The 12 Gays of Christmas: A Holiday Family Bakery Novel Read online

  The 12 Gays of Christmas

  A Holiday Family Bakery Novel

  By

  David Connor

  And

  E. F. Mulder

  Come visit us at https://www.facebook.com/mmromcomsinprint?ref=hl

  Books by David Connor and E. F. Mulder

  Boys of Summer (Anthology)

  Celebrate (Anthology)

  Christmas Spirit

  Double Flip

  Herm I. T.

  Men of Steel (Anthology)

  Never Too Late (Anthology)

  Penn’s Woodland

  Quadruple Flip

  Rated XXXmas

  Tidings of Comfort and Joey Down Under

  The 12 Gays of Christmas

  Unmasked and Undressed (Anthology)

  Written in Stone

  Chapter 1

  It was a dark and spooky warm autumn evening eight days before All Hallows’ Eve. The lights flickered in and outside Holiday Bakery, as a storm overhead tested the power grid for the entire town. A tissue paper ghost twirled from the breeze created by the air conditioning fan, and a witch on the door cackled when the last customer of the day exited into spooky blackness just as every street lamp up and down the deserted lane dimmed and flickered several times.

  “Wait.” Troy Holiday’s bushy, raven brows came together when he frowned. “I thought this was supposed to be about Christmas.”

  “It is,” Spencer told his younger brother, while affixing a poster to the bakery window advertising Holiday’s latest seasonal event. The placard featured the tagline The Six Days of Halloween, along with drawings of half a dozen cupcakes, two dozen cookies, and a huge wedding cake, all adorned with Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas embellishments. “But the contest starts tomorrow. We’re calling it ‘The six days of Halloween’… like the twelve days of Christmas.” Spencer turned back to Troy. “And I won’t be here. Damned jury duty! So, I’m reminding you one more time not to forget to put one of these little stickers…,” he shook the stack in front of Troy’s face to regain his brother’s rather short attention, “on every customer receipt you give out. Hopefully I’ll be back by Tuesday to run things the rest of the week.”

  “And this is supposed to bring in more customers?” Troy wondered aloud.

  “Hopefully.”

  “How?” Troy’s girlfriend Isabelle asked.

  They were an adorable pair. Tall, brunette Troy was a 2015 college graduate, who’d turned twenty-three in September. Isabelle, his petit redheaded baby mama/fiancée—depending on the day—was a nineteen-year-old freshman. Their little bundle was due in March. It was an unplanned yet joyous event, much like the way Isabelle came to be, back when her parents and Spencer were the same age she was now.

  “Well, hopefully people will come in all week to get the stickers, and then come back again on Black Friday to redeem them.” Spencer moved to the other window to hang a second sign. “I want to give away a free wedding cake to a gay couple getting married around December twenty-fifth. By starting the contest now, announcing the winner right after Thanksgiving, and gearing the actual giveaway toward Christmas, we get all sorts of promotion all through the gift shopping season, which everybody knows really starts with Halloween.”

  “Got it,” Isabelle said.

  “Me too,” Troy added.

  “I should hope so, Turkey.” Spencer ruffled his brother’s wavy mop. “I’ve only explained it to you a hundred times.” Bless his heart. It must have been those youthful hormones.

  “Why a gay wedding cake?” Isabelle asked. “Because you’re gay?”

  “Partially,” Spencer answered. “And also because our state was one that had to wait for The Supreme Court to make same-sex marriage possible. It not only irks me we were one of the damned fourteen holdouts, now we got some jerkwad running on a platform of undoing it all on a local level.”

  “He won’t win, bro,” Troy declared.

  “He might. Not that it really has anything to do with me personally. I won’t be walking down the aisle anytime soon at my age.”

  “You’re not old,” Isabelle said.

  She was always a little cool toward Spencer, not exactly rude…

  “Yeah he is.” That was more Troy’s way—teasingly so—this time with a mouthful of muffin.

  Isabelle just never seemed quite at ease in Spencer’s presence. She’d shrieked in his arms when she was mere hours old, and never seemed to get over it. Her parents, Getty and Kirsten, were Spencer’s closest friends, though things with them were somewhat uncomfortable these days as well.

  “Getting older by the day,” Spencer said to Troy. “There’s no need to remind me.” He checked his reflection in the cupcake case, all the while fantasizing about dumping a vat of banana cream pudding on his baby brother’s head. They looked a lot alike. They had the same blue eyes, the same jet black hair, the same square jaw and huge ears, but with fifteen years between them—shocking baby surprises ran in both families—Troy had his whole life ahead of him, while Spencer was in a coming-up-on-middle-age rut.

  “I don’t protest often,” Spencer continued, “but voting against Grayson Devries and supporting his opponent are ways I can raise my voice.” Democrat Heidi Reed’s sign hung in the bakery window beside the wedding cake poster. “This giveaway will put my stamp on the cause too… literally.” Spencer handed the stack of rainbow stickers with Holiday Bakery’s address, phone number, and website info printed on them to Troy.

  “Why’d you get so many?”

  “There was a minimum,” Spencer explained. “I had to order a thousand.” He took two back for the posters. “One on every receipt starting tomorrow. You hear me?” One hundred and one reminders couldn’t hurt.

  “Loud and clear.” Troy saluted.

  “And hopefully at least one person will be gay or know someone who is.” Spencer pursed his lips, suddenly filled with doubt. “Maybe the whole thing was a stupid idea.”

  “No way, bro. It’s brilliant.”

  “What do you know from brilliant, Turkey?”

  Before Troy could answer, the power went off completely, and the shop was thrown into darkness. Isabelle gasped.

  “Don’t be scared,” Spencer soothed. “The generator’ll kick on in five, four, three, two…”

  On the lights came, and then, like Spencer knew it would, the wall phone rang. He smiled as he picked it up. “Hey, Getty.”

  Augustine Pentz—known as Getty since elementary school—had been Holiday Bakery’s handyman for years. Spencer was part scientist, He knew the precise amounts of each ingredient needed to create the perfect chemical reaction to make each sweet confection rise in the oven and also taste good on the palate. He was an artist as well, able to make the most beautiful things out of dough, sugar, fondant, and chocolate. What Spencer wasn’t, was good with tools and anything mechanical. That was where “Getty” came in. He could fix anything, from a mixer cord to a cracked concrete slab.

  “Everything okay there, Spence?”

  “Generator kicked in just fine.”

  “Good to know.” Getty had recently gotten it running again after the engine conked out. “Shouldn’t give you any trouble, just wanted to make sure.”

  “You worked a miracle as always,” Spencer said. “If I get another few months out of the thing, I’ll be happy.”

  “You’ll get at least another year if I have anything to say,” Getty promised. “Have Troy call if he needs me. And have fun with jury duty.”

  “Somehow I doubt it.”

  Spencer was right. It was no fun at all. By the time
he arrived back at the store the first evening, Troy was ready to flip the closed sign. “Sorry, bro. They picked me. I’ll be tied up all week.”

  “No big, Spenny. Today was a breeze. And yes, I remembered the stickers.”

  Spencer had been just about to ask. “Good deal. Busy day?”

  “Not really. Not bad, but nothing huge.”

  “Alright. Take off for the night if you want. I have those cupcakes to finish for the Halloween parade, the ones you’ll be shipping out for me tomorrow the moment the post office opens.”

  “Tomorrow,” Troy repeated. “Five hundred cupcakes to the Town of Arvasaille Rec Center for the Arvasaille Halloween parade sent in dry ice by nine-oh-one a.m. Yes sir!”

  By George, he got it. Troy had even remembered the dry ice part. Maybe there was hope for him after all.

  “You want some help with the decorating?” he asked.

  Sloppy globs of orange and black icing weren’t going to cut it at the prices Spencer was charging. “No thanks,” he said, knowing Troy couldn’t manage much more. If Troy was good at anything—and that remained to be seen, at least as far as working at the bakery was concerned—it was going to be the bookkeeping and business end. “Job won’t take too long,” Spencer told him. “Three colors swirled in one bag, a thousand pieces of candy corn, some sprinkles, and a bunch of scary cutouts… it should all go pretty fast.”

  “Okie doke. See you in the morning, then.”

  “You hanging out with Isabelle?”

  “Just at her house. Nothing too exciting. Her old man will be there.”

  “Watch that ‘old’ stuff!” Spencer pinged a candy corn kernel off his brother’s forehead. “Score!”

  “That’s child abuse, bro.” Troy rubbed the spot.

  “You’re twenty-three and bigger than I am. Call the authorities. We’ll see what happens.”

  A few hours later, Spencer was finally ready to close down shop when the witch on the front door screeched, scaring him half to death.

  “I saw the light. You alone?”

  Spencer tried to slow his racing heart. “Getty… Yeah.”

  “I startled you.”

  “Naw.”

  “Yeah.”

  There was no sense arguing. Getty knew him too well.

  “It’s Monday.” Getty nodded toward the calendar as if to prove it.

  “Oh yeah. Kind of forgot. Long day.” Spencer handed over a large plastic bag. “Take whatever you want.”

  Three times a week, Getty collected the bakery goods not sold to drop off at a local shelter. “This is really nice of you, Spense,” he said.

  “Glad to do it. If one doesn’t help their community…” Spencer let the thought trail off, hoping he had made his point.

  “This contest is pretty cool too.” Getty pointed his thumb at the back of the poster in the window. “You had any trouble yet?”

  Back in June, the day the Supreme Court ruling had come down declaring state bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, Spencer had put an oversized rainbow wedding cake slice on display up front. It was seven layers—red, yellow, pink, green, purple, orange, and blue—with white icing and Love Wins piped atop. A brick had come through the window overnight, landing right in the middle of it, displacing the two grooms atop. A Facebook message from For Good and God claimed responsibility, and said, amongst other things, “The bible condemms queers!!!!” Two m’s and four exclamation points had not only gotten the message across, but also the intelligence level of its messengers.

  “I’m still relieved no one was here to be hurt,” Spencer said, thinking back on it. “And still disgusted that someone would be so…” He couldn’t even think of a word that fully described how revolting the act had been, and how violated and frightened he had truly felt by it all. “Troy didn’t mention anything bad today.” Spencer swept as he spoke.

  “That’s not this town,” Getty said soothingly. “Not the people we grew up with. One bad apple, and all that.”

  “One bad government too,” Spencer said with disgust. “You know what I heard?”

  “What?” Getty looked up from his task.

  “Grayson Devries is expected to win by a landslide. There goes marriage equality around here.”

  Getty set down his doughnuts, his expression one of disbelief. “He can’t really undo a Supreme Court ruling, can he?”

  Spencer shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably not, but he can stall licenses, procrastinate, and wrap everything in so much damned red tape they’ll force any two gay people who want to get married to give up and walk away. That’s what they’re hoping, I bet. I wouldn’t let them win,” Spencer declared. “I won’t. In fact, they try to push that crap through, if the federal government doesn’t nip it in the bud, I’ll get married just to say screw you!”

  “That’ll show ’em.” Getty’s chuckle made Spencer smile. “See you Wednesday. Or before,” Getty said at the door. “You know, to screw the state legislature or something. I’ll be here if you need me.”

  Oh, how Spencer did.

  The rest of jury duty passed uneventfully, except for the last day, when one juror showed up dressed as Wonder Woman for Halloween. The judge called a recess so Kevin could change. On Halloween night, though—in his black wig, red, white, and blue strapless bodysuit, boots, and bullet-proof bracelets—Kevin stopped by the shop. “This promotion rocks!” he said. “I’m gay myself, in case you hadn’t guessed.”

  Spencer just smiled.

  “I don’t really plan on getting married anytime soon,” Kevin revealed, as he carefully slipped his receipt with the rainbow sticker in his wallet, “but if I trap me a man between now and Turkey Day… I’ll be back for my cake.”

  “Good luck. Hope you do.”

  Spencer was winding twinkling white lights around a seven foot faux spruce to the sounds of Bing Crosby when Getty dropped by the next night. “Smells like Thanksgiving, beginning to look and sound a lot like Christmas, and jack-o-lantern cookies are on clearance.”

  “‘One decorates early in retail. Holidays overlap,’” Spencer quoted. “Dad called this season ‘Thanksgivingmas.’” The memory was bittersweet. “I miss him.” Warren Holiday had been gone eight months. He hadn’t even lived to see Troy graduate college, and it would be the brothers first Christmas without him. “I miss him every day,” Spencer said.

  “Need a hand?” Getty put one on Spencer’s shoulder.

  “No thanks.” Spencer turned away from it. “Going to wrap it up for the day as soon as the last pumpkin and mincemeat pies come out.”

  “Your promotion working?” Getty asked.

  “Well, we haven’t really seen a bump in sales yet. But… come Black Friday, when the gay dudes with the rainbow stickers show up for their cakes and we go into our full-on media blitz, hopefully we will.”

  “You going to have time to make a wedding cake—maybe several—during the Christmas season?”

  “I’ll have to make time,” Spencer said. “If it’s good for business and the cause, it’ll be well worth it.”

  The next few weeks seemed to speed by. The shop was packed to the rafters the final few days before Thanksgiving as people suddenly realized pie baking was not as easy as Martha Stewart made it look. To Spencer’s surprise, there was a line outside the bakery’s front door when he and Troy slogged down from upstairs with midnight turkey and mashed potato hangovers the Friday after too. It wasn’t a 75% off big screen TVs Black Friday Walmart crowd, but for Holiday’s, twenty people waiting on the sidewalk at 5 a.m. was quite unusual, to say the least.

  “I hope they’re not here to complain about the pies,” Spencer said.

  “They got to be here for the contest, Spenny, right?” Troy’s sleepy eyes hardly matched the excitement in his voice. “The wedding cake dealie.”

  “They didn’t need to bring the whole bridal party,” Spencer whispered as he approached the door. “Groom-al party?” He rubbed gunk from his lashes. “Whatever they call it, I’m just glad s
omeone was interested enough to actually show up. That homophobe Devries getting elected made me wonder about where I’m living.”

  “It wasn’t a landslide, though.”

  “No. But he still won, and immediately promised to ‘bring back the sanctity of matrimony.’”

  “Screw him. Maybe we should invite him to the drawing, and then let everyone here for the drawing take a swing at him.”

  “We’re not going to encourage violence.” Spencer opened the front door. “Good morning.” He greeted the crowd. “We’ll be open in an hour. Until then, how about free hot chocolate and muffins in ten?”

  There were tables in a courtyard in front of the shop. It was still quite mild, so Spencer figured the throng would enjoy a little early morning alfresco snack.

  “Wait.” He caught Troy by the wrist as he went for some napkins. “What do you mean drawing?”

  “The raffle drawing. The whole cake for gays promotion thing, duh.”

  “Uh, Troy… there is no drawing. One local gay couple about to wed, maybe two if we’re unlucky—how many can there be in this itty bitty town?—shows up with a sticker on their receipt and gets a wedding cake. Every rainbow equals a freebie. No drawing. Done deal.”

  “Ooooh.” Troy turned toward the radiator. “Brr.” He hugged himself.

  “It’s sixty degrees, Troy.” Spencer spun him around by the shoulders. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing.” He looked at the floor. “Maybe something.” He twisted paper napkins into short snakes. “Remember those five hundred Halloween cupcakes?”

  Spencer shook his head. “You didn’t.”

  “I thought we could reach more customers if we cast a wider net. People come from all over the state for that parade, an event where our cupcakes were front and center. So before I packed them up and mailed them off to Arvasaille, I put a rainbow sticker on each one.”

  “Troy!”

  “Gay dudes love Halloween!”

  “Do we?”

  “You used to. You didn’t even dress up this year.”

  “I had jury duty… adult responsibilities.”

  “You were home by six. It wasn’t dark ‘til seven. People get to act like kids on Halloween. We did last year. Izzy and I did this year. You could have come with us.”