Calhoun curls under Audie’s arm in his Santa hat, drinks Grey Goose, and sulks.
He realizes Wills is filming them. “That’s Snoop Dogg to my Martha Stewart. Everyone’s here and it’s awesome. We’ve got everyone in the tub at once. Audie, hold up the Goldschlager. Audie fucking loves Goldschlager. And we have three Rutledges now — yeah Baylor, might as well change your goddamn last name. All of you wave, you all look exactly the same. This has been the best Christmas ever.”
Crispin kisses him.
“It even smells like Christmas?” Isa grins. “Because Wills got that giant-ass tree and we made gingerbread houses and ornaments.”
“And Wills got us like, stockings!” Amory smiles. “It was like, the best stocking I ever got. Ellis put socks in ours.”
“He so did.” Quinn rolls his eyes.
“I never got a real stocking?” Audie’s voice sounds high and sad and he hits the pen.
“You had such a weird childhood.” Henry takes the pen from him.
“No shit.” Audie slugs at the Goldschlager, then passes it to Baylor.
They decide to do Secret Santa before everyone gets too trashed. Wills insists they put on their ugly sweaters, so everyone throws them on over their pajamas. Whatever, no one feels like getting dressed for real. Calhoun certainly doesn’t. Almost everyone watches Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which Amory claims as his favorite movie, while Crispin and Audie cook up a mess of spaghetti. They all eat, then look under the tree. Obviously, no one’s bothered to. Because there’s a big problem.
Wills gapes. “Oh, fuck.”
“Fuck is right.” Henry stares.
Audie shakes his head. “This is bad.”
“Real bad,” agrees Calhoun.
Wills hands out the presents, and pretty much every single guy opens two bottles of liquor. The girls get jewelry and stuffies and candy. No one bought them liquor. The guys each got two bottles of whatever. They’re surrounded by an enormous bar.
Lucky nods his head. “There’s only one thing to do in this situation.”
“What?” Henry asks.
“Start fucking drinking. Pick a bottle, bitches. And we’ll last longer if we’re not in the hot tub because it dehydrates you. Liquor goes in the bedrooms or we won’t remember what belongs to who in the morning because our goal is not to remember shit. Clean up your bottles, pick a seat, pick a bottle, grab some water, and start drinking.”
“Decent advice coming from Lucky Jasper? Well, shit.” Amory starts singing ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ from Hamilton over the Christmas carols. Then everyone’s singing Hamilton, including Audie and Calhoun, who went and saw it when it came to Charlotte — twice. Hamilton seems so Christmas-y somehow, even if there’s nothing particularly Christmas-y about Hamilton to begin with. Even Baylor joins in. Calhoun catches her eye and smiles. Yeah. Baylor fits. They’ll make her fit. She’s another Rutledge, and she just wants to belong. It’s Christmas. And what’s Christmas for but opening the door to people who knock?
5
Audie
They settle themselves on the floor with their liquor. Calhoun’s got Grey Goose from Lucky; Audie’s drinking the Goldschlager Baylor bought him. Isa stretches out with her head on his lap and shares Calhoun’s liquor, even though Audie offers her some of his. “Yours tastes like fruitcake or something, Audie, no way,” she tells him.
“Okay.” Baylor settles on the floor nearby. “We didn’t do it last night. Never Have I Ever. Let’s do it. We’ve gotta use this liquor somehow.”
They go through the usual. Never have I ever had sex in a car. Never have I ever had sex outside. Never have I ever had sex in my parents’ bed. Never have I ever been interrupted while getting myself off (this provokes plenty of laughter). Never have I ever had phone sex. Audie laughs at that one. “We should take two shots.”
Calhoun turns bright red.
Everyone cracks up.
They’re pretty well smashed and pretty well stoned.
“Drink if you’ve had sex with someone of the same gender!” shouts Quinn. Everyone throws down a shot except Isa, Baylor, Lucky, and Thor — including Delia. Audie’s more shocked all the girls aren’t drinking.
“What? Is someone, in this room, seriously going to slut-shame me over this?!”
“Bi-girlfriend has a point.” Wills leans over the glass-topped coffee table and high-fives her, showering Calhoun in fake snow.
“Who was it?!” Isa shoves her.
“Not telling.”
“Tell.”
“Not telling.”
“Tell.”
“Not here, not now, not ever.”
“NEVER HAVE I EVER,” Baylor yells over the general din, “hooked up with Bastian McCarthy.”
Everyone looks around to see who drinks. Quinn and Delia and Isa, of course. But also Henry and fucking Calhoun. The room erupts. Audie vaguely hears Wills yelling at Henry. He and Quinn, at the same time, shout, “You hooked up with Bastian?!”
“Um, yeah?” Calhoun slugs back some more vodka.
“Oh. My. God. That’s why you hate him so much.” It all clicks into place.
“We were going to start going out!” Calhoun’s actually yelling. “I was in love with him! Then all of a sudden he said I was too sweet and he’d break my heart and he couldn’t go out with me! He said he wasn’t good enough and I begged but he said no and he wouldn’t talk to me after that!”
Audie stares. “You’re fucking with me.”
“Oh my god. You hooked up with Bastian before you hooked up with me!” Quinn shoves him. “I thought I was your first, except for sex!”
“Well, you were!” Calhoun takes a big drink. “Mostly?”
“Oh my god, Calhoun Chatterton, you fucking lied to me!”
Audie still can’t wrap his mind around this. “You hate my best friend because you were in love with him?!”
“Um, yes?” Calhoun’s eyebrows knit up.
“Oh my god, Calhoun! You were what, sixteen?! You’re twenty-two. You hate my best friend over a high school fuck-up?! After everything he’s done for me, you hate him for that?!”
“It was really bad!”
“Yeah, and he was the only one there to listen to me when they shot my goddamn dog! You think that might outweigh some teenage fling? You know Bastian used to beat up kids for me in school, and when he saw me again at USC that first day, he cried because he wasn’t there to do it in high school. He cried because he wasn’t there to help me.”
Calhoun shifts uncomfortably.
“Baylor’ll tell you what a good friend he was in college. So if that’s your real problem with him, get over it. Now. And for the record? Bastian never said a word to me about it. That’s how fucking loyal he is. He could have blabbed to me that he hooked up with you, and he never did.”
Calhoun opens his mouth, shuts it, opens it again, and shuts it.
Baylor says something about Quinn getting kink-shamed, and he stomps out.
“Oh Jesus Christ, are we going to have a repeat of that one Thanksgiving a few years ago?” Henry throws down more liquor. “Where we teased Quinn about having a forty-year-old sugar daddy who probably spanked him until he got pissed and drove home drunk all the way to Savannah? Delia, get his keys and make sure you fucking keep them this time.”
“How the hell should I know where his keys are?!”
“And Bastard McCarthy ruins something else, and he’s not even here.” Calhoun drinks some more Grey Goose.
“Calhoun.” Audie tries to touch him. He swats Audie away. Everyone keeps talking. “No, seriously, Calhoun. Listen to me. I know you got your feelings hurt and I’m deeply sorry for that. Bastian certainly owes you an apology. But to hate him the way you do — you’re always the one telling me not to carry things around this way.”
“You like him better than me!” Audie’s never seen Calhoun so angry. “If you had to pick, you’d pick him.”
“Calhoun, love isn’t about picking. When you love somethi
ng you love it with everything. You can’t make it into a quantity. If you can it’s not really love and you know it.”
“So you love him the same as me.” Calhoun’s folded his arms and clenched his teeth.
“I love you both differently and for different reasons and the comparison is stupid. So stop being jealous. That’s what this always has been. You’re just jealous. Drop it.” Audie looks right at him. “It’s Christmas. Christmas is a time for forgiving people. Forgive him.”
Calhoun’s face starts to crumble. “But it’s so hard!”
“Don’t care.”
“I was so hurt!”
“Don’t care.”
“It was so awful!”
“I’m sure it was. And it’s over.”
Calhoun looks like he wants to cry. He finally lets Audie hug him. And shockingly, Baylor comes close. “He told me about it.” Her voice is quiet. “He said it was one of the things he regretted the most. He said he felt like he had to, and he hated it because he really liked you a lot, and he knew he fucked up everything and he didn’t want to fuck you up, too.” She looks at Audie. “You know how much Bastian hates himself. He was so drunk when he told me, I don’t think he would have told me otherwise. He made me swear to never tell Audie, so sorry, breaking that confidence right now, but it seems like the right thing to do. Calhoun, I never, ever, ever thought you would drink. I thought you’d keep it a secret like you always had. I’m so sorry.”
Calhoun looks up. “Thank you for telling me.”
“It seemed like the right thing to do. It seems like Bastian would want me to tell you right now.”
Audie nods. “He would. I don’t think you made a mistake, Baylor.”
Wills’s voice cuts through everything. “So it’s Christmas, and we’re all pissed, and we’re sitting here talking about how much some of us hate some guy.”
“Who by the way had some really bad stuff happen to him, and y’all should lay off.” Isa glares at them.
“Like what?” Henry asks.
“I promised I wouldn’t tell and I won’t. Audie knows and he won’t tell either.”
“What?” Calhoun looks at Audie.
“Promise is a promise.” Audie shakes his head.
“You are all making Christmas suck!” Wills finally yells. “You’re just sitting here gossiping about fucking Bastian?! God. What, did we all turn the corner into drunk assholes or something? It was so, so wonderful. Everyone wore Santa hats and made ornaments and we even sung Hamilton —”
Crispin hugs him. “I think you need to go to bed, love.”
“I don’t need to go to bed! I want my fucking Christmas back!”
Audie suddenly feels a kind of sagging. “I got a real stocking. I never got a real stocking.”
“Wills — we’re all kinda drunk, and —” Henry’s reddening.
Baylor starts to cry. “Fuck this. It is motherfucking Christmas. This is the best Christmas party I have ever been to and you are the best group of friends I have ever seen and I was like, halfway thinking I might get to actually be friends with y’all too and I was joking. I swear to god I didn’t mean to start anything. I’m so fucking sorry. I guess that’s all I can say. Except we need to cleanse some shit.”
Something shifts. There’s some kind of understanding, some kind of decision made without words. “QUINN! GET UP HERE!” Wills yells. He starts unstringing the lights on the Christmas tree, what the fuck? Crispin begins helping. Baylor and Lucky take off ornaments.
“What the fuck is going on?” Henry stares at them.
“I’M NOT FUCKING AROUND, QUINN! BAYLOR’S STUPID SORRY AND WE NEED YOUR GODDAMN HELP!”
Audie hits his pen. “What’re they doing?”
Calhoun gets up without a word to him.
“I said, what the fuck is —”
“Brother.” Wills smiles. “What do you do at the end of a Christmas party?”
Henry grins. “You burn the Christmas tree.”
Quinn stomps up. “What?” He looks like he’s been crying. Delia and Amory are with him.
“Help us get this tree down to the beach.”
He grins back at Henry. “We’re gonna burn that motherfucker down, aren’t we?”
“We have to save Christmas,” Wills says. “Everything sucked and the only way to make it unsuck is some grand, insane gesture that —”
“We’re gonna give this tree a Viking funeral.” Lucky stands up as he and Thor manage to heave it out of the metal thing holding it up. Audie still sits on the floor, realizes he’s in the direct path of said tree, and scrambles up. Holy shit. These people are serious. They’re going to burn down a motherfucking Christmas tree.
Audie can get behind this.
Audie can more than get behind this.
Calhoun doesn’t hate Bastian.
Baylor made him feel better. He doesn’t hate Baylor.
All the people he loves, save the Chatterton family, are in one place.
He’s wearing a Santa hat Wills made him, holding a bottle of liquor his friend gave him, with another bottle and a stocking waiting. He made ornaments and a gingerbread house. People love him and he loves them. He shrugs into his coat and takes Calhoun’s hand, setting his liquor carefully on the end table — he’s drunk enough anyway — reaches back to his second grade class Christmas pageant, and starts singing “O Christmas Tree,” probably horribly off-key, behind the Jaspers dragging the enormous Douglas Fir. Everyone immediately joins in. But no one knows another verse, so Quinn begins, equally off-key “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Audie tucks Baylor’s hand in one pocket and Calhoun’s in the other. He doesn’t want them cold. Calhoun has Isa’s hand. They drag the tree over the dune, where it makes a satisfying swishing sound. They join in “Jingle Bells” as Henry goes to get stuff to light the tree up. No one can sing except Wills, Henry, Amory, and Calhoun, sort of. It’s glorious to hear everyone belt out these songs with everything they have, unselfconsciously, knowing they’re among friends, among people who love them and won’t judge them and won’t care that they can’t carry a tune in a bucket — that they’re among people who are grateful to have their voice as part of the off-key harmony.
This is Christmas. All the voices coming together to form this beautiful, off-key harmony. Audie can love this. Audie can love this way of loving one another.
As they finish “Frosty the Snowman,” Henry sprinkles kerosene on the tree. “I wish we had marshmallows and sticks!” Calhoun says. He hugs himself in the cold. Audie holds him and Baylor. Delia cuddles Isa.
“Wills, you have to make a speech!” Lucky-or-Thor yells. Probably Lucky.
Wills seems to think for a bit. “I LOVE YOU ALL AND IT’S CHRISTMAS AND THAT’S WHAT CHRISTMAS FUCKING MEANS!”
Audie hugs Calhoun and Baylor tight.
Wills lights that fucker up.
It catches with a whoosh, and flares, then slowly dies to a crackling that still drives them back with its heat. They stand around and grin at each other and hug all around and pound each other on the back. They sing Christmas carols. They pass Audie’s pen. It’s amazing and wonderful and it’s Christmas, oh my god, it’s actually Christmas, all the people he loves and a roaring fire and carols and happiness and joy and the stars twinkling above them.
Until the cops show up.
“What d’you kids think you’re doing?” a voice demands.
Ah, fuck. Audie’s heard that voice before, or one like it. He’s gonna have to handle it.
“We’re closing down a Christmas party, officer.” He says it politely, like it’s the most normal thing in the world — and wonders who the fuck has the pen right now.
“Y’all’re all violating Tybee noise ordinances and I suspect you’re all intoxicated. All y’all walk a straight line.” He toes one in the sand.
They all try and fail.
Audie and Amory have to deal with the cops. They bargain and plea and finally come up with a compromise. Half of them get disorderly conducts an
d public intoxications. The other half get off free. They can pick. Audie and Amory decide to take them. They still need four more.
Baylor immediately steps away from Calhoun. “I am the drunkest person here by at least a bottle of vodka.”
She has some argument with Quinn and Delia; they refuse to let Quin take it and finally Delia wins. Crispin says he’ll do it and hands a very freaked out Wills to Henry. Isa grins. “I’m an artist. They expect me to do weird shit.” She walks up to the officers with the others.
Luckily there are no cuffs involved, but there’s paperwork and IDs and citations and all that bullshit. After the cops leave, Wills and Henry push the tree out to sea. They solemnly, silently watch it go, still burning with the kerosene.
Audie finally speaks. “That was the best Christmas party ever. And I have to show up at court because of it.”
“I hope y’all let me hang out again.” Baylor leans on Audie. Audie squeezes her hand and Quinn hugs her.
“Oh, Tannenbaum, or whateverthefuck.” Henry nods. “Oh, Tannenbaum.”
They tramp back to the house and go down to their rooms. Audie hears Isa talking to Henry through the door. Good for them.
He shuts the door behind him and Calhoun. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Calhoun smiles a little.
“You wanna get the smoke out of our hair?”
“Yeah.”
Audie turns on the shower, and they strip. He runs his hands down Calhoun’s long, lean sides. “How did you get so gorgeous?” He kisses his boyfriend’s neck.
“I look at you and think the same thing.”
“Guess we just got lucky.”
“Guess we did.”
They stand together under the double showerhead. The water courses down over Audie, plastering his curls to his head. He washes Calhoun’s long hair and conditions it; Calhoun does the same to his, and they wash each other, Calhoun’s delicate fingers light and gentle over Audie’s body, skimming him, touching him all over. He’s serious about it, serious about the job of getting Audie clean. Audie doesn’t give a fuck. He spreads body wash over his hands and runs them over Calhoun, stroking them over his lean muscle, loving his lanky body.
Learning to Love Christmas: Audie and Calhoun 3 (Low Country Lovers) Page 7