Mistletoe Magic: A M/M Holiday Romance

by Tara Simon

  Tara Simon

  Mistletoe Magic

  A M/M Holiday Romance

  Copyright © 2020 by Tara Simon

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  First edition

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

  Find out more at reedsy.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1: The Plan

  Chapter 2:The Family

  Chapter 3: The Park

  Chapter 4: The Change

  Chapter 5: The Declaration

  Chapter 6: Christmas

  Chapter 7: The Sketch

  Chapter 8: The Goodbye

  Chapter 9: NYE

  Also by Tara Simon

  Chapter 1: The Plan

  It was Halloween night and Lee was at Sam’s party when he received the text from his sister, his drunk fingers fumbling to unlock his phone and read it. Then he realized he couldn’t actually use his touch screen while wearing gloves. He cursed, using his teeth to pull them off, all the while wondering why he decided to wear gloves with his vampire costume in the first place.

  Oh yeah, because Samantha had told him they made the outfit look sexy and sophisticated. He snorted, reading the text now that it was open.

  Becca (11:43pm)

  Just a reminder that you only have a month or so to find yourself a boyfriend, or you’ll owe me $$$ and the honor of bleaching your hair

  There was a string of emojis at the end of the text that Lee rolled his eyes at, while he quickly thumbed in his reply without really thinking about what he was saying. They say that drunk people can’t help but tell the truth, except for Lee, who tended to do the opposite.

  Lee (11:44pm)

  ur out of luck iv already got one

  He definitely didn’t have a boyfriend, not since the guy he dated for a few weeks during the summer turned out to be a complete tool. Maybe if Lee wasn’t so drunk, he’d have thought out his answer a bit more. He certainly wouldn’t have told Rebecca that he already had a boyfriend. Honestly, he didn’t know why he said that in the first place, but he tended to bullshit a lot when he was drinking, and didn’t really care at the moment either. He was drunk and happy and simply wanted to find that cute blonde guy dressed as an elf he’d been making out with earlier.

  Hey, maybe they’d start dating and he’d take him home for Christmas to meet the family.

  But it was Lee who was out of luck, not Rebecca.

  The cute blonde guy was leaving the party early with someone else, which left Lee feeling sour at the missed opportunity. Then he figured he probably shouldn’t meet a potential boyfriend to bring home to his family at a party anyway, and decided to go drink some more. He pushed all thoughts of the bet to the back of his mind, heading over to where Kris, Pete, and Samantha were starting to do some jello shots, and joined in.

  It wasn’t until he was nursing a hangover the next day that he started to panic.

  Lee had been going through his social media accounts for evidence of what happened the night before. His snapchat story featured way too many shaky videos of his friends doing shots, playing beer pong, and drunkenly acting as whatever they’d dressed up as. There were two pictures on his instagram: the first of him and Sam, with a poorly spelled party shoutout, and the second was of him and Kris, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders and cheesy grins on their faces. The caption on the picture was just a bunch of thumbs up emojis.

  He didn’t bother deleting the pics, instead just fixing the spelling on the Sam one, before exiting the app and saving what was usually the worst for last. He went into his texts, breathing out a sigh of relief when he saw that Rebecca was the only person he messaged. He didn’t remember it though, and went to see what he wrote.

  “Oh, fuck,” Lee groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. “Shit.”

  Because he didn’t have a boyfriend, Rebecca was right - he’d only have a month to find a guy that’d be willing to meet his family so soon. And there was the possibility that he’d need to convince the guy to pretend that they’d been together for longer than they actually were. Would anyone actually be willing to do that? Maybe he could bribe them somehow.

  Lee groaned again, rolling out of his bed and stumbling towards to kitchen. Kris was already there, slumped at the table with a coffee and looking every bit as hungover as Lee.

  “Coffee should still be warm,” he mumbled, pointing at the pot on the bench.

  Thanks.” Lee grabbed a mug and poured himself a cup, sitting down across from Kris when he was done. “I feel like death.”

  “Ugh, me too.” Kris nodded, then winced at what the movement must’ve done to his headache.

  Lee grimaced sympathetically. “I barely remember anything from last night.”

  “Neither,” Kris agreed. “Not even the pic you tagged me in on instagram.”

  “I don’t even remember posting it. But you know what else I don’t remember?”

  “What?”

  “Telling Becca I had a boyfriend so I could win a bet we made when I was 20.”

  Kris raised an eyebrow. “You’re single.”

  “Yep,” Lee sipped at his coffee. “And if I lose, I’ll owe her $1000 and will have to go blonde for a year.”

  “A year?” Kris raised both his eyebrows now, eyeing Lee’s dark brown hair.

  “I tried talking her down to a few months, but she wouldn’t budge.”

  “So what was the bet, anyway?” Kris asked after a moment. “And why?”

  Lee sighed. “Ever since I moved out, mom and dad would always pester me about my love life every time I visited. They kept saying they wanted me to bring someone home for the holidays, but I never have. When I was 20, Becca said that if I didn’t have a boyfriend to bring home by the time I was 28, I had to give her $1000 and let her bleach my hair and keep it that way until the next Christmas.”

  “I can understand the money part,” Kris started, staring into his coffee with his brows drawn together in confusion. “But why the blonde thing?”

  Lee grinned at that. “Because she went blonde when she was 15, and it looked so bad it was hilarious. She told me she’d get back at me for laughing one day, and a year later the bet was made.”

  “What happens if she loses?”

  “The same thing for her, but at least I know she definitely doesn’t suit blonde hair.” “Well, we can’t let her win, then.” Kris grinned.

  “Nope,” Lee replied, popping the ‘p’. His phone beeped with a message from Rebecca, and Lee rolled his eyes when he read it. “She wants to know who my boyfriend is.”

  “What’re you gonna tell her?”

  Lee smirked at his best friend. “Just that it’s a surprise.”

  * * *

  Towards the end of November, Lee was not only running low on cash after all of the Christmas shopping he’d been doing, but he was also just as single as he was a month ago. Kris had been trying to help set him up with potential boyfriends, but every failed date just reminded Lee of why he hadn’t actually brought anyone home for Christmas yet. He was good at casual. One night stands were his specialty, he had the numbers of a few guys in his phone who he knew he could hit up every now and again, and he tended to not date people for more than a few months at a time.

  Lee was a flirt, and a good one at that, but nobody he dated ever really held his interest enough for it to get serious. Honestly, the only constants in his life
were Kris, Sam, Samantha, and Pete. He’d been fine with that, but obviously it needed to change if he didn’t want to be short $1000. And if his shifts at the cafe where he worked kept going to the holiday casuals, he wouldn’t even have that money in the first place.

  “How was last night’s date?” Kris asked when he got home from work that evening, plopping himself on the couch next to Lee.

  “Horrible,” Lee sighed. “The guy insisted on having the date at some seedy bar, then he kept checking out the bartender all night.”

  “What a jerk. Sorry, I thought he seemed nice. And interested.”

  “Nah, not your fault.” Lee shrugged him off. Kris couldn’t have known the guy would be like that. “But as if that wasn’t bad enough, Becca keeps asking me who my boyfriend is, and I’ve been using the ‘it’s a surprise’ excuse to death.”

  As if on cue, his phone beeped with a message from his sister.

  “Speak of the devil,” Kris laughed. “What does it say?”

  Becca (6:07pm)

  Is Kris your secret boyfriend?

  Lee raised his eyebrows, and showed Kris the message, who laughed again.

  “Why would she think we’re together?”

  “I don’t know, but we’re about to find out.”

  Lee (6:07pm)

  What makes you think he is?

  Her answer didn’t come through immediately, but when it did, they weren’t expecting the wall of text.

  Becca (6:11pm)

  You’ve only posted 4 photos on insta in the last month, and Kris is in 3 of them. There’s the one of Kris playing with Pete’s dog, the Halloween one of you both the night you told me you already had a boyfriend, and you posted one of you both last week to celebrate some Harry Potter marathon. Nerds. Not to mention he’s always on your snapchat story. I know he’s your bff and you guys live together already, so of course he’s gonna feature in your pics and shit, but if I’m wrong about Kris then your actual boyfriend must be pretty jealous of him anyway. That and you’re pretty good at hiding him.

  Maybe Lee was good at hiding his boyfriend because he didn’t actually have one, but telling her that was out of the question, obviously. But she did have a point. Even though he loved all his friends, Kris was the one he was closest to and spent the most time with. They’d only known each other since they were 18 when they met at college, after he’d already known Sam and Pete for years, but they’d instantly become friends and been basically inseparable ever since.

  Lee stared at the text, unsure of how to respond to it, then let out a long groan. “I don’t know what to say. Help me.”

  “Well you’ve got two options,” Kris said. “Keep up with the ruse of having some secret boyfriend and hope you can find one in time. Or you can tell her she’s right and that you’ve been dating me all along.”

  “You’d be okay with that?” Lee asked skeptically, wondering if Kris knew exactly what he was offering.

  “Yeah, of course.” He shrugged. “She already thinks we’re dating, so it wouldn’t be hard to convince her she’s right.”

  “You realize that you’d have to spend a whole week during Christmas with my family, right? Because that’s how long we’re gonna be there.”

  “I’ve met your family already, Liam, they’re not that terrible. A week is nothing.”

  Lee rolled his eyes. “But you’d have to pretend we’re in a relationship in front of my mom, Kris. Can you really do that to her?”

  “It’d be fun. What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.” Kris shrugged again. “I’m serious. I don’t mind doing this. You’re most likely not going to find a boyfriend before Christmas, and I don’t particularly want my best friend to have bright yellow hair from a shoddy bleach job.”

  “You’re absolutely sure about this?” Lee asked earnestly, electing to ignore the fact Kris basically just insulted him because he knew it was the truth.

  Kris put his hands on Lee’s shoulders. “I am. I’m completely, 100% sure about this.”

  “I’d prefer 110%, but okay.” Lee slowly smirked. “Kristopher Grant Porter, will you be my fake boyfriend?”

  “Liam Stern, I’d be honored.” Kris smirked right back.

  “Well, now that that’s settled, I’ve gotta break the news to Becca.” Lee stared down at his phone, before looking back up at Kris. “What the fuck do I say?”

  Kris grabbed the phone, opened the camera, and pulled Lee against his side. “Just let a picture do the talking.”

  Lee grinned widely, the same smile he did in the photo with Kris from Halloween, and Kris kissed his cheek as he took the photo. They sent it to Rebecca, who instantly replied with “I knew it!!!” and several heart-eyes emojis. Well, at least they knew she approved.

  * * *

  For the next few weeks, Lee and Kris found that pretending to be boyfriends simply for Rebecca’s sake was quite easy. Their social media patterns didn’t change, with Lee only needing to snap random pics of him and Kris to her every so often, usually while they were already doing something together. They’d told their friends of what was going on just as a precaution, but also because they knew they’d find the whole situation hilarious.

  Which they did, and couldn’t stop teasing them about, but Kris and Lee didn’t mind.

  Leading up to the week with Lee’s family, they were determined to get their facts straight. It was decided they would pretend they’d been dating each other since August after Lee ended it with that guy he’d been seeing, growing romantic feelings for each other while Kris comforted him, but decided to keep it casual at first in case it didn’t work out. In October, when it seemed to be going well, they told their friends, but didn’t want to involve family yet. Now that they’d been together for a few months, they thought it was time they knew. But they didn’t intend on telling Lee’s parents just yet. He’d made Rebecca swear not to tell them who his boyfriend was, instead wanting it to be a surprise.

  He couldn’t wait to see the shock on their faces when he brought Kris home to them.

  Winifred and George loved Kris. They first met him at Lee’s 21st, and it wasn’t long before they were instantly smitten. They adored Kris, always going on about how he was such a nice boy and how they were glad Lee had a good influence in his life (they’d never quite forgiven Pete for streaking through their backyard when he was seventeen). But they didn’t know how much of a little shit Kris could be. He had to be, if he agreed to bullshit Lee’s parents into thinking he was dating their son.

  “How loved up should we be?” Lee asked after they’d gone over their story for the hundredth time, the night before they were due to leave. “We’ve only been together for, what? Four months? But we were best friends before that, and seeing as this ‘relationship’ is going well now, we might be moving along faster than a normal couple.”

  Kris thought about it for a moment. “We could act like we’re in love, but not at the point where we’ve actually told each other yet.”

  “Yeah, that’s good. They’d believe that if they asked.”

  “What about PDA?” Kris asked now. “I know you’re pretty hands-on with guys you’re dating, and I guess I am too, but would your family be expecting that?”

  “They would,” Lee nodded, thinking about his high school boyfriends. “Mom and dad were really supportive after I came out, so I didn’t feel like I needed to hold myself back when I was around them. We’ll have to share a bed in the spare room, and expect lots of hand-holding, cuddling, and lots of kisses.”

  “Making out?”

  “Maybe, just to be safe.” Lee laughed, thinking about all the times his mom’s habit of never knocking made her walk in on him sucking face with his first boyfriend. She’d eventually learned her lesson, but still forgot sometimes.