Blame It on the Fruitcake (3 page)

I invited him in and we ate cookies. The next night it was homemade pizza. I mean, who turns down pizza, right? Then it was mac and cheese. Again, turning down mac and cheese is like sinning big-time. So on it went until Monday night, riding home, I realized I’d been eating a lot of his shit and not repaying him.

But he wasn’t on my doorstep, so I walked over in my dirt and grime and knocked on the door.

“Hey, wondered if you’d like to go out to eat with me tonight,” I said before it occurred to me I should be saying “hello” or “hi” or something.

He blinked at me a moment and then grinned like high beams.

“Oh yes!” He clapped his hands and did his Brian dance. He turned and picked a heavy coat off the wall pegs by the door.

“Wait. No. Not yet,” I stammered. “I gotta get cleaned up first. Wash off the grease and lube and stuff.”

His eyes glowed at the word “lube,” but I ignored his signal.

“How about I come back in about fifteen and we’ll go?”

He nodded, danced, and waved bye-bye at me as he closed his door.

Shit. He was one really weird fucker. I don’t renege on an invitation, though. I hurried through a shower, put on clean clothes, and was ready to go in almost fifteen on the nose.

A
T
S
OUPS
On!, we sat across from each other. As we were getting settled, Brian turned to me. “Don’t you just hate it when they forget the apostrophe?” he asked.

“What?” I grabbed the menu the waitress handed me.

“You know. The apostrophe missing in the sign. Soup
apostrophe
S
.” He was watching me closely.

I had no idea what he was talking about. I was hungry, and he was waiting for an answer. “Whatever.” I shrugged.

He smirked at me and nodded. Our dinner was off to a great start. After he’d looked down the menu and grimaced, he stared at me, his head cocked to one side.

“Jay says you’re really special. Why would he say that?” he asked.

I shrugged. I thought Jay was pretty special. Wasn’t aware he thought the same about me. I hoped we had the same meaning of the word. At night when I beat off, we did.

Brian cocked his head to the other side, as if this new perspective would give him the answer to his question. “Jay says you’re a mechanic.”

I nodded, not feeling the need to add anything.

“What do you do?” I asked him.

We were waiting for our meals, which seemed to be taking way too long to get out of the kitchen. Although the place had “soup” in its name, this restaurant served a wide range of diner food. Or so I thought. Brian had tried to order a chef salad without croutons and packed with any raw veggies available, with dressing on the side. That’s it. No real food. I tried to get him to order a meal, but he kept insisting a wad of lettuce, a handful of garden growth, and a dab of sauce was a meal. I ordered the steak platter medium rare and decided I could share when he got hungry.

“What do I do?” He shook his head like I should have known the answer to the question. “I’m an art student at State.”

“What year?” I picked up a pack of crackers and broke it open. Damn, I was starving. And truth be told, bored, bored, bored by Brian. The more he stared, the more I felt like a weird bug or something under a microscope.

“Graduate. I’m getting my master’s at the end of the semester. In design.”

“Design, huh? What do you design?” I stopped and cleared my throat. “What do you want to design?”

He grinned and pointed to his holiday sweater, with its snowman in purple and green. “Clothes! I have an eye for it.”

I caught myself before I started laughing. I nodded.

Finally the food caught up with us. Brian got his trough of lettuce and fistful of veggies. I got my meat and potatoes.

“I still don’t understand it,” he said. He was picking at the salad, moving stuff around like he was a miner looking for a payoff. “What does Jay see in you?”

I grunted. Good question. Got no answers. Okay, now I’m not an expert on good manners, but wasn’t this guy being just a little rude?

“Why do you care what your brother sees in me?” I asked. “Does it matter?”

His eyes got wide, and he stared at me, looking shocked.

“Oh God. Oh no. No, no. I wasn’t trying to insult you. I didn’t mean it like that. I just…. You and he…. I’m sorry. Sometimes I can’t find the air brakes for my mouth. Really. I didn’t mean to insult you. Really. My bad.”

Yeah, what we needed here was air brakes. But the more he protested, the more I was sure he was insulting me and probably meant to.

After that I shut down and didn’t engage. I was taller, bigger, and meaner than him. I didn’t need to pound on him for insulting me. But I didn’t need to pretend to talk to him either.

He tried to get me not to tell his brother what he said. I hustled us through the meal, paid, and walked back to the loft, him trailing behind, trying to make nice.

He’d given me something to think about. I’d kinda had an idea how people would see us before. Now I had a real good picture. I might clean up nice in a suit, but I wasn’t in Jay’s league and never would be. Everyone knew it, and better than anyone, so did I.

A
FTER
MY
dinner with his brother, Jay called me a couple three times, but I let them go to voice mail each time. I was trying to figure out how to tell him we didn’t have to do anything after he got back. I’d be running in my cutoff sweats and ratty cross-trainers. He’d be in some fancy Lycra outfit wearing the latest Nikes or something. Now that I knew what everyone would see when we were together, even the one wonderful kiss couldn’t stop the bile from rising. Now I was beating off to his memory, not our possible future.

If there was one thing you knew growing up in the Home and being passed over for adoption time after time, it was your place in the world. I knew mine. I was proud of what I’d made of myself. Unlike a lot a guys who started out where I did, though, I didn’t feel like I had to squeeze myself into a social strata I didn’t understand and that didn’t want me. Jay was a puff of smoke, but that’s all he was—a dream.

Wednesday dawned cloudy and gray, just like my mood. Jay called at breakfast. I let him leave a message. He asked if I was ready to run. Yeah, I was—away. Jay called again at lunch. I let it go to voice mail and didn’t play it back. I watched the clouds roll in thicker and darker as the day passed.

About four Janene paged me to come to the office. I was a mess with grease and gunk over almost every part of my body. I looked and felt like the day, which was now a roiling pit of unhappiness. It looked like it was about to dump a shitload of snow on us at any minute. The way I was feeling, I wanted to shout, “Bring it on!”

My grease rag was just smearing stuff around as I tried to clean up on the way to the office. I fully expected an irate customer trying to save money for the holidays by complaining about the service and refusing to pay his bill.

Instead I found Jay—pristine Jay, in his tailored suit and polished shoes—sitting in my office.

I sighed when I saw him. Damn, he looked good. He reminded me of the tiny present on my doorstep, all neat and tidy and happy. I couldn’t kid myself and say I didn’t want him. I did. I really did. Dammit.

We stared at each other. Then I sighed again.

“Hey, welcome back. How’re Seattle and Phoenix?” I asked.

He shook his head and frowned.
“What’d I do?” he growled at me. “What the hell did I do?” Then he stopped and closed his eyes. “Or what did Brian do? It was Brian, wasn’t it?”

I was so busy taking him in, grieving a little that we wouldn’t be sharing any more kisses or even some time in bed, that his questions were slow to catch up with me.

“Huh? Brian? He made me dinner a few times, and I took him out to eat. Nothing happened. He didn’t do anything.” I didn’t want to talk about me and Brian and how he’d opened my eyes. “How was your trip?”

As I started past him to sit down at my desk, he rose and grabbed me by the arms. When his lips met mine, my resolve crumbled. Hell with it. He wanted to kiss me. Oh yeah.

It was all good until I heard the clapping and cheering. The guys were huddled at the plate-glass window, peering in at us.

I started to back up, but Jay held me in place.

“As long as it’s a show,” he whispered in my ear, “let’s give ’em a good one.”

Then he laid a triple-X-rated kiss on me with groping and humping and generally making me leak worse than the old Honda a guy brought in last week.

The applause, whistles, and catcalls grew louder. When we broke apart to catch our breath, I glanced over and saw the entire staff ogling us.

I felt like I was brick red, but I was happy. Goddamn was I happy.

Sure, I knew we didn’t have a prayer together, but it was Christmas. Fuck if I didn’t deserve a nice holiday season too.

Y
EAH
,
WELL
,
since the weather was so crappy out, we didn’t go out running. After cleaning up at the shop, I left my bike there and he drove us to dinner.

“So you gonna tell me why you’re not speaking to me?” he asked after we ordered.

We’d both broken open some crackers and were munching on them. I couldn’t answer because my mouth was so dry.

I lowered my eyes, picking at some dirt on one of my knuckles.

“What are we doing?” I didn’t look up at him.

He reached over and took my dirty hand in his. “Don’t know. But we’ll figure it out together. Okay?”

I looked at our hands. So different and so alike. He had a smudge of ink on the back of his hand. I had dirt. His blue button-down was wrinkled and smudged in places. I had a spot of grease on my T-shirt. Both of us wore the marks of our jobs. Maybe we weren’t so different.

Best of all, he could kiss like a son-of-a-bitch. We tried to say good night, tried to part in the hallway between our lofts, but it was impossible. Our feet were firmly set on a path to his bedroom, and we were helpless to fight it.

We were naked almost before the door closed. His mouth locked on to mine and wouldn’t let go. Possibly because I had a tight grip on the back of his head. We were rubbing so hard against each other we should have burst out in a super merit badge-worthy fire.

“Bed,” he whispered in my ear.

“Yeah.”

We had a lot to explore.

The next day it hit me: Now not only did I have a present and fruitcake, but I’d also gotten laid. Who needed more than one really great night in his life?

For the next few days, we saw each other every second we could. He seemed to be really into me for some reason I couldn’t understand. I wasn’t going to look a Christmas gift in the mouth, though. I was riding this puppy until one of us gave out.

I’d never gotten up in the morning with someone still in my bed. Never wanted to before. But it was fucking okay. We both watched our version of the news as we ate: me, sports; him, entertainment reports. We talked about what we expected our day to be like. He’d even offered to look for a spot where we could put Big Harry’s bike and give his ashes a proper burial.

They were the most domestic days I’d ever lived, and I loved it. I’d never thought of myself as housebroken, but damn if I didn’t consider it now. Having a live-in lover seemed so fucking easy I couldn’t understand why so many guys I knew complained about it.

On Saturday morning he got a call from his grandma, the one who made the fruitcake.

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He’s right here, Nana. You can talk to him yourself.”

He handed the phone to me, and I panicked. What the hell could this woman have to say to me? I had nothing much to say to her.

“Uh, hi.” I felt like I’d just jumped off the high board and was soaring into the blue depths of who knew what.

“Is this the man who liked my fruitcake so much he tried to steal some?” she asked.

Fuck. Outed. Damn.

“Uh, yes, ma’am. That’s me.” Now what? “I’d never had fruitcake before, and it was so delicious I had to have more. You turned me into a fruitcake junkie, ma’am.”

She started laughing so hard she ended up coughing, and I worried about her. How old was this woman? Should I not be joking around with her?

“Young man, I have to meet you,” she said after a couple of final coughs. “I want you over to my house for Christmas Day. I’ll give you your fix and a lot more.”

I almost lost it. A little old lady who wanted me to visit her on Christmas and the promise of fruitcake. I looked up at Jay, who seemed concerned, almost frowning. Fuck. There I went again, forgetting my place. Hell, I’d gotten along alone so far without celebrating Christmas since I’d left the Home. Why should this year be any different?

Just because we’d spent a few days together didn’t mean I got to horn in on his family holiday. What was I thinking?

“Thank you for the invitation, ma’am. But I got other plans.” It broke my heart, but I had to do it. The ditch between Jay’s clenched eyebrows was deeper now. Shit, I’d almost blown it by giving in to greed.

She started talking a mile a minute about turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce and new potatoes, gravy and dinner rolls. The list of food rolled over me, drowning me in delicious images and smells. I wanted. I wanted so much to go. I ached to go. But if the Home drilled nothing else into me, I did know the rules. Cute girls and boys got cuddly toys and happy mommies and daddies. Ugly oversized kids made their own happiness.

Time to start over and get real. I let her talk until she seemed to dry up.

“Uh, nice talking to you, ma’am. Here’s Jay. Merry Christmas.”

I handed him the phone and started clearing the table as he wandered away to talk to her. See, here’s the problem with a loft. There’s no place to go to be private and alone. And I knew this discussion with his grandmother was one of those talks.

After cleaning up the breakfast dishes, I put on my shoes and walked to the front door. He was still huddled over the phone. I coughed and signaled to the door as I opened it. He shook his head and held up a hand to stop me. I smiled, which might’ve looked like a grimace, I don’t know, and waved.