by LB Gregg
At seven-thirty dinner arrived on a little wheeled trolley. Doug Winters steered a savory pineapple-encrusted ham into the candlelit dining room and my father and his brothers followed the scent of cured meat and maple.
Advent carols played on the sound system and my mother hummed innocently beside another towering Christmas tree, this one a Douglas fir laden with twinkle lights and tinsel. Mom was the brightest spot in the room in a cheerful reindeer sweater upon which Rudolph’s nose flashed red light.
I poured a drink and circled the ornately dressed table, squinting at the place cards. Keith had the place next to my mother. My name rested suspiciously beside Caleb’s. May was next to Ryan.
No question someone had rearranged the seating plan to her satisfaction.
“Man, you’ve aged well.” Ryan shook his cocktail at Caleb as they took their seats. He wasn’t the only McKenzie hitting the holiday sauce with gusto. I sucked a scotch-flavored ice cube as Ryan’s blue eyes sparkled. He was feeling frisky. “Isn’t this a small world? I still can’t believe it. Caleb Black, mister high-school enigma himself.”
“I wasn’t an enigma.” Caleb smoothed his napkin over his lap. “I was just another kid.”
“And you still look like one. You haven’t changed a bit. Except you traded your grunge wear for cashmere.” He’d changed for dinner. His sweater was the same green as his eyes. “What’s your secret? Clean living and fresh air? Or dirty sex?”
“He’s taller,” I offered and they both turned to stare at me as if I’d farted in public. “What? It’s true. You are taller.”
I used to have to bend to kiss him. The tips of my ears burned and I reached for my glass.
Caleb cleared his throat and set his own drink down. “I had a late growth spurt in college. Other than that?” He smiled at Ryan. “Yes to all of the above.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
“You’ll drink to anything tonight,” I muttered.
Doug Winters lapped the table filling wine glasses and making small talk. There was a shout of laughter from the other end of the table and then, dinner was served.
May sat across from me and she sent a friendly smile my way. “If it’s any consolation to you, my family lives to embarrass me at every holiday. It’s excruciating. We can talk about something else at this end of the table, if you like.” She didn’t once notice my brother and he frowned a little at her as if she were going to spoil all his fun. Her bright eyes were filled with mischievousness and I found myself eased by her presence. “We’ll be the grown-ups.”
“That would be a welcome change.” She was very pretty, I realized. Not at first glance, but she was cute and curvy and in her green velvet dress, with her hair flowing to her waist, she looked like a voluptuously sexy Christmas elf.
Ryan couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
“So, your mother tells me that you’re a vet, Dr. McKenzie.” May passed the bread to Ryan without looking at him.
“It’s Owen, please. I hope she didn’t talk your ear off.”
“Oh no, not at all. She’s quite proud of you.”
“I am,” Mom called from the end of the table.
Caleb handed me the bread. “I’m not surprised you’ve done well. I always admired your focus.”
So he did remember me, but only for my GPA? “Well, once I knew what I wanted, I didn’t let anything stand in my way.”
“I remember.”
What did he remember?
But he didn’t choose to elaborate. Instead he served himself a slab of ham, his part of the conversation apparently over, and tucked in to his dinner. His hands were graceful, and his manners would make my mother proud. Which was to say, he knew which fork to use.
It bothered me.
“I understand you’re opening a practice in St. James.” May lifted her wine glass. “A toast, then, to Owen and new beginnings.”
“New beginnings.” I touched my glass to hers and everyone at the table followed suit. I moved to steer the conversation. “So, tell me about—”
Ryan’s voice drowned mine as he honed in on Caleb. “So, what brings you to Evergreen?”
“We were invited.”
“Oh. Are you two a couple?” Ryan waggled his eyebrows. “Lucky you.”
“Put your eyes back in your head.” May handled my brother like a pro. “We’re just old friends.”
“I promised we’d spend Christmas here. We teach together at the college.” Caleb tossed that information out and I inhaled my Merlot. Holy hell, it burned. I blinked through a sheen of cough-induced tears as wine flooded my sinuses.
“I didn’t realize.” I wheezed. “When you said teacher, I thought…I thought you meant kindergarten.” I wiped my nose with my napkin.
“No way.” May giggled and then she laughed full out. “No.”
“You teach…here? In St. James? At the college?”
How could that be?
He nodded. “Going on five years now.”
Obviously this wasn’t news to my brother who winked at me. That grinning bastard. “Wow. Talk about a small world. What do you think, Owen? Isn’t that uncanny?”
“I…yes.” I scrambled to say something coherent. “What a fluke.”
Fluke?
“I live in town as well.” Caleb speared a baby potato with his fork and I felt its tines jab me straight in my solar plexus.
“Excuse me?” My own fork hit my plate with a clatter.
“Actually, I guess I should welcome you to St. James.” Caleb lifted his glass again. His smile flashed in the candlelight. He was handsome and smooth and I felt like a bumbling oaf. “Welcome, new neighbor.”
He didn’t even blink.
“Small, small world.” Ryan tapped his glass to May’s.
“Welcome, Owen!” My mother raised her glass. “And to old friends and new friends.”
“Here, here!” Uncle Duncan lifted his wobbling goblet and I held my breath. Wine sloshed but he managed to tap his glass against my father’s without incident. They all looked so happy. I raised my glass and my father’s twinkling blue eyes winked back at me.
Keith dabbed his lip with his napkin and cleared his throat, finally breaking his silence. “So. Caleb, is it? Tell me again what it is that you teach.”
“Creative writing, Lit, English 101, Women and Speculative Fiction. You know, the usual.”
That made so much sense. “I never saw you without a book in your hand. Fantasy books.” Some of them were mine. “You read all the time.”
“It’s my passion. And I’m hopelessly addicted to anything with magic, wizards or swords.”
Keith scoffed, “Like Lord of the Rings?”
“Exactly. Owen bought me the set back when we were in high school.” He said to me, “I don’t know if you remember that.”
He remembers. Warmth spread through my body, but that had to be the wine. “For Christmas.”
“Read to me.” Caleb shoved his hair back from his forehead and it poked like the spines of a hedgehog—if hedgehog spines were blue. Latching on to my wrist, he yanked and I fell on top of him. He smelled like the garage where he worked, and my mother’s gingerbread cookies. His mouth closed on the side of my neck. “Mmm…”
“Bite me.”
He squirmed against me and laughed. “I will. But first—read.”
“You’re crazy.” Teeth nibbled along my shoulder and I rolled him onto his back, and pinned him. I gripped his wrist against my pillow and he struggled only because I loved it. Sex. I was going to have sex again with another person. With Caleb Black.
“When you read, it’s even better. I could listen to your voice forever.” His free hand slid into my underwear and my dick fit perfectly into his curved fingers. He whispered, “I promise to make it worth your while…”
“Anything.”
May’s voice brought me back. “Caleb’s being modest. He’s the new assistant chair of the department.”
I put the wine down and reached for my water.
“Must be a small school,” Keith said.
My mother cooed, “Oh, that’s wonderful. And it’s another reason to celebrate. Congratulations, Caleb! Your parents must be so proud.”
“Thank you, Mrs. McKenzie. I’d like to think so. My mother was a teacher and read to me until I was in the seventh grade. She passed away when I was in high school.”
I turned to look at him. “I didn’t know that.”
At eighteen I’d been perilously close to losing a parent. I glanced again at my father.
“I know. I should have said something—I was going to say something.” Caleb pushed his hair back, the first self-conscious move I’d seen from him since he dropped the sheet music two hours earlier. “But things got in the way. And then there wasn’t time.”
From her spot on the opposite end of the table, Mom said, “I remember the first time you came to our house. It was the winter break of Owen’s senior year. You had blue hair and the two of you blushed the entire time.”
“Mom, I don’t think anyone wants to hear…”
“Blue hair?” Keith laughed. “That’s so extreme.”
“Extremely cool. Chicks dug it. And evidently our Owen did too.” Ryan looked between Caleb and I. “I never saw you at the house. Where the hell was I?”
“Molesting the sophomore class.”
May giggled. She must think I was joking.
“Those two were an item,” my mother announced. “Caleb was Owen’s first boyfriend.”
Truly, if Father Christmas loved me at all, he would gift my mother with acute laryngitis.
“What?” Keith’s aggrieved voice pinged through the room. “I thought you didn’t come out until college. I thought your first lover was that Terence guy in your anatomy class.”
“Yes, Owen. Tell us about Terence.” Ryan flinched as May kicked him under the table. “Hey. That hurt.”
“There’s a difference between coming out and making out. I think everyone understands that point.”
“Yes of course there is, but I don’t think you ever mentioned this.” Keith eyed Caleb. “You never mentioned anyone with blue hair.”
“Maybe you just weren’t listening,” Ryan offered helpfully.
My mother continued dreamily, “It was snowing and I had just banned Tchaikovsky for the season. Dad was sleeping. I was standing by the kitchen window frosting cookies and the Vienna Boys’ Choir were revved up to sing Handel’s Messiah—”
Doug Winters circled the table again and unnecessarily replenished the wine as Mom geared to tell her spellbound audience a story. My story. If I could crawl under the table, I would, but that would only encourage her.
“—when Owen came home from the winter dance with a boy in a red sports car…a Mustang.”
“It was a Mach One. I loved that car,” Caleb added.
“They parked on the street. Snowflakes covered the car windows, but I saw you both silhouetted in the lamp light.”
“Oh for the love of…”
“The two of you stayed there, parked in front of the house in the freezing cold. The windows fogged. Time passed.” My mother’s career on the stage had been wasted in the ballet. “It was nearly midnight when you finally brought him into the house…he had a twig of mistletoe tucked into his jacket and I knew. He was your first.”
The sound of metal rasping against china filled the room as Keith sawed into his meat. Ryan gave my mother an appalled look. “You didn’t actually witness this event, did you?”
“Don’t be disgusting.” She sipped her wine. She should eat some ham. Maybe soak up some of that alcohol. “Not that you are disgusting, love, but I respect your privacy.”
Ten years of education, a new veterinary practice, and she could level me with ease. As an adult I knew better, but shock had a way of sailing past reason and leaving a person floundering in adolescent embarrassment. I’d thought I was too old for this. Man, had I thought wrong.
My face had to be as bright as Rudolph’s red nose flashing on her sweater. “How can you remember a single inconsequential event that happened fifteen years ago?”
“Inconsequential? Don’t dishonor your history or insult the man sitting beside you. He was your first love. And you—” she waved her glass at Caleb, “—you thought my son hung the moon. I saw you.”
What had she seen? Caleb’s palm had cupped my neck and I could still hear the sound of my throat clicking in the silence of the car as I swallowed. It was steamy inside, but that ring on his knuckle was cool against my skin as he drew me in for another kiss. Jesus. I’d nearly self-combusted. A short time later the two of us were sequestered in my bedroom, the walls plastered in posters of snowboarders and football greats, and Caleb coaxed his way inside my jeans. When his wet mouth closed around the velvet tip of my penis, I had utterly combusted.
Don’t look at him.
But I did—and to my amazement, Caleb looked back at me. His voice was soft. “I remember that as well, Mrs. McKenzie.”
Against his pale hair the tips of his ears glowed a bright scarlet. His simple reaction stayed me from gagging my mother, who said, “It was a defining moment.”
She was right. That evening held the definitive moment of a lifetime because it was the first time I came in another man’s mouth—it had been the official point of no return.
That memory was clearly written in Caleb’s expression as his gaze searched mine. I didn’t move. His bayberry aftershave held me prisoner. And his chin was so smooth I knew he’d shaved before dinner. I waited, spellbound, as Caleb’s glance flitted to my lips for a hovering nanosecond. Right there in the dining room, in front of the entire McKenzie clan, with a single look, Caleb caught me.
He licked his lips and I couldn’t have moved if my life depended on it.
From a seemingly great distance my mom said, “That’s when I knew I had a gay son. You were parking with a boy—and he was so unbelievably adorable. Dreamy.”
“But you never said a thing about him. Nothing.” Keith’s voice was filled with confusion and, thank God, because he broke the spell I was under. I flushed like a schoolboy and stared down at the puddle of gravy on my plate. I’d eaten every last scrap. When had that happened? No wonder my stomach felt strange. Keith’s silverware clanked as he set them on his plate. “Who in the hell are you?”
“What does it matter to you?” Another sentence I wanted to retract instantly.
“I’m Caleb Black. I was only in Owen and Ryan’s school for half a year.” Caleb shrugged. “Maybe I wasn’t worth talking about.”
He couldn’t possibly believe that—although my every word tonight proved otherwise. I’d just called him inconsequential.
Nice work, you moron.
“It’s okay. I understand. I was a handful,” he said and my stomach burned with shame. I couldn’t have this conversation with him. Not here. Not with Keith’s eyes gleaming demonically from five chairs away—what the hell was he doing here? Not with my mother hovering on every word and certainly not with my father blinking in confusion at the lot of us.
I reached for my glass.
May’s eyes twinkled as she ably steered the conversation. “Caleb’s still pretty dreamy, though. You’ve got that right, Mrs. McKenzie. I bet Mr. McKenzie really cut a wide swath back in the day, too.” Ryan groaned, but if he wasn’t smart enough to run away with that girl, I would. She was unexpectedly clever—and a true lifesaver. “Now. Tell me the story of how you met—and then we can have some pie and coffee.”
Chapter Five
I was back in Boston. Fat flakes whitewashed Newbury Street and the air was sweet with the scent of falling snow. Taillights moved through the intersection a block away and the T crawled on its elevated track with a tinny clackety-clack—which was impossible. There hadn’t ever been an elevated train here before, but since this was a dream, I let it go.
Half a block ahead of me, a man left fresh boot tracks in the unspoiled snow. He huddled deep inside his coat as white blanketed his shou
lders. With his collar turned high and his hands shoved in his coat pockets, he hunched against the weather and moved purposefully away.
“Hey,” I called, but he disappeared into an alley. I followed him into the narrow shadows. Snowfall accumulated on the walks and ledges around me with a soft hiss. Traffic sloshed in some far-off street and the light of the train faded into an arched tunnel made of tree limbs.
I squinted.
An unlikely forest had cropped up around me. It was weird. Trees winked into existence where before there were only street lamps and signposts. A breeze swirled and the buildings shifted, morphing from charming Bostonian buildings to the towering forest road of Evergreen. Even the pines creaked in the wind.
“Caleb?” His footprints meandered through the blue-white ground. Amorphous blobs—garbage bins, an abandoned shopping cart, a piano, my first car—littered the path, but I followed him until the trail winded ahead and his marks faded around a bend. I was alone.
Something yanked me by the scruff of my collar and I stumbled backward into an unseen doorway—or inside a tree. I couldn’t tell which, but the smell of liquor and Quaker State motor oil filled my frozen nostrils and I knew. I knew him. I’d always known him. Even his smell was the same.
“I thought I’d find you here.” The same words he’d spoken when he found me standing outside the gym. When most sane people were making out under that depressing mistletoe ball or holding hands in public with their heart’s desire at that outdated holiday dance, I’d been a solitary figure lurking in the shadows, outside peering in. I’d stood fogging the glass, feeling as if I’d never belong anywhere—because I’d never be brave enough to kiss my true love under the mistletoe.
And just as he’d surprised me when we were teenagers, the shock of his cold fingertip on my skin heated me from within. I wasn’t alone anymore, not with Caleb’s hand sliding over my jaw. His palm scraped my whiskered chin like sandpaper.
I grabbed his wrist, not to budge him, but to keep him before he faded into my memory. I pressed into his cupped hand and he leaned against me. “Owen McKenzie, funny how I see you everywhere I go.”
“I’m hard to miss.” My name from his lips sent a wave of longing through my stomach until his words suddenly penetrated. He’d seen me?
