Holiday Cheer from Andrew Grey and Amy Lane

Chapter 2 Hard to be a Saint in the City

Chapter 2: Hard to be a Saint in the City

AFTER ANOTHER frantic kiss, Andy dashed out the door, leaving the apartment a cold, vacant place, and Eli tried hard not to get too emotional. There were things to do, right? It was the Christmas season; the kids at the shelter needed a thousand things, and Eli was in charge of Christmas with them this year. It didn’t even bother him that he was Jewish by birth. Christmas was all about the fantasy. The idea that there was a perfect day and a perfect love and that children would be cared for by magic or fate or a responsible adult were all equally unlikely in the minds and hearts of the kids at Rainbow House.

Andy had asked him to come to Vermont, but this was the one year Eli absolutely, positively could not leave. The fact that Andy understood this sort of made him the perfect boyfriend, but it could also mean Andy was totally okay with leaving Eli behind.

Argh!

Nobody kissed like that when they were totally okay with leaving someone behind, right?

In the end, that was the thought that got Eli going. He made quick work of the kitchen—but first he finished the eggs Andy hadn’t eaten. Eli didn’t waste food, ever. He’d known too many hard times when food was a luxury. Andy had known that when packing little homemade dinners for him, Eli noticed as he put the eggs in the fridge and took stock with a little lump in his throat.

Ten days’ worth of dinners—along with a note that said there would be a food delivery on the twenty-ninth of December so Eli would have food until the third. Eli also knew Andy had stocked the freezer with frozen burritos, but Eli wouldn’t let Andy’s hard work go bad. Andy knew that.

Andy knew him so well.

That first day after they’d met on the subway, the one thing that had drawn Eli to him—besides his big blond good looks and country-boy smile, of course—had been his way of paying complete attention to Eli, as though Eli was his favorite subject and Andy was studying him for the big test.

Back Then

“SO YOU know everything about me,” Andy said, taking Eli by the hand and pulling him off the subway car at the Williamsburg stop. “You know I’m a tech coder, you know I grew up in a tiny town, mom, dad, two kid sisters—so boring, yawn now. But what about you?”

“Nothing to know,” Eli mumbled. The streets of New York were always so busy. He liked being able to tuck his hands into his pockets and keep his head down and go. Walking hand in hand with someone was harder. He had to be aware of his space and Andy’s space and—oh. Andy drew nearer to him, bumped shoulders, and kept up that grip on his hand.

This was nice. Andy’s body heat radiated out from the protective wool of his peacoat, and Eli felt like a lizard basking in the sun.

“There can’t be nothing!” Andy laughed. They came to the real-estate agent’s office, which had a small blue-and-white striped valance to protect people from the weather. Still smiling, he drew Eli under the valance and looked into his face. “You have the prettiest eyes,” he murmured before bending to place a quick kiss on Eli’s lips. “There’s got to be a story in there somewhere.”

Then he lifted his head and turned to open the door and let them into the small office, greeting Elaine Stritch, his agent, with a hearty hello. Eli was left, heart pounding, to listen as Andy negotiated the three visits they were going to do that day and introduce Eli as his new friend who was helping him get a feel for Brooklyn.

It turned out to be bullshit, of course. Andy worked in Williamsburg and had for nearly a year. He walked down the street with that shoulder-swaggering confidence that made people part for him, and Eli began to cling to his hand just to ride his wake.

The agent was competent—which meant she showed them the apartment, talked for a moment about the features, and then left them alone to decide.

But as they looked around each place, Eli started to realize that Andy was looking for more than just an apartment. He was looking for a life, a future, and that… that blew Eli’s mind.

“No,” Andy murmured at the first one. “No windows. We need windows to the outside. I don’t care if they’re in the front, in the kitchen, or in the back—there’s got to be a window so we can look outside and see what kind of day it’s going to be.”

Eli had snorted. “So you can look outside and see what kind of day it’s going to be.”

“So me and the person of my choice can look outside and see what kind of day it’s going to be,” Andy corrected him. “I’m not going to live here alone. I’m going to settle down.”

“Just like that. You assume you’re going to settle—”

Andy had kissed him then too, until Eli couldn’t remember what he’d been going to say.

“And we need a guest room,” Andy said breathlessly when they came up for air. “Because my family’s going to visit. And yours too.”

“I don’t have any family,” Eli confessed in a daze. This wasn’t first-date conversation. Hell, this wasn’t even date conversation. Eli didn’t tell anybody this. The facts of his somewhat pathetic existence were locked behind his eyes, because he hated pity.

“Well, you’ll have mine,” Andy offered blithely. “And if not visiting family, visiting friends. And if not visiting friends, we’ll adopt.”

Eli sputtered. “Adopt? You’re already planning for kids?”

Andy had paused then, gazing into Eli’s eyes with absolute determination. “You want kids, don’t you? At least one? To open your home to a small person, someone we can shower with affection and spend time with, and love?”

Eli had been helpless then. Absolutely helpless. He’d been kicked out of his house when his parents found out he was gay. Ever since, he’d lived with the fantasy of having a child of his own, whom he swore he wouldn’t let down. Someone who would be treated like a child should be—with love and care and attention and laughter. It was his pet plan, held close to his heart even as he built up his credibility and trust at Rainbow House. Someday he’d learn enough from the kids at Rainbow House to feel like he could give a child a childhood, make his house a home.

And here was this giant of a man who brought him breakfast and found his umbrella and grabbed his hand to dream impossible dreams… and they had the same dream?

He’d almost run away then, terrified by all the promise in Andy’s sparkling blue eyes. But when he took a step back, he realized he was already in Andy’s arms, clinging to his casual shirt underneath the peacoat, sheltered by the peacoat like a duckling under a parent’s wing.

“Someday,” he rasped.

“Me too,” Andy murmured. “So yeah. We hold out for a guest room that can be a kid’s room. And windows so it doesn’t feel like a prison. And hardwood floors and arched doorways.”

“Arched doorways?” Eli asked, looking around at the very pedestrian lines of the apartment they were in.

“Damned straight.”

“Well, now you’ve gone too far.”

And Andy had grinned then, blinding him with his vision, his dream for the future, the intoxicating fantasy that Eli would be in on that dream from the ground floor.

It took three more months and countless visits to the real-estate office for Andy to find the perfect apartment. By the time he did, he’d had Eli so wrapped around his heartbeat that subletting his own tiny hole in the wall to a recent graduate from Rainbow House and moving in with Andy had seemed inevitable.

But Eli had lived with him for two years before he gave up his lease and let the graduate have the apartment for real.

And Now

“HEY, ELI! Are we getting the tree today?”

Eli smiled at Lola as he walked through the door of the shelter. The outside of Rainbow House was pretty impressive. Taking up what used to be an old theater, before extensive remodeling, the scalloped overhang that took up nearly a quarter of a city block had been painted with a series of rainbows over the stucco. Yes, time and weather kept trying to dull their luster, but every two years or so, somebody wrangled some extra money for paint out of the budget and let the residents do the paint job. The rainbows had turned into murals, and this last one had turned into watercolor rainbows that bled into flags representing as many countries as the kids could possibly fit on the marquee. The result was slightly chaotic but very universal, and it made Eli smile every day he worked.

On this day, he’d walked through the grand entryway, between the tables set up to admit new shelter residents or simply pass out food to those who didn’t want to stay but were hungry, and into the foyer of the house itself.

The foyer had been kept grand, and while the theater had been renovated to a two-story house—top story for dormitories, bottom story for schoolrooms, offices, and medical facilities—the foyer still gave a sense of greatness to the battered old girl that Eli loved as much as the rainbows.

Sometimes old things did need to change, but sometimes they just needed some paint and some elbow grease to not just change but transform .

“Yeah, honey. I promised. The delivery guys are supposed to get here to set up in an hour.”

Lola nodded as though of course that would happen, but Eli caught her look of suspicion. Well, Lola had been thrown out of the house a year ago, at sixteen, when she’d come home with green stripes in her long hair and high heels. She’d been out on her first date as Lola instead of Chris, and she’d gotten caught, and that lovely champagney joy of first love—and first love with a boy who knew her for exactly who she was at that—had quickly become a fight for survival on the streets.

It had taken her a week to find Rainbow House, and Eli didn’t want to know what she’d been through in that time, although much of it was plainly written in her distrustful eyes and the way her full lower lip trembled whenever something threatened happiness.

But Eli had made it a rule not to make promises to these kids he couldn’t keep, and he had done the fundraising—and Andy’s firm had pitched in a lot —as well as made the order, ensured the order, double-checked the order and delivery, to make sure this promise, of all the ones that had been broken to these kids, would be fulfilled.

“See here?” he said, pulling out his phone. “What’s that say?”

She narrowed her eyes and studied the readout. “It says delivery in an hour. The car is coming in from upstate now.”

“Truck,” he said. “We’re getting a ten-foot tree, delivered and set up, complete with pedestal.”

“And decorations?” she asked suspiciously.

“No, not decorations! That’s our job!”

She rolled her eyes. “Popcorn strings and paper chains?”

“Well, yes,” he said. “But we also have glitter, felt, popsicle sticks, and a whole lot of patterns that Mrs. Wheeler printed out. Have you been to the craft room today? I promise you, there are some prime craft supplies in there. Go look.”

She thawed a little. “Okay. But someday, I’m going to have all glass ornaments. No janky shit on my tree.”

“Fine, but if a kid you love makes it, it’s not ‘janky shit.’ It’s ‘sentimental decorating.’ I swear. It’s a thing.”

That got a small smile. “It’s janky shit, but you’re a nice guy for trying,” she said.

“Then go do some trying yourself,” he said, laughing. “Shoo! I know the younger kids need someone to ooh and ah over their own janky shit.”

And that got a laugh; Lola missed her own younger siblings, but she’d done a nice job of adopting some of the kids at the shelter as her own. And any kid who’d been thrown out of the house at ten, eleven, or twelve for things that they barely understood themselves was desperate for someone to tell them they were okay.

Eli suppressed a sigh at the thought and walked through the foyer to check on Mrs. Wheeler.

Mrs. Wheeler was a retired schoolteacher who devoted three afternoons a week to the shelter, usually helping with lessons and continuation school packets, but this close to Christmas she was all about the arts and crafts—and so were the kids. Thanks to Mrs. Wheeler they had glitter candles and glitter lights and glitter banners and sprays of hand-crocheted stars in every corner of the foyer, all of them awaiting the big tree.

“How’s it going, Margie?” Eli asked as he poked his head into the craft room. As expected, her demesne was a combination of military organization and happy chaos that probably would have driven Eli absolutely bonkers but that the kids seemed to really thrive on.

“Go away, Eli,” Margie said happily. “Your need for order stresses the kids out.”

“Aye aye, chief,” he said, ducking his head as he went to close the door. Before it clicked shut, she stopped him with a little wave before she pushed her ample body up and moved creakily toward the entrance.

“It’s coming, right?” she said softly. “The kids are so excited.”

He held out his phone and showed her the delivery truck, now ten minutes closer than it had been when he’d shown Lola. “So it says,” he told her. “But they haven’t called me yet—”

At that moment, his phone buzzed.

“Don’t get excited,” he muttered. “It’s Andy.”

“Isn’t he on his trip?” she asked.

He nodded and stepped back into the hallway, hitting Call as he went. “Eli Engel,” he said crisply, because he didn’t get gooey when he was here. It was absolutely imperative that the kids believe the adults around them were drama free. Most of them had gotten enough drama from their homelives and were getting a continuous supplemental dose from draconian politics, uncertain futures, and their own hormones.

“Hello, Eli Engel,” Andy said teasingly. “Your tree is on its way.”

Eli blinked. “Wait, they called you ?”

“Mm-hmm,” Andy replied, keeping his voice deliberately vague. “No, I don’t know why, but I know you and the kids are probably freaking out a little by now, so I thought I’d let you know you should have the tables cleared out in the next half hour.”

Eli nodded, remembering the first three times they’d done this, when Andy had been the driving force behind it.

Nobody had thought they could get a Christmas tree that first Christmas.

Andy had been the one to suggest some fundraising, to hit up his bosses, to give Eli a list of other contributors—particularly those located in Bed/Stuy who wouldn’t mind big gold foil stars with their names on them.

And Andy had been the one to spend a week of evening dinners on the phone proving to Eli that it could be done.

“We can do that,” he said. “Thank you. How’s the train ride?”

Andy grunted. “Not as quick as a plane ride but with much less risk of getting snowed in.”

Eli laughed softly and found an alcove—once upon a time it had been a phone nook—and he backed into it, pretending it meant real privacy. “Thanks for the heads-up, babe. I appreciate it.”

“Not a problem.” Andy’s voice was laced with fondness. “I know how you worry.” He paused. “And there should be a couple of boxes of big glass ball ornaments in different colors to go on the tree. The guy said there was a special or something—I have no idea. Anyway, I know Lola thinks it can’t be a real tree without super fancy ornaments, so be sure to put her in charge of making sure those get on the tree. Tell her you’re taking pictures for me, so I expect a full report.”

Eli nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll tell her. She’ll be so excited.”

“Good,” Andy said, a satisfaction in his voice Eli couldn’t identify. “Now tell me you love me and then go have your day. I know you’ve got a busy one planned.”

“I love you,” Eli said wistfully. “I’ll take lots of pictures.”

“I love you back. And you’d better. Now, bye.”

And with that he ended the call.

He was right about Eli’s day—from checking to make sure the kitchen was stocked to looking in on a couple of new residents to having a meeting about funding, his day was packed, and that didn’t include the tree decorating and the trays of hot chocolate and the donated, kid-decorated sugar cookies.

All of it was a breathless flurry of activity and productivity that made Eli proud every day.

It wasn’t until he was helping to clean up after the tree had been decorated—and wondering if he was going to get home before nine at night so he could eat one of Andy’s premade dinners—that he saw a spare piece of paper on the ground by the tree.

It was from a box of ornaments, and it had the usual stuff—number of boxes (five), color of ornaments in box (one box of silver, one of gold, one each of blue, red, and green), number of ornaments per box (twelve), and person to be billed for the ornaments in the boxes.

Andrew Matthew Chambers.

Eli knew the address—it was his address too.

“Whatcha got there?” Margie asked, heaving by him with a trash bag and a broom.

Eli shook his head and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and she snatched the paper away.

It took her a moment, and she put the paper down and handed him a ripped-off portion of industrial paper towel.

“Aw, baby,” she said softly. “That boy really loves you.”

Eli nodded. “I know,” he said through a constricted throat.

“He really did hate leaving you for the holidays.”

“I know.” His lower lip was wobbling.

“Maybe you should trust he’s going to come back, you think?”

“M-m-m-m-ayyy—”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” she murmured, setting her cleaning supplies down on a table and holding her arms out.

Eli found himself engulfed in a big, squishy Margie hug—a thing he’d seen her offer countless kids before him but had never once been subjected to himself.

What was he going to do when Andy decided not to come back to Brooklyn?