Let It Snow

by Heidi Cullinan

  “They’re all so sweet, Marcus. So sweet. Nobody’s ever appreciated what I do quite so much and I hate to stop, even for a minute.” He bit into his chicken BLT and groaned. “Oh my God, this is amazing.”

  The food was cold from the ride over and slightly squashed, but Marcus had a feeling a half-rotten baloney sandwich would taste good to Frankie right now, he was flying so high. Marcus smiled and nudged the thermos between them. “This is tea. Not your fancy stuff from the cabin, but it’s hot and fresh.”

  Frankie nodded absently, staring at the salon mirror as he chewed. “I don’t know if it’s the storm or the weirdness of being so out of my element or what, but—” He shook his head. “I feel popular, that’s what it is. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way before.”

  “You’re giving something special to a lot of people no one usually cares too much about. That makes you pretty sought-after in a small town like this.”

  “I’m just doing hair.”

  “You’re smiling and treating old women kindly and not acting like they’re in death’s waiting room. Hell, Frankie, I watch you working with them, I see how little kindness it costs to make them happy, and I feel guilty I haven’t taken more time to visit residents other than my mother. You’re doing a good thing. A really good thing.” He twined their fingers together. “I’m going to be the big asshole that takes you away at six, but I can live with that. You’re going to be dead on your feet tonight.”

  Frankie’s smile turned wicked. “Oh, not that dead.” Laughing, he bussed a kiss against Marcus’s lips. “I’m having so much fun. Is it okay if I come back tomorrow?” Some of his smile died. “I don’t want to take time away from us, but…”

  Every time Marcus thought about Frankie leaving, his gut knotted. He stroked his lover’s cheek. “Storm’s supposed to blow through again in the afternoon, so we’ll probably have Sunday and Monday to ourselves again.”

  Frankie leaned into Marcus’s touch. “I suppose I should call work and update them. God, but Robbie is going to be pissed.” Marcus’s hand slipped down to Frankie’s neck, massaging a tight line of muscle with his thumb. Frankie melted on contact, making a soft moan. “That feels so good.”

  Rising, Marcus moved behind Frankie’s chair and took up his massage in earnest. “Are you going to be in trouble?” Tightness in his chest tried to keep the next words down, but he pushed past them. “Because the roads are supposed to be plowed tonight. If you wanted—” He swallowed hard. “I could get you back.”

  In the mirror, Marcus could see all the joy leaving Frankie’s face. “Leave? Tonight?”

  That despair fueled Marcus’s already eager need to backpedal. “It’d be rough going, and we might have to turn back around, but we could try.”

  Frankie met Marcus’s gaze in the glass, his eyes haunted and sad. “I don’t want to leave tonight. I’m not ready.”

  “Okay. We’ll stay then.” Marcus resumed his massage. “It’s likely safer that way.”

  Frankie didn’t relax, though, and after a few minutes of silence he whispered, “I don’t want to go at all.”

  Marcus stopped moving.

  Frankie tensed back up and shook his head. “Silly, isn’t it? I keep telling myself that.”

  If it was silly, then color Marcus a fool, because he wanted that too. He opened his mouth a few times to try and speak, but fear got the better of him, and he didn’t. He just kept up his massage, loving the excuse to touch.

  Frankie relaxed back into his hands. “This next storm—will it be the same as the first?”

  “This one’s Canadian through and through. Sharp winds, four to five inches of new accumulation tops, but the blizzard conditions will be back as strong as ever. Mostly it’s slowing down recovery time. Without the first storm, it’d be a blip, but it’s kicking us when we’re down.” He shifted his hands to Frankie’s shoulder blades. “Last I heard when I left the café, the tanker was headed into town, right behind the first pass of the plow.”

  “How’s my car?” Frankie asked, his voice a little slurred from the massage.

  “Still waiting for the belt. Though it’s only coming from Eveleth, so it might make it here tomorrow morning.”

  Frankie leaned his head back, looking upside down at Marcus with soft, vulnerable eyes. “I don’t want to go,” he whispered.

  Marcus couldn’t speak. He lifted a hand to stroke Frankie’s face.

  “Tell me I’m being ridiculous.” Frankie swallowed hard and reached up too, his fingers tangling in Marcus’s beard. “Tell me I’m silly, that this wouldn’t ever work. Tell me I have a good job in the Cities, that I’m afraid of small towns and there’s no way this kind of reception can last, not here. Tell me I should enjoy the time I have and stop trying to make an aberration into reality.”

  Marcus would do no such thing. He couldn’t say that, but neither could he say what kept banging at the back of his lips. Stay, he wanted to tell Frankie. Stay in Logan. Live in the cabin with me. Run your own salon. Work at the care center. Do anything you want, just do it here. He couldn’t say any of that, because Frankie was right. This was an aberration. No way someone like Frankie could stay happy in Logan.

  He couldn’t say anything, so Marcus bent over and brushed a kiss across Frankie’s lips. Then another, and another, until finally he stood, trailed his hand along Frankie’s nape and cleared his throat. “If we don’t let them back in soon, there’ll likely be a riot, and in a nursing home, I can’t imagine that stays pretty very long.”

  Frankie laughed, but there was a sadness about him now, and it cut at Marcus all the way back to the café.

  The afternoon went by fast, not leaving him a lot of mental room to wish he’d dared to say what he felt. A pipe had burst in the same apartment building he’d been shoveling out, and all the residents were supposed to relocate to the church, which was getting full fast. Not all the residents wanted to leave, though, Carl and his wife being one of those families. The mayor looked more haggard than ever when the other volunteers came back to the café, but when he spied Marcus, he crossed the room and pulled him aside.

  “I heard about your friend, the hairstylist. Very kind of him.”

  Marcus nodded. “Sure. He seems to be having a great time too.”

  “He’s not planning on heading out with the plow, is he?” The mayor shifted on his feet and averted his gaze. “Hate to ask for a favor, but my mother lives with me, you know. By rights she should be in the home, but my wife says she doesn’t mind caring for her.”

  Marcus smiled. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  He went to pick up Frankie after that, heading over a little early, but he was glad he had because Frankie looked tired, so much so that he texted Arthur and Paul and told them they were headed home instead of back to the café. Maybe Frankie would have enjoyed the attention, but he needed to put his feet up more. In fact, once the wood stove was stoked and the chili heating on top of it, Marcus tucked Frankie into one corner of the couch and put himself on the other end so he could give him a foot rub.

  “I called my boss,” Frankie said as he snuggled under the blanket and flexed his toes against Marcus’s fingers.

  “What did he say?”

  Frankie sighed. “Not much. He’s pissed, like I thought.”

  Marcus said nothing, only kept up the massage.

  “I called my roommates too. After talking to Robbie, I felt like I should ask you to take me back tonight after all, but Josh read me the riot act and told me not to leave until it was daylight and the roads were one hundred percent clean. I guess there was a horrible accident north of Duluth the night I got lost and ended up here, with a semi and three cars, and seven people died. He said the pictures in the paper showed blood all over the road, like when someone hits a deer except you knew it was people.” He shifted so that he lay in Marcus’s arms. “That could have been me. If I hadn’t gone in the ditch, if I’d have tried to get to my parents’ place, I’d have been in that mess, maybe.”


  Marcus pulled him closer and kissed his jaw.

  Frankie turned into the kiss and found his mouth.

  It didn’t take much for their hands to brush against each other, and soon they were pushing at clothes, seeking skin. “Dinner’ll be ready soon,” Marcus murmured, slipping his hands under Frankie’s waistband.

  Frankie slid to the floor and parted Marcus’s knees. “Food can wait,” he said, and undid the zipper to Marcus’s jeans.

  When Frankie took him in his mouth, Marcus tipped his head back and let go, surrendering not just to the erotic attentions but to the feeling that had been trying to explode out of his chest all day. He acknowledged it, held it back, but as he looked down and saw Frankie smiling up at him around his cock, bright-eyed, beautiful, and sexy as hell, Marcus gave in completely.

  I love you, he cried inside his head as he came in Frankie’s mouth. I love you, I’m so glad you crashed your car, and I want you to stay.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ON SATURDAY MORNING as the four of them had their breakfast and planned out their day, Marcus told Frankie about the mayor’s mother and the pregnant woman who wanted her hair done. Frankie said absolutely, but when he caught Marcus’s frown, he paused. “Is there a catch here or something? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Marcus rubbed at his jaw. “Carl and his wife live over at the old schoolhouse.”

  Arthur put down his spoon and grimaced. “Oh hell, Marcus. No.”

  Frankie glanced back and forth between them. “What? Why is the schoolhouse bad?”

  “Because it’s one big fucking meth lab, that’s why.” Paul set down his coffee and fixed his gaze on Marcus. “You can’t take him there.”

  Marcus knew that, yet he couldn’t get the sad young man out of his mind. “Thing is, Carl’s a good guy.”

  Arthur grunted. “I’ve heard plenty of rumors about his wife, though.”

  Marcus began to wish he’d brought this up with the boys in private first. “Well, if it’s a bad idea, then forget it. He just seemed like a nice kid.”

  “He is.” Arthur poked at his oatmeal again. “What kind of mess he has himself in exactly, I don’t know. But this is a viper’s nest best left alone.”

  “Wait a minute,” Frankie said, his own breakfast abandoned now. He seemed troubled. “So why is it I can’t do this woman’s hair? I’m not following you. Because you think she’s sleeping around?”

  Marcus sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “No. It’s—Well, it’s complicated.”

  “Well, how is it complicated?” Frankie demanded.

  “Because the old schoolhouse apartments don’t have anybody decent in them, that’s why.” Arthur’s voice was sharp.

  “Except for this Carl.” Frankie turned to Marcus. “Why can’t his wife come to the care center?”

  That was a good thought, actually, except that now Marcus worried about what this Cindy was like. “I don’t know if it’s legal.”

  Frankie gave him a look. “It’s hair, not open-heart surgery. Come on, Marcus. You brought this up for a reason. Why don’t you at least let me call the guy? See what he says?”

  In the end that’s what happened, because Frankie was insistent. He wouldn’t let Marcus or anyone else listen in, either, and so while Frankie was up in the loft making his call, Arthur gave Marcus hell.

  “What the fuck were you thinking? You want him to stay, this ain’t the way to go about it.”

  Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know. The kid got to me, is all.”

  “Leave it to you to go from grumpy bastard to big softy just from getting laid a few times.”

  “I know.” Marcus’s stomach knotted. Why hadn’t he thought about this? Because Arthur was right, Marcus had been hoping Frankie would stay. Somehow this had been part of his bright idea, having him do Cindy’s hair, and now it was all backfiring on him.

  “Fucking hell. You’re in love with him.” Arthur gripped Marcus’s shoulder. “Don’t act like your dog died. We’ll watch him, all right? We’ll make this work.”

  Marcus nodded, though he still felt grim. “What’s the status on the storm?”

  “Due to hit tonight, shortly after dark.”

  Frankie appeared on the stairs, face flushed, looking defiant. His gaze met Marcus’s. “I’m doing Cindy’s hair,” he declared.

  “Okay,” Marcus agreed, waiting for the rest.

  “I’m going over to her apartment,” Frankie finished, color rising, but his chin too. “Apparently she’s nervous, and I’m going to convince her it’s okay.”

  Marcus simply nodded as Arthur swore. He hoped like hell this wasn’t the biggest mistake he’d ever made.

  FRANKIE COULDN’T EXPLAIN why he wanted to cut Cindy’s hair. Probably he should have had Carl bring her over to Logan Manor, but the thing was, Frankie could tell it would be better for Cindy to get her cut at home, between the other child and the pregnancy.

  The biggest reason Frankie wanted to go over to the apartment, though, was that he wanted—maybe needed—to see this horrible apartment building for himself.

  He wasn’t an idiot. He could tell the others were trying to keep him away because going there was like painting FAG on his forehead and going into a gay-basher’s club meeting. The apartment building would be everything he feared about small towns concentrated, distilled and made volatile by a snowstorm. It was reality in a way that everything about Logan so far hadn’t been. Which was exactly why Frankie wanted to go there.

  The apartment building was the element which, if Frankie followed through on his secret desire to live in Logan, he would ultimately have to face. He wanted to face it now while he was flying high from the care center, when he wanted to stay so much he was ready to go to the Cut ’N’ Curl owner and see if she had a chair available for him to rent. He needed some reality fast, and if there was a way to double-check his Christmas miracle, Cindy Felderman was it.

  Logan was starting to feel like a fairy tale, and it was making Frankie want things he knew he shouldn’t even dream about. He wanted an old-timey Hollywood orchestra and choir to sing “O Holy Night” in the background while Marcus got down on one knee, declared his undying devotion and determination to carry Frankie off to a log cabin in the clouds, and the more things went well, the more part of him expected that to happen. He’d lain awake the night before, sated from sex with Marcus’s big arms around him, fantasizing variations on his own personal Christmas movie where everything worked out and everyone lived happily ever after. He wanted to call Robbie and tell him he wasn’t coming back. Everything felt so good, and he never wanted it to stop.

  He’d told this to Andy, whom he’d called from the privacy of the loft before calling Carl, and Andy had injected cold reality like none other.

  “You’re crazy. You can’t stay up there just because you’ve had some great backwoods bear sex,” Andy had argued. “They’re being nice to you because you’re an aberration. You try becoming a local, you and your everyday gay-pride parade, and they’ll turn on you so fast you won’t see the baseball bat coming before it hits the back of your head.”

  “They don’t seem like that,” Frankie had argued back. “They seem different. They seem nice.”

  “Right, which is why this is so serious. I say go over to this apartment from hell and see Logan, Minnesota’s true colors. Frankie, nobody is more paranoid and freaked out about Small Town USA than you, and your small town wasn’t even that small. Your love hangover is affecting your common sense.”

  That was how, for better or for worse, Frankie had ended up on the back of Marcus’s snowmobile, heading into the bad part of town with his shears in his bag and butterflies in his stomach.

  The old schoolhouse apartments turned out to be just as grim and depressing as advertised. It was the same kind of turn-of-the-century brick building Frankie had attended elementary in, except his building had been regularly maintained, and this one looked like it was held together by dumb luck and duct tape.
Half the stairs had fallen away, though the front entrance was boarded up so it hardly mattered. Residents came and went via a side door, also with stairs, these one of those concrete pre-fab things Frankie had seen at Home Depot when he and the guys had been on a budget decorating spree after too much HGTV. The parking lot sported very old, very rusty cars and trucks, several up on blocks instead of tires. The windows were the kind that used to be big and bright but had long ago been mostly boarded up and replaced with tiny windows that resulted in the building looking half-lidded and sad.

  Arthur and Paul had insisted on coming too, and they worried over some exposed piping they found under the stairs once they’d all piled into the hallway. The hallway that stank of dog shit, sweat, and something unnamable and sad, though at the moment it was all dulled by the freezing temperatures. Which was, apparently, the concern for the pipes. Left uninsulated, they were in danger of freezing and shutting the whole building down.

  As he and Marcus climbed the stairs to 3B, Carl and Cindy’s apartment, Frankie wondered if letting the place get condemned wouldn’t be a blessing.

  “Marcus?” Arthur called up to them. “You got a second?”

  “Let me get Frankie settled, and I’ll be right down,” he called back.

  Frankie had to admit he was glad Marcus didn’t abandon him. Someone was yelling in the apartment across the hall from Carl’s, so Frankie knocked timidly, not wanting them to mistake which door had a visitor. Carl answered on the second knock, looking weary and cold but grateful.

  “You must be Frankie.” Extending his hand, he nodded hello to Marcus. “Hey.”

  Marcus nodded back then gestured at the stairs. “The guys and I are going to check on the pipes.” He turned to Frankie. “You okay?”

  No, Frankie wasn’t, but he lied and forced a smile. “No problem. You go on, I’ll be right here.”