Christmas is a couple of days later. I go to Mass in the morning and talk to Lucy when I get back, and she and I open gifts over the phone. I call each of my siblings, all four of them scattered around the country with families of their own, and I hear about the ways they’re celebrating. Somewhere between one brother and another, I putWhite Christmason. Then I wonder whether it’s too early to check in with Darren after last night’s Christmas Eve shift.
I’m wondering a lot of things.
I don’t have experience with this friends with benefits arrangement Darren and I have enjoyed the past couple of months, but I think our time together makes sense when we’re being friends and reaping benefits. Conversations across the bar, and texts with trivia questions, and dinner, whether I cook or Darren brings us takeout. Orgasms we achieve in minutes ormore than an hour, or sometimes not at all, all the kissing and grinding occasionally enough for us to claim the pleasure we’ve sought from the other’s body.
But what happened between us in my backyard the other night was far more intimate than the rest of our friendship, and without a single kiss, it felt short of everything else. Darren held me and listened to me, his warm breath in my hair and his thumb in a soothing back and forth against my hand, and I shared stories that shouldn’t matter to him. They did matter though, and if none of my other friends would carefully caress me through that welcome ache, and if my sometimes lover wasn’t going to caress me any further than that, I wondered what those hours meant for us.
Neither of us has the heart for more, but Darren’s embrace had felt a lot like sunshine passing through a stained glass window, and I’ve never been able to stray far from church.
For his sake, it might be time for me to walk away fromsomething.
Regardless, I decide I won't think too much about it today, and that works well until I’m staring at a Christmas tree I decorated out of habit. My phone startles me with a call, a ridiculous picture of Darren’s charming bartender grin on display when I look down.
“Merry Christmas,” I murmur, excited to hear from him, and weighed down by the reasons I shouldn’t be.
He doesn’t say anything back—not for a while—and the silence drags on just long enough for me to worry, my headperfectly clear when I’m about to go in search of his voice by calling his name. Before I can, Darren clears his throat, and I wait for an explanation, as patient as I’ve been about anything.
“Hey, I—sorry, this is—it’s Christmas, and I shouldn’t—”
He stops there and coughs, too many words caught in his chest while he’s concerned about apologies and holidays, and I take the deep breath he can’t find.
“Darren, it’s fine. Just tell me.”
I reach for an ornament Lucy made me in kindergarten. The past is a hell of a thing, and I step away from it now, but Darren doesn’t have it so easy.
“I met my dad last night.”