The 12 Gays of Christmas: A Holiday Family Bakery Novel Page 3

  “Give it up, Spenny. Everyone knows you’re hot for each other.”

  Spencer tried to regain his composure. He set down the flour sack and reached for a large glass measuring cup. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re… friends. Best friends. Buddies.”

  “So? What is love other than best buds who want to bang each other?”

  Spencer added yeast to warm water in the Pyrex beaker and set it aside to proof. “Such prose. I’m putting you in charge of our Valentine’s Day promotion.” He tapped his brother on the tip of his nose. “Get on it.”

  “Even Isabelle knows.” Troy played with the pendant at his throat.

  “Knows what?” Spencer had frozen in his tracks. Even after he recovered, he continued to play dumb.

  “That her parents split because her dad is gay.” Troy handed over a huge bottle of vanilla as Spencer moved on to the wet ingredients for his first wedding cake and Kevin’s special one. A little extra batter, it wouldn’t be a big deal.

  “Oh?”

  “I get she has issues about it. That’s why she and her pops were estranged for so long.”

  “She said that?”

  “In a roundabout way.”

  “Oh.”

  “P, Q, R, S, dude. Say something else!”

  “Go get the eggs.” Spencer was hoping by the time Troy returned, they could change the subject.

  “Much like Grayson Devries, whatever issues Isabelle has about homosexuals, she just has to get over.”

  “Isabelle doesn’t deserve to be lumped in with that twit.”

  “True that, I guess. Whatever issues she has are personal. It’s not gay people she has a problem with. She just hasn’t gotten used to the fact that her dad’s one of them. They fought about forever. We fight about it now.”

  Spencer’s heart ached. “I don’t want you two fighting over Getty and me… over something that’s never going to happen.” Crap! Was that an admission?

  “I think she may be coming around, though. You know how I know?”

  “Communication?”

  “Not even. Passive aggression—at least passive suggestion.” Troy hoisted himself up onto the counter and watched his brother work. “She made me watch this Hallmark movie the other night, the one where the mother of the groom and the father of the bride fall in love with each other. And you know who was in it?”

  “Who?” Spencer asked.

  “Blair and Tootie from The Facts of Life.”

  “Well, there you go, it all makes sense now.” Spencer cracked the third egg of eighteen. “It actually doesn’t.”

  “We watch that too—The Facts of Life— upstairs in her room. On you know what channel? Huh? Take a guess.” Troy continued, before Spencer could. “On Logo, bro. We watch The Facts of Life on the gay network. Who watches Logo unless they’re gay or like gay people?”

  “Well, The Facts of Life is pretty awesome.”

  “To your generation, old man, not ours. Put it all together.”

  Despite his best efforts not to find it, Spencer couldn’t help but note a certain logic to Troy’s reasoning and hypothesis. “Cool… I guess.”

  Whatever else was happening, Getty and Isabelle were getting closer again, and that was great to see. The whole history of the “three amigos” was untold to Troy, unless Isabelle knew it. It had grown a little sordid at one point when Kirstin unjustly accused Spencer and Getty of having an affair. Getty had admitted to Spencer years earlier that he and Kirstin fought all the time. He’d sworn he never cheated, but deep down he knew he didn’t love his wife the way a man should. He’d told Kirstin that, and though she’d supposedly admitted she sometimes felt the same way, they’d stayed married for several more years, each taking turns—before the accusations of infidelity—crying on Spencer’s shoulders via phone calls or e-mails. Things were currently civil again between everyone involved, though the ink on the dissolution papers was barely dry. Kirstin and Spencer chatted often now, as if things had never been strained at all. Exasperating was a better word to describe the situation between the two men, however. Spencer walked on eggshells around Isabelle. Sometimes Getty did as well, it seemed. Hell, they walked on eggshells around each other, with unspoken thoughts about tearing each other’s clothes off—at least until a couple of hours ago when Spencer tore off his own. They’d both been shocked upon discovering who their closest relative had fallen hard for. Talk about your Hallmark Movie Channel plotlines, or maybe one on Isabelle’s new favorite, Logo! Once the new complication presented itself—which almost immediately was seen more as what it was, a wonderful, happy blessing—Spencer and Getty not only vowed to one another, but also to Kirstin, that they wouldn’t do anything to screw it up.

  “You know I’m right, Spenny. About everything.”

  Be that as it might, the situation was far too tenuous for Spencer and Getty to give into carnal feelings, let alone any sort of romantic ones. “Go close up shop, smarty pants. Someone could walk off with a dozen scones while you’re in here babbling.”

  Troy smiled. He knew he’d made his point.

  “Getty and I are just friends. Go!”

  Troy hopped down. “For now.” He stepped over to Spencer and hugged him. “But I’m not giving up.” Then he punched him in the arm.

  “Ow, ass!”

  “I just want you to be happy. I want the old Spenny back—the goofy one, the big, dopey doofus.”

  Spencer figured those days were long gone. He wished things could be different, but wishes were for birthday candles and little kids.

  “Getty brings that out in you,” Troy said at the door. “So don’t give up. “ Almost as if reading Spencer’s mind, he added one more thing. “Because Christmas is all about wishes too, ya know?”

  Chapter 3

  Getty was straddling the giant mixer stand a few days later. Bent over its bowl, checking its motor carriage, he was testing the seams on a pair of black denim jeans that pulled tightly across his still athletic ass, and his heather gray undershirt kept riding up, exposing the shimmering golden fuzz in the small of his back. After going somewhere sexual, Spencer went back to his conversation with Troy from earlier in the week. Getty’s divorce had been particularly tough on teenage Isabelle. Spencer saw some of it firsthand, hanging in the background at her high school graduation, and more recently, witnessing her demeanor around her father at the shop while there with Troy. Even after the separation, for the longest time, Spencer and Getty resisted temptation, unless one counted the occasional intentional double entendre and Snapchat foreplay that never led any further during late night online talks with suggestive selfies or X-rated site links exchanged. Yeah. Those were all things someone’s loved one had the right to count, Spencer supposed. He had hated watching his best friend torn apart, first by the marriage and then the divorce. He’d cried happy tears the night Isabelle was born and sad ones when she refused to hug her father as she held her diploma surrounded by her 2015 classmates. Spencer had missed much of the years in between, until he’d been needed back at Holiday Bakery. It was difficult to stay away—then and now—but somehow also easier. Warren Holiday had used Getty as a handyman around the shop for years, and there he had been, the very first person Spencer had seen upon his return.

  “Is there anything I can do, Spence… to help around the store or with your grief?” He’d taken Spencer in his arms without warning, and for half a moment, the sting of Spencer’s father’s death was lessened by an embrace Spencer had often dreamed of feeling over the preceding years. Kirstin had taken a turn hugging him too, but Isabelle had merely skulked away, her feelings toward Spencer already evident. Of course she knew.

  Spencer still avoided Getty often, even when in the same building. Sometimes he’d need something up front, yet he’d hide in the kitchen, because Getty was out there fixing the latest thing to fall down, break down, or wear down. When Spencer did see Getty, when they talked, it was immediately obvious the one thing Getty never felt ambivalent about was being a dad. He lov
ed his daughter with his entire heart. He was proud of her accomplishments and hopeful for her future as a nurse. One of the first things he’d vowed post-divorce was his intention to win his daughter back. “The breakup of our family crushed my Tinkerbell. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make that up to her.”

  There was no denying the sexual tension. Spencer had fantasized often about what it would be like if they ever reconnected. His romantic vision was nothing like the way it actually went down a couple days earlier, though, standing naked in his hallway, then alone in his bedroom, fraught with anxiety and guilt. They’d shared so many carefree encounters as teenagers, alone in the back of Getty’s old van, safe from the prejudices of the outside world, guided only by instinct, with no idea what “making love” even truly meant. Still, somehow they had found their way. Kissing one another had seemed so natural, despite what certain government officials or church leaders might have people believe. And when they’d gone further, as young men barely out of boyhood toys and notions, that too, despite a bit of nervous fumbling and release that came rather suddenly, seemed totally innate. Loving Getty was as fundamental as breathing, but the way things were, the way they had to be, leading each other on wasn’t fair to him, and it wasn’t fair to Spencer. He still spent half his free time fantasizing, and the other half being depressed by the realization those daydreams would never be coming true.

  “Things are breaking down left and right around here,” Getty commented. In the past ten days he’d fixed the generator, the light in the case, a floorboard, a spindle on the stairs, the oven door handle, and now, the most important thing so far, the mixer. “You may be jinxed.” He reached back to pull up his jeans, apparently aware he was suddenly flashing a bit of luminescent blond furred crack between the top of his belt and the bottom of his T-shirt.

  “I probably overworked the motor with all that cake batter. It’s not burned out, is it?”

  “No, just… Well, I don’t actually know yet, but it’s not that. I’ll try to figure it out quicker than I did that light yesterday.” Getty chuckled. His eyes sparkled like the tinsel on the tree when he turned his head in Spencer’s direction. “How many handymen does it take to figure out the whole box of lightbulbs are bad?”

  Spencer answered with a smile.

  “I’ll take them back to the Home Depot later today,” Getty said.

  “I think they’re gone. One of the kids must have done it.”

  “Oh.” Getty tugged on his shirt hem. “Good deal. Hey!” He smiled. “I think I got it.” And then he reached for a screwdriver and uncovered the top of his rear end again. “Five more minutes. Sorry this puts you even more behind schedule. You must be completely overwhelmed.”

  “I’m not doing too badly.” Spencer tore himself away to run some pine rope around the perimeter of the kitchen door on the shop side. “I’ve been putting in really long hours—”

  “That’s what Troy told Isabelle. Don’t overdo.”

  “I have eight of the twelve cakes baked and in the freezer. I’ll get the others done by the end of the day now—thanks to you. And I’ll have them all crumb coated and frosted by the middle of next week. That’s a huge accomplishment right there. Plus, I’ve done some of the sugar molds and appliques it was okay to do ahead. So, I’m really on a roll. I think I’m going to make it. Then I can slow down.”

  “I hope so.” Getty yanked at his pants some more. “You look tired already.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Handsome, but tired.” Getty glanced over sideways.

  “Decorating the cakes is all me.” Spencer didn’t take the bait. “Troy has been pretty amazing, but I doubt I’ll ever trust him with a piping bag and a writing tool. He’s aces at powdering beignets and doughnuts, though, and he only eats about half of what he makes, so that’s not too bad.”

  “He’s a good kid,” Getty said, bending over further, showing the most flesh yet. “I hope they make it.”

  “Me too,” Spencer echoed. “I kind of feel like Troy’s dad sometimes, ya know, what with the difference in our ages. He’s good, but not fully baked yet. I still got some raising left to do, now that I’m all he’s got left.”

  “I get it,” Getty said. “It’s so weird how there are times I’d swear we’re both still Troy’s age, and then in the next moment, it hits me I have a kid who is—almost. And she’s having a kid in another few months.” Getty wiped his brow, possibly not from work sweat. “Damn!”

  “I know. But you started young.”

  “Hmm,” Getty said. “I remember the night.”

  “Me too.” Spencer remembered it all too well.

  Suddenly, the mixer motor hummed, which was good for several reasons, one of which was the direction the conversation may have taken. Spencer could certainly understand Kirstin feeling betrayed by Getty’s unfaithfulness. Getty had cheated—just not with Spencer. It had happened early on, within the first few years of the marriage, long before the split.

  “I really can’t blame him,” Kirstin recently said. “I did… and there are days I’d still like to. He confessed a good decade after it happened. I wanted to kill him. In the next moment, I wanted to hug him. Then I wanted to kill him again. He was a gay man trapped in a relationship with a woman. Bisexual, at best—or maybe just a gay man capable of sex with a woman.”

  Spencer really hadn’t wanted to hear all the details.

  “He was struggling against what he was in his heart and body and what society told him he should be. I believe he was faithful after that one time, and that had to be hard. I know he’s never stopped caring about me. We were still best friends, even on our angriest days.”

  Spencer knew those feelings all too well. It was basically a retread of what he and Getty had gone through. They’d fought on senior prom night when someone had made a bigoted comment about “two dateless faggots”. Spencer had wanted to stand his ground at the dance. Getty had wanted to bolt—and he had, leaving Spencer behind. That was the night he’d had sex with Kirstin, maybe to prove something, maybe as juvenile vengeance. Spencer and Getty had patched things up, and then made all sorts of plans for college, where things would be more liberal and uninhibited. By mid-July, those plans had been dashed. Spencer had learned then—before Kirstin ever had—what being cheated on felt like.

  “Yay!” he said, patting the side of the mixer. “Sounds good.”

  “I’m good.” Getty stood and hiked up his pants once again.

  “You are.” Spencer was right beside him.

  “Now let’s make sure it works on high.” Getty went for the lever.

  “Getty, don’t!”

  But it was too late. The faster speed kicked up a tornado of confectionary sugar, dusting Getty head to foot, so he looked like an aforementioned beignet or Frosty the Snowman.

  Spencer laughed. “Sorry.” But he wasn’t. “Looks like a white Christmas this year.” He swiped a finger down Getty’s cheek, and then licked it off. “Sweet.”

  “Well, I try.” Getty moved closer, and their lips touched.

  “Oh, god.” It was that comfort—that familiarity even after so many years apart—that made their current situation so frustrating. And when Spencer took a step back, and cleared the powdered sugar from Getty’s eyes, he looked into them, past his reflection, and saw that Getty felt the same.

  “The kids will be back soon,” Spencer said, by way of taking the idea off the table. The table in the huge front window might have been a fun option, and also another way to protest Grayson Devries’s election and homophobia. “Damn!”

  “What?” Getty dusted off his shirt, further dirtying the floor.

  “You know what. You have to.” Spencer reached for the broom.

  “Yeah. I do.” Getty raised his hands in defeat, maybe in response to the sugar, or perhaps just the topic. “Isabelle and I have a lunch date. We survived the first time, sitting across from each other, just the two of us, with an hour to fill with conversation. Hopefully we can do it again
.” He took out his cellphone. “I’ll tell her to meet me at home after I shower.”

  Spencer debated a moment. “That would take her all the way across town. Then she’d have to bail early to get back this way for her next class. The shop is closer… and your pants aren’t too bad.” Spencer almost reached forward to dust off the crotch. “I can probably shake them out while you wash your hair… ya know… upstairs.” He nodded in that direction. “I have a few shirts in my closet that always feel too short on me. Grab one after you… you clean yourself up. You should be good to go.”

  “Really?”

  “Let’s not make a big deal about it, Getty.” Spencer’s heart was pounding. “Leave your clothes outside the bathroom door, and I’ll take your jeans outside.”

  Getty grinned.

  “What?” Spencer asked, flustered.

  “This same thing happened in a Hallmark movie I watched not too long ago.”

  “It wasn’t the one with Tootie and Blair by any chance, was it?”

  “Chachi from Happy Days and DJ from Full House.” Getty took off his shirt. Spencer started at his navel and felt his way up with his eyes. “Why?” Getty asked when Spencer’s eyes met his.

  “Just curious.”

  The bathroom door was left ajar, maybe intentionally. “Damn him,” Spencer muttered. The dark gray shower curtain was way more opaque then it seemed from the other side. Spencer had been meaning for days to swap out the current décor with the holiday stuff, including a virtually clear one with snowmen on it, snowmen not at all strategically placed to hide a naked man bathing. Spencer had discovered that when he’d accidentally walked in on Troy enjoying more than a bath last January. Getty’s silhouette was almost as clear, however. Every muscle showed when he raised his arms over his head to tend to his hair. Every curve and slope of his back and buttocks was visible as he turned to the side and bent to reach the shower knob. Even the shimmying protrusion coming off the flatness partway down when Getty shook his wet head, like a beast in the rain, was quite discernible. Was he finished already? Spencer went flush with the wall to hide.