Chapter 15 #4
“Come on.” Alex headed for the living room and plugged in the Christmas tree, the dozens of multicolored lights creating an appropriately intimate atmosphere in the otherwise dark room.
Mitch perched on the edge of the couch and Alex felt his gaze following him like a touch as he grabbed the throw and spread it out over Mitch’s lap.
“I’m going to make us some hot chocolate,” Alex said. “I’ll be right back.” Leaving a bewildered Mitch behind, he headed for the kitchen.
His hands shook slightly as he prepared the hot chocolate on the stove.
Nerves and a severe case of what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-you.
He’d almost kissed Mitch right there, in public, in the middle of what felt like the entire fucking world.
What if someone had recognized him? It wouldn’t just fuck up his own career, but Mitch’s future prospects, as well.
He’d been so caught up in the moment, he hadn’t thought past the need to have his lips on Mitch’s.
It was stupid and reckless and impulsive.
But it had also felt extremely right. Not the part where he’d almost kissed a guy in public, but the part where he’d held Mitch in his arms and breathed him in, where he’d held Mitch’s hand, where he’d carried Mitch’s skates to the rink and Mitch had blinked at him with baffled surprise.
The rightness of it all, of them, settled in his heart, and he walked back into the living room carrying two mugs with steady hands.
Mitch stood next to a side table. He jumped when Alex walked in and guiltily placed a small wooden Christmas figurine back on the table among the others. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to touch.” He sounded like a child apologizing for breaking his mother’s fancy china.
“It’s fine,” Alex said, setting the mugs on the coffee table. “Here.” He held the figurine out to Mitch, then placed the fat Santa in Mitch’s palm when he hesitated. “It even opens. See?” Alex showed him where to twist and let him do the rest.
Mitch sat on the floor in front of the coffee table and opened all of the little Russian dolls, lining them up in a neat row, from tallest to shortest, on the table.
Fat Santa, Mrs. Claus, a snowman, a penguin, a gingerbread man, a nutcracker, and a tiny Christmas tree.
His lopsided smile tugged at Alex’s heartstrings.
“We were never allowed to touch the decorations at my house,” Mitch said, changing up the order of his line so that the dolls sat in a row of alternating heights.
“My mom has the house professionally decorated every year. For Thanksgiving and Halloween too. It’s always beautifully done, but Dan and I were never allowed to touch anything.
We even had a huge sleigh in the front yard one year, a real one with a bag of fake gifts in the back, and when I asked my mom if I could sit in it, she slapped me. ”
He said it all so benignly, as if he was talking about the weather.
We’re expecting an uncommon cold front with a side of frigid bitch.
His panic when Alex had walked in made more sense now, if he expected to get in trouble for touching something he wasn’t allowed to.
Alex wanted to wrap him up and tell him that he could touch whatever he wanted in this house, nothing was off-limits.
Hell, if he wanted to pluck popcorn off the popcorn string on the tree and eat it, no one was going to stop him.
Except Alex might, since the popcorn was almost a week old and probably stale and gross.
“I remember one time I came home from school with an ornament we made in class,” Mitch continued.
Now he was rearranging the dolls into teams, as though he was setting them up for a scrimmage.
“It was just a Styrofoam ball with a bunch of marshmallows pinned to it, nothing fancy. When I asked my mom if I could put it on the tree, she said ‘Mitch, dear, we don’t want anybody seeing that on the tree, do we?’”
Alex sat on the couch and rested his elbows on his knees. “What did you do?”
“I threw it away,” Mitch said, all what else was I supposed to do? “It was ugly. Why would I keep it?”
Alex dug his nails into his palms and clamped his jaw shut on the words that wanted to escape. Insulting someone else’s mother was not cool, and although he suspected Mitch wouldn’t care, Alex refused to sink to that level. But he could think it.
And you might also see periods of scattered showers made up of Greta Westlake’s victims’ tears during the cold front.
Alex pushed Mitch’s hot chocolate closer to him. “Drink this,” he growled. “I’ll be right back.”
He was barely gone two minutes, and in that time Mitch had put the Russian dolls away, drank half his hot chocolate, and was still sitting on the floor, eyeing the doorway. He tracked Alex as Alex set a large plastic box on the floor next to him.
“What’s that?” Mitch sat up on his knees.
“This,” Alex said, removing the lid, “is my mom’s craft box.”
“Okay.” Mitch paused for a second. “Why is it here?”
Alex took out scissors, felt material and construction paper in a rainbow of colors, a glue gun, a glue stick, rhinestones, sparkles, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, pinecones, Styrofoam balls of all sizes, clothes hangers, popsicle sticks, three dozen markers in an old Le Kit pencil box, a mini paint kit, and a bag of small pompoms. “We’re going to make Christmas decorations. ”
Mitch’s mouth twisted. “Is this because you feel sorry for me because I never had a handmade ornament on the tree?”
“No. This is because everyone deserves their own ornament on the tree.” Alex had a feeling Mitch didn’t even have one of those “Baby’s first Christmas” ornaments. Or maybe he did, because his dad seemed cool. “So, go crazy. Craft away.”
Mitch looked at him morosely. “You’re never going to try and kiss me again, are you?”
“Oh, honey,” Alex said, staring pointedly at Mitch’s pink mouth. “You don’t need to worry about that. But first, crafts. Then kissing.”
Mitch crafted.
Alex created his own ornament too, but he kept a close eye on Mitch, who inventoried everything in the box before deciding what to make, then set aside the specific materials he’d need for whatever he was making before he started.
Then he took a scrap piece of paper, sketched his design on it, and once he seemed happy with it, he started putting everything together. Alex was exhausted just watching him.
“Do you ever do puzzles?” Alex asked.
“Sure,” Mitch said, carefully cutting into red felt. “I’m doing a twenty-four piece one right now called Why Are We Doing Crafts When We Could Be Making Out Instead?”
Alex chuckled and traced the outline of his hand on a piece of construction paper. “Why twenty-four?”
Mitch merely raised an imperious eyebrow. “You’re twenty-four, aren’t you?”
They worked in silence for a few minutes, until Mitch looked over and said, “Are you making a Christmas octopus?”
“Hey!” It wasn’t a work of art, but it certainly wasn’t a goddamn octopus. Alex gathered his materials and shuffled to the other end of the coffee table. “You just worry about your own ornaments.”
“Sure, sure.”
Alex took a sip of his now lukewarm hot chocolate and went back to work.
He cut out the trace he’d made of his hand, added white felt to the fingers, glued googly eyes to the palm, used a pipe cleaner for the mouth, and added small red pompoms to the bottom of each fingertip-turned-beard, just because he could.
Finally, he cut out a red felt Santa hat, superglued it to Santa’s head and called it a day.
Mitch, on the other hand, had taken a couple of pinecones and painted the ends white before sprinkling them in green glitter.
Then he superglued a small Styrofoam ball onto the top of each pinecone, used a marker to dot a couple of eyes, glued a small felt hat on its head…
and had himself a little elf duo. Alex contemplated hiding his Santa octopus before Mitch saw it for the abomination it was.
“I take it back,” Mitch said when he got a look at it. “That’s not an octopus. That’s a zombie octopus.”
“No, it’s Santa.” Alex held it up.
“If you say so.”
“Do you think zombies believe in Santa?” Alex asked.
“I think zombies would eat Santa. All that meat on his bones? He’d be the first to go.”
“Poor Santa. Guess Mrs. Claus wouldn’t stand a chance either.”
Mitch snorted and held up one of his elves. “What do we do with these now?”
Alex handed him a black marker. “First we put the date on the back.”
“Why?”
Alex blinked at him. “Because we do.”
“Uh-huh. Should I add my name and age too?”
“That’s a good idea, actually, yes.”
Mitch huffed, but did as told. He made a small hole at the top of his elves’ hats and looped a string through it. Alex did the same for his zombie Santa octopus and then they were hanging their new ornaments on the tree.
“Are you sure your mom won’t mind?” Mitch’s voice was small, but his lips were titled upward when he gave his elves a little push to make them sway.
“Yeah,” Alex said, voice gruff. “I’m sure.”
Mitch gave some of the other ornaments a push.
Alex left him to it and sat on the couch, admiring Mitch’s lean frame and how he stood with feet slightly further than shoulder-width apart.
Mitch was probably used to a Christmas tree that had a new color theme every year.
What must he think of Alex’s tree, with its eclectic mix of candy cane reindeer, cookie ornaments, and popcorn string?
“You made all these?” Mitch asked.
“My mom and me, yeah.” Alex tucked a leg underneath himself on the couch and twisted sideways, elbow on the back of the couch, head resting on his hand.
“Some I made at school when I was a kid. Others, my mom and I made over the years. It was tradition every year to make a few new ornaments. We couldn’t afford to buy any, so we used what we could. ”