Candy Man (16 page)

Beautiful.

“It’s gorgeous,” Adam said softly. “You and your family—something else. I’m….” Oh, it sounded like such a grand word, but it was all he had. “Humbled. I’m humbled. And really grateful.”

“Me too,” Finn said, pulling him into the brightly lit room. “Now sit down while I serve you Christmas dinner—”

Adam sniffed experimentally. “What’s for Christmas dinner?”

“Stuffed chicken, gravy, salad, and garlic potatoes.”

“Whoa!”

“Yes, Christopher
also
brought food from Mom, who says she’s looking forward to seeing us volunteer tomorrow. Mom fundraises a lot for the homeless, Adam—you have yourself a fan right there.”

Adam closed his eyes and remembered Thanksgiving. “Well, back at her. God, it smells good.”

Finn shut the door behind him and came to nestle in Adam’s chest. “So do you. Do you mind if we talk about the sketchbook after dinner?”

If Finn was here? And his? And unafraid? “Yeah, that’ll be all right.”

“Good. Go wash up and I’ll start putting the stuff on the table.”

Adam was getting used to eating regularly sized meals, and he wasn’t going to pass up on seconds, not tonight. Finn told him about his day, about decorating, and how Mari and Joshie strung the popcorn, but Joshie and the dog kept eating it, and how Christopher and Peter had gotten into a big honking argument about how to get the tree up the stairs. “Did you know Rico has neighbors? I swear, I’ve been sleeping here for weeks, and I didn’t know he had neighbors until this old woman across the porch from you poked her head out her door and started swearing at us in what sounded like German. Then the guy above
her
started swearing in what Peter says was Farsi, and he should know because he was in the Peace Corps. Anyway, you’ve got neighbors, and they all yelled at us today, but that’s okay, because the living room looks great.”

Adam smiled at him, savoring one of the last bites of stuffing. “It does. This is a real good present, Finn. Thank you.”

“I got you something to open tomorrow, but, you know, like the sketchbook….”

“Yeah. Some of the best stuff doesn’t come in a box.”

“No.”

Adam stood and took their empty plates to the sink and loaded the dishwasher. By the time he got back, Finn had wiped the table, poured them both a glass of eggnog from a carton, and pulled out the book.

And then the real work of the relationship began.

“So this is you, hiding from your mom and grandma?” Finn asked as Adam took his first swig.

The picture showed a small child-shaped stain in a dark space, with angry sounds beating against the fragile shelter.

“Yeah.”

“This image shows up a lot.”

“Yeah.”

“Can… can we make a deal?”

“What?”

Finn covered his hand. “They say it takes twenty really good things to wipe out one bad thing, you know?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Can we make a list on the back of this picture, this first one here? When we get to twenty good things, we can take this picture out of the book? Maybe burn it? We won’t get rid of them all, you know, but maybe….”

Adam thought of those lonely days without Finn, thinking he didn’t deserve anyone good in his life, thinking he would always be that helpless child, hearing how much nothing really meant.

“Maybe they won’t be so much a part of me,” he said softly.

Finn nodded and smiled. “Good. Yeah.”

He flipped through some pictures from the Army—good ones. Soldiers marching in rank and file, looking earnest and brave. Young recruits in formation and seasoned soldiers wandering behind them, looking at the young ones with wariness and affection. A man at target practice with the M16, staring through his scope with sweat dripping in his eyes. Hard things. Warriors’ pictures. Good moments of pride.

Robbie looking wicked, winning at Rummy, his short-jawed, pretty face alight with merriment because he’d just won Adam’s best commodity, and Adam was happy to give it.

And then….

“Oh, I hate this picture,” Finn murmured.

The lines were thick and dark, soldiers surrounding that child-shaped stain from the earlier pictures, raucous, angry word pictures coming out of their mouths.

Adam closed his eyes and looked away.

“I don’t know what to do with this one,” Finn murmured, taking his hand. “I want to rip it up, make it so it never happened. But it
did
, and that’s going to hurt, and I can’t stop it.”

“You don’t….”

“So maybe we let it sit, and maybe we’ll forget about this book someday, and find it in the dusty bottom of years and years of your sketchbooks—pictures of the animals, pictures of me, my family, ’cause you have Thanksgiving in here already. Maybe someday we start writing the good things on the back of
this
picture, and it can go away too. What do you think?”

Adam gripped his hand and closed his eyes. “I think that picture is already getting further away.”

“Good,” Finn murmured, kissing the outer whorl of Adam’s ear. “Then we’ll just hope for the best here. Okay, moving on.”

Past pictures of death in the desert because that was all Adam could see anymore, and past pictures of loneliness and desolation because that was all he had.

There was a gap then, because most of his drawings had been done for school, and those were in other sketchbooks.

Then there was Easter. His family—Grandma, his mother, Rico’s mother and father, another auntie he barely talked to and her two kids, and they were all sitting at the long banquet table, looking in surprise at the closed door.

And Adam stood outside the door, with blood dripping down his forehead and nose, because Grandma had just slammed the door in his face.

Adam remembered that moment—
that
moment was yesterday.

“How did you get through that?” Finn asked quietly. “I might have stopped breathing.”

Adam stroked the back of his hand with his thumb. “Rico texted me—probably right from the dinner table as the old bitch went off. Said I was finally cool.”

Finn rubbed the drawn Adam’s hurt forehead, and then the real Adam’s scar.

“Then this one, we keep. But we rip it out. And every time you draw a picture of me or my family or someone you love at the holidays, we stack this picture under it. Until you have so many good pictures you have no choice but to let it go.”

Adam smiled and closed his eyes, thinking. Letting the pictures parade through his head on the little movie theater in his brain. “Lots of different things to do with these pictures. What if we forget?”

“Then we still win.”

Adam’s smile widened. “What if all I want to do right now is take the dog for a walk and then take you to bed?”

Finn kissed each eyelid, a breath, a touch, and then Adam felt his lips, and the sweetest benediction Adam could ever imagine. “I think that sounds like an amazing plan,” Finn murmured. “I think we should do that one.”

Clopper was, of course, all for it. They walked the muffled streets of Adam’s new home, and Adam felt more peace in his heart than he could ever remember.

Sleeping Pictures

T
HAT
NIGHT
Adam shucked his clothes and sat on the bed in his boxers, gesturing Finn to come stand, fully clothed, between his knees.

Then he proceeded to kiss Finn’s stomach, his hips, his chest, delicate rubs of skin against skin, only the brush of tongue as Adam explored.

He discovered flat moles on Finn’s back—five or six of them—and an odd sort of elongated freckle on the back of his neck.

“It’s a stork mark,” Finn murmured, sitting on the bed now in the V of Adam’s thighs. He lowered his head to give Adam better access. “Mom says that’s where the stork carried me.”

Adam nibbled on it, thinking of a baby Finn being carried by an oversize bird. He could draw that, he thought. He would love to draw that.

Adam kept kissing, kept exposing little secrets in the lamplight, and Finn trembled with every touch of lips to skin.

By the time Finn was naked, stretched out in front of Adam with his hands over his head because Adam had put them there and asked him to stay, Finn couldn’t talk anymore. He grunted and wiggled and spoke in half syllables and partial words.

“Ad… yeah… no… more… oh Go… ki… not the…
ah
….”

Adam drank him in, his trust, his need, his absolute confidence that Adam would give him whatever he needed.

Adam had that confidence too. Adam gave him
exactly
what he needed.

And when Adam was inside of him, possessing him, holding Finn’s hands above his head and thrusting his sensitized, pulsing body into oblivion, Adam had the sense—the sublime, amazing revelation—that
this
was what sex was for.

So he could make love to Finn.

Finn came without touching himself, his moan of climax deep and resonant—a man’s sound—and Adam had never been so happy to have a man in his bed. Adam came sheathed in Finn, his orgasm washing from his groin outward, like the electromagnetic pulse from a massive detonation, leaving him helpless, shorted out, quivering in Finn’s arms without consciousness or care.

Finn took care of him when he was like this.

He would wake, barely, while Finn washed them both off and turned out the lights and then crawled into bed with him, curling into Adam’s warmth so easily, so naturally, it was like Adam never had any doubts that he could give Finn what he needed.

He was starting to lose those doubts—but he’d never forget that he had them.

Maybe Finn had the right of it. Maybe you never really lost those pictures that hurt you. But maybe they could become less and less of all of the pictures in your heart.

T
HE
DAWN
was barely gray when Adam’s phone went off, reminding him that it was time to get up and go help at the homeless shelter. He reached over Finn’s shoulder to where the phone rested in the charger, and avoided crushing the cat, who had insinuated himself between them again, the better to snuggle with Finn at stork-mark level.

He’d no sooner recovered his phone than it buzzed with a text from Rico.

Merry Christmas from New York
, Rico texted, complete with a picture of lower Broadway, the part that used to be all textile mills, taken through a window. It was decked out for Hanukkah mostly, but there was still the odd Christmas tree in the windows below, and Adam wondered how high up Rico was to take such an awesome scene. He wanted to draw it.

But first he pulled back just enough to capture the kitten tangled in Finn’s strawberry blond hair.

Merry Christmas from Finn, my boyfriend, and Jake, your cat.
He’d shown Rico lots of pictures of Jake—but this was his first of Finn.

They’re both beautiful, Adam. You sound happy.

I am. Are you?

Very much. I don’t have to go to San Diego and pretend anymore.

Pretend what?

That Grandma’s an okay human being and I’m not mad at my mom for leaving you at her mercy.

Forget about it. You were my only good thing.

Pretend I let them slam you out of the house and I’m not just like you.

Rico sent that with a picture much like Adam’s, except this was taken with his back to the window, and the sleeping features of a young, dark-haired man were illuminated by the snow-glowing morning behind them. Glittering on his chest was a tiny six-pointed star.

Adam thought,
Oh, Rico. You didn’t tell anybody? Oh God. You must have been so afraid
, and his heart stuttered against his ribs.

He’s beautiful too. Congratulations, cousin. I hope you’re happy too.

I am. His name is Ezra.

You and me will always be family. Someday maybe I’ll meet him.

I’d like that. I’d like that so much. Someday, I’d like to meet Finn.

Love you, Rico. Merry Christmas.

Love you too, Adam. Happy Hanukkah.

Adam sent a smiley face and then put the phone back and wrapped his arms around Finn.

“Mm… is it time already?”

“You know, we could sleep in if it didn’t take you half an hour to poop.”

Finn rolled over in his arms, and the cat hauled its lazy ass up the pillow to get out of the way. “I get some of my best thinking done that way.”

“Yeah? What are you going to be thinking about today?”

“That I’m in love with someone who loves me back.”

Adam nuzzled the hollow of his neck, which smelled like cat and eggnog, and a little like sex, and mostly like Finn. “You think about that as long as you want. I’ll be thinking about it too.”

“Merry Christmas, Adam.”

“Merry Christmas, Finn. Let’s get out of bed and see what kinds of memories we can make, okay?”

“Yeah. Let’s make sure to take lots of pictures so you can draw them later.”

Adam thought of the portrait he was giving Finn for Christmas. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

So much hope. The first Christmas ever that he would have all the hope in the world—but, God willing, not the last by far.

Cherry Pixy Stix

T
HE
DAY
after Christmas, Darrin walked into his shop a little late and found that most of his staff had done all of the setup during the way way early. Well, yes, it was good to be boss, right?

People were pretty much at the “hanging around and waiting to open” stage, and Darrin looked over to the counter to see Adam perched on the sales stool, and Finn tucked up between his thighs. They were discussing apartments, and animals, and where Finn thought they could get the best deal in June, and Darrin warmed, just watching them.

Adam would be here for a while—three or four years, at least—but that was because Finn wasn’t planning on moving away from him. Ever.

They would be happy, Darrin thought, remembering the Pixy Stix. They would have lives, careers, giant dogs, gentle cats, and maybe even children, sometime off in the hazy, hazy future of their own.