Christmas Kitsch (Hol) (MM) (17 page)

“No sorry,” he said softly. His lips met mine and then parted for me. I swept my tongue in gently, relieved when he sucked on it a little before letting it go.

“No sorry?”

He smiled shyly into my eyes and then hid his head against my shoulder. “It was really sort of awesome.”

“Yeah?” I felt like I’d won the lottery.

“Yeah.” He pulled back again and kissed me, and this time I sucked on his tongue and let him pull back.

We smiled at each other for a while, and then he shivered and we both sort of pulled ourselves together.

“Gotta shower,” he said, and I figured we’d be doing that alone, because it took a while to get used to someone else in your space.

“Yeah.”

“You go first; I’ll make us breakfast. Then, I don’t know, hang out until my dad gets back.”

I grinned, thinking about all the trouble we could get into “hanging out,” and then I remembered my thought from the night before. Well, I guess maybe we’d have to “hang out” another time.

“Hey, Oliver. Where does your dad keep his gardening equipment?”

I could tell by his expression he was taking that
all
wrong, and by the time I’d explained, he was looking at me like I was both a genius and I’d destroyed his last, best hope.

“You know,” Oliver said from his perch on the porch, “this is not what I had in mind when I talked about a day hanging out.”

“I’m sorry.” I was, too. Both my hands were wrapped around the thick handles of a pair of pruning shears, and I kept thinking,
Was Oliver’s cock this thick? I think it was thicker. I think it was about this long. But I’d
really, really frickin’ love
to see it this time, and taste it, and touch it some more and . . .

Yeah. I meant well, but it’s a good thing Oliver was out there to tell me what to cut and what not to cut, or I would have just razed all those damned fence flowers, thrown them away, and gone inside and used Mr. Campbell’s son as my own personal playground. And I don’t think Oliver would have minded one bit.

But no, we
could
have been doing that, but I was cleaning up Mr. Campbell’s yard instead.

“Your dad’s done me a solid,” I said simply. “I’d really like to do something nice for him.”

Oliver grimaced. “Rusty, he’s my
dad
, that’s what he—”

“Look,” I said, feeling embarrassed at having to point this shit out, “I know
you
are used to your dad being a stand-up guy, but there’s a reason I had to leave the damned house to come out to myself, okay? Your dad cried a little and went and had a sit-down with God. My dad boxed up my shit and cut off my phone service.” Fuck. Rex. I hadn’t called him before I’d given back my phone. I’d promised him I’d call him. He was probably frantic. “I know
you
take that shit for granted, but I’m not gonna, okay?”

Oliver sighed and stood up, dusting off his bottom, shivering as he did so because it was chill and gray and sitting on the concrete did
not
make it any warmer. There was only one pair of shears and one pair of gloves, so I’d been chopping everything down, since I had the height and (sort of) the muscle mass. Oliver had been using the gloves to haul the dead branches and stuff to the green waste can. I rode clean-up and raked the small stuff into a pile. It worked, actually. We each got to take little breaks, and it gave us a chance to talk, which was the best part.

But that’s not why Oliver was standing up and coming toward me now. I wasn’t done cutting down the last stand of dead flowers, so he wasn’t ready to pick it up.

Instead, he took the shears from me and set them down, and then took my face in his cold hands and pulled me in for a kiss.

It was the good kind, the kind that started off light and got deeper and heavier, until I grabbed his ass and hauled him closer. He chuckled and
gave
himself to me, with the same generosity as the rest of his family (although, you know, not quite giving the same thing). I drank it up,
ate
it up, and kissed him harder.

Wrenching back from his mouth was difficult, and we rested our foreheads against each other in the tarmac-colored chill.

“What was that for?” I asked, not minding.

“For thinking my dad walks on water.”

“You are so weird.”

He laughed, his breaths puffing between us. “Well, maybe I kissed you because you look sexy doing yard work?”

I thought of how many times I’d watched him squat down and pick up dead vegetation, his tight little bottom straining against the seat of his jeans. I’d been thinking a lot about the finger and the O, and I was definitely thinking I’d like to explore
that
part of Oliver too. “Hey,” I said, thinking about it. “How come I didn’t always want you like this?”

Oliver’s grin was sly and sexy. “You did. You just didn’t know it yet.”

I laughed, but I thought there was more to it than that. I thought that maybe knowing who I was let me see better who Oliver was, and that’s why I liked what I saw.

Oliver’s dad was surprised when he got home, and I looked at him, anxious. I’d followed Oliver’s directions, and I’d been listening when Jorge had been complaining about what needed to be done, but I was still afraid I’d chopped down some vital flower or an heirloom morning glory or something that could never grow back.

He grinned though and clapped me on the back and hugged Oliver and thanked us both for the work, and a big fat weight dropped off my shoulders.

“Good, I’m glad I did that okay.”

“You did great. Rusty, why don’t you go wash up and then you can go get your phone, okay?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I
gotta
call Rex. I totally left him hanging yesterday.”

I trotted off and left Oliver and his dad talking about me in Spanish. I
knew
it was about me, because it
was
in Spanish, and usually they talked English when I was in the room.

Later, when we were in the truck, I asked Oliver about it. “So, what’d your dad say about me?”

Oliver looked at me and grimaced. “He said we’d have to replant the morning glories in the spring, but that I should marry you if it meant I had to buy a dress and a veil.”

I swallowed, and that didn’t change the shape of what he just said, so I shook my head. “I got nothin’. None of that made any sense at all. Except for fucking up on the—”

“No, damn it!” Oliver glared at the road and wrestled with the wheel. The truck was too big for him. It had a bench seat, which meant we had to scoot it way up and my knees were around my chest, and when he had to use both hands to turn, it looked like he was dancing with a really large invisible woman. It meant he couldn’t glare at me, and I was glad, because he looked
fierce
when he did that.

“Are you talking to me or the truck?”

“You! You didn’t fuck up. He just thought what you did was really great, and he thinks you’re a keeper.”

I had a sudden, terrible thought. “Oliver?” My voice sounded small.

“What?”

“If you and I don’t work, is your family going to stop talking to me?”

Oliver sucked in a breath, and his face scrunched up. “No,” he said softly. “We still see Joey and Sal’s mom for Christmas sometimes. Gloria’s ex-boyfriends work for my dad all the time. Don’t worry about it, okay? You won’t get left again.”

I wanted to take his hand then, but I wanted to live a little more, I guess. Still, hearing him say that? It took away a worry I hadn’t known I had.

The minute my phone was reconnected, it made one, long, continuous chime. RadioShack was still a little busy from Black Friday (and now I knew why they called it that, because traffic
sucked
and
all
the sales clerks were bitchier than my mom when she didn’t get her fiber shake), so I waited until Oliver and I walked outside to call Rex without even checking my messages.

“Jesus, asshole, you couldn’t write me an email?”

Doh! “Oh God. I’m sorry, Rex, I kept thinking that I couldn’t use my phone—I totally . . . I’m sorry. I . . . man, the last couple of days have been sort of fucked—”

“Why are they coming for your clothes tomorrow?” he asked bluntly.

“Oh
fuck
!” Like six
zillion
people with kids turned around to glare at me when I yelled that under the overhang of the strip mall. I grimaced and tucked my voice a little closer to my chest.

“Rusty?” Rex sounded freaked out, and I felt like shit. I’d even set my laptop up in Oliver’s room, but no, I’d used it to play DVDs on.

“My folks saw me kissing Oliver before I even got in the door,” I said, the humiliation still fresh. “They kicked me out, took my car, left my shit on the front porch, and discontinued my phone. I just got to the store today to get a new one.”

“No,” Rex said, his voice low and soft and really shocked.

“No what?”

“No, nobody does that anymore, do they?” Oh no, he sounded really hurt.

“I guess my folks are sort of throwbacks,” I said, feeling bad for him. I felt like I’d kicked his favorite puppy.

“God . . . Rusty, just—what are you going to do?”

I brightened. I had a
plan
. “Well, Oliver’s dad is letting me crash on his couch, and Oliver’s aunt has a lead on a cheap apartment. Oliver’s uncle is gonna set me up with a cheap used car, and I start working construction again next week.”

Rex grunted. I mean, it wasn’t that far-fetched, right?

“So that’s it? I was told your stuff was getting shipped out—I mean, is there anything you don’t want them to have?”

I thought about it with a little bit of panic. I had my laptop and a phone that would play my music. What had I left back in my dorm?

“My books,” I said, thinking about
Crime and Punishment
and
A Tale of Two Cities
. Both of them had sticky papers and highlights and notes scrawled in the margins about stuff Oliver had said. “My posters, the pictures. God, any clothes you can stuff in a box—”

“I’m burning that striped shirt you wore when you didn’t get out of bed,” Rex said, and I laughed a little.

“Yeah, you do that. Look—my personal shit first, my clothes second. Make sure you get that picture of you and me in the quad. It’ll be like proof that I went there.”

“Will do.” There was a pause. “Rusty, this is so fucked up. I can’t believe . . . I mean, you
knew
this was going to happen, and the rest of us . . . we thought you were being afraid.”

Had I known? Yeah. Yeah, a part of me must have.

“Well, I guess I’m not surprised,” I said thoughtfully. “Maybe I’m not that dumb after all.”

“Shut up.” Rex’s voice was thick. “I’ll box up and hide what I can. When’re you coming down?”

“Monday. I’ll text you. Let me know if it’s safe to come in. I’ve got to go see if I can get an emergency drop form too, so it doesn’t look like I flunked out.”

Rex swore. “Fucked. Up. All right—I’ll see you Monday.”

And was it weird that I was looking forward to it? I looked at Oliver. “We’re going together, right?” Oliver nodded, and I said into the phone, “Yeah, I’ll bring Oliver. You’ll get to meet him. It’ll be good.”