“Maybe you wouldn’t what?” I’d been trying to keep out of the webcam range but now I leaned in, trying to make out the little blinking letters and emojis.
“Um. Kick you out of bed.”
He… what?
“It’s just a silly phrase,” Alec said, but that mock-innocent look wouldn’t have fooled anyone. “You’re a sexy man, My Personal Santa. A man of mystery on my show! They want to know all about you. About us.”
Us? I was confused about these bloody comments, but the idea that there was an us made me feel too excited to care. Whatever was happening on the internet, that caring look in Alec’s eyes was just for me.
“They’ve been watching you all week,” he continued softly. “Seeing us together. They love your dancing tonight. There are so many comments about how good we both look in our new bling. And the careful way you hold me.” Another blush. “Oh! Someone says… you have such a loving hold of me.”
“What the fuck?” I muttered, afraid it was my turn now to blush.
To my shock, Alec burst into peals of laughter, his eyes on me, but his talking still directed at the screen. “I know, I know, he’s very outspoken, isn’t he? But I like that in a man.”
Oh bugger.
“You mean… they heard that?” I half mouthed, half hissed. “I thought you said you’d been muting what we say between us!”
“I must have forgotten.” His look was now more satanic than saintly, as he swung back and forth between me and the screen. “O-M-G! I don’t usually have so many comments… There’s a group here who thinks you really are built like a God, but the God of Love, and they’re starting a fan club for you. One of them wants to write us into fanfiction, and—oh, lord—two of them agree your calves are by far your best feature—”
“Enough!” I growled. I pulled him out of the webcam’s view, and kissed him. Very soundly. And at the same time, I slid my foot under the power cable running to the wall and yanked it out of its socket.
Alec had forgiven me for the abrupt end to his podcast. He seemed to think it was likely to bring in more followers, not less. He’d already been notified of three new emails from his sponsors, though I insisted he waited to read them until we’d had a drink. Go, me, Mr Assertive.
The admiring sparkle in his eyes was very flattering.
Now we were down three bottles of strong beer each, and were maybe a little drunk. Alec was draped over me on the sofa. He’d looked so disappointed when I reached for my jeans—hello, December weather? and I still hadn’t found any heating in this bloody unit—but to be honest, the sarong was warm enough, especially with Alec all cosy in my lap. Obviously, it was one of his designs. I knew his trademark style by now: the clever mixture of textures, and the cute inserts made of a contrasting design he’d presumably liberated from charity clothing that hadn’t found a home elsewhere. Like on this sarong, where a stripe down the opening flap blended neatly in colour, but with a recurring theme of something more like paisley…
I peered more closely. It was nothing like paisley!
“Fucking hell. Are these dicks?”
Alec laughed, his body vibrating against mine. “I don’t think it was meant to look like that, but it was the first thing I spotted on a pair of old chain-store pyjamas. Maybe the designer was exploring his subversive side, or maybe someone printed the fabric upside down. But I couldn’t resist them!”
We laughed some more: had another beer.
“Are you thinking of designing jewellery too?” I asked.
“Not yet. Why? Didn’t you like the bracelets?”
He surely knew the answer to that but, like the mischievous minx he was, he still asked. “The designs were pretty, but the materials? Really cheap and nasty.” I scratched peevishly at my ankle, where a dangling dolphin on the flip flops had scraped off the skin every time Alec and I took a swerve. “And my ear lobe itches like fury where you hung that palm tree on my hoop.”
“My Personal Santa,” Alec teased. “Full of the spirit of the season.” He still had the matching palm tree hanging from his ear, it definitely was his favourite. Then he glanced up: he must have felt me tense. “What’s the matter, Gray? Oh. Oh. Have I been too—? Do you want me to move?”
No way! I clutched him tighter, horrified he’d think he was offending me somehow, that I didn’t love having him on my lap. What the hell did I think I was doing, grumping and complaining my way through life, without thinking how it might affect people around me?
“I used to love Christmas,” I blurted out. “But my boyf—my ex—dumped me this summer, and I haven’t really got into the spirit of anything since.”
Alec sucked in a breath. He snuggled a little closer: nuzzled my neck. “That’s really bad luck.”
I didn’t know what had brought on this confessional feeling of mine—apart from the beer, of course—but it felt strangely liberating to tell Alec about it. My resentment had been festering inside like a poisoned worm for several months now. “Well, he didn’t think it was bad luck. He said it was due to my lack of imagination. At work, at play… and in bed.”
Sexuality can be complex, Nate had said as he shoved his clothes into a suitcase with indecent haste. It’s not that I don’t love you. But I want to discover myself with others.
If he’d added, It’s me, not you, I think I would have thumped him. As it was, my hands had been otherwise occupied: I had ice creams for us both that I’d just brought back from the shop. His was melting down my wrist as I watched him scamper out, red-faced at not expecting me back so soon. I’d wondered why there was a taxi waiting at the kerb outside the apartment, engine running.
I’d eaten his ice cream, as well as my own, with very angry and very desolate bites, while I shed a few hurt tears. Bloody good thing it was my flat in the first place, or he could have left me without a home, or broke—or both. I probably should have realised much earlier that we weren’t suited for the long-term, but lust, gratitude, and what-I-thought-was-love had clouded any sensible judgement. But maybe I’d had suspicions, because I’d been ignoring for several months his nagging at me to move out of London and get a shared place with him. And he was staying out late after work a lot; I’d taken many odd, hang-up-quickly calls when he was away.
Fuck it. How stupid had I been?
“My family never liked him,” I said bluntly. “That should have warned me.” Because, let’s face it, though we squabbled and bickered like any strong-willed, London family, I almost always trusted them. Last Christmas, for example, Nate had been drunk and insulting all through lunch. The whole meal had been an exercise in awkward laughter, teeth-gritting, and my sister angrily rolling her eyes where Nate couldn’t see—but I could—whenever she got the chance. The tension and his bad behaviour spoiled the whole holiday for me.
Yeah, I should have known.
Being dumped hurt like hell at the time, though.
Alec brushed his lips along my beard: he seemed to have grown quite fond of it. His expression was worried, his eyes wide and earnest. “Gray? I’m sure you know what he said was nonsense. I think you’re very imaginative. He just didn’t see it in you.”