Christmas Kitsch (Hol) (MM) (27 page)

Rex, whatcha doin?

Studying. How are you?

Okay. Have a place. It only sucks a little.

Can I visit for Christmas?

Aren’t you flying up to see the moms?

Before that. I’m done next Wednesday. I’ve got a week of downtime.

Yeah. Sure. I’ve got a futon.

Excellent. See you Friday.

I need to know what to get Oliver for Christmas.

Don’t stress. I’ve got it covered.

Got what covered?

What you’re going to get Oliver for Christmas. I’ll bring it up.

Wouldn’t that be a gift from you then?

Not if I give it to you and you give it to him.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got to pick it out.

Oh. Okay. Well, I’ll give it to both of you. See you then!

Okay. Do you want my address?

Yeah. Email it. Later!

Yeah. See you then, Rex, and thanks for frickin’ nothin’!

Well, that wasn’t fair, and it would be nice to see him, even if the idea of the guy sleeping on my futon was sort of weird. But I still had no idea what to get Oliver, and it was starting to ride me hard. I couldn’t give him the home I wanted, or a dog like the ones his dad had, or even a bed, because my budget was down to the bone at this point. It turns out that baking cookies wasn’t cheap. He had brought me a family, and his family had brought me the beginnings of a life, and I had nothing to give. And I wanted to give him something. Something wonderful.

When I wasn’t at work, where I needed my head with my hands or I’d hurt myself, it was all I could think about.

By Friday, I’d turned in the papers for the professors who would let me, and I felt a sort of surge of triumph about that. Friday night, the twins were the ones who brought Oliver from his dad’s after work, and they stayed over just to hang. They brought a brand-new garland of tinsel that hadn’t made it out of the box last Christmas. We strung it around the little space with the ornaments near the wreath, and I had to admit, the place was still a little bare, but it did look like Christmas. We watched TV and listened to them bitch about their love lives until one in the morning, and then they hauled my old sleeping bag out of my closet (it’d been in my boxes of stuff) and crashed on my futon, using their sweaters as pillows.

Oliver and I slept, curled tightly against each other, in the bedroom.

“Hey,” I whispered, even though we were both falling asleep.

“Yeah?”

“Why do people keep coming over here?”

“Don’t you like it?”

“It’s awesome. Whyfor? Are you making them?”

Oliver grunted. “No. If I had anything to do with it, we’d be having sex right now.”

My entire body blushed at the thought of sex with people in the next room. “Uhm. No.”

“See? No. They like you. This is having friends, Rusty. I know you’ve done this before.”

“I have,” I said shortly. “This is different than friends. This is family.”

“Derp!” he said shortly. “If I’m not getting any, it had better be for family.”

“Derp?”

“It’s a word.”

“God, you’re cranky.”

“No. Sex. Go to sleep.”

But he snuggled closer when he said it.

“Oliver?”

“Derp?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too. More specifically, I’d love for you to suck—”

I kissed him, laughing. I mean, I’d specifically love to do that too. But there were people in the next room. Because even though I hated this apartment, apparently they liked me enough to stay. Blessings were always mixed—I hadn’t known that as a kid. I was starting to know it now.

The next day, the twins got up and bought doughnuts, which we had with coffee from the new coffeemaker. They were still there when Nicole arrived with Estrella.

“You couldn’t have called?” I asked, gasping at my sister. “I mean, you never said a time—”

And that’s about all I got out before Estrella rushed forward and engulfed me in a hug. She’s round and soft, and nice to hold. She used to hug me a lot when I was a kid, and I wondered when I’d grown out of hugs like that. How had I relegated Estrella to the same box as my parents, an adult to ignore, when she was the one here in my crappy apartment, hugging me like she missed me?

“Rusty!” Two squishy kisses, one on each cheek, and I didn’t even feel the need to look around and see if Oliver, Sal, or Joey were laughing. Smiling, maybe, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t laugh at someone who was there to be my friend.

“Hey, Estrella,” I said, going in for another hug. “It’s real nice of you to come by.”

“Here,” she said. “I’ve brought you something.”

She reached into the big paper shopping bag hanging from her arm, and pulled out something I hadn’t thought of in years.

“Oh my God!
Santa
!”

It was the Santa cookie jar that Estrella used to pull out every Christmas. It was big and kitschy and gaudy—Santa’s suit was too red and his cheeks were too round and his eyes were way too blue—but Nicole and I had loved it. It was the cookie jar Estrella had brought out when Christmas cookies became available. It meant something important.

“Here,” she said, walking over to the refrigerator. I took it from her and put it on the top of the fridge for her and then wrapped my arm around her shoulders for a hug. Her dark hair was a messy halo and pulled back in a bun, and I kissed the top of her head.

“Thank you,” I said quietly. “I love that here.”

“Your sister and I miss you,” she said.

I took a deep breath. “I miss you guys, too, but I’ve got a place here.” And people kept visiting. Maybe
crappy
was relative.

“Oliver will take care of you,” she said, and she may have been lighting candles for me to save my soul, but she sounded happy to think we were together.

Sal and Joey stayed with us the whole day, and yes, we all made cookies. Estrella had also brought an old Mixmaster and the glass bowls—I remembered this one from our kitchen—and I was the guy in front of the mixer, scraping the sides. Nicole measured the stuff for me to put into the dough, and Oliver scooped it out of one of the big glass bowls and onto the cookie sheet when I was done. Sal and Joey manned the stove and the frosting station.

We were making a
fuckton
of cookies.

I kept saying, “Okay, guys, we were only supposed to
learn
how to make cookies, so I’d have something to give for Christmas.”

“Rusty,” Sal said, his voice serious, “you’ve only got, like, two weeks left. I say you just cook until the supplies run out.”

“But they’re all going to be gone before Christmas!” Was nobody seeing this? I took a giant bite of dough, because it was the sugar kind with the touch of lemon and I loved that.

“Then we’ll make more,
papi,
” Oliver comforted. “I get paid Monday, I can buy some supplies.”

The dough sat like a lead ball in the bottom of my stomach. “I don’t get paid until the last day of December,” I said, and I thought dismally of how much money I had left. “How am I going to get you a present?”

“You don’t have to give me anything,” Oliver said, whapping me on the back of the head. “My present will be the chance to move in.”

“You practically live here anyway,” I said sourly, because the whole,
Rusty wants to wait for a bed thing
didn’t seem to have stopped him from spending the night at all.

“Yes, but if you make it official, I’ll be able to bring my furniture over, and your lamp won’t have to sit on the floor.”

“But if we don’t have a bed, that would be a royal pain in the ass.” Without looking I caught his hand when he tried to hit me again.

Oliver growled and said something awful about my private parts in Spanish, or at least I assume, because Estrella smacked his hand with a wooden spoon.

“Ouch!”

“That wasn’t nice,” she said. “If you’re going to say things like that, say them in English.”

Oliver glared at me, and I narrowed my eyes and glared back. “I said you were so stubborn, you’d let your balls drop off before you fucked your own fist.”

I stopped glaring and thought about it. “Yeah, you could be right, but I think it might be in your best interest not to let that happen.”

Nicole’s laughter pealed across the kitchen, Sal and Joey both groaned and begged us to stop talking, and Estrella glared at us all until someone asked me why I hadn’t taken Spanish.

“Because I’m stupid,” I said seriously. “I was busy getting my Cs in French.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Estrella said, coming forward to show me how to clean off the beater before the dough threatened to clog it and stop the motor. “Your mother made you take French.
You
wanted to take Spanish because then you could talk to the gardener.”

I blinked. “Wait—wasn’t that, like, in fourth grade? I don’t remember that.”

Estrella rolled her eyes. “
I
do. That is why I was not so surprised when you started kissing this one. You sure did like Nando.”

I felt my face heat. I’d forgotten all about that summer when I’d followed that man around like a puppy. “I, uhm, didn’t realize . . . I mean. Uhm. I didn’t even think about . . .”

Estrella wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “Your mother fired him, do you remember that?”

I looked at her, horrified. “No. I—”

“You cried. I remember. But later, when you were choosing classes for middle school, you said Spanish so you could talk to Nando if you met him again, and your mother said French.”

“God.” I turned off the mixer and started to clean the beaters. “That explains
so
much.”

She laughed gently. “You have always been a good boy.”

But not that bright. I didn’t say it aloud, but I was thinking it. Oliver must have known that or read my mind or something, because he wrapped his arm around my waist and kissed my shoulder. “Nando can’t have you,” he said seriously. “I’ll teach you Spanish.
Te amo, mi amante
. You remember that.”

I mouthed the words. “What does that mean?”

“It means you should let me move in.”

By the time Estrella and Nicole were ready to leave, we had piles and piles of iced cookies on the counter, and freezer boxes of more that were ready to be iced and decorated and put onto decorative paper plates, which I didn’t have yet.

“Oh God,” Nicole swore, as she was putting on her jacket. “You guys have to eat most of those and give me something else. I’m fat enough already.”

I was going to make her stop, but Joey did my work for me. “What in the hell is wrong with you two? Rusty keeps saying he’s stupid, you’re worried about fat—
Jesus
, Rusty’s gonna be fine, and you’ve got boobs and a butt and I don’t see why that’s a bad thing.”

Estrella spoke sharply to him in Spanish, even though she hadn’t met him before that morning, and he looked at her mutinously. “No! No, I’m not going to apologize. She looks just fine. She’s cute! Give her four years, I’ll be grabbing her ass.”

I turned around and was about to deck him, Oliver’s cousin or no, but Nicole was smiling at him, a sort of luminous, transported look in her face. “Yeah?” she asked, and she sounded greedy for the answer. “You like my ass?”

And to my shock, Joey, who had seemed unshakable, blushed.

“You need to wait four years,” he said with dignity, and then he opened the door.

My mother was standing there, her hand raised to knock.

Oliver and I had hung back in the kitchen so that we could usher everyone out, and even though the oven and all of the people had kept the place warm, I felt a sort of sleety sweat wash over my body, and only Oliver’s hand in my own kept me grounded.

“Uhm, Mom?” I said, and she ignored me.

“Nicole, you haven’t answered your texts for an hour.”

She looked at me apologetically. “My phone lost charge.” Then she turned to my mother. “We were coming home.”

“I saw Estrella’s car,” Mom said, her voice sounding sort of lost. “I remembered today was her day off, and your coat was in the back. I could see Rusty in the kitchen window.”