Gas Money for Santa

The note read, “I’ve had enough of this.” That’s all. Hal had left it on the dining room table for me to see. The scrawl was obviously done in anger. I hadn’t thought the fights—not rising to the level of fights, I didn’t think—we’d had the last couple of nights were enough to push him over the edge. I know I shouldn’t have said that he went for the surface flash rather than the long-haul reliability. I was just talking about the new Cadillac ATS coup he’d bought a couple of weeks ago from at Baltimore dealer and hauled it back here to Havre de Grace, near the top of the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Susquehanna River. But then he shouldn’t have asked me if that wasn’t what I was: surface flash rather than the long-haul reliability.

I never pretended that I hadn’t been looking for a sugar daddy when we first hooked up.

He’d been worked up and went on to say I was impetuous, overly generous, jumped to conclusions, and avoided confronting problems. He’d said, “If only you’d talk to me about—” but I’d cut him off, saying I didn’t want to talk about it, I wanted to fuck. That ended on his bed, him muttering something about an early Christmas present, with him on top of me, my legs open to him, and him French kissing me while he did his weekly pushups on me. It was how we ended most of our arguments, with me earning my keep by clutching his buttocks, taking his cock, and telling him how good he was doing. And he was, in fact, doing good. He had a nice long one that could get in deep. And I did have “a thing” for older men. Merry Christmas.

Afterward, I’d said, “You forgot to include that I was a pushover for a man with a big dick.”

“I didn’t get around to saying half of what you are,” he retorted. Then, calmed down, he’d just said that that had been covered in everything else he’d said I was and that it was Christmas. It could wait. The note he’d left me, though, said it couldn’t wait.

Just the memory of that brief explosion last night irritated me and I took my cellphone out of my pocket and turned it off. He would call, I was sure, to expound on the note he’d left, and I wasn’t in the mood to hear him. He was old enough to be my father, but I didn’t want a father telling me all the things that were wrong with me. I had wanted Hal just to be a nice sugar daddy, and usually he was.

He’d apologized and I’d laughed it off. I actually felt a little guilty about that—going to a hotel room with a good-looking, muscled-up soldier from the nearby Aberdeen Proving Grounds. I was bartending for him where I worked at Coakley’s pub, on the main waterfront drag, St. John’s Street. The soldier had been cute, in a rough-looking way, and had muscles and a smart mouth. So I went with soldiers who came into the pub sometimes. Big frickin’ deal.

Hal had been the one who wanted us to move in together. I hadn’t promised him total fidelity, and I had myself checked regularly. But I felt bad he’d found out about Corky.

I felt worse that he’d become a martyr about it and had brought it up a couple of times. Good thing I guess that he didn’t know about the other soldiers from the proving grounds. Hal gave good fuck, for a guy eighteen years older than I was, but he didn’t give it often enough. He was busy, though. Owning a restaurant like Charlotte down on the waterfront took a lot of time. But it brought in a lot of money to float us. So, there was that.

Still, a terse note like this to tell me we were finished. He was a man of few words, but not often this few. I guess I could be glad he didn’t add a sentence to tell me to pack up and be out before he got home, which should be by now. He was going to take off from the restaurant and do the grocery shopping. We were seriously out of milk. I’d taken off early myself because it was snowing like hell out there. This was no afternoon to try to find someplace else to live in Havre de Grace. I liked the Concord Pier apartment Hal had gotten overlooking a marina. So, did he decide to buy some milk before deciding to call it quits? I wondered.

I went to the refrigerator, opened it, and said, “Shit.” Not only was there no milk, but I saw that he’d mixed up some eggnog. It was just two days before Christmas, but who doesn’t replace the milk but does mix up homemade eggnog? A guy who was flash surface and no reliability, I guessed.

I looked out to the marina, where all the boats were white today and seemed to be shivering, a December occurrence when it snowed in Maryland. The snow had stopped, though. We were projected to have more, maybe as much as eight inches. And here I was, all alone in an apartment, without milk. With a sigh, I put my coat back on. It was better schlepping out to the Weis grocery store on the Pulaski Highway in four inches of snow than in eight inches, I decided.

I was coming out of Weis with milk and a few other survival supplies when I heard the bells. I looked around for the Salvation Army kettle, because I always slipped some money into the kettle when I passed one. It was a good luck habit. I’d lived on the edge for a while and had been aware that there wasn’t always a lot of distance between me and a guy who was down on his luck and homeless. Who knows, I might be evicted tomorrow in the snow myself. It had started snowing again. There was no Salvation Army bell ringer in sight, but I did see where the ringing was coming from. Across the parking lot, a “sort of” Santa was standing at the edge of a gas station and was shaking a leather strip with lots of little round bells on it. Thanks to atmospherics in the snow, he was getting quite a bit of sound out of them.

He hit me as a “sort of” Santa because he was bedraggled and not making a particularly good stab at the character. He had a red Santa hat with a white fluff ball on the end and he did have wavy white hair, but his beard and mustache, also white, weren’t filled out like Santa’s would be. He had them, but it was like he was just informed the last week in November he was being brought in as a substitute street Santa and had only started growing the beard and mustache then. He had on a red sweat shirt and he was rotund enough, but his baggy pants were black and looked like he’d been rolled in the dust in them.

He had a poster-board sign in front of him on which was scrawled, “Need Help Getting to Florida.” The sign was curling up at the corners. It wouldn’t last another hour in this wet snow. Maybe this poor excuse for a Santa wouldn’t last too many more hours standing out here in the falling snow either. Poor guy. He obviously was homeless, living out of his car, and had been trying to get to somewhere warm when his car ran out of gas. Havre de Grace was more of a “my car ran out of gas when I was driving from New York to Florida” place than a winter wonderland destination.

I started to get into my car when it hit me that I would have tossed money in a Salvation Army kettle out of superstition about “that could be me,” but I was just going to pass this guy by when he needed some gas money to get out of the snow. He could be me too.

I put the bag with the milk and survival supplies on the floor of the backseat of the car, closed the door, and walked over to the gas station. When he saw me approaching he moved a hand to his crotch and adjusted his package. He was smiling at me. In some instances I would have taken that as gay signaling, but he was just a homeless guy. He probably was just naturally crude. I took the option of smiling back at him.

“Hi. Saw your sign,” I said. “So, you’re trying to get to somewhere warm and got stranded here in the snow?”

“Something like that,” the homeless guy said, “Anything you could spare would be a help.”

Up closer, the guy looked younger than he did from afar and a lot less like a Santa. He was on his way toward having the bulky torso and a belly for it, but up close his face looked pinched and malnourished. He was pretty good looking, though, if you discounted the likelihood he’d been dragged through the dirt.

“Sure, I can give you a twenty,” I said and handed him a twenty-dollar-bill. I’d been a big spender of Hal’s money since we’d hooked up. “But that’s not enough to get you below the snowline. I’ve seen on TV that it goes all the way down into the Carolinas. How close are you to being able to get on the road?”

“I’ve got a twenty now, thanks to you.” He smiled at me again. That got to me. In such straits and still able to look on bright side of things. He was quaking and I though he must be chilled to the bone. It was a wet snow that was falling. He’d be soaked as well as chilled even before we’d stopped jawing with each other.

“I tell you what,” I said, on impulse. “You look like you need a meal and dry, clean clothes. How about you come back to my place for a couple of hours and you can have dinner with me, have a shower, and we’ll get your clothes cleaned and dry? Then I’ll bring you back here and you can continue your Florida quest. Your car should be OK here. There aren’t too many car thefts from gas stations in snow falling this heavy, I don’t think.”

“Well, I don’t know—”

“And I think I have something at the apartment that would make a sturdier sign than this one is. The snow has pretty much done it in, I think.” While he was hesitating, I held out my hand and said, “My name is Ryan, by the way. Ryan Jamison. And you are?”

“Nick,” he said, smiling and taking my hand in his. He had a good, strong grip.

“Of course it is,” I said. “Short for Nicholas. I’ve heard you were a saint too.”

He laughed. “Not always, I’m afraid. I’m sure I’ve made the naughty list a time or two.”

He didn’t balk as I guided him over to my car.

* * * *

I could hardly believe how high the stack of clothes was by the master bedroom door when I heard Nick go into the shower and turn it on. They hardly fit in the washer, but if he was going to be out of here after a bite to eat, one washer load would have to do it. I wasn’t domesticated anyway, much to Hal’s annoyance. Sometimes I thought he wanted a maid as much as a bed partner whenever he was in the mood—which wasn’t enough. I had to have it more, and I, in fact, got it more. He looked the other way, but he had no idea the extent of it.

It was almost Christmas and I wanted to be in the mood, so, before I started burning a pizza for Nick and me, I went around the living room, turning down the lights, turning the lights on the Christmas tree, and put a CD on of shmaltzy Christmas oldies. It was still snowing outside. The bluish cast to the snow-covered boats in the marina below was Christmassy as well. I opened the refrigerator, saw the eggnog, took it out, filled two mugs, took a swig, turned toward the master bedroom door upon hearing a sound there, and went WOW. I probably would have done that anyway at finding that the eggnog was heavily spiked, but what really brought the “wow” up was the view of Nick standing in the bedroom door.

“Sorry for the towel, but you took all of my clothes,” he said, “and what’s in the closet in here is too flamboyant—and a little too small—for me. It’s not your size, though. It was easy to see that.”

It wouldn’t be, I thought. I was a small guy. So, he was curious about what was what here. Might as well give it to him straight. “That’s Hal’s room—my roommate.” I had a slight start at the thought that Hal had left his clothes here. That was the closer that I was the one who was supposed to leave. I’d have thought that that was pushy of Hal, except that he was paying for this apartment. It was his name that was on the lease. What took my thoughts away from that, though, was that Nick wasn’t at all what I had been expecting.

Yes, he was heavy, but more in the husky vein than the Santa category. I smiled, the great pile of clothes I’d put into the washer now explaining itself. He wasn’t roly-poly in a Santa vein. He’d been wearing every stitch of clothing he owned in an attempt to keep warm. It had made him appear much (Much!) heavier than he really was. I’d really have to say he was husky and stocky, starting with a well-muscled barrel of a chest and tapering down a tad at the waist, which was thick, but not obese. He actually had very good muscle tone for a mature hobo—not that I knew that the homeless should be flabby or scrawny.

Nick wasn’t either flabby or scrawny. He looked good to me in just the towel hooked around his waist. I liked older men. The wavy gray hair had to be early onset. He couldn’t be fifty yet in what the rest of his body revealed. The gray, in fact, became salt and pepper on his chest and in the line down his belly and into the low-rise of the towel. It, of course, made me wonder what color his pubes were. I was wired that way, always thinking of sex and dicks and whether they were going to be inside me. I wouldn’t throw this Santa out of bed.

“I look silly like this?” he asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re giving me a smile. I must look silly.”

“No, not at all,” I said. “Sorry we don’t have anything here to fit you. I’ll put a rush on the wash.” Not that I could get the washer and dryer to work any faster than they wanted to. “Here. Want some eggnog? Careful; it’s heavily laced.”

“The best kind,” he said, coming over and taking a mug from me. We just stood there by the kitchen counter for several beats longer than were comfortable, both of us grinning for no particular reason.

“Let’s go into the living room and enjoy the Christmas tree and music while the pizza burns,” I said.

“Sure. That would be nice. I didn’t think I’d get Christmas this year. Maybe there’s a present for me in there.” He was giving me a good smile.

“Maybe,” I said. Was that a pass? Was I imagining a situation that didn’t really exist?

We settled on the sofa, facing the tree. The view of the marina beyond the snow-covered balcony was off to his right. I had to look across his hairy barrel chest to look out at the snow. I found I wanted to look at how the snow was doing often.

“Here. Let me get you more eggnog,” I said. “You finished that cup fast.”

“It’s good stuff. Thanks,” he said as I popped up and refilled both cups.

“There’s another guy in this apartment with you?” he asked when I returned to the sofa. “The guy bigger than you. The one with the flamboyant clothes.”

“Yes, that’s Hal. I think he’s in the process of leaving me, though—or throwing me out.”

“A lover’s spat?” Nick asked, looking closely at me over the rim of his cup. He had spread his legs a bit, and I got a glimpse of the lower curve of his balls. They were hairy, like the rest of him. He was auburn-color down there. There was a bulge in the towel higher up. He had to be half hard.

“Am I really that obvious?” I asked. “Is it really that obvious that I sleep with men?”

“To someone who also sleeps with men it is, yes,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.

I let myself exhale, only now realizing that I’d been holding my breathing in check ever since I saw him, nearly naked, in the bedroom doorway. That was out there now. I let it stay out there. “Something like that,” I answered. “He owns a restaurant here in Havre de Grace. He’s an older man. I like older men.” That last sentence was unnecessary, of course, but I recognized the look in Nick’s eyes and knew the mating game had started. He hadn’t just declared gay and revealed he knew I was gay. He was shopping. How extraordinary that bringing a homeless guy in from the cold for a bit would lead to a hookup.

“You like older men how? Like on top or . . . ?”

“Yes, on top,” I said. “I’m a submissive. But you, Nick. Being outside—no place much to go for privacy—what do you do for—”

“I take it wherever and whenever I can get it. Younger men mostly. Younger men who will go under me.”

“Men?”

“Yes, men. But small, young-looking men. Men like you.” The towel had fallen away from his lap. He definitely had had auburn-colored hair earlier in life. And he was in full, thick, long erection.

“Your mug is empty again,” I said, my voice thick with arousal. “I’ll get you more.” I realized I was slurring my words. That eggnog definitely was heavily spiked.

“Maybe later,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’m thinking of unwrapping a Christmas present. What are you thinking? I’m thinking you brought me here tonight because you’re lonely and have had a spat with your man and he’s left you hanging. I don’t think it was just to wash my clothes. I’m thinking you are slim hipped, with a tight channel, and you want it filled for Christmas by a big bruiser of a Santa like me, with lots to give.” He slid over to me and put an arm around my shoulders. Bing Crosby was warbling “White Christmas” on the player.

I was about to be played. What was it Hal had said about being impetuous and too generous?

“Yes,” I whispered. That’s all Nick needed.

He was lifting my right leg with a hand, coming a bit off the sofa and twisting toward me. My right leg was running along the back of the sofa cushion, trapped behind him. My left leg was still bent, the foot on the carpet in front of the sofa. I was reclining into the corner of the sofa. His left hand cupped my head and his knees, and he had risen to his knees between my thighs, his thick torso hovering over me. I was trapped between him and the back corner of the sofa. He brought my face to his for a kiss. It was a deep, French kiss, his bourbon-flavored tongue forcing itself in.

His right hand was working the buttons on my flannel shirt. Flaring that and moving his lips to my throat, I felt his fingers at my belt buckle and then my zipper—and my trousers and briefs were stripped off and dropped on the carpet in front of the sofa.

I cried out a “Yes, Yes!” when his lips went to my nipples, first one and then the other, and his fingers, first one and then a second, breached my sphincter muscle. I arched my back and rolled my pelvis up so he could go deeper with the fingers. Moaning, I began riding the fingers in a slow, rolling motion.

He was an expert at this. He knew how to kindle a flame and control a submissive. He knew how to get a guy into position quickly to take his cock.

“Fuck me. Put it in me, Santa,” I whimpered.

“You don’t have to worry,” he murmured. “I’m good to go if you are. I got checked at a free clinic in Philly last week. Haven’t done it since then.”

Oh, my god, I thought. He was going to bareback me. I got checked regularly because of what I didn’t tell Hal. We used condoms and I usually did with the soldiers too, but I’d wanted to be safe. But I hadn’t even thought about it in this position he’d quickly gotten me into. And when he brought the subject up, it was an explanation on why he was going to bareback me.

And he did bareback me, slowly opening me up, stretching me, as his thick, long cock slid into me and into me and into me. I lifted my left leg and wrapped it around his buttocks, holding him inside me. He held there for an eternity, deep inside me, before he started the rhythm of the fuck. I had been clutching at him, clinging to him. When he started to work me, I relaxed, letting all of the tension flow out of me, opening completely to him, vulnerable, soft in the core he now could—and did—reach. Surrendering wholly to him. “Such a nice present,” he murmured. “Tight, sweet, all mine. I love my present, baby.” When he started to move, I went right with him, rocking my pelvis in rhythm to the long, deep thrusts.

I didn’t want it to stop, but he was on top of me, and taking my breath away. He must have been 220 at least. “Please, you’re crushing me.”

“I’ll get off.”

“No. Just readjust.”

He dug his knees in and raised his torso off mine, stiff arming his arms into the arm of the sofa on either side of my shoulders, his head hanging over mine like that of vulture, staring down into my eyes, taking in every reflection in my eyes of what his cock was doing deep inside me. With the extra leverage of his knees he was able to thrust in farther, harder, faster. I rocked on his thrusts, grabbing the sides of his chest under his pits, feeling him reaching into, devastating, ravishing me in my soft core, as I whimpered, “Yes, yes, yes,” and groaned at his total possession of me, of his unabashed, total use of me. Taking me brutally, cruelly, gloriously. Taking me in a lust and passion and a “taking no prisoners” vigor that Hal never had reached. Making me vulnerable to him and then tearing it out of me.

I had already cried out, “I’m coming,” and did so when he tensed, jerked, and released in the center of me, quickly pulled back to released again on my rim, and then thrust inside to release again. He held me tight under him, a strong hand palming my lower back into him as he grunted his final releases. I lay nestled and firmly in his arms, taking his cum, sighing. I was relaxed, totally surrendered to him, and he knew he had mastered me. He had fired off repeatedly. He must not have had it for a long time. He had barebacked me—flooded me with his cum. I didn’t care.

I lay there, collapsed into the corner of the sofa, legs and arms akimbo, tongue hanging out and panting lightly, my eyes watching the snow softly fall on the boats in the marina beyond the wall of glass to the balcony, humming to myself, when he’d left me to take another shower. Bing was singing “Silent Night.”

How in the hell did an old homeless guy learn to fuck another guy so well?

Merry Christmas.

The pizza, of course, was burnt to a crisp.

* * * *

I woke, flat on my back on my bed, my legs spread and bent, my feet pressing into the mattress, pushing my pelvis up to stretch into Nick’s throat as his lips descended the sides of my cock, which had wakened sometime before the rest of me did. My arms went over my head to grip the top of my headboard and I arched my back and babbled to the ceiling, as below me and lying between my spread thighs, Nick gave me an almost never-ending, edging blow job and worked my prostate with his fingers. Christmas present to me.

“God, you’re good,” I whimpered.

“Just payin’ my way,” he answered in a muffled voice. He was kissing my inner thighs, which were trembling for him.

I was already exhausted, even though having just awakened Christmas Eve morning, when I came. He rolled my pelvis up and went after my hole with his mouth. When I was ready, open, and whimpering for him, he cupped my buttocks, pulled me up to where my legs were extended under me, worked his way between my thighs on his knees, penetrated me, and fucked the hell out of me, once again, taking me hard, savagely, gloriously once more. Yodeling about the great time I was having, I turned my face to the wall of glass beside my bed and enjoyed the slightly different angle view of the marina under a blanket of snow. The snow had stopped though, and after he’d come—once more barebacking and me once more not caring that he did—and I’d come yet again, he scooted up beside me on the bed on is back, and I turned on my side toward him and let my hand glide over the curves and creases of his body, beautiful to me despite the heft of him. Anyone who could fuck me like he did . . .

All of world in silence now except for the low sound of the never-ending revolving of the CDs in the living room, now featuring the Mormon Tabernacle’s rending of “In the Bleak Midwinter” and the muffled sounds of snow plows and snow shovels at work outside. Havre de Grace was coming alive and shoveling out for Christmas.

“I would guess that the clothes are finished in the dryer,” he whispered.

“They are if I remembered to put them in last night before you carried me in here and fucked the shit out of me a second time. I don’t know—”

“As I told you, I take it where I can get it. I don’t get it that often. The clothes are probably still in the washer,” he said. And then, “I guess we should get them dry and I should get going again.”

“To Florida?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. Neither of us objected to that. We were alike in being content to take our pleasures as encounters, not toying with relationships. We were both drifters in that way—Nick physically, me emotionally.

“I’ll feed you breakfast first,” I said. “The clothes can go through the dryer while we eat. Then I’ll take you back to the gas station for your car.”

“I don’t have a car,” he said, and he laughed. “Do you have a bus station here? Buses require gas to run too.”

I laughed too. This all had come out of concern for gas money for a car that Santa didn’t have.

He’d left his leather strip with the bells on the kitchen island counter and I rang them to summon him to breakfast. His clothes were only damp when I went into the laundry room as he went off to take another shower, so they’d be ready soon after breakfast was finished. He done me superbly and I’d be sorry not to get another round, but casual hookups were what I was used to. This relationship I’d had with Hal had been what had been hard to manage.

Still, it was kicky to having been fucked royally and repeatedly by a surprise Santa at Christmas—and a very capable Santa at that. Quite a Christmas present.

“Do you have enough to get you to Florida on the bus?” I asked as we were finishing breakfast.

“I don’t know. You said something about making me a new sign. I could do some more panhandling.”

“How much more do you think you need?”

“Trying to get me out of town?”

“I think we both enjoyed it. I, for one, was touched deeply by it. No one has gotten as deep into me like that and fucked with me so completely as that. That’s dangerous. I don’t know about you, but I think we both don’t want to push that button any harder.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. If I were another person—”

“Same here. How much more do you need to get on your way south?”

“Maybe seventy-five, but you don’t have to . . . I don’t want to take any more gifts from you.”

“It doesn’t have to be a gift. I’ll buy something from you.” I reached for the cookie jar, where Hal kept the grocery money. He was a lavish spender. He wouldn’t even notice that the household fund was light by eighty dollars, which is what I took out of the jar and handed to Nick.

* * * *

When I returned from the bus stations, which, amusingly was just north of the Weis supermarket on Pulaski Highway, where I had picked Nick up in the first place, Hal was standing by the balcony window, gazing out onto the marina.

“There you are,” he said, in a natural way, just as if he hadn’t walked out on me the afternoon before. “I wondered where you were. The tree lights and the CDs were still on when I came in.” The CDs, in fact, were still going. Dinah Shore was singing “I Wonder as I Wander.” “It smells like something was burned to a crisp in here.”

“It was pizza,” I responded instinctively. “I had it in the oven and forgot about it. Something came up.” With Hal, I tried to stay as close to the truth as I could.

My mind raced. How had the apartment been left? Thank god I’d put the breakfast things in the dishwasher. My bed was still a mess, but it often was. What evidence of himself had Nick left in the master bedroom, Hal’s bedroom? I’d taken the towel he’d been wearing to the laundry room before we left. Thank god he hadn’t worn any of Hal’s clothes.

“I was out seeing how the roads were, whether they’d been cleared.” That wasn’t a lie. I’d been on the roads. “The note you left yesterday—”

“You were right. The Cadillac is a piece of junk. I’d had enough of it. I was taking it back to Baltimore to trade it back in—I’ve got a Lexis now. The Caddie broke down on I-95. Had to be towed into town and they couldn’t get a new car to me until this morning.”

“You were out all night. I didn’t know—”

“I tried calling you several times. You have your cellphone off.”

“Oh.” Yes, of course I did.

Hal was over at the refrigerator, opening it. “I made some eggnog. I thought for Christmas Eve . . . shit, it looks like you’ve drunk most of it already.”

“Yeah, sorry. It was good. And you weren’t here last night. I got maudlin watching the tree and the snow falling in the marina and listening to the CDs. Sorry.”

“That’s OK. I’ll make some more. You want to go out tonight?”

“No. I want to stay in and do more of what I did last night—with you. I want to give you a special Christmas present.” That was all true enough.

“Give me a special . . . ? Oh, yes, I see.” I’d come over to the refrigerator and embraced him and kissed him on the throat. He pulled my face up and we kissed on the lips. “Yes, I approve. The best sort of present.”

“Yes, it is,” I thought. Thinking of another kind of present giver, but content with the one I had and who took care of me—as long as I could go off the reservation now and again.

“Uh, what’s this?” he asked. Hal had seen the leather strip with the bells on it that was laying on the kitchen island counter.

“Oh that?” I said. “That’s something I bought off a homeless guy I saw in the gas station parking lot over at Weis’s. He was asking for gas money to get him to Florida. He’d dressed up a bit like Santa and sort of looked like him. He looked so cold and pathetic that I gave him a fifty. He didn’t want to take all that I gave him as a gift, so I bought these bells off him he’d been ringing to catch people’s attention. I went by Weis’s this morning and he was gone. He’s on his way to Florida, I’m sure. I guess you’ll say I was being impetuous and overgenerous again.”

“Shhh, let’s not go there again,” Hal said, taking me into his arms. “I was being unfair. It’s Christmas and you were just in the Christmas spirit. Those characteristics are good things about you, not bad.”

I smiled in his embrace, looking out at the beauty of the snow-covered boats in the marina. He’d left out at least one trait when he’d been berating me for what I had to admit were flaws of mine—my tendency to keep secrets. On the whole, though, I think I was doing that for his benefit and to keep our relationship going. I don’t think I could go on with him as I did if I didn’t get myself a present now and again. Merry Christmas to us.