Christmas Kitsch (Hol) (MM) (13 page)

Boy, was she a knockout. I mean, seriously, she may have been Oliver’s aunt, but back in my girl days, I would have flirted with her for sport. She was pretty. She had Oliver’s oval face and dark brown eyes and even the little inquisitive thing at the arch of his eyebrows, but mostly it was her smile.

“Rusty, I’ve heard so much about you!” Like Mr. Campbell, she had a little lilt in her voice, and it made it easier for me to smile shyly and try not to back into the corner of the kitchen, where I was finishing with the silverware on the table.

“All of it good,” Oliver said quickly, and I shrugged.

“Then she couldn’t have heard much. But it’s good to meet you, Ms. Campbell—”

“Call me Gloria,” she said with a warm smile, and I could feel my ears turning pink.

“Nice to meet you, Gloria.” She was also wearing a long parka, and all of the coat hooks were behind me, in the dark living room full of now-sleeping dogs. “Would you like me to take your coat?”

Her face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Oh my word!” She whirled and slid the coat off, and I dropped the spoons on the table and caught it. “Oliver, look at him. Polite as anything. Why haven’t you brought him by before?”

Oliver was standing in the glare of the kitchen lights, and his face was already flushed from cooking, but I could swear he turned a little pinker.

“His house is really nice, Aunt Gloria,” he said, darting a quick glance at me. “Besides, he has a
pool
.”

Suddenly I was back at this summer, where I invited Oliver over all the time, and he hadn’t invited me over once. Had he been
embarrassed
of me? Well, why not? I mean, I’m the loser who couldn’t hack it at Berkeley, I’m the idiot who thought my friends were okay when they were really asswipes, and I was obviously defective in
some
way, or my parents might have been able to take the gay thing in stride, right?

“Yeah,” I said into the sudden silence. “Well, you shoulda known—dogs trump pool, any day.”

I turned then and moved into the living room to hang up Gloria’s coat. I was so busy trying to swallow back my disappointment that I hardly heard Oliver excusing himself from the kitchen. I stood at the side entryway for a few minutes, wondering about that cab and that hotel room when Oliver showed up at my side.

“I was embarrassed,” he said quietly, and I couldn’t meet his eyes.

“About me?”

He snorted. “No! C’mon, Rusty—think! My house is small, my people are brown. You keep saying it, Rusty, but I’m not going to believe you’re that dumb.”

I looked at him, feeling naked. “You shoulda known,” I muttered. I was thinking of the way looking at Oliver had become my whole world that summer. “You shoulda known that the dogs trumped the pool.”

Oliver looked stricken and nodded, and I realized that I wasn’t being rational.

“I’m sorry. I’m . . . I’m sort of all over the place. You know, maybe I should, I don’t know, take a cab, go hide out in your bedroom, something. I’m not going to be really, you know, stellar company tonight, righ—?”

I was interrupted as the side door by us flew open, and three men, my height but broader, came barreling through.

Oliver rolled his eyes and laughed and backed up against me, mashing me against the wall. My brain shorted out, and all of my insecurities died a quick and painless death.

He felt so good. It was like that touch, the rough feel of his slender body through his clothes, leaning against me through mine, was all I needed. I wanted to shiver, collapse around him, howl, and hold him to my body.
God
, did I need to have him in my arms. At the moment, though, the giant men were all yelling in Spanish, and hollering at Oliver’s dad, and it didn’t seem to be the moment. I mean, I knew that, but I also knew that if I had much more time with Oliver in my arms like this, I might succeed in crawling through the back of the wall with my butt muscles alone in an effort to grab him and escape.

I gave Oliver a little shove, and suddenly he was being roughly embraced by the oldest of the men and shaken within an inch of his life.

“Hey, Ollie! You grew, at least an inch, right? Yeah, you grew—”

“It’s only been a month, Uncle Manny. Pretty sure I haven’t grown in a month.”

“Joey! Sal! Get over here! What do you think, you think Ollie’s grown?”

Oliver grimaced up at the two other young men, both of whom looked only a little older than us.

“Hey, Joey. Hey, Sal. I haven’t grown. Uncle Manny’s a little high. You gotta watch and make sure he doesn’t drink too much coffee on his way up the hill.”

“It’s only from Sacto, Oliver,” Joey said, rolling his eyes. He was the tallest of the three men and the widest, with a wide-cheekboned, handsome face and a square hairline to match his square chin.

I don’t know if Sal was younger, but he was certainly littler, and he was willing to buy into the lie. “Yeah, man, I swear it took Dad, like, sixty-four ounces of java to make it this time. He’s got to lay off the late-night chat sessions if he wants to live to be old.” Sal was shorter and skinnier, a lot like Oliver, and his narrow face was marred by acne scars, but he had the sort of smile that made you not think about that. Both boys had the big, brown eyes of Oliver’s family, with the really thick lashes. I bet they got away with
murder
in school.

Manny turned to his sons and rolled his eyes. “Late-night chat sessions, right? I’m doing bills to keep you two in schoolbooks for the next three years. You’d think with twins, you’d want to study the same thing and save us some money, right?”

“Twins?” I squeaked, and Joey caught sight of me and shook his head sourly.

“Yeah. God was fuckin’ laughing
that
day, wasn’t he?”

“Joseph!” Manny snapped, and Joey grimaced.

“Sorry, Dad!” he sang, as Manny moved to the kitchen. Then he rolled his eyes at Oliver and me and seemed to remember himself. He extended a hand. “Joey Campbell—we’re Oliver’s cousins.”

I had to come out of the corner of the room to shake his hand and then Sal’s after it. “Rusty Baker. A, er, friend of Oliver’s—”

“My boyfriend,” Oliver said smugly, and both boys widened their eyes and nodded appreciatively.

“Nice, Ollie,” Sal chirped. “You finally snagged him! That’s awesome.”

I went to back up again, and Oliver reached behind his back and grabbed my hand. “He was ready to be snagged,” Oliver conceded, “but he’s shy. No freaking him out, okay?”

“Sorry,” Sal said sincerely. “We just heard a lot about you this last year. We were sort of hoping you’d show up someday.”

Joey eyed me up and down. “Yeah, but you’re going to have to get over this whole shy thing,” he said, apparently still sitting on the fence. “You won’t last long here.”

“Boys,” Manny called from the kitchen, “take off your coats and come wash up!” and hallelujah, I was saved. They turned around toward the bathroom—which, by the way, I had never seen—and I went to follow them, only to be stopped by Oliver.

“You okay?”

I smiled brightly. “Never better. Let’s eat.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head and followed me into the kitchen. At least I wasn’t trying to run anymore, right?

Dinner started with grace, which I was unused to, but it was nice, I guess. And then, after a brief, no-nonsense sort of prayer from Oliver’s dad, chaos erupted. Everybody was talking to everybody else, and tamales were being passed, and people were up in each other’s business.

It was terrifying.

“So, Manny, where’s Silvia tonight?” Gloria asked, and the two brothers groaned.

“No, no, no—don’t summon her, she may appear.”

Manny glared at his sons. “She flew down to San Diego to be with her family—”

“Yeah, she found out we were having dinner up here tomorrow and took off for the hills, man. Uptight, skinny bitch—”

“
Joey
.”

Joey glared at his father. “Dad, you’re better than she is. Don’t let her tell you different. Mom says so too. Says she’s a money-grabbing—”

Mr. Campbell laughed. “Joey, you ever think maybe your mother’s not the most . . . I don’t know,
objective
person to talk about your father’s love life?”

Sal interrupted earnestly. “Naw, Mom’s totally happy with Jimmy the Lawyer. He’s cool. His house has a pool, she doesn’t have to work so much, gets to spend time with the new baby. It’s okay. She’s really trying to be a friend.”

Manny looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, she’s doing her best. But, well, yeah. I think Silvia and I, we’re probably not really suited for each other.”

“Yeah,” Joey muttered. “For one thing, she voted Republican. I can’t
stand
that shit.”

“Hey hey hey!” Mr. Campbell put his foot down. “No politics at the table. That’s the new rule that I just made up right here.”

Joey looked at his plate, embarrassed like a little kid. “Yeah, Uncle Arturo. That’s fair.”

“You dating anyone, Gloria?” Manny asked, and his son shot him a grateful look.

Gloria shrugged an elegant shoulder. “Men. They all want in your pants, but nobody wants to hold hands, you know?”

“Yeah,” Joey said, nodding. “You hold out for someone nice, Aunt Glo. You’re worth it.”

“Sal, that girl you were seeing?” Gloria said, snagging some
sopas
and salsa from the lazy Susan in the center of the table. “She ever come home and meet your
papi
?”

Sal shook his head and looked embarrassed. “Nah, Aunt Gloria, she’s not that sort of girl.”

Manny grunted. “She’s got money, and she’s Jewish, and he’s all up in his head. Sort of like Ollie was about this one, right?”

My face heated, and I glared at Oliver, who looked apologetically back. “You’re sort of out of my league,” he muttered to me, and I rolled my eyes.

“Yeah, if we’re playing football,” I said back, and Oliver laughed, holding his hand over his mouth because he wasn’t quite done swallowing a bite of tamale, and looked at me with dancing eyes. He got a hold of himself, swallowed, and shook his head.

“Well, thank God we’re not playing football, Rusty. I think we’ll do okay without it.”

And suddenly all of the attention was on me, and I wanted to be one of the dogs.
They
got to sleep on the couch after being unconditionally loved. I was getting looked at by this totally nice family that didn’t seem to have any problem prying into people’s personal lives. I took a quick bite of tamale to make it clear I was done with
my
part of the conversation and waited for someone else to talk.

Oliver’s Aunt Gloria took the gambit, and I sort of wished I’d said something instead. “That reminds me,” Gloria said, smiling warmly, “it was nice of your family to let you come have dinner with us tonight. I’m sure they miss you after being away for so long.”

Mr. Campbell, Oliver, and I all froze. I still had tamale in my mouth, and I tried helplessly to swallow it. Without a word, Oliver passed me my glass of milk, and I was still washing stuff down when Mr. Campbell spoke up for me.

“Rusty is going to be staying here for a little while,” he said quietly.

I wiped my mouth, and said, “Only until I can find an apartment. I still have my savings from the summer. And a car. I need a car.”

Mr. Campbell grimaced, and Manny said, “Hey, I can get you a car!” at about the time Gloria said, “I’ll check my listings. I can find you a nice apartment, really close.” And then both of them together, “Don’t worry, Rusty. We’ll set you up.”

I smiled a little, completely in the dark, until Oliver laughed.

“You did things right, baby. Gloria’s a real estate agent and Manny owns a car lot. If you were gonna get thrown out of the house, this was the place to have dinner.”

I opened my mouth a little and shut it, and opened it and shut it, and turned about seven different colors. “Thank you,” I squeaked at last. “That’s nice of you. I’ll take you up on that.” I had no plans whatsoever of hitting up Oliver’s relatives because they were being nice to me, and I hoped then that someone would move on, someone would save me from this conversation, keep it out of the places I least wanted it to go. Joey (who seemed the type) just didn’t want to drop it.

“Man, that’s messed up. What’d you do to get kicked out? Flunk out of school?”

“No! I was passing,” I said, because damn if I wasn’t still proud of that.

“Then what? C’mon, bro, ’fess up. What sort of heinosity do you have to commit to get kicked out of the house the night before Thanksgiving?”

“I was kissing Oliver,” I snapped back, annoyed. “It wasn’t a hardship.”

The entire table drew in the same gasp of air. I’m surprised they didn’t keel over from oxygen deprivation. The silence was painful, and I chewed doggedly at my tamale and ignored Oliver, next to me, hiding his eyes behind his hand.

“Was it a good kiss?” Gloria surprised me by asking. I looked up and saw her again, just like she’d been when she walked in: beautiful, elegant, and kind.

I swallowed. “The best ever,” I told her sincerely. “Totally worth it. Wouldn’t change a thing.”

“Good answer,” Sal said, and I looked at him gratefully. He smiled encouragingly and poured me another glass of milk because mine was apparently empty, and then he turned to his brother. “Heinosity? Hein
osity
? Who taught you English, time-travelling surfers from 1989?”

Joey shrugged, unimpressed. “Okay, brainiac, what word would
you
use?”

“Abomination,” Sal said, looking smug. “But I wouldn’t use it, because it was only a kiss.”

Joey nodded, shoving another big bite of tamale in his mouth, which he talked through. “Yeah, man. That’s messed up. There’s nothing heinous about a kiss.” He swallowed. “But abomination—man,
that
word has got to go. It makes me think of a big, white hairy thing, and that thing is
not
sitting at our table.”

Oliver looked at me and winked. “No, I’m pretty sure Rusty waxes.”

His cousins busted up into laughter, and the adults all acted shocked, and I glared at him, not really mad, but really, really wanting to tell him that I didn’t need to wax. My chest was pretty hairless on its own.