Chapter Fourteen #2
Luca hadn’t—since he hadn’t been at any of the practices with the shelter kids Charlie had attended—but Charlie waved at them all so awkwardly as he hopped out of the SUV that Ben didn’t want to subject him to any introductions.
Charlie looked set to slip past them and go straight inside, but then he squared his shoulders and looked at Jax.
“Um, I just wanted to say thanks for doing this. It’s really cool you guys are making an effort for, uh, people like me.”
His face was tomato red by the time he finished, and he looked pleadingly to Ben, at which point Ben remembered Charlie was used to being completely beholden to all adults present, more so around Christmas. More harrowingly, he saw Ben as a responsible adult.
“Go ahead,” Ben said.
Charlie vanished so quickly he might as well have left a cartoon puff of air behind.
“Sweet kid,” Jax said. “His parents are…”
“Let’s not talk about his parents,” Ben suggested.
“Ah. Good thing he has you to take care of him, then.”
Ben smiled weakly. “I hope so. He’s right, you know. You guys are doing a great thing here.”
Ben knew Jax was the PR department’s favorite player because he made the most headlines (or what passed for headlines in the hockey world).
According to the internet, he also took first place among the hottest guys on the team.
Ben obviously had other preferences, both because he had two decades on Jax and because he’d gotten stupidly fixated on Phil.
But when he complimented Jax on the project, he absolutely lit up, a wide smile breaking out across his entire face, and Ben could kind of see what the fuss was about.
Something tickled in his hindbrain, a sense of déjà vu he couldn’t place.
“All right, everyone, enough yapping. Get to carrying.” Phil tossed Breezy the Santa costume, and if any of them had thought he would be at all embarrassed by it, they would have been wrong. He donned it with a gleeful little laugh Ben would be hearing in his nightmares.
Inside the shelter, they found an array of teens still in their pajamas.
Plates stacked with waffles alongside squeeze bottles of Mrs. Butterworth and a heart-stopping quantity of butter lined the big table in the dining room, as well as a few forlorn bowls with cantaloupe slices.
A gift exchange had already taken place, wrapping paper littering the floor, and Ben spotted a girl at least a head and a half taller than him showing off a new bracelet to Charlie.
It couldn’t have cost more than five dollars, but it had a Pride flag charm dangling from the clasp.
“Ho, ho, ho,” Breezy called.
Someone groaned.
“Merry Christmas?” he tried.
A few kids took pity and answered in kind.
“C’mon, guys. We brought presents,” Breezy said.
“Can we do it without the creepy old white guy suit?” asked a kid with an Afro and a glint in his eye.
Breezy sighed. “Jayden, comments like that are why Santa brings children coal.”
Jayden snorted. “No one ever gets coal for Christmas. Empty threat, dude.”
Breezy looked momentarily poleaxed.
“Sit down, everyone,” Mara called.
The children scrambled to obey.
“Chris, you can do this with or without the suit, but I recommend without. Everyone else, grab a seat and some waffles.”
Breezy pulled off the suit, huffing. “No one has any childlike whimsy anymore.”
Phil patted him on the back. “You can keep the spirit of Christmas alive for all of us.”
They started with the boring stuff: Boxes of Sea Lions merch, baseball caps and T-shirts, and their bestseller, the lace-up hoodies.
Ben frowned a little. “PR covers all of this?” he asked the closest hockey player. It happened to be Tom.
Tom shook his head with a fond, rueful smile. “PR covered the caps. Jax bought most of the rest out of pocket. I think Breezy helped?”
Again, a sense of recognition tugged in Ben’s stomach as he watched Mara force the teens into appropriate thankfulness.
“Okay, next up.” Breezy reached into the next box for a stack of envelopes with an artful bow on the front.
“I have one of these for each of you. See, Charlie over there—” He waved, and Charlie sank into his seat, trying to hide behind his tall friend.
“—told us one of the worst things about, um, about not getting to be yourself is everyone else is always telling you what to wear and how to present yourself. So we didn’t want to do that. ”
“Unless we’re repping the Sea Lions, huh?” Jayden asked slyly.
Breezy made the universal I’m-watching-you gesture. “Anyway. Chloe, wanna pass these out?”
Charlie’s friend stood up and grabbed the envelopes with a muttered, “Thanks, Breezy.”
“You can trade these,” Jax called out as the room started to descend into chaos. “We tried to find something for everyone.”
Ben spotted gift cards for Forever 21, Hot Topic, and TJ Maxx changing hands almost instantly. “They spent so much on this,” he realized.
“I keep telling you,” Phil said. “Sometimes having money and spending it is good.”
“That’s different,” Ben told him. “This is just…giving it away to other people.”
Phil shook his head. “Why are other people worth spending money on, but you and I aren’t?”
Ben opened his mouth and then closed it again. He hadn’t put up more than a token protest about Phil spending money on Charlie. It was only when he himself profited off the luxuries of Phil’s life that he felt guilty.
“Obviously, the kids here need sixty bucks in clothes a lot more than I do,” Phil said as if he owned a single article of clothing costing less than sixty bucks. “But I can foot the bill for their Christmas gifts and pay someone to clean my house without it being a big deal.”
“Did you foot the bill?” Ben asked.
“We split it between the four of us,” Tom told him. “Me, Phil, Breezy, and Jax.”
“What about Luca? And Lunes?”
From Tom’s other side, Luca snorted. “They would not let either of us pay for anything.”
“They’re still on ELCs,” Phil defended. “They can be charitable in a couple years when they’re making the big bucks.”
Luca rolled his eyes. “Fortunately, we are not so easily cowed.” He got to his feet and picked up the box he’d carried in from Breezy’s powder-blue pickup.
Breezy frowned. “I don’t remember that box.”
“No,” Luca said. “This one is from Diego and myself.” He opened the box in the middle of the floor.
“Books?” Jayden asked dubiously.
“Oh, I’ve read that one.” Charlie pointed to The Song of Achilles. “It’s really good. It’s about, like, ancient gay dudes.”
For those teens not occupied with trading coupons to their favorite shops, “ancient gay dudes” was incentive enough to inspect the box’s contents. Using the distraction, Luca handed Mara an envelope.
“Diego also sent this for you,” he told her quietly. “He couldn’t be here today, but he says ‘Merry Christmas.’”
Mara smiled her thanks, and whatever she found inside made her light up. A note fluttered out of the envelope as well, and her eyebrows went up as she read it.
“Okay,” Breezy said, clapping his hands. “We’ve got one more gift for you guys, and I hope you like this one.” He reached deep into his gift bag and pulled out a box. “We’re going to let Mara open it so it doesn’t get too chaotic here.”
He handed over the box.
She eyed him suspiciously and peered inside.
“Seriously?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Jax said. “Seriously.”
Mara looked around at the kids. “Okay, guys, gals, and nonbinary pals. We’re going on a field trip.”
Jayden squinted at her. “Did they get us tickets to the aquarium or some shit?”
“You know they do other things at Cyberian arena besides play hockey, right?” Breezy said a touch smugly. “We got you guys concert tickets.”
An excited murmur went through the room.
Jayden was not so easily convinced. “Is it some loser like Brad Paisley or something?”
“Give us some credit,” Jax said.
“Have you heard what Phil listens to?” Charlie asked.
On the one hand, good that Charlie was coming out of his shell and making friends. He also had a point about Phil’s taste; Ben had heard more early-2000s hip-hop in the last two months than in the previous three decades. On the other hand, rude.
“It’s Billie Eilish,” Breezy revealed.
The room broke out into pandemonium.
“You’re really going to take all these kids to a concert venue?” Ben asked Mara, alarmed.
She held up the note from Lunes. “That’s my Christmas gift. Diego will help me chaperone.”
She let the noise continue for about three minutes past Ben’s tolerance for it, and then she whistled sharply. “Okay everyone, pipe down.” When they did, she nudged Jayden. “C’mon, kiddo.”
Jayden huffed an aggrieved sigh and pulled a bag of tiny, gift-wrapped objects from under the couch. “Thanks or whatever,” he told Breezy, handing him a card and a present. “I guess you were right. Hockey doesn’t suck.”
Ben would have to disagree, but he appreciated the gesture.
The presents turned out to be rainbow-colored homemade friendship bracelets. Breezy nearly teared up when Jayden tied his around his wrist, but he made it, Ben suspected, because he would definitely lose all of Jayden’s hard-won respect if he did.
It was a good Christmas morning.
Ben would have been quite satisfied to end the holiday on a high note, but to his surprise, the other hockey players followed them home when they left the shelter.
“Oh,” Phil said. “Yeah, I always invite everyone who has nowhere else to go over for the holidays. I don’t think I actually said anything this year, but I guess they’re here.”
“We don’t have enough food,” Ben said, a ludicrous statement in the face of Phil’s perpetually full pantry.
A look out the kitchen window revealed the Scandinavians and Dmitriyev coming down the drive hot on the heels of the guys who had been at the shelter.
They could maybe feed five hockey players if those hockey players accepted much smaller portions than usual. Eight wasn’t possible.