1 Chapter 1
Embers flickered, orange and yellow, in the hearth. Jim and Henry sat in front of the fire, wrapped in two things—a yellow-and-white afghan, worn soft, and each other’s arms.
The heat of the dying flames still gave off a little warmth, and when Jim looked over at his husband, his best friend, his soul mate, his outrageous lover, he saw him again as a very young man. A fire’s glow can do that, erasing lines, warming the complexion, and adding a subtle hint of magic to almost any face.
But even without the enhancement of firelight, Jim would have felt the same about Henry, regardless of time’s relentless march across his features.
Jim touched that face, because even after all these years, he couldn’t keep his hands off this man. This man who’d come into his life in such an abrupt and unexpected way twenty years ago tonight.
“Merry Christmas, honey,” Jim said softly, looking deep into Henry’s warm and soulful brown eyes.
Henry touched the tip of Jim’s nose and smiled. “Not quite yet.” He glanced at the old grandfather clock near the front door. “One more hour until it’s official.” Henry moved away for a moment to pour them some more wine, a Sicilian red. He shook the bottle a little to empty the last of the wine into Jim’s glass. “Another one bites the dust.” He set the wine back down and returned to Jim and his warm embrace.
They sat for a long time, staring into the embers, which were almost like orange/golden eyes staring back. Jim was just starting to get sleepy when Henry said, “Remember?”
He didn’t need to say more. Jim laughed and nodded. “The night we met? Of course, how could I ever forget?”
“It was the night before Christmas,” Henry started.
“Oh, there was a creature stirring all right!”
They pressed their foreheads together, laughing and remembering. It was easy to laugh now, but back in 1997, Henry wasn’t laughing much, and if he’d been told back then that he wouldone day laugh about the predicament he’d found himself in that particular winter near the end of the twentieth century, he’d have called you crazy.
Certifiable.
Ready for the men in the white coats.
“It was horrible,” Henry said. “Horrible and wonderful all at once.”
“Isn’t it funny how things work out?” Jim asked. “Sometimes the very best gifts life gives us show up in clever disguise.”
“I don’t know how clever my disguise was, but it sure scared the wits out of you that Christmas morning.”
They closed their eyes. Two minds, as one, drifted back twenty years.
* * * *
It was freezing. It had to be close to zero.
All around him, Henry knew everyone dreamed of a white Christmas. They were certainly getting their wish, here in this small town in western Pennsylvania. The snow had started in the early afternoon, after a morning of ominous-looking dark gray clouds and the smell of precipitation in the air as some kind of nasty omen. Henry looked up at those winter skies with dread. White Christmases were all well and good for those who could look out on them from warm houses, with flames flickering in a fireplace, with cups of eggnog dusted with nutmeg, and with the sound of Bing Crosby crooning “White Christmas” or Judy Garland singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in the background.
If Henry was hearing anything holiday-related in his own head right now as he trudged through the six inches that had accumulated since the snow had begun falling around noon that day, it was “Christmas Time is Here,” from Charlie Brown. The melancholy of that one perfectly suited his mood. Something almost dirge-like reflected his current life situation better than anything else.
How he’d found himself homeless and looking for shelter on Christmas Eve was a long story, and one he didn’t care to revisit, not when he felt the cold and damp seeping into his very bones. Suffice to say that the loss of his job, his car, and his home were part of a domino effect that he realized most people like he had been, living paycheck to paycheck, were in constant danger of.
He’d been on the streets of his small town for a little more than three months. It hadn’t been too bad. Until tonight. He’d couch surfed for a while, until what few friends he had grew weary of his presence and began making up excuses for why he was no longer welcome. Sleeping in his Nissan Sentra wasn’t exactly comfortable—or warm—but it was better than a cardboard box in a store doorway, as he’d witnessed one man doing downtown.
But the car, like the apartment and the job, quickly fell victim to loss when Henry could no longer make the payments. He thought maybe the repo man wouldn’t find him—an advantage of homelessness and no longer having a permanent address—but he was wrong.
