Authors: Amy Lane

Christmas Kitsch (Hol) (MM) (26 page)

“Believe it,” I told Oliver right now. If I’d passed on that vision of him, brown skin shiny, cock in his own fist, then I really must be hella fucking dumb.

The next evening after work, I switched cars with Oliver at his dad’s and stayed for an hour to play with the dogs.

Then I kissed him in front of his dad, and told them both I needed to go home. He looked at me with wounded eyes, and I made a helpless motion.

“Your dad cannot
possibly
want me here for another night.”

“No,” Mr. Campbell said, “but only because I know that Gloria left a casserole at the apartment for both of you.” The little Pomeranian was licking my fingers, and I found it hard to just pat him on the head and say good-bye. Man, that dog loved the hell out of me.

“Excellent,” Oliver said, brushing by me. “I’ll go get more clothes. Tomorrow, I’ll bring laundry over.”

His voice was brittle, and I watched him go unhappily. I picked up the little dog and let him lick my chin.

“What are you fighting about?” Mr. Campbell asked me, and I grimaced.

“He wants to move in. I don’t even have a drawer for him. I can’t even keep a dog. What’s this dog’s name, anyway?”

“Peanut.”

I flexed my fingers in the dog’s silky fur. “Man, I really love this dog.”

“I know you do, Rusty. But dogs need to be let out and let in, they need to be fed, and they need someone who knows better to do all that.”

For a second, I thought he was on my side, and I nodded, because he got it.

“Stubborn sons, on the other hand, they’re perfectly good at doing all that for themselves.”

“You think I don’t want him in my place? Of course I do. But wouldn’t you rather he stayed at home?”

Mr. Campbell shrugged. “Of course. But he can always come home.”

Something inside me broke and bled. “Yeah. Well. I gotta go.” I stood quickly and backed up. Oliver could go home, and I couldn’t. All I could go to was that shitty apartment, and now I was dragging Oliver there.

Oliver trotted out with his backpack over his shoulder, and I was still backing toward the gate. “I gotta go,” I said again, looking at them both and feeling the totality of being an outsider just smack me in the head. “I . . . Oliver, you stay here and pet the dogs . . . I gotta . . . you’ve got a home here. I . . . I gotta . . .”

I turned then and fled to my car and peeled out of there. I didn’t look to see what Oliver was saying to his dad, and I told myself I didn’t care.

Of course I cared. When I got to my apartment, Oliver’s Aunt Gloria was there
and
my little sister. Gloria was setting a steaming casserole on the table, and she looked up and smiled at me.

“Hey, Rusty. Oliver called and said his dad’s dropping him off in a minute, so you should be ready.”

I looked around the apartment in sort of desperation. I wanted it to be
better
, and suddenly I realized—

“Where’d the table come from?”

It was a little wooden breakfast table, with four scarred and sturdy chairs around it. There was a brand-new Christmas hot pad in the center, and four of my plates set around it on the place mats. There was a red poinsettia in the middle as a centerpiece.

Nicole was sitting at the table, doing her homework, and I looked at her a little desperately. “Why are you here?”

She looked at me and shrugged. “I took the bus. It’s only a block away from where the bus stops. It’s better here than at home.”

“And the table?” Oh God. I was so confused.

“That’s a gift from Manny,” Gloria said. “He had it in his garage and pulled it out to use. It’s okay?”

I looked at it and nodded, and for the first time since Berkeley the tangle in my brain was too tightly wound for me to trace back any threads and find words. Oliver’s family, my family, the things I needed, the things I wanted, what I wanted to
do
for Oliver, and what he wanted to be for me—it circled and muddled and I’d left him right there, in his driveway, because I didn’t have any words.

“Is anything wrong?” Gloria asked. She sounded concerned, and I realized I’d been standing there, my mouth opening and closing in desperation for a little while. I shook my head.

“I, uhm. I.” Suddenly all those lessons from my parents, the ones about not offending people and not being rude when given a gift, kicked in. “It’s great,” my mouth said, while my brain scrabbled for something to hold on to. “It’s really awesome. Thank you. The table, the food. My sister. It’s great. I’ve got to go change. I’ll be back in a sec, ’kay?”

Gloria smiled and looked relieved. “Okay. We can have dinner when Oliver gets here.”

“At the new table,” I told her numbly, hoping my smile didn’t look too off. God. Oliver was going to hate me. I was so stupid. I swallowed, a little human emotion trickling in through all that politeness. “It’s really awesome of you and Manny. Thank him for me, okay?”

She smiled “You can thank him. We’re all doing Midnight Mass and Christmas dinner together. Everyone will see you then.”

I nodded. Okay. Good. I could thank everyone when I went to Midnight Mass and sat down to Christmas dinner with this new family that was not going away. I swallowed again and my eyes burned.

“Rusty, are you okay?” Nicole asked, and I nodded, which was a lie.

“I’ll be back in a sec.”

My construction clothes were jeans and work gloves and an old T-shirt with a hooded sweatshirt on top. I stripped out of those and put them in the pile, then found a decent pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt and sweater, wrapped myself in a towel, grabbed my clothes, and crept across the hall. Nobody noticed, and I dove for the shower, hoping I could pull myself together in there.

A home.
This
was my home. There were no grown-ups here, and nowhere else to go. I had to make it the best I could.

It wasn’t bad, really. The table was nice. I had some Christmas decorations up. I could do home things here, and I knew, during the weekend, I could hang out on the futon and do my homework and feel comfortable. I was happier when Oliver was here. That was not even a question. But this was my home now, and there was so much more I wanted it to be for Oliver. The hot water sluiced down my body, and rinsed away some of the panic, and I tried to control the shudders and the stupid goddamned baby tears that wouldn’t go away.

The bathroom door opened, and I stuck my head out of the shower to see Oliver, looking sober but not pissed, sitting on top of the toilet.

“Hi,” I said. It was a word, right?

He nodded. “Hi.”

“We’re having a dinner party.”

“I noticed.”

“I’m freaking out in the shower.”

“I noticed that too.”

“I’m sorry I left you at your dad’s.”

Now his eyes narrowed, and I knew how pissed he’d been.

“That was an interesting choice. Whyfor did you do that?”

I sighed and turned off the shower and waited for the water to stop dripping, then reached for one of my two bath towels.

After I’d toweled my hair and dried myself off, I wrapped the towel around my waist and stepped out of the tub. “I want to build you a house,” I told him. “I want it to be maybe a little bigger than your dad’s. But it’s got to have a yard. We can garden and make flower beds and a lawn. It would have an open floor plan, you know? So we could talk while one of us was at the table and the other one was cooking or doing dishes, and you could listen to the TV while you were doing that. I like that. And the bedroom would have desks in it, so if one of us had to sit and work, the other one could sleep, and we’d know we were there. We wouldn’t have separate offices. And the bathrooms would be bigger. And there would be a washer/dryer in the garage, or a mudroom or something like that. Probably a garage, because I like building stuff and I want my own tools. And we’d paint it exciting colors—like cinnamon and sky blue—you know, like that blanket you’ve got on your bed? And—”

I was standing in front of him at the toilet, and he stood up and held his finger against my lips. Suddenly just being near his body made me feel better. I needed to remember that—being near his body made me feel better.

“This is a good plan, Rusty. Why are you telling me this after leaving me on my father’s lawn?”

I swallowed. Oh yeah. That. “Because this place, it’s not like the one in my head. And you can always go home, but this is the only place I’ve got. And it’s not that great.”

He wrapped his arms around my waist, and I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and kissed the top of his head.

“I’m sorry I left you on your father’s lawn.”

“I’m sorry you’re all lost inside.”

My throat swelled, and for a minute I thought I’d have to get back into the shower again. “I don’t think right when I’m not holding you,” I apologized, and he hugged me tighter.

“Maybe you just need to be held some more,” he said, and I nodded.

“Okay.” He felt good against my body, and my next breath came easier.

“I’m up for the job,” he said, and I smiled. The tightness eased up completely.

“I’m really glad about that.” I meant that with everything in me.

“Good. Get dressed. I’ll go talk to my Aunt Gloria.”

I stopped him from pulling away and kissed his mouth, and he opened for me. It started out casual, and suddenly it got clingy and tight and when I pulled away, I realized that we were a towel away from having sex in the bathroom with people outside. I swallowed and turned him around and pushed gently.

“Go.”

He took a few deep breaths while I was getting my boxers on, and finally went.

I came out and we had dinner and talked. Gloria liked my sister very much. By the end of dinner, they had plans to go shopping, and I wanted to bang my head against the table.

“Oh God. Christmas shopping. I’m so lost! What do I get everybody?”

I couldn’t wrap my head around it. When it was my parents and Nicole, I’d spend
days
looking for something for Nicole. My parents got a gift certificate to the galleria. But now, I had Oliver’s whole
family
, and
no
money, and . . .

I looked at Oliver miserably. He was telling my sister about a new vintage clothing store, and how he was going to go look for some combat boots for cheap, and his face was lit up and his hair was framing his cheekbones and . . .

I wanted to give him the world. I wanted to give him the house I had in my head. I wanted to give and give and give until he had everything.

It’s just . . . I had so very little to bring to the table.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nicole was saying while I lost my mind. “I’ll bring Estrella here on Saturday. She’ll teach you how to make cookies.”

I felt a pang of guilt. “You can’t do that to Estrella. Saturday’s her day off.”

Nicole wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, but she’s worried about you. I told her I’d show her you were okay.”

Okay. Okay. Well, I had to go shopping anyway, right? “What should I buy?”

She gave me a list of stuff. I made her write it down, and Gloria added some suggestions. Okay. Great. I was getting a whole new skill set here. Balancing a budget, baking cookies, dealing with my emotions—it was like a crash course in being a human being. I could do this. I’d
been
doing this. It would be okay.

That night, after Gloria and my sister had left, and the dishes were done and the leftovers put away (they’d be dinner for, like, three days), Oliver and I sat at our new table and did homework. We didn’t say much.

I dozed off at my computer at one point, and when I woke up, Oliver was steering me through the darkened apartment. He helped me take off my pants and my sweater, but he left on my T-shirt and underwear. We both crawled under the covers on the creaky inflatable mattress that smelled like our sex from the night before, and he burrowed into my arms.

“No sex?” I yawned, trying to ramp myself up for it.

“No sex,” he said, clinging a little tighter.

“Why not?”

“Because you just need to be held.”

“God, you’re smart,” I murmured, and we fell asleep in a tangle.