Kingsley took a tenuous step forward.
“I have a secret for you. It’s not my secret but I’ll tell you anyway.”
“I’m intrigued,” Søren said and leaned back on the piano bench, arms crossed, ankles crossed.
“It’s about your piano. Do you know how la maîtresse was able to afford to buy you a fifty-thousand dollar Bösendorfer piano?”
“I’ve always been afraid to ask.”
“A wealthy man came to me with some special requests. Nothing she hadn’t done before…except he was the son of a mafia don. You know how she despises the mafia. She turned the job down flat. Then she saw your piano for sale and called me back, said she’d do it. That was when you two were apart because you were being such a bastard about her working for me. And still, she still did that for you.”
Søren glanced away, at the fire.
“No piano is worth that,” Søren finally said.
“You are, though. To her. Now for my secret, one I even kept from myself. All these years, I resented you and hated her because I told myself that you loved her more than you loved me…but really, I think the truth is, she loved you more than I did, and I knew it, and that’s what I resented.”
Søren said nothing.
“If not more,” Kingsley went on, “then better. She loved you better than I ever did. A brooding sexual obsession with someone you dated in high school doesn’t really count as a relationship, does it?”
Søren smiled. “Not quite.”
“I made passes at you. She made sacrifices for you. If this was a competition between me and her and you were the prize, she should win, hands down.”
Søren said softly, “It’s not a competition.”
As if to prove that, he picked up the package tied in brown paper and gave it to Kingsley.
“This really was going to be your gift for this coming Christmas. If you open it, you won’t be getting anything else this year. You’ve been warned.”
“Empty threat,” Kingsley said, though knowing Søren, he probably meant it. Still…he couldn’t help himself. Søren slid slightly to the side and made room for Kingsley on the piano bench. Kingsley sat next to him and untied the twine.
He flipped the package over. When he pulled the paper apart, he knew what he was going to see: red and blue. A Paris Saint-Germain football shirt. Not the one Søren had originally gotten him all those years ago, but a replacement. And every time Kingsley wore it in New Orleans, he would think of Søren and miss him.
But he didn’t see blue and red. He saw gray.
Gray and burgundy.
He unfolded the t-shirt and stared at the scarlet words screen-printed across the heather gray fabric.
LOYOLA UNIVERSITY
New Orleans
The cartoon head of a red wolf peered over top of the college’s name, baring its teeth.
“What…” Kingsley’s voice trailed off. He had to catch his breath.
“I am, as of one week ago, on the shortlist to replace Father Juan Domenico as a professor of pastoral studies at Loyola University. He’s retiring at the end of the next school year.”
Once again, Søren had stunned Kingsley into silence.
“Apparently I’m a ‘shoe-in’ for the position—a Jesuit priest with two PhDs and nearly twenty years of pastoral experience at my own church. I’ll move to New Orleans next January or February. Just like you said…one last winter here.”
Finally, Kingsley found his voice, and as usual, it was the voice of doubt. “And it’s going to happen? You can just…make a phone call and leave?”
“They’ve been attempting to transfer me for years. I’ve done everything I could to stay here, but only because it was close to Eleanor. Close to you. I don’t need this house or this church. I need you. I need her. I need my family. If my family is in New Orleans, that’s where I need to be.”
“What if you don’t get the job?”
“I’ll come anyway.”
Kingsley felt like panicking. It didn’t seem possible that this was real, and if it wasn’t he would never survive the joke being played on him. His heart was pounding like a million horses racing across a thousand fields. He couldn’t sit still. He rose from the piano bench and stalked back and forth in front of the fireplace.
“If I need to leave the Jesuits and join the Diocese of New Orleans as a parish priest, I will,” Søren explained. “There are priest shortages everywhere. It won’t be a problem.”
“What about Nora?” He was almost dizzy with shock.
“She’ll come, too.”
“She will?”
“If she knows what’s good for her.”
How did Søren do that? How could he make a threat sound so sexy? Or sexy talk sound so threatening?
He was right, though. Nora would go. She’d said as much, that she would run off with Søren anywhere if he asked her.
“And don’t worry about Juliette,” Søren continued. “She called me weeks ago and asked if there was any chance we could join you all in New Orleans. She really does love you, you know. One of these days you’re going to have to accept that I love you, too.”
Kingsley had to sit down. He didn’t even bother looking for a chair. He sat down on the rug in front of the fireplace, back to the fire, eyes on Søren.
He lowered his head and closed his eyes, breathed through his hands. The floor creaked and he felt Søren sit down by him on the rug. Then two strong hands drew him down across Søren’s lap and fingers slid under his shirt to stroke his back.
They sat there by the crackling fire, suddenly boys again who would break every rule to be together, even if it were only at night and far away from the prying eyes of the rest of the world.
“That summer we were apart,” Kingsley said, “all I wanted was to see you again. Then school started and one night…it happened. You took me out to the woods and it was the best night of my life. It feels like that night again.”
Lips touched his temple. Then Søren spoke three words.
“You did well.”
It was that night again.
Slowly, Kingsley lifted his head. He was still clutching the shirt. He smoothed out on the floor in front of him and folded it carefully and rolled it into the classic “ranger roll,” which he’d learned to do back in his days in the Legion.
“I should get home to Jules,” Kingsley said. No overnight visits for a long time. Juliette wasn’t due quite yet but it was still possible she could go into labor at any moment.
“Of course,” his lover said. “It isn’t as if we’re running out of time to be together.”
Kingsley stood up and held the gray t-shirt against his chest, as if afraid to let it go. Søren stood, too, stood close.
“Another secret,” Kingsley said. “I want you to kiss me.”
“That’s not a secret.”
“It’s—”
Before Kingsley could get another word out, Søren had fallen onto his mouth. Their lips met, their mouths opened, their tongues touched. Kingsley breathed deep. The logs on the fireplace crackled and delicious smoke wafted through the room. The taste of Søren—like snow melting on his tongue—and the scent of the fire, and the rough grip of strong, cool fingers on the back of Kingsley’s neck, and the wind outside rushing over the windows…all of it came together and turned the kiss into a winter symphony, and all that was missing was the mistletoe above them, but it could wait. If not this Christmas, then the Christmas after, or after that.