24. Kingston
Twenty-Four
Kingston
Christmas morning used to be my favorite morning of the year. My mom would make bacon and the creamiest scrambled eggs you’ve ever had. I know now her secret ingredient is mayonnaise and I shudder to think about the calories in a serving, but when I was a kid, they tasted like magic. My dad would make hot chocolate for Luce and me with Hershey’s syrup, dumping what was probably half a bottle in each cup. We’d open presents and I couldn’t tell you a single specific item I received, but I remember being delighted with everything, though they were never things like video game consoles or computers. We got practical things, books, a few treats, and it didn’t matter because we were together, safe and warm and happy.
Since I moved away, started my adult life, I’ve had some memorable Christmases. There was the time the guy I was seeing and I went skiing in Colorado and stayed in a villa with a private fireplace and hot tub in the room. The time I flew Mom up to the city and we went to see the Rockettes and the tree at Rockefeller Center. We ate at the restaurant at the top of 30 Rock and ran into Shemar Moore in the lobby, and he gave Mom his autograph and took a picture with her beaming ear to ear. When Sergio and I were together, we flew to Paris one Christmas and spent the day wandering the city, eating and drinking to our hearts’ content.
But this Christmas might be my favorite one yet.
Luna wakes me up, her paws kneading my chest with languid urgency, letting me know she’s expecting me to serve her needs in the very near future. Toby’s already up, brewing coffee and making toast. I make the eggs, throwing in a squirt of mayonnaise out of nostalgia. We video chat with my sister, crowding together around the phone to watch my nephews tearing into the identical-except-for-the-color handheld game consoles I bought them. My sister passes the phone to Mom. Toby tries to hide, but I drag him back, introduce them. He’s not mine, but I’ve talked about him enough to Mom and Luce that they know who he is.
Family obligations out of the way, breakfast consumed, we turn our attention to the small cache of presents that’s accumulated on the table next to our baby tree. A few are from our friends, tokens of appreciation and the season. I make Toby open the gift from me first. I had thought about getting him something extravagant, like an overcoat, but figured he’s had enough of my foisting clothes on him. And while I’m not a stranger to buying clothes for my friends, it might seem too intimate. I have to try so hard to ride the line between appropriate and revealing. I think I’ve done a good job of keeping our Christmas for two on friendly ground.
Instead of clothes or jewelry, I found something else I thought he might like. He opens the box with an expectant smile, which widens when he sees what it is.
“Did you take this picture?” he asks, holding up the photo of Luna I had printed and framed in the city. “It’s lovely.”
“It’s just a picture from my phone, but I thought you’d like to have it.”
“Since she’s decided you’re her favorite, you mean?” he says, but he’s teasing. “Thank you, Kingston. I do love it. Now you.”
He pushes a red envelope toward me. The outside of the envelope has a big, dramatic K written on it in Toby’s decisive hand. I slide open the flap and take out a simple folded piece of card stock. The front has a black ink drawing of a Christmas tree—but not just any generic cut tree. It’s our rosemary tree, complete with the sunflower and tulip and cactus felt ornaments. He’s managed to completely capture the nuances of this particular tree. I haven’t seen many of his drawings, but he’s just as talented with a pen as he is with paint. Clever boy.
I open the card and a homemade booklet slides onto my lap. I pick it up, read the first page, and chuckle. It’s a coupon for “one freezerful of ice cream.” I look at the next one. “Dry cleaning duty—pick up and drop off.” There are a dozen slips, and they’re all hyper specific, only things that Toby can do for me, right down to “de-cat hair your wardrobe.” I look up at him. I hadn’t expected anything in particular—perhaps a small painting, if I was going to be greedy. Or a scarf. I’d never turn down Hermès or Chanel.
But this is better. This is something no one else could have given me, and it makes me feel toasty warm from the inside out that Toby would make me something so personal. So intimate, in a way. It leaves me indescribably happy that he knows me so well.
“I love these. Thank you. And I’ll look forward to using every single one.” It will take ages to use them all up—well after the imaginary deadline in my head of his gallery show in March. Somehow, I have it in the back of my mind that once he becomes a big shot in the art world, he’s going to move out, move on. He won’t need me anymore and he won’t be the first person I see most mornings and he won’t be the last person I see most nights.
“I’m glad you like them,” he says, ducking his chin. “It took me a while to figure out what to get the man who has everything.”
“I don’t have everything,” I say quickly. Because I don’t have you.
But I don’t say the words, because they’d destroy the carefully curated existence we’ve built here.
Even so, it’s a pretty wonderful Christmas morning.