“Yeah! I mean… if you look at the pieces I’ve produced this past year, you’d think O’Leary festival paraphernalia was my area of expertise.” He rolled his eyes and nodded at the blue-and-silver snow-covered backdrop. “Not my preferred medium, but I’m getting used to it.”
“You’ve had to paint more than one backdrop?” I remembered Gideon saying there were too many festivals in town, but…“How many backdrop-requiring events are there?”
“Oh, something like… eighteen?”
My shock must’ve shown on my face because Everett laughed. “I know, right? I used to think it was weird too, when I first moved here. But I’ve, ah… drunk the Kool-Aid.” He smiled a smile I couldn’t decipher.
“You’re an O’Leary transplant?”
He nodded. “From Boston, like you. My mom was born and raised here, but she left as soon as she was legal, and I only moved here and started teaching, mmm… God, sixteen months ago now?” Ev shook his head. “It seems both longer and shorter.”
“Did you find itweird?” I demanded.
“Shit, yeah. Still do sometimes. It’s the most bizarre culture shock imaginable. Outtherethey have Uber and dim sum and neighbors who understand boundaries, whereas here in O’Leary you have to walk to the bakery and every single person in town knowsexactlywhat you ordered.”
“Right? That’s exactly it! In Boston, I have a life where it’s just me and Hazel, and one nice neighbor who babysits because I pay her, you know? Suddenly, I’m here for twenty-four hours and my child is off with someone I barely know, and all one-thousand-seventy-something people in town have donated stuff to help me out.” I toed the box again and felt compelled to admit, “You know, I told Gideon nothing is gonna happen between us. It can’t.”
Everett frowned. “Okay. What’s one thing gotta do with the other?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Gideon said it had nothing to do with anything, but… I feel like you’re all helping because you care about Gideon, and you wanna play matchmaker—like all that shit with the vipers and the hotel—and you’re gonna be pissed when I end up leaving next week.”
Everett nodded, like he’d heard all the stories, and he probably had. “I see. Yeah. Because out there, with the McDonald’s and the boundaries, it’s all quid pro quo. It’s not like that here, Liam. There’s a reason I’ve stayed in this town, you know?”
I frowned. “Yeah. Because you’re with someone here, right? Silas?”
Ev smiled and leaned back against one of the ancient, melamine desks. “You sound like me when I first came here. ‘What’s the catch? What’s the lowest common denominator?’ Yeah, I’m with Silas. But he loves me, and if I wasn’t happy here, he’d have moved.” It was a simple statement of fact, and his eyes were warm. “We stayed because for all the insanity in O’Leary, it’s a good place. A place you can count on.”
“You sound like Gideon.”
“Because he knows what he’s talking about.”
“People do seem nice,” I allowed. “Generous.”
Gideon certainly was.
Everett was silent for a second, then he crouched down to start sorting through the props in the box at my feet.
“Did you know there’s a Santa contest in town, Liam?”
“No! But that explains a lot. There’s an overabundance of Santa hats out there. I thought it was a weird kind of fashion.”
Everett grinned. “Yeah, wait until next week when the full costumes get broken out.” He shook his head indulgently. “Anyway, the thing is, the costumes aren’t even the point of the contest. Like, it’s not about who canlookmost like Santa. The idea is to basicallybeSanta. To do good deeds and expect nothing in return,ho ho ho.”
“Seriously?” I asked. “That’s so…” I couldn’t figure out how to finish that. Silly? Sweet?
“The word you’re looking for is ‘O’Leary,’” Everett said. “As in, ‘That’s so O’Leary.’ And this place will drive youbatshit, let me just tell you. People asking when you’re gonna have kids, and commenting on how they love or hate your new sweater, and judging any new guy or gal you bring home, and checking out whether you’re buying whole or skim milk at the Imperial.” He shook his head. “It’s like having a thousand loving, crazy-making relatives. But Liam, if you decide to leave, you leave. They might shake their heads and wish they’d done something evencrazierto keep you here, but they’re not gonna be mad or whatever.”
“WhenI leave,” I corrected.
“Sure,” he agreed easily. “When.”
He sorted props silently for a minute, then chucked a plastic snowflake back in the box impatiently. “Okay, fuck it. I’ve been sitting here trying to remember to mind my own business, but apparently it takes exactly sixteen months to be assimilated by the Borg because I’ve completely forgotten how to be normal.” He brushed his hair out of his eyes again. “Whatisthe deal with you and Gideon? You’remarried?”
I hesitated, but it was hardly asecret, right? And Jesus, I really needed someone to talk to.
I dropped to my ass on the carpet on the other side of the prop box and resumed Everett’s sorting job.
“Gideon and I met five years ago this month at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas.”
