter than a shiny nickel. Brighter than the plastic glowing Virgin Mary statue Casey had kissed that night so long ago in Mr. Maples’s yard.
Dammit. Why now?
Joel didn’t have time for the pain twisting through him like a snake curling up tight in his chest, hissing and protective. Promising him that, yes, he still had the same unmanageable feelings, and yes, he still had a heart that could break. Alas, he hadn’t managed to kill off that weak part of himself quite yet. Not for lack of trying.
“Hey,” Casey said, smiling and sticking out his fist like a grenade, the start of an old handshake they’d made up the summer they were fourteen. The same summer Casey got braces, and Joel had agonized over his own crooked—still crooked—teeth. And the same summer he’d fallen in love with the boy from the “right side of the tracks,” and his father had punched him in the mouth for being a moon-eyed sissy about it.
Joel tossed his chin up, withholding his hand. “S’up. Long time, no see.”
Casey left his fist out long enough for it to become awkward, but Joel only raised an eyebrow and didn’t put him out of his misery. Finally, Casey let his arm fall. His brows dropped, and the corners of his pillow lips drew down. Joel’s brain itched with irritation that some part of him wanted to smooth Casey’s brow and shush his discomfort away.
Instead, he put out his hand and Casey took it. After shaking like Casey was any old customer, Joel sighed. He’d always given Casey too much leeway. “How’s the big city?”
“New York is, uh… It’s fine.”
“Good. Glad to hear it.” Joel pursed his lips and flicked a strand of his dark hair out of his eyes. He put on a smile, but it felt tight and wrong on his face. His heartbeats were all wonky, and the air seemed to whir in his ears, making his own breathing sound strange.
He cleared his throat, trying to get a handle on what to do and where to look. Not at Casey’s face—anywhere but in his amber brown eyes. Get it together. Treat him like he’s just another customer. “Can I help you find something? We have a lot of Christmas items discounted in the back of the store.”
He’s driving a Lexus, dumbass. Like he needs your stupid discounts! Joel wiped a hand over his upper lip. What the fuck was Casey doing here anyway? Why wasn’t he in New York City where he fucking belonged?
Casey frowned, and Joel knew he was probably coming across like a total dick. He shook with the effort to keep himself together. Tight voice, tight chest, barely holding back the betrayal and hurt he’d felt when Casey had up and left him behind. Never even looked back. Like Joel had been nothing and no one at all. Joel chewed the inside of his lip, adrenaline rushing cold in his veins.
It’s not like he was your boyfriend. Get a grip, dipshit.
“My mom sent me for a tree.”
The uncertainty in Casey’s voice and the wavering hurt in his eyes awoke Joel’s stinging sense of self-righteous anger. Who was Casey to act hurt? He was the one who’d left, who’d never replied to Joel’s last text, who’d cut him off like deadweight.
Joel jerked his chin toward the organized rows of Fraser and Douglas firs and fresh Scotch pines. “Have at it.”
He turned back to the poinsettia display, shifting a few pots around. His gut tangled and his chest ached. His sweaty palms nearly lost grip on one of the pots as he moved it slightly left. Wiping his hands against his jeans, he ignored Casey, who stood rooted in the spot, Christmas lights reflecting in his golden-brown hair, apparently struck dumb by Joel’s rudeness.
“Oh. Well, right. I guess you’re busy.” Casey flicked a pointed glance around at the nearly empty parking lot. “With all these customers…”
Since when did earnest little Casey Stevens grow a snarky tongue? Joel almost admired it, except that it meant Casey was still standing there reminding him of feelings he never wanted to have again. It hurt too much when people just up and left. Like his mom had when she died. Like Casey had when he graduated.
If Joel had learned it once, he’d learned it over and over again: everyone left eventually.
“The work’s never done when you’re the boss,” Joel bit out, but his voice shook. “So, like I said, please, have at it. When you’ve picked out a tree, we’ll be happy to help you load it.” He ges
tured at the tree lot again before turning on his heel and stalking into the red brick block of Vreeland’s Home and Garden without looking over his shoulder.
“Fuck,” he whispered as the door swung closed behind him. His knees shook, and his stomach twisted up hard. He swiped a hand over his face, fingers raking over his scratchy whiskers, and squeezed his eyes shut. “Fucking fuck fuck.”
Joel’s mind raced. How was it that all the feelings he thought he’d stomped to death and buried deep beside painful memories of his mom came roaring back at just the sight of this grown-up Casey?
It was like a hand had popped out of the grave he’d marked “Love for Casey Stevens,” and in an instant the head and shoulders had emerged too, surprisingly intact and handsome. The creature’s face was smudged with a bit of dirt, but no sign of decay was in evidence as the rest of the zombie body emerged. Love for Casey Stevens approached, hands outstretched toward him, offering a friendly smile drawn out over straight, white teeth. Joel shuddered. He could feel fingers around his throat, choking him.
The plot for a new book dropped into his head. He’d call it Merry Christmas From Your Undead Lover, because why not? When his first (and of course unrequited) love rose from the dead during the holiday season, he was obligated to work it into a novel, wasn’t he? It was either that or burn the world down around him. One or the other. No in between.
His employee Angel stood next to the life-size Blow Mold Nativity scene he’d set up near the register. He’d chosen it for their inventory because it was reminiscent of the one in Mr. Maples’s front yard. Now, with Casey fucking Stevens wandering the length of his Christmas tree rows, it made his heart wring again.
Oblivious, Angel held a Sharpie in her fingers, a pensive expression on her face. A silver ring glinted in her thick, dark brow, and her blue eyes shimmered with mischievous anticipation. That expression faltered as she caught sight of him. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
She tilted her head, obviously not believing him, but then she shrugged. Her black sweater dotted with white skulls stretched tightly over her ample bosom and wide shoulders. “Then I’ll carry on.” She leaned forward, shoved her chin-length, dyed black hair behind her ears, and stuck out her tongue in concentration. The Sharpie descended toward Mary’s face.
Joel pointed at her. “I swear to God, if you draw a mustache on Mary or put 666 on the Baby Jesus’s forehead, I will fire you so fast you won’t know what hit you.”
Angel sighed and capped the Sharpie. She blinked curiously at him. “You’re grouchy tonight. Why?”
“This is a job, not a game,” Joel barked, pointing between her and the Blow Mold set. “That’s merchandise, not a toy for your amusement. Stop trying to turn my store into your goth performance art piece.” He pulled his still-trembling hands through his hair in frustration. “Just sell things to people, Angel. That’s what you’re here to do.”
“But I’m bored,” she said, as if that was a reasonable statement to make to an employer. “And this isn’t merchandise to sell. It’s our display model, and you said I could give it to my mom after the season was over.”
Joel grimaced. “I said you could buy it from me for sixty percent off, not just take it. And does your mom want her gift vandalized?”
“Maybe. She thinks I’d make a good tattoo artist one day.”
“You can draw on it when it’s in your mom’s yard, then.” He took a deep breath, trying to hold it together. Sometimes he thought Angel acted more like a fifteen-year-old than the nineteen her paperwork proclaimed her to be. He was only twenty-two after all, but he felt a dozen years older than her most days. “It’s almost closing time. You can get through a few more minutes without vandalizing anything.”
“Can I please put 666 on the baby’s head? Just long enough to take a selfie with it?” She blinked at him with wide blue eyes popping brightly between the dark black eyeliner on her lids. “I’ll use some hair spray to clean it off before I leave.”
“No. For one thing, that’s blasphemous or something.” He wanted to escape into the backroom and get his crap together before he had to go back out there and help Casey load a tree into his SUV. Assuming Casey even wanted to buy a tree from a rude asshole like him. He struggled to come up with another reason. “For another, just no. Absolutely not.”
She rolled her eyes and wrote 666 on her left hand instead, and then returned to stand behind the register, smiling to herself as she began to draw what appeared to be a bat on her forearm.
Joel took a slow breath, walked over to the register, and grabbed a red Sharpie from the tin can of pens. He handed it to her and said with a gentler tone, “It’s Christmastime. If you’re going to draw a bat on your arm, at least put a Santa hat on it.”
She rolled her eyes again, this time with a heavy sigh for embellishment, but she uncapped the red pen and complied. Done with his ridiculous employee, Joel stomped off into the backroom and plopped down at his small desk crammed with paperwork and an out-of-date computer. He tugged his hands through his hair before burying his face in his arms. His blood zipped through his body like it was being chased.
Casey Stevens. In town. At his store.
He swallowed hard. Fuck, maybe Casey would just leave without buying anything. Leave and not come back the way he had when he left for NYU three and a half years ago. Why had he come here anyway? To rub it in? To make sure Joel was living the loser life he’d always been destined for despite his stupid adolescent dreams of getting out?
Humiliation rode him hard. Joel’s throat tightened. He wished Casey had never come around. But showing up uninvited had always been a habit of Casey Stevens’s.
“Can I watch you play?”
Joel looked up from where he was noodling on the new-to-him pawnshop guitar he’d bought with his own money from working in his dad’s store. The garage door was open, and the cool winter air mixed with the stale smell of old cigarettes and the relentless scent of diesel oil.
Casey stood there, flushed and handsome, holding a banged-up sketchbook with the winter sun backlighting him like an angel. Joel hated that he thought things like that about Casey. As if he were some kind of queer.
But he was a queer, actually.
If he were being honest.
Because there were plenty of other thoughts he cherished about Casey, too. Uncomfortable, sinful, and exciting thoughts. Thoughts that apparently showed on his face sometimes; thoughts which his dad couldn’t resist trying to beat out of him.
“I won’t distract you,” Casey promised, shoving one hand into the pocket of his khakis and lifting up the sketchbook with the other. “I’ll just draw a little.”
“The rest of the band will be here soon,” Joel warned him. “That’ll be your cue to scram.”
“I know.” Casey’s expression went thoughtful as he gazed at the drum kit, amps, and guitars taking up nearly the entire garage. Joel’s father might have thought the band was a waste of time, but there were several good reasons he was generous with the use of the garage space. Reasons Joel preferred not to think about—like one massive black eye that had required a cover story for a few weeks—but they were reasons all the same.
Casey scratched at his pink-tipped ear and hesitantly met Joel’s eyes. “Or I could stay? I like to listen to the band. Sometimes I don’t go home, you know. I hang out around the corner where your friends can’t see me, and I listen.”
“Stalker.”
“Y’all are good.”
“Don’t go talking like a hick. That’d be low class.” Joel teased Casey with the words he’d heard Mr. Stevens use a lot over the years of being Casey’s only neighborhood friend, but his heart swelled at the idea that sometimes Casey stayed behind to secretly listen to the band play.
“I’m not a stalker. I just want to hang out with you. Why is that a problem?”
It was a problem because if Joel didn’t ditch Casey as soon as they got off the bus at school, if Joel’s band pals acknowl
edged him with even a head nod in passing in the hallways, Casey Stevens might go from having the reputation of an anxious-but-cute nerd boy to…what? The pet geek of the angry, bitter, and going-nowhere-fast crowd?
It wasn’t like Joel had any illusions about who he was and what his future held, even if he liked to talk big about his dream career as a writer. But it didn’t have to be that way for Casey. He’d go to some fancy college, find a career, make a million dollars before he was twenty-five, and wonder why he’d ever looked at Joel with the hero-worshipful eyes he was flashing now.
And that was the way it should be. The way Joel wanted it to be. He cared too much about Casey to drag him down in the gutter with him. RJ and Becca were already gutter kids. They didn’t have anything to lose by being friends with Joel. But Casey sure did.
Besides, maybe he didn’t want to share Casey. Not even with his bandmates. But he couldn’t admit that to anyone and barely even to himself.
Joel sighed. “If listening around the corner is what you normally do, why not just keep doing it?”
Casey deflated a little and tweaked the collar of his white, long-sleeve polo shirt worn beneath his navy-blue Timberland coat. His clothes were so bland, so personality-free, that sometimes Joel wondered if Casey was actually trying to make himself invisible by wearing them. He figured Casey would have some geek pals by now if he ever wore some T-shirts with science jokes on them. Though Casey was more of an art guy. So T-shirts with art jokes, whatever.
Joel huffed. He knew Casey would be better off if he had other friends, and, frankly, so would Joel. He’d have fewer black eyes and bruises, that was for sure. But Joel couldn’t shove Casey away either. Because he was dying to know what Casey Stevens looked like naked, what his mouth tasted like, and what noises he made when he came. Hell, he’d have done anything to just hold Casey in his arms and smell his hair, touch his skin, and get to love him. But wanting those things was a lot like breathing underwater. It was going to get him killed. And also like breathing underwater, in the end, it was inevitable. A person could only hold their breath for so long.