by Mary Calmes
“Hello,” I called out.
Joe leaned out of the kitchen. “Hey.”
I dropped my keys on the shelf, locked the door behind me, and put my laptop bag on the couch as I passed it on my way to him.
He smiled as I walked up to him. “How was your day, baby?”
I slid my hand around the back of his neck, stroking over his nape before I tipped his head back so I could kiss him. “Long. Yours?”
“Hectic, but I wanna hear everything about your first day back.”
I took his hand and led him back into our large, newly renovated kitchen. Joe had put all his energy into the house while I was missing, and the improvements, ordered by him, supervised by Julian, were extensive and stunning. All the new stainless steel appliances, especially the refrigerator big enough that Joe could hide in it, were amazing. “What’d you make?”
“Roast chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli with fennel, and salad. I hope that’s okay.”
“Jesus, Joe, of course it’s okay. I don’t deserve you.”
“Sure you do,” he assured me, lifting his chin for another kiss that I willingly bestowed.
After I changed, we had dinner and sat at the table and told each other about our days, the friends, the crazy people, and the little things that didn’t matter to anyone else. While I was doing the dishes and he was drying, he told me that he’d gotten an e-mail from Shane earlier that day.
“Oh? What did it say?” I was interested.
“Can I say first that you need to fix the voice-activated software on my laptop.”
“Why’s that?”
“Ryan thought it would be funny to screw with it, so now every time I read e-mail it gets read to me by some Eastern European call girl.”
My iced tea went down the wrong hole.
“It’s not funny, Marcus.”
“No, not at all.”
He growled.
I laughed softly. “Tell me what Shane said.”
“Oh, well, he told me that he was sorry for everything from being so weak that a witch could possess him—that wouldn’t have happened to one of you guys?”
“No,” I told him. “And it wasn’t possession. She made a doppelganger and inhabited it, but still, if you know yourself, if you’re confident, a clone cannot be made. It’s too hard.”
“Oh.”
“Go on.”
“Well, he just said that he was really sorry and that he wished that things could have been different with us.”
“What else?”
Joe arched one beautiful, thick eyebrow for me. “That if I ever left you, to please let him be the first call I made.”
I leaned sideways and sucked his ear lobe into my mouth, inhaling at the same time. “You’re never leaving me.” My voice rumbled deep in my chest.
“No,” he agreed, holding onto the counter as he shivered.
Six years—it had officially changed while I was gone—and the man still got weak in the knees when I kissed him. I was so lucky.
When I was done with the kitchen, I flipped off the light and just stood there a minute watching him. He was folding laundry that he’d done earlier and was listening to some baseball game that was on TV.
“Marcus,” he called over to me distractedly. “Remember tomorrow night is that charity benefit Ryan’s hosting, so you have to pick up both of our tuxedos from the cleaner’s before three and be home no later than five.”
“Yes, dear.”
He grunted, immersed in what he was listening to.
I went into the bedroom, and after a while, he poked his head in.
“Whatcha doin’?”
“Crossword.”
“I can turn off the TV. We can play cards or something.”
“Nah.”
He slid into the room. “You want something for dessert?”
“Like?”
“I dunno. We could take a walk for ice cream or pie or—”
“No, I’m good here.”
“You feel okay?”
“Yeah, just sore.”
“We could go get a drink.”
“You drank enough the other day,” I reminded him.
He flipped me off, and I started laughing.
“We could call some friends, go out if you want.”
“You wanna do that?”
“Not particularly, but I will.”
I yawned. “That doesn’t sound real good.”
“So, what, then?”
“Baby,” I smiled. “You’re not here to entertain me. You know that.”
“I know. I just don’t wanna take you for granted.”
“You’re not. I’m home. I’m safe, so are you. We’re fine.” He looked good in his jeans and a rugby shirt. “We’ll find our old rhythm. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried.”
“But listen, I don’t expect you to cook every night all of a sudden.”
“No, I know, but I like cooking for you, and you appreciate it, and talking while we do the dishes is probably one of my favorite things in the whole wide world.”
“You’re very easy to please.”
“No, I’m not. You’re the only one that I want to do this stuff with.”
“Come here.”
“What?”
“I was gonna attack you later when you came to bed, but could you just pretend it’s later and let me have you now?” I grinned slowly, dropping the newspaper and the mechanical pencil I was using to do the crossword on the floor.
“Uh, yeah.” He laughed, climbing onto the bed.
I reached out for the collar of his shirt. “I missed you today.”
“Bullshit. You were too busy to miss me.”
“I wasn’t, I swear. I missed you.”
“That’s kind of romantic, huh?”
“Don’t get used to it. Just kiss me.”
He chuckled against my lips before I grabbed him, rolled him over onto his back under me, and kissed him breathless. When I was sure I had him at my mercy, I went to work on his clothes.
The bite was unexpected, hot but surprising, and I lifted up to look down at him.
“Why am I stopping?” I grumbled irritably because I just wanted to take his clothes off and ravish him, and why was he being difficult?
“I just”—he took a shuddering breath—“love you, is all.”
“Yeah, I love you too,” I said quickly, bending to reclaim his mouth. I got his chin.
“Marcus!” he squealed.
I growled.
“I’m serious.” He started laughing. “Stop being an ass.”
I whined loudly, taking his face in my hands. “I love you too, baby, more than anything. You’re my whole life. Now can I please just do you?”
His face was alight with happiness, and his eyes, the beautiful pale blue I was a slave to, were dancing. “Yes, Marcus, I’m all yours.”
It was always nice to be reminded.
I
I THOUGHT people only went nuts over Christmas in the movies. It had never occurred to me that in real life, people put giant fake snowmen on their lawns, put life-size Santas and the reindeer—complete with Rudolph—on the roof of their house, and draped lights over every square inch of available space that a staple gun could be maneuvered into. Even the trees and bushes were threaded with lights. It was insane, and I had no idea. And that was just the outside.
Inside, the place looked like Santa’s workshop. I had never seen so much kitsch in my life. All the red and white, it was like shopping at Target. The candles made the whole house smell like pumpkin pie, and the decibel level with the visiting family—uncles, aunts, cousins, kids, and Dylan’s parents and their friends—everyone sitting around talking, visiting, and sharing details about their lives… I had never wanted to go home so badly. It was like being in a blender with the switch stuck on mince: I was just chewed up and spit out.
I was supposed to be cheerful and friendly and invested, but there was just no way. I hadn’t been ra
ised in loud; I had been raised in quiet. My mother stayed home and gave piano lessons to help pay the bills. My father was a college professor who taught biology. They had both been older when I was born, my mother in her midforties, my father fifty. There had only been the three of us after my grandmother passed away, and our celebrations, all of them, were small. After they died in a terrible car accident when I was ten, I was all alone. It had taken me a long time to even interact with my first foster family, and then the second and the ninth…. It had been just me for so long. And then one day when I was sixteen, I had turned a corner down at Fisherman’s Wharf and been compelled to walk forward, lift my hand, and touch a man’s back gently so he would look at me.
Jael Ezran, my sentinel, had turned and seen me, and the weight of his stare felt scary and safe at the same time. It seemed like I was supposed to be there, and when he reached for me, I moved forward so he could slide his hand around the back of my neck and draw me closer. That night I had met the other warders in his clutch of four and become the fifth, and from that day on, I had never felt alone again… until now. I was supposed to be bonding, but that was not happening at all.
It was important to my boyfriend that I interact with his family, so I tried. I had missed going the year before because my best friend had been missing and I could not be expected to run through the motions of being happy when I was sick at heart. But since the rite of passage that is spending the holidays with your partner’s family could not be ditched two years in a row, I was there, smiling, nodding, and quietly slipping into a coma. For days on end, I wondered how much eggnog I could possibly be expected to drink. It wasn’t even spiked.
“Don’t be a dick,” Marcus told me over the phone. My best friend and fellow warder was in Lexington, Kentucky, with his boyfriend and his parents.
He had not gone the year before when he had been fighting for his life, as in trying not to die in a hell dimension. I told him that would have been preferable to where I currently was.
“You don’t think you’re laying this shit on a bit thick?”
I grunted.
“People have history and traditions. You should respect them.”
“There is a big stuffed elf in every room of this house.”
“That’s festive.”
“They string garlands out of popcorn.”
“You need to try and not be a self-righteous ass right now.”
“I could die from this.”
He cleared his throat. “Family is what’s important.”
“There is snowman-shaped soap in the bathroom, Santa towels, rugs, decals on the mirror, and a little plaque that says to flush the bad and not the good.”
Silence.
I snickered.
“Really?”
“Uh-huh.” I drew out the word.
“What’s good that would be in the toilet that wouldn’t flush?”
“This is what I’m saying.”
“Whatever,” he snapped. “Just stop being a dick.”
“Why are you getting on me?”
“Because you’re not even giving it a chance.”
And so I tried then, I really did.
The problem was that I didn’t do small things. If you needed something heavy picked up and moved, I was your man. If there were errands to be run, carpets to lay, walls to be painted, I was so there. But sitting around talking, snacking, watching movies, and just spending quality family time was beyond me. I didn’t do stationary well; I had to move before I started climbing the walls.
My inability to sit still did not go over well with Dylan’s parents, who already thought that a thirty-one-year-old man was far too old for their twenty-year-old son. And they were probably right, but there was nothing I could do about it. I loved the man already, and there was no way I was giving him up. Even meeting his annoying friends couldn’t get me to change my mind.
He was young, so of course he had a whole gang of guys who had graduated with him and gone off to college the same time as he had and came home for Christmas every year, making the pilgrimage from different schools all across the country. They descended on the Shaw house that Lily, Dylan’s mother, had made into a mini North Pole, complete with a motion-activated four-foot Santa who yelled “Ho-ho-ho, Merry Christmas” at you constantly. She had greeted them warmly, kissing and hugging them all as she had not me. It wouldn’t have mattered what Dylan’s mother did, if Dylan had given me a second thought.
It wasn’t Dylan’s fault he forgot about me; this was his family. These were his friends from high school he was catching up with. I had not been there the year before to cramp his style, and suddenly I was thrown into the mix. But I was the constant, that part of his life he could take for granted because I was unchanging. And because I was smart enough to understand that, it stung just a little, but not a lot. Not enough to matter. It was an oversight—I was an oversight—and he would never do anything to hurt me intentionally.
I had faith.
Mrs. Shaw was laughing at how much growing boys could eat. Dylan’s buddies—Lance, Jason, and Cole—had stories to tell, news to fill each other in on, and conquests to compare. I hovered in the background, forgotten even to the point of not being introduced.
I went out on the back porch, where it was cold.
It would have been selfish to interfere, to make him acknowledge me, so I didn’t. I was surprised when he left without a word to go have drinks at house parties. His sister Tina, short for Christina, said he was visiting old haunts, hitting a coffeehouse where he was sure to know everyone.
“You can’t expect him to just hang around here with you and my folks and their friends on a Friday night,” she said, smirking.
The accusation that I was old was there, thick, in her voice. I heard her loud and clear. I was even older than she was, thirty-one to her twenty-four, and since she was Dylan’s older sister, of course, to her, I was a fossil. She thought of me being more like her parents and less like her, Dylan, and all their various friends.
If I had looked like an Abercrombie & Fitch model, I could have gone to the party and had everyone falling at my feet and showed my boyfriend that if he ignored me, I could get a replacement damn quick. The difference was that I was a warder and Dylan was my hearth, so he was not replaceable—he was the man I was building my life around. I had to wait patiently for him to return when he was ready. If I had been home, it wouldn’t have mattered. If I had been home, I would have had other things to occupy my time. A warder could always patrol.
Every city had a sentinel who protected the populace from demons, ghouls, and all other creatures from the pit, and every sentinel had five warders he commanded. I lived in San Francisco and was one of the five who served Jael Ezran. I was hoping that he would call me home because of some emergency, but when none materialized, I was going to call to see if they needed me at work before I remembered that everyone was already off. Running a gentleman’s club—a strip club—was normally hectic, but during the holidays, we were never all that busy. It seemed sort of strange to have hot women stripping out of elf costumes, so I had closed the place down as I did every year. With absolutely no one needing me at all, I decided to do what I always did when faced with too much time on my hands: I volunteered for chores.
“Are you sure, Malic?” Mrs. Shaw asked when I told her I would clean the rain gutters on Monday.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her smile almost reached her eyes.
“You don’t have to,” Mr. Shaw said when I offered to clean out the garage for him on Tuesday.
“I’d like to.”
He had nodded, worried about my sanity, I was sure.
“But, Malic, it’s a huge job.” Dylan’s snarky sister squinted at me as I started raking up debris in the backyard on Wednesday.
“It’s fine,” I assured her. She just gave me a flippant shrug and walked away.
At night, Dylan always came and gave me a kiss before he invited me out with him.
“
No, you go.” I smiled. “Have a good time.”
“Just come on,” he said as his friends lingered in the background.
I shook my head, and he left with them, off to another party, coffeehouse, the mall, movies, someone’s house, just hanging out, getting reacquainted. He came home early in the morning, passing out beside me in bed reeking of cigarette smoke, alcohol, and stale air. Other scents clung to him as well, like men’s cologne and sweat. And while I knew he wasn’t kissing anyone but me, never mind screwing around, it was still hard to know he was dancing with others, letting them put their hands all over him.
“You have no one to blame but yourself,” Marcus told me over the phone. “When you get invited out with your man, you go, idiot.”
But I didn’t want to. I was a little worried about what it said that Dylan had not slowed down since we had arrived five days ago for our two-week visit with his family in Marietta, Georgia. Maybe he wanted to spend more time away from me at home, too, but I was keeping him from his joy. The nagging concern of our age difference got bigger and bigger with each passing day.
“It was a mistake to give in to my selfish desire for him,” I told the only person whom I didn’t feel like a tool confessing my insecurities to.
“You’re so stupid,” my friend and office manager Claudia Duran told me. “I wish I was there to knock some sense into you.”
“He’s happier with his friends,” I insisted.
“He invites you and you don’t go,” she volleyed back.
“If I went, I’d cramp his style.”
“Or he’d be all over you.”
But again, I wasn’t hot, wasn’t pretty like he was; I was big and scary and mean. I was not someone the other boys would love. I was a man, and I did not dance and hang out and wear jeans that were too big and shirts that were too small.
On Friday—it had taken two days to do the yard—I was cutting back the hedge that was overgrown beside the fence along the driveway when I looked up to find a man holding a large bottle of water out for me.
I smiled. “Thank you.”
He lifted his right arm, which was in a cast supported by a sling, and asked me if I could do him a huge favor.
