20. A Very Special Christmas
A Very Special Christmas
HENRY
I walked into the Aster family Christmas like it was my birthday party Alexa and Sid were hosting, not Jesus’s.
I didn’t even quibble when I breezed into the open-concept kitchen while holding a platter of spinach-and-artichoke dip as per Alexa’s request and found a hot and ready spinach-and-artichoke dip already plated and being eaten.
“Oops. Sorry. First-year hostess brain,” said Alexa.
“Let’s put yours in the fridge as a backup in case this one runs out. ”
There was no need to ask around. I understood implicitly that she’d made the present spinach-and-artichoke dip herself as some sort of wordless little jab after the rousing success on Christmas Eve at Isla’s Attic because it overshadowed her party—it’s all anyone was talking about—and it put a pin in her fantasy of using that space for her soap shop.
She was totally flabbergasted by Aidan appearing alive in the window.
Frankly, so was I. So was everyone .
But we played it off like that was the plot all along. Aidan was lying low through the window displays so— BAM! —we could give him a surprise appearance as the widowed Christmas tree farm–owning town mayor, in the flesh, for everyone to see and fawn over.
I think most of our customers lost the plot of the windows as the days went on, but the cash flow proved they didn’t care. Isla’s Attic had had one of its most lucrative holiday seasons since before Great Aunt Isla moved. I had enough liquidity to pay the back rent and to pay Aidan.
While, yes, he was getting free room and board (with a side of sex), I belatedly realized I hadn’t bought him a Christmas gift, and this was his first Christmas. He needed something more to unwrap than just little old me.
No stores were open late at night on Christmas Eve, overnight shipping would be impossible, and Aidan would’ve known if I’d gifted him something from the leftovers in the shop.
If I’d considered it sooner, maybe I’d have painted him something. A portrait made of old sales tags and sticky putty. But there was no time and somehow that felt too personal, so instead I thought about what would make Aidan feel most human.
Then it hit me. What was more human than working for your supper?
Before Aidan woke up, I printed off an official-looking payroll stub for the four weeks he worked for me at minimum wage and folded it in with a bundle of cash that I withdrew from a nearby ATM.
“Oh, it’s a… piece of paper? Thank you! I love it.” He held it to his chest.
“No, silly,” I said. “It’s a paycheck. Your first one.
For working the window of Isla’s Attic!” Good thing he was unaware of the Red Light District in Amsterdam, otherwise it would’ve sounded like I was suggesting he’d been selling his body all this time.
“You know, like one you get at a job. Didn’t your how-to list suggest jobs were important? ”
“Oh,” he said, brightening. “Oh, yeah. Thanks.”
“Merry Christmas!” I handed him the corresponding cash.
“Your first gift should be arriving later today,” he said, putting the cash in his wallet.
“You didn’t have to get me anything,” I said before we moved into the kitchen to prepare a breakfast of pancakes together.
Now I stood in Alexa’s kitchen with the entire Aster family, and for the first time I wasn’t the lone wolf. Aidan stood beside me with an arm stretched around me. I placed my right hand on his muscular back and accepted a drink from Mom with my left.
“The mysterious roommate arrives! It’s fabulous to finally meet you. We would’ve said hi yesterday at the store but you were being mobbed by your adoring fans,” Mom said, pulling Aidan in for a crushing side hug.
“We’re thrilled you could make it. We saw your photos all over Facebook yesterday. Gosh, you do look magically like that mannequin fellow,” Dad said.
I sipped my poinsettia punch from a red plastic cup for fear my mouth might run away and spill all about how magical it really was.
Aidan pulled his hand away from me to shake hands with Dad. It was silly, truly, but my sacrum burned with the absence of his palm. His willingness for PDA in front of my family prompted my stomach to flutter.
Not only wasn’t I alone, but I might’ve been falling in love, too.
I hadn’t made up my mind. Not entirely. But all signs—the burning, the fluttering—were pointing toward yes.
I had a man at my side who maybe loved me if his constant human state meant anything, money in my bank account, and a song in my heart, which I sang proudly when we gathered around the keyboard for post-appetizer caroling.
Aunt Clara and Uncle Brian, Alexa’s mom and dad, handed out songbooks with lyric sheets inside to everyone.
I even volunteered to solo a line in “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” I took the “lords a-leaping,” which, to me, was the gayest line.
On “pipers piping,” which Aidan volunteered for, everyone dropped their jaw in response to the angelic voice that spilled out of his mouth. What other talents had he been hiding from me?
When the song was done, Aidan winked at me as if we were in on some kind of joke together. I kissed him on the cheek and refilled our cups without question.
Aunt Clara and Uncle Brian were the only ones in the kitchen at that moment, checking the temperature of the turkey in the oven and basting some juice from the pan onto its browning back.
“Where does Alexa keep the oven mitts?” Aunt Clara said, opening and closing every drawer. “It’s pure randomness in here.” The drawer she sifted through had pens, dish towels, bag clips, and several fridge magnets advertising pizzerias in it.
“Organization has never been her strong suit. I’m pleasantly surprised by how well she’s done here,” Uncle Brian said, not knowing they weren’t alone.
Uncle Brian was Dad’s brother, the middle of three siblings.
A tall man with the wizened face of an unrepentant lifelong scholar and a closet full of tweed blazers to match.
Aunt Clara always seemed like his opposite.
A lithe, young-looking former ballerina who worked part-time as a massage therapist. They first met when he was face-down on her massage table.
She went from rubbing out his back knots to tying the knot with him in the span of a year.
“So, a former model with a beautiful singing voice, huh? Nice catch,” Aunt Clara said when she noticed me, wiping her hands on a holly-patterned dishrag. I fumbled with the ladle in the punch bowl.
“Of all the vintage shops on the Jersey Shore, he walked into yours,” said Uncle Brian.
Aunt Clara laughed. “Did you know Brian made the same Casablanca joke to him earlier and he had no idea what Brian was referring to?”
“That’s exactly what he said, ‘I have no idea what you’re referring to.’”
“Yeah, he can be a little blunt.”
“No! No,” Aunt Clara piped in. “It’s refreshing. He’s unfiltered and bubbly. Not to mention jaw-droppingly handsome.”
“What are we talking about?” Alexa asked, suddenly appearing in the doorway with Sid right behind.
“How hot Henry’s new boyfriend is,” Uncle Brian said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
Alexa scrunched up her face. “Okay, gross, Dad. Gross. He’s, like, half your age.” Little did she know, Aidan was ageless. At least, I thought he was. “Anyway, can we focus on the turkey, please? The guests are getting hungry, and you know how hangry Grandpa can get.”
“Almost ready,” Aunt Clara said. She’d finally found a suitable pair of oven mitts.
“Sid, I’d advise you to put your collection of historically inaccurate yet impressive mini ships in bottles somewhere out of Grandpa’s range of motion,” said Mom, appearing by the ice bucket for her own drink refill.
“He loves to gesticulate during a story. The hungrier he gets, the wilder his arms.”
“My father does not have wild arms,” said Dad, piling into the kitchen as if this were a clown car.
“He does, but we love him for it,” said Mom.
Sid raced to preserve his precious collection right as we all heard a yelp from the other room. “Saved it!” shouted Aidan, who held one of the model ships in his hand like it was a newborn baby.
Uncle Jude and Aunt Sadie cheered boisterously for him.
They both had had a lot of poinsettia punch already, much to the chagrin of their adult kids, Morgan, Michael, and Marcus—a set of triplets who all somehow married women also with M names: Michelle, Misha, and Mo.
Mo was a nickname for Marcus’s wife, one she did not particularly like, but unfortunately for her, her real name was Morgan and having two Morgan Asters was simply not going to work.
Aidan handled all the confusing new names and faces exceptionally well.
“Who in their right mind would put those tchotchkes there when there are kids running around?” Grandpa hollered.
As if on cue, a parade of my cousins’ kids ran through the dining room absolutely hopped up on sugar, shaking everything that was not bolted down.
“And where’s that turkey? Oh, speaking of turkeys, that reminds me of the time I went turkey hunting with George…
” This story would go on just long enough for Aunt Clara and Uncle Brian to carve the now fully cooked bird.
“Still happy you hosted this year?” I asked Alexa when we were the last two left to be seated.
“Happy as a clam,” she said with a pinched smile. “Now find your seat, please. Dinner is served .”
AIDAN
“Family” was a lot louder than I’d anticipated it being.
The Aster clan could be summed up as a barrel of chatter and laughs, squeals and shared plates, grunts and groans and the occasional uncovered burp from one of the smaller humans scattered around the communal dining table.
Happily, I sat between Henry and the child of one of Henry’s cousins, a young boy named Peter who was more interested in his handheld gaming device than the platter of sliced roast turkey that got passed around. I served myself some white meat before handing it off to Henry.