Must Love Christmas
A Glasgow Lads on Ice novel
Avery Cockburn
Contents
Bonus Lads
About This Book
Wee Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Thanks for reading!
Glasgow Lads series
Author’s note: Guillain-Barré syndrome
All About Curling
About the Author
Copyright © 2020 by Avery Cockburn. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
Cover design by Damonza.
www.AveryCockburn.com
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About This Book
Must Love Christmas: A Glasgow Lads on Ice Novel
Garen McLaren is a bit of a mess. But so what? His curling teammates adore his manic energy, and so do the kids he teaches. And nobody does Christmas like Garen. (Snow globes in October? Why not?) He’s vowed to make this year’s holiday the best ever, despite his hot but Scrooge-y new flatmate.
Simon Andreou is a bit of a control freak. The pressures of a new job in a new city are making his head spin. The last thing he needs is an agent of chaos like Garen for a flatmate—much less the memory of their single naked night together.
Just as this odd couple are fumbling toward friendship, a debilitating setback steals Simon’s precious control over life and limb. To be there for Simon, Garen must learn to stop running away when things get tough. And Simon must learn that accepting kindness can be a gift in itself—at Christmas and all year through.
This holiday season, treat yourself to this heartwarming stand-alone novel where love defies fear and gingerbread defies gravity!
Wee Author’s Note
Must Love Christmas takes place October through December 2016, i.e., four years pre-COVID. This means that when Garen briefly gets the flu, it really is just the flu. So as Garen and his pals would say, gonnae no worry!
To Nana
Chapter 1
71 Days Until Christmas
Garen McLaren was being abandoned.
He tried to look cheery as he carried his best friend’s final box of belongings out of their flat—which, in a few minutes, would simply be Garen’s flat.
Outside, Luca was waiting beside the open removal van with his boyfriend, Oliver, both of them rosy-cheeked from the effort of moving Luca’s possessions amid the brisk autumn Scottish wind.
When Luca saw Garen approaching with the box, he turned to examine the overloaded van. “Och, that’ll never fit,” Luca said, rubbing his dark, neatly trimmed beard with both hands.
“Sorry.” Oliver sighed and leaned his sturdy frame against the side of the van. “We should’ve moved stuff from our places separately instead of trying to cram it all into one big trip.”
Garen shifted the box in his aching arms. “Is there room for this in your car?” he asked Luca.
“There’s barely room for me in my car.” Luca took the box and set it on the ramp with a thud. “Shall we rearrange things to make this fit?”
The thought of reloading the van made Garen want to curl up on the pavement for a nap. “Wouldn’t it take less time to drive back tomorrow for the last box? You’re only moving one postal code away.”
“He’s right,” Oliver told Luca. “Unless you can’t survive one night without your…” He angled his head to read the words written on the box in Luca’s neat print. “…Curling mementos, 2010-2016,” he finished with his deadpan Canadian inflection.
Luca chuckled. “Maybe just one night.” He picked up the box with a grunt of effort. “Wait here,” he told Oliver. “I won’t be long.”
Garen followed Luca back up to the flat. As they entered the living room, the place suddenly seemed an empty cavern, though all the furniture remained.
Luca set the box on the dining table and let out a sharp breath, pausing before turning to Garen. “This is so much harder than I thought it would be.”
“Why? You’ll be living with the love of your life. You should be happy.”
“I am.” Luca’s dark, lively eyes had begun to glisten. “But I’ll miss you.”
“Pish. We’ll still see each other twice a week at the curling.”
“It won’t be the same.”
“How different can it be? You already spend most nights at Oliver’s. I’ll barely notice you’re gone.”
Luca must have heard Garen’s voice catching on that final word, because he stepped forward and pulled him into a hug. Garen’s arms hung at his side before wrapping round Luca’s back and holding him tight. He squeezed his eyes shut as reality sank in: After five years of seeing his best mate nearly every day, he was about to live alone.
Finally Luca let go and stepped back, wiping his face just as Garen wiped his own. They laughed together at the mirrored motion.
Garen patted Luca’s box of curling mementos. “Must be some interesting items in here.”
Luca smirked. “Yes, you can have a look if you like.”
“Cool.” As usual, Luca had read his mind. “You sure you don’t need me to help you unload stuff at your new place?”
“You’ve already helped so much.” Luca brushed a streak of dust off the sleeve of his blue wool pullover. “I feel horrible leaving without knowing how you’ll pay November’s rent.”
“It’s my own fault for procrastinating.” Luca had given him three months’ notice to find a new flatmate, but Garen hadn’t placed an ad until two weeks ago.
“Any new inquiries?” Luca asked.
“Not since I checked the app ten minutes ago.”
“I really think you should consider changing the ad wording.”
Garen shook his head. “I want people to know what they’re getting with me. I can’t live with a homophobic neat freak.”
“Maybe upload some new photos, then? The place’ll look bigger now without my stuff.”
“Good idea.” The task would give him something to do tonight instead of lying on the couch feeling sorry for himself—or at least something in addition to lying on the couch feeling sorry for himself. “Away and start your happy-ever-after already.”
His eyes sparking with glee, Luca gave Garen one last quick hug…and then he was gone.
Garen locked the door, then returned to the living room. The afternoon sunlight was angling through the floor-to-ceiling bay window, so the place appeared warm and welcoming. To make the room look even more civilized, he cleared all of his random crap from the coffee table, leaving only the carved wooden bear statue his sister had bro
ught him from Bulgaria.
He took new photos of the living room, then did the same with Luca’s bedroom and the kitchen. Feeling accomplished and also thirsty, he opened the fridge.
There on the top shelf was a brand-new four-pack of his favorite IPA—a red ribbon tied round the handle—and a note in Luca’s handwriting. Two hearts flanked the word Enjoy!
Luca had also left behind the rest of his takeaway pad Thai from the previous night. That was Garen’s next meal sorted, then.
He brought the food and a beer to the dining table in the living room, intending to choose new photos to upload to his Flatmate Wanted ad.
But Luca’s Curling Mementos 2010-2016 box beckoned him. Garen unsealed the packing tape, then flipped back the flaps.
At the top of the box was a framed photo of Team Riley—or “Team Smiley,” as their fans called them—taken just before the start of the Scottish Men’s Curling Championship. Garen and Luca stood in the center, flanked and dwarfed by their brawny front-end curlers, David and Ross. A grinning Oliver stood beside them as their coach.
Garen dug deeper into the box, traveling back in time. Here were Luca’s three consecutive Curler of the Year awards from Shawlands Rink, where Team Riley were based. Last year, Garen himself had won the honor in a shocking upset. He’d often wondered if Luca had asked the awards committee to give it to Garen. That was the sort of friend he was.
Arriving at the bottom of the box—the early days of Team Riley—Garen found a photo of himself, Luca, David, and Ross after they’d placed third in the national university championship.
He pulled out the photo and examined the space between his body and Luca’s, mere days before their breakup. On the ice, their chemistry had never faltered, but here on the podium, holding up their bronze medals, there was the hint of a disconnect. In the photo, Garen was beaming at Luca while Luca beamed at the camera. Awkward, that.
He let out a long, slow sigh as he began putting the items back in the box. Like most of Garen’s relationships, his affair with Luca had lasted roughly three months. Since then, Luca had dated sporadically before falling in love with Oliver two years ago. Meanwhile, Garen had continued his rollercoaster routine of diving into relationships hard and fast, then scrambling out of them even faster when things got difficult. Now he was nearly twenty-six and no closer to long-term love than he’d been at nineteen.
At least he’d found a true friend—and the world’s best flatmate—in Luca Riley. Who else would put up with Garen’s literal and metaphorical rubbish?
He had to find somebody. He couldn’t afford this place alone.
Garen opened the Gumtree app and replaced several photos with the ones he’d just taken. Then he examined the text:
Slobby gay curler seeks flatmate who’s not fussed about any of those things. I’m not perfect, but this flat in Glasgow’s West End certainly is. Fully furnished with most mod cons, including dishwasher. Gorgeous view of Kelvingrove Park. Secure entry, lift, central heating, free use of launderette in building. Pets welcome!
As Garen ate his pad Thai, he considered removing the bit about his lack of tidiness. But surely some people preferred a laid-back flatmate who understood that a dish could sit unwashed in a sink overnight without spawning the apocalypse.
Maybe that wasn’t the problem. Maybe it was the ad’s final line:
PS: Must love Christmas.
He could easily delete that bit. But it would be hell to live with someone who would bah-humbug his annual merrymaking. Garen needed Christmas more than ever this year—the whole country needed it, what with the doom of Brexit now hanging over their heads. For just one month out of twelve—or maybe a bit longer—he needed to believe wishes could come true.
Wishes. “Ooh, that’s it.” Garen jumped up from the table, dropping his fork into the takeaway container. As he hurried toward his bedroom, he heard the fork clatter to the floor behind him.
He yanked open the bottom drawer of his bedside table, his “repository of randomness,” as Luca called it. He shoved aside three pairs of semi-broken earphones—their wires locked in a strangle-fight—half a dozen ticket stubs, a long-expired tube of mentholated pain-relief gel, and several random bits of plastic and metal that probably belonged to something important.
Finally he spied his lucky penny, the one he’d picked up on the subway last month—facing heads up, of course, because the opposite was bad luck.
Garen slipped the penny into his front jeans pocket, then put on his jacket and went out into the crisp October evening. Tugging up his hood to keep his hair from blowing into his eyes, he crossed the narrow street into Kelvingrove Park, where the low rays of sunshine glowed against the autumn foliage. Within a few minutes he arrived at the grand old Stewart Memorial Fountain and its four soaring spires of water.
Garen nodded a greeting to the Lady of the Lake, whose statue stood atop the towering round fountain. Arranged below the Lady at various levels were statues of unicorns and lions, carvings of coats of arms, and bronze plaques representing each sign of the zodiac. The whole structure was a bit over-the-top, like a comic book in fountain form, but Garen rather fancied it.
As the wind blew harder, sprinkling him with cold drops of dancing water, Garen circled the fountain clockwise, touching each of the bronze cherub statues on its shiny wee head. Finally he stopped in front of the plaque featuring a centaur for Sagittarius, his own zodiacal sign.
Garen pulled the 1p coin from his pocket and closed his eyes. I wish for a good flatmate before the end of the month. He opened his eyes, then added, Preferably not a morning person.
He tossed the penny into the fountain so it would plop into the water beneath the centaur. But as he let go, a gust of wind blew the coin leftward. Drawing an imaginary line toward the fountain, he discovered the penny had landed in the section belonging to the goat of Capricorn.
Garen searched his pockets for another coin, but unsurprisingly there were none.
“Close enough,” he told the Lady of the Lake, then turned for home with hope in his heart.
Chapter 2
70 Days Until Christmas
Simon Andreou was on the wrong street.
Standing at the junction, he checked his phone again. The enthusiastic email from his prospective flatmate, Dr. McLaren, said the property was on Parkgrove Terrace. But Simon could have sworn the original ad had said it was on the adjoining Royal Terrace to his right.
He shrugged and turned left onto Parkgrove. There was little difference between the two streets, since both ran alongside Kelvingrove Park. As Simon made his way down the pavement, he saw people running along the park’s jogging path on the other side of the wrought-iron fence. His feet longed to join them.
Simon checked his watch as he arrived at the tan stone building’s front entrance: fifteen minutes early, he noted with satisfaction. He straightened his tie, smoothed the cuffs of his blue dress shirt, then pressed the 7 button next to the broad red entry door. While he waited, he carefully folded his new leather jacket over his arm, taking care not to crease it.
“Hello?” came a man’s singsong voice through the speaker.
“Yes, this is Simon Andreou. I’m here about the flat.”
“Fuck, already? I mean…great! Just a—shit, just a minute.”
The speaker went silent. Simon waited a few moments, then turned to survey the quiet street.
After visiting four Glasgow flats in six hours, it looked as though he’d saved the best for last. The location was ideal. It was reasonably close to his new job in City Centre—not to mention pubs, restaurants, and shops—but this park would provide a serene haven from the urban bustle. In fact, the area’s ambience called to mind his favorite parts of Liverpool. Maybe he could feel at home here.
After more than a minute had passed, he pressed the button again.
“Hiya,” came the voice from the speaker. “Sorry about that.”
“I’m a bit early.”
“Yes, you are. It’s fine. Just
don’t expect…anyway, it’s the top floor.”
The door unlatched with a buzz. Simon pulled it open, then paused. Hadn’t the ad said the flat was on the middle floor?
At the top of the staircase, the door marked 7 was slightly ajar. Simon knocked anyway.
The thump of rapid footsteps approached. “Coming!” The door jerked open, revealing a twenty-something man wearing a Deadpool apron and holding a turquoise feather duster. His sandy hair was pulled into a messy bun atop his head, revealing a fair face, square jaw, and pale blue eyes.
“Well, hiya,” the man said, releasing a broad grin that lit up the dim entryway.
This was the strangest-looking physician Simon had ever seen. “Doctor McLaren?”
The man tilted his head, looking confused. “Call me Garen.” He shook Simon’s hand. “Come through, come through. Care for a cup of tea or a fizzy drink or anything? I’ve also got beer if you’re in that sort of mood.”
“No, thank you.” Simon followed him into a long hallway with rooms on either side, the design typical of most flats he’d seen.
Garen beckoned him into the first room on the right, a large lounge framed by matching beige sofas. On the far end, a dining table sat beside a bay window. The room was tidy but felt lived-in, exuding a casual warmth.
“It’s nice,” Simon said, because he had to say something.
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