Glass Tidings

by Amy Jo Cousins

  “Did you guys have an open relationship?”

  “I didn’t ask. He didn’t tell.”

  “But you assume . . .”

  His hand was back in Eddie’s hair, fingertips stroking Eddie’s neck because he needed to. “That he was fucking other people? Yeah.”

  “Ouch.”

  Gray shrugged. “I didn’t tell him not to.”

  “He should’ve asked. Manners.”

  Gray liked it when Eddie got uptight about weird ideas of honor and protocol. It balanced out what Gray saw as Eddie’s otherwise . . . flexible ethics. “Do you like open relationships?”

  “I don’t do relationships,” Eddie said, shaking his head.

  “But if you did.”

  Eddie didn’t answer him for another moment, and the silence made the question’s weight heavier than Gray had meant it.

  Teasing was hard when everything he said rumbled with undertones of need no matter how hard he tried to conceal it.

  “If I was gonna be with someone, no. I wouldn’t share.” Eddie’s voice was fierce. He didn’t look at Gray. “What’s mine is mine.”

  Gray clenched his teeth on the words that wanted to spill out.

  I’d be yours. Just yours.

  His fingers tightened on Eddie’s shoulder though, and he knew the younger man could feel it.

  “So, if your dad was twenty-five years older than your mom, you’re totally comfortable with the idea of being with a younger man,” he said, satisfaction swelling in his voice.

  Gray recognized a tension breaker when he heard one. He tugged at Eddie’s hair for a moment and then let go. “Maybe I want to be the younger man.”

  Eddie didn’t hesitate before shaking his head. “Nah. No way. You’ve got that silver fox thing going on like whoa.”

  “Silver fox?” Gray tried to squash the outrage.

  Eddie’s laugh told him he’d failed. Before Gray could even protest, Eddie had climbed onto the couch and was kneeling next to him, the tips of his fingers stroking through the hair at Gray’s temples that had gone gray in his thirties.

  Jesus.

  Gray could smell him, the fire and chemical scent of the temporary garage workshop clung to Eddie’s clothes. Between the blowtorch and the evenings of Eddie sitting at his feet in front of the fire, Gray would always associate flame with this man who’d sparked into his life and burned his heart down.

  Eddie’s fingertips pushed deeper into Gray’s hair, digging into his skull and drawing tingling lines across his scalp. His eyes closed, Gray leaned into Eddie’s hands, letting those strong fingers carry the weight of his tired head.

  Gray knew their weird arrangement meant he was supposed to leave Eddie downstairs and go up to bed without him, or to wait and follow on his own if Eddie went up first. To lie awake, restless and alone in his bed until Eddie cracked open his door and slipped through and into his bed.

  But when Eddie stood up a long while later as if to go to bed, Gray couldn’t let go of him. Stood up with him, wrapped his hands around Eddie’s wrists, and leaned in close. The ends of Eddie’s hair tickled Gray’s check as he pressed his face to the side of Eddie’s neck.

  “Just come,” he murmured. Eddie’s skin shivered under his mouth. “With me.”

  And when he laced his fingers with Eddie’s and led him from the room, pausing only to close the fireplace’s glass doors, Eddie came with him without a word.

  Now that Eddie knew Gray’s story, the ghost that was haunting Gray’s house stopped hovering in the corners and came right out to sit on the sofa and hang out. Having a name to put to the feeling of being in someone else’s space made it easy to spot the holes in Gray’s life that he’d worked around until they were bricked over caves of grief and unhappiness.

  Eddie had never wanted an exorcism so badly.

  Obsessing about Brady’s ghost kept him entertained for a few days.

  Brady would for sure be the Ghost of Christmas Past. Wonder if that makes me the Ghost of Christmas Present after I’m gone?

  But the idea of being gone was starting to make his stomach twist, so he stopped imagining himself in the role, although not before he’d grilled Gray some about the book.

  “Do you have A Christmas Carol?” he asked one night in the library.

  Gray looked up from his book. “By Dickens?”

  Eddie wasn’t about to confess that he mostly knew the story from the Muppets version. He nodded, keeping it casual. “Yeah. Great sci-fi time travel story, right?”

  “Interesting way to look at it. And maybe. I haven’t read it in forever, but it might be in the upstairs hallway. That’s where the nineteenth-century literature is. There’s probably a collected works of Dickens up there somewhere. Really big book.”

  Eddie rolled his eyes. Oh, great. Literature. Excellent.

  “I can feel the enthusiasm from here,” Gray drawled, closing his book on his finger to mark his page. “It’s actually really funny, if I remember correctly.”

  “It’s so funny you haven’t read it in a hundred years.”

  Gray gave him a look. “Sarcasm and pedantry suit you.”

  “I just wanted to read about the ghosts,” Eddie said, not really sure what that last word meant and determined to drag the conversation back to his initial idea. “Who do you think would be your Ghost of Christmas Past?”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “Anyone from your past who’d been kind of shitty and selfish and would come back to warn you to be better?” Which hadn’t come out quite right, because Gray wasn’t shitty and selfish, but Eddie wanted him to say that Brady had been. He didn’t know why he wanted that so much, but he needed to hear it. Needed to know that Gray wasn’t sitting here pining over some dude who’d fucked him and fucked him over.

  And maybe Eddie was hoping for some kind of comparison to take place naturally in Gray’s brain as he sat there on the couch next to a guy who might not be society’s idea of an upstanding individual, but who was surely better than a douche bag who’d run off to the bright lights, big city at the last minute, right?

  Right?

  Gray was silent, lost in his own thoughts as Eddie squirmed, crossing his arms and then his legs, then uncrossing them and trying to look as if he didn’t care about the answer to his question at all.

  “I don’t know,” Gray finally repeated, still staring off into the distance as if the windows weren’t black and shiny with their reflections against the night. “Maybe my dad, come back to remind me not to be so . . .” Gray circled his hand in the air, encompassing the house. “So hermit in my castle. My dad was quiet and spent a lot of time by himself, but he still found someone to spend his life with. Eventually.”

  Eddie swallowed his sigh. Not even a nibble at the asshole ex as the Ghost of Christmas Past.

  When he so obviously is the ghost here. Duh.

  Instead of arguing though, he got off the couch and stomped up the stairs to the bookcases in the hallway. If Gray still carried a torch for his ex, it was none of Eddie’s business. A bed, a roof, some cash, and decent company were more than Eddie had the right to expect in any case.

  Hoping to play Master Therapist and heal Gray of his broken heart was just giving in to his hopeless romantic side.

  “I think I need to go lift some weights before I keep reading,” Eddie complained an hour later. He dropped the book until it rested on his chest, a heavy weight on his sternum. “Ow.”

  Gray’s grandma had owned some heavy-ass books. They even had pictures in them, which had made him laugh, because that was kind of a kid thing. But he liked them anyway, the thick black lines of the old-fashioned drawings radiating emotions like a spinning disco ball. Tension, fear, happiness. It was all there in the story and in the pictures scattered through the pages.

  “I like the smell of old books,” Gray said, wistfulness lacing his voice.

  “I like reading without needing wrist braces. Jesus.” He set the thick book aside and wiggled his arms back and f
orth to shake out the ache in his muscles.

  “Well, I guess we’re lucky there are old books for me and ebooks for you,” Gray said lightly, nudging Eddie’s shoulder with his knee. “Dickens is long out of copyright. Bet you can download it for free.”

  Eddie ignored Gray’s suggestion and changed the subject by turning his head and biting Gray’s thigh. Even though that was very much against the rules.

  Remembering the point of those rules was getting harder and harder with each passing day. It had had something to do with not getting attached, with keeping some kind of lid on the playing-house thing he had going on here. Cooking and reading in front of the fire were one thing. Two things. Whatever.

  Pretending to be the live-in boyfriend was inviting way too much trouble.

  Even if most of the time he just wanted to drape himself over Gray’s body and reel him in like a tractor beam.

  But tonight, he couldn’t decide which he wanted more: Gray’s attention or his grandma’s book. The words were old-fashioned, but they made him laugh because Dickens could be a sarcastic little shit when he wanted too. He got, like, swoopy and smushy with the holiday spirit thing too, and that was pretty great because it felt like Eddie was being given permission to keep bringing home the decorations and to want to touch all of Gray’s old things all the time. To pretend like they belonged to Eddie. Like he was the one who had family things going back years and years, and all the memories those family things tugged along through the years with them.

  Those thoughts were so fucking sappy Eddie had to up his game from thigh-biting to lap-crawling and dick-grinding, just to keep Gray from being able to read his thoughts.

  Danger, Will Robinson, danger! Deflector shields at 50%.

  “Young man, I saw you outside. What are you thinking?”

  Mrs. Wasserman stood opposite him on the other side of the counter, hands on her hips in her puffy down coat. Her pink mouth was pursed and her eyebrow pinched together as she glared at him.

  Eddie, who hadn’t been scolded like that since grammar school, held up his hands like a stick-up victim.

  “I have no idea. Probably nothing good.”

  That got a short laugh and the beginnings of a smile, which made him feel less like he was about to take incoming fire.

  “You are in so much trouble.”

  Spoke too soon.

  “I saw you outside in that . . . that . . . whatever it is, it’s not a winter coat. It’s freezing out! What would your mother say?”

  Years of experience let Eddie grasp the best answer in a flash. He was cold, after all. He let the tiniest bit of the drawl he always picked up in Texas every winter slip into his voice.

  Drawls made you sound extra sincere. Fact.

  “My parents aren’t with us any longer, ma’am.” More of a guess than a certainty, for sure, but since no one could argue differently . . . “But I imagine my mom would skin me alive if she saw me running around like this.”

  Like clockwork, Mrs. Wasserman’s mouth softened and her shoulders dropped.

  Seriously, if Eddie could get paid for predicting people’s emotional response, he’d be a millionaire.

  “I bet she would.”

  Time for the coup de grâce.

  “That’s why I’m saving up to buy one first thing,” he said with a cheerful smile, bending down to lift another box of restock to the counter before starting to unpack it.

  Look at what a hard worker I am. Wouldn’t you want someone to be nice to your boy if he were in a jam like this?

  Eddie never sold anybody a damn thing.

  “Saving up? Oh for crying out loud. I helped my boy clear out his old winter stuff last month and I’ve been procrastinating taking it in to the thrift store. What size are you?”

  “A medium.” Usually a small, actually, but if all she had was a large coat, he’d manage. No sense risking her deciding it was two sizes too big before he had a chance to check it out. “But I really couldn’t—”

  “Nonsense. You’d be saving me hauling it all the way across town,” Mrs. W. said, finishing with a firm harrumph that said he could shut up now.

  He never wanted anyone to regret doing something he’d encouraged, directly or more subtly, them to do, so he protested a few more times, sincerely, before accepting Mrs. W.’s offer.

  “Thank you, ma’am.” He really needed to watch it with that drawl. His natural inclination toward mimicry sometimes took a turn to mockery, which was bad. Nobody wanted to feel like they, or their kind gestures, were being made fun of.

  “What time are you working until today?”

  “Three thirty.” He was off when the high school girl Gray employed showed up. Eddie was happy to stick around longer, but Gray had already sold out of most of Eddie’s first two batches of ornaments and had encouraged Eddie to put in the hours in his workshop instead of the store. Eddie enjoyed watching his neat stack of cash grow in the dresser drawer where he kept it, so studio time was totally welcome.

  “I’ll be back before then,” Mrs. W. said, waving off his protest that she could bring the coat by anytime, and then departed the store.

  Eddie smiled and waved, and then caught sight of the small display tree directly opposite the counter and frowned.

  That tree.

  The one nearly denuded of glass ball and icicle ornaments, but still bearing a sign saying, Meet the Artist on Weekend Afternoons!

  The fact that Gray had set up that tree probably had more than a little bit to do with the run on art glass at the Christmas Shoppe.

  Eddie wasn’t sure how he felt about someone doing something so clearly for his benefit that wasn’t Eddie’s idea first. That felt suspiciously like letting someone else take care of him, and Bertie was only the most recent burn that had him swearing never again when it came to that kind of thing.

  It had occurred to Eddie that, with one week to go until Christmas, maybe he ought to apply a little don’t shit where you eat to this weird fucking situation he had going on with Gray. Maybe putting the brakes on some of Gray’s nicer urges was a task he shouldn’t have let slide.

  Because Gray had helpfulness coming out the ass. Between the spare room and the job, the advance for his safety glasses, the low seller’s percentage Gray insisted on keeping, even Eddie was starting to feel a little . . . whatever. Like things were so far out of whack between the two of them that he only felt like half a person next to Gray.

  Guilty.

  Eddie didn’t do guilt.

  If people liked giving him things, great. He didn’t ask for them, and giving made some people feel good. So why shouldn’t he let people know he didn’t have a winter coat?

  And if Eddie was particularly good at recognizing who enjoyed giving, or was a soft touch who just couldn’t stand to see someone else in need, well, that was just a fine match of skills to circumstances, yeah?

  It wasn’t like he robbed people. Or even asked them for things. Christ, he’d seen grifters manipulate the cash out of a poor, single mom’s wallet, and Eddie had never done anything like that. That was bad juju.

  And he gave stuff away all the time too, didn’t he? Shit. When he finally got down to Texas, he’d end up giving Mrs. W’s kid’s coat to someone who was heading north. Or selling it for a couple of bucks at a secondhand clothes store, which was basically the same as giving it away. Someone would end up getting a really nice coat for, like, fifteen dollars.

  So why was he kind of hoping Gray would be out of the shop, running an errand or something, when Mrs. W. returned?

  “Fuck it,” he muttered to himself as he rearranged the Christmas village houses for the hundredth time, moving his latest favorite to the middle of the display. A multicolored house with decoration like lace on the roof’s edge and around the windows. There was a tiny switch at the base in the back that lit up candles in the house’s windows when you flipped it. Eddie could picture those tiny lights shining in a cold, winter night. “It’s just a coat.”

  The little emo s
hit with the eyeliner and black fingernails slouched back into the shop shortly after Mrs. Wasserman left, and Eddie scowled at him again as the kid lingered over the display of expensive German ornaments, hands pushed deep in his hoodie pockets.

  The teen left before Gray headed out to grab sandwiches at the shop down the street that gave him a local business owner’s discount, not even needing to ask for Eddie’s order—meatball sub, extra cheese—because Eddie had fallen in love with the first-ever sandwich Gray had brought back for him.

  Jesus. He’d never had a meatball sandwich like that: the balls so big they destroyed the bread it arrived on, thick, dripping provolone melting out the ends.

  Balls so big, his brain repeated, chuckling.

  Balls were never not entertaining.

  They ate lunch late, at two, and normally the shop was empty-ish, but the kid was there again, lurking in the background as Eddie finished checking out Mrs. Wasserman for the second time that day. Gray had stepped out to the bakery to buy some cookies he swore were enchanted, they were so good. Last week’s subtle suggestion to Mrs. W. that the Ninja Turtles might not be around next year must have sunk in, because she’d come back with her son’s pristine winter coat and seemed determined to clear out their stock, bringing one of each turtle to the front counter in a shopping basket.

  She chattered at him as he rang up and tissue-wrapped each ornament, asking him more questions about where he was from and how long he’d be staying in town, all of which Eddie dodged answering, again, because who the hell knew what was going on in his life right now? And all the time that kid lurked at the back of the store, dark eyes in a pale face darting over at Eddie every few seconds, totally aware that he was being watched.