New York Christmas (2 page)

“Ha ha, Strachen,” Daniel said drily. He scooped the box out of Alex’s way and closed the lid. “I’ll just take them to admin then.”

“Don’t be so hasty,” Alex said. He held out a hand and shook it, palm up.

“Gimme.”

Daniel placed the box very deliberately in front of his partner and then settled himself on the nearest chair before scooting forward to help himself to a muffin.

“These are from Grand Street?” Alex commented around a mouthful of muffin. He pointed at the address on the side of the box. “That’s like ten blocks away.” He swallowed his mouthful and took a swig of coffee, grimacing at what Daniel knew was disgusting caffeine. “And in the opposite direction from where you live.”

“Great detective work,” Daniel said. He bit into a whole cranberry and the juice of the tart fruit sparked on his tongue.
God.
These muffins were heaven in a box. He watched as one by one they disappeared as other officers took them. A small part of him regretted sharing. Still, an empty box meant he could go back after Thanksgiving and see Chris again.

“Is this something to do with your guy? Did you track him down?” Alex leaned in and spoke quietly. Despite the fact that every single person in the department knew Daniel was gay, Alex respected that he didn’t want to talk details with everyone getting up into his private life.

“We’ll talk later,” Daniel offered. Unspoken was ‘when we’re out and away from here’.

They settled into the routine of the new day, checking reports, briefing, and organizing themselves into what they needed to do. It was nearly midday before they hit the streets, and the snow was a blessing in that it slowed everything down. People still milled around; cars still forced their way through lights and around corners narrowly missing the feet of the waiting pedestrians. But there was a buzz of excitement

in the air. The first snow was always an exciting one, before it melted or, worst case scenario, turned to slush. The bitter November air stung Daniel’s face but it was okay.

He was home here.

“So tell me? Did that guy you tracked down, the brother or something, give you good intel?”

Daniel hated to use police information to track down the man he wanted to find and had instead relied on good old-fashioned detective work. Knowing Chris’s brother worked at the
Times
was a good place to start, asking for details of where his brother worked the next step. Address in hand—and leaving two hours early for work—meant that finally, after all these years, he had seen Chris again. Strange that the man who had given Daniel’s studies purpose had ended up in a coffee shop of all places. In his head Chris had become a teacher, or gone on to further study and become a doctor of English lit. Anything but someone who made coffee and sold muffins for a living.

“Yeah, and he was working behind the counter there.”

“Hence the muffins. Did he recognize you?”

“Yeah he did. I could see he realized it was me immediately.”

“Were you in uniform?”

“Left it here yesterday and changed when I arrived. Didn’t want to scare the guy off at first sight.” Daniel shrugged. “He looked like a scared rabbit, and he wasn’t wearing his glasses.”

“You remember he wore glasses?” Alex laughed. “Man, you have it bad. Have you really liked him for this long?”

Daniel hadn’t shared a lot of his backstory with Alex. His partner knew the headlines: son of rich parents, private education, college degree, cop. He didn’t know about Chris and the effect the senior had had on his freshman self. Why would he?

Daniel kept everything very close to his chest. He sighed.

“It’s unfinished business. I should have looked him up way before this.”

Alex looked at him thoughtfully while he deftly avoided colliding with a woman who had stopped to look in a shop window with very little consideration for the people around her. He grimaced but continued walking. They were used to much worse.

Everyone out here had an agenda and it was a cop’s job to make sure they handled whatever the City threw at them.

“So why didn’t you look him up?”

Daniel spotted a scruffy Santa with a charity box on the corner and looked pointedly at the guy, who seemed to get the hint and disappeared. He had mastered the art of the steely-eyed take-no-shit glare from Alex and he used it to good effect.

Sometimes body language and the uniform were more effective than words.

“The time wasn’t right. I was at college, then battling family, then training, then beat. Only just settled I guess.”

“Dangerous game if he was that important. What if he up and met some other way-tall, hazel-eyed studmuffin and eloped to Tortuga?”

“You calling me a studmuffin, Strachen?”

Alex huffed a laugh and answered a call to his radio. There was a situation a street over and suddenly talking was done.

As they dealt with the details—a dead rabbit, a conman, a wailing kid, and the kid’s mom—Daniel attempted to get his own thoughts in order. Chris had been shocked to see him this morning but he
had
recognized him. That was a good thing, right? Chris was still just as Daniel remembered. Flustered, cute—not cute, gorgeous—and still with that smile that caused butterflies in the pit of Daniel’s stomach. He would go back soon, maybe even pluck up the courage to ask the guy out.

Decision made, he concentrated on the story of why a four-year-old had found a dead rabbit inside a shoe box.

Only in New York City.

Thursday, November 22nd

Chris pushed his keyboard away and slumped back in the chair. He’d turned down Thanksgiving with Ame, and he was supposed to be working now. Who was he kidding? There was no way he could work when all he could think about was Sacred Heart and the mess he was in the middle of. He had tried really hard to get his head around the text on the screen, but at the end of the day not even Charles Dickens was keeping his head in the game.

The job he'd got at Sacred Heart was something he fell into by accident. A friend of a friend mentioned that the private school was looking for a fill-in English teacher for a while and would Chris be interested in temping there for a few weeks?

A few weeks had turned into a few years and Chris couldn’t have been happier.

The kids he taught were respectful and listened to him, his fellow teachers were friends as well as colleagues, and he had even fallen into a closeted relationship with one of them. Whitman Hamilton-Keyes III, son of one of the board members, had all the classic good looks and silver-edged air to him that Chris aspired to.

That had all gone to shit. An email had been found and the contents of it meant he was asked to leave with nothing more than the box of his personal items and a warning not to set foot in Sacred Heart again. Working now for his best friend since moving to the city had been a fallback until he decided what to do. That had been online training courses in literacy, which kept the wolves from the door. He gave up on keeping his small apartment and took the room above the café. There was always hope. He’d hired a lawyer with what remained of his meager funds but at the end of the day the funds ran out just as the school handed him the ultimatum: Stay quiet and we won’t make a fuss.

Hot chocolate would probably help. Or rather the distraction of making the drink would make it seem like he was taking a natural break instead of giving up. He padded down the stairs, his feet sockless against the wood floor and his head spinning with what ifs and maybes.

“You’re up late—you okay?” Ame was at the bottom of the stairs, two empty muffin baskets in her arms and a concerned look on her face. He could lie. He could spend an awfully long time standing in the cold evening air trying to convince his best friend that yes, everything was okay. He knew one thing would always be true though, she would see through it in an instant.

“Did you have a good time at your mom’s?” Chris was an expert at deflecting attention from his own troubles.

“Too much food, football, the usual lovely family time. Don’t change the subject.”

Great. Ame had that face going on. The one that wasn’t going to let this lie.

“I’ve been better,” Chris said. Best to get how he was feeling out of the way. Better to be honest. “I had the final letter from the Board at Sacred Heart waiting for me when I picked up my mail yesterday.”

“What did it say?”

“What they said it would. Thanking me for my work there and sorry to see me go.”

“It’s over then?” Sadness colored her voice, and she placed the baskets on the floor, freeing her arms to pull him into a tight hug. Grief balled in his chest. She knew what he had decided. She may not have agreed with him rolling over and taking it all, but she at least hugged him when he got low. He wasn’t stupid; everything they said was a lie, but lies stuck like mud on a blanket. Rumors were enough to stop any future school—state or private—from giving him a job. No, he was going to keep his head down, keep his nose clean, and not take chances by going back into teaching.

Seeing the words in black and white though, that had hurt. Details under the exclusive prep school’s letterhead, wishing him luck for the future and thanking him for his understanding. It had been too much. He relaxed into her embrace. Amelia might be six inches short of his five eleven, she may well only be two-thirds his weight, but hell, she could hug like a bodybuilder on steroids.

“I’m sorry, Christian,” she added soft and low in his ear.

He shrugged as she released him and he got a look at her face in the dim light of the hallway. “It’s fine. Knew what they were going to say—just seeing it is hard.” They stood in companionable silence for a few moments. He didn’t know what else to say; having someone with him who understood that he needed time was enough.

“Maria had her scan today.” Chris widened his eyes; he hadn’t even thought to ask about the woman he was temporarily replacing.

“Is everything okay?”

“Baby is fine, but Maria’s blood pressure is through the roof. They told her no working now ‘til baby comes, or they may have to perform a Caesarean. It looks like it may be preeclampsia. At any rate, we won’t see her before Christmas.”

“Poor Maria,” Chris said immediately. He had a lot of affection for the fiery Italian and her family. They had been trying so long for a baby. Maria falling so ill with only six weeks before the birth didn’t seem fair.

“Will you stay here with me for longer—now you have the dismissal in writing from the school that is?” Chris knew what she was asking. Would he stay here with her, in the room over the bakery, would he continue to cover for Maria, would he want to be here? This little café halfway down Grand Street attracted tourists and businesspeople alike and was always busy. The distraction was good, he at least earned a bit of money, and he loved Amelia.

“I wouldn’t ever leave you in the lurch, Ame.”

“I know that, babe, just… will you try for another position? Maybe at another school? A public school?” That wasn’t the first time she had said this. She was of the opinion he was wasted anywhere outside of a classroom. He wished he could feel the same.

“No.” Chris shocked himself at his quick response. He was normally a lot more restrained. None of this was Amelia’s fault. “Sorry. I don’t mean to… look, I’m not working with kids again when at any given time I could have the finger pointed at me for being gay.”

“Chris—”

“I’ll work the online thing, grading, maybe write some textbooks,” Chris said. He was being stubborn and he knew it, but although he had been friends with Ame for five years, she didn’t know what he really felt inside.

“Isn’t that a waste?”

“I’m not putting myself through all this shit again. I’m just as happy working in the background.” He knew his hurt and anger filled his lying words, Ame couldn’t miss that. For an instant she frowned at the words. Shit. Obviously he wasn’t doing a good job of hiding how he was feeling.

“You’re welcome to stay here. Both in the room and working downstairs,” she finally said, leaning to pick up the two baskets and heading back into the main shop area. He followed. “You know with Maria not here I could always use the help. But you also know you don’t have to stay if you want to move on to something else. I can always hire in help up to Christmas.”

The shop itself was dark, the blinds pulled, and the only lighting came from the machines that fed their part of NYC with coffee, green and red LEDs lending an unearthly glow to the ghostly interior. The shop was calm before the next day with its Black Friday shopping rush.

“Thank you, Ame. I want to stay and be focused on something, and I’ll work Maria’s shifts. Hell, I have the time. You don’t need to find anyone else.” Amelia stopped by the counter and shook her head. It was enough of a reaction to make Chris want to run back upstairs. Here came the lecture.

“Thank you for that, babe,” she started calmly enough, “I won’t say no. The run-up to Christmas is always busy as hell, frantic, a mess, but—” She paused, and Chris winced, knowing what was coming from his fiercely protective friend. “You’re wasted here. You should be teaching, working with kids! It’s what you are good at, and I could cry that they took it away from you.”

“Ame—”

“Promise me you will fight this, Christian, make some sort of stand, show them they can’t do this to you.”

“Ame—”

“I’m serious. You graduated top of your class, you bleed English literature, you need it, your passion, and you teach those kids—fuck, I’m so pissed at Sacred Heart.”

Chris moved to gather his friend in a hug, not sure who was comforting whom at this point.

“I said I won’t fight them,” he began quietly, “the deal was I just walk away quietly and they don’t press charges.”

“Of course they won’t press charges. They can’t. You didn’t do anything wrong!”

Ame pulled back and jabbed him in the chest, punctuating each word with her finger.

Chris shrugged again. Seriously, what was the point in dissecting this over and over? He hadn’t done anything wrong, hadn’t done any of the things he had been accused of. But to fight Sacred Heart, a private school, a highly respected institution some two hundred years old? He wasn’t strong enough to do it, and he had no support there to even try. The accusations hurt, his fellow teachers and their condemnation hurt.