Christmas Kitsch (Hol) (MM) (30 page)

“Rusty, you don’t even have a bed—”

“I’ll get one. My next check comes before New Year’s. Oliver’ll pitch in.” If he was still speaking to me. Maybe if I started with, “Move all your stuff in, and I’ll have some faith,” he would be.

“You’re coming home for Christmas!” she snapped, except her chin was quivering and her lower lip was quivering, and I realized that she was almost in tears.

“I
am
home,” I told her. “Oliver and I are spending Christmas Eve together, and then we’re going with his family to Midnight Mass.” Because I was pretty sure that was still on. “We’re going to his dad’s for brunch, and we’re giving cookies to frickin’ everybody, and little toys to his little cousins and movie tickets to his big ones. And his family
asked
if we wanted to come, and they’re
glad
that we’re together. If you want to
ask
if we want to come over sometime,
maybe
we can pencil you in.”

My mom pulled herself up, like she was trying to be strong. “Rusty,” she said, but her voice sounded off and broken, “be reasonable. Your father is so upset by this, and your family can give you so much more than these people—”

“These people?” And now
my
voice sounded off and broken. “You don’t even know who
these
people are!
These
people gave me a table and chairs and a toaster and a mixer and a quilt. They brought me groceries and invited me to dinner and brought me a big fucking flower for my house! Nicole brought me decorations and Oliver . . . Oliver brought me
home
. Jesus, Mom! I don’t even know if you
miss
me. You didn’t see me for
months
and then you kicked me out of the house. My family gave me
shit
, because as far as I can see, everything you gave me was to get something back. I got the clothes and the car as long as I toed the line. I wasn’t
meant
to be this person you were trying to make me. But you know what? The person I am isn’t bad.”

“The person you are?” she asked bitterly. “The . . . the menial worker living in a tacky little apartment on an air mattress? What kind of life is this for you?”

Well, at least she cared. Sort of. “It’s the kind where I’m loved,” I said simply. Oh,
now
I figured that out. I missed Oliver sleeping next to me so damned bad. “Now if you were going to leave Nicole here, go ahead. I’ll give her a ride home.”

Her breath hitched, and her face blotched, because I think I pretty much told her to get out of my house.

“Nicole is to have nothing more to do—”

“I’ll run away and sleep on his couch. Futon. Whatever.” We both looked at Nicole in surprise, but she had her arms crossed and her lower lip out. “Seriously. I came over to visit my brother and my friend. They’re working college students. If that doesn’t make your cut for friend, Mom, I
do
know who all the pot smokers are. I can go be friends with
them
!”

“Don’t you dare!” Mom and I both shouted in tandem, and Nicole raised her eyebrows in surprise.

“Now, see,” she said, obviously enjoying her position, “from Rusty, I know where that’s coming from. You? Mom, you’re going to have to prove you’re not just trying to look good in front of your book club or whoever the fuck you’re trying to impress this week.”

“
Nicole
!” Mom clapped her hand over her mouth, and this time, I couldn’t mistake the look. She was hurt.

“Nicole,” I said softly, trying not to puncture the silence that shocked the room, “I think maybe you should say you’re sorry.”

Nicole’s chin quivered, and I realized it looked just like Mom’s. “No.” She took a deep breath through her nose and let it out over a wobbly bottom lip. “You’re the one person I know who loves me. I don’t
have
Oliver’s family. I just have you. You can’t tell me I can’t see you anymore. I’ll never make it through school. I won’t. You were lucky, Rusty. Everyone loved you through high school. I don’t even have the dumb jock thing. It kept you safe!”

I thought of the oversized shirts and how happy she was to sit in my shitty apartment and do her homework. I couldn’t help it: I held out my arms, and she ran inside, and I comforted her.

“You are always welcome here,” I said, and I glared at Mom. “Right?”

Nicole had started to cry in earnest, and Mom’s chin was quivering too. “Great,” she snapped. “I’m the flaming bitch and you’re Mother Teresa. Wonderful. Is it so wrong for me to want what’s best for you?”

“No,” I said, holding Nicole more and more securely. “As long as you don’t confuse what’s best for me with what’s best for
you
. Now go away. We’ll drop her off by ten.”

Mom looked at us both and then clenched her jaw. “Fine.”

We watched as she whirled around on her low-heeled boot and stomped outside.

Nicole finished crying on me before we moved, and I was sort of glad I hadn’t changed out of my work shirt, because it was full of mascara and crap when she was done. Finally, she pulled away and looked around.

“Nice quilt. Where’s Oliver?”

I thought of the irritated, mutinous look on Oliver’s face when I’d taken him to his dad’s yesterday morning. I’d had Mr. Campbell drop me off back here at the apartment after work and I’d just told Oliver that there was no use both of us suffering if I couldn’t patch the air mattress.

“He’s spending the night at his dad’s until we can fix the bed,” I told her, feeling disheartened. “He’s pissed.”

She quirked her mouth. “What are you going to do if you can’t fix it?”

I looked behind me, wondering how long I had to wait before the rubber cement settled under the duct tape. “Shoot it, and then go to one of those rent-to-own places that charge your firstborn and get one there.”

Nicole shrugged. “You don’t have to tell them that two roosters will
never
make an egg.”

Now
that
was funny, and I was still laughing when I tried to reinflate the mattress.

An hour later, after a dinner of mac and cheese, I had to call Oliver and beg for forgiveness.

“Let me get this straight,” he snapped. “I’m at home, where I’m supposed to be all cozy and shit, and you finally admit you need your own damned car back so we can drop your sister off?”

I thunked my head against the wall while holding the phone.

“Yeah. Sorry about that, baby. She had Mom bring her over, and there was a big ugly confrontation, and I told her we could give her a ride home. I hope that’s—”

“Your
mother
came over? And I’m only hearing about this
now
?” Oh great. He sounded hurt. Christmas Eve was tomorrow, and
damned
if my Christmas gift to everybody I loved wasn’t a big fat box of Kleenex.

“Nicole needed the quiet,” I said, keeping my voice down, mostly because it was true. “Mom’s not easy on her either.”

Oliver swore in Spanish, and I was
really
going to have to learn that language so I could know when he was hoping my balls fell off and when he was hoping something bad happened to someone
else.
“I can’t believe we made cookies for them.”

I shrugged. “Nicole was going to bring them home with her,” I said. I couldn’t seem to explain to him why that hope wouldn’t die. My parents didn’t seem to be monsters. Not the warmest people, no—but I kept wondering if they realized what they’d done.

“Yeah, yeah. I know. Your heart is too big. It doesn’t leave any room for being pissed off.”

Grimace. “Yeah, well, I must have a little pissed-off in me because I yelled at my mom.”

“Really?” He sounded downright chipper about that. “Good. You should yell more. That’s okay then. I’ll be over in twenty. Dad gave me money. He wants us to get Starbucks.”

“Oh, hey, tell him he doesn’t need to—” But Oliver hung up on me before I could tell him I didn’t want to take advantage of his father.

So we stopped at Starbucks and got a big eggnog latte, and then dropped Nicole off at home. This time, we drove all the way to the front of the driveway, so she just had to run up to the porch. She stopped and waved when she got inside, and Oliver and I waved back.

“So, uhm,” I said into the quiet left when she disappeared into the house. “Do you want to come back to my place?”

Oliver grunted and blew on his coffee. “Did you miss me?”

“Derp!”

“You don’t even watch that show,” he said. It was true—I never got
South Park
, but I
did
like the word.

I was driving, so I made sure the car was in park. I turned to Oliver then and tapped his chin until he turned away from his coffee and into my kiss. He tasted like eggnog latte, all warm and sweet, and I smiled when our lips touched.

“I missed you,” I said when I pulled back.

“Me too. I’ll stay the night tonight, but tomorrow, we’re gonna move all my shit into the apartment. No exile just because the bed dies. I
live
there. You can’t get rid of me now.”

“But your bed is so small . . .” I whined and he shrugged.

“It’s better than the futon, and it’s what we got.”

I studied my coffee for a minute. “I wanted to make a better place for you,” I confessed, thinking about the hopeful pictures I’d drawn the week before. “I want you to live in a real nice place.”

His hand on my leg was warm, and I won’t lie, it made my dick wake up and start sniffing for him, since he’d been gone and all.

“I’ll live anywhere with you,” he said, and there, in front of my parents’ big two-story, with the manicured lawn, in front of everything I’d turned my back on, I had to kiss him again.

So weirdly enough, we were moving his furniture into the apartment when the delivery van arrived.

I didn’t work Christmas Eve, so early that morning Oliver and I took his dad’s big truck and moved his dressers and his computer table and his books. We were going to go back for his bed, but while we were setting the other stuff up in the bedroom, his cousins showed up to help. And while they were poking around the gifts on the counter instead of helping, the movers arrived.

“Russell Baker?” The guy in the front looked bored, and I stared at the pen and the clipboard he shoved at me with stupid eyes.

“That’s me. What’s this?”

“How should I know . . . wait. Floyd! What are we bringing out?”

“A bed. What do the instructions say?”

“Oh—wait. Here.”

The guy pulled a card out of his pocket, plain and white. Oliver had moved from the bedroom to peer over my shoulder as I read it, and I felt a sudden, warm loosening of my chest.

“What’s it say?”

I swallowed. “It says, ‘Merry Christmas, Rusty and Oliver. If you have time, we would like to see you on Christmas Day. Dinner is at 3 p.m., but anytime would be fine. P.S. Thank you for the cookies.’”

Oliver looked at me and then looked up at what the guys were schlepping in. The mattress and the box spring came first. The frame came next. It was nice—good quality, oak furniture, stained gold and solid as a rock. A queen-sized pedestal bed, the kind with the drawers in the bottom for extra space.

Oliver wrapped his arms around my waist and leaned his chin on my shoulder.

“Merry Christmas,” he said quietly. “Should we go?”

I looked at him, those earnest brown eyes so intent on my face. I think I fell in love with him the minute I saw him. I wanted him, wanted him in my life from that first second, watching him sit in AP English and not take any shit. He was my family. He was my home. But you could never have too much family and never have too much home. It was good to live in a world where we were loved.

“Yeah,” I said, kissing his forehead. “But for dessert. Your family gets us for dinner.”

When he smiled so big his dimples flashed, the little grooves in his cheek framed his mouth like parentheses. I could watch him smile like that forever.

Maybe life would let me do that.

That night, when the bed was set up and made, Oliver lit candles for the kitchen table, and we ate homemade pizza and sparkling cider, and exchanged gifts.

Oliver got me (with help from his family) a toolbox, with a beginner’s set of construction tools in it—a hammer, a square, a level, a tape measure, and a screwdriver. It was big and sturdy, and I loved it. It sort of said I was a man who could make my own life, and that was a big thing to believe.