Simon cleared his throat. “It might add a touch of…” Extreme awkwardness. “Fun?”
“Definitely.” Garen grabbed the biggest mistletoe garland, bunched with painted-snow pine needles and cones. “Something for guests to kiss under at our party.”
Simon took the mistletoe so Garen could push his wheelchair over the dirt path toward the till. He ran his fingers over the white berries, his mind blending memories and fantasies of their mouths melding in passion. He was strong enough now to stand on his own beneath this mistletoe, strong enough to hold Garen in his arms while they kissed.
He was strong enough now to do a lot of things.
Simon gave a sigh of relief. Despite their outing’s inauspicious beginnings, at least it had ended on a harmonious note. Maybe tonight they could hang this mistletoe together and—
The thought screeched to a halt as he rewound Garen’s last words in his head. “Wait, what party?”
Chapter 13
17 Days Until Christmas
“Hold that side tight so it stays level.” Garen stuck a drawing pin into the top left corner of the six-foot-wide strip of wallpaper, then two more along the top edge.
“Are we done decorating after this?” Simon asked, resting his shoulder against the living room wall.
“Almost.” Garen decided not to mention that Christmas decorations were usually an ongoing project that didn’t stop until midnight on Christmas Eve.
He had to keep Simon busy somehow. The doctors had given him a final recommendation against flying to Greece, and Simon had convinced his family to go without him. So it was up to Garen to make sure his friend had a happy holiday and even happier birthday.
Fortunately, making merry was pretty much Garen’s reason for living.
He finished fastening the paper to the wall, then stepped down off the stepladder to admire his work.
Simon stared at their temporary two-dimensional fireplace. “That’s…really something.”
“Makes the room feel cozy and warm, don’t you think?”
“If you say so.” Simon gestured to the “brick” portion extending to the ceiling. “Now Santa will have a chimney for delivering our toys.”
“And we’ll have a place to hang our stockings.”
“I haven’t got my stocking. I could ask my parents to send it to me.”
“No need.” Garen walked past five open boxes of decorations—which he’d pushed against the wall so they wouldn’t become a tripping hazard—before finding the right one. He pulled out his own vintage 1990s red-and-white zigzag-striped stocking, along with a brand-new blue-and-white one he’d ordered online.
Simon cocked his head. “A Greek flag Christmas stocking?”
“It’s no substitute for traveling there, but maybe it’ll help you feel a wee bit better about freezing your arse off in Glasgow.”
Leaning on his walking frame, Simon took the stocking. “It’s not empty.”
“Funny, that.”
Simon gave him the side-eye, but seemed to suppress a smile as he made his way to sit on the couch, his steps with the frame already faster and smoother than when he’d come home three days ago.
He reached into the stocking and pulled out his early Christmas gift. “Reindeer socks?”
“Not just any reindeer socks. The soles are extra grippy, to stop you slipping on the floor.”
Simon laid them out on his thighs, with the antlers, red nose, and googly eyes pointing up. “They’re staring at me.”
“I hope they’re warm enough. I wanted to get you big fuzzy reindeer slippers like my own.” He held up one foot, displaying the brown furry face. “But considering I can barely avoid tripping in them, I figured they’d be dangerous.”
“These are great, ta. Sorry, I’ve not got you anything yet.”
“You’re here. That’s enough.” Ooft, that was a bit sappy, even for the Christmas season. Garen affixed his own stocking to the fake mantel with a drawing pin. “You could’ve gone back to Liverpool to recover. The fact you didn’t means you now find me tolerable, and that’s a gift in itself.”
Simon stared at the reindeer socks, fingering their felt antlers. “You thought I found you intolerable before?”
“I don’t know.” Garen straightened his stocking, then angled it again, just for something to do. “I felt very edgy around you at the beginning, like I was being judged for my myriad failings.”
“And now?”
“And now I don’t feel that way.”
“Then maybe this illness has made me less of a prick. Slightly.”
“Or it’s made me less of a bam,” Garen said. “Slightly.” He held up his hands. “Not that that makes it worth it. I’d rather we were still bickering if it meant you never had to suffer through this.”
“No. Listen.” Simon clutched the reindeer socks in his fist. “The shit I’ve been through this last month…I need to believe it was all for a reason, even if that reason is just you and me getting on better.”
Garen’s heart twisted, though he admired Simon’s ability to console himself by finding meaning in his hardship. “I wish I could say I understood, but I’ve not walked in anything like your shoes.”
“I know.” Simon offered that devastating smirk. “That’s why I’m telling you.”
“Good. The more of that, the better.” Garen took Simon’s Christmas stocking, then secured it to the “fireplace” beside his own. Finally he stepped back and examined the living room as a whole. “Something’s missing.”
“Lad, every square foot of this flat is decorated. Even the toilet roll plays a medley of Christmas carols when you tear off a sheet.”
“Until you took out the musical thingamie and hid it somewhere—a move I totally respect, by the way.” Garen went to each of the half-full boxes of decorations, hoping for an idea. “The problem is, there’s no theme in this flat. It’s just a bunch of stuff.”
“Since when do you care about themes?”
“Since meeting you, I guess.” At the end of the row was a closed box containing decorations for a different holiday. “Wait.” Garen yanked open the box and drew out a cardboard skeleton. “We missed Halloween because of the flu.” He shook the skeleton at Simon, making it dance. “We could do a Halloween-themed Christmas!”
“A what, now?”
Garen went to the corner and took hold of the lighted garland hanging there. “We could put fake spider webs on this. And the tree, we could strip the needles off the branches on one side to make it look half-dead.”
Simon gawped at him like he’d sprouted a second nose. “Are you mad? We’ve put in too much work to redo it all. Save this idea for next year.”
“Next year it won’t matter, because I won’t have missed Halloween.” Garen turned to the fireplace, his brain buzzing with ideas. “I could cut a wee hole in the space above the fire and put this skeleton through, make it look like a dead Santa is coming down the chimney.”
“Whoa, whoa.” Simon patted the air, palms down. “Dial it back, okay? Let me think for a second.”
Right. Garen took a deep breath, then let it out. Much as he wanted to distract Simon from his lack of Mediterranean holiday, going over the top would only annoy him.
Simon drummed his fingers on the arm of the couch. “What if we made just one Halloween-Christmas hybrid decoration? Something small but fun.”
“Like what?”
“Like…a haunted gingerbread house?”
“Ohhhh.” Garen suppressed the urge to tackle-hug him. “That’s genius.” His mind started zooming again. “We’ll do a biscuit-crumb graveyard in front of the house, with a gingerbread tombstone for every guest at our party. Each person can eat their tombstone as an act of defiance against their own mortality.”
Simon gave him that you’re-a-pure-daftie look. “I was thinking marzipan ghosts, but that’s sound too. I’ll order the supplies, and we’ll put it together next week.”
“Thank you.” Garen went over and sat beside him on th
e couch, taking care not to crowd too close. “My favorite part of Christmas growing up was our family doing projects together. So this haunted gingerbread house will be like that for us.” He risked sounding sappy again. “We’re like a mini-family now, at least for Christmas.”
Simon smiled. “Except we’ll not be forced to do any family things we don’t want to do.”
“Exactly,” Garen said. “Like pretending to enjoy my dad’s fruitcake.”
“Or listening to my cousins’ rubbish children’s choir.”
“Or watching my teenage stepbrothers aggressively ignore my mum.”
“Or humoring me great aunties when they ask which lucky young lady I’m gonna marry.”
“I thought you were out to your local family,” Garen said.
“I am, but the older ones still think I’m going through a phase.”
As they laughed together, their eyes met, and Garen felt a shivery heat sweep up the back of his neck.
He jerked his gaze to the floor. It had felt safe to flirt with Simon in hospital, where they couldn’t act on it, but now that they were home together, what was stopping them? Only their own self-control, a force that seemed to weaken every day, at least on Garen’s part. All he could think about was Simon’s hands and how much he wanted them against his skin and in his hair, no matter how unsteady they were.
Simon cleared his throat, then pointed to the coffee table, where Garen’s wooden bear statue now wore a tiny Santa hat. “I’ve always meant to ask, what’s with the bear?”
Garen exhaled, relieved to be steered back to reality. “My sister gave it to me. It’s the national animal of Russia.”
“That makes sense. Greece’s national animal is the dolphin.”
“Oh, cool. Dolphins are really…” Garen’s imagination snagged on an image of Simon swimming naked in the ocean. “…cool.”
Simon examined the Christmas tree across the room, seemingly oblivious to Garen’s desire to jump into his lap. “One of my family’s traditions is that after the star goes on, we’re done decorating.”
Garen smirked. “Is that your way of saying you’ve had enough?”
“It’s my way of saying our flat has had enough. It’s time to send those boxes back to storage. Also, you do realize that every reindeer figurine and snow globe need to be dusted at some point.”
“Do they, though?” Garen laughed at Simon’s glare. “Okay, okay. I’ll get the stepladder.”
Once the silver-and-gold star was in place, it sagged a bit to the side, looking more like a pentagram. Garen tried to adjust it so it pointed upright, to no avail. “This top branch is crooked.”
“You know,” Simon said, “an artificial tree would have a branch perfectly positioned for a star.”
“Great, let’s get one. We can have two trees.”
“Not a chance.”
Garen pouted down at him. “I’d hate Christmas too if my birthday was Boxing Day.”
“I don’t hate Christmas,” Simon said. “I just like it a normal amount, which compared to you seems like loathing.”
Fair enough.
Simon touched one of the hanging baubles at the front of the tree. “Was this your grandmother’s?”
“All the burgundy and gold decorations were hers.” As Garen climbed down the stepladder, he remembered how proud his gran had been of her trinkets. “She thought those colors made things look more posh.”
“What was she like?”
“Granny McLaren was the quintessential working-class wee wifey. Queen of the Steamie, they called her.”
“Steamie?”
“The communal wash houses that women in the tenements used to use. Major gossip hubs—the true halls of power in this city, some say.” He folded up the stepladder and set it against the wall. “There’s a famous play about them, and my dad says it’s just like when he was growing up. I’ll show you some time.”
“She sounds formidable.”
“Gran was the gravitational center of our family, and once she was gone…” Garen spread his hands. “Everyone but me kinda floated away.”
“That must have been hard. Especially after what happened to you as a baby.”
Garen just shrugged. If he started burrowing down that emotional rabbit hole, he’d never be able to function. “People come and go. It’s what people do.” He pointed to an older ornament, a painted orange-and-black serpent. “Isn’t that the giant snake from The Nightmare Before Christmas?”
“I made it from a kit about twenty years ago. That’s why so much of the paint’s chipped off.”
It was the only one of Simon’s ornaments in less-than-perfect condition, so Garen assumed it meant a lot to him. “You were always a big fan of snakes?”
“My whole life. My parents wouldn’t let me have one until I turned eighteen, but one of my mates at school had this enormous boa constrictor, Regina. She was gorgeous.”
“But not as gorgeous as Poppy, right?”
“Obviously.” Simon shuffled a few steps to the right with his walking frame, inspecting the tree. “I dunno why I like snakes. Maybe it’s because they’re so simple, so comfortable in their own skin.”
“Until they’re not.”
“Hm?”
“They shed their skin,” Garen said. “So they’re not always comfortable in it.”
“Right, but…” Simon seemed to search the air for a response. “At least they do something about it.”
Garen let that observation hang in the air without comment and instead went to the side table where their half-drunk cups of cocoa had been abandoned during the decorating frenzy. He handed Simon his. “It’s gone cold, but it’s still chocolate, so well worth drinking.”
They clinked their mugs together and stood side by side to admire their tree. It was a collaborative effort from top to bottom. Garen had wanted colored twinkly lights, while Simon preferred steady white lights, so they’d compromised with steady colored lights. The ornaments were a mix of their childhood hand-me-downs, as well as a few they’d bought together, including the glittery star.
Prominently placed at the front of the tree was a small wooden sign. Upon it, Simon had neatly painted in red the words Water Me.
Garen remembered what he’d told his sister weeks ago, that this would be the best Christmas ever. Tonight, for the first time, he believed it.
Chapter 14
14 Days Until Christmas
In some ways, the Santa Dash was unlike any race Simon had ever run. It was taking place in the still-unfamiliar city of Glasgow, the runners were wearing Santa suits—issued by the race in exchange for a £10 entry fee—and, most significantly, he’d be traversing the course on his arse instead of on his feet.
Despite the new elements, this race had all the familiar triggers that shot adrenaline through Simon’s veins: the crowds, the music, the volunteers, even the number bibs. As he pinned the number 6151 to the front of his Santa suit, he jounced his heel against his wheelchair’s footplate in anticipation.
“How do I look?” Garen asked Simon and their friends as they waited for the race to start. “Too much?”
Simon examined him. Garen had strung tiny jingle bells onto red ribbons, then woven them into his Santa beard. His Santa hat’s white puff ball bore a blinking green LED Christmas tree. Draped over his Santa suit were two strands of multicolored, battery-powered Christmas lights. And above each red trab he wore three anklets made of green glow sticks.
“For anyone else it would be too much,” Luca said. “But for you, it’s just right.”
A gust of wind came up, making Simon’s number bib flap against his chest. He tugged his Santa hat down over his forehead to secure it. At least the costume’s thick white beard would keep his face toasty warm on this near-freezing day.
Around him, George Square was packed with waiting Santas, some cradling cups of steaming coffee while others perused the stalls of the Christmas Market. The carols piping in over the PA system mingled with the music of the spinning
carousel to create a cheery cacophony.
An announcement came over the loudspeaker, asking the Santas to head to their pace groups for the start of the race.
“That’s us to the ten-minute-mile club.” Gillian waved at Simon as she turned to leave with her husband, Jack, and their daughter, Willow. “See youse two at the finish line.”
“You’ll see us long before that,” Garen called after them, “when we leave your arses in the dust!” He turned to Simon. “Shall I push you to our starting spot?”
Simon nodded, appreciating that his friend always asked permission before touching the chair.
As Garen wheeled Simon toward the back of the massive queue surrounding George Square, the press of humanity started to feel a bit claustrophobic. Normally, Simon would be among the tallest in a crowd, yet now he was below eye level for everyone but kids and dogs. Was this how short people and other wheelchair users experienced life all the time?
He’d worried that today would be a repeat of their awkward tree-shopping trip, but Simon was greeted with welcoming smiles as they found a spot amongst the “Fun Runners,” those with no chance or desire to finish near the front of the pack.
He gave a warm wave and thumbs-up to a nearby woman in a wheelchair, then promptly felt like a fraud. What would she think if she knew Simon’s chair was but temporary?
Then again, maybe she was also using a chair due to an injury or a reversible illness. Before this bout of Guillain-Barré, Simon had never considered the thousand reasons people might use wheelchairs. He’d seen the aid as a trap. But in these last two weeks, the chair had come to mean freedom, not captivity. It gave him power rather than taking it away.
And it sure as hell beat lying on his back staring at the ceiling.
At the starting line far ahead of them, a great roar arose.
“We’re going!” Next to Simon, a young boy of about eight years bounced on his toes. “Ma, how many Santas are in this race?”
“Must be at least 5,754,” she said, poking at the four-digit number bib on her son’s back.
He reached round to touch the bib. “Can I keep this after?”
Must Love Christmas (Glasgow Lads on Ice) Page 16