Christmas Kitsch (Hol) (MM) (28 page)

“Good,” Nicole said with dignity. “Now you can take me home and Estrella doesn’t have to.”

Mom didn’t move. She just stood at the door and looked around. I saw it through her eyes for a moment and wanted to run and hide. The kitschy decorations, the cheap IKEA futon, the Formica counters, and the new, badly installed tile. I wondered if she could see the inflatable bed from the hallway and hoped the floor would open up and swallow me.

“Rusty, you
live
here?” she asked after a moment, and I had a sudden moment of defensiveness.

“I’ve got a kitchen full of people who want to be here,” I snapped. “Who’s in
your
house right now?”

She gaped at me, and Nicole turned and gave me a thumbs-up. I smiled weakly and turned to Estrella. “You’re not going to become like Nando, are you?” God. What if I cost Estrella her job?

“No,” Estrella said loudly, looking my mother in the eye. “Today is my day off. I can do as I wish.”

“Is that my Mixmaster?” Mom asked, her voice cracking, and Estrella looked proudly at her.

“No. That is the one you gave me five years ago. You gave me a new one last year, and this was mine to do with as I pleased.”

Mom flinched, and I wondered what was happening between the two women that I didn’t understand.

“Oh,” she said after a few moments, and I stood there.

Then I remembered that Estrella had taken her day off to teach a bunch of stupid kids how to bake cookies for Christmas. I hugged her, realizing how short she was all over again. “Good-bye, Estrella. Should I make some cookies for you?”

She pulled back and smiled and kissed my cheek. “I would love some, Rusty. Nobody’s ever offered before. I’ve always had to bake them.”

I smiled at her, feeling goofy and pleased. I could give her something no one else had. She pulled away then and walked with dignity out of the apartment while my mother shifted aside. Sal and Joey didn’t even look at her as they walked by, but I watched as Nicole hugged them both and said she couldn’t wait to see them again.

Mom flinched at that, and still kept staring at the inside of my apartment. Finally, it was just her, standing there in her caramel-colored Nordstrom coat and leather gloves. “You don’t even have a bed!” she snapped, her voice accusing, and I glared at her, suddenly angry.

“Shut the door. You’re letting out the heat.”

Oliver took that as his cue and ran forward, slamming the door in her face. We stood there, in our warm kitchen that smelled like cookies, and stared at each other for a second. I dragged my hand through my hair and realized that it was shaking.

I took two deep breaths and turned back to finish securing the cookies in a big freezer container Estrella had brought in her magic shopping bag, and Oliver waited until it was all done and the container was sealed.

“Rusty?”

“Yeah?” I said. I kept my attention on the counter in front of me, making sure it was as absolutely clean as it could possibly be.

“I don’t even know what you’re thinking right now.”

I took a deep breath and let it out shaking. “I’m thinking I hope Estrella and Nicole don’t get into trouble.”

“Yeah? ’Cause you sound like you hurt more than that.”

I closed my eyes hard and pretended they weren’t burning, because he was right. “I’m sort of wishing that wasn’t happening.”

He was suddenly mashed up against my back and his hands were looped around my waist. “I’m here to make it better, Rusty. We don’t need a bed to do that.”

I wiped my hands off on a towel and turned in his arms then, holding him so tight my arms shook. “You make it better,” I whispered, because it was true.

“You’re making a home for me,” he whispered back, and then, coupled with what Estrella had said about making her something that she’d always made for someone else, I got an idea about what to do for Oliver for Christmas.

That night we ate a small meal of spaghetti, because it was easy, and went to bed early. We started out kissing, slow and hard, and then faster and harder, and then like we’d drown if we didn’t taste each other deep on the back of our tongues. His hands shoved at our underwear and our shirts and I shoved at them too, and when we were naked, he wrapped his legs around my waist and ground up, our groins matching and meshing, and both of us hard and scrabbling for friction.

He kept one arm wrapped around my shoulders then and fumbled with the other hand under the pillows, coming back up with the lube. I don’t know how he did it one-handed but he did. He dumped lubricant all over his fingers and snicked the lid shut, then moved his fingers back behind him, and I felt a cold, bright excitement as I realized what he was doing.

“Are you stretching yourself out?” I asked, pressing my lips against the side of his neck.

“Yesssss . . .”

I shivered and bucked against him. His own cock started to drool against my stomach and I kneaded his backside with one hand while I steadied him with my other palm.

“Are you ready?” I put both hands on his bottom, feeling his hand moving between his cheeks. God—it was
erotic
, like nothing else I remembered ever being, and he pulled his hand away and wiped it on the sheets for a second before scooting up on his knees. I leaned back against the pillows and bent my own legs while he positioned himself, up, up . . . I felt his hand on my cock, placing it at the edge of something tight and rubbery and slick and he started lowering his body on top of mine in the dark.

He stopped, halfway down my crown, hissing and breathing hard. I stopped moving, looking up at his face in the darkness, as he closed his eyes and thought really hard about something. While he was thinking, he slid down, a little at a time, a little bit, a little bit, moaning softly until . . .

Oh my God!

“Ohhhh . . . Oliver!”

He popped past the crown of my cock and let out a sigh of relief, then pulled up a little, and down a little, and up a little and down, going down further each time, until he was . . . oh God. He was seated, all the way, with my . . .

I couldn’t even think of what part of me was where. I was shaking too hard with need to even make the thought.

“Oliver?” I squeaked, and he bounced up a little, and then down again, and now I moaned. “God, yeah, please. Keep going, baby. Keep going. Oh my God. It feels so good . . .”

It did. I’d never had such a slick, tight grip on my cock before, not in a hand or a mouth, and Oliver’s breathy little gasps made it sexier, because I think it felt good for him too. I reached out and grasped his cock as it flopped between us, grabbing it and stroking it, and shivering when Oliver’s moan came deep from the pit of his stomach.

“
Rusty, don’t stop
!”

Both of us then, him bouncing up and down, me stroking him, and he found a rhythm as he clenched and rocked and gripped and stroked me with his body. The air mattress bucked and squeaked and trembled beneath us, but I didn’t care, didn’t care, because my vision was going black and my skin was washing cold and a surge of pressure shivered up my balls and rushed my groin and . . .

“
God, yes
!”

Above me Oliver started scooting, and his voice was broken as a sound from the center of him rumbled out and his cock spurted hot in my fist. Our movements became frenzied and spastic then, and for a moment, all I could feel was the hot and the liquid and the hard grip around my erection. Then Oliver fell forward, panting in my ear and nuzzling the side of my neck.

“Was that so bad?” he panted, and I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and rocked him. Our bodies separated, and there was a gush of fluid, but I didn’t care. Tomorrow we’d do laundry, but tonight . . .

“You’re amazing,” I mumbled, wanting to clutch him to my heart forever.

“It’s okay, even without the bed?”

The mattress was only half-inflated, and we’d have to refill it tomorrow, but that’s not what I was thinking right now.

“We don’t need a bed to be in love,” I told him, feeling weepy, and he kissed the corner of my eye where water was sliding out. I’d forget those words in the morning, hate myself for forgetting my objective, but right now, I couldn’t imagine giving up what we’d just done for something as stupid as a bed.

“No, we don’t,” he said softly, and then it was just us, cuddling until we ran to the bathroom to clean up and put on our underwear.

Oliver spent the next night at his father’s house. I managed to convince him that I needed the night to plan his gift, and since it was the truth, he bought it. (I’m pretty sure lying to Oliver was not something I could ever do. I had a hard enough time trying to get him to believe me when I was pretty sure I was right.)

I spent the night with some big pieces of paper, a new pencil, an eraser, and some Sharpies. And, of course, with all of my hopes for us, my dreams for what we could be, for the things I wanted to do for him.

It was all I had, but he kept telling me that all I had was enough, so I was going to run with that. I was going to fly!

The next morning, his father brought him to the apartment so he could take my car again, and he ran a bag of his clothes inside before his dad and I left in the truck.

On his way out, he glared at me. “Don’t I even get a key?”

“Can’t you even wait until I have a spare made?”

“Yeah, okay. I didn’t see no present in there. What were you doing with your time?”

He was standing in front of me before I slid into the passenger seat of his dad’s truck, and I cupped his chin and kissed him, our breath hot in the morning frost.

“I was making your present, and I hid it so I could have a chance to wrap it. I swear, Oliver, I think it’s something you’ll like.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “You say that. For all I know, you’re making plans to crawl in bed again.”

I kissed him again, this time in apology. “I swear, baby. I’ll never scare you like that again.”

He glared. “So, now you’re calling me ‘baby’?”

I smiled and kissed the tip of his cold, cold nose. “Only if you hate it. You can spend the night tonight, I swear.”

“Do I get a key?”

“Do you want to make a copy? You’ll be done before I will, and this way your dad can drop me off here.”

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Yeah, yeah okay. I’ll do that.” He squinted at his dad. “You’ll drop him off here at six?”

Mr. Campbell rolled his eyes. “Oliver, he’s a good boy. I’m going to take care of him. Now go, or you’ll be late for class!”

I went to hop in, and then I had a thought. “Hey, Oliver, did I tell you Rex was staying over Friday? We’ll have to make some cookies for him, too.”

Oliver grunted. “Christmas trees and reindeer only. No sexy men. Pervert.”

I laughed and got in the truck, and Mr. Campbell looked at me funny. “Did he just call you a pervert?”

I shook my head. “No. He called
Rex
a pervert. Are we really laying in the drywall today? I want to try that. It looked pretty cool.”

Mr. Campbell laughed, and I started thinking about what we could get him that wasn’t just cookies. As we rounded the corner toward the bare house we were working on, I thought maybe some flower seeds, because his yard wouldn’t be the same without them.

It was right then when I realized—hey! I was finally not just thinking about living past Christmas.

I was finally thinking about spring.