by Roan Parrish
I’m flying to Philly tomorrow to have Chanukah with Ginger and stay for a few days and I’ve been thinking about whether I should try and track down Colin. I’ve left a few more messages for him, but he hasn’t called back. I know it sounds sick, but, I mean, I would have heard about it if he killed himself, right? Someone would have found him and—
“Ready!” Rex saunters in with a wrapped box in his hands.
I groan, reaching out an arm toward him so he can help me up. He drops the box on the couch and smirks at me, then lies down beside me on the floor, leaning on one elbow so he can look at me.
“Do you think it’s possible to actually die from eating too much?” I ask.
“Yeah, probably,” he says, dropping a light kiss on my stomach and then lying back. I groan and flop over so I can bury my head in Rex’s neck. His arm comes around me and he lets out a warm rumble of contentment. Marilyn barks once, then comes over, turns in a circle, and lies down with us in front of the fire. I start to laugh, then clutch my stomach.
“What?”
“It’s just so goddamned picturesque,” I say, waving a hand at the Christmas tree, the snow falling outside the windows, and the dog curled up in her blue flannel bed in front of the roaring fire. Rex chuckles, his chest vibrating beneath me.
After I come out of my food coma, I go to the closet and get Rex’s gifts. I hesitate, then leave the second one in the closet for later.
“You go first,” Rex says when I join him on the couch. I’m suddenly really nervous that my brilliant gift isn’t actually brilliant after all.
“Okay,” I say, hesitating, “but you might not like it.”
“Okay,” Rex says very seriously. “Well, if I don’t like it I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll still like you a whole lot.”
I roll my eyes and shove the box at him, the wrapping this garish, 1970s-looking gold and green deer print that I found at Mr. Zoo’s. Rex untapes the paper and folds it neatly. He takes the lid off the box and holds up the thing on top. It’s a Christmas tree ornament of a dog that looks a lot like Marilyn.
“It’s to remember the night we first met,” I say, my cheeks burning at how sentimental this is. “I know it’s cheesy, but—”
Rex kisses me.
“Shut up,” he says. He strokes my cheek. “It’s great.”
He dangles the ornament in front of Marilyn, who merely lifts one ear and opens one eye, decides nothing that’s going on is worth her attention in the slightest, and snuffles back to sleep, turning to toast her other side equally in front of the fire.
Then Rex lifts a bunch of tissue paper out of the box and pulls out another, oddly shaped package wrapped in the same paper. I hold my breath as he struggles with my terrible wrapping job, looking at his face because I want to see his initial, unguarded reaction.
Rex’s mouth falls open.
“Oh my god,” he says, lifting out the vintage Marilyn Monroe ornaments. There’s one of her with her white dress blowing up from the scene in The Seven Year Itch, one surrounded by paste diamonds and feathers from Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, and one that’s shaped like a regular ornament but has Norma Jean on one side and Marilyn on the other. Then he lifts out the last ornament. It’s of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.
“The Casablanca one isn’t vintage,” I say. “I just thought you might like it.”
“How did you…?”
“I found them online. Are they—do you like them?”
Rex’s finger looks huge tracing the tiny figure in the white dress. When he looks up at me, there are tears in his eyes.
“They’re just like the ones my mom had,” he says, pulling me to him and crushing me against his chest. “Thank you.”
He makes a big deal out of making me help him hang the ornaments on the tree. When we sit down again, he hands me his present. It’s wrapped perfectly, in thick silver paper, and it smells like wood shavings.
I tear off the paper and inside is a carved wooden box attached to an ornament hook. The box is three or four inches square and is made of several different kinds of wood.
“Great minds,” Rex murmurs. He’s gotten me an ornament as well.
“Did you make this?” I ask. “It’s beautiful.” Rex nods.
“I got the idea at Ginger’s. Looking at that puzzle box. I really liked that and I thought maybe I could make one. Turns out they’re harder than I thought,” he adds, sounding nervous. “Even a simple one.” His hands are clasped in his lap.
“Um, you have to open it,” he says.
I fiddle with the box, pulling on the corners and pushing the middle, then vice versa.
“Um….”
“Oh, you have to—” Rex points to a side piece and I slide it over. It takes me a minute—Jesus, this is an easy one?—but I finally hear a pop and it slides open.
“Ha!” I say, inordinately pleased with myself. Then I look inside.
It’s a key.
I look up at Rex, whose face is open, vulnerable and hopeful.
“I thought maybe you’d want to move in. Here. With me,” he says softly. It’s his shy voice. The voice he uses with strangers when he’s nervous. I look down at the box again. I pick up the key. It’s on a simple wooden keychain cut into the shape of Michigan. It weighs nothing in my palm, but it feels like the heaviest thing I’ve ever held.
“But,” I say, my mind racing. “But what if—what about the job? What if I get the job? We haven’t even talked about it and I—”
“Move in with me,” Rex says again, his voice resonant once more. “Live with me. Here, for now. Then, wherever. As long as you’re with me, I won’t care where we live.”
I swallow hard.
“You’d leave here? With me. But what about—” I gesture around us to the cabin Rex worked so hard to build. To the place he created out of grief and fear and desperation; the place that became a home.
I’m squeezing the key so tight I can feel its teeth cutting into my palm.
“Baby,” Rex says, putting warm hands on my shoulders, “I can build something else. Something just for us.” His eyes never leave mine. “I came here because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Didn’t have anyone. And now…. As long as I’m with you, I’ll be home.”
My eyes flood with tears.
Home.
I never felt at home in my father’s house. The apartments I’ve lived in since then have been crap. Just places to crash. Ginger’s apartment has been a home away from home—as close as I thought I might ever get to a place that feels right. That feels like home. Then I met Rex and, even that first night, when I thought I’d never see him again, something about him called out to something deep inside me. I love this cabin, these woods, but it’s not this place that feels like home. It’s Rex.
He’s looking at me, eyes tracking mine. I can see the moment he thinks I’m about to say no and it almost breaks my heart. I nod quickly, my mouth getting twisted around all the things I mean to say. So I just launch myself forward and hug him as tight as I can, arms around his neck and legs around his waist. Rex’s hugs feel like being wrapped in the warmest blanket.
We stay like that for a while, just holding each other, until I relax my grip and my fist that was clenching the key unfurls, revealing a perfect indentation of Michigan in my palm.
Finally, I haul myself off the couch to go to the bathroom. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and my expression is unfamiliar. I look younger. Happy in a way I never have. I can’t help but think of the first time I saw myself in this mirror, Rex behind me, the night we met. I shake my head, thinking that if I’d told myself that night that I would be living in this cabin, I would probably have drowned myself in the shower laughing.
On the way back to the living room, my phone buzzes with a text. At first I don’t believe it can really be from Colin because there’s not a profanity or an insult in sight.
I’m okay, it says. Can’t talk yet. Merry Christmas.
“Holy shit,” I sa
y. “It’s a Christmas miracle.”
“What?” Rex asks, and while he seems relieved Colin’s all right, he doesn’t seem overly impressed with the message.
“Seriously,” I explain, following Rex into the kitchen, “this is unprecedented. This could be the only nonaggressive Colin text the archives will ever see.”
Rex pulls out a tray of gingerbread that’s been warming in the oven.
“Oh my god,” I groan. “That smells so good; what are you trying to do to me?” Rex waggles his eyebrows and wraps his arms around me from behind, kissing my hair.
“Daniel,” he murmurs in my ear, making me shiver. “Say it again.”
“What?”
“That you’re really going to move in with me.”
I turn in his arms, marveling again, as always, at how big and solid he is, how warm.
“I’m really going to move in,” I say, grinning. “I just wish I wasn’t leaving tomorrow because I’ll have to wait until I get back to actually do it.”
Rex squeezes me, running his hand up and down my back. I breathe in his smell.
“I’m gonna miss you when I’m in Philly,” I say.
Rex lifts me easily, dropping me on the counter and barely missing the gingerbread. He steps between my knees and kisses me deeply.
“We have time,” he says. He’s looking at me so steadily. I can tell he doesn’t just mean time when I get back from Philly.
“Oh, I almost forgot. I have one more present for you,” I say. I jump down from the counter and grab it from the closet. Rex is back on the couch and I hand the gift to him, leaning over the back of the couch. He hefts it in his hand and gives me a strange look, then undoes the paper. Inside is my worn copy of The Secret History.
He looks at the book uncertainly, then opens it and looks at the text.
“I—Daniel,” he says regretfully. “No. It’s your favorite book; I don’t want to ruin it with my shit reading. The print’s so small and it’s long and—”
I shake my head, climbing onto the couch with him.
“I thought, if you want, I could read it to you.”
Rex looks sheepish.
“Yeah? I tried to order the audiobook after we met that night in the woods,” he says.
I can feel a tightening in my groin just thinking about that night. Rex’s powerful body pushing me against that tree. Then it resolves into a warm feeling in my stomach at the thought that Rex went to that much trouble when I thought he wasn’t even interested in me.
“I didn’t know what it was, but I thought any book you loved that much had to be worth reading. I only saw the author’s last name—only read it, I mean. I asked at the library, but they didn’t have it.”
I brush his hair back and smile at him.
“So, what do you think? I’ve never really read out loud to anyone before, so I don’t know if I’ll be any good at it, but….”
“You have such a sweet voice, baby,” Rex says, nuzzling my throat. “I think you’ll be good at it.” He kisses my ear. “Can we start now?” His voice is eager.
I nod, feeling almost drunk with contentment.
“One sec,” he says, and a minute later he’s back with a huge piece of gingerbread and some wine.
He sits back on the couch and I lean back against his chest, cradling the worn paperback. From this vantage point I can see the whole living room. The Christmas tree with our new ornaments gleaming among the green branches. The lights twinkling. The crackling fire and the snow falling softly outside, covering anything dirty or broken or sad with a thick blanket of clean, pure white.
It smells like wood smoke and cedar and Rex and gingerbread and, as I open my favorite book, adding the dusty smell of worn paper to the mix, I find I’m almost too choked up to read.
As if he senses how overwhelmed I feel, Rex tightens his arms around me.
“You okay?” he asks, his hand splaying across my chest. I nod, but can’t quite get the words out.
“It’s….” I look around us, then back at him. “It’s… perfect.”
“Too good to be true?” Rex asks, stroking my hair away from my face.
“No,” I tell him. “Just good.”
Epilogue
December
Ginger’s shop window looks like some kind of insane Victorian-era Chanukah circus exploded in a burst of needles and lace. Blue and white velvet ribbon tacked up with tattoo needles spells out “Tattoo Bitch” in scrolling cursive. The Bud Light can angels hover in the corners of the window and old tattoo machines are stacked on top of each other to make a metal tree. Everything is dusted with blue and silver glitter. It actually looks kind of awesome.
“Yaaaay!” Ginger calls as I step into the shop. “It’s Chanukah!”
“Well, technically, Chanukah’s over, but—”
“Shut up. Chanukah is never over. The oil will burn for eternity!”
Good thing no one’s in the shop because Ginger is clearly in giddy mode. I can’t help but grin into her hair as she launches herself at me for a hug.
“Okay, you can tell me everything while we go get the food.”
I stow my bags behind the counter and Ginger leads me back to the door, her elbow linked in mine.
“Everything about what?”
“Everything about how you look stupid happy.”
She squeezes my elbow in the crook of her arm and grins at me.
“Huh. So do you,” I tell her. “I hope we don’t get hit by a bus to even it all out.”
“Pff. On South Street? As if the traffic ever moves fast enough for that to kill us. Golden Empress?”
“Of course.”
As we get our takeout, Ginger tells me about going to Christopher’s parents’ house for dinner and how she made a mostly good impression until she accidentally laughed in his dad’s face when he said he loved Neil Diamond because she thought he was kidding.
I tell Ginger what Virginia said about the Temple job and about Rex asking me to move in with him. What I don’t tell her much about is that Rex and I talked a lot about the future last night. About our options. About how he’d feel leaving Holiday.
I don’t tell her that last night, when we went to bed, I put the key to Rex’s cabin—our cabin, now, I guess—on the bedside table so I could see it until I drifted off. Or that, when I fell asleep in Rex’s arms, his big hands all over me, I felt certain that he would be there in the morning.
That I wouldn’t wake up to find that the world had disappeared.
While we eat, Ginger plays Christmas music DJ, putting on everything from Scottish boy choirs to Scott Weiland’s Christmas album. I practically choke to death on a mouthful of sweet and sour chicken when I crack up at a YouTube parody of a Time Life CD commercial featuring A Very Eddie Vedder Christmas in which some genius has manipulated Pearl Jam songs into the form of Christmas carols. Finally, she puts on The Nightmare Before Christmas, which is her favorite Chanukah movie because she says it’s obvious that Jack Skellington—a skinny outsider who tries to gain access to Christmas by studying it—is a metaphor for Jewish kids growing up and trying to figure out what the big deal about Christmas is.
“So, you got the text from Colin, but you haven’t heard from him since then?” Ginger asks as Jack discovers the portal to Christmas Town.
“No.” I didn’t really expect to, either. Mostly, I think the only reason he sent me that text was because he was afraid that if I didn’t hear from him I might tell Brian and Sam what I saw at dad’s funeral.
“What did the guy look like? The one at the cemetery?”
“I didn’t get much of a look at him. Big. Like, Rex big. Maybe bigger. Dark hair, dark eyes. I don’t know, man. He looked kinda hot, I guess. Mostly I just noticed he was, like, crazy still. He didn’t react to anything that happened. Didn’t step in and fight. Didn’t try to help Colin when we were fighting. Rex pulled me off him, but this guy just stood there. It was weird, actually. He didn’t even say anything, but….”
�
�But?”
“But not like he didn’t care. I mean, when I walked in he was… holding Colin. Like, cradling him. Gently. Colin was sobbing and this guy definitely cared. It was more like… maybe he knew what was going on? Like, knew what was at stake for Colin and didn’t want to intrude or something. Fuck, I don’t know.”
“They care about each other, then, right? I mean for Colin to have this guy at your dad’s funeral—”
“Yeah, I know. I guess so? Ugh, I still can’t wrap my mind around it. I’m going to try and find Colin tomorrow and see if I can talk to him.”
Ginger flops upside down on the couch, her hair trailing the carpet, staring at her little Chanukah tree. It’s wrapped in white twinkle lights and hung with hundreds of stars cut out of blue paint chips from the hardware store. Every shade of blue you can imagine, from the palest baby blue to the deepest navy. It’s beautiful.
“Do you think Colin’s a top or a bottom?” she muses.
“Dude, stop! He’s my brother.”
“Well, I’m just saying. Do you think he likes—”
“Jesus, Ginge, seriously. No. I refuse.”
“Is it wrong that I think Colin’s kind of hot now that I know he’s gay? And tortured.”
“You are seriously fucked-up.” I think about it for a second. “Okay, I would totally think that about someone who wasn’t my brother.”
“Okay, but just for one sec—you saw this guy. Can’t you guess if he—”
“Presents! You want your presents?”
Ginger pouts, but it’s well established that presents are a subject change that she’ll allow.
We have a firm rule that we can’t spend money on gifts and an equally firm one that all gifts can be regifted, recycled, or trashed without any concession to sentimentality. Ginger nearly always gives me a tattoo, so that rule mostly applies to my gifts, which I always used to find by picking through stuff that people left at the bar. They usually weren’t great, but one banner year some girl left a red leather jacket and I’ll never be able to top it.