The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 31. Sophomore Year - Chapter 9

The Amicos swept into the Becker house like a natural disaster, one day before Christmas.

Or, at least, two of the four Amicos did: Nonna and Uncle Pete, my mom’s mother and older brother. We were missing my two cousins, Nicole and Kaitlyn, who were off with Aunt Diane this year, Uncle Pete’s first ex-wife.

“Hey, Mary Cath,” said Uncle Pete, giving my mom a hug.

Nonna stood just behind him in the front doorway, a Mother Superior in a heavy black coat, a gold cross hanging around her neck. She waited for him to finish hugging my mother, before she moved in for her embrace.

“It’s so good to see you, Mary Catherine,” said Nonna, without conviction, because it was really just a sendup for the next part: “Just a four hour drive, and still, I only see you on Christmas and Easter. But I suppose twice a year is better than nothing.”

My mother was a good sport. Catherine Becker, nee Mary Catherine Amico, had an unflappable pressure cooker of a smile--the product of fourteen years as a political wife--as she stared down her own private hell.

Uncle Pete moved onto me next, wrapping me in a hug. I was the middle child; I was on duty, to cart luggage up to the guest rooms, while Justine and Philip drank pinotage in the family room with Dad.

“My favorite nephew,” Uncle Pete said, clapping me on the shoulder. “My namesake.”

“Dad’s namesake,” Mom replied, newly freed from Nonna, who came after me next with a hug and three lipsticky kisses on my forehead.

Uncle Pete was glaring at her, as if she had snatched away his only Christmas present. “You can’t let me have one thing, can you?”

“Accuracy,” she replied.

Uncle Pete was Peter Francis Amico. Little Pete. My grandpa had been Big Pete, Peter Salvatore Amico. Big Pete had died the year before I was born, but Uncle Pete remained Little Pete.

I was just Peter, for what it was worth. Peter Adam Becker, not an Amico, existing in some amorphous sidebar only tangentially connected to the main dynastic branch. Mom had made it clear throughout the years that I was named after Big Pete, not Little Pete, which was a sticking point.

Uncle Pete, while offended that I was not named after him, also did not like the fact that Mom had stolen the name Peter out from under him, because that precluded him naming his own son Peter III.

He never had a son. He had only daughters.

Mom had realized long ago that dealing with Nonna and Uncle Pete, especially post-Aunt Diane who had functioned largely as a broker for peace, required a substantial amount of patience and forced smiling.

“How was the drive?” she asked, with as much brightness as possible under the circumstances.

“Long,” Uncle Pete replied. He clapped his hands together. “I hope you have wine ready.”

“I always do,” she said, motioning through the archway to the family room. “David’s opened a bottle of pinotage.”

“As long as it comes in a bottle,” said Uncle Pete, “I’m not too picky.”

“Even then,” Mom replied, a sotto voce comment, except one said at full volume, sweetly.

Uncle Pete did not react.

He was alone this year, because he was freshly separated from wife number three, Aunt Cheryl. Though we never called her that; they had only been married for barely a year before the entire thing went south, and the only time I had met her was at their wedding last June.

My mom had thought Aunt Cheryl was a bad idea from the beginning. But how would you ever know that sort of thing, know that someone was wrong, before you even had a chance?

Before Aunt Cheryl had been Aunt Angela, who lasted about four years before sending Uncle Pete on an ice flow.

Before Aunt Angela had been, of course, Aunt Diane, mother of my cousins Nicole and Kaitlyn. Fifteen years of putting up with Uncle Pete’s drinking and Uncle Pete’s sporadic employment and Uncle Pete’s frustration with his life, before throwing in the towel. Or that’s how Nonna told the story, when Uncle Pete wasn’t around.

“And the girls send their love,” Uncle Pete was telling my mom. “As does Di.”

Considering they had divorced a decade ago and he’d had two wives since then, Uncle Pete still mentioned Aunt Diane with savage regularity. He worked her into conversation as if she happened to be somewhere just out of earshot, in the bathroom, rather than in Mahwah with her pediatrician second husband.

I think, until Aunt Diane actually walked down the aisle again, six years after their divorce, Uncle Pete still thought of their separation as temporary, a superficial situation that would eventually untangle and resolve itself, like the last scene in a romantic comedy.

He was married to Aunt Angela at the time, who presumably realized Uncle Pete’s lasting fixation on his ex-wife and was less than appreciative. She filed for divorce less than three months after Diane Amico became Diane Kowalski.

Uncle Pete never talked about Aunt Angela, or even Aunt Cheryl, but he talked about Aunt Diane.

Was that what happened if you never got over someone? If you had someone who was a piece of you, and you spent the rest of your life in mourning for that phantom limb?

“Peter,” my mom said, turning around, “can you help with the bags?” She looked back to her relations. “Mom, you’re in the guest room. Pete, you’re in my office, upstairs.”

Uncle Pete pretended to look incredulous. “You have an office now?”

“I’ve had an office since I went back to work,” she replied, coldly. “1998. You’ve stayed in there about fifteen times since then.”

Uncle Pete wasn’t paying attention; he looked up the curved staircase, craned his neck to see the banister, like a child engaged in a wholly new experience. “I always thought that was Dave’s office,” he said, bending over a bit further. “Did you ever replace the pull-out up there, Mary Cath? My back.”

Something I noticed only recently: my mother gave this involuntary shutter whenever someone misidentified her, as Mary Catherine, as Mary Cath, as some rearranging of the names that no longer suited her, shorn off with her Latinate nose, circa college.

It was almost imperceptible, and I wondered if I did the same thing for Peter, Pete, Petey, unnoticed by anyone. Family had a way of keeping you trapped in amber, where everything except you was allowed to grow and evolve.

“It’s a Lexington sofa bed,” she said, crisply. “Four years old. You’ll survive the weekend.”

“I’ll take a glass of wine first,” said Uncle Pete, leaving his bag abandoned on the ground for me.

Nonna seemed more pressing, so I went for her suitcase.

“How’s Tulane?” she asked.

“It’s wonderful,” I replied, as I dragged her suitcase up the first step. Her suitcase weighed about five thousand pounds; it was like bringing a Volkswagen up the stairs. “Lot of fun, really.”

“And you’re not seeing anyone,” she said, “still?”

“I date here and there,” I said. “You know, college. It’s so busy. There’s so much going on.”

Nonna nodded appreciatively. “I never went to college. I could’ve gone to college, but I married your grandpa instead.” I had heard this story at least a million times, but I let her roll onward. “I was the top girl in the class, and everyone was saying ‘go to college, go to college,’ and I passed the entrance exam… but everyone else was getting married. What are you supposed to do. Are you okay with that bag? Do you need help?”

I yanked the bag up another stair, trying not to grunt or make it look difficult. “It’s fine, I got it.”

“I hope you wind up more like your brother,” she continued, picking up the conversation without missing a beat. “Georgetown Law School. And less a degenerate like your uncle.”

“I’m trying my best.”

Nonna’s face did not seem to necessarily believe that. “You’re an English major,” she asked, “still?”

“Still,” I replied. “Well, English major, creative writing concentration.”

“So you’re going to law school too,” she said, less a question and more a command. “Both following in your father’s footsteps.” My dad had not, actually, gone to law school; he had a bachelors from Stanford, and had foregone higher education to play professional baseball. “Have you been following this election? Hillary Clinton this, Barack Obama that. I didn’t think we could get worse than Bush, but then Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum start talking about socialized healthcare, and marone.”

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to have an answer to that. I pulled the bag to the top of the stairs.

“And I have no problem with a black President or a woman President,” she assured me, as I dragged her bag down the hallway. “I think it would be a good thing for the country, actually, if we didn’t have another white man. But both of them. Socialists. I can’t even imagine who would vote for someone like that. You know who has a good head on her shoulders? That Condoleezza Rice. I really like her. And black, woman, gay? You’d get all the firsts out of the way at once.”

I didn’t, at all, know how to answer that one either.

“She’s not running,” I replied.

“I know she’s not running, Peter,” she replied, irritatedly. Nonna did not like being condescended to, real or perceived; increasingly perceived, as she got older and suspected that her children were infantalizing her. “I’m saying she has a good head on her shoulders. You know, your father would make a very good President too.”

I opened the door to the guest room. Reprieve. “Here we go,” I said, flipping on the light. Before she could say anything else, I jumped in with, “I’ll see you back downstairs!”

I passed my mother and Uncle Pete on the staircase, though neither had bothered to pick up his suitcase, which was still in the middle of the foyer floor, so I assumed that was still my job.

His bag weighed roughly two metric tons less than Nonna’s. I slung it over my shoulder, and followed the two of them into my mom’s office.

Guests stayed in my mom’s office. Generally because my dad’s office, downstairs, was kept in a general state of disarray, and my mom’s office was not, even though as a lobbyist she tended to bring home more work than he did.

Besides, neither of them trusted Uncle Pete around sensitive government documents and my mom had a more secure filing system. My dad’s office had also been locked earlier that morning, I noticed, a ceremony they saved for days when Uncle Pete was stalking the halls.

When I brought in the suitcase, my mom was stacking pillows on top of the made-up sofa bed. Uncle Pete was across the room, standing behind her desk.

He set down his glass of wine, and picked up one of her business cards.

Uncle Pete always looked around the house like an appraiser, studying the moldings, the trinkets on the bookcases, silently comparing his lot to his sister’s.

“Catherine Becker,” he read. “Executive Vice President for Government Affairs, Countrywide Financial.” He looked at her. “Shouldn’t it be ‘M. Catherine Becker’?”

Mom looked up at him, her eyes narrowed. “What’s the difference, Pete?”

“Accuracy.”

That word hung uncomfortably between them.

“It’s easier this way,” she replied, and she went back to stacking pillows.

“Government Affairs,” he repeated. He set down the business card face down on the desk, and retrieved his wine. “So important.”

“Lobbying,” she replied, shrugging, without interrupting her work with the pillows; they were now neatly stacked, and she was smoothing the edges, largely so she wouldn’t have to bother looking at Uncle Pete. “Everything sounds more important than it is.”

“They let you do that?”

Mom snapped her head back to her older brother, barely containing her irritation. “Let me?”

“Well, Dave. The Senate. They don’t have rules against you?”

“I can’t lobby David or his staff,” she replied. “I can lobby the other ninety-nine Senators. And 435 members of Congress. And I do. Very well.”

Uncle Pete took another sip of wine, and made a face.

“I don’t think I like this wine,” he told her. “What did you say it was?”

“It’s from Prairie Chapel,” she said. “Pinotage. David’s brothers’ winery.”

He took another sip, shuddered dramatically. “It tastes like nail polish remover.”

“Are you still saying thank you, Pete?” she said, sweetly.

“Oh, don’t be like that, Mary Cath,” he said, absentmindedly running his finger along the top of a silver picture frame, a professional photo of me, Philip, and Justine as toddlers. “It’s Christmas.”

Catherine Becker said nothing.

Uncle Pete came to the next photo, the one of my parents at the 2005 inaugural ball, standing smiling with George and Laura Bush.

“Dave is Dave, isn’t he,” he said.

“Yes he is,” she granted.

“Does it bother you?” he asked, glancing up at her. He let those words hang for a second, and no one quite had any idea where he was going with that. “Predatory mortgages?”

My mother frowned, not entirely sure how the conversation had taken that particular turn.

“Countrywide is America’s biggest home loan lender,” she replied, like she was reading from a brochure. “‘Predatory mortgages.’ We’re not some fly-by-night subprime mortgage robber baron. We help people buy homes. We helped you buy a home.”

“At market rate.”

“At a fair rate,” she clarified. “Even I can’t wave a magic wand and make a decade of bad credit disappear, it doesn’t work that way.”

She had landed her blow, and she looked far more relaxed after that.

Uncle Pete, for his part, was still staring at the photo from the 2004 inauguration like it was a bomb.

“David thinks he’s going to be President,” he said, using the glass to reflect the light from the window. “Doesn’t he?”

“Maybe he will be,” she said. “The kids...”

And, with the mention of her children, my mom suddenly remembered I was in the room. She jumped, turned around, pretended that she hadn’t seen me standing in the doorway with luggage waiting for this all to plot out, and said, “Oh, Peter, come in!”

I came in, put the bag down next to the sofa bed, and my mom was still staring at Uncle Pete, who had moved on from the photos under the window, and on to one of the bookcases.

“I can park my house in your office alone,” he told her, as he ran his finger along the scalloped edge of one of the shelves, which now was the seasonal home of my great-grandmother’s creche--something with sentimental value but too chintzy to go in the foyer with the A-list decorations. “What’s your heating bill like?”

“I don’t know, Pete,” she said, crisply.

It was a fear of mine, that I would grow up to be so much less than Justine and Philip.

The single uncle who let love get away, let a career get away, let life get away. Who wandered in at Christmastime in a drunken daydream to brood over what they had, and I didn’t.

Uncle Pete picked up a porcelain shepherd, turned it over in his hand, and returned it to its flock in the manger scene.

Mom gave me a very subtle side-eye.

“So Dave pays the bills?” he asked.

“Our accountant pays the bills,” she replied.

“Who pays the accountant?” he asked, as he picked up the Virgin Mary, turned it over in his hand.

“Fairies,” she told him. “Can I help you with that?”

“Oh, no,” he replied, lazily. “Wasn’t this Grandma’s?”

“I got it when she died.”

“I always thought Diane got it,” he replied, studying it closer. “Huh. I always thought this Mary looked like that actress.”

My mom realized she would have to bite. “Which actress?”

“Three’s Company,” he said. “Not Suzanne Somers. The brunette.”

“Joyce DeWitt.”

“No,” he said. “Maybe not Three’s Company. Who was the girl from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Huh,” said Uncle Pete, holding up the figurine. “I’d know it when I hear it.”

Mary, who may or may not have looked like the girl from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, suddenly tumbled out of his fingers and fell to wood floor, her head popped off like a gunshot.

Uncle Pete and my mom screamed out dueling obscenities at the exact same time, both rushing down to the floor, to the scene of the crime.

Mom held the body and the head in her outstretched hands. “It’s fine,” she said, placidly, with the determination not to lash out this early in the holiday season.

“I can glue it,” he said, motioning to the head. “It’s not that bad. Clean break.” He exhaled. “I guess Joseph’s single now. Nothing wrong with that.”

 

“‘Maybe he’ll be President,’” Philip repeated, his voice hushed. He leaned back in his desk chair. “She said that? This is part of a troubling pattern. She’s going to March for Life in January--did you know that?”

My mother attended March for Life only in re-election years. My dad had been re-elected last November, had more than five years left on his term in the Senate.

It was harrowing to think about: the long game. Preparing to face a national media far more hostile than the Nevada media for a moderate politician with decent approval ratings.

“This is going to be horrible,” he continued. “We have to stop this.” But he lost interest; he was staring across the room at his alarm clock, at the red numbers that switched from 11:59, then 12:00. “Merry Christmas Eve,” he added. “Today’s the day.”

He opened his desk drawer, pulled out a black velvet box: Ouma’s engagement ring, destined for Lindsay.

And then he tossed it to me, underhand, which I wasn’t expecting; it sailed across the room to where I was sitting on his couch, and hit my knee, and fell to the floor.

Philip rolled his eyes, but giggled. “Nice catch.”

“Nice throw,” I replied, leaning down to pick it up. And I flipped it open.

I hadn’t remembered what Ouma’s engagement ring looked like. I had never thought much about it. It was larger than I thought, a big round diamond encircled by smaller sapphires.

There was something about growing older, that Philip was going to be getting married, that the family would start to grow, and it was a strange thing to comprehend. I was 20. I was not old. And I knew that. But watching the future, watching pieces fall together. At least for Philip. Everything else felt so in flux for me, but they weren’t for Philip. Philip had at least the self-assurance that everything was going to be okay.

I thought of Kevin. Kevin was never far from my thoughts.

“Are you scared?” I asked Philip.

Philip smiled. “I’d be scared if I didn’t know what the answer would be.”

“You know what the answer’s going to be?”

“Well, we’ve talked about it,” he said. “She’s going to be surprised when it happens but she’s not going to be surprised that it’s happening. You know?”

“I guess that’s the only thing to be scared about,” I said. I closed the box, I tossed it back to him. I overthrew, but he snatched it out of the air with one hand, as the recipient of my dad’s athletic genes, and then set it back down on the desk.

“It’ll be nice,” he said. “And then, on the 25th, when we fly up to Boston to see her parents, she’ll have something to tell them over Christmas dinner.” He smiled. “I mean, they know already, because I called them to ask them. But, you know.”

Philip had kept me in close detail during each step of the process. He was most nervous about talking to Lindsay’s parents--he had to ask both of them together, he said, though he didn’t explain why. He didn’t seem nervous about Lindsay.

“I’m happy for you,” I told him. “She’ll love it.”

“Speaking of things people will love,” he told me, “you and Justine each owe me $60 for Dad’s gift and $50 for Mom’s.”

“Remind me tomorrow,” I said. “What’d we get them?”

“They both wanted ‘experiences’ rather than things,” he said, “because they’re difficult like that. I got Mom a Sur le Table gift card for cooking classes, and we got Dad flying lessons.”

“Flying lessons?” I said. “What, did his imam put him up to that?”

Philip smiled. “He asked for them. I don’t know. We could only afford an hour, which I’m not even sure gets him up in an actual plane, but that’s not our problem. Oh, and you owe two dollars each for their cards.”

“You bought them six dollar cards?”

“They make music when you open them,” Philip replied. “I don’t know why I bought them. Lindsay likes them.”

“Whipped,” I told him. “Whipped and you’re not even married yet, how did that happen?”

Philip giggled. “Someday, you’ll be in love, and you’ll be halfway through doing something before you realize you’re only doing it because they told you to.”

They. He said they.

What did he mean by they?

And Philip didn’t realize it, as he fumbled with the desk drawer to put the ring away, but the “they” hung there between us. Subtext suddenly on the surface.

Or an overreaction. A they tossed out in the most innocuous, genericized sense.

I had been in love, even if Philip didn’t know it. Was still in love.

But I hadn’t been whipped. Kevin had asked me to do plenty of things that I didn’t want to do, and I didn’t do them. Oz on Michaela’s birthday. Telling Veronica. Telling anyone. And Kevin had gone to Paris, had flirted too close in public, even though I told him not to. He wasn’t whipped either.

And it had only been a few weeks. Since Kevin had touched me, since I had touched Kevin, and time and our relationship seemed to have infinite possibilities.

Neither of us were whipped, and maybe being whipped was a prerequisite for love. Walking into CVS to buy a six dollar greeting card without even realizing it just because you instinctively knew that’s what they would have wanted.

Philip turned back to me, and I could have just opened my mouth, at 12:03am on Christmas Eve 2007, and said it. If there was a time to say it, I could have said it.

That’s the kind of thing Kevin would have wanted me to do.

But Kevin wasn’t here.

I looked straight at Philip and I said, “Singing cards are a waste of money.”

 

It happened at about five o’clock the next evening, Christmas Eve, just around sunset. The proposal.

We were all gathered in the kitchen over three bottles of Veuve Cliquot rosé and scattered appetizers: the Beckers, the Amicos, Ambassador and Mrs. Kendall, and the Averys from down the street, who always spent Christmas with us.

We weren’t supposed to be in the kitchen. My mom had put the appetizers on the living room coffee table in and effort to migrate the party into more elegant surrounds, but Uncle Pete had brought everything except the crudités back into the kitchen and left them on the island. Mom didn’t bother to make it an issue, with she and Nonna busily working in tandem like a couple line cooks on the Seven Fishes.

But when it happened, it happened quickly: Philip pulled Lindsay out of a conversation with a slightly-too-flirtatious Ambassador Kendall, saying he wanted to show her something outside, and the entire room fell silent as they headed out through the garage.

“Ooh,” Mrs. Avery cooed, once the door closed, as her son Ryan, the Avery who had been in my class at the Harrington School, filled her up with another glass of champagne.

The party, finally and in one unit, migrated into the living room, where the thirteen of us stood indiscreetly at the picture window, lined up like The Last Supper, looking out to the backyard.

My dad had a digital camera clutched tightly in his fist, ready to pounce on the magic moment once the happy couple hit the predetermined mark that Philip and my dad had scouted out earlier this morning, staking it out with a stick on top of the crunch white snow.

Uncle Pete was holding the platter of smoked salmon in one hand, a piece of smoked salmon on a round of baguette in the other.

We saw the first signs of Philip and Lindsay coming around to the backyard, and we all pivoted just slightly, as if we were doing some social milling.

“Could we look any more obnoxious?” whispered Luke Avery to me.

“I know, right?”

Philip was talking and looking very serious--presumably rattling the pre-arranged talking points he asked for my edits on, around one o’clock in the morning the night before--and Lindsay was suppressing a smile, the cautious optimism of someone who basically knew what was coming but didn’t want to jinx it.

And then it happened, in an instant: Philip spinning Lindsay to the correct angle, and dropping down on one knee in the snow, the moment carefully framed in the picture window of the living room.

“David, make sure you have the flash off,” said my mom, as the words, “Will you marry me?” were traced by Philip’s lips.

And Lindsay McCoy entered the different stages of engagement excitement: covering her mouth with her hands, the unbridled smile, the fervent nodding, the hug, the kiss, and the gasp as the ring slid on her finger.

I took another sip of Veuve Cliquot rosé.

The last time I had Veuve Cliquot rosé was with Kevin, in the underpass in the riverbed in Colton, California. Drinking it out of the bottle.

“Young love,” said Uncle Pete, holding his champagne flute to his lips, as he stared through the picture window. “I hope it lasts.”

And, once Philip and Lindsay came back towards the house, conversation segregated itself again--my mom and Nonna went back to the kitchen; Ambassador Kendall continued selling Claire Avery, age 17, on the Latin romance of Tegucigalpa; Mrs. Kendall and Mrs. Avery telling volumes of stories to each other made up of disdainful eyebrow raises and champagne sips; my dad and Mr. Avery talking about the megapixels in the new digital camera; Uncle Pete talking about the divorce rate to no one in particular.

But everyone stopped, to give a celebratory cheer, as Philip, the right knee of his suit wet from the snow, a scar of the engagement, and Lindsay, who couldn’t take her eyes off her finger, came back into the room.

Young love. I hope it lasts.

 

“You know,” said Luke Avery, a few hours later, as we settled into his Audi, parked in the Averys’ driveway four doors down. “This is getting to be a tradition.”

We were drinking Grey Goose straight from the bottle--contraband fortification, the same thing he had invited me to do last year on Christmas Eve.

We were both already a few glasses of champagne in. Enough where our drinking was going to start being looked upon unfavorably by our parents, who had had more than us but we were still minors.

Even though, for Luke, it was only barely.

“My 21st birthday is on Thursday,” he was telling me, accepting the bottle back. “But we can still do it next year. It’s fine.”

I smiled at that. I wasn’t especially close friends with Luke, but I liked him. And he was cute, in a navy blue suit--not hot like Kevin, but cute, with a lean build and dark hair and glasses and a full face of stubble, a new addition this year that made him look older, sexier.

He had been two years ahead of me at Harrington, a year behind Philip--he was a senior at Northwestern now. We’d said hi to each other at Harrington, because our parents were friends and we had spent the last decade at functions like Christmas, but that was the extent of all of it.

Luke took another swig, said, “Whew!” And handed it back to me.

I stared at the bottle. I wasn’t good with swigs, and I had already had a few, each which felt increasingly difficult to keep down.

But Luke Avery had invited me to do this, two years in a row now, escape the Christmas party where our drinking was tacitly monitored by our parents. Even if Luke was hours away from being 21.

Luke was watching me, and I took another big swig, willing myself not to cough anything up. And I forced a smile on my face. “It’s good,” I said.

Luke rubbed his hands together. It was about thirty degrees outside, and not much warmer in the car. Like last year, we hadn’t brought our coats, because that would’ve made it look like we had left. Luke hadn’t offered to start the car, but I wasn’t going to bring it up.

I handed the bottle back to him. He was smiling at me.

“You’ve been so quiet tonight,” he said.

“There you go,” he said. “You’ve been so quiet tonight.”

I turned up the smile on my face, even more. “Really? I don’t know--there’s just so much going on. Philip, Lindsay. All that.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Philip’s only a year older than me. I couldn’t imagine getting engaged in a year.”

“Don’t you have a girlfriend last Christmas?” I asked him. “I thought you said you did.”

Luke’s mouth crept into a smile. “Yeah, I definitely said that,” he told me. He paused. “His name was Mike. We broke up over the summer.”

Oh.

That I was not expecting.

I tried to think if their relationship had been on Facebook--if I had missed the theatrical coming out of a good family friend, but of course I wouldn’t have. People didn’t come out theatrically, like Kevin did. They didn’t make a spectacle, insist on themselves.

If anything, Luke would be like me. It would be a closeted affair, sneaking through the side door, pretending to just be friends in polite company.

And I thought of Luke. The invisible face of his boyfriend kissing down his new stubble, unbuttoning his shirt, throwing him down on the bed, like Kevin had done with me.

I was horny. It had been nearly a month since I last had sex, with Kevin, that last just time minutes after he had broken up with me. The last time I felt that big cock pounding my ass. When I didn’t want to let him go.

There was a little stirring downstairs. I put my legs closer together, just in case.

“Yeah,” he said. “Friends all know. Haven’t told the family yet, but that’s kind of the last people of the puzzle.”

“I can imagine.”

Luke smiled at that. “You were hooking up with some girl last year too,” he said. “Weren’t you?”

I remembered that, last year, I had said Michaela. I was thinking of Kevin--ecstatic and hopeful, after that first time Kevin and I hooked up, the night before I had come home for Christmas last year--but I had told Luke Avery I hooked up with Michaela Birdrock.

We made eye contact, and his smile grew larger. Because he vaguely knew the answer to: “What was her name again?”

I was horny, and I was thinking of Kevin Malley, but I was also thinking about Luke, and the not indistinct possibility that he would fuck me in the backseat of his Audi.

My voice came out barely audible. “Kevin.”

But it was enough for Luke. He gave a breathy laugh, a relieved laugh. “Sounds about right. Are you two…? Still?”

Were we two, still. No. We were no longer two, still. We were two ones, separated by a continent and, in a couple weeks, a continent and an ocean.

And it’d be months before I saw Kevin again, before I got to settle back into his arms, and tell him I loved him, tell him how much I wanted to be with him.

But we were not. Two. Still. “No. We were for a while, but no.”

I had meant to say more. I had meant to be more eloquent, but I was suddenly so dangerously close to tears just thinking about Kevin and me and our relationship and what had happened, the singularization of us.

“Yeah, it sucks,” he said. He took another swill of vodka, and then set it down in the cupholder under the console. “I gave you some bullshit advice last year.”

Did he? I hadn’t remembered very much of our conversation last year, except fishing around to see if he was interested, and him telling me that he had a girlfriend.

Who was Mike. Mike the girlfriend.

“It’s okay,” I replied. “I don’t think I took it anyway.”

“Well,” he said. “I told you, when you go after a girl, tell her: ‘I like you. You’re hot. Let’s grab a drink.’”

I didn’t remember that. I genuinely didn’t. I smiled, and said, “Oh, that’s not bad advice. I think that’s good advice.”

A year ago, Kevin and I had already hooked up, already taken the initial babysteps towards what would be our relationship and our breakup, over the course of the next year. I didn’t need pickup advice.

I did now. Though I couldn’t imagine myself ever going up to anyone and saying, “I like you. You’re hot. Let’s grab a drink.”

Maybe it was bad advice.

“Is it?” asked Luke Avery. He gave a very long pause. “Because, you know, we already grabbed a drink.”

And I couldn’t even say who initiated what. Maybe he did, maybe we both did.

We had both been home from school for two weeks, probably both as horny as hell, and we just came together, spontaneous combustion, over the center console. Our lips smashed together, his hands grazing my body over my sportcoat, one on my shoulder, one on my back.

I pulled him in closer, more ravenously, and he moved the hand from my shoulder to the back of my head. It was competitive, almost. To see who could kiss harder, who could get there first.

And when we broke, Luke decided to lumber over the center console, which was very much in the way of progress at this point of our making out.

Luke was not at all graceful, but he was not graceful in an adorable way; he contorted his way out of the driver’s seat, and then his shoe got caught on the parking brake. His glasses askew, he sort of just fell into my laugh, a big smile on his face.

“Attractive, right?” he said.

I kissed him again. “Very.”

He straddled my legs, and we started making out again, Luke on my lap. Through our slacks, I could feel both of us hardening, both of beginning to rub up against each other. As our lips wrestled with each other, our hands covering as much of the other person’s body in the few minutes we had before we had to go back in for the Seven Fishes.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him push the buttons on the door--the seat slid back as far as it could go, and started reclining. He held onto me as the seat took us horizontal.

And he was still on top of me, his body on top of mine, and my hand snuck down to his ass, which was rounder, more muscular than I had thought. And he held me closer, our dicks pressing together again through our pants.

Luke’s fingers were undoing my belt. And then my button, and then the zipper, and finally my dick sprung out when he yanked down the waistband of my boxer-briefs.

Luke wasted no time. He moved off me, got on his knees down on the car’s carpet, and took my dick in his mouth.

The last blowjob I had gotten--for a year--was Kevin Malley. Luke’s technique was not dissimilar. And when I closed my eyes, I was on Kevin’s white sheets in his bed on Broadway, and he was going down on my dick.

And I could almost hear his voice: You like that, Becker?

Oh, I love it, Kevin. Don’t stop. Never stop.

I’ll never stop.

Luke was speeding up. Faster than Kevin went. Kevin wouldn’t go that fast. It was not unpleasant. But Kevin was about technique, the delicate strokes.

I put my head to slow Luke down, but he didn’t seem to understand; he kept sucking me, faster, faster than Kevin would, and I felt my hard-on slipping suddenly away.

Luke took my dick out of his mouth. It wasn’t soft-soft, but it wasn’t hard. Wasn’t as hard as it had been when Luke first took it in his mouth. And he looked up at me, slightly confused, slightly disappointed, like he hadn’t understood exactly what he did.

“Let me suck you off,” I said, to save face, and Luke lit up at that. Everyone liked a blowjob.

We awkwardly switched seats, neither of us graceful. I hiked my pants back up. Got on my knees where Luke had been, and undid his belt, his button, his zipper.

And maybe, after what may or may not have been a near-miss last year, he anticipated us hooking up in the passenger seat of his car. Because he was wearing red Andrew Christian briefs.

Fuck-me briefs. The kind of underwear you wouldn’t wear for your own comfort at family dinner on Christmas Eve.

Something Kevin would never wear. But still. They were hot. And they framed his package perfectly.

They were really hot.

I put my mouth on the red fabric, and Luke moaned. And I moved up and down his rock-hard, fabric-covered dick, until I pulled down the waistband and saw the thing in the flesh.

It wasn’t as big as Kevin’s. Who was as big as Kevin? But it was still big. And it was the perfect shape: a prominent head, a nice upward curve, a big vein running along the side of it.

And it was hard. It looked throbbingly hard, the hardest-it-had-ever-been hard.

I took it in my mouth. Just the nice head. I played with his dickhole with my tongue, the way Kevin liked. And he moaned. He moaned and, again, when I closed my eyes, it could have been anyone moaning. It could have been Kevin moaning.

His dick was easier to suck than Kevin’s. Kevin never got much from me in the way from technique; I was more focused on making sure I could even take the damn thing without gagging.

I felt like a fucking champion, sucking Luke’s dick, and making him squirm. And by the time I deep-throated him, took advantage of the fact that he hit the back of my throat way before Kevin’s would have, he was holding onto the handle in the ceiling, pulling himself up, fucking his cock back at my mouth as I sucked him off.

“I’m going to cum,” he said, maybe as a warning, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop and, maybe it was the champagne and vodka that was giving me courage, or maybe it was the horniness that I felt so intrinsically now, twenty-two days post-Kevin, that I wanted all of him.

Not some of him, but all of him.

Kevin gave a big groan, and dumped his hot load down my throat.

No. Luke. Luke gave the groan. Luke's load down my throat.

I swallowed it. Felt his cum coating the back of my throat. And, like someone who did this all the time, I reached over to grab the vodka, and took a swig to wash it down.

“Fuck,” said Luke. He was panting. He had a thin layer of sweat on his forehead, despite the cold; the windows had begun to fog up, like that scene in Titanic. His glasses had fogged up too.

“You like that?” I asked him.

“Holy shit,” he said, whipping off his glasses. “Fuck. We definitely should’ve done that last year.”

 

By the time the party faded away and we all went upstairs, I was drunk. Not college drunk, not puking in the bathroom at The Boot drunk, but drunk. Granted, over the course of eight hours, but several glasses of champagne, then white wine, then a vodka and semen interlude in Luke Avery’s Audi, and red wine, and Irish coffee, and a little bit of sherry.

That did sound like a lot. I tottered across my room. I was drunk.

I fell into my desk chair.

And I was still horny. Because even though I could still feel Luke Avery’s cum vaguely in the back of my throat, I hadn’t cum myself.

I thought about Kevin. Kevin was never far from my mine, but I specifically thought about Kevin. And where he was. I knew he was spending Christmas Day with Veronica’s family in Mandeville on the North Shore, but I didn’t know what he was doing for Christmas Eve.

It was 12:27. Officially Christmas Day. And I was drunk and horny enough to think: what the hell.

“Merry Christmas,” I texted.

I felt the very, very first pangs of regret, that I would kick myself in the morning, in the clear light of sobriety. But I didn’t have time to get that far, because Kevin immediately texted me back: “Merry Christmas, Becker.”

“Are you at Veronica’s?”

“Tomorrow,” he replied. “They invited me for tonight, but one day of the Tandys’ weird Christmas-Hannukah hybrid thing is more than enough for me.”

“Oh,” I said. My right hand was holding my phone, but my left palm was rubbing the outside of my dick, through my slacks. I thought about Kevin, naked, in his bed. Holding his phone, and responding to my text immediately. “What are you up to, then?”

“Drinking alone at Johnny White’s in the Quarter. ”

“That sounds… merry?”

“Not the worst Christmas I’ve ever had,” he replied. “How's being back in Hamlet?"

I was getting hard, from the friction of my palm. And the fact that I was so dangerously close to Kevin Malley. I kept reading every text in his voice. When I closed my eyes--when I closed my eyes like I did every time I jacked off now--I could see him standing over me, and it was a month ago.

“Hamlet is good,” I typed back. “The Italians are here. And the Averys, and the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras.”

“So, just a typical night at the Becker household,” he replied. “Glad you’re having a good time. Give Nonna a kiss for me. Skip Uncle Pete.”

“Nonna asked about you.”

There was a little bit of a pause, possibly as Kevin tried to slice up what I had meant by that. “Really?”

“Not directly,” I said. “She asked why I’m single.”

There was another long pause. Long enough for me, even in my drunken state, to very much regret being that forceful with Kevin. When we were texting. When we were getting along.

“Subtle, Becker,” he replied. But maybe he was in a good mood, it being Christmas. Or maybe he was a little drunk himself, because his next text was: “Believe me, you won’t be single for long. And I’ll be jealous as fuck.”

And, even though I had regretted my last comment, I couldn’t help but twist the knife just a little longer.

“Well, I already had sex today. In an Audi. Luke Avery’s gay, who knew.”

I had only ever mentioned the Averys in the abstract--I didn’t know if he could’ve picked Luke Avery out of a lineup. But, like my last message, I regretted flaunting my Christmas Eve hookup after I pressed send.

Because I didn’t want Kevin to think I was over him, that I had moved on to someone else. And most importantly, I didn’t want Kevin to stop talking, to leave me again. So I added:

“But don’t worry. You’ll always have a special place in my heart.”

And I thought that seemed sarcastic, almost, considering the context. And I was just drunk enough to add: “And an even more special place in my ass.”

Kevin sent me back a smiley face, but then, “I think we may be getting into an ethical ex-boyfriend gray area, and I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

Oh. We were.

But he loved it. I could imagine the smile on his face, the repositioning of his legs at the bar at Johnny White’s. Wanting it. Not wanting to want it, but wanting it.

“You’re just mad because I’m getting you hard in a public place.”

He sent back a winky face.

“Regretting this breakup?” I asked. “Or are you just lonely on Christmas?”

Kevin didn’t respond to that. The next text was, "So, are you wearing a tux again, or do you only bust out the formalwear on Thanksgiving?”

I smiled at that. Because I had him. Because we were doing this. I typed out: “Gray tweed blazer. Navy pants. Red plaid tie.”

But I was horny and drunk enough where I thought we should expedite this.

“Just a jockstrap,” I told him. I unbuttoned my pants, slid the zipper down, so I could get a little closer to the action, rubbing my dick through my underwear. “And nothing else.”

“You don’t even own a jockstrap.”

“I’m on my bed,” I said again. I pulled down down my pants and boxer-briefs to my knees, in one movement, and my rock-hard dick flopped out. “And I’m on all fours. In my jockstrap. Waiting.”

There was another long pause from Kevin. I undid my tie, threw it on the floor next to my belt, unbuttoned my white button-down.

And my phone buzzed: “This really isn’t a good idea, I don’t think.”

I leaned back in my desk chair. I wanted to keep going anyway, and I wasn’t going to let Kevin be sensible.

“It’s been three weeks since I’ve had a dick in my ass,” I said. “Since I’ve had your dick in my ass. And my hole is the horniest it’s ever been before. It needs your cock so bad.”

Another pause from Kevin. Then: “Well, I’m not going to fuck you,” he warned.

I didn’t know what else to say to that. He wasn’t playing? At all? “Oh.”

“Because we’re broken up, and I don’t want to lead you on,” he said. “Definitely not going to fuck you.” And then he added, “Unless you beg me for it. Good bottoms beg for it.”

And I smiled at that. At the ruse. At the role play. And I closed my eyes for a second, and began stroking my dick, just slowly, because I wanted to last. I imagined it was Kevin’s hand, Kevin’s mouth. Kevin’s body against mine, his lips on my neck, his hand on my cock. I couldn’t remember a time I had been this hard before: fifteen days without sex, without Kevin.

“I’m not going to beg,” I told him.

“Then you’re not going to get fucked.”

“So what does begging look like? I tell you I need you? I need your cock deep inside me? Because it’s the thing I’ve been missing?”

“That’s a start,” Kevin replied.

“No,” I told him. “You don’t get to call the shots anymore.”

“Yes, I do,” he replied. “Lick a finger and play with your bottom hole. Pretend it’s my big cock.”

And I did. I was running out of hands. I licked my middle finger on my left hand, and slowly lowered it to my awaiting asshole.

And I let out a long exhale. It had been so long since I’d had something in my ass, even something as small as a single finger. But I could move it. I could hit my spot, just slightly, just grazing it. I could close my eyes and imagine it was Kevin’s finger. Not Kevin’s cock, Kevin’s cock was so big that it didn’t feel anything like my finger.

“You haven’t thought about anything but this tight ass,” I told him. “And how it feels around your cock. Have you?”

I was hitting my spot now. A lot. I could feel the tension building. I had to bite my lip from screaming, waking the entire house up in the earliest hours of Christmas morning.

Kevin sent back: “I keep picturing you on all fours, with your face buried in my pillow. Begging to scream with pleasure, but knowing you can’t.”

God. How had we never done this before.

I set the phone down on my desk, so I could have both hands free--so I could finger my hole, and jack my engorged dick, and I didn’t last long: maybe ten seconds, and I erupted all over my stomach, my chest, even to the bottom of my chin.

Fuck. I’d jacked off in my room since I’d been back, but that was… different.

I picked back up my phone. “That’s hot.”

I could imagine a wry smile on Kevin’s face, as he wrote the next bit: “You just came, didn’t you?”

I hated that Kevin was always right, that Kevin could read me. And I debated being coy and sexy, but I was drunk and I was relieved and I was suddenly very, very tired. So I wrote back: “More cum than you’ve ever seen in your life.”

“Where?”

“Stomach. Chest. Face.”

“You came all over yourself,” he told me. “You filthy little slut.”

And I could just imagine Kevin had fucked me. Me, facedown in his pillow. Kevin pounding me, until I was spent and enthralled and placid, like I was now.

Except Kevin wasn’t here. And I was spent and placid but empty. And I thought about him, and I missed him. And wanted him with me.

And I wanted to say, “Isn’t this right? Doesn’t this feel right? Shouldn’t we be together?”

But I didn’t. I sent back, “Did you cum too?”

“No,” he said. “I’m at Johnny White’s, I told you. I was just selflessly trying to get you off. You’re welcome.”

I’d forgotten that Kevin was sitting up at a bar. On Christmas. Nursing a drink, and texting me things like: “You came all over yourself, you filthy little slut” as he casually ordered another Abita Amber from the bartender?

And I had to smile at that. At the sheer ridiculousness of that.

At Kevin.

“So, what, you’re just going to sit there at a bar, casually sipping your beer, while you’re sexting me? You’re not going to jack off?”

“Oh, I’m going to jack off,” he said. “I going to get stinking drunk by myself, and then I’m going to cab back uptown, and crawl into bed, and pull up your texts, and imagine you spreading your legs in front of me. Close my eyes and remember how tight your ass feels around my cock.”

I smiled at that. But I was no longer horny. “Goodnight, Kevin.” And though I thought better of it, I added: “We get to do this when you’re in Paris, right?”

“I won’t have texts in Paris."

"But you'll have Skype, won't you?”

“Is that your subtle way of saying you want to jack off with me over video chat?”

“Oh, was I being subtle?”

He sent me a smiley face. And I decided to leave it at that. On that note. On a good note.

“Goodnight, Kevin,” I said.

“Goodnight, Becker,” he replied. “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal.”