Elliot Crane
How late are you working today?
Seth Mays
Looks like the usual.
Why?
Just wondering if I you were going to miss dinner.
I hope not.
:)
I tried notto take it personally that he’d clearly forgotten my birthday. For one thing, we’d only been actually dating-dating for less than a month, and for another, I’d mentioned my birthday once during a conversation back in Richmond about the fact that Hart’s parents—despite being incredibly nice, generous, and caring people—had named him Valentine at least in part because he’d been born on February fourteenth. I reallycouldn’t reasonably expect Elliot to remember that mine was St. Nicholas Day.
Which was actually apparently a thing that people celebrated in Wisconsin. I’d been seeing little signs in the stores—hardware, grocery, and some of the shops on Main Street—about putting candy canes or roasted nuts or oranges (or coal) in kids’ shoes. And some of the quirkier places, as well as the public library, of which I was rapidly becoming a fan, since they had both ebooks I could get on my phone and access to a surprising amount of research materials for a tiny public library, had signs about Krampus, a demonic goat-like creature that stole naughty children and accompanied Jolly Old St. Nick on his rounds.
Part of me was secretly getting excited about the holiday season—I loved the idea of Christmas, the lights, decorations, music, cookies, all of it. Probably because I’d had the kind of upbringing where Christmas was very much a religious—andonlya religious—occasion, and Noah and I weren’t allowed to even mention Santa.
As soon as we were on our own, Noah and I had taken every opportunity to do all the Christmas things we could—to find the neighborhoods with Christmas lights, splurge at the grocery store on candy canes and hot cocoa, and to watch whatever Christmas specials came on TV. The stuff we could do cheaply.
When we’d gotten older, and had steadier jobs, we’d bought decorations, a small fake tree, and gotten each other gifts that we’d done our best to stretch into piles of presents—like if one of us bought gloves or socks for the other, we’d wrap them separately just to have more presents to put under our tree, like in the movies.
This year, I would be here, since I definitely hadn’t managed to save up enough for a plane ticket back yet, although I was already starting to feel weird about the fact that I’d missed Thanksgiving with Noah and would now miss Christmas, too.Noah’d sent me pictures at Hands and Paws in Richmond, and I’d sent him pictures back from Green Bay, but I’d missed him.
I had the feeling Christmas was going to be worse—not only was I not going to spend it with Noah, but we were going to spend it with the shadow of death threats hanging over our heads. Just the thing to bring holiday cheer. I was glad I had Elliot—but I also wanted my brother. My family, small and sad as it might have been.
I talked to Noah about once a week, and texted him more often, although I was sometimes surprised when I went three or four days without hearing from him or vice versa. But usually one of us sent something to the other. A photo of one of Noah’s new paintings. Cinnamon rolls Elliot had made one morning. A plate of food at a fancy restaurant in DC that Lulu had taken Noah to. The last roasted duck I’d made with potatoes, pearl onions, carrots, parsnip, butternut squash, and apples.
He’d texted me about twenty-two times so far today—only eleven more to go—with different emojis, messages, and photos of the present Lulu had left with his cream cheese bagel and the cupcakes someone had brought to work to celebrate. Quincy had also texted me, a series of emojis and the wordsHAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!followed by the image of a dancing badger. It was the wrong sub-species—European, not American—but I appreciated the thought.
Ronda had brought cookies to work with little candles on them in frosting, which was about the sweetest thing anybody had ever done for me for my birthday. Obviously Noah and I always celebrated, but that was expected—we were twins. But the fact that Ronda, who had only known me for a handful of months, not only figured out my birthday (probably by looking in my personnel file), but gone out of her way to bring dairy-free cookies for me brought a small lump to my throat. The ideathat someone who barely knew me would do that was incredibly sweet.
Elliot hadn’t said a word about it.
Not this morning when he’d sleepily shuffled into the kitchen to kiss me before I left, and not in the message he’d sent me around four-thirty. Or at any point in between those two things.
It was making me surly, despite the fact that I repeatedly told myself that I shouldn’t be mad that he didn’t know what day my birthday was.
It wasn’t just the fact that he didn’t know my birthday. I was mad about several things, but that was one that could have easily been remedied by Elliot remembering what I’d said back in March.
Months before he’d decided to think of me as anything other than a few-night stand.
I sighed.
I needed to stop self-sabotaging. At least in terms of the still-very-new relationship I was otherwise pretty happy in. So he didn’t remember my birthday—so what? We were also dealing with people leaving death threats on his doorstep in the form of skinned animals. His dad had died almost exactly a year ago, murdered in the house he still lived in—the house where he’d grown up.
Part of me thought he was incredibly strong for refusing to give up the home where he’d grown up—a home where he’d had a loving family. Friends. Good memories. I imagined, anyway.
At the same time, I didn’t know if I could have stayed in a house where someone I loved had been killed. Was it even healthy to stay there? Honestly, I didn’t know. Maybe it was actually healthier to acknowledge the death and loss, to live with it, than to pretend it had never happened.
“Happy birthday!”
I almost jumped out of my skin. At least I managed not to shriek, even if I did actually jump.
Roger laughed. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
