Blame It on the Fruitcake (2 page)

His laughter got louder, loud enough that the twinky guy came rushing up to see what was going on. I got the feeling he was the kind of guy who hated being left out when something was happening.

“Hey!” He danced around on the other side of my new friend. “There a problem?”

My friend was laughing even harder now, and it took a few minutes for him to get quiet so he could speak.

“Sam was wrapping up a piece of the fruitcake to take home with him,” he explained, sounding a little breathy from all his laughter.

The twink looked puzzled for a moment but brightened after a beat. “Yeah, sure. That’s cool. Wouldn’t it be easier to carry in a container than a napkin?”

My new friend gave the guy a wink and said, “Good idea. A container it is.”

We went into the kitchen, where it wasn’t any quieter than the main area. By this time my head was pounding, and all I really wanted to do was get the hell outta there. The good-looking dude had pulled a huge loaf of fruitcake outta the fridge and was cutting off a slab. He opened a drawer, got out some waxed paper, and wrapped it around the slab—my slab. Then he searched through cabinets until he found a container with a top and put the slab inside.

“Here. Enjoy!” he said and handed it to me. “By the way, I’m….”

He was cut off by a shriek from across the loft and two people running into the kitchen area. They shouted about needing wet paper towels, so my new friend hustled to get some for them.

After that, the pandemonium ramped up a bit, and I was left knowing no one but Dave’s name for sure. I’d been introduced to a lot of people, but my pounding head refused to mingle.

I was standing in the kitchen space, looking out over the rest of the partying crowd, watching them sway and regroup.

To hell with it. While I thought Mr. Handsome, who’d known Harry and had given me the fruitcake, might be booty material, I didn’t think I’d make it through this hell called a party much longer without losing an eardrum.

Without even thanking the host, whoever he was, which I knew was proper manners, I snuck out as another group was coming in and, clutching my fruitcake, made it to my apartment. I’d lasted until a little after 10:00 p.m., a perfectly respectable time for an orphan to get back to the Home and a disgrace for a mechanic in his midtwenties, no matter how successful he was.

The music continued through the night into the butt-crack hours of the morning. But even though I got up in a fuck-you bad mood with a monster headache, I figured I’d still won. I’d come away with fruitcake.

T
HE
NEXT
day at the shop, I thought I’d test the waters about this fruitcake thing. Course, this would be an unfair dialogue since I’m the head honcho, but hey, nobody said life was fair, right?

So we’re working on the timing of this older bike without any of the fancy electronics bikes have these days. A bunch of the interns were standing around, watching me fiddle with it since they don’t know what to do with bikes that don’t respond to the diagnostic gizmos.

I’d just about gotten it in tune when I looked up.

“What do you fuckers think about fruitcake?” I asked, looking serious, or at least as serious as I could fix my face.

All I saw was open mouths and big bug eyes staring back at me.

“This one of them trick questions, boss?” José, one of my brightest apprentices, asked.

“Naw. Just a question. Just shootin’ the shit.” I quirked my head, asking for another response.

The four guys around me exchanged glances. Almost like a wave at the stadium, they shrugged.

“Don’t know, boss,” José said. “Never had any. Don’ wanna try.” He shrugged again and turned to the other guys.

“Why not?” I shot back, like I was giving a class on rebuilding a cheap engine.

“Uh, ’cuz it’s ’sposed to taste real bad. Like menudo left out too long. Or maybe like, what was it Ling brought in for his New Year? The petrified egg?”

One thing I had to give José—he jumped right in to any project or questions I had and gave it his best shot. I figured of all of my interns, he was going to be the winner. I just hoped I could keep him after his apprenticeship.

“So anybody actually seen fruitcake or tried it?” I searched their blank faces.

“No, boss,” they answered one at a time.

“Well, I got a treat for you boys. I got me some fruitcake to share with you. But you gotta give me your honest opinions.” I smiled my shark grin. They exchanged an uneasy glance.

“This like one of them rite of passages, yeah?” Jimmy was scratching his cheek like he always does when he’s upset and thinks he’s about to fail.

“Something like that. Follow me.” I wiped my hands on my grease cloth and rose, listening to my knees groan. Pretty soon they’d be cracking and popping.

My little parade moved into the breakroom, where I shooed a couple of the other guys back to the garage.

“Okay, before I cut into it, I want you to smell this stuff. What’da ya think?”

I passed around the container I’d gotten from the guy at the party. I still thought about him, especially at night when I was alone in bed. He revved my motor more than anybody had in a while. A long while.

“Fuck! This smells like a brewery,” Zeke said. “The stuff’s hundred proof.”

José, Jimmy, and Art nodded.

“How bad can it be if it smells like my favorite bar?” Art asked.

I cut them each a tiny piece, about the size of a die. To even up the raggedy end of the main piece, I cut myself a tiny slab and popped a chunk of it into my mouth. The dice sat on the paper towels in front of the guys. Everyone was watching me, probably waiting for a wince or puckered lips or something to show how disgusting the fruitcake was. Instead I smiled.

“Eat up! Try it. I’ll never make you eat it again. Promise.”

One by one they sniffed the pieces. Zeke and Jimmy put the whole cube in their mouths and chewed. José bit off a chunk while Art tried to stare it down.

“Oh my fucking God,” Jimmy groaned. “What the fuck?”

His eyes were like saucers. He was glaring at me.

Art put his piece down as the other two groaned.

“This shit is great,” Zeke nearly yelled. “Hot damn. Can I have more?”

Jimmy and José were nodding and slid their paper towels toward the container.

“Maybe Art isn’t going to eat his,” I said, and I thought a fight might break out, what with everyone grabbing for Art’s piece.

Quickly he picked it up and shoved it in his mouth. He shot a glance at me. He grinned. “What the fuck?” he asked after he’d swallowed. “I don’t get it. This stuff’s great.”

“Yeah, I don’t get it, boss.” José’s forehead was creased like he was really puzzled. “How come it’s got such a raw deal?”

“Got me. But thanks for trying it.”

I didn’t tell them they’d answered my question about whether I was the only one who thought it tasted good and smelled not bad at all. I had started to think maybe I was crazy. Like maybe the Home had skewed my thinking and stuff.

We got back to work, and I tried to put the handsome party guy out of my head. But every time I had some of the fruitcake, I thought about him.

I knew there was no chance we’d ever get together. I mean, we were worlds apart, even if he did know Harry and my shop and grew up in a small town. I just had to talk my dick into believing me.

N
O
MATTER
how well I planned to draw out the fruitcake, there came a day when there was no more. I kicked myself for giving some of it away to the guys. What a dumbass I am sometimes.

The upside was I got to return the container and find out the name of the guy I talked to, the guy who’d gotten my Christmas care package of fruitcake together for me. Well, I could at least ask about him if I found the balls to do it. Would Jay laugh at the lug of a mechanic wanting to know the name of someone hot? Probably. Hey, but I’d put on a suit and tie and talked to bankers, I told myself. I could ignore his laughter like I’d ignored theirs, and ask.

It took a few more pep talks, but by night, I was ready with a clean container to go be polite, return it, and ask my question.

Turned out it was all a moot point because when I knocked on the door, who should answer but the guy himself. Which I wasn’t prepared for. So I stood there in my work boots, my nicer jeans, a tank, and held out the little container like I was a Betty Crocker neighbor out of the 1950s. Shit. I was fucked.

“Hey, Sam! How’re you doing?” he asked, pulling me into his loft. His hand on my arm was strong and sent chills down my spine. I was really fucked.

“Uh, yeah, listen, uh, thanks for the fruitcake.” I shoved the container into his white shirt. I looked down at his gray wool slacks and designer boots.

Yeah, okay, he was starting to react to me like I was reacting to him. With guys it’s easy enough to tell if someone is responding. So yeah, I felt a little better. Maybe I was really going to be fucked. Who knows?

“Glad you liked it.” He took the container from my hand with his free one, then pulled me into the kitchen. “I’m just cooking dinner. I’ve got enough for two. Can you stay?”

Shit. The kitchen area smelled great, just like the whole loft did. The streamers hanging from the high ceiling still waved in the breeze, and on the wall, the tiny Christmas lights twinkled off and on in some random pattern. I’d stepped into a dream, and anything could happen.

I nodded to his question, and he let go of me.

O
VER
A
dinner of beef fucking stroganoff and a crispy green salad, he told me he was the Jay Merriweather who sent the invitation, and the little guy was his younger brother Brian. Jay explained how he was a location scout for a party-planning firm.

“I travel around the country and look for places where our clients can have executive retreats or put on galas. I get to stay in exclusive hotels and be wined and dined by the hotel or resort personnel. It’s a great job, actually. But not as fun as working on bikes.” He shook his head with a frown.

Like I said. We were day and night. He was glamorizing grease and air pumps, and I was visualizing cool, shimmering pools and an overload of gourmet meals. I laughed.

“What?”

“Oh, I was just thinking the grass really is greener over the fence.” I mirrored his head shake. At his raised eyebrow, I added, “You think my job is fun, and I think your job sounds like a dream. Different grass, different green.”

He laughed. “Okay, seen like that, you’re right. Still, working on bikes all day must be a little fun.”

I shrugged. “Sure, it’s a pretty fucking easy way to make a buck, or I wouldn’t do it. But fun? Not as fun as riding them on the twisting mountain roads. Do you own a bike?”

He nodded. “An old Kawasaki I bought when I was twenty-one.” He chuckled and got a faraway look in his eyes. “Spent my entire paycheck on it and had to go crawling home to my folks for food and to borrow rent money. You ever have to do that?”

I snorted. Not likely. I didn’t go into the details but shook my head.

“Yeah, well, you’re lucky, because you have to take a shitload of kidding if you do.”

I’ll bet. Still, it would be nice to have a home to come crawling to. I was a little too large now to be shoved in a basket and set at the Home’s front door.

We spent a couple hours chatting about this and that, pretty much like me and the guys shooting the shit around the shop. I found out he played golf and tennis but didn’t like either one very much. He also was a runner and was thinking about getting in shape for a marathon. Since I’d been kicking around the marathon idea, even though I was probably too big and bulky to make much of a showing, I promised to train with him in the spring and work out with him this winter. We made a date for Wednesday next week, when he’d be back in town.

“Gotta run up to Seattle and then down to Phoenix to scout some places, but I’ll be back by then,” he told me.

Since I had a modified gym setup at one end in my loft and he had a similar setup in his, we agreed to work out and then have dinner together, maybe watch a movie or something afterward. It sounded fucking perfect. My dick had a few ideas about the “something” we could do.

I offered to help him clean up from dinner, but he said his brother Brian, who was getting away from their parents by housesitting, had promised to clean, so he wanted to leave the mess for him. He said he didn’t want to kick me out but had a plane to catch later that night and still had to pack.

Before I left he refilled my fruitcake container.

“Gotta leave you with something to remember me by.” He handed me the container, then leaned in and kissed me. I almost dropped the container, but I managed to fumble it well enough to get one hand free to wrap around his neck. He let out a groan and I echoed him. When we broke apart, he grinned. “Think of this as a down payment for Wednesday night.”

I went back to my place with stars in my eyes and my head. I felt like a twelve-year-old guy with his first crush.

A
T
WORK
for the rest of the week and into the next week, I caught hell. I must’ve skipped this part when I was living at the Home because I kept a low profile. But working with a team day after day, trying to hide my preoccupation with Jay and my occasional—okay, maybe often—silly grins popping out like acne all but wrote out what was happening to me.

My dating history can’t really be called a history or dating. It’s been more of a series of bar-bed-bye relationships. Like in so many other things we didn’t have in common, Jay didn’t seem to fit into that pattern. I daydreamed about how easy he was to talk to. He’d gone to a lot of shows I’d entered and asked tons of questions about the bikes I’d created for them. And he listened. He really listened. Fuck, I was blown away.

What was weird, though, was Brian started hanging around and was always at my door when I got home.

“Hey, sweetie,” he said, doing his Brian foot-to-foot dance. “I made some molasses cookies today. I made too many, so I brought some over for you.”