by David Connor
“Adorable overload.”
“Right? I fucking was.”
“Still are, as far as I’m concerned.”
“I played in the band in junior high. Did I ever tell you any of this?”
“Uh-uh.”
“I quit because it wasn’t cool.”
“Maybe the CIA has a marching band.”
I loved the sound of his laughter. “Goof.”
“Stockings first or last on Christmas morning?” I asked.
“Last. Definitely last. The message thing…?”
“Yeah.”
“You remember I told you?”
“Of course.”
“The year I got my driver’s license it was One of these is car keys. The K was the key. The C was condoms. I always get condoms. Always got… well… after a certain age, of course. The year Mom and Grams died the message was Always cherished in our hearts. I think we cried most of the day that year. I didn’t think he’d still do it, but he had. I wondered if we’d do Christmas at all, and also what he would have said to mom and Grams. Shit.” Maybe it just hit him, “Why did I never ask?”
“Because we think we have all the time in the world.”
“I get another chance. That’s awesome, and I’m so glad we get to have it together. I can’t wait to see what Grampy said this time. I mean, the whole message—the sign—it has to come true. I love you so much, it would… I don’t know… what a letdown if the sign I know is coming doesn’t back that up. How much will Christmas kind of suck if Grampy doesn’t say… something?”
I was suddenly nervous. I almost wished I had never brought up the idea of message from Aidan’s grampy. It may have opened a Pandora ’s Box filled with nothing but disappointment. I remembered a C on the stocking list I’d shopped from. Aidan was getting condoms again. I got the Magnums, and though I had written the letter on each and every tag, I couldn’t for the life of me recall them in a way I could put them together into words in my mind. I considered going to my room right then to empty the stocking onto my bed and try, but it wasn’t that stocking that was important—unless it was the same as the other.
“I still feel like a kid on Christmas,” Aidan said.
I wondered what he’d said before I really tuned in again.
“Up until last year, at least. I really felt like a kid then in a lot of ways, but in some others I figured I’d never get to be again.”
I pulled him closer. “This year I hope you can feel that way again.”
“Maybe one last time.”
I was about to ask what he meant, but I sort of got it. Life was changing.
“Grampy never brought the stuff out until I went to bed, even when I was all grown-up. Of course, according to Grams, men are never fully grown. ‘You all act like adults when trying to get a woman, Cookie, but once she says yes, you’re little boys again.’” Aidan chuckled. “She died before the big gay revelation. Grampy and I could act like goofs, but he was strict sometimes. You and me act like goofs, but we have our manly moments too, right?”
“For sure.”
“Funeral arrangements… Man, nothing makes you feel like an adult than throwing all that shit together.”
I could grasp that.
“Maybe hanging out with Alec will bring out the grown man actions more.”
“Maybe.”
“Probably not.” Aidan kissed my nipple.
“It could go either way.” I could grasp that too.
“Sing to me,” Aidan suddenly said.
“What do you wanna hear? Something Christmassy?”
“Naw. Sing ‘Corner of the Sky’. I like that song.”
I kissed the top of Aidan’s head and then sang through the whole song twice with Aidan’s head against my bare chest. “You ready for bed?” I whispered.
“Mm hmm.”
“My room or yours?”
“Mine.”
We rose from the couch and started down the hallway. “Good night, then,” I told him. “Merry Christmas.” It was a little after midnight.
“Where ya going?”
“You said…”
“My room.” He pulled be back by the waistband of my jingly boxers. “But together.”
“Oh.”
“But just to sleep. Okay? One more night.”
“Oh.” I hoped my disappointment didn’t show on my face.
“I know. Actually, I don’t know anything. Am I being childish or am I being mature? Am I being hopeful or scared?”
“Ssh. We can wait one more night.”
I looked to the ceiling when Aidan went in to brush his teeth. I was brought up religious, and was used to saying prayers, so as fake candles flickered in every window streaked with rain one could almost think of as frost, as the tree shone brightly, all but the star, and as I thought of my mother placing the baby Jesus in his crèche before she went up to bed, I said to the heavens, to Dr. Wise or maybe God, “Thank you for your blessings. Thank you so much for bringing Aidan into my life. Please, if I can have just one more thing, please give him his Christmas wish.”
9
There was barely enough light to see it, but Aidan’s watch read 6:30. The power had gone out sometime overnight. I had slept so soundly, I had no idea when. I only noticed now because the clock on the nightstand was a big, blank rectangle and the AC wasn’t humming.
“You awake?” Aidan asked.
“Hmm.” Not really.
“I never could sleep in on Christmas morning.” He was up and out of bed before I finished scratching the first place I always scratched upon waking. His was stiff, and nicely striped in magenta and green.
There was light in the living room, though, and the realization of where it came from made me inhale sharply. “The star,” I said softly. It shined with an ethereal golden glow. “Aidan.” I grabbed his arm and shook him like mad.
“I see it.” He gently rubbed my arm when I stopped, but still seemed less than moved.
“Come on.” I shook him some more. “The star is lit.”
“The star is lit.” His grin widened. “The star is lit. I love you, Kipster. Come on, let’s see what Santa brought.”
We tore into the gifts we’d gotten for each other right there on the living room floor in our Christmas underwear. Aidan had gotten me a beautiful leather satchel. “To carry your school books in,” he said. He also got me some shorts that weren’t “ugly”, some body paint to “label all the good and better stuff”, and a bowl of his Raman noodle and chocolate concoction. “So I can see your cum face again.”
I had gotten him a set of bakeware and kitchen knives, even before I’d known about the CIA. “I brought them down from New York. I always thought you’d be a great cook. I didn’t know you already were. You probably already have everything.”
“Now I have new… to start school with.”
I also picked up the Pippin CD, a bunch of boxer shorts, more tighter underwear, and I handwrote a certificate for the purchase of a new tattoo. “You’ll wanna mark the occasion when you start at The Culinary Institute.”
“Everything rocks!” I got a long, sweet kiss as my reward.
“Stockings?” Aidan’s blue eyes were filled with excitement. “We got up together,” he said. “I didn’t get to hang it.” He reached behind the couch from where he sat, and I enjoyed watching him do it.
“Let me get yours.” I stood.
“I already have it.”
“Funny thing… this year you get two.” I went and returned with the chef stocking.
“Sweet!” Aidan’s face read pure excitement when he saw it.
“Open your grampy’s first.”
“Open yours first.”
“Yeah?”
He handed it to me. “Definitely.”
I dumped my stocking onto the carpet, under the magical glow of the unplugged star. I ended up with a B, a C, three E’s, an F an H, a K, an M, an N, two O’s, two R’s, an S, a T, and two Y’s.
“You can write the letters
down and open them, or figure the message out first.”
I was a child. I was curious to see what was in each one. “I’m sensing a theme.” There were a bunch of temporary tattoos—a treble clef, a bass clef, an eighth note—all related to music. One of the O’s was the Oklahoma CD. The other Okamoto condoms. The K was a brand named lube. “Another theme. Yay me!” I unrolled a sheet of paper. The letter C went with a college application. “I already graduated from college.”
“I’ll explain when you figure out the message.”
I studied the letters I had written on a pad from next to the phone. “Ooh! I think I know. Be my corner of the sky.”
“Will you?”
“Aidan, yes.”
“I’m ready then. I’m manning up and asking.”
“And I’m saying yes. Yes again. Yes.”
“I’m pretty sure Grampy would be happy for us. He’d love you. I told you that before, and I know it’s true. All of that said, part of being a grown man is making my own decisions. I’m making one now, sign or no sign. This is right. It’s good. Half of why I wanted to wait was for the sign, but the other half… I wanted to do something romantic and sweet. Like this. An old tradition—Grampy’s—that I’m using to start something new.”
“I love it.”
“Then we’re officially a couple.” We sealed it with a kiss. “I want to be good for you. I want to be someone you can count on, someone to help you through rough times, not just the other way around. I want to tell you all the good stuff that happens to me, and I want you to hug me when bad stuff happens, like you did the other day, for something that happened a year ago. I want to do all of those things for you too. Shit! I suck at words.”
“You’re doing fine.”
“I want us, Kip. Everything is less sucky with us. Everything good is better and everything bad seems manageable. I knew that a long time ago. I was afraid to want it, though. I’m afraid to have it, because what if I lose it?”
“You won’t. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You might. I might. Everyone might. Everyone will, eventually. But the days we already missed we didn’t have to…”
“Yeah.”
“And the days we had, the times we had… the good ones… The night Grampy died, you made the beginning of it so fucking awesome, and you helped with the shitty part, until I was stupid and made you go. Everyone I love leaves me,” Aidan said. His emotions were all over the place. “It’s a fucking risk, ya know. It’s worth it. We’re worth it.”
“Yeah. It is… and we are.” I held him as tightly as I could. “I’m not going to go anywhere, though, even on the bad days. You have my promise. I’ll leave the room. I’ll storm out the door. I may even get in my car, but I’ll come back.”
“Don’t get in the car.” He said it so softly, I barely heard it. I felt it, though.
“Okay. I promise not to get in the car.” I kissed the top of his head. “Whenever we fight, I’ll… go for a walk.”
“Only where I can see you, at first.” He took my forearms. He looked up at my eyes. “Just up and down the street.” Aidan smiled. I did, too.
“Deal. Whenever we argue, I’ll walk back and forth right outside the window.”
“And I’ll wave to you.” He laughed.
“Knowing you, you’ll moon me.”
“Knowing me, I will. That changed me too—our fight. It made me think. I had you. We had us. And then I let you go. I made you go when I didn’t have to, and it was so frigging dumb. I missed you as much in those hours as I did in the months we weren’t together. I swore if you came back, I’d never let you go again. I’m learning. I’m growing.”
“We both are.”
“Hey.” Aidan let go. “I still wanna see what Grampy had to say.” He smiled.
“Me too.”
We settled back on the floor in front of the couch where Aidan opened his stocking the same way I had. He wrote down each letter, and then unwrapped the corresponding gift while I played with my yoyo—the Y in sky. I tried to recall if the items he opened were the same as I’d bought. I didn’t think so. Some of the ones I bought were weird.
“Axe and condoms.” Aidan smiled. He got a lot of spices for the spice rack. “These things cost a fortune,” he said. There was an oven mitt and underwear—U, not B for boxers, another U from a U2 CD, and one of the E’s was one by Elvis. Aidan studied the letters once everything was open. “Help me. You got yours fast.”
An A, a D two E’s, F, K, two M’s, three O’s, P, R, two Us, and a Y for yeast that was probably too old now to be active was what we had to work with.
“Make? Make something? Something about cooking?” I suggested. A lot of Aidan’s stocking stuffers related to the kitchen.
“Proud. Oh.” Aidan lost the enthusiasm he’d had all morning. “Make me proud of you.”
“You sure?”
“Yup.” Aidan stood. He gently shoved the loot aside with his foot. “Make me proud. I guess he wasn’t there yet.”
“Aww. He was. I’m sure. And with all the cooking and baking stuff, he’d be really happy about you going to the CIA. He knew how much you loved to be in the kitchen.”
“Thanks.” Aidan was deflated. “Grampy was never a sentimental kind of guy.” He shrugged. “What made me think that was going to change? Last year, he wanted me to make him proud. I passed everything but bio, which I would have aced thanks to you. I stayed out of trouble, at least until after he was gone. Maybe that would have done it. Maybe last Christmas, if he could have—if he’d been here—he would have said, ‘And you did it, Houdini.’”
“I bet he would have, and I hope you believe it. You said it, not me. And, hey, there’s still the star.” Aidan looked even sadder. What had I said?
He took me by the hand and guided me close to the tree. “Look up,” he told me.
“Where?”
“Behind the tree.”
“At what.” He tilted my head where he wanted it. “Oh.” There was a yellow emergency light.
“It comes on when the power’s off.”
“Oh.”
“So that’s that.”
“What about the stocking I filled? I used a list your grampy wrote.”
“Whadda ya mean?”
“I went into the desk for paper, to make my own list, and found one that said Aidan’s Stocking. I cheated, and used that. The elf gave it to me! Come on. Let’s see if we can figure out what he said.”
“The elf gave it to you?” I got the look yet again.
“Sort of,” I said.
“It must have been an old list, from at least two years ago or more.” Aidan nodded toward the floor. “That was last year’s stuff. What you bought must be a repeat message.”
“Well, maybe it’ll mean something different now.” I picked up the chef hat stocking. “Check it out. I got everything your grampy wrote exactly.”
“We don’t really have time. We gotta shower, then dress, and then head off to dad’s hotel room. I’ll open it when we get back.”
“You sure?”
Aidan smiled. It seemed forced. “Yeah. And I love you. I do. No matter what.”
I loved him too, and I hurt for him as well.
A bit of Aidan’s Christmas spirit came back at his father’s. They had power in town, and though Aaron had a spindly little tree, tall, but sparse, artificial, of course, it was pretty all lit up, in a Charlie Brown kind of way. We had a blast with Alec, who loved the gifts Uncle Aidan had bought. The kid adored him.
“Is that about me?”
I’d brought my tablet. “Yup,” I told him.
The stollen was a hit with the brunch crowd, and no one was surprised that Aidan was going to pursue a career in the culinary arts. Aaron had filled a stocking for Aidan too. He didn’t do the message thing with his brood. “I’m not smart enough to think of enough things to go with that many messages,” he said. “But I wanted to keep one of the Wise traditions going for you. One year, I thought your grandfathe
r had told me to go to hell. I missed a letter or two,” Aaron said with a grin. “Though I wouldn’t put it past him. I had it coming.”
Aidan’s message from Aaron said Father and son, and made Aidan’s eyes pool with tears. “Thank you, Dad. This means a lot.” The D in “and” was drum sticks, which only made it that much more meaningful.
We got back to the house around two. The power was back on, which meant the star was off. I’d still been hoping that whole thing was something more meaningful. “Where are you?” I whispered.
“Right here.”
“Good to know.” Though I wasn’t talking to him.
We’d been invited to stay longer with the Asher clan, but it was all still new, and truthfully sometimes awkward—a roomful of people who all knew each other and us. “Kip has to call his parents.” Aidan used me as an excuse, which I didn’t mind. I did call my family. Actually, we Skyped. Aidan sat beside me, and though I swear my father’s jaw hit the floor when he first laid eyes on the dreads, the earrings, and the tattoos, Aidan made him laugh a couple of times, and he apologized as well.
“I acted like a brat yesterday, Mr. Kipling. I choose that word because Kip—Matthew—used it a day or two ago and I denied it. I do sometimes forget I’m not a child. I’m nearly thirty years old, but there are days I act eleven. I’m a work in progress, sir.”
“We all are,” my father said.
“I’m going to try to be a better person for your son. I’m going to do my best to be the kind of man he deserves, the kind of man you would want for him. I’m probably going to need some help along the way to do that. Kip… he makes me stronger. He makes me hopeful. He makes me happy.”
“That’s all we can ask, then,” my dad said.
OMG he’s frigging hot AND adorable! I got that text from my sister during the Skype. What’s he look like naked?
That’s for me to know.
Aidan disappeared a few seconds after my parents and I signed off. He came out of the bedroom in a pair of the boxer briefs I’d gotten him, pulling the comforter behind him like a toddler with his blankie. “Come on. Let’s hit the pond.”