2016 Top Ten Gay Romance

by Snyder, J. M. ; Black, Becky; Creech, T. A.

  “Okay. Good night. Love you.” Brad blew his customary kiss into the phone.

  Darrin kissed back. “I love you, too. Brad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Yeah, I hope so.”

  They said goodbye.

  Darrin sat and stared at the wall. Dolly was curled up next to him. All that Brad had said about the game and practice was true. He would be busy over the next few weeks. If what had happened tonight hadn’t taken place, Darrin probably wouldn’t have given much thought to Brad saying he wouldn’t be around for a while. They’d been through this before, many times. But then tonight had happened. Brad had almost been outed—at least Darrin hoped it was almost. Knowing how Brad’d feared that, Darrin didn’t know if there was something more to Brad’s not being able to see him than just football commitments.

  * * * *

  The next days were busy for Darrin. He had rehearsals for the Christmas special and performances for the current show in which he was dancing. Even so, Brad was constantly on his mind. They talked on the phone as regularly as usual. Darrin had always been able to tell within a few words what kind of mood Brad was in. To his surprise, Brad’s mood seemed to lighten and he became brighter with every passing conversation. He told Darrin how well practices were going and how eager he was to start the playoffs.

  “We won our division,” Brad explained. “We get a bye week and home field advantage. Since we’ll be playing in New York, I thought I’d send Frieda those tickets I promised her. I need her home address. Do you have it?”

  Darrin gave the address to Brad, disappointed that Brad still didn’t seem willing to have him come to a game.

  Brad never brought up the close call they’d had with Frieda recognizing him. Darrin asked occasionally how Brad was doing with that. The only thing Brad would say was he was dealing with it. So, as time passed, Darrin’s anxiety over the situation diminished.

  Frieda left a note for Darrin after taking care of Dolly one evening. It said she had received the tickets and she wanted him to give his cousin a big hug and thank him for her.

  “The thank you I can handle, but I don’t know when I’m going to see Daddy Brad to deliver that hug,” Darrin said to Dolly, who sat next to him on the sofa. “He has two weeks between games and I thought he’d be able to come and see us. But I guess he’s too busy.”

  Dolly whined and put her head in Darrin’s lap.

  “Yeah, I miss him, too,” he said.

  * * * *

  It was the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Brad’d had an away game on Christmas. He had told Darrin they’d have to find another time to celebrate. However, he didn’t make any suggestions. This worried Darrin as, despite their regular phone calls, Brad had seemed distant. Darrin tried to assure himself with the thought that such was the life with a pro football player and their families during the season. Family time and celebrations took a back seat to the game schedule.

  Tony and Allen’s wedding day had arrived. It was on a Monday as the Broadway shows usually had Mondays off. The ceremony was to be held at a small non-denominational chapel near Times Square. The reception would be on the stage of the theater where Darrin, the grooms, and many of the guests were performing. Those attending had been requested to wear bright, rainbow colored clothing to celebrate the advent of same-sex marriage as the law of the land.

  Darrin arrived at the chapel shortly before the beginning of the service. The air was full of happy anticipation. The colorfully clad wedding guests were milling about in the sanctuary, laughing and talking, rather than taking seats and quietly waiting for the ceremony to begin.

  Darrin did his best to keep his spirits in line with those of the other wedding guests. He didn’t want his worry over Brad, or his feeling of envy for what Tony and Allen were going to be able to share with the world, to put a damper on the day. But just as a bit of insurance he sat in the last row to avoid being pulled into the festivities, or be questioned on why he hadn’t invited a guest to come with him.

  The minister came out onto the altar. The revelers hushed and took their seats. Just as he began his welcome to the wedding guests, someone slid into the seat next to Darrin. “Is this seat taken?” a deep voice asked.

  Darrin turned.

  “Brad!” Darrin exclaimed rather loudly. “What are you doing…”

  “Shh,” Brad shushed Darrin. “Sorry I’m late. Practice went overtime,” Brad said in a hushed voice.

  “What are you doing here?” Darrin asked again, this time in a whisper.

  “Well, you said you were going to come by yourself.. No one should be at a wedding without a date. “Then Brad put an arm around Darrin’s shoulders and kissed him on the cheek.

  In shock that his boyfriend was sitting here at the wedding beside him, wearing, of all things, a multi-colored, tie dyed, long sleeve tee, Darrin asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Shh,” Brad shushed again, and gave Darrin a big smile as he squeezed Darrin’s neck.

  Just then a small ensemble from the show orchestra began playing an excerpt from The Carnival of the Animals. Darrin, still dazed, turned his attention to the back of the chapel.

  As Darrin watched, dancers, dressed as jesters, came down the aisle doing cartwheels and backflips. They were followed by three ballerinas on point, strewing flower petals along the way. Then came two couples in formal wedding attire. The wedding program identified them as Allen’s two brothers accompanying Tony’s sister and a cousin. After them came a chorus singing A Christmas Canon.

  When the entourage was assembled on the altar, the organist began to play Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March. The congregation stood.

  Allen, in black tux, with his parents, one on each arm, came down the aisle. Allen was smiling broadly, his mother crying, his father looking stern. Darrin chanced a glance at Brad. He, too, had a big smile on his face.

  Tony came in. He was wearing a white tuxedo. He was accompanied by two of the ensemble dancers from the show.

  When they reached the altar, Allen’s mother kissed him and Tony. Allen’s father hugged Allen and stiffly shook hands with Tony. Tony’s attendants gave hugs all around and took their seats.

  Allen and Tony turned to the minister, who beamed at them and said, “Well, this is really something. You folks really know how to celebrate a wedding.”

  Everyone laughed and the ceremony began. When it came to the point where vows were exchanged, Brad took Darrin’s hand in his. Darrin blinked back tears.

  The recessional, if you could call it that, was a cacophony of cheers and congratulations accompanied by the ensemble playing “We’ve Only Just Begun.” Allen and Tony made their way back up the aisle, hugging and kissing the enthusiastic guests.

  When they got to where Darrin and Brad were standing, Allen hugged both men, then quipped, “Oh my God, Darrin! Where did you find this hunk! I’m jealous. He looks like he could play football!”

  “Hey!” Tony interjected jovially. “Married just five minutes and already my husband has a roving eye.” He, too, then hugged Brad and Darrin.

  Darrin turned to Brad and shook his head. “Now can you tell me what’s going on?”

  Brad took Darrin in his arms and kissed him in spite of the fact they were surrounded by Allen and Tony’s wedding guests.

  “It’s first and goal to go, Darrin. That’s what’s going on.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Darrin asked.

  “Come on, we have an hour before the reception. Let’s go somewhere and have a drink and I’ll explain.”

  A light snow was falling as they made their way from the chapel to a small bar. They sat in a booth and ordered beers. Darrin looked across at Brad, who beamed back at him. Darrin glanced around the room. They were actually out in public—together.

  “What did you mean it’s first and goal to go?” Darrin asked.

  “You know what it means on the football field, right?”

  Darrin no
dded. “It means you’re close to the goal line and you have four plays to score.”

  “Brilliant. You’re a genius!”

  “I had a good teacher,” Darrin said, smiling at Brad.

  “Okay. The other night when Frieda saw me at your place, at first I was scared shitless. Then I saw the wedding invitation and I started thinking. If I wanted to keep seeing you, we couldn’t just keep meeting at your apartment the rest of our lives. It wouldn’t be fair to you. And I sure as hell didn’t want to stop seeing you. You mean too much to me. That means we need to start going out and living a normal life. So, it won’t be long before our little secret is out in the open. It’s gonna happen sooner or later, just like it did with Frieda. Of course she does think we’re cousins.”

  They both laughed.

  “But she’ll figure it out. And so will people who know me and see us together. I don’t want to make some big coming out announcement to the media. I want to just let it happen gradually, however that works out. So that’s where the first and goal comes into play. I came to the wedding. That put us at first and goal. We’ll just have to see how to play those remaining four downs.”

  Darrin considered this. It was almost too good to be true. Finally he asked, “So when you cross the goal line and score, you’ll be out as a gay man?”

  “That was the plan at first. I thought coming out and being myself for the first time in my life would be the ultimate score.” Brad reached across the table and took Darrin’s hands in his. “But I have a better one now.”

  “Okay?” Darrin wondered what could be better than Brad coming to terms with who he was.

  “Coming out would be like scoring a field goal. I want a touchdown. You see, when we were at the wedding and I saw the joy and love Allen and Tony were sharing, I decided I wanted that for us, too. When we…” Brad emphasized the word we, “When we cross that goal line and make a touchdown, it will be our wedding day.”

  Darrin just stared at Brad for several seconds. Was he hearing this right? “You’re asking me to marry you?”

  Brad smiled. “If you think you can put up with me.”

  Darrin wanted to jump up and hug and kiss Brad right then and there. “Of course I can. Yes, of course, I’ll marry you!”

  Brad squeezed Darrin’s hands. “Great! But don’t go ordering the invitations just yet. We’ve got a few downs to play first.” He smiled.

  They sat and stared into each other’s eyes for a long while. Darrin sensed they both wished they could do more to celebrate this breakthrough moment in their lives. But they were at a bar and they were still only at first down. They had more plays ahead of them..

  After a time, they left to go to the reception.

  Brad hailed a cab. “Booth Theater on 45th,” Brad told the driver as they got in.

  “Jesus!” the cabby exclaimed, “You’re Brad Grabosky!”

  “Last time I looked, yeah,” Brad said with a chuckle and a sideways glance at Darrin.

  “Holy Crap! Wait’ll I tell the guys. The Hounds are my favorite team. Oh, man! How are you guys gonna do in the playoffs? Can I have your autograph? Uh…maybe when I drop you off, maybe your friend could take a quick pic of us on my phone?”

  “Sure, that’d be great,” Brad said.

  “Man, oh man,” the driver kept babbling on. “Brad Grabosky in my cab. I can’t believe it!”

  Brad took Darrin’s hand in his, leaned toward him, and said quietly, “Looks like we just played first down. Only three more downs and we score.”

  Football is a very enjoyable game, Darrin thought happily. He smiled at Brad, who smiled back, bent down, and gave him a kiss.

  Darrin caught the cab driver looking at them in his rear view mirror. He grinned at the two men and said, “Nice play, Grabosky.”

  Brad looked at the cabby, then back at Darrin, winked, and said, “Second down played. We’re at third and goal.”

  THE END

  It’s Not Yule, It’s Me by Michael P. Thomas

  Chapter 1: Ben

  December 25, 2007

  No Elvis.

  I’ve got no problem working Christmas morning at Bean City, but that’s my rule: no Elvis Christmas music. I’ll listen to Mariah Carey or Artie Shaw or Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers all day long, but if Elvis comes mooing over those speakers, I’m going home.

  I’ve got no beef with Elvis in general, you understand. I know all the words to “Blue Hawaii,” and if you get enough Fireball in me, I’ll back you up on “Kentucky Rain” at karaoke ‘til you’d think maybe America really does Got Talent. But I spent a summer painting names on ornaments at one of those 365 Days of Christmas! stores in a touristy mountain town. We only had one CD of “Holiday Classics” that played on a constant ten-hours-a-day loop, and I’m not lying to you, “Blue Christmas” was on it twice. By the Fourth of July, I was having nightmares that I’d been buried alive in Elvis’ coffin and he wouldn’t stop singing that song. “Maybe if I sing it louder, someone will come and rescue you,” his ghost proposed on a near-nightly basis. But no one ever did.

  So I rescued myself by declaring a unilateral moratorium on that song, and since Jackie, my boss at Bean City, has three little kids who still believe in Santa, she doesn’t care what I refuse to listen to as long as someone who isn’t her can get the joint open by six. My family doesn’t even get home from Midnight Mass until one-thirty in the morning; most years when it’s time for me to go to work at five A.M. we’re still around the dinner table. So for me it’s not a question of getting up early, but rather of staying up until noon, which I wouldn’t be that into if I worked at a dairy farm, but I can get my head around it here, where it’s all the espresso you can drink. Which I’m sure Jackie would be happy to give me as my Christmas present if she knew she was doing it. She’s a sport like that.

  I still want to get into teaching when I finish school—at thirty-three, I’m what Metro State calls a “non-traditional” student, but I shall finish—but I gotta say, this coffee-slinging gig’s alright. As long as we show up reasonably on time and don’t cuss anybody out, Jackie kinda lets us do our thing. I can have dreads to my waist, I can be plastered in tats, I can pierce whatever I want and wear a kilt to work, just please wipe out the sink before you go home. Not that I do any of that—I mean, I guess my hair’s kinda long, and I might have one tattoo, never you mind where—but I appreciate the Live Free! atmosphere, and my ink-splattered, dreadlocked co-worker Seth, who wears one every day, definitely has the legs to rock a kilt.

  And it doesn’t exactly look like the Hajj around here on Christmas morning. Seeming to believe that the modern coffeehouse economy would crumble without them, one or two small-black-coffee guys still lurk with their laptops; one or two young couples cuddle up on the couch in the corner and let their hot chocolate go cold before they go their separate holiday ways; the occasional frazzled middle-aged mom, halfway to her in-laws’ in Aurora, will leave her minivan running right out front and scurry in for a double shot of Somebody Help Me Before I Strangle One Of These Kids, but these are always to go. No, working Christmas works for me—I’m churched for the year, I’m fed like a tick, I’ve drunk half a bottle of Calvados with my cousins and watched the kids gleefully rip through a houseful of presents. Now all I have to do is earn my little eleven dollars an hour playing souvenir stuffed moose shuffleboard until Seth rolls in at eleven-thirty and tells me to go home, then eat again and sleep ‘til my mom comes and bangs down the door in two days just to make sure I didn’t die. My life is not especially complicated.

  Seth was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago, but I’m not fussed about it. I’ll text him if it ticks over an hour—one afternoon he made kind of a big deal out of making sure I had a guy named Lennox’s number. “If you go more than two days without seeing me, call this dude, not the cops, Benny, you gotta promise me.”—but around here, the less you squeal, the less you get squealed on, and we all have our days. Besides, it means another shot of espresso, and the chan
ce to lean against the counter and drool over the dude in the hoodie hunkered down by the door.

  He’s been here forty-five minutes, maybe an hour. Alone, without a laptop, which doesn’t really fit the holiday customer profile, but then again he’s not exactly radiating festive. There are dozens, probably hundreds, of reasons people don’t celebrate Christmas, and this guy looks like he’s stocked up on quite a few.

  Maybe that’s what I notice. More than someone who doesn’t celebrate, he’s slouched into his seat like someone who wishes he was celebrating. Which is certainly none of my business.

  So I plop my little butt into the chair across from him. He removes an impressive cascade of blond-ish bangs from in front of his face, the better to ascertain who goes there, and I smile. Whereupon his elfin face crumples and he dissolves in tears.

  “Oh my gosh. Are you okay?”

  He keens dramatically when I ask this, and I flinch. Stupid question, got it.

  “I mean, what’s wrong? Do you want to talk about it?”

  He looks at me—well, you know, towards me—as the tears just gush from his eyes. He snuffles up a tremendous glob of snot, chokes on it a little, wails out a “No,” then proceeds to tell me the whole sordid story.

  Probably. What I mostly hear is Waah and Ooooh and Meh meh meh as he blubbers out about thirty seconds of gibberish before he throws his head back and just howls “Whyyyy?!”

  I am at a loss.

  His open weeping does not abate. He looks at me again. His face is the color of a traumatized tomato and he’s just soaked in tears, the poor guy. I half-stand and half-drag my chair around the small table until I am close enough to offer him a hug and he flings himself into my arms, clawing at comfort. He cries for a spell yet, then gathers up a handful of my T-shirt from the hem—yup, that’s my hairy belly; it’s usually flat, dude, I swear—and trumpets into it like a cartoon elephant. We’re talking five pounds of snot, pretty much right into my lap, right as Seth walks in the door.