Bowl Full of Cherries (2 page)

“Dang, I slept late.”

“Dang, you did,” Tyler agreed.

“Xondee still here?”

A shrug. “Think she’s gone. Maybe.”

“This a new band you found?” Crowley asked, pulling himself up and pointing at the record player in the corner. The sound was too fresh, too experimental. It emulated eighties New Wave, but the core of it was contemporary. In spite of the pop and hiss of the vinyl pressing, he could tell it was one of Tyler’s new underground bands.

“Cupcakes and Heartbreaks. Won it in the Dirty Santa game last night. Got wild. I thought there was going to be fisticuffs. Oh, someone drank all your absinthe, by the way.”

“I had absinthe?” Crowley asked. When he drank, which wasn’t often, it was usually a rum and coke.

“I got it for your last birthday. It was in the bottom cabinet. Maybe I didn’t tell you.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, my friends are dicks sometimes.”

“Why do you keep inviting them over?” Crowley kicked off the covers and stretched. He smelled a little ripe, definitely needed that bath.

Tyler looked up, the multicolored lights he’d strung all over the room reflected off his glasses. “’Cause I like ’em?”

S
leigh bells but what the hell? I fucking hate this holiday….
The lead singer’s voice melted into incomprehensible gibberish after that. Tyler listened to the weirdest music.

“So. No more flights out, I take it?”

Tyler was no dummy. Crowley was going to have to admit that he’d lied about his flight to Kansas City being canceled. He hated that. Hated lying. Sometimes, when he was distressed, though, things slipped out. Not-quite-truths.

“She doesn’t want me to come home this year.”

Or ever.
The clack of the thick knitting needles stopped as Tyler looked up slowly.

“Seriously?”

“So, I’m just going to see if Dr. Fisher has some work for me and I’ll—”

“Do I hear you right, sir? Are you honestly telling me that you’re going to spend Christmas
here
? Alone?”

The urge to make something up came on so strongly that Crowley felt sick to his stomach. Or maybe he was just hungry. How long had it been since he’d eaten last? He knuckled the knot forming between his eyebrows.

“I didn’t say I’d be alone.”

“You’ve got a date?”

Follow-up questions. Dammit.

“Well… I could find one. Maybe.”

“You could,” Tyler agreed skeptically. “If you ever talked to anyone ever.”

“I talk to people.”

“Dateables, Crowley. Date-ables.”

“I talk to… dateables.”

“Who? And don’t say Jason Unger.”

Crowley’s heart thudded. “I
wasn’t
going to.”

“’Cause that guy’s a jock. You shouldn’t have asked him out in the first place.”

“You’re right,” Crowley agreed uncomfortably. He should have known he wasn’t Jason’s “type,” being—what did his female friends call it?—
real-sized
. He hadn’t expected Jason’s barking laughter as Crowley asked him out for coffee, though. Or the way the good-looking athlete shouted, “‘Fat’ chance, Fredericks! Get it?” He got it. “Fine, maybe I don’t talk to ‘dateables.’ But I have friends. Some of them are probably going to—”

Tyler, fuming about Jason, butted in. “He’s everything that’s wrong with the world. He’s a self-absorbed Abercrombie broseph without two brain cells to rub together.”

“Remember that time you wanted me to tell you if you started using clichés in casual conversation?”

“I purposely chose the cliché. The man
is
a cliché. All of his
friends
are clichés.”

That’s when Crowley realized they were no longer talking about Jason Unger. Tyler was now talking about Jason’s friend, David Griffith, instead. Crowley smiled patiently. “It still freaks you out that David—”

“Don’t say his name.”

Crowley sighed. “He
likes
you, Tyler.”

“That’s fine. He can like me all he wants. Good on you
bro
, keep on liking me. That’s not the problem. It’s the freaking
Target
gift card.”

“Right? It’s almost criminal.”

“Don’t you dare laugh at me, Fredericks. The guy supposedly
like
-likes me and he bought me a
Target
gift card. To Target. A gift card that is good
at Target
.”

Crowley was glad conversation had fallen away from Jason Unger, even if it meant Tyler was being a jerk about the puppy-dog lacrosse player, David.

“So, I’ve decided you’re coming with me to Susset.”

“What?” Crowley asked, thrown by the abrupt change in conversation.

“Well, I’m not leaving you here alone. Pack your bags. I’m taking you home with me for Winter Break.”

“But—”

“Seriously? Alone on Christmas or with your best friend in the whole world? Put your crap in a bag and toss me my phone, Fredericks. I’m going to check ticket prices.”

Crowley paused for only a moment, ingrained Midwestern politeness itching to protest. But the truth was he didn’t want to be in their apartment alone.

“Are you sure I won’t be intruding?”

Tyler rolled his eyes.

It wasn’t really necessary for Crowley to “put his crap in a bag” since he hadn’t actually unpacked from his ill-fated not-quite-trip to Kansas City. But all the same, he got the bag out and rifled through it, trading out some of his warm clothes that would have worked in KC for
really warm
clothes, good for Susset, New York and its ski slopes.

“I’m going to get a shower while you look for tickets,” Crowley said.

In the cramped bathroom, Crowley slowly peeled off his clothes and dropped them in a pile next to the sink. The trashcan was overflowing with all kinds of mess—including what looked like
more
Solo cups and a couple of their steak knives. Someone had used lipstick to draw a candy cane on the mirror after X-ing out a second candy cane that looked a bit like a striped penis.

He tried to scrub the lipstick off with a tissue, but it smeared everywhere. He didn’t really want to look at himself in the mirror anyway. No need for a mirror to confirm what he already knew.

Crowley tried not to think what might have happened in the tub during last night’s…
Get-together
?
Shindig
?
Meet-n-greet
? as he turned on the faucet and then the showerhead.

The spray of the hot water felt good as he stepped inside and Crowley—finally able to let his guard down—let out a long, defeated sigh.

Don’t come home. No one will pick you up from the airport.

“Merry Christmas, Mom,” he murmured.

S
HOWERED
AND
changed, he found Tyler moving around the living room with a large black trash bag, tossing the empty cans in, leaving the ones that were still full. Xondee was gone, having abandoned her couch for wherever she went when she wasn’t at their apartment. He wasn’t being funny calling it hers, either. She’d moved the pink and green monstrosity into their apartment and told the guys they could borrow it, if, and only if, she could sleep on it “any time she got too drunk or too bored.” They’d needed a couch.

“Seems like it was a good… event? What did you call it this time?”

“Ugly Christmas Sweater Extravaganza.”

Extravaganza! That explained the fondue pot in the kitchen. Tyler always went for the fondue when something big was going on.

“Who won?”

“No one ‘won,’” Tyler replied with a shrug, setting another can back onto the floor. “It wasn’t a contest. Shit.” Tyler’s foot had caught one of the Pabst Blue Ribbon cans—
not
an empty one—and the contents sloshed out on their scuffed hardwood floors. Crowley walked the five feet into the kitchen, grabbed a towel, and chucked it overhand at Tyler, who caught it.

“So, are you ready to go?” Tyler asked.

“I’m packed,” Crowley said. “Are you sure it’s all ri—”

“I mean, like really, really,
really
ready? ’Cause you’ve got to get your keister to the station in like an hour.”

“What? Why?”

“Checked the schedule. My train was already full. You’ll have to take the earlier one.”

“Go to New York without you, you mean?”

“It’s just a different train. A few hours alone with my family won’t kill you,” Tyler said, eyeing the PBR-soaked towel with a sigh. “I bought your ticket—it’s in your e-mail.”

“What?”

Tyler looked up, blinking behind his thick-rimmed glasses. “But seriously, if you’re going to make it, you need to haul ass. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Yeah, right behind me as in won’t get in until tomorrow morning, right?”

“I’ll be
mostly
right behind you. Don’t worry about it. I’ll call Mom and someone will pick you up.”

He’d thought they were going to discuss ticket prices, maybe plan a little more in depth. Had he even said he’d go? And now, hesitantly, Crowley walked back to the bedroom and picked up his bag. How all the pieces had come together?

“I sent you the address and the house number, just in case,” Tyler called. “You got your wallet? They are going to want to see ID.”

Crowley patted his pockets. Wallet, keys, phone. He shrugged the bag up higher on his shoulder.

“All right… I guess I’m on my way?”

“
Go
.”

R
ELL
L
ANG
spent the last fifty miles dozing, his head lolling onto his shoulder. He dreamed about snow and skiing. In the dream he kept losing one of the poles, and he had to use the remaining one to paddle himself forward. When he reached the end of the “mountain” (which was really nothing more than a gentle slope) a bear was waiting for him, and Rell tried to fight the beast off with the pole.

“Wake up,” the bear demanded, swiping him hard in the shoulder. Rell went flying into the snow where he found his other pole. “Seriously, nerdlinger, stop drooling on the upholstery and wake up.”

Slowly he opened his eyes on the blindingly bright afternoon, made brighter by the glare of the sun off the snow. They were parked in front of his mother’s valley home. A large wooden cutout of Mrs. Claus, bent over toward the street to show off her polka-dot bloomers, stood proudly on the front lawn. Rell yawned and looked over at his chauffeur.

“I dreamt you were a bear.”

His best friend since childhood, James, adjusted his glasses and quirked an eyebrow. “Yeah, all five foot four of me.”

“I thought we decided you were five six.”

“That was when I still had the mohawk.”

Rell laughed. “So you coming in, or what? You know Mom’s going to want to feed you.”

“Wish I had time. Got to get home.”

“Wife. Children. Right.” Rell sighed and looked around at the interior of the SUV. “This what you imagined you were going to be doing when you were a kid?”

“Nope,” James said, popping the lock on the door. “Didn’t imagine driving out into the mountains to cart your ass home, either.”

“Of course you didn’t. Because kid-James would have been out there roughing it
with me
. Foraging and fighting wolves and stuff.”

“How’d that work out for you?”

“It
would
have worked great if some asshole hadn’t stolen all my gear while I was fishing.”

James half grinned and adjusted his glasses. “I’m sure you caught a feast, too, right? Enough to eat for a week?”

“I was getting by.”

“Then why did you demand we stop for burgers on the way back?”

“Man cannot live off fish and berries alone, my friend.”

“Especially if he doesn’t know how to fish,” James muttered. “Tell your mother ‘Merry Christmas’ after you finish making up some crap about how you didn’t get fired again and you didn’t call me collect to come rescue you from a failed attempt at living in the wild.”

“Shuddup,” Rell muttered, throwing open the door. “You’d think you might have a little sympathy for—”

“Maybe if it was the
first time
, Rell. Maybe I’d have sympathy if it was the first time.”

Rell shut the door as James popped open the trunk where Rell’s one remaining bag of clothes and necessities sat amidst bags full of toys for James’s daughters. As he slung the bag over his shoulder, Rell said, “Thanks, James. I, uh, you know, appreciate it.”

“What are friends for?” The words were right, but the tone was heavy.

For a long time after James had driven away, Rell stood in the driveway trying to get his thoughts together. But thinking was hard in the face of Christmas decorations. Mom had gone all out this year. In addition to the Mrs. Claus cutout, she’d edged the house in icicles of lights. It was too bright outside to see them lit, but he imagined it was going to be light-tastic. The bushes, too, no longer looked much like bushes, but more like branches with lights growing out of them. All along the walk, she’d “planted” metal candy canes with, yes, more lights tied between them. His father always grumbled that his alimony checks went to pay for the December electricity bill.