by Julia Kent
“Who’s first?” I asked.
“You.” Trevor handed me a wrapped gift. “This is from me and Joe.”
Now, I’d asked for three things for Christmas. Gift cards to my favorite coffee shop, lingerie, and a card game called SuperFight. We had agreed not to spend a bunch of money on each other, because we were going on tour soon and didn’t want a bunch of stuff.
This box didn’t feel like any of those requests, so I cocked one eyebrow and gave the guys a questioning look as I opened it.
It was a child’s bouncy ball. You know the kind. Like a big yoga ball, but with a circular handle you grabbed on to while you bounced.
Joe had a grin on his face a mile wide. Trevor’s cheeks were pink.
“What is it?”
Trevor reached under a couch cushion and pulled out a hand pump. “Open it! We’ll show you!”
I tore open the packaging, wondering what on earth had them so excited. Trevor took the bright-red deflated rubber ball thingy from me and started pumping. I stood to get myself some more coffee, and by the time I came back and took one look at that...thing...I was howling with laughter.
This wasn’t some child’s toy.
It was thoroughly for adults.
A ten-inch protrusion stuck up off the ball’s surface, right about where my hoohaw would go. A much smaller nub was present, and it looked like if you positioned yourself in one direction, you’d avail yourself of a certain kind of pleasure, and in the other direction, well..
Let’s just say that ball went both ways.
Joe and Trevor were beaming.
“Wow,” I said slowly, all hope of a nice coffee gift card long gone. “That’s a really inventive gift.”
“I knew she’d like it!” Trevor crowed. “After the Sybian disaster, you said no more electronic toys, so we found this!” He was so boyish in that moment, his red turtleneck snug in all the right places, jeans hugging his hips and his shoulders wide as his hands held the ball. I melted.
“It’s perfect,” I lied.
“It will be,” Joe said in a low voice. “Especially since it deflates and fits nicely in a suitcase. We know how much you hate to fly, and we’ll be flying a lot this coming year, so we wanted a toy you could throw in a suitcase without worrying about going through security and setting anything off.”
“I’m the thing that gets set off when I go through airport security.”
Trevor laughed. He and Joe shared a look that made it clear they were thinking about our trip to the island of Eden years ago. “Yeah. We remember.”
The moment kinda went sideways when we all noticed Tortilla was starting to climb on my bouncy dildo ball and rode it around the room, bouncing and pretending he was riding a bucking bronco.
“Don’t see that every day,” I said as the man went boing boing boing around the room, the dildo part rubbing up against his crotch. A light flush turned his cheeks pink and if Joe hadn’t stopped him just then, I think he woulda jizzed in those borrowed jeans of Joe’s.
“We have a present for you and Popsicle!” I called out, trying to rescue the moment. While Joe surreptitiously hid my new bouncy ball behind a chair near where we stored our shoes, Trevor and I pulled out the two presents.
“I don’t have anything for you,” Tortilla said, looking shame-faced.
“It’s fine, Paul,” Trevor said. “Just play us some music. That’d be great.”
Paul perked up, and for the next two minutes we got the harmonica version of Katy Perry’s “Roar,” which Joe sat through politely, his jaw twitching. Let’s just say Paul should stick to Mumford & Sons.
“Okay. Now I earned my present!” Paul declared. A troubled storm developed in Joe’s eyes, and he swallowed, hard.
Trevor put his hand on Paul’s wrist. “Hey, man. Don’t feel like you have to earn a gift. A gift’s a gift, you know?”
Paul looked at him, not comprehending. “What?”
We didn’t know his life story. We had no idea who he was, where he came from, what had happened to make him homeless and living on the streets of Cambridge with a chicken. But in that moment, as he looked from me to Joe to Trevor with confusion, some part of my heart went out to him.
Three years ago I thought that the world I knew was all I was gonna know.
I wondered if Tortilla felt that way.
“Why do they call you Tortilla?” I asked, breaking the weirdness. Trevor set Paul’s present in front of him.
Paul laughed, eyes tracking Popsicle as she walked over to one of Joe’s running shoes and pecked at the laces. “Because I like tortillas.”
“That simple?” Joe asked.
“Yeah. There’s a Mexican place down near MIT that puts all their unused tortillas out on the back curb every night. The owner’s cool. I go there and scarf ‘em down. Some of my friends started teasing me about it, and...” He shrugged. His stomach growled. His eyes went to the unopened donut box on the counter.
I got up and walked past the table, noticing the other box was now empty. Huh. Guy was a bottomless pit.
Bringing the fresh box back, the scent of cinnamon filled the air as I opened it. Cider donuts. Joe’s favorite. The guys all grabbed one each—my favorite were the maple, which rested in my full stomach now—and Paul shoved the entire donut in his mouth, then got down to business opening his present.
First, he pulled out the Starbucks gift card. “I can get a pumpkin spice latte!” Paul chirped, waggling his eyebrows. “Or maybe a peppermint one. Hmm. It’ll be hard to decide. Thanks, guys!” His eyes cut over to my bouncy ball with a lingering look of want.
Then he reached into the gift bag and withdrew the Random Acts of Crazy ski hat. You would have thought we’d given him a cashmere sweater.
“It’s perfect!” he shouted, pulling it over his now-clean, blonde hair. He looked so much like Trevor for a split second, the angle of his long, sharp nose making me blink twice, and then the resemblance was gone.
He jumped up and hugged all three of us, Joe’s embrace a bit perfunctory, then found his backpack, tucking the gift card away for safe keeping.
“Here’s Popsicle’s gift.” Joe handed him the gift bag.
“Why are you giving it to me?” Paul asked, brushing some hair off his eyebrow. His blue eyes glittered. “Popsicle should open it.”
Joe rolled his eyes, turning his face away from Paul, and picked up the bag. Trevor bit his lips, holding back a snicker.
“Here,” Joe announced, dropping the bag in front of Popsicle. She pecked at it.
“For God’s sake,” Joe muttered, pulling the sweater out. “Here.” He handed it to Paul, who started laughing.
“Is this a penis cozy?” He held it over his crotch and started unbuttoning his jeans.
“No! It’s a chicken sweater,” Joe snapped. “Put your junk away. It’s for the chicken.”
“You gave my chicken a sweater?”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
“I can’t put that on her!” Paul buttoned his jeans, looking at Joe like he was nuts.
Trevor’s expression deflated. “Why not?”
Paul rotated the green and orange sweater in his hands, his fingers tracing the logo’s words. “Popsicle is a Rhode Island Red. She looks terrible in orange. It’s not her color.”
“It’s like the chicken version of What Not to Wear,” I whispered to Joe, whose expression hardened.
“But thank you. It’ll be great for keeping my balls warm in January,” Paul said.
“Is that a special problem?” Trevor asked, clearly trying to change the conversation.
“It is if you’re sleeping on cardboard and don’t have much cushion. I’m a back sleeper, so if I open my legs at all, the balls sink, you know?”
Trevor nodded.
Why in the hell was Trevor nodding as if he knew all about ball sinking?
“And the sac rests against the clothes, which rest against the cardboard, and without insulation you wake up with a cold, dead feeling between you
r legs.”
Joe winced. “Really?”
Paul smacked his upper arm. “No. I’m just pulling your leg. I’ll put the chicken sweater on my cock because it’s a great irony. Chicken. Cock. Get it?”
Paul was fucking weird.
“Right.” Joe raised his eyebrows and looked at me like he needed to escape. “So, we should get going. My mom said eleven. You’re invited,” he said to Paul, the words reluctant and unsure. “And so is Popsicle.”
“Your mom really owns a chicken sanctuary?” Paul asked, eyes wide.
“Something like that,” Joe answered, grabbing his coat and shrugging into it. “Let’s go.”
“Wait! We have two more presents to unwrap!” I said, scrambling to catch up.
“We’ll have to do them later,” Joe said, looking at his phone. His eyes cut over to Paul. “I think we need to take care of this now.”
Trevor and Joe shared an uneasy look.
Paul grabbed his backpack and Popsicle. That was all he had. He took a good look at the apartment. He let out a sigh of contentment.
He gave Joe a nod, then followed along, unquestioning.
“Joanne know we’re coming?” I asked Trevor as we walked out into the hallway and down to the stars.
“I hope so. I’m not sure which will be the bigger surprise: Tortilla, or Popsicle.”
Turns out the biggest surprise was something no one saw coming.
Chapter Nine
Darla
Herb answered the door with a beer in one hand and a sprig of mistletoe in the other. Beer at eleven a.m. on Christmas Day?
Now that was a tradition I could get behind.
He pointed to his cheek. I kissed him, giggling. He wrapped me in a bear hug and I saw Joe’s eyes blink rapidly, his surprise turning to a gentle pleasure as his dad made me feel welcome.
“Herb Ross,” he announced to Tortilla, handing me the mistletoe as he shook hands.
“Dad, this is Paul,” Joe began.
“My friends call me Tortilla,” Paul said, shifting Popsicle into his left arm so he could shake Joe’s dad’s hand.
One eyebrow cocked, making Herb look exactly like Joe for a second. “Nice to meet you, Tortilla.”
“Are they here?” Joanne called out from behind Herb. Her face appeared behind his shoulder, tiny little taut legs carrying her across the sleek wood floors. “Just on time, too! I’m pleased you’re punctual, Joey, even if—”
Her words cut off at the sight of Tortilla and Popsicle.
“And who are you?”
“Mom, this is a new friend of ours. Paul.”
She reached out and shook his hand.
“My friends call me Tortilla,” Paul said. As he blinked, slowly, his Star of David tattoo showed.
Joanne dropped his hand like it turned into a poisonous snake. Peering intently at his face, she then looked at me in abject horror.
“Tortilla? TORTILLA? Not the same homeless man you serviced last night?”
Herb was taking a big swig of his beer to finish it off. As Joanne’s words sank in, he let out an enormous spray of Jack’s Abbey Lashes Lager, the red label screaming Christmas like everything else in MetroWest Boston. It’s like the city color coordinated for the season.
“Jesus, Herb, we just had the curtains dry-cleaned with non-toxic chemicals!” Joanne screeched, smacking his arm. He patted the front of his shirt, swiping the droplets off.
Herb’s eyes turned to me, so soulful and dark like Joe’s. “You ‘serviced’ this man? He’s the one you were accused of blowing behind the vegan restaurant last night?”
I whipped around to Joanne and got in her face. “You told him?”
“Of course I told him! He’s the one who made some of the phone calls for you!”
“Wait. Herb pulled strings to get me off?”
“That sounds really dirty,” Paul said.
“SHUT UP.” All three Rosses told him off in unison.
“Anyone want some cheese-stuffed jalapeños?” Gene asked from the kitchen. Trevor and Paul made a beeline for the out. Gene gave me a commiserating look of sympathy.
I needed it.
“First of all, I didn’t service anyone last night,” I declared.
Joe cleared his throat and holy shit, did he just blush?
“Technically, that’s not true,” he demurred. A flash of sex last night, hot and comforting, made me flush a little, too.
Herb snorted.
Joanne glowered. “New family rule: no talking about your sex life.”
“Unless it involves blowing Santa Claus,” Herb whispered.
“Anyhow,” I said archly, looking at Herb, “I didn’t do anything to Tortilla. But thank you.” Relief swept over me like a perfect spring breeze right before a much-needed rainstorm. “I appreciate everything you did to get the charges dropped.”
He waved his hand dismissively. “It was nothing. A few phone calls.”
“I helped,” Joanne added. “Edie didn’t like the idea of having her precious grandson the assistant district attorney know about her...recreational activities.”
“You mean, like when her friends took up a collection to watch Joe and Trevor have live sex in front of them?”
Good thing Herb didn’t have another beer on him. He growled at Joe.
“Excuse me?”
Joe looked like he was ready to kill me, his face like angry, hot granite. As he struggled to control his emotions, Herb added,
“How much?”
“How much what?” Joanne interrupted, livid.
“How much is the going rate for that?”
“They raised nearly five grand,” Joe began to explain.
“You had sex with Trevor in front of your grandmother’s best friend for five thousand dollars!” Joanne screeched.
“I’d French kiss him for five grand,” Herb mused. “Not sure I’d go all the way.”
Herb deftly stepped back from Joanne, predicting the blow she threw at him.
“We didn’t actually have sex. The church organists gave us the money anyhow,” Joe started to explain.
Herb folded his arms across his massive chest. “This story gets better and better. Church organists?”
Joanne looked like a hummingbird on crack. “Can we move this conversation to the kitchen? I need a shot or nine of whisky to continue.”
We migrated into the giant cook’s kitchen, which looked like something out of Top Chef. Tortilla was stuffing bacon-wrapped jalapeños in his mouth like they were going extinct, chewing in between drinking from a huge glass of milk.
“God, you people eat well,” he mumbled around a full mouth. At some point, he had set Popsicle down on the ground and she lingered at his feet.
Gene was dressed in a white button-down oxford shirt, navy blue casual pants, and a gorgeous moss-green cashmere V-neck sweater that looked like it could carpet a golf course. I wanted to give him a hug just so I could feel the wool against my cheek. Gene was friendly, but physically very reserved, so I settled for a smile and a wave.
“The chicken?” Joanne asked, her voice filled with a kind of polite loathing that was an art form of linguistic gymnastics that I could only aspire to develop by the time I was fifty.
“I’m sorry. I should introduce Popsicle,” Paul said, swallowing a huge lump of food, then wincing. “This is Popsicle.” He looked at Joanne. “Popsicle, meet your new foster mommy.”
Joe and Herb lost it. Just...lost it, folding in half, bent in two, whooping and braying like donkeys with their dicks caught in a car door.
I actually saw that happen, once, back home in Peters. That’s how I know the sound.
“We were hoping,” Trevor piped up over the commotion, “that Popsicle could stay here with your other chickens, just for a week or so. While Paul gets settled in.”
“You’ve added a third man?” Joanne asked me, her face wavering between disgust and admiration.
“No! He’s not—we’re not—no. I can barely handle two men. Wh
at in the hell do I need a third for?”
Joanne breathed a sigh of relief.
“Besides,” Tortilla added, “three on one is no fun for me, because I always get stuck with the wrong hole.”
Gene, who was about as expressive as my stepdaddy the taxidermist, gave Herb one hell of a look before turning to Tortilla and asking, “There’s a wrong hole?”
Joanne pinged him in the head with a flying K-cup. An organic, fair-trade K-cup.
“Gene!” she shouted.
Tortilla opened his mouth to answer Gene’s question. I shoved a bigass piece of cinnamon bun in his mouth. His face exploded into an expression of sheer delight, a groan of culinary ecstasy coming out full-throated.
I’d found the right hole.
Joe
When had this become my life?
And why had I clung so hard to the old, uptight, repressed one?
Maybe I’d been the repressed one, because here was my dad, talking to my girlfriend about blow jobs and asking me about how much women were willing to pay to watch me put my cock up Trevor’s ass.
For the record, if Trevor and I did have gay sex, I would be the top. Period. End of discussion.
“I want to get back to the whole getting paid to have sex with Trevor at a stripper party topic, Joe,” Dad said just after I’d shoved a bacon-wrapped jalapeño in my mouth.
Gene’s eyes widened and he gave me a look, then added a thumbs’ up.
I started choking.
Maybe, if I let this hot-as-hell appetizer fill my throat, I could just lose consciousness slowly as my oxygen-deprived brain shut down, and I would never have to resume a conversation with my mother, father, and Gene about having sex with Trevor in public.
That would be the easy way out.
But no.
I chewed.
“I would just like to state,” Trevor declared, holding a beer that matched my Dad’s, “that if Joe and I ever did have sex with only each other—and we haven’t—he’d be the catcher.”
His phone buzzed, and he left that statement hanging in the kitchen like a nasty, wet fart. While Trev took his phone call, I looked at the amused eyes of a group of people I hated to the core right now, and said:
“No fucking way. That’s not how it would go.”