12. The Christmas Spirits #2
“I was a model overseas for a while,” Aidan said, nailing our lie.
“Ever do any underwear modeling?” Mariah Hairy asked. The crowd ooh ed.
Aidan’s eyes frantically found mine in the crowd. I shrugged and gave him a covert thumbs-up. “Yes, I have.”
“Oh, fantastic. Then you’ll have no trouble participating in our Strip Tease and Sync for Santa, will you?” From backstage, a drag king dressed as Santa Claus rolled out on a velvet throne surrounded by folks dressed as elves.
I panicked. Someone needed to give Aidan the hook. It was one thing to be hot in a space like this. It was another to be exposed. I cycled through a million ways to get him off the stage before he said, “I only know all the words to one song.”
“And what song would that be?” Aidan whispered it to Mariah Hairy. “Are you sure? Well, okay then.” Mariah Hairy handed him a tequila shot from a tray one of the elves was holding. “Down the hatch, honey bunch. You’re up first.”
Before I could do anything, Aidan gulped down the liquor.
The quick plunk of the intro to “We Need a Little Christmas” twinkled through the room.
Gays of a certain age and theater twinks cackled as Aidan threw himself into performance mode.
Embarrassment melted into my bones as I shielded my eyes, but then the short white man to my right elbowed me.
“Is that your man up there? He’s a hoot. And smokin’ hot.”
I peeked through my fingers. Aidan spun and sang and kicked his legs. He was uninhibited and floating through the air with spritely jumps. The spotlight guy could barely keep up with him. Aidan shed his clothes lightning fast, just as we’d been practicing.
Somehow, he’d turned a stodgy show tune into a sexy showstopper.
“Yeah,” I said, pride swirling somewhere south of my navel. “That is my man.”
My heart kept time with the conclusion to the song.
Standing in only his boxer briefs and sneakers, Aidan held his final pose and soaked in the applause. I clapped the loudest, shouted the hardest. And then my phone started vibrating in my pocket.
I would’ve ignored it had the Sunshine Meadows contact number not scrolled across my smartwatch. Shit.
I excused myself from the crowd, pushing past the bouncer and the line of people outside waiting to get in. Leaving Aidan alone was a bad idea, but I couldn’t let this go to voicemail. “Hi. Hello. Henry speaking,” I said into the phone.
“Mr. Aster, this is Brock over at Sunshine Meadows. How are you this evening?”
“I’m fine, Brock. Everything’s fine. Is everything fine with Great Aunt Isla?” I asked. Every time the door opened, the rush and cheers of the crowd hit me anew. I really should be in there.
“Physically, yes. We had a bit of a situation,” he said.
“Is she hurt?” I asked frantically.
“I think it’s best she tells you herself.”
Crackling emanated through the phone. “It’s nothing, doll. Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s not nothing,” Brock said in the background.
“We had a slight kerfuffle over bingo this evening. Everybody made it out alive,” she said.
“What kind of kerfuffle? Are you sure you’re not hurt?” I asked, stepping farther away from the club entrance so I could hear better.
“There’s not a single scratch on me, ” she said. I could hear Brock scoff over the speakerphone.
“Oh, Aunt Isla, no .” I palmed my face with my free hand.
“Shirley was not respecting the bingo rules, doll,” she said. “My midday nap ran long and I was late. Sue me.”
Midday nap? It was past eight p.m. How long had she been asleep? Was anyone checking on her there? “Okay…”
“Delilah was out from calling bingo today, so when that happens, we go to the backup sheet. It’s a rotation, you see?
I was next on the list. I knew this. Shirley knew this.
But because I wasn’t there right at six thirty, Shirley decided to skip me and start.
When I politely told her she couldn’t do that upon arriving, she got very angry. I maintain that I was quite calm.”
“You started a fight, Ms. Attenborough,” Brock said.
“Honey, I don’t start fights, I only end them.”
“You ended this one by pulling Shirley’s wig off!” scolded Brock.
I rolled my eyes. “Brock, can you take us off speakerphone, please, so I can talk to my aunt alone?”
He did as I asked. “It’s over and done with, doll. I’ve already forgotten about it.”
“I’m sure Shirley hasn’t,” I said, hoping to elicit some semblance of guilt from her.
“I only meant to pull her hair. I didn’t know it was a wig.”
“Aunt Isla…”
“Okay, I knew it was a wig, but I didn’t know it would be so easily snatched.”
Ugh. I should’ve been inside watching drag queens in fabulous wigs snatching dollar bills out of willing hands.
Not dealing with this. “I want to believe you, but you’re not making it easy.
Brock wouldn’t lie. You know how long the waiting list was for units in nursing homes.
There’s nowhere to transfer you if you get kicked out. ”
“Doll, this isn’t high school. They can’t expel me,” she said.
“Actually, they can. You signed a contract that says they can evict you if you don’t follow the rules, and while it probably doesn’t say it explicitly, I’d think ripping someone’s wig off counts as a pretty big infraction,” I said, wishing I didn’t feel so much like a parent to a churlish teenager.
“I said I was sorry.”
“Not to my knowledge, you didn’t.” That was Brock again. Farther away this time.
I groaned. “Is this really all about being the bingo caller?”
“Yes. Why would it be about anything else?” she snapped.
“I—” I leaned back against the cold, disgusting brick wall. The weather finally registered, and I shivered without my coat.
“I will be on my best behavior, wardens. Can I go to bed now?” she asked both me and Brock.
“You’re not a prisoner here, Ms. Attenborough,” Brock said. “You’re free to leave any time you wish.”
“Where would I go? How would I get there?” she asked, and my heart broke a little out in that dirty alley against a graffitied wall in the mid-December freeze. Hearing her this downtrodden, like life for her was already over, crushed me. “Lights out for this old gal. Kisses, doll.”
“I’ll see you soo—” She hung up on me.
I collected myself before going back into the madness. The show had ended while I was on the call. The dance floor was a sea anemone; the dancers’ arms turned to neon-pink tentacles beneath the frenetic strobe. Aidan wasn’t among the masses.
Unsure where to look next, I turned to flag down the bartender, who once again barely noticed my presence. “Have you seen my friend? About yea tall, blond hair, blue eyes. He, uh, did the striptease to Angela Lansbury.”
“Check the bathroom. Saw him hightail it that way.”
I hacked my way through to the congested back hallway where guys—some glitter-covered, some leather-clad, some both—made out and made plans and made me angry by not moving out of my way.
“Girl, there’s a line !”
I ignored the indignation being thrown my way because at the inlet to the men’s room, Aidan did an unbecoming dance as he waited his turn. “Aidan!” I yelled out.
“Henry!” He shouted my name like there were marshmallows in his mouth. “I thought you’d left me.” There it was. The quintessential drunken whine. Every gay man and straight woman used it when they’d slipped past fun-tipsy and into more treacherous territory.
“Sorry. I had to take a call. How much have you had?” I asked, swooping in to catch him as he listed. The crossover between mannequin mode and human mode glitched in my mind.
“How much of what have I had?”
“Alcohol. Drink. How many drinks have you had?”
“The cosmo. The tiny yellow one before the lip sync. The second tiny yellow one after I won the lip sync—oh, I won, by the way!” Everyone who overheard this in the line cheered for him.
He smiled. I mirrored the smile even though I was concerned.
“Then the bartender brought me another cosmo, and now I really, really have to peeeeeeee, but I don’t like the look of that trough, and nobody is leaving the stalls. Aren’t those meant for one person?”
There was definitely more than one pair of shoes peeking out from beneath the chipped, rickety stall doors. What Aidan didn’t know in that moment couldn’t scandalize him. “We should probably get back. Do you think you can hold it until we’re at the apartment?”
“Probably.” Not even two minutes after we hit the sidewalk and I called the rideshare, Aidan said, “I can’t hold it.”
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Follow me.”
Around the side of the building, next to a barbershop, was a tight, low-trafficked alley beside a burnt-out streetlight. He could pee in peace there. “How did you know about this spot?” Aidan asked as he did his business.
Flashes of Cam and me getting frisky there popped into my mind. “Just did,” I said. “Car will be here in five. Hurry up, please.”
We crammed ourselves into the back of the tiny black 2019 Ford Fiesta while Aidan was still zipping his jeans. The driver was one of those psychopaths who doesn’t play music and keeps his windows slightly cracked in December, so it was both awkward and freezing.
It got more awkward when Aidan asked, “Are you mad at me?”
“No, I’m not mad at you,” I said, cognizant of the fact that I was practically in the driver’s lap back here with my knees almost touching my stomach. “Why would you think that?”
“I think that because you left right after my lip sync. I thought maybe I embarrassed you,” he said, eyes boring into me. Looking for approval, maybe?
“Embarrassed me? Aidan, you were amazing up there. You brought the house down. It was unexpected and fun. Everyone loved it,” I said.
“Did you love it?” he asked. God, his voice was wobbly, and his eyes looked precious in the semi-dark of the car. A human replica of the face-holding-back-tears emoji.
“I did,” I told him sincerely.
“But you don’t love me, ” he said. He stared down at his lap as his bottom lip quivered.
“Aidan,” I said, reaching out to take his hand. The way Aidan gripped my hand in return made any fear fall away. “I’m enjoying spending time with you and working on the window with you. That’s a really good start. Okay? Love doesn’t happen in an instant.”
“It did for Romeo and Juliet,” Aidan said.
“And they ended up dead, so let’s not hold them up as the romantic model.” I really needed to put parental controls on his TV usage after I went to bed.
“Thank you for being so nice to me, and for paying for things for me, and for teaching me how to paint, and for always making sure I look good before we leave the apartment. Oh, and thank you for letting me stay in the apartment,” he said right as we pulled up outside of Isla’s Attic.
“You’re welcome, and you’re welcome, and you’re welcome…” I continued to you’re welcome him as I helped him out of the cramped car, wished the driver good night, and brought him upstairs.
If this had been Cam, sloppy and sappy after a night out, I probably would’ve been annoyed at having to baby him. With Aidan, tenderness zipped between us. I got him to the couch, set him down softly, and brought him a tall glass of water.
Topher, happy to see his friend, hopped up and started making biscuits on Aidan’s lap.
It seemed Topher already loved Aidan; all it had taken was some gentle attention and ample amounts of catnip.
It was possible I could fall as quickly, too, if I really let myself.