Chapter Thirty-One
ITALIAN FAMILIES are more about Christmas Eve than Christmas, so Lewis’s family does the giant holiday gathering on the 24th. Mom’s side of the family, that is—Dad’s an only child and his parents passed away when Lewis was in high school. The location of the Mancini Christmas Eve Spectacular is determined on a rotating basis, but whoever did Thanksgiving doesn’t get stuck with Christmas too.
Lewis takes a commuter train to the Jersey suburbs to his aunt’s house. One of his aunts—his mom has three sisters and a brother, plus a bunch of cousins that Lewis and Taylor have always called aunt or uncle.
After the Giant Italian Dinner (Feast of the Seven Fishes FTW), Lewis and Taylor always pile into the back seat of their parents’ Volvo and head back to Weehawken, where they spend the night and have Christmas Day at home.
This year, Lewis is standing at the corner of Park and Clifton Terrace, hands shoved in his pockets as he waits for the 89 from the Hoboken PATH station. He gave Tad his parents’ address, so he doesn’t need to stand in the cold, but he got antsy. He wants to meet Tad at the bus stop in case he gets anxious about meeting Lewis’s family.
Well, he will get nervous—Lewis knows Tad is already anxious about this. He’s asked a million times if it’s really okay for him to crash their Christmas, and a million more times if Lewis is really really sure he wants Tad there overnight, and furthermore if it’s actually all right for Tad to sleep in Lewis’s bedroom.
The wind cuts through his denim jacket. He stamps his feet to warm his toes in his rescued Pride Chucks. His hair is still damp from his shower—he smelled like fried seafood, which was gross, but he should have dried his hair before rushing into the cold.
The scent of impending snow is in the air. Lewis doesn’t want to jinx it by checking the chance of precipitation on his phone. Checking it again, that is. He refreshed the app obsessively this morning, watching the chance of snow creep up, as though by keeping an eye on it, he could make a white Christmas happen.
It’s just, how perfect would it be if it snowed tonight? It’s snowed a few times, but it hasn’t stuck, and everything is ugly and brown and dead. Lewis wants this Christmas to be the most romantic ever.
A bus goes by, but it’s not the 89. Thick, low scud chokes the sky, reflecting the dull orange light pollution of Manhattan and the unbroken urban sprawl of Union City/Weehawken/Hoboken/Jersey City. If they get a white Christmas, it might be the right time to tell Tad he loves him.
Another bus slows as it approaches. It’s the 89. Lewis takes his hands out of his pockets and tries to look cool and casual. What a weird headspace to be in love but keep it to yourself. He knows that every smile he shoots Tad’s way, every time he touches Tad, screams it. Does Tad know? How can he not?
The bus stops and with a pneumatic hiss, the door opens. Tad steps off holding a green Fj?llr?ven K?nken backpack by its rainbow straps. Lewis’s heart skips a beat. It’s totally cliché, and it’s totally true. It’s a thing. The dull orange streetlights make his hair look copper. His curls bounce and lift off his head, clearly styled for lift. He’s clean-shaven and wearing a blue and brown plaid jacket over black skinny jeans, and even in the dark, his eyes light up when they find Lewis.
“You didn’t have to meet me!” Tad says, but he sounds so joyful that Lewis knows it was exactly the right thing to do.
Lewis pulls him into a hug. “I thought about meeting you at the PATH station but I didn’t want to seem too desperate.”
Tad kisses him lingeringly. He tastes like tea and something Lewis can’t quite name, except that it’s Tad . Something that reminds him of the sharp green of a forest. He smells like oak and amber, and a little bit like sweat. That’s probably the nerves. It’s not bad. Lewis could, quite honestly, breathe in the smell of Tad’s sweat all the time.
“Are you freaking out a little?” Lewis asks, interlacing their fingers.
“Um, I’m freaking out a lot, actually.” Tad’s throat jags. “I’ve never met a boyfriend’s family. What if I freeze up and can’t get a single word out?”
“Then you freeze up and can’t get a single word out,” Lewis says, squeezing his hand.
Tad laughs nervously and lifts his free hand to his hair, like he’s going to run his fingers through it. He stops at the last second and instead pats it into place. “Your parents will think I’m a lunatic. Or maybe they’re already expecting me to be weird? Did you tell them I’m weird?”
“I definitely didn’t tell them you’re weird, because you’re not weird.” Lewis brings Tad’s hand to his mouth and kisses the back of it. “I said you’re shy. They get it. Taylor was so shy when we were kids, she didn’t say a word all through first grade.” He doesn’t remember that because he was too young, but it’s family lore.
“Taylor,” Tad repeats. “Taylor’s your sister.”
“Yep. My mom’s name is Lisa and my dad is Robin.”
Tad mutters the names under his breath and squeezes Lewis’s hand back. “Okay. I’m sorry in advance for acting like I’m an alien whose spaceship just dropped him off a couple hours ago.”
“It’s going to be fine. And if you’re uncomfortable, we’ll just go to my room. No big deal. Okay? They’re excited to have you, because they can see how—”
Wait. Should he say this?
But Tad is looking at him expectantly, so Lewis finishes, “—how happy you make me.”
Tad looks a little flustered and a lot happy. “Merry Christmas to me,” he says, hugging Lewis’s arm to his body. “Can we go inside? It’s fucking freezing. And somebody had a window open on the bus. Did you see it’s supposed to snow?”
“Shh!” Lewis slings an arm around Tad’s waist as they walk down the sidewalk. “I don’t want to jinx anything.”
“You’re such a romantic,” Tad teases. “I love it.”
Which is close enough to I love you that Lewis buzzes for the entire walk. And yeah, it’s Too Soon for I love yous. At least for Dating Break Lewis, who was going to be more circumspect about his love life. Maybe it’s time to just let Dating Break Lewis die. Poor kid never really had a chance.
“Oh. Wow.” Tad jerks to a halt when Lewis turns onto the walkway for his house. “This is… wow.”
The small front yard is festooned with inflatable Santas, reindeer, snowmen, and a massive dragon, which isn’t Christmassy, but Mom bought it for Halloween and thinks it’s too cool to only have its time in October. There are Christmas lights and garland on it to make it more seasonally appropriate.
The entire front of the house is covered in Christmas lights too—with no attempt to stick to a color scheme. There’s white, green, red, multi, blue, and some purple that are probably from Halloween, but Mom has never cared about stuff like that. See: the dragon.
Lewis barely even notices it anymore but… yeah. “This is a pretty good introduction to my parents.”
A slow smile creeps across Tad’s face. “I think I like them already.”
Tad grins, kisses Tad’s smile quickly, and leads him up the walkway. When he opens the door, he yells, “I’m back!”
From the living room, Mom squeals, but thankfully doesn’t come galloping to the door. Lewis repeated a few times that Tad’s shy and to please not overwhelm him, and she promised she’d be calm. Of course, Mom’s definition of calm is skewed several degrees toward hyper compared to most people.
Dad’s and Taylor’s hushed voices come from the living room, too, so his family is hanging out around the Christmas tree exactly where he left them. Lewis takes Tad’s jacket, noticing Tad’s leg bouncing nervously. After he hangs the jacket in the closet, he returns to Tad and rubs his hand up and down Tad’s spine. Under his palm, the tense muscles in Tad’s shoulders relax a tiny bit.
“I’m here,” Lewis says. He spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to help Tad through his shyness and nervousness about meeting new people, and he decided he wouldn’t say things like, It will be fine or They’ll love you or Don’t be nervous . Lewis understands anxiety. You can’t just turn it off. Maybe Lewis doesn’t have the same kind as Tad, but he knows what it’s like to have your brain doing its best, constantly, to doubt everything good about yourself.
Holding Tad’s eyes, Lewis repeats, “I’m here. And I’m really, really glad you came.”
Tad’s shoulders jerk as he takes a quick sip of air. The flutter of his heart is visible at his throat, and Lewis wants to put his lips over it.
With another breath, Tad says, “Okay. Introduce me to your family.”
Lewis takes Tad’s hand again. Their wedding rings click together.
From the living room, Taylor hisses, “They’re coming!” which is followed by the sound of her racing from one end of the room to the other and the creak of the sofa as she launches herself onto it. Subtle. Really subtle.
The lights are dimmed and the tree is lit in the living room. Everyone has glasses of wine, and there are two empty glasses sitting on the coffee table. The gesture makes Lewis love his parents even more. If they want to join the rest of his family, the invitation is there, but the wine hasn’t been poured to make them feel like they have to stay.
“This is Tad,” he says, hearing the warmth and affection in his voice. Hopefully Tad hears it too. “Tad, this is my mom and dad, Lisa and Robin, and my sister, Taylor.”
They all get up. Tad holds out a hand to Mom, clears his throat, and says in a small voice, “Um, hi—um. It’s”—a breath he struggles with—“it’s nice to meet you.”
Mom’s eyes are warm. “I’d love to hug you. Can I hug you?”
“Oh! Um.” Tad’s eyes are wide. “Yes? I mean. Yes. Yeah, that’s fine. That would be nice.”
The hug Mom enfolds Tad in is careful and kind. She’s worked at LGBTQ+ youth centers for most of Lewis’s life, and her gentleness with Tad reminds Lewis why she’s good at it. She just makes people trust her. She’s like the Every-Mom.
It would be great if Tad loosened up after Mom’s hug, but he doesn’t. But—he doesn’t run away, either. He sticks it out, and Lewis stands at his side, touching him frequently to try to pass his love and pride to Tad through his fingertips. They all stand there making small talk for a few minutes—typical get-to-know-you stuff, like where are you from, what do you do for a living, and Taylor’s contribution: “When I picked Lewis up from the airport after he got back from Vegas, I knew he met someone there.”
Tad flushes and glances at Lewis, who feels his face get hot. Yeah, when he was supposed to be holding Tad at let’s-just-be-friends arm’s length, he was so bad at it that his sister immediately guessed what was up. She said it to him in the car when she picked him up, too, so he knows she’s not retconning.
“Do you two want a drink?” Dad asks, gesturing to the empty glasses.
Lewis feels Tad tense, so he says, “I’m going to get Tad settled upstairs. Maybe we’ll come down later, though.”
For some reason, Tad tenses even more at that. Shit, did Lewis misread him? Did Tad want to stay and have a drink?
“The wine needs to breathe anyway,” Mom says brightly. “Go on upstairs. I guess I can’t make you keep the door open?”
“Oh my god, Mom,” Lewis groans as Mom laughs gleefully.
The exchange makes Tad relax, though, so the parental humiliation is worth it.
On the way to the stairs, Lewis grabs Tad’s backpack, which he left by the door. “Once I hit puberty, my parents wouldn’t let me have the door closed when I had friends over.”
“Did they know you were gay?” Tad asks.
The stairs creak underfoot as they climb them. They’re narrow and definitely not to code, but his parents say they have character. “I asked them that when I came out. They said they were just trying to break down outmoded sexual and gender stereotypes.”
They reach the landing upstairs. “Your parents are cool,” Tad says.
“Yeah, they are,” Lewis says proudly. He leads Tad to his bedroom, pushing the door open and walking inside with only a tiny bit of trepidation. His exes, those who came here, always laughed at his childhood room. Which honestly, Lewis probably deserves, because this room is ridiculous.
Tad’s mouth drops open. “Oh my god.”
He turns slowly, taking everything in, from the twinkling dew lights to the animal posters to the fake plastic vines hanging from the ceiling. There are posters of glistening, mostly naked men. There’s a rainbow mobile he got at NYC Pride when he was ten. There’s a small collection of his old plushies on his bed.
Actually he meant to move those.
“Um.” Lewis hurries across the room and sweeps the plushies up in his arms. “Sorry, I forgot to put these in a tote.”
The dolphin he got at the Bronx Zoo when he was in first grade flops back to the bed. Before Lewis can grab it, Tad picks it up. It’s well-loved, the fuzzy gray fabric of its skin less gray and more dishwater. Lewis brought it with him everywhere when he was a kid. He brought it to school and got teased mercilessly when all the other kids had stopped doing stuff like that—but there he was, Lewis Mancini-Sommer, toting around his dolphin stuffy while everyone else was transitioning to tween-dom.
Having it with him just made everything seem more manageable. And his parents never made him feel stupid or childish for needing it. Once, a teacher suggested he stop bringing it to school, and Mom drew herself up to her full height (an unimpressive 5’3”) and said, “When Lewis is ready to stop bringing Ocean to school, he’ll stop bringing her.”
Tad turns the dolphin over in his hands, then rubs its nose. “Does she have a name?”
Lewis knows he’s bright red. “Uh, yeah. Ocean.” A smile creeps slowly across Tad’s face and Lewis fights the urge not to bury his own in the armful of plushies in his arms. “I was six.”
Tad’s smile doesn’t look mocking. It looks… soft? “May I please snuggle Ocean?”
“You… um… yes? What’s happening? Are you making fun of me?”
Hugging the plushie to himself, Tad shakes his head. “No! You’re adorable. I love—” His face goes scarlet. “—er, this. I love this. Your crazy, gay room, and the fact you still have your plushies, and that your favorite was named Ocean. Also.” He points to a poster of pre- Magic Mike Channing Tatum. “I really like that.”
He cocks his head as his eyes track over Channing Tatum’s assets, lingering at the prominent bulge in his Abercrombie & Fitch briefs, which had been a major draw for teenage Lewis too. “Your parents let you have this?” he asks, sounding surprised and like he doesn’t want to sound surprised, but can’t help it.
Lewis deposits his plushies on the dresser (which is bedazzled thanks to a burst of creative energy during the summer between seventh and eighth grades). “My mom bought it for me when she found a stack of Taylor’s Abercrombie catalogs under my bed. She said she didn’t want me to be ashamed about masturbating, but she was getting tired of Taylor having ten fits about the catalogs always disappearing.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” Lewis laughs and rakes a hand through his hair. “I know my parents weren’t exactly typical. I mean, especially with….”
One of Tad’s eyebrows quirks up. “Especially with my parents being small town, heteronormative-loving, homophobe-lite killjoys?” He hugs Ocean again and looks sad.
Lewis pulls him onto the bed and rolls on top of him, which gets him a smile and laugh. “There he is,” Lewis murmurs, kissing Tad lightly, then a little harder, slipping his tongue between Tad’s lips.
“I can’t believe your parents are so cool with me sleeping in here.” Tad wraps his arms around Lewis and kisses back. “They are, right?”
“Of course they are.” Lewis nestles his face in the crook of Tad’s neck, letting Tad take the full weight of his body. He can feel Tad’s heartbeat reverberating through both of their rib cages.
For a few minutes that feel liquid and endless, the two of them lie there, breathing together. Finally, Tad murmurs, “We can go back downstairs with your family.”
“I want to stay right here,” Lewis murmurs back, the salt of Tad’s skin on his lips.
“No you don’t.” Tad plays with the hair at the nape of Lewis’s neck. “Seriously, you don’t have to humor me. I can handle spending time with them.” He pauses, then adds, “That sounded wrong. What I mean is, they’re nice. It’s stupid of me to be nervous about having a glass of wine with them.”
He starts to shift, like he’s going to get up, but Lewis makes himself dead weight, pinning Tad to the mattress. “I’m not humoring you. It’s not stupid you’re shy. And I don’t want to go anywhere.” For good measure, he kisses Tad’s neck. “I just want you to feel comfortable here.”
Tad wriggles. “Yeah, well, I want your parents to like me. And I want to be able to sit in a room with them and talk without fighting down an anxiety attack. Like exposure therapy. Wait. No. Not like exposure therapy. That sounds bad.”
Lewis smiles and kisses Tad’s neck again. “You want my parents to like you? How come?”
Making a protesting noise, Tad says, “ Lewis . Come on. Why does anyone want their boyfriend’s parents to like them?”
Lewis props himself up on an elbow and looks down at Tad’s face. Since they got back from Nevada, Tad has gotten paler. His freckles have faded too, but the ones that are there stand out starker against his skin. With a thumb, Lewis traces the scatter of them from one cheekbone, over the bridge of Tad’s nose, and across to his other cheek. “I don’t know,” Lewis says. “Tell me.”
Tad shifts a leg and gets it out from under Lewis, then promptly hooks it around Lewis’s leg, locking them together. “Because.”
“Because?”
“Because maybe I kind of want to be around for a while.” Tad looks like he wants to hide his face, but there’s nowhere for him to go.
The words are making it hard for Lewis to respond, anyway. His rib cage, already full of the beat of Tad’s heart as well as his own, and the tide of their breath, fills up with this too. It’s heat and light and gold edging along all his bones from the center and outward.
But Tad will worry if Lewis doesn’t say anything, so he makes himself breathe, and he says, “Maybe I kind of want you to be around for a while too.”
They gaze at each other before Lewis brushes a stray curl off Tad’s forehead. “You really want to go back downstairs?”
“Yeah.” Tad’s smile is a little crooked. “I’m facing my fears for you. Total character growth moment.”
Lewis slides off the bed and offers Tad a hand. “Okay. Let’s go hang out with my family.”
And it strikes him, as they head back downstairs, that not one of his exes ever wanted to spend time with his family. None of them ever bothered to appreciate Lewis’s closeness with them. Yet here’s Tad, with his own family he can’t be honest with, wanting to embrace Lewis’s.
That gold filigreeing Lewis’s bones feels like it’s shining.