Grumble Monkey and the Department Store Elf (9 page)

In that moment, Nick decided to let that part win.

So Kit held Nick until the tears were done. Done and washed out of him.

Then Kit kissed him.

Kissed him over and over, until Nick was kissing back. Before Nick even knew what was happening, their clothes were shed and they held each other, naked flesh against glorious naked flesh.

And later, Kit said, “Nick?”

“Yes,” he whispered back.

“Nick? Will you fuck me?”

The word made Nick gasp. “I thought you hated that word.” It seemed so horribly ugly on Kit’s soft, beautiful lips.

“I don’t really like it at all,” Kit said, then thrust his hardness against Nick’s own. “I—I just wanted to prove to you I could say it.”

“Don’t, then.”

“What do you want me to say, then?”

“What do you usually say?” Nick asked.

There was a long pause. “I… I….”

“What, Kit? Tell me. I won’t make fun.”

“I don’t have a word for it. I… I’ve never asked before.”

The shock of it hit Nick like a wall of stone.

“You… you’re a….”

“Sort of…,” Kit whispered.

“Sort of?”

“I’ve been with a few men. I just never let one… do that.”

No. Oh no. No, Kit. Not me.

“I can’t, Kit!” he sobbed.

“Why not?” Kit cried back.

“Kit. After tomorrow I’ll never see you again….”

“You don’t know that!”

Oh. Oh, but he did, didn’t he?

“I
do
know that, Kit. Give that to a lover. Give that to a man who will hold you and love you for the rest of your life.”

There was an eternal silence. A time in which Nick knew Kit would get up and leave, and oh, how he didn’t want Kit to leave.

“No. You need it. I’m giving it to you.”

“Kit!”

And Kit was kissing him. Kissing him like he’d never been kissed—ever. Not even by Spencer. Spence. Spin.

“Merry Christmas,” Kit whispered.

After that—well.

After that they made love.

K
IT
WOKE
up the next morning feeling happy. Even though it was Christmas morning and there was no smell of fresh coffee or frying bacon. For as long as he could remember, that was Christmas morning. It did no good for him and his siblings to beg and plead; not one single present could be opened until they all, each and every one, had their breakfast and the dishes were done. It had been torture when he was little and turned to exquisite anticipation as he got older.

The breakfast would be huge. Eggs and bacon and sausage and hash browns (Celeste took great pride in grating the potatoes) and grits with lots of butter and homemade biscuits, and of course, Mom’s famous pancakes. Oh, the pancakes! Mom used this wonderful old-fashioned thingamabob that she placed on the griddle and poured the batter into preformed cutouts that created pancakes shaped like animals: a horse, a cow, and a chicken. Sometimes (on Christmas) she’d even make pancakes shaped like snowmen by carefully pouring three intersecting circles of the batter.

Despite the fact that this was the first Christmas ever without such a breakfast, Kit was happy. He was happy even though he had no idea where his family was—certainly not home, and not even in the air somewhere. Not with all the crummy ice.

He turned to look at his sleeping companion, the morning sunlight streaming through the blinds and turning Nick all golden. Kit gasped. Nick looked beautiful. More. He looked ten years younger. He’d thought Nick was good-looking the minute he’d spotted him. Part of it
was
that Nick was older than he was. Kit had always been attracted to men who were a bit older. They made him feel safe, somehow. Protected. But until last night, he’d never slept with anyone who wasn’t within a year of his own age. Kit didn’t have a lot of experience, and until now, he’d found himself with lovers as inexperienced as himself. Usually it had been a lot of fumbling around in the dark. Fun. Oh yes. But
nothing
like last night. Nick had played him like a Stradivarius. Who knew lovin’ could be so good?

And yes, he knew Nick would be leaving sometime that morning, and he very well might never see the man again. But oh oh oh he had a new Christmas memory he would never forget. He felt wondrous. This is what it would feel like one day when he had a partner, a husband, and woke up beside him on Christmas morning. This is what it felt like for his parents even after twenty-seven years of marriage.

But, hey! There was one thing he could do.

I can capture this.

I have to
.

So Kit carefully and silently slipped out of bed and went to his closet, pulled out his sketchpad and pencils and his Conté crayons, and went to work. There was no telling when the man would wake up. He had to hurry. Kit’s hand danced across the white surface of the paper, first forming circles and ovals and sweeping arcs, until the magic began to happen and the figure began to emerge. He never got over how it happened, and
he
was the artist. He had drawn and colored and painted all his life, and still it was like a miracle.

He finished just as Nick began to stir, and Kit quickly closed the pad and slipped it under the bed. Then he went to Nick and kissed him and asked him if he wanted breakfast.

T
HE
ROAD
stretched out ahead of Nick, and he felt his eyes blurring with tears once more. All he wanted to do was turn around and go back. But how could he? It would only wind up hurting Kit. And from what he knew, it might scar Kit for life. Nick might have already done him irreconcilable harm.

After they went downstairs, they’d made breakfast—way too much for the two of them—and it was weighing heavy on his stomach. Eggs, bacon, Kit wanted to make sausage as well, and Nick insisted bacon was enough.
Kit
had insisted on animal-shaped pancakes, and Nick—finding himself delighted, for some crazy reason—went along with it.

It was right then that Kit very suddenly discovered the snow.

“Nick! Look!” He pointed out the kitchen window, but before Nick could check, Kit ran for the back door and opened it to a winter wonderland. It wasn’t snowing, but it had obviously done so during the night. “Look look look!” squealed Kit, jumping up and down like a child. “Christmas snow! It didn’t ice storm after all!”

After they ate, Kit was adamant that they go out back and make a snowman, and hell, who was Nick to argue?

So they bundled up, he in his Eddie Bauer coat and Kit in something far less expensive but surely just as warm, and Nick made his first snowman in decades.

They had a ball. Kit found an old hat in the basement and a carrot in the refrigerator for a nose. Charcoal briquettes made eyes and mouth, as they had no coal. Nick supplied a scarf he had bought at Neiman Marcus, making their Frosty the most expensively dressed snowman in the neighborhood. Nick didn’t know, maybe the whole town.

Then came the snowball fight.

And then the kissing.

It was like a scene from Disney’s
Beauty and the Beast
. Nick could almost hear the song in his head, although he could only remember a few of the words. Some lyrics about there being something there that wasn’t there before.

That was about the time they were caught.

By Kit’s parents.

“Mom!” screamed Kit when they both finally heard the couple clearing their throats noisily. “Dad!” He ran across the snowy lawn and into their arms, kissing their faces fervently. After that, there were embarrassing introductions to the whole famdamily. It made Nick very uncomfortable, especially with the sly grins that came from Mom and Dad, all the way down to little Celeste.

Except Celeste wasn’t all that little. Nick saw immediately where Kit got his height. The whole Jeffries family was tall—Kit was actually short compared to some of them—and twelve-year-old Celeste was only an inch shorter than Nick.

Mom decided it was time for a big Christmas breakfast, and that had been Nick’s cue to flee. The togetherness and love and the everything-his-family-
wasn’t
had him almost gasping for breath. He felt overwhelmed, and he knew it was finally time to leave. He’d never make San Francisco by midnight now. But maybe, just maybe, by sunrise tomorrow? Would that count?

Shit! It had been so important to him that it happen today. Synchronistic, or something.

So despite the objections of everyone, he left. But not before Kit had pressed a mailing tube in his hands. “This is for you,” he said. “Merry Christmas.”

Nick had shaken his head. “I have nothing for you.”

Kit had looked down at him, eyes full of mirth and joy and mischief, and told Nick he had given him the most precious gift of all. “And plus, I plan on swiping Frosty’s scarf. Unless you want it back.”

I am scum
, thought Nick.
Why did I take his virginity?

“No. Keep it. Please.”

Why hadn’t he insisted on leaving Kit’s virginity for a man with whom Kit could spend the rest of his life?

But it was too late for that, wasn’t it?

Every now and then, Nick would glance at the mailing tube on the seat next to him. What could it be? Kit had insisted he wait to open it. Wait for what? Christmas?

Over and over, his thoughts went to the department-store elf.

Nick couldn’t believe it, really. All that had happened in less than twenty-four hours. How meeting a silly, effeminate young man had… well… done something to him. He couldn’t explain it. Yesterday morning he was rushing to San Francisco, ready to fulfill a plan that had been forming for months. A way to end all the darkness. And oh, what a fitting end.

But then he met Kit Jeffries, a young man filled with promise and light and life and laughter. He had tried to ignore that light. But it had seeped into him somehow. Filled the darkest corners of his heart.

All in less than twenty-four hours.

Nick glanced at the cardboard tube one more time, and knew in that instant he wasn’t waiting any longer. He estimated it was five miles to the next exit, and that was five miles too long. The shoulder of the highway was clear here, the plows had been doing their job—
finally!
—and he pulled over. A moment later, Kit’s artwork lay unrolled before him.

Nick trembled.

The piece was stunning. Beautiful. He could almost see the man in the picture breathing.

But then Nick saw it.

The man…

… was him.

“You made me look too young,” he said aloud.

Kit must have done it this morning while Nick was still asleep. He was lying on his back, one arm over his forehead, the other at his side. He was naked, a sheet barely concealing his sex. The picture glowed, full of vivid life. Kit had made him golden, suffused him with light. He glimmered. Yellows and oranges and even metallic gold.

“You made me look too young,” Nick said again. “Why did you make me look so young?”

Suddenly, overwhelmingly, he felt the
need
to know the answer. But Terra’s Gate was behind him, and a different gold was waiting for him. Golden arms and golden arches and an end to pain.

But Kit’s only a half hour away. Go back.

Too late.

Too late?

Too late for what?

Kit is only a half hour away.

Can’t. Can’t go back! Call him, that’s what you can do.

Except it now very abruptly occurred to him that he didn’t have Kit’s number.

How the hell did I do that? How can I set up a show for him, make calls for him, when I don’t even know his phone number?

Go back. You have to.

How else can I help him? I promised. Kit deserves a show.

A sudden jealousy swept over him. Of someone else showing Kit to the world.

I want to be the one.

Well, I can hardly do that, and also….

God!

Up ahead was a sign that let him know the next exit was 1.5 miles away. Even closer than he’d thought. And right, then, Nick made a decision that would change the course of his life.

T
HE
WHOLE
family wouldn’t leave Kit alone, asking him every conceivable question about Nick. He answered some, dodged others. Kit found he couldn’t tell them everything. Certainly not about last night!

“Is he your boyfriend?” Celeste asked.

“No,” Kit replied.
Although I wish he was.

Now where had
that
thought come from?

“Then why were you two sucking face?”

Kit blushed. “We were
not
sucking face.”

“Uh-huh. I saw you.”

That was only part of it all.

He was just managing to get the subject changed into the story of how the family had gotten a flight into Kansas City through some miracle (a Christmas miracle?) when the doorbell rang.

Celeste took off like a rocket for the front door as his mother wondered who
that
could be on Christmas. Was it maybe Mrs. McKenna?

“Kitten!” came the shouted voice from the other room. “It’s your boyfriend.”

Boyfriend?

A shock ran through him.

Nick?

Kit ran for the door just in time to hear Celeste saying, “Then how come you were sucking face?”

Blushing furiously, Kit cried, “We were
not
sucking face.”

And yes.

There he was.

Nick was standing there in the doorway. And before Kit could say anything, the family was there too, and
demanding
that Nick spend the day. They pulled him into the house en masse and Kit felt his heart slamming in his chest at the sight of the man he… what?

Nick was blushing and looking at him in a way that made him flush all over. “Hey, Kit,” he said.

“Hey, Nick.”

Like shepherds, his siblings and parents guided Nick to the couch, and his mom insisted Nick take coffee at least. Kit was guided as well, made to sit next to Nick, and the coffee was served, full of cream and sugar and nutmeg and cinnamon. Then presents were passed out, and surprise, surprise, there were two for Nick. Kit’s mother was always prepared, and how she had smuggled them under the tree only she and Santa could know for sure.